Our tactics follow the same patterns, regardless if we are armed or unarmed. That also means that a student of M.A.T.T Combatives is not confused by new things, but will recognize what he or she is doing. When going from using one tactic armed to unarmed, we follow one principle. Only the application is changed. This is a very important principle that must be understood. M.A.T.T Combatives presumes the opponent is always armed and we have adapted tactics and techniques accordingly, regardless if you are armed yourself. We also put lot of focus on training for structure (body positioning) to ensure strong balance and full body power; this allows us to strike with the whole body behind every technique, to strike without telegraphing.
This also means that we don’t want to fight with an aggressor. The techniques we teach and our tactical choices we have made are based on Martial Arts where one does not compete. Instead, a main objective is to quickly finish the fight. Our combat methodology is created for survival. We try to give an unarmed practitioner realistic chances to render an armed opponent harmless. This is achieved though a swift, often brutal, finish. Even experienced martial artists may be chocked by the sometimes unsporting methods we use. But that comes from not training for sport. We train for survival.
The big difference technically, between M.A.T.T. Combatives and other Arts, comes from a genius concept developed by Tom Sotis from Amok! – a concept called “Four themes”. It is built from the body’s own movements and the presumption that there is only a certain amount of positions you can get into. To get the whole picture, without any holes or gaps, you have to train all of them. By using this concept we are not bound to any certain style, art or technique, but can use it for practically any style or technique.
However, we have divided our unarmed training into these categories
1) Upper body striking
2) Lower body striking
3) Emphasizing head butts elbows and knees.
Some of our fundamental tactics are:
1) Arm hitting
2) Faking
3) Jamming
4) Trapping
5) Ins and downs
Our agenda for training is based on 4 basic principles:
UNDERSTANDING STRUCTURE, this will lead to
UNDERSTANDING ROOT, which is useless if you don’t understand
TRANSFER BODYWEIGHT and these will give us the tools to reach
FULL BODY POWER.