You know what the most egregious error that people make when they advocate for others to train Jiu-Jitsu? They forget that first and foremost it should be fun. 

Whether someone is talking about doing jiujitsu because it can be crucial for self-preservation (which it is), or that it is all about competing and testing yourself against others in tournaments (which is really cool, and I have been doing that for multiple decades), there tends to be often a condescending attitude that if you are not willing to do either of the above (or both), then you are not serious about self-defense or about being more than a couch potato. 

It is similar to far too many online commentators and self-proclaimed experts in the gun community who take anyone to task who is not at the range numerous times each month, is not not competing in IDPA, USPSA, or Steel Challenge matches, is not dry firing every day, and is not taking weekend courses from famous instructors throughout the year. Or god forbid, you don’t put a red dot optic on your pistol. Don’t even get one of these experts fired up about that! 

We can debate what is needed to be truly prepared to defend your life against violence. There is much room for adjustment, nuance, and continued improvement to maximize those goals, and there undoubtably are folks out there who can pursue that even if they don’t enjoy it. But for the vast majority of people – all of whom have the right to defend themselves as they see fit – it becomes extremely difficult to do any of the above if they are miserable about doing it. 

For years, before I snapped my hamstring, my main cardio training was running. I was able to force myself to do it, but I hated it. It was boring (to me), and took much discipline to keep to my multiple sessions a week. I did it because a) I needed to continually improve my cardio to combat my severe asthma, and b) I needed the cardio to be able to function at a high level in jiu-jitsu and jiu-jitsu competitions. So I generally was able to push myself. However, if life got in the way of training, running was one of the first things that would suffer. My combatives practice would not, neither would my shooting and dry firing, and my weight training usually was a constant. So if something had to go, running was the choice. To be fair, I usually got good cardio no matter what with 4-6 BJJ sessions a week, so missing some running was not a great loss. 

I believe in the benefits of Jiu-Jitsu. I don’t think any other physical pursuit gives you the bang for the buck that BJJ does, so I want to make sure the emphasis I bring to any talk about it, and or any time I post something to encourage someone to train Jiu-Jitsu, is that above all else, it is incredibly fun. Certainly it can be challenging, but that to is part of the fun. Knowing that you have legitimately overcome some challenge gives you a feeling of self-satisfaction and pride that is crystal clear. 

If you have never practiced Jiu-Jitsu because you hav been intimidated, just find the right academy and the right instructor, and know you don’t have to be an elite level athlete, or some super tough guy to get all the benefits. You will have fun, make yourself more capable, and maybe even make some good friendships that stand the test of time. 

If anyone is unsure of how to find a good academy, don’t hesitate to reach out and I will try my best to help. I have been doing that for 20 years and have a pretty good track record by now. 

Step on the mat, and go with the idea that the ride will be fun! 

One of the joys (to me) of re-reading books is that often the natural in them hits differently depending on life events, and how we grow and evolve.

Case in point is “A Rifleman Goes to War” by Herbert Mcbride. It is a memoir of an American who during WW1 before the US entered the war, went to Canada and enlisted there. He went to the trenches and fought for 18 months. It is a great book and written from a gun nerd perspective.

Jeff Cooper mentioned it many times in the early and mid-80’s as an important work on fighting, and when Paladin Press reprinted it, I immediately bought a copy. I have read it dozens of times I the past 40 years, but drift back to0 it now and again. This time, this passage really hit home.

He has an entire chapter on. the use of the pistol in modern warfare, and this part he is comparing the 1911 to then current revolvers in use like Wesley’s, and Colt and S&W 1971s. So in arguably one of the worst conditions that a man can fight in – the trenches of the western front – with al of the mud, water, debris, constant shelling and craters, and having to move thought that world, he says quite clearly that there is no difference in the reliability and durability between revolvers and semi-autos. He make sit a point to say that all guns should be maintained properly, and when they are, the revolver is just as reliable.

From a man who actually experienced some of the most apocalyptic violence the world has ever known, versus the opinion of Youtube influencers who have almost no experience with even the mildest of violence.

I know whose opinion I pay more attention to.

