This summer Mike will be a special guest instructor at Kevin Secours' Combat Systema Summer Camp in Montreal, Quebec, Canada during the week of July 9-13, 2012. Here's what Kevin has to say about Mike.
"Mike Malpass of Combat Systema Phoenix will be providing two very special evening sessions. Mike is the owner of Combative Resolutions. He has been a police officer for 19 years, and is currently assigned to the Phoenix S.W.A.T. special assignments unit. He is a five-time national heavyweight kickboxing champion with over 24 years of experience in the martial arts, including intensive training in catch wrestling and defensive tactics. Mike is a progressive, pragmatic, pressure-tested real-world warrior. He will be leading two special evening sessions on Solo and Team Restraint Tactics and Home Security. This is a rare, must-do opportunity to learn cutting edge, battle- proven and street-ready tactics from a man on the frontline." See more about the Combat Systema Summer Camp 2012 here. Posted on June 5, 2011 by Mike Malpass
Last weekend, we completed our first Combat Systema seminar in Tempe, Arizona. The seminar went three days and covered: functionalizing the clinch, takedowns on resisting subjects, ground survival and the Combat Systema striking module. The group consisted of law enforcement officers, Combat Systema affiliates and several people who wanted to compare Combat Systema with other systems they have or are currently studying. First off, what an amazing group of people! Everyone worked hard straight through for seven-hour days. The participants opted for no lunch and small breaks for maximum training time for each individual. Throughout the three day seminar, individuals approached myself and Kevin and commented on the quality of the people involved with the seminar. For the law enforcement officers, it was an eye opening experience to train with Kevin Secours, to be exposed to his extensive experience and abilities and to see an approach to training far different from what the average cop experiences in the course of his/her career. Every cop involved in the seminar made it clear that this style of training is far more beneficial than the standard “cookie cutter” approach to law enforcement training. The affiliates, who have trained with Kevin before said that each time is a new experience and they learn new twists to the lessons each time. The others who have trained in other arts, but not Combat Systema before, were fascinated by the lesson plan objectives and amazed at the extensive knowledge Kevin has, not only of Combat Systema, but of numerous other fighting systems. For me, it was a great experience to be around a wonderful group of people and to spend three days with Kevin Secours, who is not only one of the most skillful and talented teachers I have ever trained with, but a hell of a nice guy to boot. If you have the chance to train with Kevin, I could not give you enough of a recommendation to do so. I can guarantee that you will not be disappointed and you will walk away more poised, more skilled and more amazed each time you train with him. To contact Kevin, go to CombatSystema.com and you can also see some of his teaching methods at Systema Canada on You Tube. I also highly recommend Kevin’s dvd’s, which were my first chance to see the Combat Systema application to fighting systems. Keep in mind, I studied different fighting systems for almost thirty years before I was exposed to Combat Systema material. Here is what I can tell you; if you have already been studying other arts, Kevin’s material will make you better. If Combat Systema is the first art you will study, you will be exposed to a complete fighting system that teaches how to stay healthy and develop principles and attributes from day one that can put you well on your way to becoming a balanced, healthy, and poised fighter. Check on the Systema Canada and Combative Resolutions You Tube pages in the next few weeks for video clips from the seminar and thanks again to Kevin Secours for an awesome training experience. Posted on March 11, 2011 by Mike Malpass
I get a lot of questions regarding why I teach an emphasis on the hammer fist and more unconventional striking methods. Please keep in mind that we can discuss two different methodologies when it comes to striking, which are sportive and combative. I am a huge fan of MMA, boxing, kickboxing and freestyle martial arts and I have competed in all of these arenas in the last thirty years. Eighteen years ago, I became a police officer and since then have been trying to find ways to take my sportive experience and apply it to a more combative application. This has been fun, enlightening, frustrating, confusing and back to exciting, enlightening, and thought provoking. The major issue with sportive striking methods is that the human body can generate more power than the human hand can absorb if contact is not made precisely the same way every time. If making precise strikes was easy, then professional fighters who are involved in street confrontations would have no trouble making the transfer from a sportive to a combative methodology. Unfortunately, this is not the case as numerous incidents involving broken hands with professional fighters both in and out of the ring and cage abound. Don’t get me wrong, I still love traditional boxing and kickboxing striking techniques in their sportive applications. I just don’t endorse using them at full power in a combative application. A worse case scenario could look like this: