Fighting Tactics - Trapping and Grabbing Hands


Technique Review 

Shalom, everyone. Good to be here again. This week’s technique review is about tactics, fighting tactics. The truth is it’s almost not a review, its techniques from the expert levels, tactics from the expert levels, but there is comparison and there is connection with some earlier and basic techniques. . .

Video transcript

Shalom, everyone. Good to be here again. This week’s technique review is about tactics, fighting tactics. The truth is it’s almost not a review, its techniques from the expert levels, tactics from the expert levels, but there is comparison and there is connection with some earlier and basic techniques.

So the idea is very simple, when we look at the fighting tactics, is our fighter needs to overcome his enemy, his aggressor, the other side, with different types of tactics, techniques, so that … Tactics are divided to families, one of the families is the tactic of trapping. And I will touch a few elements there, I will not cover the whole subject, which is really suited for the expert level, but give you some idea about this one.

So what’s the idea? The idea is I would like to hit the target. But the target, this human being, is defending himself. He’s active, and we are trying to neutralize the ability to defend. So we trap his hands, or his legs, so he cannot move well, cannot make defense. If he want to do an outside defense, we hold the hand even if he wants to do an inside defense, we disturb the hand he will not be able to do this inside defense and because of this the strike, the main attack will hit him. That’s really the idea.

Imagine as you remember, we have the knife threats, the close range. So if he has got a knife at a close range from here … That’s the basic technique. What do we do here? I’ll remind you. We are really going with sort of a defense, that’s a natural response, sort of a defense to deflect and grab his wrist area. If it was a gun, I would do that same but grabbing the gun. Now it’s a knife, I grab the wrist. At the same time the body moves, the body defends, diagonally forward. I move diagonally forward out of the channel so if you wanted to stab me, I will not be there. So, 200 percent difference, I hopefully you remember the 200 percent difference. The hand defense, different range is can be, different places of the knife, it can be go with the right hand, go with the left hand. Okay? And from here, drop the shoulder, strike the person. That’s the idea of the defending the knife threat. Okay? Drop it! Drop it! I disarm.

Now let’s say another person, this enemy of mine stands like this, he wants to fight me. Look at what happens from here. So what are we really doing? If you are in the opposite stance, there’s another front hand. That’s the idea of trapping. If you want to look at the whole type of situation, and move to the next mission. So practically what we are doing, if he is like this, I go sort of an outside defense and I trap his hand, I grab his hand. Outside defense or inside defense, inside defense. Change the stance. So imagine there’s no knife in the hand, and I see that he wants to punch me. Would you punch? Yes, exactly. But before he’s punching me, maybe I will talk to him, maybe not, maybe I seem like … That’s the idea. So what happens is this. I’m grabbing, trapping, deflecting, and pulling. And the knife, we are pushing the knife away. Because I want to be behind the weapon better and I’m expecting a draw of the knife before stabbing. Here, it’s less important. So I deflect him and trap him and pull him, so he’s becoming more exposed. And I move behind him, he go to first strike very early. The first strike can be to the ribs area or to the head area. That is the basics. So again, a C grip is there. The basic motion, thumb down, fingers up. Let’s do it from here from, from this small side. Now are talking about an outside motion. Which in a way it’s a little bit safer because if I am in this position I go here, still this hand is a bit more active and I am bit more exposed. If I’m in this motion my forearm is more protecting me. And I can pull better with this one.

So now look what I’ve shown you before from here, that one. What happens is this. So you saw how an outside motion that trapped him thumb down, pinkies up. The regular C grip is thumb down, fingers up. It is the inward motion and also the outward motion. Thumb down, fingers up. Here you deflect, you trap, you pull, you move all simultaneously. And also simultaneously, is the strike. So the moment my back shoulder, my right shoulder, is at the correct distance, he already go to strike. And I can strike the lower part floating ribs area or the jaw. That’s the idea. If you’re a bit more behind, back of the head. So this is the trapping of one hand, can be with the inside motion or with the outside motion almost always you go with the front hand.

First basic one. The second, what we are saying, is if he wants to fight me … Here what we are doing is two hands. Both of them inside motion. What happens here? I cross his hands. Usually downwards, there are several options, this level we are focusing only on the downwards one, this one, that would happen. So for him, he cannot make good defense and what I’m doing is I am attacking either with a headbutt first or with a kick first. Depending on my distance, maybe I’ll kick with the foot or if I’m going closer, with the knee. And again, depending on your capabilities, headbutt is very, very efficient. And then continue.

Look again. So you saw how the hands have been crossed, the upper arm which was here, his backhand, his rear hand, the upper arm is closing on the lower arm, with one hand I’m disturbing both of his hands and very early go in to strike. In krav maga most of the time you are doing trapping with the C grips. There are options from here of striking the palms. We are less using the striking, although it’s also good option. Again, what’s the benefit of this in the sense of not revealing my intentions? If he is like this and I am like this, and I am … We are striking, there’s different level of energy here. When I doing this type of behaving and then trapping like, “Please leave me be,” or if I’m like this trapping him, I’m going with a difference initially. So it shows less intention, it’s a bit earlier with action, it doesn’t have so much energy, you didn’t need to accumulate energy to strike hard, so overall its quite a disguise. It’s an attack in disguise. And what I’m attacking? I’m not attacking the vulnerable points, I’m attacking the weapons. Now he has no weapons. And now the attacks are coming. That’s the idea.

So again we were comparing these techniques to the self-defense techniques that we have and practically it’s a whole family of tactics that we just revealed part of this family. Thank you so much. All the best guys.

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