Trevor’s passion for teaching clients (personal and professional level) is extremely rare in our business. He is detailed oriented and has a teaching ability second to none. He breaks down complex concepts and psychological profiles so the layperson can easily grasp and understand. His professional and personal attributes are fantastic. He is a honest instructor whose teaching ability helps participants to easily retain and implement the training. I highly recommend Mr. Wilcox for your business and personal protection needs.

Malachi Bond
Senshido Alaska

The elbow has been described as one of the most barbaric tools for self-defense and fighting on the human body. Guro Mike Blackgrave of SEAMOK Tactical dubbed the elbows “hellbows” and this is a term that we at Intercept Combatives have adopted into our own parlance because it accurately describes the sheer destructive capability of the elbow as a combative tool of self-defense. In this post, I’ll talk about developing elbow dexterity, power generation, elbow interceptions and elbows from the clinch.

Elbows can be used as a tool for delivering cutting impact, as pointy pain-inducing obstructions for incoming attacks, for applying crushing and grinding pressure in grappling situations, and more. It is a versatile tool that should be in everyone’s combative toolbox.

“Motion is motion; it’s the intent that counts”
(Guro Michael Blackgrave)

Elbow Dexterity

The elbow can travel in virtually any direction that your hand can, and to develop dexterity with the elbow, a useful drill is to trace the letters of the alphabet with your elbow in the air.

This exercise is purely for developing elbow dexterity, and stands in stark isolation from combative application. Remember that the elbow is a versatile, multi-functional tool, and not every motion in the Alphabet Drill is a striking motion. Redirections, bumps, traps and more are all possible applications of elbow-led movements and you should explore all possibilities.

The credit for this exercise belongs to Sifu Rick Faye from the Minnesota Kali Group, whose video on Panantukan covers this drill.

Elbow Power

The next step after developing this dexterity is to work various angles on the pads, specifically for power generation in delivering impact. There are three core ingredients required for any tool to reach its maximum impact potential, and the elbow is no exception. They are distance, grounding (or base) and torque.

The elbow does not need much distance in order to create impact as a lot of power can be generated at a short distance as long as you can create ballistic torque (what they call fajing in Chinese), but it does need some distance when used as an impact weapon. And to do this, you need to have a solid base, ie grounding. The optimum impact potential of your elbow strikes is compromised without a solid base, and it is in direct relation to the effective non-telegraphic range of the elbow (essentially the length of the humerus). If you have to take an advancing step in order to make impact with your elbow, you are outside the range of the weapon and giving your opponent an opportunity to read your intent and intercept you. In other words, you telegraphed. You can get away with longer range elbows and even a stepping preparation if you cloak it behind a preceding non-telegraphic shot which serves to “blind” him to your elbow in the split second before you launch it.

To practice these ideas, here are a couple of drills you can work for developing the elbow as a striking tool:

a. Work on delivering basic elbow strikes from various angles without a stepping preparation. Use the numbers on a clock as a guide for practicing different angles, both “forehand” elbows and “backhand” elbows (think tennis). Don’t TRY to hit hard; focus on developing explosive torque from a solid base and you will be hitting with more than sufficient power. In this context, you may find that you can develop much more power with “forehand” elbows, as opposed to “backhand” elbows. Forehand elbows more easily and naturally connect to your body’s core to create the torque necessary for the strike to be effective. Forehand elbows, with the palm facing toward the opponent also expose the tip of the elbow as a striking surface and because of the lesser surface area of the tip, potentially creates much more impact than if you were to hit with the flat of the elbow due to its greater surface area. In a backhand elbow, the articulation of the angle of the arm needs to be much more precise in order to achieve impact with the tip of the elbow and therefore it is actually much more difficult to strike with the tip of the elbow in a backhand elbow motion. It tends to create more of a thud like a hammer, whereas the forehand elbow slices more like a blade. Both have their place, so you must be able to execute both forehand and backhand elbow strikes from any angle.

b. Cloak the elbow from a non-telegraphic strike. In a self-protection scenario, this might be a palm smack to the face from a classic negotiation type of on-guard position. In the active phase of a fight or in a combat sport fight, this might be a jab from a regular on-guard position. Try not retracting the first strike but rather leave it in his face, or just in front of his face, that he can’t see the elbow coming.

