I recently finished the book “Good to Go” by Christie
Aschwanden. My son-in-law, who is a Major League Baseball strength and
conditioning coach, gave it to me for Christmas. The book is an in-depth look
at recovery methods after physical exertion and exercise and which ones are
documented to work and which ones are essentially snake oil.
The author is a long distance athlete (semi-professional for a few years) doing things like ultra marathons, and has a firsthand desire to look at recovery methods. Part of her work in the book are accounts of her actually going through some of these methods and what she felt before, during, and after. Keep in mind that an anecdote is in no way a definitive result, but it does provide an interesting addition to what otherwise could have been too dry and scholarly.
She covers pretty much anything and everything that may
conceivably be in use by athletes today, from supplements to cryotherapy. She
goes out of her way to find places that are experienced in whatever methodology
she is looking at, as well as looking deep into all the authentic research.
What I found most fascinating was how much bullshit and poorly designed tests are accepted as “scientific research” in so many cases. She makes a very good case that most of what is used to “prove” the efficacy of a given method is completely antithetical to true scientific study. In some instances – mostly and not surprisingly on the supplement side – it is out and out snake oil.
As an aside – the only verifiable recovery method that
worked equally well for everyone is getting enough sleep.
I do find a bit of fault in that she focused mostly on extreme cardio sports like marathons and cycling. While she checks in on a couple of other sports like basketball, she ignores other categories of activities. She almost completely fails to mention any of the power or strength based pursuits, and she completely leaves out combat sports or martial arts. So while her findings are a good start, I don’t think they are 100% universal at this point and there are still some things to research in this regard.
I did find it a good read with a lot of good stuff to think
about. I recommend it with some minor reservations.
I posted this a couple
of years ago, but I want to revisit it because it is a topic that unfortunately
keeps coming up. For some reason, there are a number of folks in the jiujitsu
community who are obsessed with the idea that only losers and lazy people pull
guard, and if you do it, you are violating the spirit of what Helio Gracie
built. This is the BJJ-centric version of “if you go to the ground in the
street, you will get killed” and just like that insipid phrase, has as much
real world usefulness.
This current mantra
being circulated in BJJ circles essentially tries to demonize someone for
pulling guard. The thought goes that if you are just pulling guard, you are
missing a substantial part of Jiu-Jitsu and are taking the lazy path. Now,
don’t misunderstand me. I come from an academy where we ALWAYS start on our
feet, and we spend a substantial amount of time working to understand throws and
takedowns, especially ones from a judo perspective. I am all for working the
takedown and being on top and I absolutely despise the current trend
(especially in the lighter weight divisions) of someone just dropping their
butt to the ground to start the match. I think being on top is an optimal place
to be, whether in competition or for self-defense. However, and this is the key
part to understand, optimal does not mean “100% of the time”. There are
extremely good reasons to at times pull guard, and I go over them in the
following re-posted article. Please try to keep in mind that context is king
(as I regularly try to get across), and ignoring that concept potentially puts
you in a situation of using improper tactics when you absolutely cannot afford to
do so.
Here is the original
article:
Recently, on the Strenuous
Life Podcast by Stephen Kesting,
Kesting talked about a question that often is argued
in BJJ circles – should you pull guard in competition? He and his guest spent a
bit of time on it and covered a few things pretty well (though the guest really
needs to get some depth of experience with realistic self-defense because he
missed the mark there), but I think they completely skipped over the single
most pertinent answer to that question. And that leaves me to give it a shot.
Should you pull guard
in competition? Of course you should, IF THE CONTEXT SAYS IT IS THE BEST
RESPONSE. That goes for street oriented self-preservation tactics as well. So
what is that context that we should concern ourselves with?
Simply put, if pulling
guard gives you a more optimal way to win, then that is the correct context. It
is a simple mantra, yet one that seems to be overlooked most of the time the
idea is brought up, but it is the only real reason to have any particular move
in your arsenal. No move of any kind, standing or ground, works every time, so
we need to make sure that the move we choose has the best chance to lead us to
victory.
What are examples of
the context? The most obvious is when you are sure your opponent is
substantially better at takedowns that you are. If you are facing someone who
is superior there, why would you try to match his strength? Just because some
fighting expert said we should always look to execute the takedown and end up
in control? Great idea, but against someone better than that, what is the
chance it will work for us?