I have been lax the past few weeks on my regular posting of actual incidents of private citizens dealing with an entangled fight with weapons involved.

Here is a great one. Citizen grapples with an AR armed active shooter. The chance of the good guy being able to get his gun out and get effective hits before he is lit up with multiple 5.56 rounds is so small as to be incalculable. But note how quickly he covered the distance and grabbed the gun. Far quicker than most people’s draw (even a sub-second one).

Postulated hypothesis :

“Advanced” techniques are those that require higher level of physical attributes or developed ability, are more complex and more involved (i.e. have more “moving parts”) and will happen in real world application only in outlier type situations.

There are some clichés in the self-defense training community, whether you come from the firearms or the martial art side. “They all fall to hardball”, “two is one, one is none”, “I know grappling because it is hidden in my katas”, “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”, etc. Any of them may have had decent roots in an authentic truth at some point, but they tend to get warped by overuse. “There is no such thing as advanced techniques, only applications done better” is one of those that I think has some basis in truth, but loses any benefit without nuance.

Let’s look at Jiu-jitsu for example. The majority of moves (certainly the moves you should build your game on) consists pretty much of essential fundamentals. Cross Collar Choke, Straight Armbar, Kimura, Flower Sweep, et al are ones that can be done successfully and often whether you are a white belt or a black belt. However, there are moves that cannot truly be considered non-advanced. Worm Guard and its attacks is a perfect illustration of this. If you have no idea of how open guard moves work and their important points, then pulling off any worm guard attack is going to be pure luck, and it will absolutely not be consistent. Because without that underlying conceptual grasp of open guard, then the only way to execute any word guard attack is by regurgitation from what the teacher said, and there is no way to do that well or reliably against true opposition by your peer. You will not know how to control the lapel, you will not understand how to apply pressure with your hands and feet to control the other person, and you will not understand how to adjust things on the fly. You must have a fundamental base first. Therefore, if you have to have that base first to do worm guard, then there is no way it can be considered anything but advanced.

Or if we look at Defensive Handgun, I have a hard time believing anyone would reasonably argue that doing weak hand only immediate action drills will be the equivalent of a giant cluster**ck if the first time you pick up a handgun you are taught to do WHO malfunction clearing techniques. I think it is safe to say that to be proficient at that, you have to have some decent ingrained gunhandling skills, and you probably should be okay at doing the same work with your primary hand. Once you have built a bit of familiarity on that side, going to the weak hand will be a bit more manageable. So again, a skill set that ahs to have some requirements before they can be understood and performed, and again, pretty much a definite indicator of it being a more advanced skill.

We also have applications. To be good at moving through a structure with a gun in your hand and working against a bad guy, you better have the shooting and handling portion down pretty solid. You will be using almost all of your cognitive powers on the task at hand, and you will have little to spare for making sure you align the sights and press the trigger properly. Once again, fundamental skills with the gun to be sure, but done in a manner that makes it far more advanced and you need far higher developed mechanics.

Look at the following video. Go to the 8:18 mark to see some room movement with a gun in hand and note how much of the brain is occupied with seeing and thinking about the movement, and the gunhandling has to be pretty automated.

Or with jiu-jitsu, sometimes to pull off a successful attack, you need to do more than a single direct action, and have to build on a complex and ongoing series of moves.

Take these worm guard attacks. Not only are the shown set ups more complex than something fundamental like a Flower Sweep, even the set up before this moment is complex and requires a good amount of effort and work. You are not just going to be able to get to the beginning part of the video straight away at the beginning of a roll. You are going to have to carefully get into the position just to begin the worm guard attack, let alone all the actions for the attack itself.

Make no mistake that this is any kind of argument to do spend more time working “advanced skills”. Rather, I think the Pareto Principle should be followed to some extent. That is, the 80/20 rule. So the bulk of our training should be focused on the fundamentals and what gets us the most bang for the buck, but it is not a bad thing to spend at least a small portion of our time on the advanced stuff.

It might seem pedantic to talk about this in this manner, but I think it is important to be clear in how we view and talk about the principles that might help keep us alive.

