The past few weekends I have been going through my attic in preparation for a move. I have a ton of boxes up there that contain 30+years of book, magazines, and newspaper clippings. I will be moving into a smaller place, and I need to go through the boxes to see what can be gotten rid of. Since I have not done this in a very long time, there were a lot of things in the boxes that I had forgotten about.

One of those that I had lost track of was a number of issues of an old magazine called Full Contact. My wife got ticked at me since as I found them, everything came to a screeching halt as I flipped through each issue. But I could not help it since this discovery brought back a flood of good memories.

For those who were not around then, Full Contact was a Martial Arts/Fighting magazine that was published for a short time in the early to mid 90’s. Now, to understand my fondness for the magazine, you have to understand the landscape that we had back then martial art wise.

This was before YouTube, when good instructional videos or DVDs were like finding a needle in a haystack, and mostly before the internet as we know it today as a complete web that ties the world together existed. To find out really anything in the martial art world we were at the mercy of the publication schedule of Black Belt and Inside Kung Fu magazines, along with a small number of lesser mags. And all of them had information that was at best three to four months behind the times. We were also at the mercy of what the editors of those magazines decided was “cool”. If something did not fit their personal likes or beliefs, it was ignored and went under the radar to the masses.

Then, along came Full Contact. It was the first major newsstand publication that focused almost exclusively on the self-defense aspect of martial arts, and how it related to the real world. They even – GASP! – talked about the use of firearms in a positive way, which never happened in the regular martial art magazines. They featured a number of instructors who rarely got publicity like Sonny Umpad, and they allowed those who did get some publicity in the general MA press a much more free hand in articles. In a word, it was a giant breath of fresh air.

Now, that is not to say it was perfect. The editor was sometimes fooled by his own personal bias and often featured people who should not have been featured so heavily (to express it gently). And, now looking back, some of the attitudes were the precursor to the current trend of “tactical” stuff to be ipso facto better, even when it was actually faux tactical and kind of stupid.

Still, I have a lot of fond memories of the magazine, and I think it had an overall positive influence on instructors who came to prominence afterwards. While I am dumping most of the stuff that I had packed away, I am keeping my Full Contact back issues

I get a lot of emails and messages asking for advice and pointers on where to get various gear. It is certainly not a problem for me, since I enjoy corresponding and talking about all things Martial Art/combatives/fighting oriented with interested people all day long. However, I end up writing the same things over and over, so I thought a series of blog articles that cover some of my basic pieces of general gear advice was in order. The first one up for discussion is what boxing gloves do I recommend?

For a good starter glove for someone just getting into the need for working striking skills, go to

http://www.kofightgear.com/sparring_gloves.htm

These are really well made gloves that are properly designed and hold up well under moderate use. You absolutely cannot beat the pricing.

For more dedicated work, or for someone who is getting deeper into a boxing paradigm, I prefer Thai-style gloves. There are a couple of reasons for that. Number one, most of the padding is concentrated over the knuckles where it actually matters. Mexican and American gloves tend to have the padding distributed over the whole glove, including areas that never see impact. Which is kind of goofy, in my opinion, but that is how it is. In reality, lighter Thai gloves are equivalent to heavier American gloves, generally by about two ounces. So a 12 oz Thai glove generally has the same knuckle padding as a 14 oz American or Mexican glove.

The second reason I prefer Thai gloves is that they typically are more snug and have minimal padding around the base of the hand, which makes entangled clinch work slightly easier and more functional. You can do that kind of work with “puffier” gloves, but it is not as convenient nor do you get the feel of the techniques to the same level.

There are a number of Thai brands, the most prominent of which are Fairtex and Twins. I myself prefer Twins. Their gloves seem to mold to my hand just right. Other people feel the exact same way about Fairtex. Twins has a tendency to be slightly cheaper, but a bit harder to find.  There are a number of places to get Thai gloves, including the big places like Ringside. I have had good luck here:

http://www.muaythaistuff.com

If you have more specific questions, feel free to hit me up.

Anytime someone in the tactical firearms community brings up the need for unarmed combatives, many people will inevitably bring up some objections. They range over a number of things, but generally come up with two major ones.

