Whenever I do seminars, I always get a great number of questions relating to how to sustain or even gain proficiency in the H2H skill set outside of the short course format. I also get a lot of PMs and emails about the same subject. It can certainly be daunting, trying to assimilate all the things we need to integrate to be a functional multi-disciplinary thinking tactician. And then adding the task of trying to figure out how to actually get fluency in a brand new skill set makes it so much harder, especially when someone is having their first exposure to said skill set.  In this article, I will try to give some basic advice that hopefully will help somewhat.

The following is based on over ten years of teaching this material to a wide range of students in open enrollment coursework. It is not based on what I myself like to do, or what fits my personal desires. I need to make sure this is not ego driven, but what can truly be found to work the best for the majority of people. I am also using decades long experiences of some good friends and training partners who teach similar coursework – folks like Craig Douglas of Shivworks, Paul Sharp of Sharp Defense, Chris Fry of MDTS Training, Larry Lindenman of Point Driven Training, and others. Between all of us, we quite literally have almost a century of time teaching, and we have seen thousands and thousands of students. I think I can safely say there is a good body of evidence to show what a good training pathway is.

Ideally, our first training stop would be at a wrestling school that specialized in Greco-Roman wrestling. The reason being is that would be the most useful skill for controlling another person in an entanglement, and giving us our best chance of keeping the fight on our feet.  Sadly, the chance that you will find such a place is probably less than you winning the Powerball lottery. While Greco is one of the main forms of wrestling, it has never been popular in the US. Finding someone who actually understands the nuances of that method is a tough job. And, even worse, is that wrestling is seen and practiced as a competitive sport. What that means for our search is that if you do find a wrestling club, they will probably not be open to teaching a non-competitive adult who is only interested in it for self-defense. Most athletes you see training there will be between the ages of 5 and 30, all focused on getting good for a specific competition. I hope that more wrestlers understand their great art as a martial art, and start teaching as such. Unfortunately, that is far down the road.

So where else can we look? We could get to a boxing gym. Having a good set of offensive striking skills and a solid ability to defend yourself from strikes is a good idea. It is also easier to find a good boxing gym then a wrestling club. However, the better the boxing gym, the more likely we have the same problem as the wrestling – a place that is focused on sending people to amateur and professional competitions, and not as self-defense. Be very careful here, because they may very well welcome you with open arms, but not because they are willing to coach you, but rather as “cannon fodder” for their competitive guys. You might find yourself thrown into the ring to spar way too fast just because it gives the full timers an extra body to beat up. It’s not mean. Think of it from their perspective –why should they invest any time into training someone who will never get in the ring? They may as well use you for something useful.  I am certainly not condoning that behavior, but merely pointing out the reality. There are some gyms that have a “white collar” program, or teach boxing for exercise, and where you won’t be thrown to the wolves, but these programs tend to be watered down at best, and in the case of “boxercise” have little to do with functional applications. If you do find a good gym, one good aspect of starting at the point of building your striking skills first is that this is probably the least important of the H2H skills needed in self-defense in a weapons based environment (WBE), so you only need to spend about six months to a year working on this part of your game. After that, all you need to really deal with is maintenance of this area.

What about a Muay Thai or Savate school? One of the advantages there is that in this country those places are a little less competition oriented and treat what they are doing as more like a martial art, and therefore welcome a wide variety of people to the training. On the other hand, it can be a bit tougher finding a legitimate school that truly teaches these arts (rather than as part of the curriculum where the teacher learned the material in seminars and was never certified to teach). This is far more amplified for Savate (which is a shame, because it may be the most street martial of the striking oriented combat sports). Again, if you do manage to find a real gym, you only have to put in a short amount of time to get functional, as with boxing in a self-defense context.

