One of the problems affecting the Tactical Gun community is an obsession with gear as a reaction to failed or poor performance. There is a tendency to focus on a new gun, new ammo, new holster, trigger job, new sights, etc. as the answer rather than more practice or training. There is a similar problem in the Martial Art/Self-defense world where being gear-centric is replaced with technique. The answer to a failure tends towards “give me another technique”. I found myself doing this for the first 20+ years of my martial experience. I remember going to seminars with big name instructors and feeling cheated if I did not walk out of the there with a Yellow Pages sized notebook, of which I would then be unable to even remember a fraction of the techniques. And just completely forget about being able to pull off any of them against the slightest bit of resistance. So was my solution to train harder and more diligently? Of course not! It was go to another seminar, or buy another book, or watch another video/DVD. More technique!!! To bring this idea back to the shooting world, you see it happen in course after action reports ( AARs) where the main point is how many rounds are fired, regardless of the quality of information being passed on.

The problem is that approach (whether technique or gear) does not address the real problem. What does work, in both areas (H2H and shooting), is a studied focus on fundamentals and a commitment to train those fundamentals.

It took me a long time to “see the light”. About twenty years in fact. When I did, and stopped thinking the answer to every failure was more technique, and instead was focus on high percentage responses and work them under realistic conditions and pressures until they are as subconscious as possible, I began to actually succeed on a regular basis. When I was studying an eclectic modern martial art in the mid 80’s through early 90’s, we would work some grappling. However, the instructor actually knew very little about groundwork, and rather than working on good fundamentals, we had “tricks” to beat a grappler. Can’t get out from under a grappler? Bite him! Can’t pass his guard? Leg lock! This approach really hampered my development by years. Instead of using the high percentage moves proven to work, we wasted time taking the easy route that led to failure.

It is one of my current and most irritating pet peeves in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. I see too many newer trainees and lower belts become obsessed with the latest move that is sweeping the competition world. People who cannot even pass the guard of a peer on demand spends all their time working lapel guard or mantis guard or berimbolo attacks. And then when that cool guy attack is stymied (which is inevitable because they have no clue about what is happening), they are stuck because they have nothing else. Contrast that with the higher belt, who has solid fundamentals, honed by years of dedicated practice, and can consistently succeed at moves against his peers, adding the more spectacular or complicated move to his game. He is not nailing the berimbolo because of the inherent awesome-ness of the move, but rather because he is technically proficient and knows how to use it in the right way at the right time. This comes from a solid grounding in the fundamentals, the essentials.

I am telling you that all the fighters who win all the time in competition at higher belts, have rock solid fundamental game, BEFORE they attempt one fancy move. Rafa Mendes can beat lesser fighters playing a pure 1970’s style BJJ game. The only time he pulls out the fancy stuff is if he wants to play, or if the opponent is good enough to stop him and he is forced to expand his attack. But that is a very specific set of circumstances. Ryan Hall, one of the best and most successful of the American sport black belts is well known for his competition style game. A few years ago, he found himself in a street confrontation. What did he do? Did he flop onto his back, go to 50/50 guard, wait there for minutes, and then settle for a sweep (which might be typical of him in a match)? No, he shot in with a double leg takedown, mounted, and controlled the guy. When the guy got froggy and would not stop, Ryan let him turn face down and choked him. All straight out of the Gracie Jiu-jitsu in Action videotape, circa 1989. His base was the same as all good players – the same foundational moves that you learn in the first 6 months.

One of the reasons I pay little attention to the debate between competition oriented BJJ and self-defense oriented BJJ is because it is truly irrelevant. To get good and consistent at using so called “sport” moves, you must have the foundation to launch and apply them. And that foundation is the same regardless of context. All good and legit BJJ schools will teach in general the same essential skill sets, moves, and principles. The contextual application and additions can be layered over that, but the base – the foundation of the house is the same. That is the main reason when someone asks me to help find them a good self-defense focused BJJ school, I just find them the most legitimate and best school available in their area, and then I tell them to train there for 2-3 years, and THEN think about whether it is a sport or street school.

In summary, when in doubt, work harder, longer, and more diligently on the fundamentals. That is the key to success.

Here is a video purporting to show a functional ground grappling technique:

No, no, no, and really no.

This is a great example of someone who does not know what they do not know teaching something that is utterly, devastatingly, wrong. This is the kind of thing that comes from people whose knowledge of grappling derives from a weekend certification course, or watching a lot of DVDS and online vids, or who grabs a couple of buddies (none of whom have any grappling experience) and rolling in their garage. And then based on that foundation (or lack of to be more accurate), they come up with “answers” that people with 20+ years of training don’t come up with.

Quick tip – that technique is not against BJJ rules. It can be done at any time, even in competition. So why don’t good BJJ players use it? Why was that technique never taught in the fundamental Gracie self-defense curriculum? Why is it never suggested by a seasoned grappler to be a good solution? That deafening silence is what can be called a “clue”.

I won’t go into detail on all the bad things with this technique, and why it won’t work consistently or reliably against a committed resisting attacker. I will give a hint though – what are the other guy’s limbs doing while the good guy is doing the head twist?