Elbow Interceptions

The elbow is a great tool for intercepting an ambush attack at close-quarters. In a surprise attack, your hands tend to want to cover up and protect your head – without you having to think about it. If your head had to rely on you to make a wise cognitive choice before your conscious brain even catches up as to what’s going on, it would end up having a bad day. So it overrides any cognitive power you have in the instant of that surprise attack in order to protect itself. As your hands move towards your head to protect it in a covering motion, your elbows naturally raise. They might assume various configurations, but notwithstanding any pathological reasons that they couldn’t, there is a good chance your elbows will come up one way or another and to various levels. It is nowadays considered good practice to align your cognitive responses with such subconscious reactions. That way, it avoids any dissonance between your trained response and your instinctive response; there is no conflict between what your body wants to do to protect itself anyway, and what you think you need to do. And that can only be a good thing, regardless of whether Hick’s Law carries any validity or not. When used to intercept a close-quarter ambush attack, the interception is likely to be incidental or even accidental. You are surprised and instinctively cover up which tends to raise your elbows pretty quickly, and then the collision of the attack occurs. The strength of an elbow interception is superior to using the hand or forearm because it’s essentially as strong as your humerus bone. It can be further strengthened with better skeletal alignment, but even without optimum skeletal alignment, getting “sharp and pointy” with your elbow, as my friend Tony Torres says, tends to hurt your attacker regardless. Unlike hand or forearm interceptions, which rely on the muscular strength of the triceps to create a solid frame, an elbow interception cannot be collapsed… unless your humerus breaks. It can be moved, but it cannot be collapsed. Using the elbow as an interception also offers the additional advantage of being compact, affording you better head protection. Anytime you extend your hands away from your body, you create an opening, which must be accounted or compensated for.

The elbow interception can also be used in scenarios other than an ambush. It can be used as an initiation (pre-emptive) tactic with driving footwork if you cannot defuse a situation but have time to “go first”. In a similar manner, it can also be used as a simultaneous protective/engaging maneuver in the active phase of a fight against the most common attack trajectories – the high hook lines. What if you misread a hook line for a straight line? You’re still covered and may incidentally “destroy” your attacker’s punch, or if your driving footwork is angular (which it should be), then you’re off the original line of attack anyway and have evaded the blow. What if he goes low for a tackle/double leg etc? The elbow interception can be used exactly the same way with a level change, as a tackle tends to expose the same pocket (the brachial region) as a high hook / haymaker does.

Clinch Elbows

The final area I’ll look at in this article is the use of elbows from the clinch. Muay Thai fighters love throwing elbows from the clinch. It’s much harder to miss with your strike – any strike – when you’re holding on to your opponent. When you hold on to someone, or when they’re holding on to you, judging distance or range becomes much less important. For the street, the clinch is a much broader subject of study than in Muay Thai though, and therefore the scope of “clinch elbows” for the street is much wider. For all intents and purposes, we can categorize all clinches under two basic scenarios – when I grab my opponent, or when he grabs me. When he grabs me, it could be a shirt grab, a front choke, a bearhug, as well as the various types of clinch that people are familiar with from different combat sports. It is in this context that the elbow finds additional functions such as described in the Elbow Dexterity section: bumps, traps, redirections, escapes, etc. For instance, an uppercut elbow motion is an effective front choke release. A downward elbow motion from the outside to the inside of the grabbing arm can result in an effective trap of the arm under your armpit, putting you in a relatively safe position on the attacker’s “dead-side” (to borrow the Krav Maga term). Remember that “motion is motion; it’s the intention that counts”. To practice using the elbow against an opponent who is grabbing or clinching you, have a partner grab or clinch you in various ways. Focus on hitting with the elbows, but you may have to work for better position in order to hit. You may have to work out how to manipulate the attacker to bring him in position to be struck. You may not always be in an optimum position to hit the head, but there are plenty of other targets to choose from. For example, if you are in a headlock, the opponent’s head is probably hard to reach, but once you release the headlock, you can drop and grab the opponent’s ankle while slamming an elbow into his calf, and this may have an impact on your attacker’s sense of balance ☺ On the flip side of this, practice throwing elbows from positions where you are controlling your opponent via a clinch or grab of some sort. Practice blending Muay Thai and Greco pummelling drills, throwing your elbows when you have a dominant position, but again, remember alternative targets. Practice intercepting an incoming attack and transitioning immediately to a control position to throw an elbow.