I dealt with one of those in an earlier blog post (http://www.iacombatives.com/2014/07/30/dont-limit-yourself-pt-1/). This time I will tackle the other oft-repeated objection.

That objection is essentially that learning some specific unarmed combative skill set is a waste of time since their individual combat/fighting mindset will see them through any H2H involved violent encounter.

There are a number of fallacies at work here. First of all, if this is what you are counting on, how do you know you have the needed mindset in the first place? Have you ever once demonstrated that you have it and have used it? If not, then why are you assuming it will just be there? It is like buying a Lottery ticket, then spending all your life savings because you “know” you have a winning ticket before it is announced. You are placing a huge bet with the highest stakes, and you don’t know what your cards say.

There is another problem here as well. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that you do have the needed mindset. Why can’t the attacker have as much if not more mindset than you? What if in addition to the initiative of starting the attack, he has developed a killer mindset that leaves yours in the dust. What will you do then? You are behind the curve in acting, you don’t have the physical skills, and he has a more devastating mindset. That is the definition of a “can’t win” scenario.

The third problem is one of logical equivalency. If we take the same logic at work here, and apply it to other things, we see the foolishness. “I don’t need to take any first aid classes. If something happens to my child, I will just have the mindset to get me through.” Or “I don’t need to have gone through medical school. Just let me operate on you. My mindset is awesome and I will know what to do when I cut you open.” Stupid, right? But, that is the exact same logic used in their attempt to dodge the idea of needing to know unarmed skills.

Another way of stating this logical fallacy that hits closer to home for some of those who object to training H2H methods  is “I don’t need to practice with my gun, or take instruction from a reputable teacher. When I am attacked, I will just pull out my gun and take care of business.” I guarantee you that if you used that statement in any online firearm discussion forum or on Facebook, you would be raked over the coals. But the same people who would excoriate you for the above statement will then in the next breath use the exact same argument to dismiss their need for H2H training. You cannot have it both ways. If we have a need as well as a responsibility to learn how to use a firearm in a self-defense situation, then the same need and responsibility is there in the realm of unarmed combatives.

However, the biggest fallacy lies elsewhere. This is the whole underlying idea that even if you have the right mindset, it will somehow, magically, give you the ability to defeat someone who has the initiative and more aggression and greater physical skills. Sorry to disabuse you of this, but mindset is not like spinach to Popeye. You don’t just ingest a swallow of it and are then able to thrash Brutus. It is not a magic pill or some special talisman. It cannot give you abilities that you don’t have in the first place. You are not the Hulk, and you need something more than anger to power you up.

Take a look at the following video. It is an excellent summation of everything I have written. Notice that the bigger, stronger, more physically intimidating person is completely aware of what is happening. He is not taken by surprise and has had time to work himself up to a fighting rage. He verbally engages the smaller and obviously younger opponent, and gives every indication he has prepped himself for the fight, and indeed, he even launches the first strike! Also notice that as he finds himself in an inferior position taking a beating, he does what many pro-mindset superiority people promote – he engages in “dirty tactics” and any action possible to win the fight, including striking to the face as he is being choked, and even slamming the smaller guy onto asphalt.  And watch where it gets him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZNt1-S6Ba0

Not how absolutely nothing he did had any effect whatsoever. He unleashed every trick in the book, and had the double extra advantage of initiating the fight as well as having the superior physical attributes. Throughout, he exhibited a dedicated “mindset” to fight. And the results were a complete and total loss. The only reason he is even alive at the end of the video is solely because the smaller person decided not to do any more damage. That is it. Period. Superior skill set wins out. End of story. And this will be the same story in 98% of similar situations.

Edited to add: Something I forgot to mention earlier, but was pointed out by a buddy (thanks Phil!) – Also in the video, note how the bigger guy taps. In the sport/friendly training world, this is an acceptance of defeat and is a signal to the winner that he  has the submission hold on tight and has succeeded and can let go. In the Reality Based Self-Defense (RBSD) world, they will say that when you train with tapping, you will go on autopilot in the real world and let go and then get killed when the other guy continues the attack. This video shows what an utter load of crap that is. Tapping is always a conscious act in a training context and is not done by rote. Only someone who has never put any real time into serious pressure tested training would say something so completely unproven.

