One of the things that keeps showing up over and over in the self-defense training community  is the question of who is exactly a “subject matter expert” (SME) and how they become such.

There is much controversy over things like length of time doing something, how well you do it, and how well you communicate, but sometimes there are some signs that can point to someone who knows what they are doing.

In my opinion, a sure sign of a SME is that they are still working hard to get better even though they have been doing a task for a lengthy time and have accomplished some significant goals. I have trained with a number of great performers in different disciplines and one thing they all have in common is a desire to keep working on their own skill set, and rather than them talking about how great they are, they spend far more time talking about how they need to do more or work harder or find another teacher to help guide them. It is a marked contrast to so much of the typical discourse on social media in our current age.

This was hammered home to me recently when I was listening to a podcast that was interviewing Angus Young from AC/DC. I don’t think that it can be argued that Young is truly an SME of guitar playing and that if he is not one of the greatest guitarists of the past 50 years, then he has certainly been influential and he has a distinctive playing style that separates him from the pack. And yet this guitar great said this:

“I’ve been doing it all this time now, and I’m still learning”

And this is in reference to him playing the band’s own songs, most of which he had a hand in writing and has been performing sometimes nightly since the mid-70’s! And he still is trying to get better at it, and does not think he has reached the stage of knowing it all.

So be like Angus. Stop telling everyone how much you know and what you have done, and instead keep the nose to the grindstone and try to improve on your performance regardless of where everyone else thinks you are. Then, when you do speak, you speak from humbleness and not ego.

 There are a lot of arguments that happen in the self-defense training community. 9mm vs. 45, AIWB vs. strong side carry, WML on a pistol or not, spare mag carry or not, knife carry or not, hand-to-hand training or not, ad infinitum. Almost all of the acrimonious debates are a massive waste of time, and do little to make people safer and more capable.

One minor argument, but one that may have far more reach and functionality, is the discussion over whether cardio or strength is more important in a fight.

Both sides are passionate in that focus. The strength proponents will say that being strong enough to overpower an opponent is a good way to ensure that the fight is short and cardio does not enter into it. The pro-cardio side will say that you cannot know or ensure that your fight will be over in a few seconds. Think of the recent situation from Florida where a disabled elderly man had to fight off three home invaders while the police did not respond even though they had set up a perimeter around his house. He had to continue for a long extended time (over 15 minutes!). Your fight may end in seconds, or it may not. And along those lines, how many times have you seen online experts advocate “just running away” from an attack. How far and for how long do we need to run? Are we assuming that the bad guy will not bother to chase, or will give up after a few steps? And if he doesn’t? And you need to run a mile or even more before you escape, but your cardio sucks because you have never bothered to run?

As in most debates of this nature, I tend to be the one who says “it depends”. I think both sides have much merit, and once again, it comes down to specific and individual context. It is absolutely a good idea to be as strong as possible because at the very least it prevents you from being overpowered even if you are not strong enough to overpower the attacker. And it is just as good an idea to have as good a cardio engine as possible because as anyone who has been through a life or death assault can attest, those few seconds can seem like hours and you do not want to gas out under that level of stressor.

Outside of ego or financial reasons to argue for one side (don’t be surprised when that coach who is known as a trainer for powerlifters or Olympic lifters pushes for everyone to focus on strength), you need both. I will entertain no discussion about that. Both are needed, in different amounts in different situations. It is all well and good to say “get as strong as possible”, but if you are 5’ 2” and weigh 120lbs, you will never truly build the strength to outmuscle someone 6’ 2” and 230lbs. It is just not possible for most people to reach those limits. Conversely, you may have great cardio and go for hours, but if you have little power, you may find yourself still controlled and thrown around by that bigger, stronger, but less conditioned attacker. Both qualities are important and should be trained. The real decision, in my opinion, is how we allocate precious training time to each side of this equation.

