The following is a terrific interview with two friends and good dudes who put a lot of legitimate sweat equity into training, Their insights and how they put things into perspective are just awesome to listen to. I wish I could articulate some of these concepts as well as they do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pStOqx5RcPs

One of the toughest things to remember when we are training to defend ourselves or our loved ones is that it is not a sprint, but a marathon.

It seems otherwise, because we want to get to that level of functionality where we can accomplish the above goals as fast as humanly possible. But realistically, while we need to get to work as soon as possible and do as much as we can, we can’t do it all because we only have so many hours in the day, and some skills and improvements only come over time. As an example, getting strong enough to not get bulled around by an attacker cannot come overnight. To build that level of strength, especially if we start at a place of being fairly weak requires effort over time, even if you are foolish enough to try to take some kind of personal enhancement drug like anabolic steroids.

So, we need to realize that we are in it for the long haul. Once we accept that, we can use different strategies to get better such as concentrating on important skills in blocks of time while maintaining the other skills.

One strategy that I have found is truly life altering is the paper a day analogy. This was first told to me over 30 years ago by one of my instructors, Paul Vunak. He explained it like this:

If every day, you laid a single piece of paper on your desk, you would not have very much after a week, or a few weeks, or even a few months, but at the end of a year, you would have almost a ream of paper, which is a significant amount. So if all we have time to train is three minutes, then fine. But do that three minutes every day without fail, and concentrate on a fundamental skill. Perhaps that skill would be shadowboxing. In that case, shadowbox for three minutes a day with 100000% focus and intent, and do that every day. Don’t look at it in a few weeks or months. Wait to check your progress after a year or so. By that time you will have racked hours of solid, useable practical training, and more importantly, you will have done it CONSISTENTLY. Recent studies in learning theory have led most experts to the conclusion that amount of practice is less important than how recently you trained. The skills are much closer to the surface when you spend a couple of minutes daily, rather than three hours a week but only done twice a week.

So if all the needed work seems daunting, and you have only a short time available, just pick something essential, and train it for that small amount of time available, but do it as close to daily as possible. I can truthfully say this concept probably benefited me more than almost any other single idea over the past 35 years.

Give it a shot.

I have written in previous posts how we have so much to train for when we take a realistic appraisal of what is needed to truly be prepared in a self-defense scenario.

We have a lot to cover and we all struggle with finding the time to fit it all in as efficient a manner as we can. It is a daily effort.

Unfortunately, life often gets in the way of all our plans. For example, recently, I had a family medical situation occur that caused me to have to put most outside things on hold for six weeks to help take care of someone. My regular training plans were massively disrupted because overnight, I literally went to almost no free time. Trying to fit in all the usual items was not possible and I had to look to compromise. I had to get as much in of all the needed skill sets as possible in the limited time I had. What did I do? I focused almost entirely on Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

Why did I make that choice? For one, I actively teach it both in traveling seminars as well as multiple times a week and therefore need to stay on top of my game. However, even if I retired from teaching tomorrow, I would have made the same decision.

The most obvious initial answer is that it works as a method of defense against attackers. That is a well proven statement that is only argued by those with an agenda that has nothing to do with truth, or who are blinded by their own prejudices. If I find myself on the ground against an attacker or attackers, nothing prepares me with the essential actions like BJJ does. What a lot of people miss is that it also prepares me if I am still standing but entangled with an opponent. Many fighting authorities talk about the need to stay on your feet and not get taken to the ground. One of the best ways to ensure that can be accomplished is to be able to negotiate the entanglement through proper head, elbow, hip and foot position, good hand control, and keeping the level of your hips below your opponent. Not only can you practice those things standing, you can do a lot of the work horizontally on the ground and it transfers to the vertical plane. More added value while doing BJJ!

The next reason was that it is one of the finest ways of training your fitness to fight. Want to know that you can engage in combat on the street against someone for an extended time (because we do not know how long the attack will go on – seconds, minutes, hours, who knows?)? Well then, fight someone for long rounds on the mat. If you can do that in the training environment, then you most likely have a good chance to do so when you need to protect yourself.  Your cardio will stay at a combative level, and all that hands on work against another resisting partner (who often times may outweigh you by 50 or more pounds) will give you some functional strength work as well. What about mobility? Train jiu-jitsu for an hour or two and your joints and spine and hips will move as much as a dedicated mobility/flexibility workout.