I know some of you out there are asking “What about Krav Maga?”.  Personally, I am not a big fan of that pathway. Firstly, a KM school, because of their certification/licensing practices, can range from being run by an experienced fighter and coach who has a great fighting oriented gym, to someone whose total knowledge of anything martial comes from a five day “certification” course. That is not an exaggeration by any means. KM has some of the Crossfit model of granting people permission to teach. I personally would not trust my life to someone who has not had a great depth of knowledge and experience in the field. Another issue I have even with the majority of good KM gyms is that they tend to teach along the lines “if this guys does this, then you do that”. I find that a by rote technical execution of self-defense is much inferior to a more robust conceptual approach.  And finally, I am not a fan of the fact that the vast majority of KM’s good and functional material comes from other places – i.e. boxing, wrestling, and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu – something which KM proponents freely admit and even brag about. My question is if that is the best part of the curriculum, why get it second hand? Why not get it directly from the source? Believe me, watching many KM instructors teach grappling techniques has a tendency to make me mildly nauseous. And that is not a swipe at them. It is merely truth that someone only learning it in that manner will not get the true understanding of the details and nuances of the technique, just the surface shell. So I generally tend to steer people away from Krav. If you find a top notch KM school, taught by a coach with tons of real experience, then by all means train there.

edited to add the following:

Thanks to a friend (Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training), I realized I left a couple of arts out and I need to correct it here.

Judo would be a good way to build fighting proficiency as well. Judo has a tendency to cost less than most other systems, and while it is certainly a high level sport, it still is in touch with it’s martial roots and you will commonly find all types and level of people training at a judo club. Throwing someone down really hard onto concrete is a good way to stop an attacker, and there is a great deal of standing clinch work that translates exceptionally well into a self-defense context. And learning to fall safely may well be the single greatest thing you can learn, and it may well be the most useful and most used thing you will do. It is also easier to find than wrestling in many countries such as England, so it makes a decent alternative. The main drawback of Judo (and unfortunately it is a doozy of a drawback) is that the art is really, really traumatic on the body. Regardless of how good your breakfalls are, and how good the mats are, your body takes a hellacious pounding. I love Judo, and practice it as part of my BJJ, but some of my most serious injuries have come from it. So be very careful about that, and think long and hard if you are physically up to the task.

Everything I said, good and bad, about Judo also applies equally to Sambo. A great art, and so similar to Judo. Besides the same issues of body trauma, the other big drawback to Sambo is that it is hard to find a real Sambo school in the US.

What about an MMA (mixed martial arts) gym? Ideally, there is a one shop stop for striking, clinch, and ground work. It is an excellent idea in theory, but tends to break down in reality. Here is why. First, there is no standard to judge the quality of a gym or instructor. You might find a gym where the head coach has 30+ years or experience, was a champion collegiate wrestler and has produced multiple MMA champions. You may also just as easily be at a gym where the instructor had a couple of years of Kenpo karate, gets a blue belt in BJJ (the second lowest rank), and owns a set of wrestling DVDs. Both are just as likely. And it is very hard as a newbie to all this who is legitimate or not. Another problem with MMA is that the gym, like a boxing or wrestling club, may be very focused of competition and is full of young, selfish, twenty-somethings with way too much testosterone.  Training in that group is guaranteed to be full of pain and injury. And the third concern is that when doing a method that is a jack of all trades type may mean that you never get enough of any one area to ever have much ability in it. Even most professional MMA fighters separate their workouts into specific striking, wrestling, and ground sessions. If you do that as a non-professional, you may as well go to places to train those things individually yourself and skip the MMA combined training. As before, if you are lucky enough to find a truly exceptional MMA school, (like The Hardcore Gym in Athens, GA owned by Adam and Rory Singer), then jump at it. But understand that is not quite as likely to be available.

When all is said and done, it is my opinion that going to a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (BJJ) school is the overall best path. Here are my main reasons:

