On Saturday, 8 August, 18 participants (mainly from the area around Cologne/Bonn, but with one gentleman travelling to the Rhineland from the Czech Republic) gathered in Sankt Augustin to immerse themselves in two days of instruction in the Comtech Drawpoint Method. Our instructor was my dear friend, Master at Arms Pete Kautz.

After a brief introduction, Pete got us going with the first drill of the method.
 

Since many participants were pretty highly skilled, and because Pete is a great teacher who not only can explain complex things in an easy to understand way, but also can transmit a lot of knowledge quickly, everone progressed pretty fast and Pete got us started with the second drill.

Various variations of these two drills would be our mainstay exercise for the day, save two insertions. The insertions were the 'Spanish Cross' method of speed hitting (getting three hits in one second was no problem and many participants got six timed hits in the same time!) and the use of the bandanna as an improvised method for blocking, hitting and tying up limbs.
 

After five hours of hard training, the first day of the seminar was over and in the evening many of the attendees gathered again in a nearby Chinese restaurant for a treat of 'Kung Food'.

On Sunday, Pete briefly reviewed the first day and had us do the two drills again, before working on quick access drills where the weapon was covered by clothing, e.g. a jacket. After a brief introduction to the Karambit and the lunch break, Pete had us bring on a variety of everyday items, from bike wrench, over lanyard keychain to PET waterbottle and explained how each of them could be used in a self-defence situation.

The last hours of the seminar were reserved to the third drill of the Drawpoint method and it's relation to the first two drills.  All too soon, the seminar was over and after the obligatory photos, everybody went off on their way home exhausted but happy.

The only bad thing to say about the weekend: it's over.
The good thing is: Pete will be back for a follow-up seminar next year!

Thanks to all the attendees for training hard and safely and of course a huge 'Dankeschön' to Pete for flying over the pond to share his knowledge with us.

Additional Notes From Pete

Howdy all!  The seminar last week in Sankt Augustine went wonderfully, with some incredible folks there.  Everyone was in the good spirit to learn and we were able to go far!

We covered aspects of Drawpoint, flexible and improvised weapons over the two days.  By the end of the weekend everyone could do some pretty incredible things.  In addition to having the basic technical drills such as picking, cover & slash, hooking & passing under control they could also draw from concealment in roughly 1/2 second out of motion, throw non telegraphic strikes that their partner couldn't stop, and even hit 6 times in approximately one second with a weapon.
 

Though most of our work over the weekend was tool oriented, we did about 1/3 of the work with empty hands.  This allows people to see the connections between the drills by expressing the same idea but with radically different medium.  In this case, we did the same exercises expressing them through bandanna x empty hands, bandanna x knife, knife x empty hands, empty hands x empty hands to see how they all relate to the core knife x knife structure.

It was interesting to see that doing group hypnotic induction was no problem, even in everyone's non-primary language.  We used this for purpose of locking in the first day's lessons.  One participant stared that the session made him feel very confident with his English because he was able to follow the induction, even while in a very deep place inside his mind.  Cool!

My hat is off to this excellent group of dedicated martial artists - everyone really went for it and came away able to do a lot of things.  Everyone really got good in two days so I can't wait to see how good it all looks next time we get together - after you've had time to really work all the drills and make the connections for yourself!
 

Visit MASD Today