“You simply can’t go around telling people what they have been doing for years is completely wrong and has no value, no matter how ‘progressive’ you think that you might be, you’d be very wrong!”
These are the unlikely words of long-time personal security consultant, ex-military specialist and seasoned doorman, twenty-five year martial arts veteran and founder of the “C2: Core Combatives” concept, Mick Coup.
I say unlikely, as if you take a look back at the first article in this series, “Reality-Based Self-Defence? Get Real!” and if you have been online and read any of Mick’s old essays, “The Nature of Beast” trilogy in particular, you will see that he has little time for the flawed practices of many formal martial arts. “Boil it down, see what’s left in the pan” is his motto when people discuss techniques. When asked about his years dedicated to martial arts practice, including instructor qualifications in traditional Ju-Jutsu, Kung Fu, Freestyle Karate and Kickboxing, he shrugs off this training as “not very influential” in the formation of his C2 concept, which instead utilises procedures drawn from his real-life military and civilian combat experiences. Yet he still absolutely believes that C2 principles can harmonise with other martial arts, formal or otherwise, perfectly. In his own words:
“Arms are arms, and legs are legs, they all work exactly the same way and there is nothing new under the sun, nor will there ever be unless evolution makes another big push!”
From a fundamental level, foundation C2 training is designed to directly relate to natural human fighting methods and basic physics. As such C2 is objectively and ergonomically driven by actual requirements rather than subjective preferences. The highline attack takes precedence in the “hard skills” section of C2 training, due to the head being the priority target in personal combat. If a person is required to kill an enemy with a gun then the head is the first choice; the same could have been said with archery, spears, halberds and axes throughout history. If the head is clear then that’s where you will be sure to finish someone. Likewise if we look through the martial arts: Wing Chun’s main assaults are directed towards the head, a full-contact combat-sport striker, such as a Western Boxer, knows that a knockout or stoppage is most likely with a strike to the jaw and perhaps the most high-percentage form of grappling method is a choke or strangle, which cuts off the rest of the body from the airways created by the head or the blood supply that feeds the brain. The head is the body’s computer and is the only part of our body that contains all five of the senses, four of them exclusively.
Other areas of the body are, of course, attacked in martial arts as they are in C2. Axe and swordsmen have famously chopped into and through limbs throughout history, Thai Boxers are famed for their awesome kicks to the leg, grapplers have their takedowns and limb breakages or dislocations, Karateka are known for their sweeps and try telling the Western Boxer, Ricky Hatton that body shots don’t work! Nevertheless such methods have evolved from a second-best strategy in order to get to the head and switch off the proverbial mains! If an attack to elsewhere on the body does dispatch your enemy then that is great, but the original objective is to get back to the head. Of course, many martial arts clubs have been sidetracked from this strategy, hence the reason why you see certain styles over-represented by wristlocks and throws, others by attacks to the legs and so forth.
For example, if we look at a typical Daito Ryu derived martial discipline such as Aikido or traditional schools of Japanese Ju Jutsu there is a common procedure of entering with a strike, supposedly as a form of distraction, before applying a joint lock, the wrist-lock being the most often seen. A common belief is that the attacks to the wrists were derived from handling warriors armed with daggers, knives or similar bladed weapons. Controlling the weapon hand is a commonsense strategy, however, Mick teaches not to become fixated on the weapon hand, but control it in order to clear the way for the highline. Mick says, “The weapon alone is not going to hurt you, the person holding it is – worry about him more.” This is not out of sync with what was probably the original rational focus of the art. The “distracting” blow, which often seems to waste time in a high-pressure situation, was most probably intended to be a stopping strike. And the even more unlikely fine motor skill operation that follows in many traditional Aikido or Ju Jutsu demonstrations was quite possibly a cruder gross motor skill application best used under the preface (and I steal this one from Iain Abernethy) “incidental or accidental”. Therefore at these respected arts’ core base we see a familiar C2 shape and plan.
From what I have learnt from Mick, the C2 concept strategy/tactic is to use trapping, gripping, holding, smothering, pushing and (possibly) parrying methods as a source of controlling and then ‘indexing’ to better acquire your target. These non-tangible methods, along with covering, moving and positioning, form the support skills of the C2 foundation elements. This indexing skill works on the fact that once you have made contact with someone you have a point of reference and you can naturally gauge and adjust where you want your strike to go. For example, if you want to knock a nail in with a hammer you will hold the nail and control it in order to hold it steady and then put your hand on the wall (indexing) as a reference. On a pure level, the C2 grip is an efficient “meat hook” grip that keeps the thumb on the same side as the rest of the digits, and exerts some leverage with the forearm to aid control. This is no different to the way no-gi grapplers and wrestlers take their grips. Thai and Burmese Lethwei Boxers do the same in their clinch-work with or without gloves. Mick tells me that tactical drivers also use this method when holding a steering wheel to prevent getting their thumbs broken during arduous off-route work. “If you grip with your thumb encircling the limb”, Mick explained to me “you will be less inclined to let go when it is best to do so, it can become a death grip – your death!” With the thumb not caught up on the appendage it is easier to release and you remain more in control. Once again, you are avoiding not becoming fixated on anything other than your primary objective. Mick further points out that you should attempt to manipulate any controlled limb into the enemy to discourage him from grappling you.
