Difference between Combat Hapkido and Regular Hapkido?

Discussion in 'Hapkido' started by LeaFirebender, Jul 26, 2012.

  1. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    very cool that your school encourages it. the proprietor of my school actively restricted sparring. yes, there were some things that were mcdojo-ish. not hapkido itself mind you, more of a specific school thing. i think the proprietor was worried that if someone got hurt, that person wouldn't come back, thus him losing out on their fees, kind of thing.
     
  2. Instructor_Jon

    Instructor_Jon Effectiveness First

    The danger of getting hurt during sparring is unavoidable. We do our best to make it safe but...stuff happens. I tell my folks it's better to be accidentally hurt here amongst friends than deliberately hurt out there amongst enemies.

    You are right by the way, some people can do it and some people have to keep practicing. I find it takes a lot longer to become proficient in Hapkido than Tae Kwon Do did... at least in terms of sparring.
     
  3. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    very interesting part. if you look at the theory of randori in judo (and consequently bjj/sambo), techniques are restricted to make sparring safe(r); at least, that's the theory. we all know that one can be very hurt doing bjj or judo.

    i found this in my own experience. i can actually go harder in bjj as opposed to when my friends and i experimented with hapkido sparring. i'm sure we could've improved our methods though. :)
     
  4. Instructor_Jon

    Instructor_Jon Effectiveness First

    I suck at BJJ. If you can be lower than white, that's what I am. It's like trying to lift a wet smelly mattress off of you.

    Anytime you have motion and contact you will have risk...that's just life. It's no different than waterskiing or anything else.

    I figure if folks are paying me to teach them to fight than they should be mentally prepared to get hit once in awhile and will now and again be accidentally hurt.

    If they can't handle that reality and they leave and never come back then they never really wanted to learn to fight to begin with.
     
  5. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    It seems like it's harder to spar at full speed doing CH since a lot of the moves when done quickly might really do serious joint damage.
     
  6. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Then concentrate on any techniques that won't. If you can control a resisting training partner without injuring them, you can be confident it would be easier if you did.
     
  7. Thomas

    Thomas Combat Hapkido/Taekwondo

    When it comes to 'pressure-testing' and sparring in Combat Hapkido, there isn't really a "prescribed" way from the federation. The federation (ICHF) provides the curriculum on DVDs (both core curriculum and add-on modules) and encourages people to study the material in their schools in whatever manner they wish. The seminars, clinics, and workshops are set to help students and instructors work the material and find ways to teach it more effectively. Depending on what the topic is, it may lend itself to a sparring session or it may not.

    Generally at our school (and this may vary by schools), here are some things we do...
    1. When we are working lower level of force situations (e.g., someone in your face yelling at you, grabs/attempted grabs that are not escalating to a strike, escorting techniques), we generally teach it at a slow pace and then have partners work the techniques faster and faster. As they get more proficient, we add in the verbal component (the yelling/threats) and add in the degree of pushing and pulling... to work the lower level of force techniques in as realistic a manner as we can.

    2. We also train a lot of flow drills, some are block/parry drills (like the brush-trap-tap drills) and some are joint lock flow drills with partners. This gets the hand speed up and helps apply these techniques to a more resisting opponent. Sometimes we start off with some verbal threats, let it escalate to a grab, and then a punch... when the 'good guy' evades all of that, we can shift it to a 'sparring situation' where the 'bad guy' escalates to an attack.

    3. For sparring, we work different rules sets and levels of contact, depending on the topic. Some nights, it is a straight-up Taekwondo style (pads with medium to full contact on body and helmet), sometimes we lower the power a bit and allow hand strikes to the head and low kicks. Sometimes we work less contact with no pads and open up "everything", including takedowns (and joint locks if you can put them on a very resisting partner). Often we start the session with some role-play to highlight how far you are going level-of-force wise and how to protect yourself legally. Sometimes we have students pack a training knife to use (if they can) in sparring. Sometimes the bad guy has a training pistol, sometimes the good guy has a pistol (for firearms retention training). Sometimes the end result is supposed to lead to handcuffing.

    4. Some of the add-on components make us adjust what we do as well. When we work the heavy hardwood cane, we don't generally spar with it - we work a lower speed for safety. With sticks and knife, we do more with drills than we spar, although some guys get into a bit of stick sparring. For the ground survival training, that lends itself well to sparring and we usually do a bit of open-mat afterwards for a bit of grappling practice. Again, we can also factor in the scenario format and let students decide how much to escalate and how and when to disengage.

    5. When my instructor helped build a Military Combatives course for 10th MTN Div (Fort Drum), much of the "pressure testing" was done with partner work (lots of strikes and escorting locks) in full military gear with a scenario type of lead-in (e.g. controlling people at a check point without just shooting them) and it worked well. In the course, they put on Redman suits and worked harder strikes to go along with the techniques. At the end of the course, they (literally) got into a cage and did some open sparring MMA-style. The particpants were very pleased with the various levels of force and we receieved a lot of good feedback from guys who felt this would have been good to know before deploying and from guys who came back and said these skills had been very useful while deployed.

    I know this is a long post, but I wanted to put lots of details in (and will answer questions on anything as well) becuase it is very easy to "Pressure test... spar... " but that training also has to be integrated into the art and into the expectations/needs of the art in order to make that method of practice do what it is intended for. Just because you "spar" doesn't mean that kind of sparring will make the application of your art better. The sparring and pressure testing must match the art and needs.
     
  8. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    I employ progression in training. As we are talking locks, lets start there :)

    Initially i teach them in a flow sequence of 7 (which can grow ridiculously big as one gets better). From here I teach it from hubud (sensitivity drill from fma) because this gives the locks out imod motion. From there it is out I hubud but random order.

