On Saturday 11 August the following Mappers gathered at the High Wycombe Judo Centre for a Simulation Day run by DART. In attendance were JWT, Sampsi, Gary, Cosmic, Simon, Llamageddon, SifuBen, Southpaw and Atre. It will take me some time to edit the video footage and then I'll post what we got up to. Here's a taster picture.
Another great day's training from the boys and thoroughly professional instruction from jwt. The boys were in protective equipment throughout a very hot day and certainly earnt their stripes.
Yep. Been finding random small injuries all morning. Also, I'm pretty sure you injured my thumb when you headbutted it.* Both a fun and educational day all round. Many thanks to JWT for hosting it, and to all the other guys who helped make it what it was. (*I might have actually been punching you in the face.)
It was an awesome day, thoroughly recommend it to anyone who hasn't been. Was great to meet other MAPpers as well, and punch them in the face (or flying kick them in the back )
I'm looking forward to seeing the many videos of Gary bravely running away! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8&t=1m"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8&t=1m[/ame] (1 min in)
As well as the fun there is a serious side to all this. Here is some of the safety equipment worn beneath the t-shirts.
I promise I'm not just making comedy pictures from video captures. I'll start the video editing this evening. All the armour has been going through the washing machine - piece by piece. The participants were working on a hot day in 'sweat suits' for five hours - that stress and fatigue is something that should be held in mind when looking at their performance. Here's the equipment laid out before use.
Hey, I progressed from passing the buck and running away to running away by passing through people. After that it all gets blurry, I remember being assaulted in a lift, being a mouthy bouncer and for some reason the worst crowd surfing attempt ever made by a barman... Who hasn't seen Kung fu dancing in a club?
Here is the video of the initial acclimatisation training. There's quite a mixed bag of results. As usual the biggest problems at this stage in the day are 1. Poor guarding of the head. 2. A reluctance in defenders to make head shots. It was noteworthy that the two consistent pre-emptors at this stage were DART practitioners. Despite this there were some good performances across the board here. I've labelled who is defending in the top left hand corner of each clip. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoC059jsSPg"]Sim Day 6 Acclimatisation - YouTube[/ame]
Obviously the quality of the experience will always be coloured by the levels of realism (or not) fostered in each scenario. Before beginning the videoed training the participants watched a small number of videos of real fights and we talked through some of the body language displayed. We followed this with a short practise session of role playing bad guys. Some people will always be better than others at doing this. To give the students maximum training time I ran the same scenario several times back to back here rather than scrolling through a broader range. Obviously this lessens the shock value of the scenario although each participant still has to make comply/don't comply decisions. Here is the footage of the first part of post acclimatisation training. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=008o_uNtwvw"]Sim Day 6 Scenario 2 - YouTube[/ame]
