It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these! My apologies – many things are leeching my time from me at the moment but I thought I should snatch back a few minutes to throw up a quick update and some feedback.

This week’s session started with a bit of a talkey bit, introducing some basic biomechanical concepts for you all to work into your training, such as spine alignment, the arc of strength (proximity and position), lever principles and the usefulness of fixed points. After playing with those ideas, we partnered up for some Chisao, and then split into beginners and intermediates; with the beginners going through some basic concepts of how to deal with punches, kicks and grabs, and the intermediates dealing with knife and stick attacks predominantly. All in all, good fun!

Just so everyone’s on the same page here – me and Paul are taking it in turns with the weeks! Paul will do next week, and I will do the week after, and we’ll alternate from then.

Another note – I’ve only had two aliases chosen. If you want to be mentionable on here then you’ll need to choose a name! Of course, if you don’t want to be mentioned then that’s also cool but it’ll be one less source of feedback.

If anyone has any questions about how things are structured now, what’s going on, training or anything else, as always feel free to ask on one of the plethora of contact methods we have.

See you next week,

FCIns. Josh Nixon

Andy’s approach was largely the same as ours, but introduced plenty of fresh ideas which PHDefence is always open to – I certainly have taken on board some great ideas and will be implementing them along with some awesome ones I’ve had brewing in my mind while I should have been writing essays over Christmas!

Before I go any further with feedback and general waffle, I just want to thank Andy once again for coming, and for sharing his top-notch instruction with us. While you can tell a good deal from seeing someone on YouTube, keeping in touch online, etc you can never properly know another instructor until you see them teach, or even better train with them yourself. I’ve now had the pleasure of doing both, and so I can say truthfully that Andy’s approach is commendable, enjoyable and effective. If I was a scummy crim, I wouldn’t like to be caught by this guy standing over my victim, crowbar-in-hand, put it that way! He’s big in the BCA, so you know he’s epic anyway, regardless of anything I have to say. Andy has written about the night on his blog, which I recommend everyone take a look at: http://theselfdefenceexpert.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/the-tour-begins-2012/?utm_source=The+Newsletter+List&utm_campaign=1000696770-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

As I said, I’ve got a lot of ideas for PHDefence including (but certainly not limited to) some new warmups, some new and vastly improved methods of stretching following some training revelations I’ve had at home, some small refinements I’ve made a while back to my CSPS syllabus regarding defending strikes which I think PHDefence will benefit from, a few things I didn’t think you all were ready for yet (my deepest and most sincere apologies for underestimating you in this way – it is never a good thing for an instructor to underestimate what his students are ready for, and I am truly sorry for this) and a few more things that I think you’ll approve of which are far too epic to utter a word about publicly.

A Note on the New System:

PHDefence, as some of you will already know, is undergoing a change in how things are done. Instruction will be split evenly between myself and Sifu Paul. Before, it was split in such a way that we would do an hour each every week, usually Paul then me. Now because of Paul’s work commitments we will be operating on an interlocking week pattern where one week I will be teaching the whole session, and the next Paul will do (though I’ll be there as Pad Man as often as I can manage to be), then the next week I’ll do again, etc. This week was Paul’s (though Andy’s really this time) and next week will be mine, to start you off knowing where things are going to be. It makes sense, trust me. I’m just tired and not articulating this particularly eloquently tonight.

A Congratulation:

One new student in particular was commended by Andy for being ‘hardcore’, as it has been brought to my attention that on his second session this dude (who’s at the end of primary school as well) had the choice of doing the groundfighting on the mat or on the wooden floor, and he chose the floor! It’s exactly this kind of warrior spirit that PHDefence needs, so (you know who you are) – we’re proud of you my friend. Good on you dudeth.

Just for that, I made a Success Kid meme.

I might make this a recurring theme for special congrats…

Until next week folks! It’s going to be a good one – make sure you make it down!

FCIns. Josh Nixon

It’s going to be self-defence oriented, suitable for beginners and advanced students alike (or even complete beginners who have never attended PHDefence before), with some MASAC Ju Jitsu grappling mixed in.

