Darren Currie’s x-guard seminar at Combat Base Bolton, January 27th 2008

To kick start the year at Combat Base Bolton and to motivate the students after the Christmas lay off, Darren and Helen made the trip over to the land of the Red Rose to deliver a three hour seminar devoted to the x guard.

In all my years of training, the x guard had received scant attention, so I was more than looking forward to the seminar and becoming a white belt again for the afternoon; the seminar was well attended with Jamie Ward, Jamie Edmonds and members of Combat Base Bolton and Pontefract all supporting the event, as well as the support of pro MMA fighter Matt Thorpe, who came down to the event, so it was nice to see open minded guys from different arts all training together.

Darren started the class with a number of specific drills that can be easily incorporated into any warm up and then broke the entry into the x guard into smaller segments before getting to the x guard itself, which made it easier to understand and practice.

From the x guard itself Darren demonstrated a number of simple sweeps from the position and went on to show a number of ‘what if’ scenarios, arising from whatever position the opponent landed from the sweeps. With only three hours to train, Darren had barely scratched the surface on the x guard and the seminar came to an end and from there, students were paired off and rolled with each other and I am happy to say I managed to pull off a few sweeps from the x guard, surely a credit to my skill or Darren’s superior coaching skills? I’m sure Darren will have his own answer!

Darren will be back later in the year to deliver his speciality seminar, the half guard, which I’m sure will go down as well as the x guard session, judging from the positive feedback received after the seminar from the students involved.

Check www.combatsport.com and http://combatbasebolton.blogspot.com