Few of us will be able to have the free time to train as a professional fighter and it is difficult to find enough free time to do what we want. Add to that the very real item that we also have a lot more skills to work on H2H, shooting, medical, legal understanding, pre-fight threat containment, etc.  So a major aspect of our focus is to figure out how to get the most out of what time we have.

Here is a suggestion for the strength and conditioning (S&C) work – Your immediate focus should be on which one you are most deficient in. How do we determine that? The best way is by doing some kind of fight oriented training. Taking the ECQC course with Craig Douglas, or MDOC with Paul Sharp (or my coursework even) will give you a weekend look at where you have the greatest gap. Did you gas out right away and had a hard time getting work in? Then obviously cardio should be the main thing to work on. Or did you get manhandled by your training partners? Were they able to control and dominate you and kept you from performing the physical skills you were attempting? Then you need to move some iron. Look at your most dire gap, and start to work on it.

For some, it will certainly be strength. I have always been okay in that department, but I have had severe asthma my entire life, so my cardio is a massive and ongoing concern. I absolutely need to make sure that my lungs can overcome the bronchial constriction that I will experience in a life or death encounter. We all have to make that calculation, but do so from an honest assessment, nit from what you prefer, or what some Subject Matter Expert has said.

I like the approach of doing 4-8 week blocks of singular focus. For example, currently I am doing a strength block. 3 days a week I am lifting some heavy weights and making sure I have moved the needle forward in that arena. While doing so, one day a week I do a basic 45 minute long, steady distance (LSD) cardio workout for general maintenance. Along with 3-5 days a week on the BJJ mats, this keeps my cardio at a reasonable state. When I reach the end of the current cycle, I will most likely transition to a focus on the cardio with multiple days doing that, with a single strength day for maintain what I have achieved.

By the way, here is a really nice feature of strength work. You can indefinitely maintain gains there by one workout a week of a near maximal, low volume, low rep session. So as long as you do that, you will not lose anything. I wish the same could be said for cardio, but the best we can hope for there with one day a week is a slower loss. But still, we have some flexibility in our long term planning.

If you want to really look at this area, there are a few resources I would advise. Drop me an email if you would like some direction. One that I am hoping will be available soon is an e-book written by Larry Lindenman for Point Driven Training. I have a copy and it is a terrific “one stop shopping” info manual on training for not just S&C, but nutrition and mobility work as well. He has not finished it or made it available for sale yet, but I am trying to convince him to do so. If it happens, I will shout about it everywhere I can. Keep looking here.

After my recent article about the new El Nino push dagger from Shivworks Product Group, I received a number of inquiries about not just that specific blade, but push daggers in general. As a follow up, I decided to do something for everyone to read.

From the early 2000’s to roughly 2007, I was in a full on deep dive on push daggers. As a long term Filipino Martial Arts knife-centric geek (my training in FMA started in 1984, though I had been reading and trying to do it on my own since 1980) I had toyed with push daggers n the past, but they are not optimized for a normal FMA outlook. However as I shifted to a more combat sports focus centered on boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and Brazilian Jiujitsu, the PD became more interesting and useful, because it is an ideal platform for someone who has a classic boxing fighting game.

Whereas FMA and other blade oriented arts spend much of their time on intricate slashing and varied stabbing patterns, the push dagger is much simpler – lock the handle tightly in your clenched fist and punch. Punch the same targets as in the same manner you would if you had a bare knuckle closed fist. Think the long straights of the jab or cross and the tight infighting strikes of an uppercut or shovel hook. You do not need to change anything, and you do not have to spend an extraordinary amount of time to build the push dagger techniques into your already existing fighting methodology. Essentially all you have to work on is making sure your hand is holding the PD tight and firm.  But you should have that tight a fist formation even as a pure empty hand striker, so it is not intrinsically different, which is quite unlike trying to add in the classic FMA/Indonesian/Japanese/or other typical knife fighting system.

