STF

Hand-to-Hand Training

Posted March 25, 2021, 4:55 p.m. by Ensign George Anderson (Scientist) (Riley W)

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman) in Hand-to-Hand Training

Posted by Lieutenant Charles Fordham (Security Chief) in Hand-to-Hand Training

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman) in Hand-to-Hand Training
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

<snip>
Rand nodded. She seemed oddly relaxed in this setting compared to days before at the observation lounge. The people around her and the activity not seeming to bother her. She jabbed at the pad stopping when she made contact rather than following through. You want to be hitting the target before you finish extending your elbow. Otherwise it’s just a love tap. So she needed to hit it but keep going? And before he could correct it she jabbed again this time following though till her arms was fully extended. It made a satisfying smack against the pad. She grinned to herself. It would knock anyone over, but it might surprise them.
Yeoman Rand

Ford was watching another student when she hit the pad with a smack! and he turned to her with a grin. “There we go!” he said to her, and braced again. He let everyone get about ten good solid hits in before he called out for them to switch partners holding the pad.

“Do you want to take a quick break, or get some more in?” he offered to Rand.

“I’ll keep going unless you need to check on everyone else.” Rand was no slacker and was happy to keep practicing, she also knew it wasn’t fair to keep the instructor’s attention simply because there was an odd number.

Once he was satisfied everyone had done enough on that side, he called out again.

“Now, let’s switch things up - try it with your dominant side in front, jabbing with your dominant hand. Do about ten again. Watch your hands - you’ll need to be holding them in slightly different positions than we were the other side.” He looked around, checking all of their positioning before nodding. He held the pad out for Rand.

“Remember, we’re focusing on the motion - we’ll add power right after this,” he told her, bracing for the next punch.

COS Ford

She switched her stance and the first jab was all sorts of wrong and she flushed, embarrassed, but quickly corrected herself and sent several jabs at the bag with a resounding “smack.” Her last one her wrist was flexed incorrectly and her aim off from tensed shoulders. Lucky for her it scrapped her knuckles along the canvas of the pad, rather than sprain her wrist, with a dull thud rather than a smack - it would sting later - but she finished out the set.
Yeoman Rand

Ford grimaced at the sound and saw the redness on her knuckles. “You’ll be all right,” he said, “but that is going to hurt later. I have a handwrap if it gets bad.”

She nodded and glanced at her knuckles and shrugged. She’d gotten worse tripping on a cross country trail at home. She’d clean it up later.

He held out his right arm parallel to his chest, fist palm down, to show her what had happened. “You want your knuckles parallel with your forearm,” he said, running his left hand across the flat wrist. “If it’s not…” he cocked his wrist back and pushed, then cocked it down and pushed. “… you can get pretty hurt. I told you, nothing natural about the way we fight,” he chuckled.

She watched as he demonstrated and the implications looked painful. “Sorry,” oh now what? He said call him Ford but some of his officers were there. That wouldn’t be appropriate in this situation would it? Okay then, “Lt. I’ll be careful.” She took a couple more tries at it, making sure her wrist stayed straight, not hitting quite so hard for a couple watching her aim and her wrist as she moved through the jab.

He stepped back up to the front of the room and waved one of the security crew to him with a pad. “Now, let’s talk about power generation. This is simple physics, f=ma, force equals mass times acceleration. What we’ve been doing is accelerating the mass of our hand, maybe our arm, to generate that force, but we can do better.”

He stood in a basic boxing stance so they were on his left and demonstrated the jab a couple of times. “Now, I want to add some more mass behind this punch, so I’ll push my shoulder and hips into it.” He showed them a slowed down jab, rotating his shoulder and hips at the last second, then demonstrated on the pad - the sound difference was immediately noticeable. “An easy bad habit to fall into is moving the shoulder first - this gives away what you’re doing and is easier to react to, since your hand isn’t moving yet. Always move your hand first.” He showed the punch off from both sides of his body, then sent the security member back to his partner.

“Practice this slow a few times; I’ll come around and correct anything I see needs it.”

He returned to Rand and slipped the pad back on. “Questions before we try it out?” he asked her.

COS Ford

Rand was replaying what he’d done in her head, it made sense, but the practice of it was different. She moved through it slowly but she couldn’t quite figure out how to “push” the jab with her shoulder and hips. She felt like she was trying to ‘jump’ into it, and she knew that was wrong, and felt very foolish if she appeared to be jumping at it. Which she wasn’t but she wasn’t getting any power either because her self consciousness got the better of her. She had it all set in her head to not start with her shoulder and with her fist. So her fist led but then nothing followed.
Yeoman Rand

Ford walked around her, watching. “It’s sort of a push-pull motion,” he said, and stood in front of her, hands up, the pad still on his right hand. “When one side goes forward, the other goes back.” He slowly pushed his left hand forward, and at the end pulled his right shoulder and hip back slightly, rotating his left shoulder and hip forward.