• It is a needed skill set. This part sort of goes without saying. We know the grounded entangled fight happens, and if you find yourself there, you do not want to rely on luck to get you through. What makes this even more critical to actually training it under an instructor and in a gym is that groundwork is the most complex aspect of a fight, and where the tiniest variables can have a huge impact. Only knowing the barest gross movement aspects may leave you with a sizable gap in your ability to survive.
• With the popularity of BJJ, there are legitimate schools almost everywhere now. It is far simpler to find a school close to you than almost any other functional fighting method. Also, BJJ has a meaningful ranking system that with very few exceptions means it is easy to find out if your teacher actually has a depth of knowledge on the subject.
• BJJ, while very popular as a competitive sport, has never lost its roots as a fighting martial art, so every school welcomes all types as students, from the young athletic competition, to the middle-aged white collar professional, to the housewife, to the young child.
• Best bang for the buck – where else in one place can you get a fighting method, as well as learning to deal with massive stress and build the capability to fight through that, to increased strength (you will have to deal with incoming force and pressure from people possibly stronger than you so you will get stronger), actual fight applicable cardio, joint flexibility and mobility, and a nice healthy outlet for outside frustrations.
• Along those lines, we can even improve our standing vertical entangled skills. Not only is there the aspect of throws and takedowns in BJJ itself, but many of the core ground fight techniques have the same motions and actions as our standing clinch actions. So while we might not have a Greco-roman wrestling school to go to, we can still improve in that area.

So, my default suggestion to people is to find a good local BJJ school under a reputable high belt instructor, and commit to going there 2-3 times a week for 2-3 years. By that time, you will have built cardio, strength, combat mindset, and fighting skills that are robust, reliable, and functional for everyone.

The bulk of my 2017 schedule is up. There are still a couple of seminars to be added, but the majority of my teaching travel is set. Go to the schedule page to check it out.

Here are some vid clips from this year’s Rangemaster Tactical Conference and my block on Clinch fundamentals. Thanks to my buddy Mark L. for putting them up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTb9cKqgMo0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tnXL4mXqoo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzoHGPfxb4

Larry Lindenman is a great instructor and writes some truly exceptional articles, especially in the area of Strength and conditioning for self-defense. This is one of his best articles:

How Much Strength do you need?

The podcast of my latest interview on the Practically Tactical show is now available:

http://www.practicallytactical.com/episodes/129

In light of my last post, and with all the messages and emails I have received in ways I have found to squeeze in as much training I can and maximize what little free time we have, I am bringing an old post back up. It is a coupe if years old, and a lot of new readers may have missed it.

This is a simple trick I use, but it has proven to be incredibly beneficial:

Managing Training Time

I am now 36 years into my martial journey. If we include the study and use of firearms in all its aspects as part of that, I am actually 46 years into it.

I just celebrated the 36th anniversary of starting down this path when I walked into the dojo of American Karate Studios the day after my 16^th birthday. Since that day, there has not been a day that went by that I was not actively training under the eye of an instructor/teacher/coach/mentor, and working either the actual physical actions of it, or the continuing mental obsession about it was not running on loops through my brain.

I think that after that length of time, there are certain conclusions that I can draw about success in training, or the lack there of. Let me give you what I believe – no, scratch that – what I KNOW to be the single greatest key to achieving success, especially for the average, everyday person. This is something that if I were a smart business man, I would not give out freely here. Instead, I would put up one of those hard sell websites with tons of testimonials and hints about this “secret”, and then charge some odd amount like $97 to sell you an e-book that took me 5 minutes to put together. Instead, since I am not a particularly smart man, I will just give it out for free to anyone who bothers to read my ramblings.

So here is the main tool to help you become a fighting master in whatever method or delivery system you choose:

Do what you can, with what you have, in whatever time you can carve out, and DON’T QUIT.

That is it. The one single thing that helped this non-athlete with very little unoccupied free time to achieve a decent level of performance and a level of understanding to the point that I am an okay coach and can get material across to all sorts of people. So let’s break this down and look at what I am trying to say.

One of the underlying trains of thought I hear over and over again whenever I or anyone else brings up the need to work on empty hand skills is an “all or nothing” refrain. That is, if someone can’t get to a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu gym three times a week, then there it is not worth it. Or, if someone has physical handicaps of some sort (injury, age, etc), then again, there is no reason to do any of it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because we will never be as good as Jon Jones, or George St. Pierre, or Roger Gracie is irrelevant. We are not trying to be them, nor are we in competition with them. We are not really even in competition with the bad guy who may be out there waiting to attack us. While certainly we may need to fight them, we cannot do anything about their ability. We have no control over that. The only thing we can control is our own ability and/or capability, so THAT is who we are in competition with – the us (in an individual sense) of yesterday. All we need to worry about is if we better than we were yesterday.  Even if that better is only measured in fractions, then it is still in a positive and forward motion. Are we more capable and dangerous than we were the day before in any measure? If the answer is yes, then be happy. If the answer is no, then fix it!

