Return from Hiatus: Analyzing Fedor

It's official, my deadlines are done and I'm back in business. I returned just in time to begin a series on my favorite fighter of all time and arguably the most complete fighter to date, Fedor Emelianenko. Weighing in at about 3000 words with a ton of gifs, pics and videos, this is probably the most in depth assessment of Fedor's striking that exists, and it still is far from comprehensive!

Cheers for the support and for everything,

Jack

Photo: Esther Lin



Fedor Emelianenko's storied career is coming to a close, and perhaps it is for the best. Watching the 230lbs Russian trade wild swings with Bigfoot Silva was a sad affair. Fedor has declined, and noticeably so, and is not utilizing the full skill set he owns anymore. It is safe to assume that on any given day, Fedor Emelianenko could knock any man in the world unconscious - such is the nature of his ungodly punching power. Unfortunately, this is not what made Fedor great. Fedor's career was never about the chance of a knockout and it was never about his punch - he garnered only a handful of KO victories up until his meeting with Sylvia (the start of his decline into a one dimensional brawler). Fedor's strength lay in having the best rounded game at heavyweight, and being close to the best in all disciplines, not in any one attribute.

Emelianenko came to dominance under the banner of the greatest fighting spectacle on earth - the PRIDE Fighting Championships. Having posted a phenomenal record against mixed competition in the lesser Japanese promotion RINGS, Fedor was brought in to act as a 'gimme' to then number 2 heavyweight Heath Herring. In his destruction of Herring, followed by his humiliation of Nogueira from the latter's vaunted guard, Fedor showed a viciousness and science in ground and pound that has not been seen since. Following a streak of victories over legitimate threats, Fedor was finally matched against the other member of PRIDE's heavyweight trinity - Mirko "Cro Cop" Filopovic. Fedor really turned heads by beating the Croation kickboxing monster senseless on the feet.

Fedor's arsenal of techniques was enormous, and this may be the last chance we have to discuss them while he is in the news. So to make it easier on the brain this series will be divided into three parts - Stand up, Ground and Pound, and Grappling. In Ground and Pound we will look at the techniques that made Fedor so dangerous in even the best guards developed to date, while in Grappling we will discuss Fedor's takedowns, trips, and submissions. In this article however, we will discuss my forte, stand up technique.

We will look in some depth at Emelianenko's utilization of:

• Russian Hooks
• Hand Traps
• Off Balancing
• Body Work
• Kicks

Continues at:  http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/5/31/3053056/fedor-emelianenko-striking-technique-pride

Igor Vovchanchyn: Back-Step Punching

Wanted to move this one over too!

Cheers,

Jack






With no major UFC or Strikeforce event on the cards for a couple of weeks, those of us uninterested in The Ultimate Fighter will have to find other ways to entertain ourselves. One of my personal favorite activities at a time like this is to dust off the videos of legendary Ukrainian mixed martial artist, Igor Vovchanchyn. Igor's power was paralyzing, his style inspired tension until the match's conclusion, and his ability to leave bigger men in crumpled heaps gave birth to fear and admiration in equal measure.

One of the most fascinating features of Igor Vovchanchyn's life is that he was essentially a kickboxer when he entered mixed martial arts. Despite this being thought at the time to be a handicap, Igor went on an unparallaled winning streak against bigger, stronger, wrestlers and grapplers - becoming the single consistent exception to the "grappler beats striker" rule of early MMA.

Vovchanchyn is always given the credit he deserves as a terrifying power puncher, but he is rarely celebrated, as he should be, for his technical ability. Many observers simply see the wide swings and assume that Igor was a barn-burning brawler and no more. But brawlers had never had results knocking out grapplers - striking wide was an invitation for a clinch or takedown. Limited in the number of punches or combinations he threw, Igor had means of dragging grapplers into exchanges wherein he could knock them out nonethless. In this series we shall examine a few of Vovchanchyn's slickest tricks.


Back-step PunchingAnderson Silva has famously said that any man alive can fight well going forwards, it is fighting while going backwards that separates the men from the boys, and this is certainly true. Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva and even the not so hard puncher, Muhammad Ali shared the ability to drop a man to his knees while they themselves were on the retreat. Igor Vovchanchyn pioneered this technique in mixed martial arts and it has caught on with top level strikers since. In the "Mister Powerman" tournament's final round, a young, trim Igor Vovchanchyn knocked his opponent out cold with the first punch he landed by drawing him in and punching him while on the retreat.



