Few things are sadder to me than someone refusing to see a better path.

I was reading a book last night that was a recently written instruction manual dealing with defensive firearms use, and the author was a 25 year LEO who had a lot of time with the firearm being taught. It was fine until I got to the part where he – in writing – says that another technique is probably superior, but that he is too old and set in his ways to change. Say what?

I cannot wrap my head around that. He has seen the other technique and has seen how well it works, but because he has put time into something else he refuses to alter what he does? That is not admirable, nor is it about integrity or dedication. It is the exact opposite in fact.

Refusing to go to something better is just foolish. Regardless of how long you have done something, if something demonstrably better comes along, you need to accept it. If that makes you a student rather than a “guru”, then so be it.

I had multiple decades in other martial arts before I did much BJJ. I had deep dives in 8 or 9 different systems, with instructor certifications in most of those. At the same time, I probably dabbled in 20+ other methods ranging from a few years to a few weeks of training. Many of them I very much enjoyed and was pretty good at, and most of those were the accepted “cool” martial arts, especially in the 80’s and 90’s. Moreover, the ones I was an instructor in were fairly easy to teach. I could look good and made people believe I was some fighting master, even if I was out of shape, and did not require a lot of effort to teach or demonstrate. And even better, the techniques and methods were kind of flashy at times and new people quickly felt like they could use them. That is a proven way to keep students.

I could have easily spent my time continuing to do those arts. I had every reason to do so. Except for one overwhelming contrary reason that kept poking me in the brain. I FOUND A BETTER WAY. I found a method/delivery system that was more combat effective, and worked for more people, and could be maintained for a lifetime. It meant I had to humble myself and be a student again, and I had to admit to people that what I did before was not as good as I thought or portrayed, and it also meant I had to work much, much harder as a teacher to teach the new material.

So I switched to the combat sports template I have been practicing and teaching for the past 25 years. At times I wished I had stayed teaching mindless patterns of movement because it would have made my life easier. Easier to teach, and I would not have had to stay on top of my own personal performance the way I have to now. But that is morally, intellectually, and physically lazy. It would also be ethically corrupt to teach potentially lifesaving skills that I knew to be sub-optimal.

Don’t be like the author I talked about. Always challenge yourself, and if there is a better way, then go to that path no matter what it means. You only cheat yourself when you ignore that.

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.