I have written a lot, and for quite literally decades, about my personal training journey. One of the reasons I do so is to show others that not every day is a champion level day. Nor is the journey easy or light. We all struggle constantly. I also share my failures (and anyone who has followed me for long know there are a buttload of those!) to show people that just because someone has accomplished something and has skill in an area or areas, it does not mean they started that way. The greatest champion has had to work for it, and has met many failures along the path.

I think I have a responsibility that goes along with having a public voice that some people will listen to, that I need to be as encouraging as possible to those filling the same path behind me.

The truth is that there are a lot of days all of us don’t feel like training.

Whether that is getting on the jiu-jitsu mats, lifting that barbell, putting on the running shoes and HR monitor, or going through the motions to get set up for a dry fire session, there are times when life has beat us down and we would prefer to lie in bed and pull the covers over our head.

Sure, we have the image in our head of that super bad ass that is always pushing the iron while running marathons and ragdolling people on the mats and shooting a 5 second FAST test who is impervious to outside influences, but that is a fantasy. Life gets in the way for all of us and there are going to be the times we just don’t want to train.

For example, a few weeks ago, I did not want to roll.. A long trip on the weekend with little sleep, and some personal/family medical issues drained me about as much as a person can be drained without withering away. And to be honest, being 61 on jiujitsu mats facing guys who are 25, 30, and even 35 years younger than you is daunting at times. The easy thing to so would have been to miss the rolls. And I pondered it for a short time on the drive there. In the end I went, and in the end I did roll.

Did I do great? NOT ON YOUR LIFE. But that is not the point. Training is the Way, not being the dominant guy. It is not about the new squat PR, not about tapping everyone in class, not about getting the cold, on demand sub second draw. What it is about is just doing it. Even if “it” is just doing a single set of 10 goblet squats with a 35lb kettlebell, or doing 10 standing up in base, or doing 10 dry fire draws from concealment.

Don’t get wrapped around the axle that we are always awesome. The majority of the time we are going to feel “meh”, and perform as such. Who cares? Enjoy the process. The goal will take care of itself.

I wrote recently about the preference for the term self preservation over self-defense. Self-Preservation is far more overarching and applicable, and as I wrote in that article, it is very multifaceted with many aspects to cover.

While the easily understood things like firearms usage, Empty hand skills, Knife methods, OC spray, etc., are all needed, we also need to look at our financial health, Mental and emotional health and stability, our relationships with others, proper vehicle maintenance and defensive driving, as well as medical and dental needs. All of these things are a must to live a happy and productive life, with longevity and the ability to enjoy that longevity. 

Of all the different components of Self-Preservation, I would strongly argue that Pre-Fight Threat Containment is the most important area we can work on, and the one most needed to keep us safe. This can cover things like De-escalation, verbal judo, managing unknown contacts, Situational awareness, understanding how violent criminal acts think and act, and having a mindset that understands reality of the world, as well as a determination of how we will conduct ourselves as needed (are we willing to use force – up to lethal – to defend ourselves?). 

And if Pre-Fight Threat Containment as a whole category is the most functional (and it is),  then the most critical part is what is called Deselection. It is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the training community, but tends to be very nebulous. What exactly is covered by this term, and how do we use it? 

Essentially, at its core, Deselection means that bad guys view you as not a good choice to victimize. They look at you and decide to look elsewhere for a victim. It is not necessarily that you need to look like some Apex Predator. That is not realistic for 99% of the population, and even if you are in the 1%, there are always more Apex Predators. It is not a singular thing so it alone does not ensure safety. 

The late, great William Aprill lectured on how bad guys have a very binary decision making tree. They look at a potential victim and if they think “yes”, it’s on. But if they don’t have a positive “yes”, then it is a hard “no. They don’t think “maybe”. If it is not obviously yes, then it’s a no-go. So for us, all we need is not to be a hard “yes”. 

Fortunately for us, thanks to decades of scientific research, we know what a hard “yes” looks like. 

The seminal and groundbreaking study “Attracting Assault: Victim’s Non Verbal Cues” by Betty Grayson and Morris Stein from 1981 gives us what we need most. They discovered exactly what criminal predators look for in a good victim. Things like awkward movements while walking, poor posture, odd gait, head and eyes downcast (consciously as well as through poor posture), etc gave off strong signals to bad guys. 

