For those of you who read this Blog I’m going to assume that you do so to a large extent for helpful information on Self Defense. Now this begs the question, which is more worthwhile and efficient, to stick to basic techniques and just work them on a regular basis, or to devte your time and effort to long term (almost lifetime) training?
Most criminal assaults are not convoluted affairs, but rather are themselves simple and straightforward situations that require only basic strategies and tactics.
I’ll let regular contributor Steve Forester give you his take on the matter
Long Term Training Or Basic Skills Development?
by Steve Forester
So, I was reading about Paul Vunak's Enigma videos below;
"How does one train for now and how does one train for a life time in the martial arts. This balance for learning how to fight now and not 10 years from now was a point that is invaluable to so many martial artist , fighters , instructors , law enforcement, military and everyday people like you who want to protect themselves and loved ones .
Fast forward 10 years later and now we have the next phase of the Enigma Series. Paul continues to show you what its like to take the guess work out of your training.
This is where Paul Vunak and Contemporary Jeet Kune Do steps in. The turn around time and demand for learning to be functional now is the goal. To be a complete street fighter or martial artist that can train for a life time but have the necessary skills now to protect yourself and loved ones".
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That caused me to think about the shift from the emphasis on skills that can be learned quickly for self-defense, versus lifetime training skills.
1. Specifically, who has the time, motivation, money, etc. to train for a lifetime? Now most of us do some sort of regular maintenance training. I talking about someone who goes to a gym/dojo 2-3 nights a week for 1 1/2 hours, and paying someone for training.
2. And, is long term training beneficial?
Personally, I have only known one person who truly devoted themselves to life-long martial arts study. What I saw in my own formal training was the typical beginning student stuck with it for a few months and then quit. A few lasted a year. 2 or 3 out of an original beginning class of 30 will continue for two years.
I have mentioned before about talking with a contractor who was working in my home and I asked him if he trained, as he had the look. He said he did when he was younger, but then he got married, and now has two kids which brought an end his training career. That is more typical of what I see.
Yet, long term training seems to be the rage now and has been for some time. Not picking on Vunak, but he used to emphasize the RAT system he trained SEALS on, and his Street Safe series which was simplified civilian self-defense. His Enigma series seems focused more toward long term, MMA type training.
We look at another example in BJJ. It takes about 10 years, more or less, to earn a BJJ black belt. Two years of whichis spent at the blue belt level just perfecting the guard position. Many BJJ students never make it out of the blue belt stage.
I am not knocking any of these arts, or long term training. My instructor Carl was a devotee of long term training. He always said that he believed WWII Combatives provides the best foundation skills for self defense, but then went on to say that one can go further.
Now that leads to the question of how beneficial is long term skills training? Long term skill development - not maintenance practice.
There is an argument to be made that for only personal protection against a street assault, long-term, complex, skills training may actually be detrimental.
We know street assaults are very quick and very violent affairs. In training for something like this, how many complex skills will one be able to perform, or even remember? How many skills can one make instructive, reflexive, and convulsive? How many complex skills will be usable under severe Sympathetic Nerve System (SNS) stress?
The argument against long term training for street survival goes something like this. Instead of learning more and more skills, what about if we just take the Fairbairn/Sykes WWII “Gutter Fighting” techniques and work on perfecting those skills. Honing them until they are implanted in our sub-conscious and can be used without thinking?
After looking at all sides of the argument, and doing some longer term training that was not Fairbairn/Sykes related, I can say that I, personally, can see the merit in this argument. But my training goals are only to protect myself from street assaults.
Lets look at it this way. Anyone who has seen what is on Carl Cestari’s Old School 1 DVD. Knows how to position themself, control distance, and make a preemptive strike using only two techniques: the Edge Of Hand (EOH) and the Heel Of Hand (HOH) blow.
Simple, right? Any one of us could teach the average new student these skills in one day or less.
