Correction to an article I wrote for CCM

[Oleg Volk]

In March, I had an article about training in Memphis, Warrior Talk Symosium, organized by Gabe Suarez. Part of the article dealt with unarmed techniques taught by Martin Cooper, a British police officer. Turns out that my understanding of the lesson may have been flawed, resulting in an article that did not do justice to the trainer. Mr.Cooper commented:

The system we teach coaches ordinary people into the world of violence and aggression. It matters not which tool they will use to defend themselves - if they have not the will, their skill will not save them. Our system has few 'skills' ie techniques. What it does have though, are many drills which bring out the warrior in a normally peaceful person.

We teach maybe three or four techniques, but those techniques are honed in a catalogue of drills, in order that the student cognitively understands what a true warrior is, thus they can access that person in themselves. I can turn out competent fighters in a morning. I can turn out competent fighters with or without guns in a weekend.

When I talked to Martin about this, he graciously allowed me to reproduce an article that he wrote on the same topic. Hopefully this article would give a better idea of his methods than mine did. I will also direct Martin to this thread so that he could answer any questions that may come up.

 

[Coops387]

Initially, I was pleased and honoured that a UK cop actually featured in a mag which is so far away from policing in England.

However, your resume of what I teach was inaccurate to a large degree, certainly due to a misunderstanding of our methods. Oleg penned the article and he was at the event. However, he did not take part in my training. If he had done, his review would have been different.His article said, "In the US, his methods may be of more interest to people who live in similarly restrictive juristrictions, such as New York." His view is short sighted and a little off the mark. Gabe Suarez asked me to teach athe empty hand method we use, so I did. This same empty hand method is taught to armed officers and armed bodyguards within the UK and in Europe: Sweden & Poland to name just two counties. It sits perfectly with firearms use, concealed or not.
The system we teach coaches ordinary people into the world of violence and aggression. It matters not which tool they will use to defend themselves - if they have not the will, their skill will not save them. Our system has few 'skills' ie techniques. What it does have though, are many drills which bring out the warrior in a normally peaceful person.

We teach maybe three or four techniques, but those techniques are honed in a catalogue of drills, in order that the student cognitively understands what a true warrior is, thus they can access that person in themselves. I can turn out competent fighters in a morning. We can turn out competent operators with or without guns in a weekend.

Our methods are used by departments who deal with firearms and violence every day. What we teach does acually work and has no place along side martial arts, they are two different animals.

I would like to thank Oleg for this chance to correct an error. He is obviously someone looking for the true path in combatives. Thank's for that Oleg.

As for the future, we will continue to train special units and first responderes alike. However, if there is interest in our methods outside this closed world I would be happy to look at training people in our methods.

Coops