This information leads us to the single best way to get ourselves deselected, in an inarguable and scientifically driven way.  Having a modicum of physical fitness will strongly push us into being deselected. Period. Read the above victim cues. They all are antithetical to having some fitness. When you are out of shape – too fat, too skinny, too heart or lung weak – all of the above characteristics will be you. They are an inevitable outgrowth of a poor level of fitness. On the other hand, when you have a reasonable level of bodyfat, have a little bit of muscle, heart, and lung strength, you will exhibit the exact opposite of the “victim traits”. Your posture automatically improves, you will have a steady and purposefully gait, and it will be almost subconscious to have your head up and eyes looking around at the world in front of you. Criminals may not look at you as some kind of dangerous predator, but they will not see prey. 

And no other aspect of a multi-disciplinary self-preservation skillset will give so much of the benefits of deselection as health and vitality will. Carrying that concealed handgun won’t in and of itself, and carrying openly will more likely make you a target rather than get you deselected. 

And this is not about walking around with 5% bodyfat, squatting 300lbs, being able to run a 10k. Those are for sure great examples of a great level of fitness, but we don’t need that. Remember the criminal binary decision tree. We just need to not be an obvious “yes”. 

This crucial concept is what is missed by all those voices online that desperately try to minimize how useful and important health and vitality is for Self-Preservation. They will use infantile Straw Man arguments and say things such as “people get through life and death encounters without fitness”, as if that means it is a good idea. Millions of people also survive violence without a gun. Does that mean the same anti-fitness people think we have no need to carry a gun to help defend ourselves? There are people who have fallen out of airplanes from hundreds of feet up and have survived. It does not mean that is something that should be striven for….

But most importantly, I DON”T WANT TO HAVE TO BE IN A LIFE AND DEATH FIGHT. Regardless of whatever skill level and capability I possess, or whatever amount of tools I carry on my person on a daily basis, I prefer to only exercise those skills in the training environment. If I can keep from being ever involved by a criminal because they have deselected me simply due to the fact that I exhibit a tiny level of health and vitality as I walk down the street, then right there that fitness (at whatever level) has saved me from potential death or grave bodily harm, and has kept me from having to endure the post fight legal battle. All simply because I took a little time away from shooting, and spent it doing health and vitality training. 

I don’t know how anyone could say that was not about as effective a self-defense tactic as there has ever been.

After a couple of years of focusing on being a full time caregiver, I am easing my way back to doing seminars again. On January 24-25, 2026 I will be doing a somewhat rare in-town seminar at the Casa Grande Police Range. In connection with Independence Training, we will be teaching Close Contact Handgun coursework to give people a safe but realistic understanding of the complicated matter of gaining and maintaining space to use a handgun effectively, but even more importantly how to use movement, awareness, and verbal dexterity to ideally not even get into a violent encounter in the first place.

This is the fundamental base where we try to ensure that we don’t end up in an entanglement, and we can use our handgun to maximum effect. There is some VERY MINOR physical contact in the class with little to no impact, but it is extremely limited, making the course suitable for anyone who is looking to get their feet wet in the close range self-defense envelope. This is a great introduction to the 0-5 yds gunfighting envelope for those who have been hesitant to do so from lack of physical conditioning or little experience in H2H fighting , and has the thumbs up for Craig Douglas of Shivworks (since we shamelessly are teaching a great deal of his material in the course). We have had some great feedback results when we taught this course before, including people who have taken ECQC. We are looking forward to doing it again.

In this class we will look at ways to maintain distance, using verbalization, footwork, positioning, and awareness to keep distance from an aggressive criminal, and to utilize the pistol in a manner in which we can prevent him from stopping us. The focus is on NOT getting entangled and having to get into a physical fight, but rather to use the pistol the way it is intended to be used – at a distance.