There are far too many people who have serious disabilities who do train for that to be an acceptable out. People with cerebral palsy, paraplegics, blind people, folks in the 70s and 80s, etc. all train and even compete. If they can do it, so can you!  There are no excuses. Take a look at this:

Seriously, if you think because you have a bad back, or have had hip replacement, or only have the use of one arm, then there is no point to trying to improve your ability to defend yourself, you are selling yourself short. Do you think the bad guy cares that you have a bad knee? As a matter of fact, he might target you because of that. There is no special get out of jail free cards. You better be prepared for that assault to the best of your ability, and that preparation starts as soon as possible. Do what you can. If all you can truly do is train at a BJJ or MMA or Boxing gym once a month, then do it. It is better than sitting on your ass in front of the keyboard talking about how your mindset and cool gear will see you through. Don’t settle for being too scared or lazy, and just strive to be a tiny bit more dangerous each day.

Another refrain I often hear to try to excuse someone doing the work is that they don’t have a gym or instructor close by. Well, then look at travelling to seminars and learning and getting better. Or buying DVDs and books. OR looking online to the tons of free videos that are out there. Learn as best you can in a distance format, and practice on your own. There are a lot of things you can do solo. For example, just practicing fundamental BJJ ground fighting movements like hip lifts and hip escapes will help more than you realize. If all you have, is trying to follow along to a DVD, then follow along to that DVD and practice the moves as much as you can. Do what you can, with what you have.

The final excuse that people generally make is “I don’t have time”. That statement is then too often followed by the person saying something like “I spent last weekend binge watching the last season of Game of Thrones”. And they do not see the dichotomy there. Look, there is almost no one on this planet that cannot carve out two minutes to practice something. The busiest person I have ever seen still had a couple minutes of down time. You can use that down time to play Candy Crush mindlessly, or you can use it to make yourself one tiny fractional bit more capable. It is up to you.

I know some of you are saying right now “This is all easy for you to say Cecil since you do this full time and have plenty of time and energy available, and you are a professional martial artist and athlete”. And nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t do this as a vocation. I do it as an avocation. It is what I love. I put food on the table and a roof over my head by having a real day job that I am at Monday – Friday 8AM – 5PM, and have been that way for the past 30 years since graduating college. There have been times in my life that I was working as many as 80+ hours a week, as well as traveling out of town on weekends. I also have been married and have children so for the past 27 years  I have had full family obligations to occupy non-work time. On top of that, I have no athletic ability whatsoever. I was the kid always picked last for dodgeball (we called it warball) in PE. I also have had pretty severe asthma all my life, with numerous hospitalizations for life threatening attacks (the first was when I was one year old, and the most recent was about 1 ½ years ago). Let me tell you, trying to train hard with that going on presents a lot of challenges. To add to my woes, form everything doctors and lab work have been able to figure out, my thyroid – that wonderful little gland that contributes mightily to things like energy, muscle making, and converting food to useful stuff instead of wasted fat – has never worked . Ever. Makes it more a matter of willpower to train because my body does not have excess energy demanding to be burned off. And as the topper, I am not particularly good at mentally grasping new stuff. It takes me some time to “get it”. In sum, I have exactly ZERO things that people typically look for as a reason that you can get good at fighting. It is not easy for me to dedicate time to do this. It requires me to think and plan ahead, and to exercise a lot of willpower and discipline to execute. I am almost the poster child for having reason to NOT doing this. But I did it, and continue to do so, and the one thing that I had going for me was that I am obstinate as hell. I am plain stubborn. When I set my mind, I will just keep plugging away. It may take a long time (and generally does for me. After all it took me 16 years to get my black belt, when the standard time is 8-10), but I will get there. Which is the final point. This whole study is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Just keep heading that way and stay on the path. DON’T QUIT. It may take awhile, but as long as we are a bit better than the day before, we are headed the right way.

