Russell T Mackler of Viñas Arnis was invited to teach at Combatcon August 10-13 2017.
Combatcon is an annual convention for martial arts, stage combatants, stunt professionals, experts in tactical combat and personnel protection, and professional authors. There are classes, demonstrations, HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) tournaments, and many other activities. The event was held at the Flamingo in Los Vegas Nevada.
As a part of the event the Viñas System was able to participate through teaching a couple of classes. This included “Controlling the Fight” and “Knife Disarms”.
“Controlling the Fight”
What does it mean to “Control the fight”? The class was intended to provide strategic thinking and tactics enabling you to manipulate your opponent as to reduce risk for yourself while increasing the risk of your opponent. Principles and concepts were discussed with examples and opportunities to practice items learned. Some of the items discussed included: Centerline control, baiting, deterrence, deception, and structure associated with fighting with an edged based weapon (Sword).
There is more to learning disarms then just removing a weapon from your opponent, such as how do you get to a disarm, what happens when your opponent doesn’t comply, and other facets to enabling disarms. The class provided principles, concepts, techniques, and drills associated with disarms. It provided a holistic view while also providing details to enable disarms. Some of the items discussed included: Risk reduction thinking, weak points to enable disarms, thumb control, elbow control, locks, distractions, edge awareness, etc.. The 7 basic strikes were taught which then enables the disarm entries T-Block, X-Block, and Double Tap. Body structure was also discussed.
Richard Marsden of Phoenix Society also taught Polish Saber and Russell Mackler and Adam Simmons helped as assistants.
Phil Martin deserves a huge congratulations for getting a bronze in the cutting tournament.
Kyle Griswold deserves a lot of respect for having the best run Sword and Buckler tournament to date.
I also hung out and supported Shawn Fackler, Tristan Fackler, and Alfredo Velez associated with Loyal Order of the Sword. Congrats to Shawn for an outstanding performance in rapier and sword in buckler were he won a Silver and Bronze.
We would like to thank Richard Marsden, Adam Simmons, Chris Nelson, and Phil Martin for enabling us to attend and be apart of the community.
We would also like to thank Combatcon for having us.
And finally without the Viñas family I wouldn’t be here, thank you Grandmaster Nonong.