BJJ also gives me a sporting outlet if I so choose. Rather than being an armchair quarterback, I prefer to be under stress and active. Even into middle age I like to keep my game as sharp as possible and nothing does that better than competing against an unknown opponent who has the same skill set as you. And competing in front of an audience or on an internet broadcast pay-per-view, or on a DVD gets you used to pressure. It is not exactly the same as a life or death struggle, but if you can’t perform in a non-threatening pressure situation, how are you ever going to know for sure you can perform when your life is on the line?

And another reason is that if you are fortunate to find the right BJJ School, you will have a social support circle unmatched anywhere else. There is something powerful in the bond you develop with your teammates that arises out of the shared effort of trying to make the other person tap time after time, and the ego crushing that comes from it. We all win, and we all lose, and in that understanding comes a new family. That is not something I ever found in a typical fitness gym, nor is it something I have ever experienced on a shooting range, outside of Craig Douglas’ ECQC course, which has more in common with a BJJ class than most typical handgun coursework.

And finally, it is the best stress relief I have ever found. When you are in the middle of a round of “rolling” (i.e. sparring), the only way to survive is to focus 100% on what is happening at that moment. Everything else in my life – job problems, financial issues, personal issues – has to be left outside when you step on the mat. It is like a perfect moving Zen meditation. The only thoughts are totally in the “now”.

Watch this match between two of the best super-heavyweights in the world. Notice how there is so much movement and energy and, yes, art, all happening at one time:

So, for all these reasons, I feel like BJJ is the single best bang for the buck activity you can do to become a better person, as well as a safer one. This is not to say that it is an excuse not to do other types of training, but if you find yourself in a place where you have limited time, look to BJJ for the best bang for the buck.

I finally put up the tentative 2015 schedule. Tentative in the sense that there are at least three or four more to add as soon as everything is finalized. But I didn’t want to waste any more time getting the confirmed ones up. Go to the Schedule page to see.

Thanks for looking!

Recently, a friend of mine, noted pistol instructor Todd Green, posted an article about the need for trainers to not shove their dogma down every trainee’s throat (http://pistol-training.com/archives/9186).

It was an excellent article and one I agree wholeheartedly  with. However, this attitude of “everyone needs to find what fits them best” can be, and too often is, taken to the extreme where that becomes a blanket excuse that literally anything espoused by anyone is justified as valid. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we can show through actual real world footage what is working and what is not, we cannot accept all ways as valid. Just because someone does not like to grapple, they don’t get to ignore the reality of it. Or if someone says that they have a better way of firing a pistol under stress, then show it so the world can see it for themselves. We have an objective, end-based performance standard, and we have a general idea of best practices to get there, whether we are talking about firearms, knives, impact weapons, or H2H. If you want to say you have a better way, prove it publicly and openly, not is your little closed door world where you get to act all Yoda like, pretending you are some awesome fighting guru.

I have had these discussion innumerable times with a number of my friends and peers in the training community like Mick Coup, Paul Sharp, Craig Douglas, Claude Werner, and Larry Lindenman, among others. Mick one time put it very succinctly to me – “More than one way to skin a cat…True, there is, but generally not when you want it done properly…” Exactly. The other form of the cliche is “all roads lead to the same place” Well, maybe, but if one road is a direct line via highway and avoids street traffic, and another road is a long, windy one that goes through treacherous and dangerous terrain, and severely damages your vehicle, are they really the same path? And is it okay to take either way? Of course not! We want to take the best route that works for most people most of the time. Anything else is a waste at best, and at worst can get someone hurt or killed.

Take a look at weight training. There are a lot of methods to get bigger, stronger, and more fit with weights. We know how the best way to lift to put on muscle. We know the best protocol to get stronger. We know the best way to use them to increase muscular and cardio endurance. Those methods are not the same as each other, and all have an objective standard to meet. Now, anyone who has never lifted before and then starts any program will most likely add muscle, get stronger, and get more fit with a single methodology. However, that won’t last forever and they will have to quickly move to the accepted methods. Arguing that any weight lifting system will work using this example is a failed point. We are looking at the overall success rates, not what works in a short time frame, or for a unique individual. Those are anomalies. We need best practices that can be replicated by most people in most situations.