    By the time this is down pat we integrate with another support system - say dumog for the sake of argument. After this we integrate it as a "finisher" to the core gameplan (Intercept/Blast/Terminate aka "RAT")

    This ensures that by the time you reach the stage where you are being punched in the face at full speed the technique is not only known it is almost visceral.

    This applies to pretty much any of the supporting techniques such as locks, sweeps, chokes etc...

    The main artillery (punches, kicks etc) are always drilled from pads/bags to partner drills to sparring

    I have found this progression formula works very well and can also be used to "rewind" to specific area that need "polish"
     
  9. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Hannibal, would you be kind enough to describe your flow sequence of 7? I'm not sure exactly what you mean - a set sequence of 7 locks?
     
  10. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Yes - front wristlock, up arm wrench, down arm bar, fig 4 shoulder/wristlock, hammerlock, facelock/grovit then opposite arm shoulder lock

    I will video it and post later if that would help
     
  11. Bozza Bostik

    Bozza Bostik Antichrist on Button Moon

    I for one would appreciate it, Hannibal.

    I've never been a fan of standing locks, so I asked my FMA instructor if we could go through some in the private I do. We've been doing a flow drill with 20 basic locks. There's more later on. I have a more positive attitude to them now...Sometimes it's not the technique, it's the instruction and training methods. ;)

    It would be great to see what your drill is like!
     
  12. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    When I did Hapkido we had lock flows standing and lock flows on the ground too.
    Great big long streams of 'em. Can't remember them now but the armbar back into a figure four was part of it and one I still like now.
    I hear tell that's one thing GM Pelligrini was fantastic at. Which ever way your limb went he would find a way of locking it. :)
    IMHO lock flows are like kata. You can make them look great with no pressure but they'll only work for real if you drill them, add resistance and spar (as in work them in a more free flowing environment).
     
  13. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    I work with 2 other guys right now because the main instructor is out due to injury. When I started out, which was with no belt of course, I did all of the breakaways and such and now am working on my next belt, but I have even told them that even though they tell me I am learning quickly, that I would like to make sure the technique is perfect... completely perfect or I don't want to move to the next belt. If you do a lot of these moves fast, they will still work, but being sloppy just isn't something that I want to do.

    So we work on them and then I ask them to tighten up so I can have resistance that goes against me and I can either work to break that resistance, or try to find other tricky ways of doing something else and they suggest options as I go which helps a lot. I like that this art is an evolving art more than anything else I think. There isn't a hard and fast rule.
     
  14. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Last edited: Apr 13, 2013
  15. gapjumper

    gapjumper Intentionally left blank

  16. Thomas

    Thomas Combat Hapkido/Taekwondo

    Hey! We do very similar drills (almost exactly the same). So far, we have 4 "sets" that we do and each one is composed of about 4-6 locks that 'flow' into each other. Two start from a cross hand grab, one from a same side grab, one from a punch. We work them back and forth (both sides) and build up speed with them. Then we take our brushing/trapping drills and have students 'break the rhythm' of the punch/parry drill by adding the locks in from the flow drills at random spots.

    One little difference "stylistically" that I can see is around 1:10 where they go into what I call a same side shoulder lock. The fellow with the rashguard on cups his hand on the other guy's shoulder for the lock. We've found that that a more secure lock is made by sliding that hand into the crook of the elbow from behind instead- if the guy lifts up when the hand is on his shoulder, it's much easier to reverse the lock. Locking into the elbow area gives a much more secure lock.
     
  17. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Yeah the lock depends on how their body reacts. It's supposed to be the crook (aka hammer) but different physiology almost viscerally go against it and you end with the straighter arm.

    Typically I takedown from that lock, but yeah it is supposed to look a bit different. The straighter lock is quicker and more dynamic, but as a you identified it has issues. That said the bent lock has a turn counter and a "arm tuck" counter so like everything it is jut a matter of horses and courses.

    Plus I was rushing it! :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2013
  18. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    I like the flow drills. They are a lot of fun actually and a really good way for me to get them to come very naturally. My problem is that I don't have a partner to work with, so I don't feel like I get to do them enough. If I could, i'd do them for an hour everyday or more. I just enjoy the sort of effortlessness in most of it.
     
  19. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    Thomas, i'm curious if you also use escrima sticks?
     
  20. Thomas

    Thomas Combat Hapkido/Taekwondo

    Yes... but not well! :cry:

    In all seriousness, we do. We treat the stick (and knife) components as "add-on" modules and some of our people love them. I try to stay "current" on the basic techniques, skills, and drills so I can teach the basics - from there students can explore on their own (and with partners), use DVD resources, and go to seminars (we don't have a Stick school nearby).

    I started quite a few years ago with my instructor - he had picked up quite a bit from a Bobby Taboada seminar (drills and a great video) and had continued to study at seminars and such. Later we jumped into the seminars and videos with Master Julius Melegrito (awesome instructor). The bulk of what I do (which I consider fairly basic level) is striking and parrying drills, sinawali drills, some stick defenses/disarms, some joint locks with sticks, and transitions from stick to empty hand work. Again, I don't consider myself much beyond 'basic level' with the sticks, but several of my students have found it 'enough' for a foundation to go and learn more.

    On the official side, I don't think the ICHF is promoting seminars with any specific 'Stick and Knife' instructor. Master Melegrito's ICHF Stick and Knife DVDs are probably still available somewhere - his are very nice because he "fitted" the Combat Hapkido empty hand terms, style, philosophy into the drills and materials he teaches, making it very easy to cross train and absorb. (Edit - it is available at Amazon [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Combat-Hapkido-Stick-Combatives-DVD/dp/B001AMV0J2/ref=pd_bxgy_misc_img_z"]Amazon.com: Combat Hapkido Stick Combatives DVD: Everything Else[/ame])
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2013

Share This Page