Check out this video
compilation of a person going up against superior Judo players and using a
guard pull strategy to negate their advantages:
Here is a personal case
in point. A couple of years ago at the IBJJF Pan-Ams, in my semi-final match, I
was going up against a guy who I found out was once a member of an Eastern
European Olympic Judo Team. Now, I think I have some decent takedown skills
that have worked for me, and I certainly train them on a constant basis in
order to get even better at them, but come on! What were my chances of ending
up in a good position if I fought an Olympic level judoka for a throw? The
answer is slim to none, and slim already left town. Most likely I would have
ended up at least two points down and in an inferior bottom position. Instead
of wasting time, and/or getting thrown by fighting him on his strengths, I took
another path. I got both good initial grips, and pulled him hard into my closed
guard where I was immediately was able to get an overhook on one arm and grab
part of his far collar with the overhooking hand. I went straight into an
excellent position and ended up winning the match (I lost later in the finals,
but that is a sad story for another day). I am still waiting for someone to say
that was a poor strategy. I won, in a solid and convincing way, so where is the
problem? I have also won matches by getting the takedown. Both approaches work,
in the correct situation.
Think about it with a
good critical eye. Jiu-jitsu is about using your opponent’s strengths and
attacks against him. Going head to head in opposition to his strengths is the
exact opposite of that mindset. It makes zero sense.
What about in a
self-defense context? Exactly the same focus! If pulling guard can lead
to a faster and surer way to win (i.e. survive and prevail against a violent
attacker). Then that is what we should do. For example, if you are being
attacked by a bigger, stronger criminal and you are on ground that is unstable
or slippery such as rain or snow slick surfaces, are you really going to be
able to turn into your pet koshi-guruma without ending up falling over with
your feet coming up from under you? What if you knew with almost absolute
certainty that your attacker knew almost nothing about the ground? How well is
he going to be able to defend when you pull him into your guard and then
immediately transition into an armbar? In actual fact, my own coach did that
when he was assaulted once on the street about 1997. He did essentially a
version of a guard pull that resembled a failed yoko-tomoe-nage and as soon as
they hit the ground he shifted to a straight armbar and destroyed the
attacker’s elbow. Guess who stopped fighting at that moment? I will give you
three guesses, and all three should be gimmes. That assault ended in a couple
of seconds and my Professor walked away unscathed which seems like a pretty
good justification for that particular guard pull.
Why not exactly “street”, here is a guard pull in an MMA context where the grappler negated the striker’s superiority by taking him a different part of the pool:
Skip to the :50 second mark to see the guard pull, and note how after that position change, the grappler had the edge in controlling what was going on. The striker was completely out of his element, and was trying to figure out how to change his game plan to deal with it, and was failing badly. That most certainly would not have been the case if the grappler had stayed standing against the striker.
Make no mistake about what I am saying and please don’t put words in my mouth. I am not advocating guard pulls 100% of the time. I am advocating having the skill set and experience to be able to choose in the moment what is the path that gives you the best chance of success.
I recently did a podcast for the Modern Samurai Project and the host, Scott Jedlinski, and I had a deep conversation about the path in jiujitsu for new practitioners and how to act with courtesy in training. I think we covered some good ground that rarely gets covered. Check it out, and check out the earlier shows because Scott gets on some good folks.
All the organizational things we try, all the methods and
tricks we do to attempt to manage that chaos is just a band aid. There is no
solution, except learning to surf the big wave.
That is why Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is so useful, and tends to
become so addicting to so many people. There is nothing more chaotic (except
for life itself) than grappling. There is so much happening, and so fast, and
tiny fractional changes completely alters what can occur, that learning to deal
with it gives you some nice tools to dealing with the variables of everyday
life.
Case in point: if you move your elbow in an entanglement by
one inch; that spells the difference between success and failure (i.e. life or
death). No other aspect of fighting will such a miniscule change matter so
much. If we are in a ranged shooting encounter, and you move your elbow an
inch, there is little that will change. Maybe I slightly expose a body part or
remove a body part from targeting, or I slightly increase or decrease my recoil
control, but that will most likely will not affect the fight, but an inch is
all it takes for an opponent to get that better control over a limb, or to sink
in that choke a bit tighter, or for him to get a better position.
This factor can lead
to much early frustration in jiu-jitsu. We start to think we finally have that move
ready to land on our training partner, and in the blink of an eye that
opportunity is lost, and we may not even realize why, especially when we are
early in our jiu-jitsu adventure.
And this is one of the reasons why people who are new to
being on the mat need to be circumspect in any conclusions they think they
arrive at. There is a very good chance they are not seeing the entire puzzle. I
cannot begin to tell you how many times I have thought “I get it now” to then
having to completely revamp that opinion. There is just too much going on and
it always leads to information overload.
