June 2019: Master Combatives Class 003-19

The month of June has been probably the best one in my life. Each day filled with 8-10 hours of Army combatives training, with some sprinkling of a JiuJitsu open mat or class sprinkled in. My days were filled with doing what I am most passionate about in life. Then my evenings were spent relaxing in a nice hotel, writing, reading or watching tv. On the weekends I traveled to train at new JiuJitsu places. Food was free and waiting at the DFAC every meal, I came back to the hotel every day to a neatly made bed and a freshly cleaned room. My only job for a month was to train and do laundry. Getting into this course was the result of years of hard work and sacrifices, and a bunch of Army combatives tournaments and the reward was an unforgettable month of training.

Day 1 Week 1
May was a whirlwind, cross-country road trip. While on the road, my diet was mostly McDonald's McChickens and monster energy drinks, combined with primarily sleeping in the back seat of my car for optimal low-cost, high-mileage-traveling. I pulled into Fort Benning, GA to start the month-long, Army's Master Combatives Trainers Course feeling like hot 💩. It had taken me years to get into this course and I laid in bed late into the night dreading that being so sick would mean I'd fail the entrance PT test requirements. The next morning I crossed the two mile run marker and the vileness that was in my stomach made an abrupt exit on the side of the track. I was in!

Week 1 - Striking
After a couple days of eating regular, real meals and nights of sleeping in an actual bed, instead of the backseat of my car on the road, I quickly recovered and had the energy to eagerly enjoy training. The first week was focusing on boxing all morning and then switching over to instructing grappling techniques after lunch.

The mornings were all about foot movement, jabs, crosses, hooks, combos, and blocking. We spent hours dialing all the little movements that go into boxing. I rather sheepishly have to admit that I've neglected this aspect of fighting, and my feet paid the price with the bottoms of my feet getting shredded off from constant pivoting. I did find the material to be fascinating though, and have told myself I will continue to study it in the future.

The afternoons were about teaching. We used an interesting style of instructing using instruction by proxy. Rather than jump in and teach a technique by talking about what I'm doing while demonstrating it, we would stand off to the side and talk two demonstrators through the technique. It was really different than what I am used to doing and seeing and was initially rather challenging. These were techniques that I knew and could do from previous courses, but talking two people through it required such a different level of understanding of the Army's combatives material. It took some getting used to, but after completing the course I have to say that teaching that was greatly increased my understanding and ability to recall all of the material.

That Friday night I jumped in to a class over at Blind Fury BJJ and enjoyed a great class and a couple of rolls (my first in a week!) I also found out there that the next day Shawn Hammonds was going to be teaching a seminar just an hour away in Alabama. I am a huge fan of Derby City MMA, Chewy and the Chewy podcast and have heard a ton of good things about Professor Shawn. I was really excited for a chance to learn from him, and was not disappointed! We covered a his brabo attack series and a lot of the material fit directly into what I like to do with my game.

Sunday I met up with some of my classmates at a local fight house on base and spent a couple of hours studying our course material and preparing for the Week 2 test.

Week 2 - Kickboxing
Week 2 we continued week one's schedule, but added in kicking. My feet had adjusted to the new training regiment, and I was no longer hobbling around like a cripple. I started out in martial arts in Kyuki-Do, that had a heavy emphasis on kicking, and it was fun to get to spend some time with my first love. My knee won't let me kick like I used to anymore, but it still made my heart happy to be throwing roundhouse and switch kicks again.

That weekend was the highlight JiuJitsu weekend for me as I got to train twice and with Chad Hardy again.

It was a 3 1/2 hour drive to make it to Chad's seminar, but it was totally worth it. Chad is an absolute JiuJitsu wizard and I think the best person I've ever rolled with. He dropped a ton of technical knowledge, and then politely beat the breaks off of me like I'd never trained before during our roll. It was totally awesome! Chad isn't just a JiuJitsu wizard, but is also a really nice, quality guy. I'd highly highly recommend attending one of his seminars if you ever have the chance. The seminar crew from Veritas all grabbed lunch together and I got treated like a long standing member of the team as we talked JiuJitsu life over pizza.