Self-defense is the same way. There are a lot of paths up the mountain (to use another insipid cliché) but I want to use the best, safest path that will give me the best chance of reaching the top, and as an instructor I need to be looking for the best way that will give as many of my athletes the best shot at doing so themselves, always taking into account their own individual situations. Doing otherwise is a disservice, and if we are talking about self-defense, it can also be ethically negligent.

Does this mean that we always teach one dogmatic path and ignore all else? Absolutely not. We should always be looking to improve and expand on our knowledge. If we can find a better, or another way, that meets that same objective performance standards, then we certainly should adopt them. But not just because it is “another tool in the toolbox”. That is the lazy way out, and intellectually dishonest.

After my last blog post, I received a lot of questions asking me what Big Rocks people should be focusing on. First off, I am going to concentrate on the H2H aspect in answer. While I could pontificate about the other categories (shooting, strength and conditioning, pre-fight threat containment, diet, etc.), I prefer to stay in my lane where I have the most experience. I am blessed to have a bunch of friends and peers that are much better at those other things. If someone wants to know about Big Rocks in those categories, I would be happy to let you know you to go listen to. For now, we will look at H2H.

We will start at the very beginning and look at the problem, and then we will look at the mindset I believe you need to deal with the problem. Once we establish those parameters, we will be able to analyze just what exactly we need to do. Technique, methodology, drills, concepts, and all similar items must wait until we have defined the problem. Otherwise, we may be in danger of designing an answer to a non-existent problem merely to prove that we are bad asses or some sort of Yoda, just to feed our ego.

The primary problem in a fight is staying in the fight. In other words, staying conscious and physically capable of fighting back is the first thing we need to concentrate on. If we ignore that, we risk losing the fight (and possibly our lives or well being, or the lives of our loved ones) before we ever get to unleash our awesome offensive arsenal. Furthermore, we need to first focus on staying in the fight when we are caught unaware that a fight or assault is about to happen.

Yes, yes, I know that we all need to be “switched on” and tactically aware at all times. I also know that not one human being on the planet can do that 100% of the time 24/7/365. It is flat out impossible, especially in our modern urban society that places such a huge demand of our attention in so many different ways.

The simple fact is that all of us can get caught flat footed by a surprise assault. The sooner that we accept that, the sooner we can start building the best responses to that shock attack, but we must at all costs not delude ourselves that it can happen.

And defining that problem leads us to building the appropriate training mindset. Being attacked when you are not ready for it is a worst case scenario. Therefore, in my opinion, we need to make sure our fundamental training is oriented towards dealing with a worst case scenario. It is the height of stupidity to spend all of your training on techniques that only work when you know what is going on. For example, take a look at this technique. It looks really cool, and if it works the way it is intended, would be totally functional. However, there is one huge flaw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NCZi18ZXho

That flaw is that the technique will only work if you are aware that an attack is imminent. Watch at about 1:03. The good guy is not even processing that the assault is happening. He has already launched his counter. Guys, if you are that physically gifted, you should not be reading this. You should be making millions of dollars playing professional sports because your physical attributes are in the elite 1% of people in the entire world. If you are instead merely mortal, and if you are not able to be completely aware of everything all the time, than counting on that technique is worse than useless, because you will never be able to fire off the technique, regardless of how deadly it is, and regardless of how many repetitions you have spent practicing it. Period.

So, therefore, our mindset in training should be to cover the worst case stuff first. Let’s dig the hole really, really deep, and work on getting out of that. If we have that dialed in, then anytime we deal with a less than worst case scenario, we are already in a good place to deal with it. The converse (spending the bulk of your time practicing when the problem is not as terrible) is absolutely not true.

To sum up our setting for H2H Big Rocks – we need to focus on methods that allow us to stay in the fight, no matter what and no matter how bad the situation is, and we need to start our training dealing with the worst case scenarios we might find ourselves in. We start our work there.

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.

Here is the next part of my half-guard for WBE series

I have been a bit lax in posting, so here is a video clip to make up for it. This is part 1 of a three part series that establishes the foundation for using the position known as half-guard to regain the initiative and go on the offensive against an opponent in a weapons based environment.