Combatives - NW Close Quarters Concepts

Preparing for the most serious of close confrontations requires organized and intense principle-bases training allowing the practitioner to avoid, and when necessary prevail,  in physical encounters. Toward these ends Northwest CQC draws upon modern tactical disciplines and theory, performance science, combat conditioning, armed and unarmed self protection, and combative arts.


NW CQC course work is strongly based in the ECQC (Extreme Close Quarters Concepts) methodology, which involves targeted instruction across the spectrum of  personal protection needs and specialized training for the armed professional focussing on awareness, threat assessment and confrontation management, use of force decision making, and armed and unarmed options tested in dynamic force on force training.


Components:


Fighting Fitness

Personal combat is the ultimate athletic endeavor. The physical exertion and adrenal dump experienced in a serious close confrontation is intense; with stress, pain, and fatigue leaching the “warrior spirit” right out of the body not inured to it through a demanding training regimen.

The better conditioned a body, the better it will process and be energized by adrenal stress rather than become overwhelmed by it, and the better it will handle injury to “stay in the fight.”

Each NW CQC training session includes a “fighting fit” component providing a cross section of physical training methods using combative movement patterns and conditioning the body to an intense output of energy over short time frames.

Confrontation Management

This topic include awareness, recognizing and addressing entreaty and encroachment by unknown subjects/potential threats, attentional and initiative deficit and decision dynamics,  positional disadvantage and weapons access, and force articulation factors based on circumstances.

Weapons Based Environment (WBE)

An awareness and understanding of the weapons based environment (WBE) fundamentally distinguishes personal protection from combat sports and theoretical martial arts practice. Weapons are potentially present and can be introduced at any moment, in any encounter.

NW CQC’s practical focus emphasizes modern firearms and short blade work, efficient carry and deployment of weapons under pressure, and weapons manipulation and retention.

These skills are developed then pressure tested in drills and scenario work.


Close Combat


The most serious physical confrontations generally occur at body-to-body contact or "clinch" range, including on the ground. Strong close quarter skills confer an ability to remain mobile and to control another while not being controlled – including the ability to disengage and/or access weapons during a fight while limiting an assailant’s options to do the same.

Avoiding the often misunderstood statistic that “nearly all fights go to the ground,” a significant number of them do, and being on the ground in a real altercation dramatically increases the odds of being injured and/or killed, particularly in an environment where weapons and/or additional assailants are likely involved.

Not wanting to go to the ground does not prevent one from ending up there, however. Training methods without a strong base in legitimate grappling skills typically offer solutions unlikely to be effective against a larger, stronger, or more skilled attacker. True preparation develops an understanding of and ability to maximize positional advantage in real time, to deploy weapons, and to disengage/stand up at the earliest opportunity while preventing being held or pinned.

This is accomplished through actual grappling practice with a combative, versus a competitive, aim.


Force on Force Training (FoF)


The truest test of any combative skill set, outside of actual application, is training with dynamics that mirror as closely as possible the “real deal.” “Force on Force” (FoF) training accomplishes this through testing against an “opposing will,” allowing the student to experience a “virtual” combative encounter under stressful conditions mimicking critical aspects of actual confrontations – to include force articulation, time competitiveness, antagonistic goals (opposing will), pain, performance anxiety, and even fear.

Current studies show that regular and increasingly challenging simulation training fostering progressively complex decision making under stress positively affects combative performance. No combative training program can be considered thorough without ongoing injections of stress inoculation training at increasingly difficult levels.

Our instructors have extensive professional experience training police, military, and private citizens in Force on Force/Use of Force Simulations, to include advanced tactical work and realistic multiple adversary exercises.