It is no secret that I pay more attention these days to old school boxing much more intently than I do the contemporary sport. And this article is one of the reasons why:
http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/casey/MC_OldSchool.htm
Favorite Moves Pt. 1 – Modified Pendulum Sweep
This is a clip of one of my favorite attacks, my modified version of the classic Pendulum sweep from closed guard. One of the reasons I like it so much (besides how high a percentage of success it has) is that it works across the board in all fighting contexts – sport grappling, MMA, or street oriented self-defense in a Weapons Based Environment.
And now a few details to watch for to help the move work consistently.
1) I only need to control the elbow at the beginning just enough to keep him from moving. I want the elbow in place long enough to do the hip escape and turn, which will then keep his elbow blocked.
2) As soon as the hip is around the elbow, I need to eliminate all space between his torso and mine. I prefer to grab across his back to his far waist, but if I have to go to the armpit or shoulder, I will.
3) Obviously, the direction you move your hips will partially be determined by his actions/energy, but if I have a choice I like going to my left. That helps to keep my weapon access points fairly free, and it has a good percentage chance that I am blocking his strong arm and his strong side access. Unless he is a lefty, and then forget what I just said 
4) I prefer to grab slightly under his far leg to facilitate the sweep, but I will take what I can get.
5) I want to drive into him hard, not just to keep his elbow blocked, but also to set up the pendulum momentum for the sweep. i don’t just fall back, I rotate a bit towards his far knee, and then use my outside leg to kick outwards to start the movement. To finish the positional change, I bring that leg back down towards his hips – hence the “pendulum” action
6) I make sure that as I go on top, my base is stable and I keep my chest low. I want to continue to disrupt any action he can take with his arms.
Brilliant BJJ
Just awesome to watch. Quite simply, one of the best BJJ performances I have ever seen. I was so lucky to see it live and up close. Just essential BJJ done at the highest level. Nothing fancy. Someone with less than two years of training will know every technique here. But this is how it is done with ultimate timing, position, and control.
This is how it is done, whether the context is sport grappling, MMA, or self-defense.
A Tip From An Experienced Coach
From Dan John, who is one the most intelligent and thoughtful, as well as experienced, strength coaches around. While his thoughts were directed at those in the strength and conditioning realm, they apply equally well to all fields of study. A succinct and direct description of the fallacy of being your own coach, or thinking your little garage group is producing all the answers.
If you’re training yourself, you’ll tend to know everything you decide to do. You’ll always push yourself exactly as hard as you feel like pushing yourself. You won’t have any gaps in your training because you have no idea what you’re lacking. Finally, you’ll be able to progress and regress easily in your system since your single follower— you— will know what you want, even if it isn’t something you need to do. I hope I painted a picture of mediocrity here.
Col. Cooper on Instructors
The great Col. Jeff Cooper for all practical purposes founded the modern defensive firearms training community. He was intimately involved in teaching people how to shoot for most of his 86 years. As such, he had many insights into what went into the making of a good instructor. While he was speaking to the ability to teach shooting, his guidelines have as much direct connection to the instruction of H2H fighting as well. Here is an excerpt from some of his writings:
“….a good instructor, above all, must seek his student’s excellence. He must place more value on his ability to teach a man to shoot than on his own ability to shoot. His work gratifies his ego when his student becomes a good shot, and improvement is more satisfying to the ego than excellence. It is fine to raise a B shooter to the A category, but it is far better to raise a D to a B……… (a good instructor) must realize that matters which are quite obvious to him may be complete mysteries to a novice. This sort of knowledge is not inherent and must be acquired through experience.”
So much good stuff there.
More Streetfight Videos
As a follow up to a recent post about how video can expose the RBSD/combatives crowd’s typical “streetfights are always this way” narrative:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9MzaziJrnQ
And:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-MN1suFFKg
And:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohn6smpukkI
Re-post – I Don’t Care if the Move Works
I wrote this about a year and a half ago, but since there are a lot more new readers of this blog, I wanted to bring it back because I think it is an extremely important topic.