Imagine a police officer who is involved in an altercation with a combative suspect. They are in a knock down drag out fight and the officer now fears for his life and escalates to full speed full power punching. He manages to knock the suspect down with a mighty overhand right but breaks his hand in the process. The officer is right handed and has now lost the use of his right hand. To make matters worse, three generations of the suspect’s family are now headed his way. The officer is right handed and cannot draw his weapon due to the damage sustained from throwing a picture perfect overhand right that landed slightly off in the fog of war. He cannot quickly handcuff his suspect and make a run for it because handcuffing cannot be done quickly with one hand. Sound bad? This happened to a friend of mine and the only thing that saved him was the emergency button on his radio which brought the cavalry quickly to his aide. If this had happened to an average police officer with no sportive or combative experience it would have been easy to pass off the broken hand as “the cost of doing business.” Fortunately for us, this officer had professional boxing and kickboxing experience and knew the business of sportive striking very well. This gave us a hint that the sportive applications were not transferring to the combative and we began to search to refine our techniques. While discussing this incident with the officer, I remember a conversation I had with Sam Jones back in the 80’s. Sam is a boxing and kickboxing coach in southern Ohio and a high level black belt in Bando. Sam is also a former contender in the professional boxing ranks as well as a holder of numerous kickboxing titles. Sam ran a bar as well as his boxing gym and one night after boxing training we were discussing the fact that Sam had broken his hands so many times that he no longer used traditional boxing punches when involved in conflicts at the bar. We then discussed the Bando Boar punches which are the same as the old school hatchet and hammer fist shots. Sam demonstrated the technique and its many applications as well as how the shots were not as dependant on stance as traditional striking techniques. Sam banged a few of these off my boxing guard and it was amazing how much force was carried through my shielding forearms and into my head. I then used these techniques to get me through my college job of bouncing in the bars at Ohio University in Athens Ohio. They definitely save the hands and there is nothing like a quick, short hammer fist to the top of a free swinging drunks head to make him blink, sag, and become very easy to restrain and escort. No residual effects, no broken bones, just quick disorientation and quick control. It would stand to reason that I would have remembered this valuable lesson and carried it into my law enforcement career, but alas, maturity and common sense came late to this ignorant soul. Roughly fourteen years ago, I brought back the idea of boxing with the hammer fists and have been refining the idea ever since. I have used it on the street and I have used it in the cage and have found it to be equally effective in both realms. Now in the MMA world, I am just a ham and egger. My dreams of sportive glory are over and now I compete when I can because it’s a great way to test the capacity to keep your head and solve problems. My focus now is on techniques that can save my keister when I need them and have less risk of causing injury to myself while throwing them. The hammer fist techniques fit these criteria because it really doesn’t matter what area of the body you hit with them, you can still get an affect out of your opponent. If I go to throw a hammer fist shot and the suspect shields, I can still get an affect out of him. If a traditional punch is shielded, you have a much greater chance of breaking your hand. The hammers can also be easily blended with elbow techniques and tie-ups to create a continuous flow of techniques which don’t require memorization, just familiarization. In fact, while we do drills that have some pattern repetition, each participant is encouraged to find their own flow and blends that work for them. After a short period of familiarization, the hammer fist striking method is easily incorporated into sparring and everyone involved can experience for themselves the effectiveness of the techniques. A good start to incorporating these ideas into your fight strategy is to start on the heavy bag with light shots from numerous angles. Keep the fists tight but the rest of the arm loose and see how many angles you can come up with to hit from. The possibilities are truly endless. Then, do some drilling with a partner back and forth against each other’s shielded arms in order to see that you can bounce them off his shielding forearms and do no damage to yourself. You will also notice how much power carries through your own shielding arms when your partner is throwing. Again, take it easy, no point in giving each other brain damage. The point is to develop a healthy amount of respect for the technique and its numerous applications. When you are ready to introduce it into your sparring, make sure you pad up and wear headgear and a mouthpiece. Even at fifty percent speed and power, you will feel the impact so be careful and enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/user/combativeresolutions#p/u/3/ObY6qzDmPEs Posted on February 20, 2011 by Mike Malpass