I am not advocating a lack of attention to developing combative mindset. Far from it. I would actually tell you that training a fighting H2H method against resisting opponents BUILDS true fighting mindset. I would also say that is the desired result. However, if you think mindset is something that during a fight will give you superpowers and allow you to prevail against a trained opponent, well; you may as well stick your nose back into a comic book because that is where that attitude belongs. Mindset comes about through demonstrated success, not in some fantasy that plays out in your head.

Take the time and spend a bit of energy to build a decent level of empty hand self-defense techniques that have been proven to work, and then add in some mindset. The result will work much better than trying to be lazy and take a cheap, mentally masturbatory shortcut.

The following is a terrific interview with two friends and good dudes who put a lot of legitimate sweat equity into training, Their insights and how they put things into perspective are just awesome to listen to. I wish I could articulate some of these concepts as well as they do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pStOqx5RcPs

One of the toughest things to remember when we are training to defend ourselves or our loved ones is that it is not a sprint, but a marathon.

It seems otherwise, because we want to get to that level of functionality where we can accomplish the above goals as fast as humanly possible. But realistically, while we need to get to work as soon as possible and do as much as we can, we can’t do it all because we only have so many hours in the day, and some skills and improvements only come over time. As an example, getting strong enough to not get bulled around by an attacker cannot come overnight. To build that level of strength, especially if we start at a place of being fairly weak requires effort over time, even if you are foolish enough to try to take some kind of personal enhancement drug like anabolic steroids.

So, we need to realize that we are in it for the long haul. Once we accept that, we can use different strategies to get better such as concentrating on important skills in blocks of time while maintaining the other skills.

One strategy that I have found is truly life altering is the paper a day analogy. This was first told to me over 30 years ago by one of my instructors, Paul Vunak. He explained it like this:

If every day, you laid a single piece of paper on your desk, you would not have very much after a week, or a few weeks, or even a few months, but at the end of a year, you would have almost a ream of paper, which is a significant amount. So if all we have time to train is three minutes, then fine. But do that three minutes every day without fail, and concentrate on a fundamental skill. Perhaps that skill would be shadowboxing. In that case, shadowbox for three minutes a day with 100000% focus and intent, and do that every day. Don’t look at it in a few weeks or months. Wait to check your progress after a year or so. By that time you will have racked hours of solid, useable practical training, and more importantly, you will have done it CONSISTENTLY. Recent studies in learning theory have led most experts to the conclusion that amount of practice is less important than how recently you trained. The skills are much closer to the surface when you spend a couple of minutes daily, rather than three hours a week but only done twice a week.

So if all the needed work seems daunting, and you have only a short time available, just pick something essential, and train it for that small amount of time available, but do it as close to daily as possible. I can truthfully say this concept probably benefited me more than almost any other single idea over the past 35 years.

Give it a shot.

I have written in previous posts how we have so much to train for when we take a realistic appraisal of what is needed to truly be prepared in a self-defense scenario.

We have a lot to cover and we all struggle with finding the time to fit it all in as efficient a manner as we can. It is a daily effort.

Unfortunately, life often gets in the way of all our plans. For example, recently, I had a family medical situation occur that caused me to have to put most outside things on hold for six weeks to help take care of someone. My regular training plans were massively disrupted because overnight, I literally went to almost no free time. Trying to fit in all the usual items was not possible and I had to look to compromise. I had to get as much in of all the needed skill sets as possible in the limited time I had. What did I do? I focused almost entirely on Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

Why did I make that choice? For one, I actively teach it both in traveling seminars as well as multiple times a week and therefore need to stay on top of my game. However, even if I retired from teaching tomorrow, I would have made the same decision.