As you can see, the elbow is a great tool for fighting, and I’ve laid down a few common uses for its deployment. Play with it in training and you’re sure to come up with many more uses – drill it with timing, motion and energy and you’ll have, not just a functional tool, but a multi-functional tool at your disposal.

Good training

Trevor Wilcox

This was a DVD I had been meaning to purchase for quite some time. As a fan of JKD Concepts and aspects of the Filipino Martial Arts, like many I have been fascinated with aspects of the infamous “Trapping Range” in these approaches to training, which include Chi Sao (Sticky Hands) from the Wing Chun tradition and Hubud from the Filipino tradition, and specifically how these methods could be functionalized for real fighting. These methods are often criticized for being non-functional, and perhaps the way that these methods are most commonly trained, that might be true. Chi Sao is somewhat more esoteric than Hubud, truly requiring the tuition of an experienced instructor, and although the same is true for Hubud, the “shell” of Hubud can more easily be learnt from a video than can Chi Sao; you have to feel it. That said, Chi Sao becomes even more esoteric when you place it in the context of a Wing Chun stylist vs a Wing Chun stylist. This is when it becomes a physical game of chess that is capable of developing very high levels of skill. Just like when two Brazilian Jiujitsu players engage in a grappling chess match, a much higher level of skill and the development of a multitude of techniques are required in order to overcome the other player who knows similar things to you. However, these chess matches – whether Wing Chun, BJJ, whatever – end up becoming removed from the reality of a real fight. For all intents and purposes, the chess matches as described are a symmetrical exercise, whereas real fights are assymetrical. There is no back and forth, like in a boxing match, it is a blitz, and a street attack would unlikely involve the level of skill of a trained fighter.

Bruce Lee doing Chi Sao with Sifu Yip Man

It is true that even trained fighters become sloppy under extreme stress, fatigue and if emotionally enraged. When you look at Mixed Martial Arts and the role of Jiujitsu in that arena, despite Jiujitsu’s hundreds or thousands of techniques, there are but a few techniques that are reliable under stress. The same is true for the street. With a similar premise in mind, Sifu Steve Grody presents an assymetrical approach to Chi Sao, one that does not focus on how to beat another person skilled in Chi Sao, but rather on how Chi Sao as a training method to develop certain skills and attributes can be useful at the moment of time in a real fight when arms get tangled up, which can and does happen one way or another.

I was not disappointed with this DVD. Sifu Grody goes through the aspects of Chi Sao that are conventionally used, and adds aspects such as movement & footwork, standing grappling, as well as how traditional applications of tactics within Chi Sao can be used when things can sloppy.

Training should be conducted in such a way that trainees are driven to become problem-solvers.

This means that training must imbue the trainee with thinking processes that allow them to make appropriate tactical choices from moment to moment, taking into account both the nature of the engagement itself as well as a host of other variables such as the environment and the presence of multiple unfriendlies as well as innocents and witnesses.

It is easy to say that you should always fight in a certain lead, or that you will always flank your opponent to the left, etc. In reality, you do not always get to choose. Circumstances always dictate.

There are thus two important training protocols to allow the development of this tactical awareness in the trainee; slow and fast. Slow, but unchoreographed, training allows the trainee to analyze his tactical choices from moment to moment, and allows the coach to guide those choices as the event plays out in slow motion. This type of training programs your tactical software, and provides the mental blueprint so that better, more tactically appropriate decisions can be made during fast, full-contact training, which develops your “tactical hardware”.

When it is time to go full-tilt boogie, while it is true that what you practice is what you’ll do (therefore you should practice impact and follow through, instead of pulling your shots), you also should not take any risks in training that you wouldn’t take in the street. The use of appropriate protective equipment is a must (I recommend Spartan Training Armour) so that impact and follow-through can be practiced. At the same time, you should not “take more” or try to take more than you would without the gear. When struck, you need to take into account how you would normally react when struck. Taking a certain amount of punishment in training is a necessary conditioning factor, but taking too much punishment (some people do it on purpose for whatever reason) may lead to bad habits.

