At the MCS Open Hand / Impact Weapons course, we place a wooden dowel in front of each student just before we cover anatomy. During that block of instruction, students are encouraged to poke and prod their own bodies to identify specific points and judge effectiveness on their own.

One of the many things the CQCG advocates is ALWAYS having an impact weapon IN your hand whenever possible. Instead of looking at the differences in weapons we concentrate on what they have in common. Whether it is a flashlight, pen or kubatons you can do all the same techniques.

The wooden dowels served the purpose but I wanted something more uniform that we could offer the students. I began to search the net for some decent Kubatons and found hundreds of faceless Ninja sites before I stumbled across Alpha Innovations owned and operated by Jeff Ferrand.

It seems Jeff’s family has been in the injection molding business for about 40 yrs. John’s interest in combatives and martial arts led to the natural progression of him forming Alpha Innovations and beginning to make Kubatons.

After getting two in the mail the fist thing I noticed was the quality of construction and how “clean” they looked. By this stage in the game you would think I would be beyond what I did next… I struck the back of my hand with the Kubatons. It is amazing the amount of force the tapered tip concentrates on a small surface area resulting in some pain and tingling nerves.

Later that day I spoke with Jeff on the phone and started discussing the idea of Koppo sticks and some other nasties that the CQCG had come up with that seemed to be right up his alley.

Needless to say the wooden dowels will be replaced at the next MCS course by Alpha Innovation’s Kubatons.

I found Jeff to be a gentleman and easy to deal with and I encourage anyone looking for some heavy duty, low cost impact weapons to contact Alpha Innovations. I would also stay tuned for some collaborations between Jeff and the CQCG.

http://www.alphainnovationsselfdefense.com/