Controlling and Indexing, in some shape or form, can always be seen when allowances are made for striking and grappling. As well as the aforementioned Aikido examples, you have the Muay Thai or Lethwei clinch, where Boxers grapple as they pummel in a series of knee strikes. Many efficient sweeps seen in semi-contact Karate competitions were done, a la Judo, by first gripping the gi and then taking out a supporting foot. The hallmark of Mixed Martial Arts competitions is the “ground ‘n pound” method of mounting an opponent and then raining punches, elbows and (until recent years) head-butts down to his face. Again, this is a very clear example of controlling and indexing the enemy – in this case additionally positioning him – in order to efficiently get substantial strikes on target. Filipino styles of fighting arts are known for their trapping techniques, which follow a not too distinct strategy from C2. The focus here is to remove the defending limbs from the target. Likewise, when taken back to their combat applicability and away from their sporting side, Karate and other related arts, reveals a wealth of indexing, controlling and striking principles.
Mick Coup, in his efforts to return combative training back to their base survival methods for the common person, makes striking a priority and his strategy is to avoid grappling. As I have said throughout this article, the highline strike is the main method of attack. Even the second primary C2 tool, the offline strike, is directed towards the head whenever possible and the strategy is always to obtain the highline targets. The third primary tool of the “Big Three”, known as the lowline strike, can be a knee or shin, best employed to the lowered head as a stopping blow, or, when striking the legs and groin, to regain that highline approach again. Everything else follows this formula. Head-butts and eye-gouges, both found in the C2 secondary tools, are methods generally used to counter grappling attacks, creating space and opportunities for a more telling primary tool.
From a personal C2 perspective I would say that experience in grappling is a superb form of attribute training: it develops your grip in a relevant way (the no-gi grip being identical to the C2 “meat hook”), toughens you up and gives you fully resistant people to work against. Positioning is also an excellent area developed in grappling. There is also the point that people will naturally grapple. Many have contested that intelligent species have a genetic instinct not to fatally kill one another in personal confrontations. Martial artists have further argued that this is the reason why we often end up grappling as a default combat method. Men often end up in an alpha male contest, which can trace its origins back to our primitive tribal days, where the strongest submits his rival in some form or another. This ensures dominance without destroying or seriously injuring a member of the same species.
On the subject of attribute training, the relevance of such contact-sports as Rugby should not be overlooked. Mick rates it alongside Boxing as great toughening methods for self-protection training. Rugby players understand the strategy of constant aggression, when to run, when to attack and they condition themselves not to give in by enduring heavy clashes with other human beings. I remember self-protection expert Geoff Thompson advising martial arts instructors to invite Rugby players to open sparring sessions to get a feel for this type of raw aggression.
The C2 main attitude and strategy is to be as pro-active as possible. The underlying philosophy is to be on the attacking side as quickly as possible. C2 aims to flip the conflict psychology so that you become the predator and your antagonist, the enemy, becomes the victim. You do not wait for counters, traps and so on from a “hard skills” mindset. Mick, unlike many self-defence instructors, tries to avoid over-reactive training at least at a foundation level – instead ‘programming’ constant offensive pressure, in some form, as the default. At his debut seminar in Cardiff he made the point about too many martial artists becoming pre-occupied with working from what happens when someone has already done something physically to you in a “real” situation. He argues that to allow someone to get this far in an assault situation already stacks the odds considerably in their favour and diminishes the likelihood of the now ‘victim’ being able to act efficiently.
“Learning how to get out of a fully-applied hold is like learning what to do when you get kicked in the head – surely the priority lies with ‘anti’ not ‘counter’?”
Therefore over-acclimatizing ourselves to grappling may be a valid form of attribute training, but it is still a step off the C2 line, which is – to be frank and to reiterate the point – to take out the head as quickly as possible.
“Do not play around with the moving parts of such a dangerous machine, find the main switch and turn it off – pronto!”
The body mechanics behind C2 would find harmony with any system that promotes the efficiency of taking a straight-line attack route – it all boils down to basic physics ultimately. Even the seemingly curving blows utilised, such as the lowline kick and palm hook, actually apply their impact force in a straight line. This “straight line efficiency” is precisely the same principle that Wing Chun and Hsing-I follows. It has often been argued that certain martial arts systems are aggressive whereas others are passive. On a hard skills base the nature of constant aggression prevails in combat strategy. It is what the military have used when they are in-fight, it is what we see time and again on news or CCTV footage of real violence and it is what separates street fighting from sport fighting. There is no “to and fro” motion in serious street fighting. It is all about constantly progressing through the enemy until the threat is eliminated. There is no “your turn, my turn”; it is all “my turn, my turn”. To quote Mick in full flow, “real fighting is just like Christmas: it’s all about the giving!”