Just as when you are walking it is natural to swing your right arm forward with your left foot, when stepping backward and punching, the right hand should punch as the right foot touches down and twists the right hip forwards. Punching while going backward is generally frowned upon as it is believed that one cannot get his weight behind his punches if he is moving away from them. The secrets of this back-step punching are manifold:

• One is moving away from his opponent's strikes, meaning one is unlikely to get hurt even if the strikes connect. 
• The opponent is moving onto one's own strikes. Meaning that even a partial punch does not need weight behind it because the opponent's weight is behind it. 
• Even experienced strikers tend to flail when they are chasing - watch Shogun Rua chasing down Lyoto Machida to witness this fault even at the highest level. 

Vovchanchyn navigated is way through dozens of bare-knuckle promotions with this technique scoring him free power punches, then brought it to PRIDE, where he still had great success with it. In both of his matches with the aggressive power puncher, Gary Goodridge, Igor was able to keep the larger man off of him by tagging Goodridge with punches when he surged forward. Igor was often criticized for not using straight punches often, but against Goodridge he used them in his back-step punching to keep Goodridge off of him while he scrambled to his feet. Igor's use of a ram-rod straight, followed by a looping hook while on the retreat effectively stopped wrestlers and grapplers from clinching him, while punishing them for chasing.

It is worth noting that Goodridge had competed at the top level of K-1 at the time, and was rarely caught coming in by even the best strikers - often overwhelming them with his power and aggression. The smaller gloves utilized in MMA often mean that it is easier to sneak back-step punches in, and often they are felt more due to the lack of padding over the fists as they are thrust out for the opponent to run on to.

Punching while on the retreat is still not common place among Mixed Martial Artists, and while the over-all level of striking in mixed martial arts continues to improve, there are still very few who use elite tactics to draw their opponent in such as Igor did. Anderson Silva effectively drew the mediocre striker, Chris Leben on to his own back-step punches, but Silva carried a reach advantage that Vovchanchyn rarely held, and was able to fire his punches almost square on to Leben without fear of retaliation. Fedor Emelianenko, who Stephen Quadros and Bas Rutten compared favorably to Vovchanchyn, utilized backstep hooks to land free punches on over-aggressive opponents, particularly in RINGS. Emelianenko dropped Chris Haseman with the first retreating punch he threw, and had great success in hurting the larger, Matt Hughes trained, Kerry Schall at the beginning of their match with retreating punches.

Igor Vovchanchyn: Russian Hooks

Wanted to move this over now that HeadKickLegend has closed it's doors, so here it is!

Cheers,

Jack


Igor Vovchanchyn, Ukrainian superstar and pioneer of the striking game in No Holds Barred fighting, seems a peculiar man to have brought kickboxers to the main stage of MMA. Igor's offense was notably almost completely devoid of jabs, and lacked straight punches, for the most part, period. Yet he had enormous success against Jiu Jitsu players who had spent their entire martial arts careers proving how easy it was to step inside and clinch up against the kind of wide bombs which Igor was known for.

One of the brilliant assets of Igor's career from a spectator's or an analyst's standpoint is that he had almost 70 fights in Mixed Martial Arts after supposedly having been bored with a 40+ fight kickboxing record, which he in turn transferred to after boxing for several years. There is a menagerie of fight film available of Igor Vovchanchyn and the same strategies seem to work time and again for him in these videos despite the perception that he was a limited and wild fighter.

In the first part of this series I examined Igor's use of retreating punching. It was not as polished as that of Anderson Silva or of Fedor Emelianenko, but he pioneered it's use in Mixed Martial Arts and applied it with a power which neither of aforementioned champions could match, despite their notable punch. Many spectators do not notice Igor's fondness for striking on the retreat and instead write the knockout wins he obtained doing this to freak power, yet it is a technique which is present in so many of his fights that it is highly unlikely that he simply lucked into it.

In this part of the series we will examine the far more obvious "eccentricities" of Vovchanchyn's striking arsenal. These are the points which are immediately noticeable to even novice MMA fans such as his "Russian Hooks" in which he turns his thumb knuckle almost toward the floor and swings his arm close to straight.