There was a recent forum discussion that brought this to mind. During the discussion, a proponent of a particular technique made the huge mistake of making an appeal to authority argument, and said that his authority figure stated that this technique was good because “it worked as often as not” (that is pretty much a direct quote, and in context). Now, I don’t think he really thought about what he was writing, because even if that statement was true, it still only meant the technique worked 50% of the time, at best (the quantifiable translation of “as often as not”). That is not what I would consider a good percentage. Especially when there are demonstrably better techniques out there, that are as easily learned as what he espoused.
And even more so, his arguments showed that still too many people make the foolish argument of just because a move works somewhere and sometime, that puts it on equal footing with a technique that works most of the time in almost all situations for almost all people. Those are two completely separate things. So I re-post this older article with apologies to those who have read it before and are lookign for totally new content. I will get something new up in the next day or, but I feel this is important.
Older article:
In the medical field, there is a concept known as the placebo effect. Essentially, if a doctor prescribes a treatment such as a drug for an illness and the drug is not actually a real medicine (but rather something like a sugar pill) but the treatment acts as a cure or as relief anyway, that cure or relief has to be attributed to something other than the actual treatment. It can be chalked up to the person’s own mind accomplishing the goal, or it was a freak act. This phenomenon is well known and accepted. It does occur, more frequently than you might think. So why don’t doctors attempt to ever use this a normal course of treatment? Because there is never anyway to judge if it is actually working, and how often, and to what extent! Sure, the placebo effect can work on occasion, but more often, it utterly fails. So therefore it can never be taken seriously as a factor when trying to cure a patient. If you can’t plan on when it works, or to what level, it is useless as a treatment.
So how does this relate to self-defense? Bear with me for a moment and I will tie it in. This past week, I was participating in an online discussion forum (yes, I know how problematic that can be at times, but sometimes, you can get good information from doing so) related to self-defense and firearms/shooting, and there was a thread in which one of the posters made one of the classic blunders in the SD field. Now this particular poster has a huge chip on his shoulder and has a tendency to bolster his debates by referring to his own experience (he has some field work in this area). However, he continually will try to end the debate over a particular technique/tactic/method by saying “x worked for me”. Now, to him, this is his trump card, his “gotcha” moment. In truth, it is the fighting world’s equivalent of the placebo effect. What he fails to realize that IT DOES NOT MATTER IF IT WORKED IN THE STREET.
What the heck did I just say? Have I taken leave of my senses? Have I stepped into the realm of mystical approaches to combat? Am I suddenly going to start wearing a ponytail and wearing giant muumuus and talking about all the chi in my belly? Not at all. What I am saying is this: if the entirety of your justification of whether a technique is good or not happens to be if it worked, you are missing the larger point.
Just pointing out that something worked is not good enough. Let’s examine this for a moment. A couple of years ago, there was an MMA fight where one of the participants ran up the side of the cage to where he was almost horizontal, jumped off of it, turned in mid-air and threw a kick that not only landed, but almost knocked the other fighter out. Does anyone out there think that would be a good technique to add to their toolbox? It worked didn’t it? So why don’t we all start practicing that move?
There are also documented instances where a person has been shot in the face with a firearm and the bullet did not penetrate the skull, but rather skipped along the bone and came out the skin on the back side of the head. Absolute documented fact. Anyone want to base their gun defense on that? Why not? It “worked”, didn’t it?
I have a video clip I got off of YouTube. It is from Eastern Europe or Russia and shows a person robbing a store at knifepoint. The clerk did a crescent kick and knocked the knife out of the bad guy’s hand. So how many people are going to practice and advocate that move as a good knife defense move? Anyone?…… Bueller?…… Bueller? Again, why not? I have video proof a crescent kick can knock a knife from a hand. So let’s all jump in and start working on being Chuck Norris.
Hopefully, the gist of my point is starting to come across. Using what works as justification is as irrelevant to optimal training as the placebo effect is to medical treatment.
