As someone who strongly advocates BJJ as a backbone art for a good base in self-defense, I am often asked what the benefits are. The obvious one is being able to fight well on the ground. However, BJJ goes far beyond that. One thing is does better than almost any other single activity is getting you mentally and emotionally prepared for the fight.

One of the biggest issues that can occur when you find yourself assaulted is that by definition, things are not going your way. Perhaps we let our situational awareness lapse, perhaps we did not realize that the person we were in range of was a violent criminal actor (VCA) because he was using a ruse, perhaps we happened to be injured or ill at the time of attack, or a myriad of reasons put us in a bad place. Regardless of how we got to that place, said place is going to be uncomfortable – physically, mentally, and emotionally. And, unfortunately, the typical gun-centric range training most of us engage in doesn’t do anything at all to prepare us for that level of pressure. It is just not possible to do so when there is not a living, breathing, resisting opponent who is determined to win and that we must lose.

One solution to this is what is called Force-on-Force training. Typically it uses marking cartridges such as Simunitions or UTM to have a pain penalty that is still safe. The gold standard for this type of training is Craig Douglas’ ECQC course (www.shivworks.com). This is terrifically useful and much needed, but there is a large drawback – it is hard to conduct such training more than once in awhile. Not only is it expensive to have guns that can use these cartridge’s, but the ammo is as well, and you also have to have good protective equipment like good helmets. It also can’t be conducted in too many places outside of a shooting range (while these rounds are not lethal, they do pack a punch and can damage surrounding structures and bystanders quite easily). And on top of all of that, it is incredibly demanding physically. A couple of hours of this kind of training will leave most people exhausted. Even for top athletes it would be tough to do more than on occasion.

However, the parts that are so valuable – the dealing with a resisting opponent and the physical, mental, and emotional pressures that are needed – can be more easily done in a BJJ academy. In every single moment you are on the mats there, you are going to be dealing with this type of situation. In a very short period of time, getting squashed underneath someone who outweighs you by 80 pounds becomes just another day. It does not exactly become ho hum, nor does it become comfortable. But it does help you lose the sense of dread and helplessness, and that feeling is something that stays with you no matter what, and that you will be able to draw on when you are being attacked for real. And the best part is that because the pressure can be adjusted in training, you can work like this hours at a time, day after day and be no worse for the wear.

I have said multiple times that BJJ gives the multi-disciplinary thinking tactician more bang for the buck than any other modality out there. Period. And getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is one of the, if not the single most useful.

When I started my Martial Arts/Self-defense odyssey some 45 years ago (this July will be 46 years), I was obsessed with getting better and I thought the main way to do so was train a lot and with a lot of instructors. Just find the best teachers, and do whatever it takes to be able to train with them, and carve out as much time as possible to practice.

As a ridiculously poor high school and later college student, I was scrimping pennies and selling blood and plasma to get enough money to make monthly trips to southern California to train with top people for an entire weekend, from Friday night to late Sunday afternoon. Then when I got back, my life revolved around blocking out time to train and practice what I learned, and even to teach. I passed up going to parties at times, or seeing cool local bands like the Gin Blossoms at local clubs (I did see them a couple of times, but not as often as I could have. I literally lived about a mile away from a club they played regularly), or even ticking off women I was dating who could not understand why I could not meet them at the bar on Tuesday night because I had a three hour session of sparring and hitting the Thai pads. I lost two girls that way, and I don’t regret either. If they could not understand what was important to me, then there was zero chance a relationship would have worked out. I even quit my part time job at Kentucky Fried Chicken, where I had worked for four years and could write my own schedule, because it was starting to interfere with my workouts. 

Then after a bit of maturity and seasoning by life, I realized that pathway was not available or even applicable to most people, myself included. Getting married, having kids, having to work to make money and keep a roof over my family’s head or food on the table tended to take needed time and energy away from training. My first job as a married man and father had me working 55 hours a week. So I began to realize that the way to long term success had more to do with consistency, and the idea that just putting time in and punching the clock allowed you to make that trip down the mastery road while staying in the real world. If all you could do was go to the gym once a week, then go to the gym once a week no matter what, and put in 100% effort. And that would keep you moving down the path. It might take you far longer to get “good” than your buddy who goes to the gym five days a week, but who cares? His journey is his, and your journey is yours. The important thing is to keep going. 

Now, I still think this plan is correct, but as I continue down this road, I realized it lacks some nuance. The part I think I fell down conceptually on is the effort aspect. While putting in 100% is ideal, the fact is that life has a tendency to get in the way. After a really tough day at your job, with clients yelling at you, and your boss riding your posterior, and worrying about how your kid is doing in school, and why your wife has seemed so distant the past few weeks, can you truly put in that full effort? Of course not, it is impossible for almost anyone. Recently I went through this on a really deep and extended level. From late 2023 through most of 2024, because of a family medical situation, not only was I running a BJJ academy full-time, I was also a full time caregiver, cook, maid, launderer, handyman, etc. I had so little spare time or energy to do much else.

So I have come to the conclusion that the only realistic way to get better at almost anything is this – JUST SHOW UP. Go and show up at the gym, or the golf course, or pick up that musical instrument, or get to the shooting range, and do the best you can. If one day the best you can muster is just going through the motions, fine. Sometimes when you are lifting the weights, you barely move much and do maybe 3 sets with minimal reps. Maybe your dry fire practice session is you mentally not even being there and you spend five minutes just vacuously going through the motions. It doe snot matter. Don’t let that impact the effort to go to the next session. Again, just show up. Put in the maximum effort that you can muster, and keep at it. You might be going through a long plateau or valley where it seems like you will never get better or have total focus, but that day will come AS LONG AS YOU KEEP SHOWING UP. The day you don’t show up is the only day of failure. And more importantly, each day you miss makes it easier to get knocked off that journey to mastery. 