Russian Hooks
These are undoubtedly Igor's signature technique. One could watch a silhouette of Igor fighting or even hitting the heavy bag and they would know it was him simply from his unique way of throwing punches. The Russian hooks of Igor Vovchanchyn were advantageous in three ways:

They could be thrown with the arm almost fully extended - making them the only circular hand strike which was effective in outfighting range.
They protected his fingers and could be thrown in rapid combinations
They forced his elbows to flare and his shoulders to instinctively rise to cover his chin. Something he would have to consciously force when throwing orthodox hooks.

Jack Dempsey stated that a punch with has less than a 90 degree bend at the elbow ceases being a hook and becomes a swing, and further advised that the swing should be "cast into the slop bucket". His reasoning was that when one throws a swing in the modern, American style (the knuckle at the base of the thumb pointing toward the ceiling), it is easy to connect with the fragile door knocking knuckles and difficult to connect with the solid, base knuckles. He also reasoned that if one were to keeping the thumb knuckle turned in towards himself it would be very likely to connect first and break also, as shown below.








Of course, this means that the range of a hook is much shorter than a swing, but the lack of a solid surface with which to land on a swing means that they are often completely ineffectual when thrown. What Igor Vovchanchyn did was to turn the swing into a dangerous and lengthy weapon, a "Russian Hook" - so called because they are only really seen from Russian boxers and Igor and Fedor in MMA. By turning the hand over all the way so that the thumb knuckle is facing down one can ensure connection with the base knuckles of the fingers. In MMA gloves, this makes it so that the padding of the glove connects rather than the unpadded and brittle digits.In Karate circles this technique is known as "Furi-uchi" or whip strike. Watching Igor chain them together it is certainly clear why.

The fact that these hooks can be thrown with any slight degree of bend in the elbow effectively means that the reach of a Russian Hook is almost the same as that of a straight! This can certainly be seen in the fact that Igor Vovchanchyn - a short, stocky fighter at 5'8", was able to land by leading with hooks from outfighting range while is opponent was limited to straight punches.



Notice how, in the above gif, Igor's opponent misses with a long straight, yet is still in range for Vovchanchyn to connect a straight armed slap, and a rear hand Russian hook which has almost the same reach. A second reason for utilizing a Russian hook, or turning the punching hand all the way over so that the thumb knuckle faces the floor, is elaborated on by Fedor Emelianenko in his excellent self titled instructional book. The turning of the hand all the way over forces the elbow to come out, which in turn raises the shoulder of the punching arm up to cover the chin. Notice how Igor's right shoulder flows out to almost his his chin, and then as he recovers he tucks his chin behind his left while ducking.



When done right the Russian hook ensures that the chin is protected throughout most of the movement, better so than when many fighters throw a regular hook, as it is hard to force the shoulder to cover the chin without turning the hand all the way over. Notice how tight Igor's lead hooks are against Goodridge, the first one almost looks as if he is throwing a jab in this twitchy gif. The tightness of these hooks, even though they looked wide, was largely responsible for the difficulty opponents had in clinching Vovchanchyn when he was throwing punches.

This is why Fedor Emelianenko was able to come out of so many seemingly wild exchanges unscathed - for all the talk of his being wild, it is hard to pinpoint a counter opening amid the whirling dervish of well protected Russian Hooks he throws against Naoya Ogawa or Gary Goodridge. His dropping of Zuluzinho, who had a much longer reach, was also accomplished by a hand trap and a long Russian hook which was able to sneak around Zulu's guard. It was only when Emelianenko attempted his long hooks in a range befitting of infighting which he exposed himself to counters. Watching his fight with Fujita, Fedor is almost on top of his opponent when he is countered by Fujita's overhand. Fedor finished the fight by dropping Fujita with Russian Hooks and following with a choke - but this time he made sure that he physically pushed Fujita back, establishing range for a long lead hook.



The main fault of Russian hooks are that they can damage the hand. Landing with the correct variation of this technique will save the hand from damage it would suffer throwing a normal swing at range. But conversely, a Russian hook thrown too close or when the opponent moves in unexpectedly can lead to landing with the base thumb knuckle - and is likely responsible for many of Fedor's recurring hand injuries. Vovchanchyn, now a retired restaurant owner whom many thought got out of the sport with his health has also gone on record in interviews to say that he damaged his hands and wrists significantly from poor connections and years on the bareknuckle circuit. The Russian hook is certainly a worthwhile technique to learn, and packs significant power and range, but one must always be careful to measure the distance and anticipate the opponent's movement, or it is possible to land incorrectly and significantly damage the hands. But this happens to even the best, orthodox punchers and is a risk of the fight game.