Trevor Wilcox
Director of Training
Intercept Combatives

The most fundamental idea behind “locking” tactics in the martial arts is bending a joint in a way it was not designed to bend or otherwise beyond its natural range of motion. By doing this, you can effect a certain level of control over a person, and depending on the circumstances warranted, do damage to the joint by bending it in an unnatural direction faster than what your opponent can compensate for. Placed on the continuum of gross – complex motor skills however, locking falls toward the complex end, and as such usually take secondary priority to gross motor skills such as striking due to the fact that complex motor skills have proven to diminish under the effects of adrenal stress. On top of that, when you place locking in the context of a smaller person (eg woman or child) employing locking against a bigger, stronger opponent, then the chances of a lock-cum-wrench or break being successfully employed seem pretty slim. Given all this, many trainers would argue that there is no place for locking in self-defense unless you’re in an occupation where there are rules of engagement that force you to rely on “control and restraint” tactics. In civilian self-defense however, locking is not a choice tactic… they say. However, we must understand the place of locking (and indeed any tactic) and where it fits in. There are only two safe assumptions in a street fight: that your opponent is armed and has friends, who are also armed. Therefore it makes sense that the way you approach any fight should be that you are walking into a fight involving weapons, especially since you may not even know a weapon is involved until its too late. If your tactics work against an armed assailant, then if he happens to be unarmed, bonus for you, the fight will be that much easier. Never assume that an opponent in a street fight is unarmed and will fight fair. The opposition in a street fight rely on an unfair advantage and turn to dialogue, distraction, deception to set up a “destruction” (Geoff Thompson). In the context of a weapons fight, one of the golden rules is that you control the weapon-bearing limb. You obviously do not want it flailing around and/or pointed at you, nor if you can help it, at anyone else if its a firearm. In this context, locking finds its essential place in the overall matrix of self-defense, either as a restraint, wrench or break, whatever is called for. As such, they are also disarms. If your opponent is actually unarmed, then breaking his arm might be excessive force, but the advantage of assuming a position of control is that you buy yourself time to make the appropriate assessment.

APPLYING LOCKS
As stated in the introduction, the most fundamental idea behind locking is bending a joint in a direction it’s not supposed to bend or otherwise beyond its natural range of motion. However, this is just the beginning. In its essence, locking is one example of what Bruce Lee called an Immobilization Attack. If you apply a lock and your opponent can still move, he’s not locked. In order for any lock to function at maximum effect, there are two basic ideas that one of my Hapkido instructors imparted to me: you either stretch him right out, or tie him right up tight. Anything in between allows your opponent more freedom of movement, thus defeating the purpose of applying a lock to begin with. Locks may also affect a singular joint in isolation, or to multiple joints, which may be called a compound lock. Compound locks are far more effective at not just immobilizing the joint, but at immobilizing your attacker. A simple lock (one joint) can be thought of like a pad lock, which can be easily picked (or cut) open. A compound lock however has multiple layers of security, like a numeric-combination lock for example, which is much more difficult (of course not impossible) to break.

Let’s take an armbar for example, a type of lock that verges on the point of hyper-extending the elbow. Locks that target the elbows and knees are usually easier to effect, than say a wrist or ankle lock, due to the larger lever that you have to play with. These joints are also closer to the core, so once you immobilize the upper arm you can stop the flailing. A typical wrist lock however gives your opponent opportunity to flail until the lock reaches the point of being “tied right up”. The wrist also has “some” range of motion in most directions and can be flexed to a degree at each angle (in other words, it’s got more “give”), as opposed to the elbow which basically has one direction and cannot be flexed.