The most obvious initial answer is that it works as a method of defense against attackers. That is a well proven statement that is only argued by those with an agenda that has nothing to do with truth, or who are blinded by their own prejudices. If I find myself on the ground against an attacker or attackers, nothing prepares me with the essential actions like BJJ does. What a lot of people miss is that it also prepares me if I am still standing but entangled with an opponent. Many fighting authorities talk about the need to stay on your feet and not get taken to the ground. One of the best ways to ensure that can be accomplished is to be able to negotiate the entanglement through proper head, elbow, hip and foot position, good hand control, and keeping the level of your hips below your opponent. Not only can you practice those things standing, you can do a lot of the work horizontally on the ground and it transfers to the vertical plane. More added value while doing BJJ!

The next reason was that it is one of the finest ways of training your fitness to fight. Want to know that you can engage in combat on the street against someone for an extended time (because we do not know how long the attack will go on – seconds, minutes, hours, who knows?)? Well then, fight someone for long rounds on the mat. If you can do that in the training environment, then you most likely have a good chance to do so when you need to protect yourself.  Your cardio will stay at a combative level, and all that hands on work against another resisting partner (who often times may outweigh you by 50 or more pounds) will give you some functional strength work as well. What about mobility? Train jiu-jitsu for an hour or two and your joints and spine and hips will move as much as a dedicated mobility/flexibility workout.

BJJ also gives me a sporting outlet if I so choose. Rather than being an armchair quarterback, I prefer to be under stress and active. Even into middle age I like to keep my game as sharp as possible and nothing does that better than competing against an unknown opponent who has the same skill set as you. And competing in front of an audience or on an internet broadcast pay-per-view, or on a DVD gets you used to pressure. It is not exactly the same as a life or death struggle, but if you can’t perform in a non-threatening pressure situation, how are you ever going to know for sure you can perform when your life is on the line?

And another reason is that if you are fortunate to find the right BJJ School, you will have a social support circle unmatched anywhere else. There is something powerful in the bond you develop with your teammates that arises out of the shared effort of trying to make the other person tap time after time, and the ego crushing that comes from it. We all win, and we all lose, and in that understanding comes a new family. That is not something I ever found in a typical fitness gym, nor is it something I have ever experienced on a shooting range, outside of Craig Douglas’ ECQC course, which has more in common with a BJJ class than most typical handgun coursework.

And finally, it is the best stress relief I have ever found. When you are in the middle of a round of “rolling” (i.e. sparring), the only way to survive is to focus 100% on what is happening at that moment. Everything else in my life – job problems, financial issues, personal issues – has to be left outside when you step on the mat. It is like a perfect moving Zen meditation. The only thoughts are totally in the “now”.

Watch this match between two of the best super-heavyweights in the world. Notice how there is so much movement and energy and, yes, art, all happening at one time:

So, for all these reasons, I feel like BJJ is the single best bang for the buck activity you can do to become a better person, as well as a safer one. This is not to say that it is an excuse not to do other types of training, but if you find yourself in a place where you have limited time, look to BJJ for the best bang for the buck.

I finally put up the tentative 2015 schedule. Tentative in the sense that there are at least three or four more to add as soon as everything is finalized. But I didn’t want to waste any more time getting the confirmed ones up. Go to the Schedule page to see.

Thanks for looking!

Recently, a friend of mine, noted pistol instructor Todd Green, posted an article about the need for trainers to not shove their dogma down every trainee’s throat (http://pistol-training.com/archives/9186).

It was an excellent article and one I agree wholeheartedly  with. However, this attitude of “everyone needs to find what fits them best” can be, and too often is, taken to the extreme where that becomes a blanket excuse that literally anything espoused by anyone is justified as valid. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we can show through actual real world footage what is working and what is not, we cannot accept all ways as valid. Just because someone does not like to grapple, they don’t get to ignore the reality of it. Or if someone says that they have a better way of firing a pistol under stress, then show it so the world can see it for themselves. We have an objective, end-based performance standard, and we have a general idea of best practices to get there, whether we are talking about firearms, knives, impact weapons, or H2H. If you want to say you have a better way, prove it publicly and openly, not is your little closed door world where you get to act all Yoda like, pretending you are some awesome fighting guru.