UFC 146: Fight Like Dos Santos

Hey folks,

Still technically on hiatus, but wanted to move this over here because HeadKickLegend, my former writing spot, has closed it's doors. While I'm moving on to BloodyElbow, a much bigger site, next week, I will not be allowed to use gifs there and shall therefore be unable to continue this series.

I quite enjoyed writing this one, and I don't think any MMA journalists have broken down Dos Santos in the detail that I began to in this piece.

This piece was written during the period when Overeem was still Dos Santos' prospective opponent, but the technical aspects are still relevant. Junior's body straights were visible in full force in his demolition of Frank Mir the other night.

Hope to get back to writing within in the week!

Cheers,

Jack




This article is part of a series of articles detailing the striking techniques of UFC Heavyweight Champion, Junior Dos Santos. All of these, and over 70 techniques by 19 other fighters, are broken down in detailed demonstration in Jack Slack's new book Advanced Striking: Tactics of Kickboxing, Boxing and MMA Masters, which is out NOW!


Junior Dos Santos and the Right Body Straight

When Junior dos Santos knocked Cain Velasquez out in under two minutes with a sloppy overhand at the first UFC event on Fox, it seemed as though the most ridiculous boxing elitists had been proven right. A competent boxer was able to show all the heavyweight "Ultimate Fighters" what for, using few other skills. The success of Dos Santos has not been a flash in the pan, he is the most entertaining heavyweight champion in some time, and far more battle tested than Brock Lesnar or Cain Velasquez. What has not been examined anywhere else, is the cause of Dos Santos' success. Herein we shall dissect the style of Cigano, and not simply proclaim him to be "too fast", "too strong", or "unstoppable".


Several key areas of Junior Dos Santos' mixed martial arts game will be examined through this series. The first is his right straight, which he uses both as a lead and counter, to the head and to the body. The second is his use of clubbing hooks. And then we shall turn our attention to his jab, or lack thereof, his approach to the clinch, and the chinks in his formidable armor.


One of the key features of Junior Dos Santos' game is his right straight. Due to his carrying his lead hand low (for reasons to be expanded upon later), Junior's jab often lacks authority, serving more as a flicking distraction when setting up a power punch. As his jab lacks the authoritative force of a more orthodox style puncher, such as a BJ Penn, Cigano is forced to use his right hand to throw his power straights. This can be seen to ample extent in all of his fights.


Dos Santos uses the right body straight in one of two ways:

• As an offense to set up his overhand. 
• As a counter punch to set up his left hook. 

As a Lead
Of the 7 significant strikes that Dos Santos scored in his fight with Cain Velasquez, two were powerful right straights to the body, and one was a probing jab to the solar plexus and one was a front kick to the midsection. This simple attacking of Velasquez's left floating rib with Dos Santos' right straight was enough to draw the inexperienced Velasquez's hand out of position. Having crouched and ducked his head twice for a right straight to the body, the third time Dos Santos dropped his weight, he was able to connect a swinging right over the top of Velasquez's lowered defense. It was far from a pefect punch, in fact it was technically hideous - connecting with the thumb and little else, at the end of a fully extended arm - but the set up was world class.


Dos Santos does not often use hooks to the body, and is known somewhat as a headhunter, but his right straight to the body is an excellent way to draw opponents out of position. Arguably the hardest hitter in the heavyweight division, it will be hard for any heavyweight to ignore Dos Santos pot shotting their midriff. Furthermore, Dos Santos' head movement toward the opponent's right hand as he throws the right straight baits the opponent in to throwing a punch of his own. Notice in the above picture, of the right straight to the body that Dos Santos throws immediately before the knockout overhand, that Cain is punching to where he feels Dos Santos' head will be. This led to Dos Santos' overhand looping over the extending arm of Velasquez and landing in a "Cross Counter", assuring the knockout.