The good news is that if you continue to chug along and
refuse to quit, you start to see some order to all that chaos. Well, if not
order, at least you get a handle on how to handle the chaos. You start to see
how to surf and stay a bit ahead, or you build the reactions to handle the
non-stop changes and variables that get thrown your way. And that is where you
start to have some tools to handle the chaos of life. After all, if you can
handle that higher belt that outweighs you by 50 pounds and you adjust on the
fly to keep him from passing your guard, then dealing with the sudden client
crisis at the office seems a tiny bit more manageable.
It is not easy, and it does not necessarily come quick, but
it does come. Just keep after it.
I, along with my peers like Craig Douglas, Paul Sharp, Chris Fry and a few others, have been talking about the need to be able to integrate empty hand fighting methods, especially grappling, alongside firearms use for self-defense for decades. Over that time, a number of people have tried to argue that the entangled weapons fight does not happen, especially for civilians. They will try to get the idea across that somehow criminals never touch or come close to their victims, and all criminal assaults happen at distance.
Fortunately, with the prevalence of the internet and the information age and the ubiquity of video, we know how wrong that argument is. I have literally hundreds of videos showing that the entangled weapons fight, even for private citizens, happens fairly frequently. Here is a recent example. I like this video for a couple of reason. Number one, it happened this month, and number two, it happened in my city. As a matter of fact, it happened about a block away from the former location of my jiu-jitsu instructor’s academy., where I spent a lot of time, right round the same time of day this assault occurred.
Take note of a few things.
Everyone likes to pretend that they “never let someone get too close to them”. In today’s society, there is not a chance of that being true. How do you get off a public bus and not let someone get too close? Are you going to yell “BACK OFF!” to someone behind you? You know what happens after that? The police come by and interview you and possibly arrest you for either disturbing the peace, or some version of assault. You simply don’t have the right to personal space that trumps public interaction. You will be within double arm’s distance of other people – including strangers – more often than not. Pretending otherwise is delusional.
Take a look at how many other people were around. There were two within touching distance when the attack started. You can even see they looked and saw what was going on and they kept walking. You cannot count on outside help, nor can you assume that the bad guys won’t attack just because there is a crowd.
Note how the very first thing the initial attacker did was grab onto the victim. That is a classic clinch position, and in fact one in which jiujitsu players spend a lot of time dealing with. And if you think about it, starting that way makes perfect sense. He had a contact weapon – the knife – and so he had to be in contact for it to have the intimidation value. Even if he had a pistol, how effective is it to stand at 10 yards away to mug someone? “Hey you, put your wallet and phone down on the ground and move away” does not work particularly well, because if it did, bad guys would be doing that all the time. Instead they move in because that is the best way to succeed. They must exert enough control over the victim to get what they need, and physical control is easier and quicker. That attachment between attacker and victim happens time and again, more often than not.
Note how easily and quickly the fight goes to the ground. Also note how obvious it was that NEITHER side tried to go to the ground. This was not a grappling trained attacker fighting a grappling trained defender, but the consequence of fighting for your life when you don’t know how to NOT go to the ground. The typical advice to “not go the ground” is useless and moronic when you don’t put the time into learning how to stay on your feet. We all trip and fall just walking around normally at some point. Why does no one just say “never trip and fall”? Because it is obviously a stupid thing to say. Well, “don’t go to the ground in the street” is just as idiotic.
Observe how hard it was for the defender to get back to his feet. Again, the typical keyboard warrior advice to “just get up” is shown to be vapid. If you don’t know, it is only dumb luck that can help, or the incompetence of the attackers. They also had gotten what they wanted and were less interested in continuing, which was a blessing for the good guy. Otherwise, it may have been far worse. Also observe that as he runs away, if the attacker had a gun, there is a good chance the good guy would have been shot multiple times as he fled. Just running away may not be the best answer.
To sum up, the entangled fight in real life happens again
and again, whether weapons are involved or not. You can try to ignore that at
your peril.
John Johnston – the host of Ballistic Radio – and I recently had a terrific conversation about some rarely talked about topics in the training community. We covered how to give critique when you are an instructor, how to not insult training partners and treat them with dignity, and how once you start to see success when you are working to make yourself safer and more capable, the journey itself becomes the path. I thought this was a good use of 45 minutes.
It has become far more popular for a lot of instructors to teach shooting at contact or entangled distances. I am seeing it crop up again and again with new courses popping up all the time.