The other vital area to ensure the best outcome is to focus on precision in your hits. Don’t just throw strikes at general areas, but rather a precise and defined spot. One of the reasons people hurt their hands when punching in the street (besides a poor fist formation) is not targeting small areas. If you think of “hitting the head”, that is probably what you will do, to include bony skull. If instead you try to hit the small moustache notch between the nose and mouth, you will be far more likely to come close to that and not inure your knuckles. Think of the proven shooting adage of “aim small, miss small”. On a similar note, blades are not great stoppers and that can be exacerbated by just stabbing blindly. Again, purposefully looking for a precise spot will make for a more effective result, and even be more humane because you will not have to stab someone 37 times to produce an effect.

And if you also have a solid “dirty Boxing” game (i.e. a combined clinch and striking method where you control the opponent as you fire off close range strikes), it is even more effective. Having dominant positional control while firing push dagger fueled shots into the bad guy while he has little say in the matter makes for a pretty good self-defense plan, and makes for a better method for stopping him from committing more violence on you or your loved ones.

And an even better add on is that each side of the equation helps minimize the deficiency on both parts. The weakness of striking is that no matter how hard you hit, you are limited in power by size/mass. You can have the best mechanics but if you weigh 140 pounds, you will not hit as hard as the 250 pounder with crappier mechanics. There is a reason that great lighter weight boxers, even ones known to hit hard like Roberto Duran, never won a heavyweight championship. By putting a sharp metallic object in there, it significantly up scales what you deliver when you land that strike. And the weakness of the push dagger (or any blade for that matter) is that sometimes the bad guy does not know he has been stabbed and it had little immediate effect. However, when you are hitting them with good mechanics, power, and precision, it amplifies what is felt by the attacker in a way that him being stabbed alone does not accomplish.

While it is a fairly simple step to go from a boxing game to adding a PD into the game plan, you do still need to put a bit of time into specific training. Obviously you need to get used to holding it and being mindful of the blade and you need to get used to the handle being in the middle of your palm as you make a fist, but you also need to understand what it feels like to strike something hard and unyielding. This is the step missed by about 98% of the PD makers because if they took the time to test their own blades in this manner, they would not be putting out the designs that they do with features like too long a junction between blade and handle (probably the most egregious violation with most PDs). I suggest a small step first to make sure that the blade is not going to turn or collapse in your hand when you make contact (and my first step whenever I test a new PD) is to take a bunch of cardboard and fold it over or stack different pieces until they are about 18 inches thick, wrap it all over in duct tape, and attach it to something that gives a bit like a heavy bag, and then start striking it. Just make sure that you start with minimal power and gradually amp it up. You may also want to wear some kind of protective glove. I have cut myself on a few poorly designed push daggers in the past when I tested them in this manner. Having an extra safety layer to protect the hand can be a nice bonus.  If you can hit the cardboard full force and the handle stays locked in place, then move up to tougher targets. My favorite ones are 5 – 10lb bags of rice or beans wrapped in duct tape (I like doing this because it helps simulate clothing and/or skin resistance without going beyond realistic expectations). Not too expensive and easily obtained, but still gives a reasonable response.

Before you carry one and rely on it for self-defense, make sure you vet any push dagger by actually doing this step. Do not skip it.

Once all the above is understood, there still remain two potential drawbacks to the push dagger.

The first drawback to consider, and one I cannot help you with, is the legal aspect. Many jurisdictions ban any kind of PD. If so, then I strongly advise you to not ignore this fact. Using a banned weapon, even in an otherwise legally justified situation, may go against you. This is an important but often overlooked point.

