There is a tremendous misunderstanding in the self-preservation community that KNOWING a technique equals being able to EXECUTE the technique. Nothing could be further from the truth. The gap between those two things is a mammoth one, and if that is not understood and dealt with, we could be setting ourselves up for failure at the most catastrophic time.
The idea that just knowing a technique is enough is a pernicious one, and one that is fueled by either delusional or willfully negligent instructors because it is an easier sell. Take for example the typical retention live fire range shooting method taught in far too many gun classes. You as the good guy stand in front of a compliant, non-moving, two dimensional paper target. On the signal – when you are completely ready and prepped – you use your weak hand to palm smash the target, step straight back, draw your pistol, and smite the foe. This seems to make tons of sense and it makes the practitioner feel good. However the chance that it works in the real world With the typical person, who has only worked this technique for maybe five minutes in one single shooting class, has no striking ability built in before that, And almost assuredly will never practice that move with full power against a resisting opponent is ludicrous to contemplate.
The main reason it is taught is because it is easy to teach and it is easy to do. Unfortunately that has nothing to do with actually working in the real world. This technique is easy to know and learn, but after a maximum of 15 minutes of working it, there’s not one human being on the planet who would be able to use it under actual conditions if that’s their total experience and time invested. And shame on any instructor who would suggest otherwise.
Think of any other physical activity that we would do.Learning how to play guitar for instance. I’m sure there are a lot of people Out there who have taken up the guitar. Learning to play a cord or a note is not that difficult. However anybody who has done it will know it can take days, weeks, months or even years to actually be able to play a song that sounds like a song. The technique of guitar playing is fairly simple but the execution is incredibly complex.
For those reading this who have spent any time learning Defensive gun use, Think back to your first class. Draw stroke, presentation, Smooth trigger press, recoil control, follow through.
All things that are simple and easy to follow. But how long did it take you to get reasonably proficient at these very simple actions? Did you have a perfect trigger press right after the instructor told you what that was? Did you have a perfect draw stroke every single time during each following drill? Was every piece of the shooting cycle perfectly executed every single time? No, of course not. Mistake after mistake after mistake, round after round after round. Maybe after hours and hours and weeks of dry fire practice and 1000 rounds of live ammo you started to pick it up. Is that all there is to it at that point or do we still have to work? The answer of course is yes. That is why we continue to take more and more shooting classes because as we learn more we get better, but we need that practice especially under the eye of an instructor. Has the technique changed one bit? HAs the draw stroke become different? Has theTrigger press changed? Is there a new way to work on follow through? No. The effort is all about becoming functional in the technique that we learned long before. And that only comes from continually work, repetition, and drilling. In other words, time and effort. Just learning a new technique is only the smallest and least useful part of the paradigm.
Refer above to my retention shooting example. Easy technique, but one that will take much effort before you can even slightly rely on it for the real world.
Where this is a great issue is in grappling. Grappling, either standing or on the ground, is the most chaotic and variable aspect of human combat. Even the smallest fractional physical change can completely alter the course of the fight, and that change can literally happen in the blink of an eye. It takes a lot of work to be able to process these changes against a true resisting opponent. Just knowing a move is close to useless.
When jiu-jitsu first started making its global impact in the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of traditional martial artists were threatened. Rather than accept and admit they were inadequately prepared to deal with grapplers, many of them would talk about their “hidden” moves in the set forms without understanding that you can have thousands of hidden moves, but if you are not practicing them, and practicing them correctly (against a physically resisting opponent, with mental will to do so, and has malevolent intent to make you lose as well as the freedom of action to do whatever he wants) than the chance they will be able to use any of their secret moves in real time is slim and none.
Similarly, if someone who has almost zero legitimate grappling background and their martial background is a striking based system, said person will have no clue how to be successful at any grappling moves, and has even less chance of teaching it, regardless of how much knowledge he has from reading books, or watching instructional videos.
If someone is trying to tell you here are the hacks to be successful at anything self-preservation related, and they are focused on technique, know that they are frauds.