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.