So I need to follow up to my previous post about staying in your lane. I am going to do essentially a public mea culpa and make sure that everyone knows what lanes I should stay in. After all, if I am going to call out others, I should be held to the same standard, right?

I have been actively training in Martial Arts for 36 years. The operative word is ACTIVE.  There has not been a week in that time that I was not training under the eye of a coach/instructor. I have lots of experience in a ton of empty hand systems, as well as multiple methods that involved blade and impact weapons. I have been teaching in small group and private lessons since 1987, and I have been teaching open enrollment seminar/courses since 2007. I have had a semi-successful run in competition (mostly Brazilian Jiu-jitsu tournaments), so I think I can safely say I have by hand-to-hand bases covered as to depth and breadth.

I have been shooting for as long as I can remember. Hunting as early as five years old, and doing a number of shooting and hunter safety classes as far back as eleven years old. I became interested in defensive shooting, particularly with a pistol, in high school around 1980. My college graduation present form my parents was a trip to Gunsite in 1987 to take the 250 General Pistol class with Jeff Cooper there, and Louis Awerbuck as the instructor. I have done courses with famed trainers like Larry Vickers, Pat MacNamara, Kyle Lamb, Tom Givens, Craig Douglas, Chuck Taylor, among others. I have also trained with a number of slightly lesser known, but still excellent regional instructors. /I have regularly competed in Steel Challenge, multi-gun Tactical, and USPSA matches. And I have been fortunate to have spent my life in Arizona, where carrying a gun has always been an accepted thing, even before the current CCW system was in place.  My focus has been more on the pistol, but I have logged plenty of carbine work in as well.

I have had Red Cross CPR/first aid course certifications (which I am actually due as of this writing to renew), as well as some other emergency med training, albeit in a very basic manner and level.

I have been studying strength and conditioning for decades, but though well read and have done a ton of experimentation on myself, I have little formal education there.

So, where does that leave me?

Well, I can safely feel like I have a bit of a handle on the H2H stuff, whether it be unarmed, with blades, or with impact weapons. I’m pretty sure I know some about grappling, both vertically and horizontally. So I have no problem teaching and talking about most things there. Combine that amount of experience with the pistol work, I fell that I can also talk and teach intelligently about the under 5 yards situation with handguns in play.

Can I teach handgun stuff outside of 5 yards? Maybe, but why? I certainly can’t add much to the conversation in comparison to so many better and more experienced trainers out there, whether they are the nationally recognized ones, or the myriad regional instructors. Just within my home city, I am personal friends with 6 or 7 far, far better people who can run a handgun better than me, and have a lot more time actually teaching it to others. Why waste everyone’s time by trying to pretend to be an expert there too?

How about carbine? Eh. Maybe to friends and family informally, but not for money. Again, I don’t have the depth and breadth that so many others have there. Shotgun? Even more so than with carbine.

What about team tactic room clearing? Please! My experience there is totally limited to Call of Duty games. Medical? My nurse daughter would skin me alive if I had the effrontery. What about arrest and restraint methods? My LE knowledge/experience is limited to a handful of ride-a-longs. Me telling a cop with 10 years of street experience how to slap handcuffs is such a nauseating thought. I may be able to give him some ideas of how to postionally control someone on the ground, but that is where I need to stop.

That’s pretty much it. If you see me suddenly advertise “CQB Room Clearing and Face Shooting”, or “Vehicle Extractions”, please call me out publicly in as many places online as possible. Don’t let my head get swelled up and I start thinking I’m all that!

One of the great advances in the study of fighting in the self-defense/tactical firearms realm over the past 15 years or so has been the acceptance of the concept that fighting is not one dimensional. Just because you can shoot a pistol or rifle really well in no way means you are prepared to fight to protect your life. On the contrary, now we understand that the study of such activity requires, in addition to firearms skill, the ability to have a functional pre-fight threat containment strategy (including de-selection, de-escalation, knowing how violent criminal actors think and act, verbal judo, etc), strength and conditioning, empty hand fighting ability (both standing and on the ground), blade and impact weapon, less lethal tools such as OC spray, traumatic medical care, and most importantly, how they all work together. In short, rather than a single dimension, we have to be integrated, multi-disciplinary tactical thinkers.

