The Predator drill

The Predator drill is something that we do occasionally in my dojo.  In it's usual form, it is one head guard wearing person (to represent the Predator status) stalking, whilst the other students circle round.  The Predator tries to grapple different students in turn, and if he or she can hold on for 3 seconds, that student is out of the drill.

The drill continues until there is only one student left.  That student is declared the winner, and the drill then restarts with another person donning the Predator  head guard.  This usually goes on for three of four rounds, to give a few people the chance to play that role.

The purpose of the drill is to teach people the value and practice the various techniques of breaking away in self defence.  In this Saturday's session though, we did I slightly different version of the drill, to practice Naihanchi based techniques to defend against two attackers.

Key elements that could be used included "crashing", elbow strikes, knee strikes, arm pulls, and rotating the first attacker to use as a shield.  "Crashing" is the use of the first part of Naihanchi Shodan, to close distance with the attacker with arms covering the head to prevent strikes.  Has to be done so that you can keep watching the attacker whist crashing into them elbows first.

Two of the senior students took on the role of dual predators, whilst all the other students got the chance to practice their techniques.  There were no set rules as to what to try, but as we had been doing Naihanchi drills, these were the ones were upmost in our minds.  Here is my effort.

The drill was both helpful and enjoyable, I think I learned something from it.  It seemed to get a positive response from the other students too 😊😊😊