We will cover:

Maintaining Spatial Relationship

Functional Footwork

Proper Verbalization

Presenting the pistol through an appropriate line of extension and compression

Live fire through extension and compression

Retention Shooting (both from the thumb-pectoral and the compressed high ready)

Live fire retention shooting

Integrating Verbals with everything else

Recognizing when it is appropriate to go to the gun and when not to

We will be working live fire on the range, as well as drilling concepts with blue guns. At the end we will pressure test our new skills in mild and no-contact Force-on-force scenarios against resisting opponents with opposing will and freedom of action using airsoft. We will be working in open space, in and around vehicles, and inside structures.

Students will need a suitable carry pistol, at least three spare magazines, a quality holster, and 150 rounds of ammo. If you have training guns and training knives, please feel free to bring them.

Click here to sign up:

Close Contact Handgun

This week’s entangled fight occurred just a few weeks ago outside a small city in Virginia. 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/polite-strangers-yes-maam-no-sir-demeanor-suddenly-turned-violent-murder-country-singers-mom

A man broke into a home after midnight, and attacked a man and wife. He stabbed the woman to death and was stabbing the man, who continued to fight throughout the house for an extended time, until they broke into the front yard, and the homeowner was able to get to his car and retrieve a gun from the vehicle and shot the murderer to death. 

So what are the takeaways? 

First, I don’t want to hear anyone say “I would have shot him before it went entangled”. No you would not because you don’t sleep with your gun on your hip, and even if you did, being woken up in the middle of the night to find someone stabbing your wife of 30 years to death in your bed would blow the brain circuits for a few moments. The bad guy would be on you long before you got your gun into play. There is no sub second draw in your bed when you are sound asleep.  

Secondly, not only does this incident serve as yet one more shining example of how private citizens face grappling with weapon situations all the time, it also gives the lie to those who love to try to say that physical fitness has no role in self-defense. How much did an extended fight like this, that started with a massive shocked adrenaline dump of seeing your wife being stabbed to death,  in your own bed, from a deep sleep, and then fighting a younger guy for minutes as you move through your house? Do you think he thought “hey, that was easy. I don’t even feel that”? Do you have to be in decent shape to survive a life or death struggle? Of course not, but has anyone ever said after “My heart and lungs didn’t even register what happened”? So ridiculous to dismiss health and vitality in a self-preservation context. 

🚨Breaking News
Thanking Our Community Heroes at the Alaska State Fair

Yesterday at the Alaska State Fair, we were reminded of the power of community and vigilance. A good Samaritan stepped up, potentially preventing a dangerous situation from escalating.

While details are… pic.twitter.com/hMDKWpZFWs

— Rants From Alaska (@AlaskanRants) September 2, 2025

The incident from this video just happened in the past few days and shows a great example of an entangled fight only involving private citizens (no LE presence at all) and weapons being produced. 

What are the takeaways we should focus on? 

1. That it happened at all. 
2. The fight was already on and the people involved were already entangled when one of them attempted to produce a handgun (of the two that he was carrying). We must remember that just because it starts with empty hands and blows being thrown does not mean it will continue on that path. We cannot assume what goes on in the head of other people. 
3. The person trying to get the pistol into the fight had zero control of the entanglement. He did not have a good position in relation to the other person (and I would like other video commentators who have little to no actual grappling experience to try to explain why he was not in an optimal position. They won’t be able to because they don’t know. Please don’t listen to non-grapplers who pretend to be SMEs in grappling). He also failed to control the arms of his opponent, who then had complete freedom to counter as he saw fit. Letting the other person have that freedom puts the odds of being successful at your in-fight weapon access (IFWA to use Craig Douglas’ terminology) at about 50/50. It may still work, but there is an equal to greater chance it won’t. So you better have a bit of training and practice in understanding the entangled fight. And no, having years doing a traditional martial art that spends 99.9% of it’s time working stand up, ranged striking gives you no grasp at all of grappling. 
4. A lot of people fail to understand the above point about having arm control. They see those of us who do teach this sometimes teach bringing a weapon into play when you don’t have arm control, such as when you are underneath a bigger, stronger opponent – perhaps even face down – and you access a fixed bladed knife carried centerline on the belt. I have heard some non-experts try to say “see! You don’t need arm control! They are hypocrites in their teaching!” What these people fail to understand is that drawing a blade when you are on the bottom and pinned down is a worst case scenario. You have no other workable alternatives, and trying to get a blade out that was carried in an optimal position at least gives you a chance. But none of us who teach this material wil lever say it is unstoppable. It is easily stoppable by someone with just a little knowledge. In that scenario, we have no control over the bad guy and he is free to counter our knife draw. But that is the only chance we have. It is better to roll the dice and try instead of accepting death. But it is not optimal. People who have little training should refrain from publicly commenting on these things until they truly understand what it is they are saying. 
5. The other interesting take on this video is that almost always we view other unknown actors around as bad guys too. We never take into account that they may be good guys and can help. Certainly we should not count on it, but neither should we completely dismiss the possibility of others around being positive.

