This is the 11th volume in our Combination Man Curriculum which seeks to give you the bottom-up-to-the-top skills and drills to make you the best Pugilist & Combat Wrestler you can be.

So far in the series we have emphasized the controlled aspects of the game, that is, the sportive aspects. On this volume we lay out a sequence of drills to make what we learn in the gym less sterile, less controlled, more chaotic and therefore more functional for the street/reality environment.

This DVD will take one Combination Ladder and put it through its paces in 90+ drills. The idea behind taking only a single Combination or Offensive/Defensive Response and then running through multiple scenarios is twofold:

ONE-We must lose the fiction that it is the depth or breadth of our technical vocabulary that will save our posteriors in times of need. This thinking leads one to assume "If I only had 'X' tactic this would never have happened", this thinking assumes that confrontation is conquered by having one more "trick" than the enemy possesses and whoever runs out of tricks/tactics first loses.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What wins in the ring, in the cage, in the streets, and on the battlefield, more often than not are two handfuls of basics. What spells the difference (aside from chance in some cases) is superior fitness (whether this be stamina or strength of both the mental and physical variety) and superior application of these basics.

What defines superior application?

The ability to break domain specificity, that is, the ability to take your rock solid go-to basics and apply them across widely divergent conflict domains both familiar and unfamiliar.

TWO-We also demo the Aurelius Bag Drills with but a single tactical response to show how we want you to take ANY & ALL tactical responses and test them or temper them for street-reality readiness. I want you to focus on the drill and the results of the drill and not the individual tactic.

In other words, don't stay married to the Combination Ladder used on this DVD, in fact, I urge you not to. Take all of your cognitively chosen tactical responses and run them through this Bag Drill template top to bottom. The Aurelius Drills will reveal the relative strengths and weaknesses of your chosen response.

If it proves effective in execution more often than not it's a keeper.

If it meets with less than 80% utility kill it. (Yes 80%, we're talking your life here, shoot for superior odds). No matter how cool a tactic is, how fun it is to drill in sterile gym conditions, how awed some folks are who get to witness it when you "show off" under optimum conditions, if it fails the Aurelius Drills it will fail you when you need it most.

As for the name AURELIUS BOXING, we have allowed three concepts from Marcus Aurelius' MEDITATIONS to inform our approach. The quotes are:

"How ridiculous and strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!"

"In the application of your principles you must be like the pancratiast (boxer/wrestler, i.e. the first Mixed Martial Artist), not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it."

"Practice even at the things which you despair of accomplishing. For even the left hand, which is ineffectual for all other things for want of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than the right hand; for it has been practiced in this."

We re-state the quotes for the AURELIUS DRILLS as follows:

• If it has happened in a combat environment it can happen to you; we must drill for unusual contingencies.

• We will assume an absence of weapons (X-Weapon or otherwise) and or a failure of weapon technology. We must respond with the only weapon we always have at our disposal-Ourselves.

• All positions, postures, handicaps, environments must be experienced-not merely considered. Never do anything in combat for the first time, don't assume your lead hook works just as well from a seated position without ever having drilled it from there.

We will address each of the above quotes and the lengths to which we must drive their pragmatic logic in a series of Legends posts throughout the month of November. These posts will augment this RAW volume.

• These volume gives you the 19 Base Drills (38 once you run them for the mandatory ambidextrous rounds).

• The Base Drills cover how to use Jolt Footworkto Power your initial strike and prime the system to go.

• We also cover how to utilize elastic load to increase starting speed.

• The Base Drills cover Six Natural Postures Standing, Five Natural Seated Postures and how to fire into position from here, plus moving from the ground to standing striking.

• We then use 5 Handicapping Drills to mimic three versions of vision impairment, how to mock injuries that will steal power and mobility, and how to mimic recovering from a shot without getting hit (you will be uncomfortable but you won't be injured).

• All Base drills are then re-started through the Handicapped Drills taking your Drill total to 90+ Drills.

This is volume, as with all RAW Volumes comes with a printed syllabus for easy inclusion in your training notebook.

(Hang on to these syllabi because at some point in the Combination Man Curriculum run we will supplement and key these syllabi to a Master Text for easy Drill & Technique search).