As a Counter


Dos Santos has also had great success with the right body straight as a counter, which was particularly visible in his destruction of Muay Thai veteran, Gilbert Yvel. As Yvel jabbed at Cigano, the latter ducked to his left and threw a right straight to Yvel's midsection. This action clearly affected Gilbert as his hands came out of position and he stood bolt upright as he followed his initial 1 - 2 with a left hook. Dos Santos, escaping the first half of the exchange untouched, exploded up out of the crouch that he had taken and decked the Dutchman.





While Yvel has never had a strong jawline, he is used to being hit hard by big men and has recovered well in the past, when he hits the ground against Dos Santos Yvel seems as winded by the body blow as he is stunned by the trauma that his cranium has just experienced. His hands keep moving right up until the stoppage but he seems to have trouble rising, which leaves him in the path of perhaps the most savage left hook I have ever seen a fighter deliver from his knees.


It should be noted that fighters do not react to body blows as they do in the movies, bending over when hurt. The discipline to stay upright has been pounded into them since day one and this often means that following a winding body shot they will stand straight up, but their hands will sag below their jaw. This is another reason that the left hook to the head works so well when following the right straight to the body.


The right body straight as a counter is rare to see in boxing nowadays. It is confined almost entirely to Karate competition, where it's setting up of the left hook is completely useless. When carnival boxer and hilarious braggart, J. C. "Champ" Thomas described the counter in his book "How to be an Ass-whipping Boxer" as far back as the 1970s, it was still against the grain of what constituted good boxing. This may be to do with the perceived lack of power that the body straight has when compared to a right hook to the body, or do to the fear of dropping one's weight towards the opponent's power hand.


Whatever the reason modern boxing has largely forgotten the right straight counter to the body, it sets up the left hook counter beautifully, and Dos Santos certainly gets enough power in it to make his opponents forget where their hands should be against such a very dangerous man.



Want to learn the techniques of Junior Dos Santos? These, and the techniques of 20 other elite strikers, are broken down in detailed photography in Jack Slack's new book Advanced Striking: Tactics of Kickboxing, Boxing and MMA Masters, which is out NOW!

Nearing End of Hiatus + Future Plans

Hey all,

Thank you for checking up on my blog and goings on despite my recent inactivity. I just wanted to say that I will be returning from hiatus in about 2 weeks time, and am looking forward to updating the blog with new pieces.

I will also be taking up a full time position at Bloody Elbow, which will mean a great deal more exposure for me and my work. I'm incredibly happy that Nate Wilcox and the team at BE are so keen to have me aboard.

In addition to my diving into the world of professional fight journalism (at last), there will be other improvements coming to this site and other projects outside of it including:

• Publishing the third installment of the Southpaw Guide here on Fights Gone By - because it's taken a damn long time coming and I must apologize for that!

• The writing of Jack Slack's "Guide to Angles" or "Angles in Striking" (haven't decided on the title, layout or complete contents yet!).

• Format and release the other two parts of Advanced Striking on Kindle as Advanced Kickboxing and Advanced MMA Striking.

• The release of a Kindle exclusive book striking fundamentals and principles for a super low price. (Ideally I would like to write a book that anyone can buy for a couple of pounds and immediately learn some effective angles and counters, will probably also include a self defense section).

• On a personal note I will also be upping the intensity of my training this year, in preparation for a second stint in Tokyo at the Japan Karate Association. Possibly by way of Cuba to improve my boxing technique and coaching, or Singapore, to improve my Muay Thai at Evolve MMA.

• I will also be available for seminars on my techniques and concepts, and for technical queries which will be answered in Jack Slack's Troubleshooting (click Contact Jack to get in touch)

• There is also the possibility of launching a "Gracie Breakdown" style podcast following major MMA, Boxing or Kickboxing events, focusing exclusively on striking.

I hope that you're all well, and I must thank you all again for your continuing support. Come June all of these ideas will be in motion, and I promise that the MMA blog-o-sphere will be saturated with informative content!

Advanced Boxing is out for Kindle!

Hey everybody,

Very pleased to announce that the boxing part of the Advanced Striking series on Kindle is up! This contains the techniques of: Mayweather, Johnson, Jones Jr., Pacquiao, Walcott, Robinson and Louis, and is set up in a flick book format - the first book of it's kind to be so formatted to my knowledge!

