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chops
chops's picture
Bassai flow drill and bunkai with impact training using Predator armor .

I've uploaded a few video's to my youtube channel for Bassai kata (Wado) including a flow drill, Bunkai and impact use of said drill using the Predator armor please have a look.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Thanks for sharing here!

chops wrote:
…impact use of said drill using the Predator armour …

How do you find it? On the inside, how much force from the head shots, body shots and groin shots gets through? The head looks well protected, but do people have to pull the body shots?

All the best,

Iain

chops
chops's picture

Great questions,So the protection for the head is amazing you can hit it fully and the wearer is ok nothing gets through in terms of hands/feet to face/head the design of it works so the energy to distributed throught out the top section of the armor (all of the top) I've had so big hitters lay into it and I've been fine (I'f youi want to try it (hit me) your have to join the que ;-) ) The body section isn't proctected per say the chest section of the armor is attached to the helmet which is part of what keeps it in place and stops the whiplash effect to the head, The groin protection is AMAZING so far no one has beaten it (That's not a challenege either !) but again I've had some big strong people who have trainined many years kicking it and I've been fine one pareant even had a go with steel toe boots ( I didn't know that at the time! ) and layed right into it and I was able to walk away as if nothing had happened !. Back to the body question the chest peiece is rrigid but flexible enought o go over the chest when praticing with it one of my senior guys decided to strike that section instead of the head which was the area that he was meant to attack he had no pads/gloves on and hit it pretty hard enough to make me think "what was that"  it made a noise like somone hitting something solid I didn't feel anything really just herd a noise and the could see other person rubbing his hard  and wondering why the strike hadn't done much

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Thanks for the feedback. The head protection does look solid, and it sounds like the other areas are sufficient too :-) Is it an expensive set of kit?

All the best,

Iain

chops
chops's picture

The short answer is yes (depends on your bank balance as well)  I suppose it is but you have to weigh up the pros and cons, personnally I think once youve had a go with the kit you can really see the benifits but all safety gear or protection equipment has some flaws (size of the helmet )  which are offset by the good bits (can strike fully) I purchased the kit with the intent of some more reliastc type training for my students

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Thanks for the reply and all the additional info. Is there a purchase link we can add to the thread for those interested?

chops wrote:
… all safety gear or protection equipment has some flaws (size of the helmet)  which are offset by the good bits (can strike fully) …

Totally. I guess it need to be big to protect the wearer. I’ve seen smaller ones, but I know me and mine could pretty much punch straight through it, so we would have to pull the blows … which seems to defeat the whole purpose. Getting good armour is always a compromise, and there is a need to train without it too of course because, while it helps in some areas (you can hit harder) it introduces its own problems i.e. head very big so accuracy is not needed and hit rate is therefore greatly increased, a blow that would be a finisher on a naked skull does not have that effect so there is a need for the wearer to adequately fake realistic reactions, etc. Mabuni wrote about this issue decades ago:

“The main disadvantage of the armour to date is that we are not fully able to use any part of the body as a weapon; which is the nature of karate. It is my hope that the current armour will be improved and with continued practice and research this problem can be overcome. In the meantime, those who use armour should not neglect the practice of kata in conjunction with prearranged sparring and free sparring without armour. Otherwise, you will come to rely on the armour. Consequently, you will miss the aim of Karate which is to be able protect yourself from an assailant.”

Thanks for a great thread!

All the best,

Iain