Going to try to capture the thought I woke up with this morning. It was about sacrifice throws, sutemi waza, and how many principles they illustrate. I just thought about linking to a video, but this is kinesthetic, and video doesn’t show the most important stuff. Principle: Balance. The essence of balance is that the … [Read more…]
Just read a really terrible book purporting to be about safety. Ignorant, repetitive and pseudo-profound. According to the back cover, the guy had a resume that sounded like a god, but there were basic words used incorrectly, over half the book was word-for-word repeats of the author’s talking points. And some of the … [Read more…]
This should probably be a book, honestly. Maybe an e-book. I’ll keep you posted. Scenarios are an attempt at what Tony Blauer calls the constant search for the best fake stuff out there. All training is fake. If you are learning to send people to the hospital and people don’t GO to the hospital, every … [Read more…]
I’m cribbing from an unknown author today. Somebody wrote something and I penciled it on a post-it note and it now hangs on the bathroom mirror. I didn’t write down who said it, and it deserves a lot of credit. Everyone has the will to win. When two people show up at a contest, both … [Read more…]
There’s a vocabulary to close combat that a lot of people lack. You need to be able to understand and identify touches, and that’s hard. Infighting is hard to learn verbally or visually anyway. The eyes and neocortex are too slow and you need to work a deeper part of your brain. That part works … [Read more…]
Part of this is about engaging the correct part of the brain…and paying respect to the parts that will be engaged despite your desires. One of the biggest lies in self-defense training is “You will fight the way you train.” No, you won’t. Not the first time. You will try and there might be … [Read more…]
The One-Step is the primary drill in most of my training. there are more, of course, and like any drills it has its flaws. No one goes to the hospital, so something about it is not right. A few posts back on my blog, things are getting a little heated up. That’s fine. everyone is … [Read more…]
The simple answer is ‘See it coming and move.’ The not so simple answer is I just finished writing a 150 page e-book that covers this subject. It will be available next month. It’s called “Writing Violence IV: Defense” and it will be available for a whopping $2.99. I specifically go into some of why … [Read more…]
Kasey and I were talking about teaching, and teaching teaching, and about people. In any field there are some people that just don’t get “it.” Whatever “it” is for that field. There are some people who shouldn’t be cops. Sometimes because their emotionally vulnerability makes them unable to deal with manipulators, sometimes because their lack … [Read more…]
There’s a trueism in elite teams. You don’t create extraordinary operators in training. You discover them in selection. Then you polish them in training. Want to have a stable of extraordinary fighters in any martial art? Make the training tough. Make the training so tough that 90% of your people drop out. The people who stick … [Read more…]