I am not scheduling this event.

I will be available for Saturday the 18th from noon and all of Sunday the 19th until mid-afternoon to work with whoever my host assembles for free training among like-minded men. Due to the recent medical and religious politics in the country, its essentially going to be impossible to conduct clinics dedicated to reality-focused civilian survival in martial arts schools or MMA clubs. To the extent that those institutions even survive it is going to be by virtue-signaling orthodoxy, which puts a crackpot like me in the shadow of heresy. If they find a way to continue on as above ground enterprises, it will be in accordance to mainstream medical and religious dogma.

I should be able to coach for four hours a day without blowing my eye up running my mouth.

Structure

For an afternoon, morning or evening, I would suggest a split session, boxing first, since most of the men will have boxing experience, followed by weapons.

I’m open for doing split days, if this is a two-day thing, it should be with boxing the first day and weapons the second.

Boxing

Ideally, we do the boxing on asphalt, as it is safe for the ankles and approximates actual combat surfaces the best and we will be going light and have seconds to catch anyone who falls. If there is no asphalt then anything flat will do.

I will stress that the boxing must be light to get anything out of such a short session in terms of method development.

With boxing as a common reference point, the goal is for me to learn your boxing skill set and boxing needs as soon as possible and help with:

-Correcting a specific pit fall if there is one

-Building on your strength

-Adding one thing specific to self-defense [bare knuckle] situations

-Men should have mouth pieces.

-We will need some boxing gloves.

I would like to start with me coaching each man in two sparring rounds as the host seconds the other partner, which will put each man at 4-5 rounds of light contact. By light I mean going half speed and tapping with the punches. This will be a movement and angle clinic, and if you are the fastest guy there and you go fast you won’t learn anything and the other guys you paste will be stuck not learning much either.

For a one-time get together the ego has to go out the window. This type of sparring you could do with your mother. The purpose is to develop high angulation sensitivity by slowing down and integrate tactile boxing methods most people never get to use in the gym until competition eve, but are very useful in the street. Ideally we pair up a guy with a lot of experience with someone with little, and the experienced boxer role-plays “the bad guy” in a slow motion round, as the coach speaks just to the phasing fighter. In this situation we have three guys looking out for the safety and improvement of the phasing fighter.

I want to call each round at the clutch moment when something needs to be addressed. This is not cardio conditioning. We are trying to stay fresh enough to learn.

Higher levels of sparring are necessary to achieve real proficiency. But, these levels are not practical access points for a visiting coach to make useful assessments in real time unless he is dealing with seasoned, competition-level fighters.

Our goal here is to actually have every fighter leave better schooled in boxing then when he arrived. Each starting from where he is, not some perfectionist reference point laid out by the visiting coach.

The non-coached partner will be assigned a task, a combat role if you will, for each round, depending on the needs of the coached partner. If we have a really good active boxer I’d like to use him a lot for this role.

After each round we workshop two aspects of the sparring from the round, me working with the coached partner and the rest of the guys pairing off for just a round length and working that aspect with us at the center of the circle for a reference check.

If there are not enough gloves to go around [each guy should bring his own considering the medical situation in the country] than checking drills will be inserted.

The second phase of the boxing should be Q&A.

-Do you have injuries, limitations?

-Questions about bareknuckle?

-Situation modeling?

-Avoidance from a boxing perspective?

The Third phase of the boxing will be a demonstration of how to use your sister, wife, grandpop, and other non-combatant friends and relations as coaches and training partners, as we move into a world where gym attendance is increasingly dicey and we get atomized via work.

At this point we reach the grappling zone, as one of the drills is to have your girl glove up and throw punches at you while you practice defense in the pocket and angle for a clinch. Once the cinch is achieved the drill starts again. I’ll introduce over-hooking and under-hooking and hip-checking from the boxing perspective. Then, if we have any grapplers there I’d prefer to hand off the discussion on upright control grappling to them.

Second Session: Weapons

We should have a grassy area for this.

Bring a pair of old hockey or lacrosse gloves.

I will bring fencing masks.

Bring whatever everyday item you imagine using for self-defense, such as your umbrella, a rolled of magazine, etc. No real weapons please, as we will be in public most likely.

I will have a cane and two sticks.

My assistant will be bringing a mess of pvc lengths we use for training.

I will run the basic concepts of using extension weapons and edged weapons outside of dueling and competition and explain how sparring can be modeled for these goals.

We will train:

-The X-pattern stroke

-The shift,

-The reverse shift

-The reverse triangle

-The roof block

We will then spar in a continuous circle for called rounds. I will call the round at a clutch coaching point, address the point, and advance a new round.

The contact will be light, as with the boxing.

We are learning.

-arm length

-short

-long sticks

The guys not sparring will get a chance to learn at the expense of their fellows as they are up there with the experienced stick guys.

When I am not sparring I will walk the circle and answer questions concerning the action.

If I have two assistants, one will second the phasing fighter who is sparring me or the other assistant.

An important aspect of avoiding injury is not having two fighters new to the skill set going at it.

We will be using PVC to a large degree.

We will be tap sparring, lightly.

We will then advance to knife sparring.

Knife sparring is done at full speed with short blunts which I will provide.

After knife sparring we will to self-defense:

-Against the extension weapon

-Against the knife

-Extension weapon against a pack

-Knife against a pack

-We will address each fighter’s body type for this brief.

We will be leaving blade verses blunt, flexible weapons and machetes alone this year, as those arts depend upon basic ability with knife and stick.

Blitz Drill

If anyone wishes to feel fight level intensity, I will spar at competition pace with anyone who wishes, for 30 seconds, with light rattan sticks and you will get a nice welt to show your kids and no one will get injured.

Q&A

We should finish by addressing any outstanding questions in your mind.

Is there something about your physical makeup which does not fit part of what we were training?

I’d like to thank my Host in advance and offer my training services in solidarity to any man who is determined not to bend the knee of submission in these stimulating times.

James LaFond, 6/17/20