I really wanted to train on Sunday, but couldn't find anything on Google that showed anyone offering a class or open mat. I jumped on the Globetrotter Facebook page to ask, and just 5 minutes later had received an answer. Definitely an awesome resource for travel training! It was another decent drive at 2 1/2 hours to make an open mat at Alliance HQ, but well worth it. I was well receive in the Alliance hospitality that I have come to expect from the organization. With 2 black belts, 4 brown belts and me on the mat, we had some really fun, killer rolls for what was school number 75!

Week 3 -  Submission Grappling and Tournament Week!
Ah my true love! Focusing on striking was fun for the two weeks, but I was ecstatic to be spending a week on submission grappling. We followed a similar schedule of hard workouts in the mornings and then focusing on teaching after lunch. We also ran a combatives standard, intermediate and advanced rules class tournament this week. Everyone competed hard, but our emphasis was more about learning how to ref, score, bracket and generally run a tournament than competing ourselves. I did win the standard rules bracket, but lost split decision first match the next day when we reset the brackets. I was okay with that though, I felt as though I'd been punched in the face enough the past 3 weeks and was happy to take my noggin out of risk.

The fun thing about this week was that they allowed us to join in on the lunch time open mats at the fight house. My class wasn't allowed to participate these, out of fear of injury, and I had spent the last two weeks glumly watching people train from the sidelines. Lunch time open mats meant skipping lunch, but I was totally cool with skipping a meal to get extra training in. There are some killers that show up to those training session and I enjoyed some great training with them over the last two weeks.

That weekend I took a break from training and explored the Columbus area. This was my fourth time at Benning, but I was never able to go out into the town before. We at a bunch of really good food, went white water rafting, and visited the Georgia aquarium. Overall just a really memorable weekend!

Week 4 - Tactical Scenarios
Week 4 was focused on implementing the combatives techniques into the our Unit's training plan, and how to integrate it into everyday training to increase combat lethality. This was the most enjoyable week of the course for me as it was eye opening to see how many places combatives had the potential to be integrated into my Unit's existing training.

We also added in shock knives into this week's training. A shock knife really ups the attention that is put on training. Rather than going through the motions with rubber knives, you have one of your classmates trying to tag you with a 9 volt battery powered shocking device. This was really really good training, and produced some rather hilarious memories from people getting the crap shocked out of them 😂

Graduation
After years of working to get into the course and four weeks of tough training, I officially graduated! It meant a lot more to me than I thought it would, but my former Cornerstone training partner Razz drove out to attend the quick graduation ceremony. Of course, we had to get a couple rolls in before graduation because it wouldn't be right if we didn't 😆

I'm incredibly excited to now be a Combatives Master Trainer and able to run my own BCC and TCC classes. I'm also though equally as daunted by the responsibility of the task. I've trained for years to eventually fill this role, but I still don't feel like I'm fully prepared for it. As stressful as competitions are, and the risk of injury is present, at the end of the day you win or you tap and try again the next time. I will be training soldiers now though. Soldiers that may one day end up in a situation where fighting may mean the life or death of themselves or those around them. So I need to do everything within my ability to ensure that they are the best trained that they can be to survive should they encounter such a situation. Something that will weigh heavily on my mind as I work on developing my Brigade's program and running soldiers through training.

What's next
There might not be many JiuJitsu things to write about for a while. I'm about to catch a plane out to Fort Irwin, CA for a month long NTC rotation. After that it's a couple months of pre-deployment training, followed by the deployment itself after. My focus is shifting from being a JiuJitsu competitor and traveler, to being a better soldier. So we'll have to see how much training I can fit in and updates on I can post on here.

As always though, thank you very much for taking the time to follow along with my training, and I hope to see you on the mats very soon!

About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He currently trains out of Wakizashi BJJ  in Oak Harbor under Professor Eli Trevino. He is an active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combative tournaments.