That is an awesome and welcome shift in our collective conceptual outlook, because it makes us better prepared to actually survive worst case scenarios and prevail. However, one drawback to this is the tendency on some instructors’ part to suddenly advertise that they are able to teach everything across the board – that they are, in effect, one shop stops for knowledge.

The simple fact is that this is nearly impossible. The sheer denseness and chaotic-ness of the totality of combat precludes almost any single person from being an expert in every field. There may be some who are great in a few areas, and have experience in some or even all of the others, but to do so with enough depth and breadth that they can teach material? Sorry, it just does not work. Instead of staying in their individual lane(s), they seem to feel that if they don’t project the aura that they know everything about everything, people will stop listening to them. So they then start teaching and offering coursework in areas they are clueless in, or start offering commentary on the viability of others who are actually knowledgeable in another area.

Take the example that everyone in the tactical firearms community is probably familiar with – a person who has served in the military in the past 15 years and has involved in real world violence over and over again during the current Global War on Terror. Perhaps they have even served with one of the Tier One Specops units like Delta or the Navy SEALS. Without a doubt, this person knows how to run a rifle, understands fighting mindset, knows team CQB room fighting and open field warfare. Maybe they even were the medic for their unit so they have a solid background in trauma care. Perhaps his unit was one that did some specialized work and used pistols in combat. This person leaves the military and starts teaching to make a living. Now, in those areas discussed above, this person is without a doubt a Subject Matter Expert (SME) and can pass on incredibly valuable lessons. Does that mean he also knows the ins and outs of the realities of concealed carry? What if he spent his entire career in a uniformed capacity? Can he understand what it is like to have to operate daily (not on one and done occasions) in a Non-Permissive Environment (NPE)? What if he starts teaching courses and writing articles on strength and conditioning? What training has he had in that? Just because he himself is in good shape and works out a lot does not mean he has knowledge that everyone else can benefit from. What about knife work? Contrary to what the movies like to portray, the list of combat soldiers that used a bladed weapon on an attacker are far and few between. And don’t even begin to think that there is much instruction or training involving knife work being officially taught to any big time military unit.

A case in point in how to conduct yourself is Kyle Lamb, formerly of Delta. Kyle is a terrific shooter, and decorated and experienced combat vet. His lectures on mindset are phenomenal. His understanding of shooting tactics and running rifles or pistols are at the highest level. Do you know what he never teaches? H2H. Even though he had some Army Combatives training, he knows he is not at a level where he would be comfortable teaching others. And that has not affected how great a fighter or instructor he is. An instructor does not have to be a jack of all trades.

Another glaring example of the exact opposite way to conduct yourself is in the specific world of hand-to-hand combat. Since the Gracie family burst on the scene publicly in the late 80’s and forced everyone to concede that ground fighting is not only a possibility, it may very well be a definite in a fighting scenario. At first, the martial arts world tried to show ways that they could defeat the grappler and never go to the ground (I still have a number of old martial art magazines filled with articles that are laughable in their ignorance on how much of a nightmare an experienced, trained grappler can be), but with years and years of not just Mixed Martial Art (MMA) events like the UFC, but real world video footage that show lots of fights go to the ground, the realization has set in that you better know how to handle it if you do find yourself on the ground. Unfortunately, this has given rise to a number of instructors who try to shroud themselves in the mantle of “expertness” when they have spent little if any time studying grappling. So this person who offers excellent instruction when the fight is upright tries to teach groundwork and makes fools out of themselves. And more importantly, passes on info and techniques that could very well get a good guy killed.

If you cannot point to any serious time in training grappling with specific and exact instructor or gym, and only throw around vague hints that you did this and that, but with no proof, don’t put out videos showing your answers to the ground when all you do is look ridiculous with techniques that are demonstrably idiotic.

To sum up, just stay in your lane. If you are truly an expert in that lane, no one will care if you are not an expert in all of them. That won’t diminish you in any way shape or form. What will diminish you is teaching or talking about stuff you have no clue about. So just don’t.

Evidence: “It Worked for My Aunt Tillie” Is Not Enough