Hock Seminar

I really did forget to post this...

Tomorrow, our school is hosting W "Hock" Hochheim (http://www.hockscqc.com/) for the first time! The only other time I met him was our trip out to Denver,CO in April of 2006. It was worth the 12-hour drive (14 or so coming back...that's a story in itself!) just to attend that part of the seminar.

Hock is a retired police officer with military experience. He's designed a comprehensive stick, knife & gun program that offers practical self-defense with efficiency in-mind. Based on meeting the man only once, I can say he has a good sense of humor, organizes his lessons so they are easy to learn & he offers practical examples.

Let's just say he's not this guy:

You may be wondering, "What's the difference between Hapkido & CQC? Aren't all those self-defense things pretty much the same"?

No, silly, that's not true at all.

Hapkido specializes largely in unarmed defense. Yes, it does offer training in weapon defense - which teaches weapon use by necessity - but the focus is mostly around getting out of a predicament. I wouldn't grab a skilled Hapkido practitioner but otherwise the art offers practical aspects of many arts. In summary: Jack-of-all-trades, Master of none.

CQC, to me, seems to find its bread & butter in the life-in-danger situations. While this may be true in any self-defense situation, knowing how to defend yourself with whatever you may have against a knife (or, Heaven forbid, a gun) is what's happening here. Hock talks often about the
"myth of the duel" - where both fighters have the same weapon, both fight as fair as the other, etc. In reality, this doesn't exist. If a guy comes at you with a knife & you have a Glock 19, are you going to put it down & draw a knife to match him? Or, are you more likely to put a smiley face in center mass ala Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon? I thought so.

Both of these styles mesh well together. This is because there are some techniques in common & the overall focus, self-defense, is the same. Actually, a dirty little secret of martial arts is that many arts use the same techniques. Sure, there are differences but mostly in things like stance & hand position. This isn't blatant theft. It's the simple fact that these techniques were learned over time, by various people & spread throughout the world.