For anyone who has studied fighting for any length of time, one conclusion can quickly be drawn – sometimes the goofiest stuff will actually work. Combat is so chaotic that almost anything can happen at any given time. However, just because anything can happen, does not mean it will happen at a given moment, and therefore “anything” cannot be relied on, just as a doctor cannot rely on the placebo effect to cure his patient.
What we need to focus on is what are the things that work in the most situations, against the widest variety of opponents, and that can be trained with the least outlay of training time, and with the highest chance of predicting the effect of the move on the other person. In other words, what are the most efficient methods/techniques/systems that still have a high amount of efficacy, especially if we are speaking of the everyday person and his limited time to train.
A few years ago, I was involved in another online debate in which the other person was trying to say that the superman punch was a valid SD move because it worked in MMA. So I went and took a look at the prior two years of EVERY UFC match and looked at every instance of the superman punch. What I found was that, yes, the punch worked in MMA – 30% of the time! The other 70% it failed! And that was when executed by professional fighters whose job it was to do nothing but train, and even then, with all of that on their side, they could only land it a third of the time. Is that really a good use of training time if we only have a very limited time to train, or should we focus on techniques that we can make use of a lot more often? Certainly the move “works”, but does that even matter?
So, did the technique work because it was a good technique? Or did it work because the other guy did something really stupid? Or was it blind luck? Or was it because you are a 300 pound powerlifter and you are fighting a 140 pound tweaking methhead? I have a terrific escape when someone has the knee on belly position on you. It is a high percentage move IF you are bigger and stronger than the person on top. If not, and he is bigger and stronger, there is no way the escape works. Should that be a technique that everyone should practice as part of their fundamentals? No? Why not? It “works” – albeit under a narrow contextual range.
In summary, we most certainly need to take into account if a technique works in the real world. But, far more importantly, we need to look at a number of other factors as well before we judge said move as something that should be put into the personal arsenal.
New T-shirts
So I finally got the new t-shirts in. If you are interested, you can click here to order:
http://www.freewebstore.org/Immediate-Action-Jiu-jitsu/IAC_T-shirt/p1832886_14206000.aspx
Applying Combat Sport Methods – A Real World Look
One of the best benefits of the information age is that we no longer have to settle for “old wives’ tales” or “war stories” as the only proof of the validity of a given martial art or self-defense method/tactic. Up until even 10 years ago, it was not easy to counter unverifiable anecdotes with documented facts. I remember around 1999 getting into an online debate with a minor martial artist about whether grappling joint locks actually broke bones. I ran rings around his arguments and he looked really bad (which I think contributed to his leaving of the martial art world and his move to finding other ways of making a fast buck), but it took awhile because the internet was not as omnipresent or as vast as it is today. If that argument took place today it would be about five minutes of Google search to have tons of documented evidence.
So we get to see things easily that we had to take on faith for decades. For example, watch the following video clip and think about what is there and, more importantly, is NOT there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4S_lMg7loc
What do we see?
First, it is certainly a “streetfight”. It is obviously not two guys in a schoolyard pushing match. The one person is extremely aggressive and clearly wants to inflict pain and/or damage to the other person. Even as the other person tries to de-escalate and escape from the situation, the larger man continues to pursue in an attempt to hurt the other.
Second, there is an imbalance in the physical comparison. The aggressor is much larger than the person trying to move away. This is the classic mean and bigger bully picking on the small guy – right out of the old Charles Atlas ads.
Third, they are not in a gym on nice padded mats. Nor are they in an MMA cage or ring. The setting is similar to almost any urban area on the planet.
Fourth, there is no referee present. There is no third party to stop the use of foul tactics, nor is there anyone there to enforce a rule set or to keep outside influences to come into play.
Fifth, the defender uses a pure combat sport methodolgy to defend himself. It is incredibly clear that the he is a boxer, and uses the exact same tactics in the street that he would use in the ring.
So what do we NOT see?