Full details are on the events page, and of PHDefence (address, etc) on the classes page. Here’s some info:

Where: Wesley Methodist Chapel, Stockton Brook
When: Friday, 13.01.2012, 19:00-21:00
Cost: Just £4 per student.
(Bring a drink of water or something and comfy clothes!)

For those of you who haven’t heard of MASAC Ju Jitsu, here is an excerpt from their website at http://masacjujitsu.webs.com/ :

Masac Ju Jitsu is a new form of Ju Jitsu developed by self defence experts Georgi Georgiev and Andrew Holland. Masac has been born out of experience. Experience that has been formed from the reality of pure street combat.

…

We only teach the very best techniques from Reality Based Self Defence, Judo, Ju Jitsu, Boxing, Aikido, Russian Sambo, MMA and wrestling. However dont think that this system is a mish mash of meaningless techniques. Every move we teach works when faced with real life violence. We only teach what works. It is simply a system where every move has been selected and intergrated to give you pure fundamentals that really work. This is Masac and Masac is pure self defence, not sport! In the street there are no awards for second place, no judges and no referees to step in and stop things.

…

Masac is the name of our system and it is born out of everything we teach. Masac is a shortened version of the equation that Newton used for the generation of force. That is the soul of our system, hard strikes, hard throws and crushing strangles and joint locks. If you want to learn more please simply get in touch and become a student.

I personally am very much looking forward to training with Andy – I love finding out about new methods and approaches, especially from a respected and experienced BCA instructor.

More information on Andy and the MASAC system: http://www.theselfdefenceexpert.com/

See you there!

FCIns. Josh Nixon

Friday marked the return of PHDefence from the black hole that is Christmas and New Year’s. I hope everyone had a great time! Last week was just a random jumble of things really – lots of pad work and pushups, Chisao and … umm … more padwork. I didn’t think I was going to be taking any of that session so when Paul handed the lesson over to me it was a bit of a surprise! However I defaulted to padwork, more padwork, and some more padwork after that so it seemed ok. Without further ado, it’s individual feedback time!

A warm welcome to W (I don’t put full names on here for kids, just initials) and to your sister if she wants to get involved! Your hook kicks on the pads were great; definitely potential there.

G.C. – Chill your beans! When a kick’s coming at you, either control or modify your flinch response – we’ll work on this loads more, don’t worry. Also over the next few weeks we’ll get through a lot more of the more advanced Form work we were doing nearer the end of the lesson. I think you’re ready, and it’s what you need to progress.

B.S. – I’ve heard tell of how you helped a new student out with a few pointers, and I’m proud of you – that kind of maturity and general awesomeness is exactly what PHDefence is looking for. Keep it up dude!

S.S. – Hope you’re feeling better soon! You get epic woman points for trying to get back into the fray though.

Finally, farewell to Chris and Charlie, who’ve now gone back to university again. See you again next time brothers.

We’ve got something awesome coming up next week, but I’ll do that as a new post…

Until next time,
FCIns. Josh Nixon

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

This next bit will only really make sense if you’re in one of the lucky areas who have received one of the new 2012 PHDefence invitation letters. This is a big deal – there’s only 500! Letter holders are entitled to a free session!

You already know about the PHDefence and the CSPS from your letter, but if you’d like to know more, this page will tell you about the CSPS in detail and this page has details of all classes that are going on at the moment, with information on PHDefence too. This page has information on me. I do around half of the teaching at PHDefence as a guest instructor. There’s frequently asked questions here, and you can find us all over the Internet through the menu at the top of this site.

If any of you have any questions about PHDefence, the CSPS or anything else, then feel free to get in touch any way you like. You can email me directly at csps.info@gmail.com. Alternatively, everyone is welcome to join the CSPS Forum, which has a PHDefence members-only section too. You can find that here.

To everyone though: we hope you had an awesome Christmas and that you have an even better New Year!

Thank you to everyone who’s supported the CSPS and PHDefence; Twitter followers, retweeters, favouriters and Tweeters, emailers, YouTube subscribers, likers and commenters, forum members, LinkedIn connections, Facebook likers and commenters, blog followers, subscribers and commenters, and all of the students, instructors, friends and family who have turned these dreams into reality.

Have a wonderful 2012.

