no sporting application????

Recently, I have been reading an interesting book called "When all Hell Breaks Loose" by Cody Lundin. In it, he writes about advice on dealing with large scale emergencies, such as natural disasters, terrorist attack, etc..., that would lead to a temporary breakdown of public services. It is a very good read, and it dovetails with his previous survival handbook, 98.6 Degrees - Keeping your Ass Alive (both the books are available on Amazon).

Lundin is a professional survival instructor in Northern Arizona, and is the best kind of teacher. He is very realistic, and does not try to convince you you will become Tarzan - King of the Jungle, but still gets across strategies that most people can implement.

HOWEVER, the book breaks down near the end. There is a chapter on self-defense. Now, to Lundin's credit, he says this is not his area of expertise, so he turns it over to someone who supposedly does know what he is talking about. I say supposedly because the guy is a card carrying idiot. This guy (I will call him Mr. Combatives) is all about easily learned techniques. And his ideas on mindset are fine as well. But then he makes a completely asinine statement. Mr. Combatives says that when you are looking for a martial arts school, you should only go to one that teaches NO SPORTING APPLICATIONS for their uber- deadly techniques. I just have to shake my head. Is this guy living under a rock for the past 15 years? Or is he the martial art equivalent of the Flat Earth Society?

Let's take this and break it down. There are two HUGE problems with his approach of doing techniques that are "too deadly" to practice and only doing them on a target in a set way. If you do not use "sporting" methods (i.e. sparring) to test yourself and the methods:

1) How do you know that the techniques work? Saying that your chin jab will stun your opponent, or that the side kick to his knee will disable him, and actually accomplishing that are two different things. The human body is incredibly resilient and can take enormous damage and yet still function. A few years ago, there was a news story that was widely circulated about a hiker who was trapped in a rock slide in the middle of nowhere. His arm was pinned under a boulder. Knowing he would die if he did not get away, he CUT HIS OWN ARM OFF WITH A POCKET KNIFE! Now, do you honestly think that hitting that guy with a chin jab is really going to do so much damage that you will be able to follow up with any strike you want (or run away at will)? Come on. And the thing is, those stories of human endurance are very common. People can take a lot of punishment and still keep ticking. Basing your entire self-defense ideas on the (non-tested) belief that your base techniques are SOOOO deadly when you don't really know seems awfully stupid to me. So my techniques aren't as deadly as yours? Maybe, but you know what? I know, absolutely, what will happen when my "less deadly" cross lands on someone. You know how I know? Because I do it, all the time, over and over again. I use that puppy on another person, who is resisting me and trying to not let me hit them while at the same time trying their best to hit me back. I know what WILL happen, not what I think will happen, or what I hope happens.

2) How do you know that great technique will land? It is great to say that is is a simple technique, but in the chaos of combat, so much can happen in the blink of an eye. Hitting a BOB training dummy, or a partner who stands there motionless, has NOTHING TO DO with a resisting opponent. Take the standard boxing jab for example. This might very well be the easiest overall technique to land. It uses maximal reach, it is designed for maximal speed, and it allows the jabber to not have to always commit too far. And yet every boxer or MMAer out there spends literally hundreds of hours of their lives to land it. And even then, it is not a sure thing. Why? Because, just a slight movement of the opponent (throwing a hand or hands up in the way, moving their head, using footwork to change distance or angle) done in a millisecond can cause it to fail. So if a professional athlete who spends that much time training such a basic technique can still fail, why will a non-professional who spends 1/100ths of that time training a possibly more difficult technique be able to pull it off at will? It is an utterly ludicrous concept.

To close, I will try to educate those people who think that Mr. Combatives' approach is the right one. His concept of combat training fails the basic tenet of the scientific method. That basic tenet states that the conclusion of the experiment MUST BE REPLICABLE, ON DEMAND. Otherwise, it is useless. Basic MMA sport style sparring and training methods will, again and again, produce nearly similar results in that they (meaning anybody who practices it, professional athlete or not) all will have similar success rates, that can be predicted before hand. Mr. Combatives uber deadly methods will NEVER be able to say the same.