The other problematic area is that regardless of how you carry, it is close to impossible to effectively set the sheath up in way that the blade is equally accessible and deployable by either hand in an ambidextrous manner. And in truth, this is the main reason I finally went away from primary carry of a push dagger. My main knife is the Craig Douglas designed ClinchPick and I prefer to carry it as Craig envisioned – on the belt, forward of the hips, with the handle pointed in towards your centerline at a diagonal angle. This allows absolute equal access by either hand. No matter what the position you find yourself in, even if you are pinned to the ground belly down with the bad guy on top, as long as you can articulate the elbows, you can get the ClinchPick out. I tried to achieve this same thing with a PD but could not solve the problem. I had multiple custom kydex sheaths made to my specs, and tried untold number of places and spots on the body to match this hugely helpful carry method, and none of them worked. If one hand was optimized, then even if the other hand could reach the knife, it was with much more contortions or extreme angles. In other words, not optimal for a life or death struggle where every second and inch count.

Now, this is not necessarily a deal breaker for some folks. After all, we already give up that same ability with our typical handgun carry set up, and most of the time with our spare carry ammo. Yes, I know we all work on that weak hand only draw from our appendix rig, but how truly functional is it? It is possible yes, but far from a good thing. For some people, having the pistol set up for right hand draw, and the PD on the left side with the plan that the left hand will use it is a pretty good concept. I offer this possible negative aspect not to tell you to completely dismiss the push dagger in your personal system, but merely to ensure you are aware of any possible problems. I myself still carry a Special Circumstances Sominer Infernus PD on a Chris Fry designed Pocket Shield in my left pocket many times, and I am completely comfortable knowing that it can only be drawn by my left hand. I just have made other plans when that is not possible. No big deal, as long as we plan ahead.

To sum up, the Push Dagger can be a very viable and useful tool but like all tools (to include the EDC pistol) we need to do a bit of work to put it to its best use.

It’s funny that we are always looking for the new hotness. Somehow, we have an inherent belief that if something is newer, it is automatically better. In every area, the new thing completely replaces the current thing in our heads.

The bitter truth is that most of the time, we are wrong. Sure, on occasion something cool comes along that is truly different and it a leap forward, such as the introduction of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. However, that is the exception that proves the rule. Generally, the newer thing is just a repackaging of old, or it is different but has no added value to what already exists.

Here is a perfect case in point. I originally read this book, John Jesse’s Wrestling Physical Conditioning Encyclopedia when I check it out of the Phoenix Public Library in 1980. I checked it out 4 or 5 more times over the next year, until finally I tried to buy it for myself. Keep in mind this was decades before the internet and the convenience of Amazon. No bookstore in the state of Arizona had it in stock (I know, because I called pretty much all of them). It became the first book I ever had special ordered thanks to a helpful employee at B. Dalton Bookseller in Paradise Valley Mall. Over the next few years I went through this book and make notes all through it, until eventually I had to buy a second copy to keep it readable and look nice in the bookshelf.

In this book is literally everything you need to know about strength, condition, mobility, and training programs to get anyone into a good solid fighting condition, not just for “wrestling” but as a general prep to fight or defend yourself. As I said, I first read it in 1980, and followed a couple of the programs (the ramp up for running guide in particular is genius).

So, did I do the smart thing and ignore most of what I saw that came after and pursued this methodology to get in the best condition possible? Of course not. This is me we are talking about. I jumped after each new “discovery” I made after that, to include some truly epic dumb crap (Gold Gym’s Book of Strength Training for example – basically bodybuilding programs tailored to different body parts to prep you for a specific sport – soooooooo stupid). Now, some stuff that I found after were great, like the bulk of Dan John’s work, or the stuff that Joel Jamieson put out. But for the most part, I wasted a ton of time chasing the new shiny squirrel.

So many times I would like to go back in time and bitchslap the hell out of 20 year old Cecil. He was such an idiot.

I originally wrote the following article years ago, but I think it may be even more relevant today than when I first wrote it. We have more people training some aspect of personal protection today than ever before, but perhaps some are not focusing as much on the most important things. And so we look at the concept of “Big Rocks” training:

Re-post:

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.

As someone who teaches coursework that tend to lean towards the somewhat physical, I am used to getting questions from potential students about that physicality. I am also used to hearing from people who are not and never will be students list all the excuses about why they will not train in such a class.

