http://www.americancombatives.com/
A disturbing brutal and wonderfully effective form of close-quarter combat was taught to the Allied operatives of WWII. It has all but disappeared, having been replaced by strip-mall martial arts studios. An example of the philosophy: even Gracie JuJitsu is a joke compared to CQB. If you allow a fight to go to the ground ("grappling"), you're a dead man, because as you're gaining an advantage through your superior wrestling skills and working your way into a submission hold, the thug's friend will walk over and puncture you with a knife. American Combatives is one of perhaps four or five similar organizations in the world that teach how to incapacitate or kill a man in a few seconds. I was a Marine in Vietnam, and I thought that the USMC close-quater combat system was one of the most effective hard-core fighting systems in the world, until I ran across John Gary of AC. Since then I've studied the CQB field in some depth, and have discovered that the old WWII commando techniques seem to be experiencing something of a renaissance, in othe schools as well. I think that's the good news
and the bad news: it won't be long before the bad guys learn this stuff, too. Right now there's a lot of pride and discipline in keeping the techniques private, and requiring proof of good character in one form or another (ie, CCW) before being admitted to training. Sooner or later, though, it will all be out in the open.
As a sort of poetic justice, another equally brutual and effective CQB form was developed by the KGB and used throughout the cold war. It's a little too much even for me to read the techniques, as many of them are designed for abduction off the street of, shall we say, interviewees, and subsequent encouragement of them to relate important information that they might otherwise have preferred to keep to themselves. But such study does go a long way to motivating a person to learn to defend himself, as it becomes quite clear quite quickly how incredibly vulnerable the human body is to focused and knowledgable forcible breach.
Martial arts are for sport, fitness, belonging to an elite group, and (the better ones like sambo, Thai boxing, escrima, and jujitsu) real-world fighting. They take years to learn well, and support various forms of training which may include sparring and katas. Martial arts teach you how to trade blows with the enemy.
If you want to learn trade blows, study a martial art. But have no illusions that such study will make even the slightest difference in a real-world encounter. It may, in fact, get you killed, as if you had sheepishly stood by and let the bad guy take your wallet instead of throwing a side kick at him, he might have let you survive.
I'm here as a third-generation warrior, with a son who's a sergeant in the Rangers, to tell you: never trade blows with the enemy. Put that thought far out of your mind. Never even consider trading blows with the enemy.
You try never to strike anyone, ever. Walk away. He calls your wife a slut; walk away. Run if you must. He pees on you and laughs, and his friends laugh. Ignore it; walk away. He's drunk and throws a sucker roundhouse punch at you; move to the side, tie him up, hand him to his friends, and walk away. Unless he's threatening someone with lethal damage, unless a life is on the line, you walk away.
You try never to strike anyone, but when you must, you strike only one blow. Only one, but such a harsh one that your enemy can never, never strike back.
Usually that's enough, but if it isn't, you strike again in the same way, and again, until there is no threat left.
A concrete example. Ever notice that the supposedly no-holds-barred Octagon rules prohibit eye gouges and neck hits? These are two of the most destructive and effective blows there are. If he's right in front of you and coming at you, slip your fingers in a claw up the front of his face from below and jam them right into his eyes, full bore. He won't see them coming up like that. End of fight. Or, he's coming at you from the side. Spin and deliver the bottom outside of your wrist, hand open like a movie "karate chop", right into the Adam's apple, full force, crushing his trachea, perhaps killing him.
How long does it take to learn this kind of system? Maybe five or six hours. It's not that hard. There are five or six blows (I've given you two of them) and four or five places to strike. Blocks are simple, just enough to get out of the way of an attack in order to strike. No stance, no punching, no deep flexibility, no kicks above the knee level. They're not needed. Just a few very simple sequences that are applied over and over, in this situation and in that.
Weapons? A knife is good. Lots known about what works, from WWII, where they had to use them over and over and over, and came back with reports on what worked and what didn't. Guns are good, but forget getting a good sight picture. You gotta learn to shoot in the dark, when there's lots of noise and smoke and flashing lights and danger and adrenalin pumping through your veins. The last thing in the world that you'll be looking at is your front sight, so you'd better learn to point the gun where you're looking.
It's more than a little troubling to see each strip-mall studio claim that its form is the most street effective martial art in the world, when even their star students and teachers could probably be taken out in three seconds by the average college coed who knew any of the authentic CQB forms. Not in a match, of course, but in an alley at night.
And, like pluspinc, I cringe at the firearms instructors who preach the gospel of the Weaver stance and locking in on the front sight.
I guess I'm becoming a curmudgeon. I kind of like it.
Dwight