If you are reading this blog, then you probably got to this page from Kevin Secours’ blog page or from the Systema Canada YouTube page. (www.combatsystema.com) My thanks to Kevin for showing an interest in the program and for helping promote the idea. I developed the Team Arrest Tactics program around six years ago, after several federal rulings came out against officers who immediately went to strikes in order to solve the problem of a resistant subject who refuses to comply with handcuffing and is hiding his hands underneath his body while lying face down on the ground. The subject may be forcefully moving his body back and forth, but is not actively trying to assault the officers involved in the arrest. To be clear, if the subject is actively assaulting officers, then strikes are certainly a good way to gain control by, first, causing dysfunction, and then, using restraint tactics in order to get the suspect into handcuffs. However, with the subjects who are resisting arrest but not assaulting officers, resorting to strikes is not the most efficient way of gaining control and compliance. While doing the research for the Team Arrest Tactics program, I was speaking with officers from all around the country and finding the average number of flashlight, knee and hand strikes to the arms, back of shoulders and thigh area, to be 15-40 strikes in order to gain compliance. At that time, this was an informal and unscientific study, but the concerns of the federal judges supported these statistics. I have several issues with strikes being the first line of defense for dealing with a resistant but non-assaulting subject. First, while the various strikes are being delivered, the suspect is unrestrained and is able to freely move to defend the strikes, and if he chooses, to begin assaulting the officers. Second, multiple strikes from multiple officers does not pass the headline test. To the average civilian, it looks like a savage attack on one non-violent man by several violent police officers. It does not really matter that they wouldn’t know a good use of force from a bad one because perception does matter. The problem at the time was that officers (including myself) were trained to go to strikes, if, after a “reasonable” amount of time, you were not able to get the hands out for handcuffing. Of course you were on your own to decide what would be a “reasonable” amount of time. The officers involved in the court cases in question acted within the boundaries of their training and within their agencies’ guidelines, so the issue was not excessive force. The rulings usually revolved around agencies seeking a better first procedure to gain compliance before resorting to strikes. From this starting point, the Team Arrest Tactics program began. The Team Arrest Tactics program is a mixture of old school Catch-as-Catch Can Wrestling, Naban Grappling, the Bando Python System and Russian Sambo. The idea was to see if compliance could be gained quickly from a resistant subject by inducing multiple points of pain compliance while inhibiting the subjects ability to take in a full breath. Keep in mind the subject can breathe, they just cannot take in the lungful of air necessary for strong bursts of strength and power. It took around six months of experimentation and the generous support of a handful of police officers who were as interested as I was to see if we could generate some good ideas. This translated to my friends being poked, prodded, twisted, grinded, cross faced and wrapped up like a Christmas gift in order to find out what works. We ended up with a program that was taught in a training module to every officer on my department. Then, it went on to be presented to several other agencies’ specialty details (usually those involved with fugitive apprehension). It’s a fun program that is easy to learn and easy to use. My favorite part of the program is the pace you practice it at is the exact pace to use on the street. The pace is slow and deliberate every time. I did read one post asking if there was concern about restricting breathing. Positional asphyxia is a concern in any arrest situation, but most documented cases come from a prisoner who is already handcuffed and is still combative. At that point, the subject was then “hog-tied” by placing him in leg restraints and connecting the leg restraints to the handcuffs. That places the subject face down on the ground with their legs pulled up behind them and attached to the handcuffs preventing most movements. The Team Arrest Tactics program does place the subject in a similar contortion, but once compliance is gained and the cuffs are on, he is removed from that position. If he is still combative, then a long line is used to connect a leg restraint to the handcuffs, but the subject is able to sit with the line attached and is not placed on his stomach. The subject is also continuously monitored to make sure he does not roll onto his stomach and stay there. The program is designed to inhibit a full breath, but not to prevent breathing. The position is uncomfortable, but in the majority of cases, it is the various forms of pain compliance (which are subtle and not obvious to the average passerby, thereby, passing the headline test) which cause the subject to give up his hands for cuffing. In only a small number of uses have the subjects been able to resist the multiple points of pain compliance. In these cases, they still gave up due to exhaustion within forty five seconds. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding the program. |
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