In keeping with his theme of hosting excellent rbsd seminars John Skillen recently hosted Bob Spour. Bob is a long time figure on the UK martial arts scene mainly known for his Muay Thai, however recently he has ventured into the rbsd market with the release of his DVDs, this seminar marks his first (to my knowledge) time teaching to the general reality market.

Many usual suspects assembled for the seminar and a great atmosphere prevailed.

Bob is a very interesting guy with an assorted TMA background in his youth before he did his stints in Thailand where he learned is craft, he has also served time in the SAS which provided many interesting anecdotes.

Bob is a funny guy and much mileage was had from his being a hard geordier and his many real life encounters, plus the unfortunate but game meat puppet who was given much abuse all in good fun.

The day kicked off with an drill to resist being put into a clinch by tensing up the and raising the shoulders, followed by what was termed head rips to manipulate the opponent.

Using the army term Bob teaches what he calls SOPs, or Standard Operating Procedures, to engrain in the trainee certain tactically essential elements, Bob illustrated this by teaching the SOP of always finishing a downed opponent with palms to the head while scanning for further threat.

The meat of the morning was spent training drills which provide ways to outmanoeuvre and hurt your opponent in a clinch setting.

Later in the morning the downward cutting elbow was reviewed with Bob going round giving tips on its delivery. This was followed by the use of the switch step in the face of multiple opponents to both get the blow in favourably and to wrong foot the opposition, which Bob had used to deal with two unsavoury republican types while in the regiment.

The afternoon included Bob teaching the use of the Thai front kick and roundhouse with the shin. Bob is very current with new efficiencies the Thais are using in their technique (they no longer perform roundhouses leaning over in the direction of the kick, favouring now a more upright guarded position) and presented great information on this topic.

Overall a good day was had by all and it’s great to see another high class rbsd authority coming forward in the way Bob has.