Sanctuary - the next step

After a great reception for the Sanctuary session I coached at the retreat we're looking at what the next step in the process is.



Having spent many hours discussing this with fellow PCWA coach, Cecil Burch, we're going to collaborate and put together a master version which includes both our work on the same material.

Having discussed the problem with teaching clinch, rather than wrestling, a number of months ago we had both identified the same problems:

• There is a gap between stand up and wrestling. If you look at the posture that wrestlers take (especially their hand position) this becomes very noticeable. For example, to protect your arms from arm drag entries you have to tuck your elbows in, which takes your hands away from your head.
• Teaching wrestling to people with no exposure to it (almost everyone in the UK) is difficult. There are very few reference points that are based on broad ideas, like position, rather than focused ideas, like techniques. Introducing clinch as a series of wrestling techniques causes real problems with people getting lost trying to sift through a number of options, none of which take precedence for them, or getting stuck in an eternal pummeling drill because that is what they are used to.
• Working clinch against anyone working the CM structure is extremely hard. They protect their necks, lock their structure into their bodies and their arms stay braced between you because of the hand-head attachment.

Above: How we believe a clinch game fits in to the big picture, particularly for beginners.

Both Cecil and I have been working on this problem concurrently and from differing start points, him looking at reverse engineering wrestling and me looking at nullifying stand-up, we have come to almost the same results. There is massive overlap between our solutions and we had each answered some of the major sticking points in each others material. The most important aspect of both of our findings has been contact, how to get it and, vitally, how to keep it.

From this we had both worked towards a master control position that, for the sake of changing the position of one hand, was exactly the same (what we have been calling Sanctuary 2). We are working to develop a small programme that will enable people to safely control that skills gap between stand-up and wrestling that:

1. Doesn’t rely on attributes
2. Has reference point positions to allow for easy navigation when in clinch
3. Enables you to safely disengage, the most dangerous aspect of clinch
4. Can be picked up in a few hours

So where does this take us now? Over the next few months Cecil will be coming over here and I will be going over to him to refine what we think is a system that fills a hole in most people’s training. How do you get in, what do you do when you’re there and how do you get out safely again? We’ll be filming the whole thing and releasing it for public use.

If you want to be kept posted on the progress of Sanctuary please drop me a mail at phil@revolutiongym.co.uk and put ‘sanctuary’ in the subject line.

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