Edited to add: And as a BJJ black belt pointed out when I posted this on Facebook, if you cannot even get the terminology correct, why in the world would you assume you have an effective move? There is no such thing as a “guard escape”. There are sweeps, reversals, and attacks. The guard is NOT something you “escape” from. Creating verbiage out of the blue, and that makes no sense, is just as wrong as the physical technique itself.

There are tons of proven, easily learned solutions to that exact situation. This is absolutely not one of them.

It is no secret that I pay more attention these days to old school boxing much more intently than I do the contemporary sport. And this article is one of the reasons why:

http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/casey/MC_OldSchool.htm

 

 

 

This is a clip of one of my favorite attacks, my modified version of the classic Pendulum sweep from closed guard. One of the reasons I like it so much (besides how high a percentage of success it has) is that it works across the board in all fighting contexts – sport grappling, MMA, or street oriented self-defense in a Weapons Based Environment.

 

And now a few details to watch for to help the move work consistently.

1) I only need to control the elbow at the beginning just enough to keep him from moving. I want the elbow in place long enough to do the hip escape and turn, which will then keep his elbow blocked.

2) As soon as the hip is around the elbow, I need to eliminate all space between his torso and mine. I prefer to grab across his back to his far waist, but if I have to go to the armpit or shoulder, I will.

3) Obviously, the direction you move your hips will partially be determined by his actions/energy, but if I have a choice I like going to my left. That helps to keep my weapon access points fairly free, and it has a good percentage chance that I am blocking his strong arm and his strong side access. Unless he is a lefty, and then forget what I just said

4) I prefer to grab slightly under his far leg to facilitate the sweep, but I will take what I can get.

5) I want to drive into him hard, not just to keep his elbow blocked, but also to set up the pendulum momentum for the sweep. i don’t just fall back, I rotate a bit towards his far knee, and then use my outside leg to kick outwards to start the movement. To finish the positional change, I bring that leg back down towards his hips – hence the “pendulum” action

6) I make sure that as I go on top, my base is stable and I keep my chest low. I want to continue to disrupt any action he can take with his arms.

 

 

Just awesome to watch. Quite simply, one of the best BJJ performances I have ever seen. I was so lucky to see it live and up close. Just essential BJJ done at the highest level. Nothing fancy. Someone with less than two years of training will know every technique here. But this is how it is done with ultimate timing, position, and control.

This is how it is done, whether the context is sport grappling, MMA, or self-defense.

From Dan John, who is one the most intelligent and thoughtful, as well as experienced, strength coaches around. While his thoughts were directed at those in the strength and conditioning realm, they apply equally well to all fields of study. A succinct and direct description of the fallacy of being your own coach, or thinking your little garage group is producing all the answers.

If you’re training yourself, you’ll tend to know everything you decide to do. You’ll always push yourself exactly as hard as you feel like pushing yourself. You won’t have any gaps in your training because you have no idea what you’re lacking. Finally, you’ll be able to progress and regress easily in your system since your single follower— you— will know what you want, even if it isn’t something you need to do. I hope I painted a picture of mediocrity here.

The great Col. Jeff Cooper for all practical purposes founded the modern defensive firearms training community. He was intimately involved in teaching people how to shoot for most of his 86 years. As such, he had many insights into what went into the making of a good instructor. While he was speaking to the ability to teach shooting, his guidelines have as much direct connection to the instruction of H2H fighting as well. Here is an excerpt from some of his writings:

“….a good instructor, above all, must seek his student’s excellence. He must place more value on his ability to teach a man to shoot than on his own ability to shoot. His work gratifies his ego when his student becomes a good shot, and improvement is more satisfying to the ego than excellence. It is fine to raise a B shooter to the A category, but it is far better to raise a D to a B……… (a good instructor) must realize that matters which are quite obvious to him may be complete mysteries to a novice. This sort of knowledge is not inherent and must be acquired through experience.”

So much good stuff there.

As a follow up to a recent post about how video can expose the RBSD/combatives crowd’s typical “streetfights are always this way” narrative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9MzaziJrnQ

And:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-MN1suFFKg

And:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohn6smpukkI

I wrote this about a year and a half ago, but since there are a lot more new readers of this blog, I wanted to bring it back because I think it is an extremely important topic.

There was a recent forum discussion that brought this to mind. During the discussion, a proponent of a particular technique made the huge mistake of making an appeal to authority argument, and said that his authority figure stated that this technique was good because “it worked as often as not” (that is pretty much a direct quote, and in context). Now, I don’t think he really thought about what he was writing, because even if that statement was true, it still only meant the technique worked 50% of the time, at best (the quantifiable translation of “as often as not”). That is not what I would consider a good percentage. Especially when there are demonstrably better techniques out there, that are as easily learned as what he espoused.

And even more so, his arguments showed that still too many people make the foolish argument of just because a move works somewhere and sometime, that puts it on equal footing with a technique that works most of the time in almost all situations for almost all people. Those are two completely separate things. So I re-post this older article with apologies to those who have read it before and are lookign for totally new content. I will get something new up in the next day or, but I feel this is important.