Nevertheless from a “soft skill” Threat Management base, a separate area taught alongside “hard skill” C2 training, the more defensive anti-ego methods can be employed efficiently. Also, once the foundation elements of emergency “last-resort” self-protection have been properly “hard-wired”, more advanced C2 training covers specialisations for military and security related tasks – where hostile subjects have to be calmed, controlled and restrained, but always with the option of instantly resorting to effective self-protection should a situation escalate beyond an individual’s control.
Confrontation training is covered in depth and detail, both from a “hard” and “soft” perspective, concerning potential conflict situations commonly referred to as the “interview” where a possible threat is pre-seen and there is an option to disengage and avoid. The idea of pre-arranged fighting is not entertained. In fact, Mick makes a big point about avoiding what the self-protection pioneer Geoff Thompson calls the “match fight” or the US prison security expert Sgt. Rory Miller refers to as the “monkey dance”. At his opening seminar, Mick put it quite clearly: “if you are still getting into real ‘match fights’ after you have left school, you need to grow up.” Therefore the only time a civilian should enter a combat situation is when it is unavoidable, which will be at the interview stage when deception and pre-emption are your tools or if you are ambushed.
“During any ‘interview’ just bear this in mind – when you think you are being pre-emptive and sneaky, the guy in front of you has already been pre-emptive overall! Be careful of this fact, you may be in the process of engaging your own brain to leave yourself wide open to his initial strike if you obsess about complex verbalisations and the like. Aim to’ interview’, or ‘ambush’, him – not the other way around, take the lead if there is no way out, and if there is a way out – why are you still there?”
Superficially, snap shots of some C2 methods resemble techniques we have seen in Wing Chun, Jun Fan, Jeet Kune Do, Panatukan and Kali to name but a few arts. Power generation for the highline strike, for example, follows the process of moving the hip – more accurately everything – before the arm, which is similar to what a lot of heavy strikers say, from Peter Consterdine’s “Double Hip” to Russell Stutely’s “Wave Form”. There are personal somewhat academic arguments about what kind of force can realistically delivered in a high pressure situation, exactly how one does it and what constitutes the right response, but I cannot help seeing a similar rough view. The positions used are natural and almost square-on to expose the maximum amount of offensive tools that can be employed, and C2 foot work is nothing short of natural walking, with the occasional shuffle here and there, a method being readily employed by Matty Evans and John “Awesome” Anderson, who are progressing the Geoff Thompson Real Combat Method, and Dennis Jones who makes a point of winding back the traditional teachings of Karate. The first choice of kicking techniques that forms the last of the “Big Three” is the lowline kick and knee (both considered to be different parts of the same technique within C2). Both look like standard Muay Thai techniques, but alterations have been made. For example, although the kick may be using the shin to strike with, its delivery is more like an angled footballer’s kick. Mick argues that footballers and similar sportsmen have developed some of the most powerful and accurate kicks possible through efficient natural selection. “Try telling a pro soccer player that his leg has to be swung straight, you’ll get a very short answer!”
It has been my experience since I began using my own method of cross training, “Clubb Chimera Martial Arts”, that the more you learn the more you reinforce principles. When you return to training for reality you need to be strictly objective with your approach and restrictive with your choice of methods. The search for simplicity has almost become a parable in the martial arts community. Everyone seems to agree with the point that “simple is best” or the “truth is in the basics”, but martial artists, loving what they do, cannot help themselves in building on what works.
With this in mind, Core Combatives, by definition, presents a base limited practice that can be easily included and mixed in with any martial art. Mick says that he has tried to remain objective about what he has chosen, staying away from personal favourites in preference for methods that can be easily accessed by the average person without his experience. Such an approach, he argues, means that C2 provides efficient combat at its most simple, clinical and true to the base origins of the marital arts. In conclusion, stepping off the line can be an enriching experience so long as it does not unnecessarily detract from the priority objective. If it does, then this must be pursued and isolated as a separate entity. This can be quite a refreshing attitude to have and stops us “reality-based” sorts from snorting at XMA or Wu Shu, giving insecure, inane and rather pointless comments like “yeah, right like that’s going to work”.
To summarize in words of Mick Coup, “everything works in some shape or form, no matter how ‘telegraphed’ or long-winded it appears to be to the critical martial ‘academic’. With the right intent, real capability and opportunity are never far away and many a seasoned fighter has had a nasty surprise at some point or another!”
Next Issue: Bob Sykes’s Training Day with Mick Coup