I think it works really well and would love to hear what you guys think. The kickboxing and MMA segments of the series are still being formatted and will be up in the next couple of weeks, and the full series is still available as the Advanced Striking PDF on this site for a better price than the 3 on kindle as my way of thanking all my readers.

The benefits of the kindle edition for those of you who wish to check technical details while at the gym should be obvious - but also many of us only get a chance to do reading while on the train or bus to work, and this is also an excellent place to plan new techniques for training!

Kindle edition is available on Amazon here

And the full Advanced Striking PDF can still be purchased on the books section of this site!

Cheers,
Jack

Jack Slack hits Kindle!

Hey guys, just wanted to let you all know that I'm moving on to the Kindle platform!

I will be serializing Advanced Striking in three parts (mainly due to file size issues); Advanced Boxing Tactics, Advanced Kickboxing Tactics, and Advanced MMA Striking Tactics.

The full Advanced Striking PDF will still be available through FightsGoneBy.com and will be cheaper than purchasing all three Kindle books, because I am extremely grateful to everyone who views my blog.

This heads up was also a way of making sure that no-one who has bought Advanced Striking buys my kindle books thinking that it will be new content. It is all formatted for the kindle, and if you enjoy Advanced Striking and would like to read it on the go (say... at the gym?) it may be worth downloading on Kindle, but I wouldn't want to mislead any of my readers!

Still technically on hiatus but excited to get these up on Amazon!

Cheers,
Jack

A Brief Post on The Pattern of Offense

When fighting at striking range there are a number of tasks one must perform if one hopes to land strikes without simply trading blow for blow with one's opponent.

Pre-Entry: The first task a fighter faces is closing the distance; against certain fighters such as Lyoto Machida and others from a Shotokan or other point fighting lineage, this itself is an enormous task, as they will simply re-establish the distance or circle out at every attempt by the opponent to close the distance. A number of effective footwork techniques should be studied to achieve this - cutting off of the ring or cage, cross-steps, shifts.

Entry: Then there is the matter of eliminating the opponent's direct counter-attack while throwing one's own attack (accomplished by attacking on an angle, checking an opponent's glove with a hand trap, or by using effective head movement on the entry).

Exit: Then there is the matter of an exit - one of the most forgotten aspects in the modern fight game. After landing a strong punch or combination it is absolutely in ones own interest to not let the opponent strike back, or in some cases to not let him grab a hold of a clinch and ride out the storm until his faculties return.

A correct exit following a combination (whether successful or not) would be to duck out to the left or right (usually in the direction which one's last punch came from is the smartest option: e. g. a weave to the right for a right hook, or to the left for a left hook), to sidestep (again in the direction from which the last punch came), to clinch (which can be followed by a throw or simply some strikes from the clinch as in my Punch and Clutch article). The final option is to re-establish range by finishing one's attack with a long jab to prevent opponent from following (as the Klitschkos have found great success with and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira does almost exclusively).

Very, VERY few fighters successfully utilize this pattern of offense. And even less can do it repeatedly over the course of a match. It takes great intelligence and creativity to be able to utilize this pattern, and great stamina to keep it up, but those who have managed to have found enormous success.

Watching Manny Pacquiao fight one will see him almost always enter with head movement or a hand trap, land his punches, then exit one of several ways so that the opponent does not strike him. Sugar Ray Robinson, Willy Pep and others were also famous for this, Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones are also excellent examples.

A quick look at this highlight from Pacquiao's destruction of Oscar De La Hoya is a lesson in entering and exiting the pocket. Every time Pacquiao is done moving in, he steps out to his right, jabs to restablish distance, or begins slipping Oscar's retaliation before Oscar has begun it. It is not clairvoyance on Pacquiao's part that he can avoid the vast majority of Oscar's punches, it is simply that he is extremely well drilled in getting in and getting out, and disciplined enough to stick to it for the majority of exchanges.

Looking for this pattern of Pre-Entry (or closing the distance), Entry (eliminating the simultaneous counter while firing one's own punches)  and Exit is a great way to truly understand the decay of boxing over the last 30 years, and the low level of striking in most MMA bouts.

I hope to talk much more about what I have termed the Pattern of Offense in my upcoming books and articles. While I have no plan for a "Pattern of Offense" book, the techniques in my upcoming Guide to Angles will provide readers with dozens of ideas to assemble their own combinations that adhere to the Pattern of Offense.