Older article:

In the medical field, there is a concept known as the placebo effect. Essentially, if a doctor prescribes a treatment such as a drug for an illness and the drug is not actually a real medicine (but rather something like a sugar pill) but the treatment acts as a cure or as relief anyway, that cure or relief has to be attributed to something other than the actual treatment. It can be chalked up to the person’s own mind accomplishing the goal, or it was a freak act. This phenomenon is well known and accepted. It does occur, more frequently than you might think. So why don’t doctors attempt to ever use this a normal course of treatment? Because there is never anyway to judge if it is actually working, and how often, and to what extent! Sure, the placebo effect can work on occasion, but more often, it utterly fails. So therefore it can never be taken seriously as a factor when trying to cure a patient. If you can’t plan on when it works, or to what level, it is useless as a treatment.

So how does this relate to self-defense? Bear with me for a moment and I will tie it in. This past week, I was participating in an online discussion forum (yes, I know how problematic that can be at times, but sometimes, you can get good information from doing so) related to self-defense and firearms/shooting, and there was a thread in which one of the posters made one of the classic blunders in the SD field. Now this particular poster has a huge chip on his shoulder and has a tendency to bolster his debates by referring to his own experience (he has some field work in this area). However, he continually will try to end the debate over a particular technique/tactic/method by saying “x worked for me”. Now, to him, this is his trump card, his “gotcha” moment. In truth, it is the fighting world’s equivalent of the placebo effect. What he fails to realize that IT DOES NOT MATTER IF IT WORKED IN THE STREET.

What the heck did I just say? Have I taken leave of my senses? Have I stepped into the realm of mystical approaches to combat? Am I suddenly going to start wearing a ponytail and wearing giant muumuus and talking about all the chi in my belly? Not at all. What I am saying is this: if the entirety of your justification of whether a technique is good or not happens to be if it worked, you are missing the larger point.

Just pointing out that something worked is not good enough. Let’s examine this for a moment. A couple of years ago, there was an MMA fight where one of the participants ran up the side of the cage to where he was almost horizontal, jumped off of it, turned in mid-air and threw a kick that not only landed, but almost knocked the other fighter out. Does anyone out there think that would be a good technique to add to their toolbox? It worked didn’t it? So why don’t we all start practicing that move?

There are also documented instances where a person has been shot in the face with a firearm and the bullet did not penetrate the skull, but rather skipped along the bone and came out the skin on the back side of the head. Absolute documented fact. Anyone want to base their gun defense on that? Why not? It “worked”, didn’t it?

I have a video clip I got off of YouTube. It is from Eastern Europe or Russia and shows a person robbing a store at knifepoint. The clerk did a crescent kick and knocked the knife out of the bad guy’s hand. So how many people are going to practice and advocate that move as a good knife defense move? Anyone?…… Bueller?…… Bueller? Again, why not? I have video proof a crescent kick can knock a knife from a hand. So let’s all jump in and start working on being Chuck Norris.

Hopefully, the gist of my point is starting to come across. Using what works as justification is as irrelevant to optimal training as the placebo effect is to medical treatment.

For anyone who has studied fighting for any length of time, one conclusion can quickly be drawn – sometimes the goofiest stuff will actually work. Combat is so chaotic that almost anything can happen at any given time. However, just because anything can happen, does not mean it will happen at a given moment, and therefore “anything” cannot be relied on, just as a doctor cannot rely on the placebo effect to cure his patient.

What we need to focus on is what are the things that work in the most situations, against the widest variety of opponents, and that can be trained with the least outlay of training time, and with the highest chance of predicting the effect of the move on the other person. In other words, what are the most efficient methods/techniques/systems that still have a high amount of efficacy, especially if we are speaking of the everyday person and his limited time to train.

A few years ago, I was involved in another online debate in which the other person was trying to say that the superman punch was a valid SD move because it worked in MMA. So I went and took a look at the prior two years of EVERY UFC match and looked at every instance of the superman punch. What I found was that, yes, the punch worked in MMA – 30% of the time! The other 70% it failed! And that was when executed by professional fighters whose job it was to do nothing but train, and even then, with all of that on their side, they could only land it a third of the time. Is that really a good use of training time if we only have a very limited time to train, or should we focus on techniques that we can make use of a lot more often? Certainly the move “works”, but does that even matter?

So, did the technique work because it was a good technique? Or did it work because the other guy did something really stupid? Or was it blind luck? Or was it because you are a 300 pound powerlifter and you are fighting a 140 pound tweaking methhead? I have a terrific escape when someone has the knee on belly position on you. It is a high percentage move IF you are bigger and stronger than the person on top. If not, and he is bigger and stronger, there is no way the escape works. Should that be a technique that everyone should practice as part of their fundamentals? No? Why not? It “works” – albeit under a narrow contextual range.

In summary, we most certainly need to take into account if a technique works in the real world. But, far more importantly, we need to look at a number of other factors as well before we judge said move as something that should be put into the personal arsenal.

So I finally got the new t-shirts in. If you are interested, you can click here to order:

http://www.freewebstore.org/Immediate-Action-Jiu-jitsu/IAC_T-shirt/p1832886_14206000.aspx