The Todd Group, formerly the Baldock Institute have been European military armed and unarmed combat and military self-defence training providers since 1927.
The Todd Group also includes the combat sports school that provides training in pugilism, wrestling and other combat sports codes.
The stances and guards for our combat sports codes are different to the stances and guards used in our military close quarter’s battle, close quarters combat and military self-defence.
This is predominantly because of the objectives of military close combat differing from civilian traditional or self-defence styles and competitive codes.
In wrestling and grappling there are rules and officials to oversee competitions making it very different to mil CQB/CQC/MSD.
In military close combat and military self-defence, it’s about enemy incapacitation or elimination which is very different to our combat sports codes where opponent safety is most important.
Stances and arm and hand positioning guarding in our combat sports are specific to the techniques of the specific code.
Some of the combat sports considerations include seizing the wrists or uniform, leg shoots with the hands and preventing leg attacks.
In military close combat kill or die actions on the modus operandi is all about destroying life support systems means including limbs destruction as part of the process of threat neutralisation.
The reality of kill or die actions on requires stances and guards that provide maximum unarmed offensive assault and unarmed counter offensive assault hard cover guard protection and primary trade-craft skills that provide best chances of threat neutralisation objective achievement.
The stances must provide evasive counter engagement hard cover guard protection as well as unarmed offensive assault employments hard cover guard protection.
Body armour battle dress boots and weapons increase safety and chances of threat neutralisation by considerable.
Our systems of European military close combat counter offensively are made up of body line cover guard and deflection means and methods over blocking techniques.
The unarmed CQC stances have commonality with armed CQB stances and this is very important.
There are far less considerations in relation to enemy threat capabilities in mil CQB/CQC actions on than there are in traditional fighting arts or combat sports simply because the employment of dirty or deadly armed or unarmed offensive or counteroffensive assault options are gross motor skill means to incapacitate or eliminate a formidable enemy in an instant.
While in our combat sports achieving grappling grips, breaking of grips, leg attacks, take downs, throws and countering all such actions plus other techniques specific to winning in competition require specific stances and defensive capabilities to best score points, knock out or submit an opponent.
Because the objective is not life threatening the focus is somewhat different to military battle field close combat.
In our CQB/CQC primary, back up, non-ballistic or improvised weapons as well as unarmed threat neutralisation methods share commonality in stance and guarding with the objective being the same as well as the human anatomy targets.
The stances are cohesive with changes in threat or situation and are based on minimising target mass, increasing stability and maintaining hard cover guard protection.
The footwork for making range and covering ground is the same for all actions on employments and is cohesive and has commonality with the stances and guards transitions and expedient actions movements.
Limb destruction and battlefield de-centralisation incapacitation is by means of joint ligaments destruction achieved through stamp kicking or high velocity knee or palm heel joints ligament destructive force not by sweeping or bone on flesh and bone type kicks.
The Combat boot stamp kicking combined with mil CQC static counter engagement hard cover guarding actions provides lower quadrant self- protection for the combatant by combating lower quadrants assaults with lead hard boot stamp kicking.
The mil CQB/CQC stances and guards also provide protection of service carried weapons as part of weapon seizure prevention and weapon retention.
Non-ballistic weapons usage has the same commonality of stance as in CQB/CQC and the weapon holding grips have commonality as well.
Less is more in primary skills of threat neutralisation selection by maximum destructive capability combined under body line hard cover guard protective capabilities and inner body line deflection that has proven to reduce factor of confusion decision making.
The mil CQB/CQC stances and guards not only reduce bodily target mass through compressed squat crouching but also increases stability and sets a position of primary expedient action initiation.
The counter offensive stance level changing actions also have commonality with natural human reactions to sudden aggressive shock actions.
The reasoning behind the military close combat stances guarding and footwork has been determined by the roles usage and threat characteristics of battle field close combat and has been proven effective in deadly actions on.
The stances include compromised and uncompromised types for overt and covert actions on respectively.