FCIns. Josh Nixon

Just thought I’d keep you all up to date on a couple of updates CSPS is experiencing at the moment. Following a minor revision of the syllabus recently, I thought the website and general online presence could do with a little bit of an update. I’ve consolidated the Links page into Resources, and will be adding a lot more stuff there soon, including a lot of videos. I have also created an Articles page and I intend to add to this a lot myself. If you have any articles that you would like reproduced here, or just linked, for free then get in touch! Also, if you have a class of your own and you would like to be featured on this site, then get in touch and I’ll put you on the Classes page. I will be shooting some videos (hopefully) soon, once I finish up some work for my degree, and they will be going up on the new and improved CSPS YouTube Channel. Here’s a little guide to those who are unfamiliar with YouTube’s new layout:

Expect to see a lot of new content over the next few weeks!

All the best,

FCIns. Josh Nixon

Condition White: Switched off. Asleep. Victim.
Condition Yellow: Switched on. Threat awareness. Looking around.
Condition Orange: Threat evaluation – passively avoiding a potential threat (e.g. crossing the street or turning back).
Condition Red: Threat avoidance / threat neutralisation. Acting – either running off or smashing someone. Or using verbal skills. Direct action to an imminent threat.

G.C. – if you can remember those then you can keep your super-dee-duper Christmas present!

It was awesome to have Charlie and Chris back again, so welcome back to them!

Now for an announcement.

PHDefence is moving its training time!

Sessions will, from the 6th of January 2012, be taking place on Friday nights, from 19:00-21:00. The price will remain unchanged, and it’s still in the same place. Full details, as always, are on our classes page.

There is a chance that, if there is enough interest, then PHDefence will be doubling their weekly training time, providing a weekly session on Fridays at 19:00-21:00, and another on Saturdays at 10:00-12:00. This is entirely down to how many students they can get though, so either send me an email, call me, Facebook me, Tweet me, whatever you want to do – let me know. If there’s a definite three or four people interested, then Paul’s willing to keep the Saturday one open and you can all have two classes a week. It depends entirely on how many students he can get.

Don’t forget to spread the word! They need more students to make any of this possible!

PHDefence is closed for Christmas and the New Year, and will resume on Friday, the 6th of January, 2012, at 19:00-21:00. That will be the new time, and hopefully they’ll be able to keep the Saturday as well. If you don’t get in touch though, it’s not going to happen.

Merry Christmas from PHDefence and me, and we hope you have an awesome New Year too.

All the best,
FCIns. Josh Nixon

Image courtesy of http://www.clipartheaven.com/clipart/holidays/christmas/santa_&_reindeer/santa_-_martial_arts.gif

Just a quick announcement that the CSPS Syllabus and Guide version 1.2.2 has been released today! Students can get in touch for a new copy (just costs £1 – I hate to charge but I just want to cover my paper and ink!) or head over to the forum to join the discussion and see what the changes are if you prefer to annotate your existing copy and save the world a little (and save yourself a quid)! This isn’t a hugely major change, so I’d recommend the latter in this case. You can find the changelog in Home –> CSPS –> CSPS Members’ Exclusive Board –> CSPS Syllabus.

All the best,
FCIns. Josh Nixon

Today, we went through some of the old Wing Chun stuff from a couple of weeks ago with Paul, and then some pretty fun ground mobility drills. After, that I took the high grades through some more advanced striking methods for their next grading, and we went through some Systema techniques for getting out of rather unforgiving situations, including the infamous Achilles leg lock and the equally harrowing inverted figure-four! It’s surprising how easy it can be to get out of these things.

It has yet to be announced officially, but it’s looking like PHDefence is going to have to move to Friday nights, probably from 19:00-21:00. Paul is going to do some serious thinking and get back to us all next week, which will be at the normal time of Saturday, 10:00-12:00. Make sure you come because it’s going to be a good one, also it will be the last one until after Christmas. Dates and details will be announced as soon as they’re decided, so keep checking back!

Individual Notes:

S.S: You’ve left your inhaler! It’s ok though because J.N. will bring it to school on Monday!

Image courtesy of http://www.ultimatejujitsu.com/learn-jujitsu-techniques/brazilian-jiu-jitsu-techniques/leg-locks/achilles-ankle-lock-inside-guard/achilles-ankle-lock-inside-guard-5.jpg