One, we do not see multiple attackers. This is man versus man. This, according to many self-defense people, never happens. And yet it does. Why is this significant? Well, because if there are times when a fight/assault is one against one, then ignoring methods/tactics/techniques that are optimized for that in the hope that other, lesser methods work better against multiple opponents ( a very dubious and unproven hope, at best), only to never encounter an assault from multiple opponents is not a particularly useful idea. I have been conducting a research project over the past year or so, using huge databases with literally thousands of incidents, to try to quantify exactly the likelihood of that. While I am still working on it, the preliminary results are showing that, at best, the percentage of multiple attackers is 40%. So why should we ignore proven methods that work best in 60% or incidents, and still work, with only slight modifications in the other percent? It makes no sense. We should want best case answers as much as possible across the board.
Second, we don’t see weapons involved. Again, something that many experts claim will always be involved. And again using the same databases for my research project is showing somewhere in the area or the high 30s as a percentage of incidents where weapons are used. And many times those weapons are more opportunistic than purpose carried. Items such as tire irons/crow bars, steak knives, baseball bats, etc. This is absolutely not an argument to ignore the possibility. In point of fact, I think it is critical that we specifically train for that eventuality in part of our defensive preparations. However, that again does not mean we ignore high percentage answers for the vast majority of real world situations.
Third, we see no injury to the defender’s hands. He clearly hits the aggressor with a closed fist, and hits the bad guy on the head, including hard bony parts of the head. And yet, it causes him no problems at all, contrary to what many Self-defense instructors say (“never hit with the closed fist to the head”). Is the potential for injury there? Of course, just as it is if the defender had hit the bad guy with a chin jab and takes the risk of a devastating wrist or finger injury.
To sum up, this is not a call to ignore the dangers of multiple opponents or weapons. Those things must be trained for. In my own training, as well as when I teach, I always make it a point to include those principles. But, we need to be realistic about the odds, and stop making dogmatic pronouncements that a street assault will always go a certain way. The world is a big place, with lots of different people doing different things, all in a very chaotic manner. Let us deal with the variables and the chaos, and not try to impose our own wants and beliefs on the chaos.
The Best Training Tool Pt. 2
The previous article was me talking about how great Shadowboxing is and how useful it can be. This one will be a bit more specific.
The beauty of shadowboxing is that there literally are no limits to what you can work. Unlike methods that rely on particular equipment, or the need for a number of training partners, with shadowboxing, whatever you can imagine, then you can do it.
However, that is also where it can become useless as well. If we don’t treat whatever scenario/situation in our head as real as possible, then it can be nothing more than a poor and mindless dance, and an utter waste of time. It is extremely important to use your imagination the way we used to as kids when we played cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers. That is, we have to live in it in the moment. For example, if my scenario is two attackers coming at me from different angles, then all my actions must stay true to that vision. I can’t “drop out of it” until I am done for that round, whether it is 30 seconds or 5 minutes. If I do that, then the better I visualize and the more I commit, the closer I come to actually experiencing it, and getting the full benefit of doing so.
A key component is to ALWAYS, ALWAYS use the best body mechanics as possible. There can be no slacking here. Each movement, whether footwork, offensive attacks, or defensive actions, needs to be conducted with absolute fidelity to the idea that every motion should be perfect. Remember the cliché: Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice does.
Another critical detail is moving through space. A huge flaw I see too often is that people shadowboxing tend to stay in a very small area. If the space I have to work in is small (like a hotel room), then so be it. But if I am in my empty three car garage, why should I stay in tiny area? I should at various times move everywhere, because in a fight there is now way to know where you should or could go, and you better have the ability to move when needed. So, MOVE! Have the idea that if you start in a certain spot, you should end up as far away as possible.
Fourth, you need to vary the speed. There is a time and place to go slow and relaxed, but there is also a time to go with the energy and intensity of a real fight. Feel free to mix them, but the better you get at full power and speed, the more likely it will translate directly to an actual fight.
Next time I will talk about how to make shadowboxing even more productive. Meanwhile, here is an excellent video showing everything we just covered: