Combatives and Other Peoples Learning Curves

For years a lot of Self Defense instructors complained that Combatives had little or no grappling in their curriculum, that it left a gap, potentially fatal, in your self defense skills. As I have mentioned before, those claims were overblown and less than truthful. Carl Cestari never said "Don't ever go to the ground". He said "don't go to the ground if you can avoid it, and if you do wind up on the ground, get up as soon as you can".

Not exactly an ambiguous statement.

He taught escapes from stand-up grips and holds, he taught breakfalls, he taught how to fight on your back if your attacker was still on his feet and trying to get to you, he taught escapes from holds on the ground, and the best ways he knew from his own Judo & Jiu Jitsu background on how to disengage and get back on your feet.

He also understood that technical grappling skills were more complicated than striking techniques were, that they took longer to learn and required more commitment than a lot of students were willing to put into learning.

That was 15 years ago.

Now apparently another Self Defense instructor is finally learning the same thing. This instructor, whose name I will not give and whose website I will not give any advertising to, has finally come to the conclusion that (and I will paraphrase here) 'he gets it, he and other instructors tried to turn everybody into BJJ devotees, that a large percentage of his students have families, jobs, limited time, and can't hit the dojo and roll multiple days a week'.

In short, he has realized that people wanted to learn some practical self defense and not become BJJ Black belts.

Accordingly he has come up with a new course that he feels will fix that. He has a catchy name for it, but for the sake of this article I will just refer to it as 'Minimalist Jitsu'.

Now what does this course consist of?

Glad you asked!

- Breakfalls -
- Technical Stand-Up -
- Standing Up Against Pressure -
- Protecting Yourself On The Ground When The Other Guy Doesn't Want you To Get Up -
- Fighting Back When You Can't Get Up -

Now just in case any of that doesn't look familiar, I will refer you back to the second paragraph of this article. Take a second and see what I mean.

Ahh, looking a bit more familiar now?

As I alluded to in the Title of this Blog Post, some people just have slower learning curves.