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Phases of Combat
Author: Bill Burgar
Fights don't just happen. There are always pre-fight cues of various forms that can be detected and acted upon. Generally, we can, for ease and convenience of training, think of self-defence in various phases: opening, midgame and endgame.
Chess players among you will note that this corresponds directly to the phases of the great game. Chess is the battle field on a board, and often people liken sparring to a game of chess in the context of 'thinking one or more moves ahead', but the analogy goes much deeper than that, and we can use it to clarify our thinking.
Opening: this phase is about gaining positional and tactical advantage over the opponent, all the while trying to do so in a covert way, and adjusting plans as the opponent changes his position and tactics.
In a one-on-one self-defence situation there are a limited number of opening moves just as there are in chess, although the number is quite large and therefore it is impractical to train every combination. What we have to do is learn the principles of opening so that when we find ourselves in a situation that we have not been in before we can use those principles to give us the best outcome under the circumstances.
The principles include: positioning, verbal disarming and de-esculat-ing techniques, observation skills, understanding adrenal response, covert positioning, pre-emptive techniques and feinting.
In chess there are common openings which, through practice and continual play, become easy to recognise and counter. In the same way, in self-defence there are common scenarios (the habitual acts of violence introduced in previous articles). And, through continual practice of these opening scenarios (the defences against these habitual acts taken from kata), we can become proficient at spotting the early warning signals of these openings and moving to counter them either by adjusting posture or by moving into the midgame, which is making physical counter.
Midgame: our objective in the midgame is to make it as short as possible and create a situation where we can move to a successful endgame. Ideally, our opening has been so good that we have deterred the attack completely or we are in a powerful position to drive home a strong midgame and move to endgame immediately. If our opening was weak or had gaps in our defence then we will have to work hard in the midgame if we are to prevail. Midgame tactics are different from opening tactics in that, while specific techniques can be identified and used, we have to work much more on principles than is required in the opening where we can practice the scenarios more easily. To practise for the midgame we need different training drills that foster our recognition of various physical patterns (using visual and tactile cues) and that allow our exploitation of those situations without thought.
Throughout the midgame we use principles to create situations which allow us an entry to the endgame.
Endgame: the end game springs out of taking advantage of a midgame ploy to 'check-mate' the opponent. The instant that we gain any advantage in the midgame there is opportunity to press that advantage further and go to the endgame where we can finish the battle. Endgame situations arise from good recognition of practised scenarios in the midgame (which leads to discussion of phase-space: the subject of another month's column).
Theory is all very well, but it is useless unless it is put into successful practice. In order to practice openings we need to set up partner and solo drills that habituate us to the scenarios of openings and ensure that we react in the right way to the various common acts that can happen and that we ingrain the principles that we can rely on when thereNjs deviation from the common scenarios.
Our midgame practice must be different from our opening practice and must be constructed of drills that ingrain the principles that can create advantage from the turmoil of the midgame and produce situations that lead to successful endgames.
Our endgame practice must be constructed of drills that take various midgame scenarios and terminate them quickly and efficiently without thought.
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