I have had these discussion innumerable times with a number of my friends and peers in the training community like Mick Coup, Paul Sharp, Craig Douglas, Claude Werner, and Larry Lindenman, among others. Mick one time put it very succinctly to me – “More than one way to skin a cat…True, there is, but generally not when you want it done properly…” Exactly. The other form of the cliche is “all roads lead to the same place” Well, maybe, but if one road is a direct line via highway and avoids street traffic, and another road is a long, windy one that goes through treacherous and dangerous terrain, and severely damages your vehicle, are they really the same path? And is it okay to take either way? Of course not! We want to take the best route that works for most people most of the time. Anything else is a waste at best, and at worst can get someone hurt or killed.

Take a look at weight training. There are a lot of methods to get bigger, stronger, and more fit with weights. We know how the best way to lift to put on muscle. We know the best protocol to get stronger. We know the best way to use them to increase muscular and cardio endurance. Those methods are not the same as each other, and all have an objective standard to meet. Now, anyone who has never lifted before and then starts any program will most likely add muscle, get stronger, and get more fit with a single methodology. However, that won’t last forever and they will have to quickly move to the accepted methods. Arguing that any weight lifting system will work using this example is a failed point. We are looking at the overall success rates, not what works in a short time frame, or for a unique individual. Those are anomalies. We need best practices that can be replicated by most people in most situations.

Self-defense is the same way. There are a lot of paths up the mountain (to use another insipid cliché) but I want to use the best, safest path that will give me the best chance of reaching the top, and as an instructor I need to be looking for the best way that will give as many of my athletes the best shot at doing so themselves, always taking into account their own individual situations. Doing otherwise is a disservice, and if we are talking about self-defense, it can also be ethically negligent.

Does this mean that we always teach one dogmatic path and ignore all else? Absolutely not. We should always be looking to improve and expand on our knowledge. If we can find a better, or another way, that meets that same objective performance standards, then we certainly should adopt them. But not just because it is “another tool in the toolbox”. That is the lazy way out, and intellectually dishonest.

After my last blog post, I received a lot of questions asking me what Big Rocks people should be focusing on. First off, I am going to concentrate on the H2H aspect in answer. While I could pontificate about the other categories (shooting, strength and conditioning, pre-fight threat containment, diet, etc.), I prefer to stay in my lane where I have the most experience. I am blessed to have a bunch of friends and peers that are much better at those other things. If someone wants to know about Big Rocks in those categories, I would be happy to let you know you to go listen to. For now, we will look at H2H.

We will start at the very beginning and look at the problem, and then we will look at the mindset I believe you need to deal with the problem. Once we establish those parameters, we will be able to analyze just what exactly we need to do. Technique, methodology, drills, concepts, and all similar items must wait until we have defined the problem. Otherwise, we may be in danger of designing an answer to a non-existent problem merely to prove that we are bad asses or some sort of Yoda, just to feed our ego.

The primary problem in a fight is staying in the fight. In other words, staying conscious and physically capable of fighting back is the first thing we need to concentrate on. If we ignore that, we risk losing the fight (and possibly our lives or well being, or the lives of our loved ones) before we ever get to unleash our awesome offensive arsenal. Furthermore, we need to first focus on staying in the fight when we are caught unaware that a fight or assault is about to happen.

Yes, yes, I know that we all need to be “switched on” and tactically aware at all times. I also know that not one human being on the planet can do that 100% of the time 24/7/365. It is flat out impossible, especially in our modern urban society that places such a huge demand of our attention in so many different ways.

The simple fact is that all of us can get caught flat footed by a surprise assault. The sooner that we accept that, the sooner we can start building the best responses to that shock attack, but we must at all costs not delude ourselves that it can happen.

And defining that problem leads us to building the appropriate training mindset. Being attacked when you are not ready for it is a worst case scenario. Therefore, in my opinion, we need to make sure our fundamental training is oriented towards dealing with a worst case scenario. It is the height of stupidity to spend all of your training on techniques that only work when you know what is going on. For example, take a look at this technique. It looks really cool, and if it works the way it is intended, would be totally functional. However, there is one huge flaw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NCZi18ZXho

That flaw is that the technique will only work if you are aware that an attack is imminent. Watch at about 1:03. The good guy is not even processing that the assault is happening. He has already launched his counter. Guys, if you are that physically gifted, you should not be reading this. You should be making millions of dollars playing professional sports because your physical attributes are in the elite 1% of people in the entire world. If you are instead merely mortal, and if you are not able to be completely aware of everything all the time, than counting on that technique is worse than useless, because you will never be able to fire off the technique, regardless of how deadly it is, and regardless of how many repetitions you have spent practicing it. Period.