I am all for this, with the caveat that the instructor has actually put the work in. Rather than just show something that they have given little thought or effort to in order to appear that they are “cutting edge”, or that they have spent zero time exploring in force-on-force scenarios against role players that have the freedom to act as bad guys truly act, as long as the instructor has done the work, I will support them 100%.
Unfortunately, that effort into doing the work is generally overlooked, and replaced with the “well, I have been teaching shooting for 40 years” or “I have been LE for 40 years” or “I was a SOF face shooter in Dirkadirkastan” and they teach incredibly sub-optimal techniques. This area demands as much thought and effort and study as trying to get a sub second draw, or shooting B8s at 25 yards, and anything less is doing the students a complete disservice, and arguably is unethical.
And just having certain components at a high level – i.e. the instructor is an excellent shooter, or is a BJJ black belt – does not meant they will get it. Shooting in an entanglement is its own thing, and requires that the instructor has put time into it, nit just the individual pieces. A couple of years ago, there was a video from two top black belts, both with direct ties to the founders of the art, showing how to shoot at contact. It was atrocious, mostly because while they both are undoubtedly better at BJJ than I am, they have never been shooters. They live in an area where they cannot carry as a private citizen, and have never been in LE or the military, so they have no clue about shooting, which means they have no clue about shooing in an entanglement.
Here is a video showing some explanation of a couple of crucial things to deal with in retention shooting. If an instructor ignores these, than I submit he has not done the work.
Recently, I made a Facebook post concerning a shooting
session I had where I shot poorly. I was frustrated because I shot far below
what I know to be my demonstrated performance minimums and I expressed that
frustration by ranting about myself online. A large number of friends reached
out to me, either through comments on that post, or even by private message in
an attempt to help me solve the problem. I am deeply humbled that so many folks
would take time to do so, and I appreciate everyone who did. Thank you.
What they all were suggesting was that I put a red dot optic
on my carry pistol, and they all felt it would take care of any shooting
problems. Not to sound ungrateful, but I am rejecting that advice (for now), not
to flat out ignore it, but for a very specific and needed reason – the red dot,
while it will allow me to shoot better, will not permanently solve the issues I
have.
I have two very specific problems, and I think it is far
better to deal with them through software (built up skill and effort) rather
than hardware that solves the problem only as long as I have the hardware
available, but will allow the problem to arise as soon as the hardware is not
available.
My first problem is physical. Essentially, I have opposing
astigmatisms in each eye. That are somewhat at war with each other, and any
corrective lenses requires ad odd mix. In fact, when I wore contacts, there was
literally only one single company in the world that made soft contacts to that
prescription, and I had to take their prices because there was no competition.
So while one eye has poor mid-range and not great close range, the other eye
has less than stellar distance vision but perfectly fine view within arm’s
reach. So using glasses works for everyday things (except for the fact that I
have to take the glasses off to read or see the dashboard of a car) works fine,
it does not give me good perspective to shoot a pistol. Wearing them, I have
crystal clear view of the target, but the sights are so blurry that I am almost
point shooting. Wearing progressive lenses means I have to constantly bob my
head up and down to see close and far at the same time. Shooting without
glasses means the front sight is sharp and distinct, and the target is blurry,
but not so much that I cannot tell where the midpoint of a B8 at 25 yards is
(it is tough to do that, but I can just barely do it).
One of the things that contributed to my poor recent
shooting was that I knew all this, but was stupid enough to think I could
somehow “fix it” this time and I wore my correctives for the first two hours of
the session. Once I dumped them – as my shooting buddy and mentor Chris L. told
me to do – my performance quickly moved back to where it should have been. And
my FB rant was mostly yelling at myself for trying to ignore reality.
So why then don’t I take all the excellent advice from tons
of friends who are suggesting that I go to a red dot knowing that? I know how
to deal with the issue, and a red dot would be a good permanent fix, yes. But it is entirely down to the second issue.
This issue I have is one that is purely the result of poor
mental discipline. I eye track. For those of who are better shooters than I am
and don’t have that weakness, eye tracking is when your eyes bounce from the
front sight to the target in order to make sure you are getting good hits.
Unfortunately, that is a good way to not get good hits! Your eye jumps before
the round has left the barrel and now instead of the gun being properly aligned
it points elsewhere. Mine has a tendency to go low because I look over the
sights.
So the hue and cry arises. “But Cecil! That will be fixed by
a red dot! So stop being obstinate and jump on board the latest tacti-cool
thing.” And I cannot disagree. If all I cared about was the basic
accomplishment of a task, then going to a red dot would completely eliminate
the eye tracking issue since I would be essentially looking at the target the
entire time.