This is not an excuse to be lazy. It is not a get out of jail free card to excuse you from putting in the work. Not at all. You are still trying as hard as you can, but you accept that some days the best you can do is 20% effort. Keep plugging away, and you will improve in time. Don’t quit.

I am a long time knife nerd. 

I was deeply, deeply involved in the Filipino and Indonesian Martial Arts from around 1982, through 1997 or so. I even had instructor certifications in multiple systems. I have carried a knife on me every day of my life since the original Spdyerco Police model came out in 1984. So my bonafides are deep and rock solid. 

One knife I have always loved since being introduced to it circa 2006 is the Shivworks Disciple. It appeals hard to my inner FMA nerd, and it was a nice segue to being convinced of the efficacy of the Clinchpick. 

While not quite as easily concealable as the Clinchpick, the Disciple is still good for concealed carry, and it is a bit more intuitive to use. But back in the day, they were very, very rare. Even Craig Douglas, the man behind the idea and concept of the knife did not have ready access to them. 

I was resigned to never being able to have one, until my good friend Michael Brown gave me one of his original Trace Rinaldi made ones. I could not believe what a fantastic and thoughtful gift it was. Michael could have sold it for a good chunk of cash, but instead, being the good man that he is, he gave it to me after a seminar I taught for his training group of LEOs in Tulsa. I loved it and wore it all the time, even risking losing such an almost irreplaceable tool. 

A bit later, I became a convert to the Clincpick, and the Disciple became a sometimes carried blade, but that gift always has had a great palace in my heart. 

A few years ago, Craig – through the Shivworks Product Group – brought the Disciple back into availability at a great price that put it in reach of pretty much everyone. I have a number of them and they are everything the older blades were. 

I even tried to make a Disciple version of my IAC Clinchpick sheath (from JM Custom Kydex). Myself and Tony Mayer of JM tried many iterations, but it just did not work unfortunately. The handle length of the Disciple defeated the deep concealment aspect of the sheath. 

Pictured here are all of the above. The far left is the original Rinaldi blade that Michael gave me, the middle two versions are the current SPG produced ones, and the far right is my failed attempt to do the IAC sheath.

With the risk of sounding like a horrible cliche, I have been a life-long shooter. I shot my first firearm (my dad’s winchester ‘97) during a dove hunt when I was five. I shot in an adult skeet shooting league when I was 12 and 13 (and generally finished in the middle of the pack). My first dove and quail hunt when I was actually participating in the shooting was at 11. My first coyote, javelina, and deer hunts were when I was still in middle school. My first defensive oriented shooting class was with Chuck Taylor in 1985, and I went to Gunsite and took 250 General Pistol when I graduated college in 1987. 

I say this to establish the very real fact that I grew up in a time when firearms were treated as the precision machines that they are. I was indoctrinated that after firing any gun, I did not go to bed with it dirty. A firearm was to be maintained at all times, and it was to be treated as a valuable tool to be preserved while being used, with the idea that they would be handed down to the next generation in as close to the same condition as when they were originally obtained. In fact, that very first gun I shot – the Win 1897 – was my grandfather’s that he had from when he was  a young man in the early 40’s (before he went off to India in WW2 to help fly the Burma Hump) and my Dad still sued it until is was stolen around 1976. The same time that my father taught me how to use a gun, during that same lesson he taught me how to clean them. The two things were intrinsically intertwined. 

But somewhere along the way, that concept has at times seemed to be lost. Now, it is fashionable to brag about not cleaning your guns, to the extent that the brag is how long has it been since the last cleaning. 

In some ways, there is some validity to that with the preponderance of polymer guns, that have a slightly less need for as much cleaning and lubrication as all metal firearms do. It’s certainly nice to be able to just shoot a gun, and occasionally dump some more oil on a few moving parts and call it a day. I just can’t be one of those who do so. I feel that anything made of metal to any extent, that has moving parts that rub against each other, that I am counting on to possibly save my life, should be taken care of as the machines they are. When I was a teenager, I worked in a machine shop that made high end aerospace parts. The CNC machines they used were the lifeblood of that business, and got a lot of use. At times round-the-clock use. But every chance they got, each one was cleaned as often and as well as possible, along with massive amounts of lubrication. They knew it was needed to keep them working, and those machines were built to a far higher tolerance and massively stronger than any firearm ever built, and still cleaning was crucial. 

The other reason that I clean the guns so often is that I enjoy handling firearms. That time breaking the guns down, cleaning, oiling, and reassembling them is just more time to build intimate familiarity with them, and have a greater and deeper sense of proprioception when I use them. I like shooting, and I like having extra excuses to be around guns. 

I do the same thing with all of my knives and edged tools. Whenever they are used in any way, even if it is the knife equivalent of dry fire, I tend to at the very least wipe them down with a soft cloth and check to see if they need a light coating of oil. When I was super hardcore into the Filipino Martial Arts in the 80’s and 90’s, not a day went by that I did not use a blade for practice and that was always followed by a bit of polishing/wiping down. I have a WW2 style kukri that is a big blade and at my old house whenever I needed to do landscaping, that kukri was my main tool. It did a great job keeping my giant Palo Verde tree under control, but afterwards it was covered in tree sap/muck/bark/shards, and even though it was relatively inexpensive and easily replaced, I still treated it with the reverence a Ghurka soldier probably would, and it got the careful cleaning. 

So I will continue to be a Fudd and clean my guns every time after use, or at least as soon as possible in cases as when I am traveling. I certainly am not advocating for anyone to follow my path, and I don’t judge anyone else for their way if they choose to do the more modern thing of ignoring these extra steps, but for me, it is not a chore, but something to enjoy.