Below you see two pictures of a standing armbar, both in a knife defense situation. In the first picture, the elbow is isolated and this can still be effective if quickly wrenched at the apex of the arc of the knife swing to do damage to the elbow. In the second picture, you see the wrist being pressed into the defender’s thigh while the torso is bent over to secure the elbow straight against the abdomen and while positioning the arm at an angle slightly behind the attacker’s torso, which happens to immobilize the shoulder to a degree. In the first picture, the knifer has more opportunity to bend his arm (if the armbar is prolonged), since if he cannot bend his arm of its own accord, he would only need to move his body to achieve the same. In the second picture however, the knifer would have to overcome the pressure of the defender’s bodyweight on his elbow with his elbow joint alone, or otherwise resort to other tactics, which will be quite predictable to the defender. Notice also in the second picture how one hand is free to attack vital targets and how twisting the head in the opposite direction as shown helps to increase the “stretch” in this particular lock.

ON GROUND LOCKING
In competition, most locking that you see actually function happens on the ground, and part of the reason for this is that on the ground, your opponent is not as mobile as on his feet. However, in competition, you do not usually have to worry about weapons or multiple unfriendlies. Obviously the ground is the last place you want to be in a street fight due to these variables, but you can also use the ground as an ally to assist your lock while you remain on your feet scanning the perimeter. The picture below shows such an example of an armbar, with essentially the same positioning as the second standing picture above, that is, the arm is positioned behind the opponent’s torso restricting shoulder mobility, the elbow is locked out straight and this position is secured with a heavy knee in the shoulder and the wrist propped against the thigh. This leaves the defender’s hands free to work on manipulating the knifer’s wrist to effect a disarm.

In conclusion, while you can certainly exert control over a weapon-bearing limb without locking, locking is a much more energy efficient way to achieve that. The last thing you want in a knife fight for example is to have to rely on the strength of your “killer grip”, or any strength vs strength tactic, to overcome an aggressive attacker because there will always be someone out there stronger than you. Locking a joint and possibly damaging it takes (his) strength out of the equation, and good locking does not rely on strength on your part to execute, but rather good set-up and positioning, and so this is valuable for anyone’s self-defense arsenal, regardless of size.

Trevor Wilcox
Director of Training
Intercept Combatives

Various close-quarter striking options from an underhook position

“Trevor Wilcox has put together a solid set of truly functional material. “Unarmed & Dangerous: the iCombatives Approach to Functional Self-Protection” is full of quality technical instruction. Mr. Wilcox has done an excellent job getting across key combative concepts in a single release. Not every great martial artist can TEACH, but Mr. Wilcox really is a very good teacher. As for his personal physical skills, he has clean, functional prowess. Overall, I’m very impressed, and he definitely has my respect.”

Jesse Lawn
CQC Solutions
(www.jesselawn.com)

Simple drill showcasing all Intercept Combatives’ AZTEC Tactical Performance Principles

“Beyond useful, like a new accessory for my AR-15 ; ) my students are loving it as well bro. Your system didn’t assimilate what I already teach, instead it augmented my curriculum…

Mr.Trevor Wilcox absolutely knows his craft, the material presented in “Unarmed and Dangerous” is of superb caliber. Being an expert level C.Q.C instructor in the “Scientific Fighting Congress” and having been employed in the past as a corrections officer, ERT member, Contractor for Department of Home Land Security and many years before that as a night club “Cooler”, I’ve always striven towards seeking the truth in combat. Trevor also shares this outlook and it shines through with the curriculum presented in this video.

Trevor’s unique principles are highly adaptable to one’s current skill-set due to the fact that his teachings aren’t meant to replace your current knowledge but instead augment what you already know, allowing you to evolve as a complete combatives tactician. What I truly found impressive was how my students and I were able to adapt Trevor’s tactics to our current curriculum and make it work for us regardless if we were training unarmed tactics, knife, impact weapons and even firearms. I would highly recommend Trevor’s iCombatives system to all Law Enforcement, Military, Security and responsible citizens, so cheers Trevor and thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with the rest of us brother.”

Jesse Murrieta
CEO, Ronin Tactical Solutions & Self-Preservation Solutions

Unarmed & Dangerous will be available in a downloadable format to save the hassle entailed with putting this project to DVD, thereby keeping costs down.

The video will retail for US$50 and come with a companion training reference manual.

Email info@intercept.hk to put your name on the list to pre-order Unarmed & Dangerous NOW!