Here is the crux of my refusal. I am not focused on
accomplishing that task. The simple fact is that I can shoot well enough right
now that I have no doubt that I currently posses the shooting ability to take
care of 98% of any plausible violent situation in which I will need to use a
firearm to defend myself. In other words, any failure in such a situation will
not be the fault of my shooting performance. So what I am spending all this time
on is dealing with almost an abstract pursuit down the rabbit hole of tiny
fractional improvements on the existing skill set.
Don’t get me wrong either. There is absolutely nothing wrong
with this. My continued training in jiu-jitsu is a perfect example. Once you
get to purple belt level, your grappling skills will easily handle 95+% of any
H2H scenario, so putting so much time, money, blood, sweat, and tears into the
levels past that is just either for a purely enjoyment outlook, or for
competition, or, as I said, going down the rabbit hole of little things. There
is nothing wrong with that because arguably that is a far more useful and
productive way to spend time in our lives instead of mindlessly cruising the
internet, or countless hours drinking at a sports bar watching sports ball.
However, this allows me to try to fix what I am able to with
my shooting performance through software instead of hardware, without risking a
failure to perform when I need to. Will I go to a red dot sooner than later? Almost
certainly. But I don’t feel like I need to do it RIGHT NOW.
Again, thank you to all that reached out. I hope this
explains why I am not taking all that good advice for the moment.
One of the insidious problems facing those of us in the
self-defense community is that far too many people have an extremely narrow
view of what we face when dealing with violent criminal assault. Too many
people seem to think that said assault will look a certain predictable way, and
base their training plans on that assumption.
If you think I am exaggerating, then let me repeat some clichés
that get tossed around in the training community to prove it.
“The gunfight will be 3 rounds at 3 yards and last no longer
than 3 seconds”. This is a popular one. People love to repeat this one, and use
it to justify their own level of competence. The problem is that these numbers
are an average at best, and what seems to be lost is that an average is just a
line that is even between all the results (pedantically speaking, that is actually
a median, but everyone tends to think of average this way regardless). Which means
that there is an equal number of instances where the numbers are greater than 3
– longer distance, more rounds, and longer time, as well as an equal number of
scenarios where they are less – i.e. closer than 3 yards, less than 3 rounds
and shorter time than 3 seconds. And that there are very, very few instances
that actually take place at that mid-line result, which means if you are training
to that standard, it will almost never arise!
Another one in particular that annoys me badly is this: “All fights start on your feet”. This was created and has taken on a life because of the pushback to the demonstrated real world success of grappling. It serves to make those who cannot grapple and are not willing to put their ego aside to get some training in it feel better and smug about not grappling. It sounds reasonable at first. Except for the salient fact that no, in all actuality, not all fights start on your feet. Many, many of them begin elsewhere. We can easily search for documented incidents, including videos where violent situations begin in a car or a bus, or a restaurant booth, or a barstool, an airplane seat, or even when the victim is lying down. To make the huge assumption that all attacks will only begin when we are standing upright is to set us up for failure at the moment when we cannot afford to fail.
Take a look at this bus driver. Note where the fight started.
And not to let grapplers off the hook – they don’t get a free pass. They can be susceptible to this as well. The one that is particularly egregious is the “well, I know that move (something inverted or a guard pull or something along those lines) is fine for competition and training but it is not a street move”. Again, this is a false assumption that the attack will be starting on our feet in a wide open parking lot by someone who looks like a bad guy that we see coming from 50 yards away. There are those, sure, but far more are the ones that don’t fit there. Just as I talked about above where you are an Uber driver and your passenger decides to assault you for your Iphone that is prominently displayed on the dashboard, or the bus driver attacked while in the driver’s seat. Guess what? Inverted moves where you are in a 360 degree environment and can put your feet on seats and dashboards and car roofs make those moves incredibly effective and useful. Or the insipid advice to never pull guard. What if the attack happens on a icy or rain slicked surface? Ever tried to maintain footing there? You know where you will probably end up anyway? You guessed it. The ground. Where you would have been in a far stronger and more aggressive position if you and pulled guard (and no, this is not me telling everyone to pull guard in a streetfight every time. It is a contextual reason why it may very well be a really smart tactic, not a universal one).
To sum up, don’t assume how your fight is going to look.
Take a realistic view of how fights may plausibly look, and prepare
accordingly. Don’t settle for platitudes that accomplish nothing.