Rand mimicked him. It was not natural, just like he said. She got her shoulder moving but it looked more mechanical than anything, but she got the push/pull right. She repeated it a few more times, the movement smoothing out.

He relaxed and walked to her dominant side. “Now, throw the punch, and right before you extend, rotate this hip back about an inch.” He tapped the hip over her dominant leg with the pad. “Don’t move your legs, don’t lean, just rotate”

COS Ford

She glanced down where he tapped her hip, more to see what he was explaining than anything else. Later she might think twice about it and blush. She moved her shoulders trying to time that rotation with her right hip. What she ended up doing was shifting her weight instead of rotating. She kept at it and then it suddenly clicked. It was like a dance move. She was very glad Randy wasn’t around because he’d have figured it out before now....The next one she jabbed out and her shoulder and hips rotated together properly. She repeated the motion slowly a few more times and then glanced at Ford still standing next to her. “Like that?”
Yeoman Rand

He nodded. “Looks good. Keep trying it out, on both sides. I’m going to walk around the room real quick.”

Rand nodded and continued to practice, to move through the motions, as Ford walked around the rest of the group. She was right it was just like the dance, well as far as the hips went. The difference was instead of her hands moving in some idiot feathery movement she was punching something, or would be. She focused on what she was doing, resisting the urge to listen to what Ford was saying and to whom he was speaking. She wasn’t there as a yeoman to take notes for him on how the class went, she was there to learn as a Star Fleet officer.

He did a tour among each student providing corrections - talking about timing with one student, not leaning with another, minor corrections to rotation to just about everyone - and then returned back to Rand.

“Okay,” he called out. “Now do them on the pad. Ten… nah, make it fifteen solid hits each side.”

He held the pad out for Rand and nodded.

COS Ford

She nodded back at Ford and then turned her focus to the pad. The first jab was about like the ones before it - a nice ‘smack.’ She got the rotation the next time but didn’t follow through with it. She shook her head at herself, rolled her shoulders and tried again. This one hit and the difference was noticeable. She looked up at him and grinned and then went back to it. She finished out the 15 with varying degrees of power but she was confident she understood what she was doing even if she hadn’t mastered it. She switched sides and the second one landed with enough force to get someone’s attention.

After making sure his legless friends were settled in his quarters, George glanced through a ship schematic. Noticing that there was a Gym on board and excited about the prospect of getting some healthy exercise, he grabbed his gym bag and started on his way. The officer went through the change rooms and got dressed before emerging into… what seemed like a combat training class. He glanced over to see a man who seemed to be in charge. He took a step towards him, then paled slightly as he realized that he recognized that face from the picture he’d seen of the Chief of Security. George had reported to one of his Department Heads - the Science Chief. But not this one. Oops.

Anderson, Sci/Sec

After a few more, but before she was finished, she stood up standing at a slight attention and nodded behind Ford - habit and training. “Lt. I think he’s looking for you, or accidently found you,” she said guessing from the ensign’s body language. Then she went back to finishing her set, either with or without the pad depending on Ford’s preference.
Yeoman Rand

Ford nodded as she continued to work on the pad, eyebrows raising as she hit with a solid smack. When she stopped he cocked his head and then looked over his shoulder to where Rand indicated. “Mr. Anderson,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” He nodded for Rand to continue, then looked back to the newcomer. “Will you be joining us?”

He expected the man, as a dual-specialist, to have some basic combat training already, so missing what they’d already done wouldn’t set him back far.

George wasn’t sure why Ford had said his name in that specific way. It felt like a reference, but clearly one he didn’t know. He didn’t worry about it though. “I suppose I might as well. I just came for some exercise, and I suppose some combat training would be nice to brush up on the basics.” He gave the man a wide grin. “I focused more on Diplomatic Security at the Academy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t throw a punch.”

COS Ford

He knew 21st century movies! Rand grinned, her rhythm off by a few seconds as she contemplated that. She loved theatre, stage or recorded. She refocused on the pad and jabbed at it, making a solid hit and following though adding a bit more force to it. Rand’s voice was too feminine to pull off the correct roughness and depth for ‘Agent Smith,’ but she felt this line was very apt in regards to Ford’s seemingly innocent questions. “You hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability…” Maybe because she was not so intensely focused on the pad because she had been momentarily distracted, but this time when she rotated into the jab it flowed better, and she actually moved his arm from the force of it.
Yeoman Rand

Okay, something was definitely going on. “Uh, you can just call me George… you guys are saying my name… weirdly.” He glanced from Yeoman to Security Chief, sure there was some hidden joke between them but unable to figure it out.

Ens. Anderson, Sec/Sci


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