Whenever I talk about the need for this material, or post a video about it, there is the inevitable pushback from people along the following lines: “That is all well and good to say we need to train this way but I am XYZ……” Generally it is some variation of “I am too injured, too old, too crippled, worried about getting hurt and paying for medical treatment, etc…”

And I understand that, I truly do. The harsh truth though is that the person who we have to most worry about – the violent criminal attacker, or his buddies, or the mob in the middle of a riot, or the terrorist, and so on – does not give a flying bag of feces about your reasons or rationalizations. He is not going to start to assault you and then realize you cannot physically fight back and then stops his assault. As a matter of fact, your physical issues make it more likely he is going to select you as a victim.

One of the most important yet overlooked parts of self-preservation is getting you deselected as a victim before anything happens. Projecting an aura of some physical capability is a damn fine way to do that. Rather than running from working to build that capability in even a minimal way is a terrible strategy. The idea is to do what you can to the best ability that you can. You may not be a BJJ black belt world champion, or world class Olympic lifter, or a Golden Gloves boxer, but having any physical fighting ability is better than having none.

As to the issue of actually dealing with doing some physical actions in a class, or pushing your strength and fitness limits, it is irrelevant. I know of no legitimate teacher of this sort of thing who expects everyone student to perform at a professional athlete level. I certainly don’t, and I know my brothers in the Shivworks Collective don’t either. Not do excellent teachers like Chuck Haggard, Greg Ellifritz, Guy Schnitzler, Steve Moses, Ben of Redbeard Combatives, or the other handful of real instructors out there.

If you have to sit out a few minutes, or have to not do a particular technique or drill, not one of us will say a negative word. On the contrary, we will all do what we can to make sure you are still getting the maximum out of the class and the material. Instead of being made fun of, you will get the same coaching that the star fighter in the class gets. That is an absolute, written in stone guarantee.

So don’t worry about whatever limitation you think you have. Come and take ECQC, or my class, or Paul Sharp’s MDOC, et al, and do what you can as well as you are able, and make yourself that much more capable. And we will do everything we can to help you achieve that.

When we are fighting off a violent attacker, especially when it is up close and at bad breath distance, there are so many things going on, and the chaos is flowing around you, and the mind is on overload, it is easy to make wrong choices.

Too often in the self-defense training community empty platitudes are the only thing offered. “Violence of action!”  Or “I will do whatever it takes to fight back!” or the most insipid of them all “I’d just…….” Somehow those are supposed to let you know how to win when the brain is on vapor lock and the attacker is overwhelming you.

The fact is that the above are exactly that – empty platitudes that have zero relationship to functional fighting methods. While giving simple ideas are good to give a guide pole that is easily grasped, they still have to be workable. One such idea is an important underlying principle I teach in my coursework. This idea is “Don’t Lose”.

I am sure people reading this are saying “well of course you don’t want to lose. That is not real advice”. And they could not be more wrong. While it seems fundamental, in the heat of the battle what happens over and over is that we get in a hurry to get to the end state – in this case surviving a violent assault – and that rush tramples over the principle of not losing.

You see it occur even in with major professional athletes in big MMA fights. Every single UFC card is almost guaranteed to have one fight where one fighter is perhaps even winning the fight when he gets in a hurry to end it and opens himself up for a counter strike by the opponent and gets knocked out. This tendency is more pronounced when someone if desperately defending themselves from an attack, especially when taken by surprise.

We try to hurry to get to a better response but fail to see how we open up windows of vulnerability. The biggest example is in any Force-on-Force scenario where one party tries to get a gun into play at the wrong time and it gets taken away and even used against him.

So instead of trying to just get it over with, focus on staying safe first, and only then take the next step. Don’t lose, because as long as you have not lost, you have a chance of winning.

I will go into more depth on this subject in upcoming articles.