https://www.wtvm.com/2024/07/31/chick-fil-a-worker-fights-off-armed-robber

This is another entangled fight involving firearms and a private citizen.This took place early in the morning at a Chick-fil-A restaurant where a robber broke in, brandished the handgun, and  ordered the clerk to open the safe. 

Let’s look at some important takeaways.

First, even though the robber had a handgun and the private citizen did not, the bad guy closed the distance repeatedly. He did not stand 7 yards away. He continually stuck the gun right up to the good guy and even made physical contact with both the gun and his empty off hand. While it may seem logical for a bad guy who is armed with a handgun (or any firearm for that matter)to stand far away, what we see instead repeatedly is that they do not. They continually close the distance into either contact range or just outside contact range.

The next takeaway is the poor efficacy of striking .Both parties  continually struck each other including knees, continuous hammer fists, and even using the gun. None of the strikes really produced much effect. There is a myth out there that is perpetuated by striking centric martial artists and assumed by those who don’t have any experience in the matter that it is easy to knock out or even severely hurt another person with strikes. I have been involved in martial arts for 46 years, including some of the best and most efficient striking systems on the planet like boxing and Muay Thai, and I have rarely seen one or two strikes end the fight in any context.I s it possible? Of course. But so is getting struck by lightning. While striking is an important component of a self preservation skill set, it needs to be understood where it fits in as well as its limitations.The reason that so many of us advocate grappling as a fighting base is due to the proven fact that Grappling does work even with limited training time. We see over and over again how a smaller, less physically dominant person with decent grappling skills can completely dominate a bigger, stronger, faster opponent who does not have the same level of grappling skills.

And that is the next take away from the video. Note that even with almost no obvious grappling skills the good guy was able to impede the bad guy’s ability to use his firearm or to even use striking in an efficient manner. Just a little grappling allows us to exert massive control over another person’s violent intentions.

The final takeaway Is the ongoing lesson that physical conditioning is important In self preservation. It’s not to say that if you are not in good shape you will lose a self-defense counter, which is obvious. But that is like saying that having a gun is not important to defend yourself because a huge number of people walk away from violence without ever needing one. It may not be needed, but it is rarely a bad thing to have, whether firearm or fitness. No one has ever lost such an encounter by being in too good of shape. This entangled fight goes on for four minutes!! For those who have not engaged in this kind of physical activity, four minutes might not sound a lot, but it feels like an eternity.  I assure you that four minutes of intense grappling against a person who’s actively resisting and fighting back will feel like running a 10k. Any violent encounter with the massive adrenaline rush and hormonal dump of the fight or flight reflex will exhaust us mentally and emotionally and most likely physically even in a very short fight. In a continuing encounter where your life is at stake that goes on for minutes? It will be the most physical thing you will ever experience. Fortunately for the good guy, the bad guy looked incredibly exhausted and was no longer interested in continuing his violent criminal activity. We better not count on that happening if we find ourselves in the same situation. When some supposed expert tells you that fitness is not important when you need to defend yourself, you need to run away from them as fast as humanly possible. Because they are either willfully lying or they are willfully ignorant. 

A side aspect of the above is that sometimes bad guys will break contact and run at the first sign of resistance. And sometimes they won’t, and will stay and continue to fight. Why this is truly key is that we have exactly zero idea which of those tow options our bad guy will take. Assuming he will run when you go for your firearm and he does not may lead to a very poor outcome.

Let’s learn all that we can from these instances. Not for our own personal preferred narrative, but for our own safety.