So, therefore, our mindset in training should be to cover the worst case stuff first. Let’s dig the hole really, really deep, and work on getting out of that. If we have that dialed in, then anytime we deal with a less than worst case scenario, we are already in a good place to deal with it. The converse (spending the bulk of your time practicing when the problem is not as terrible) is absolutely not true.

To sum up our setting for H2H Big Rocks – we need to focus on methods that allow us to stay in the fight, no matter what and no matter how bad the situation is, and we need to start our training dealing with the worst case scenarios we might find ourselves in. We start our work there.

Sometimes when we start looking at all the things we need to work on to be truly prepared in a self-defense context, we can get overwhelmed.

First, we face the sheer scale of areas we need to ensure that we are functional/capable in : distance pistol work, contact pistol work, H2H, fitness, awareness and pre-fight management, nutrition, legal ramifications and issues, edged weapons, impact weapons, less lethal things like OC spray, and other important parts. And then, we have a huge amount of different subsets within that framework : with fitness we need to think about strength, cardio, pre-hab/re-hab work/and mobility; with pistols we have to work malfunctions, reloading, shooting with one hand, shooting with the weak hand, shooting while moving, shooting while looking for cover, etc. ; with H2H, we have stand up striking, vertical entanglement, horizontal entanglement, with and without weapons, and against single or multiple opponents; with pre-fight management we need to think about situational awareness, de-selection, managing unknown contacts, ad nauseum. All the components can be broken down in a like manner. All in all, we can easily be overcome with everything that needs to be done and addressed.

Trying to navigate all that we need to do can get tricky and difficult.

One of the pitfalls that can happen when we try to figure out our training schedule is we can find ourselves  focusing on the little things while not spending time doing  the big things. We spend too much time on things that are unlikely to matter, or the chances of needing them are extremely unlikely while ignoring the skills that may happen a lot.

My close friend and experienced LEO and fellow instructor Larry Lindenman introduced me to a term that has huge ramifications for this situation and can possibly bring a lot of clarity. . He wrote an online post on the forum www.totalprotectioninteractive.com where he used the terms “Big Rocks” and “Small Rocks”. What Larry was discussing was from a nutrition and diet standpoint, but it applies to everything across the board. Essentially, our training is like a river. The flow of the river can be affected by rocks in the river bed. However, small rocks won’t really do much to the river flow, but big rocks can not only affect the flow, they can even change the course of the river itself!

What happens far too often is that we spend time throwing small rocks into the river, and don’t spend any effort or time throwing in the  big rocks. In Larry’s original example, he talked about how people spend a lot of time and money looking at the latest trendy nutrition supplements, but eat their regular meals made up of awful junk like potato chips or Big Macs. His point was clean up your daily diet before worrying if that bottle of “Ripped Energy Awesomeness 2000” will help you recover from a workout.

Along the same lines, we need to be making the same choices in the rest of our training. Perhaps as a private citizen, I should not spend much time shooting carbines and taking carbine classes if my pistol shooting skills suck. And since as a private citizen, I have a far greater likelihood of using a pistol to defend myself over a carbine, the pistol is my “Big Rock”.

When it comes to H2H, we probably should be focused initially on what are the most common types of attacks and develop a skill set to handle that. I probably should not be practicing ways to eliminate sentries on a battlefield if I cannot keep someone from taking me to the ground and pounding me into paste.

I am all for having fun in training. And if you like carbine work, or pretending you are a WW2 commando and you want to take out that Nazi sentry, I have no real issue with that, PROVIDED that you are not ignoring the big rocks. If you have not practiced drawing your carry pistol from concealment under a set time frame, but you are blasting through 1,000 rounds of ammo  a day through your AR, I would respectfully suggest your big rocks are lacking.

Ensure that the biggest rocks are taken care of before wasting the little bit of training time you have available.