But, now what if we took those same skills and relentlessly trained them into the ground. Start with just the drop-step EOH. Do just that for say, 10 sets of 10 reps, on both strong and weak side. Perfect establishing distance. Perfect your relaxed ready position and your position of advantage. Are you really in a solid, balanced position? Are you telegraphing your axe hand strike? Are you hitting with power, speed, and accuracy? Do you have that elbow up and chin down, snapping that axe hand out and back?
Now, after a few days, add a second, follow-up, short EOH. Are you moving your training dummy or Heavy Bag. Are you establishing Aggressive Forward Drive?
When the two axe hands are perfected, then add a third.
I have been doing this type of training recently and this is what I discovered. Doing this repetitive training of simple, basic, skills, imparts them not only into your sub-conscious, but into your very soul. They become who you are.
You are developing an aggressive MINDSET, which is critical. You are taking charge of the situation instead of reacting to the assailant. This is what you will automatically do under pressure. You are training the subconscious to automatically assume the relaxed-ready POSITION when our situational awareness detects a possible threat. This automatically put us in Condition Orange if we want to think in those terms. We automatically are controlling DISTANCE. Not letting an attacker stand in our safety zone and attacking anyone entering that zone.
We are training to take his BALANCE and establish MOMENTUM by using aggressive forward drive. Developing POWER, Speed, and ACCURACY in our blows.,
I believe this is critical for dealing with real life attacks. While the skills are simple, doing them under the pressure of SNS stress in a real life attack is NOT. Go to Youtube and look at videos of real attacks. Look at the videos of the recent knife and unarmed attacks and how they are initiated. Imagine, if the victims had employed these simple tactics?
If we are totally honest with ourselves, have we really trained these simple skills into the ground till where they can be used without conscious thought. Automatically (notice I use that word repeatedly) kick in when a possible threat is detected?
Here is something else that we may think obvious, but are we really studying video of real street attacks and visualizing these in our training to see how out training prepares us to handle that assault? Basically, taking our basic technique skills and tactics and applying to real self-defense situations we will encounter on the street?
Again, it sounds simple and obvious, but are we really that?
Now, lets add the HOH to this this intensive, daily training. Developing the power in the HOH to really take someone out. To perfect that HOH take-down and then use follow up methods as needed. You can build a complete fighting method on just those two techniques.
Now think about adding a few other techniques such as Knee strikes, Elbows, Savate style Low Kicks, and the Head Butt, and then training to the level I described above
I was thinking of Aaron Cohen's book (Brotherhood Of Warriors) and how they trained Krav Maga. Along with the aggression training, they started with just one technique - the left jab - and trained that thousands of times before adding the straight right. Then that combination thousands of times.
It is almost overwhelming to me to think of training just these simple technique to this extent.
We talked about "training a little, a lot", as a valid training concept. Doing 3-5 blows a day is certainly better than no blows, or doing a lot of reps once a month.
But, what if we trained 30-40 minutes a day in this intensive routine for 3-6 months? Think about how much better we would be. How much more confidence we would have in our skills.
Now, to this, lets add a a separate physical conditioning program: free weights, KB's, body weight (or a combination of these) that focuses on developing strength, agility, and total body power.
To that, add EOH and HOH conditioning on the brick and/or iron palm bag to develop these blows into real weapons.
Do visualization to develop the combat mindset, and what-if drills in daily life to hone tactics. Practice assuming a position of advantage on people in everyday life without them knowing what you are doing.
We might be thinking: "Who has time for all that"?
Exactly!
If we have not developed our foundation skills to the point where they need to be, why are we even thinking of training long-term complex skills? IF, our goal is only protection from a street assault.
There are many good reasons to train long-term complex skills. They are fun, and provide good exercise. They also provide some supplementary benefits to our foundation unarmed combat skills. But if real life self-defense is your primary goal, then I believe our training focus should be on just that.
Carl Cestari: "A student of close-combat trains just that. Close Combat".
Just empty words, though, without doing the work.
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