[dwightvdb]

Interesting points you bring up, and valid ones. I don't know the weakness of the Filipino martial arts, but I do know that very few warriors use escrima alone, which supports your point.

I disagree (but not vehemently) with your assertion that all martial arts work well for the practioner expert in their application. I don't think that all are equal in effect; at least, not on the street. I would assert, for instance, that Gracie JJ would be uniformly superior to Tae Kwon Do in 95% of normally-encountered street situations. TKD emphasizes high kicks, which is great for sport, and for knocking government mercenaries off their horses (which is what it was designed for). But ... not so good on, say, ice and snow, when the kicker would probably fall on his ass. Often you have to deal with being tackled - the guy just tackles you and takes you to the ground. Of what use is Kung Fu when you're wrestling in the mud and the guy is on top of you? Much better to learn Judo and be able to choke the guy out, than know the Horse Stance and be clueless on the ground in the mud.

Also, it's been documented time and again that in a fight you will act as you've trained. Throw ten thousand punches in the air and stop them two inches in front of your opponent's chest and guess what. That's exactly what you'll do in a fight. I don't train with a partner, because my techniques are all lethal - every one. I have a SparPro dummy that I can gouge and throat chop to my heart's content (in a manner of speaking) and all my practice is full speed, full power. I actually beat the crap out of him, forcing my fingers into his eyes and hitting him as hard as I can in the Adam's apple, over and over and over. Put me in an alley in winter with a TKD black belt and he'd last about five seconds. As he would with you, if you trained like this.

I understand your concern about freedom of information, and the desire to get it all for free. There are plenty of books and videos on the subject, but they cost standard book/video prices. The problem with putting all the information on the web for free is that the bad guys will have equal access to it.

Here's an example. There's a knife stroke, very difficult to defend against, that causes almost certain death. In the old days, only the CQB guys knew about it, but the information got leaked out, and now it's passed by one convict to another word-of-mouth in the prison system. The stroke itself is very simple: you feint to he head, causing your opponent to raise his guard, then cut him where his leg joins his pelvic region. Strangely, this is one of the three most lethal cuts (the others being the neck, and the commando move of driving the long knife down just behind the collarbone and moving it laterally, which cuts the main vessel connected to the heart ... it was this cut, instantly lethal, that the British commando fighting knife was designed to optimally deliver).

The leg cut has an interesting, somewhat surprising, effect. Done correctly (it's quite easy, actually), the femoral artery is severed. Turns out that the blood flow through this channel is quite significant, and you bleed out in a few minutes. You're essentially a dead man walking if someone cuts your femoral artery. The guy cuts you, leaves for a while to talk to his buddies and has a smoke, comes back in a few minutes and you're dead in a huge pool of blood, takes your wallet and your weapon and goes home, mission accomplished.

Much time spent on this scenario in strip-mall studios? Don't think so. You'll be challenged with a thrust to the face and cover with a block and feel a slight pain in your groin, no big deal, and be dead a few minutes later.

What do you do about this attack? Simple. Carry two knives, one on each side, and a gun. Use the knives as weapon-retention devices (he tries to grab your gun from you, you clamp his hand to your side and grab the knife with the free hand and stab him in the arm and belly until he lets go of the gun; then you shoot him). A small gun is not much use, except as a really good knife. I carry a Colt Mustang .380 in my pocket, good enough to put a guy down, and a lot better than my Sig P229 sitting in the safe back home because it's too heavy and klunk to carry all the time. You see the creep coming at you with a knife, you scream "Hey! Stop, You Stop Right There, I don't want to hurt you!!!!" and draw and shoot him twice in the center of his body and once in the head if he keeps coming at you.

Is there a problem? Yes. Turns out that a guy can pull a knife and be right on top of you before you can draw your gun. Knives are more lethal than pistols at close range; strange but true. Try it: put your carry piece in your concealment holster and have a friend stand maybe 10 yards away, and tell him to wait, then run at you and draw his knife and jump you while you're watching. Don't start to draw until you see him start to run at you. The result will shock you: he'll have his knife at your throat before you've got your gun out of the holster. This has been demonstrated time and time again, and is the reason that you're justified (in some states) to shoot a knife-wielding bad guy even before he cuts you. He's actually got the upper hand. You see a knife and an attack, you draw and fire, dude. You'll be lucky to survive.

But I digress. American Combatives is not your average martial arts trip. CQB in general is not the same as other styles. The CQB schools teach you how to kill or severly disable an adversary in a few seconds, just like the Marine Corps taught me in 1966. It's not hard, and it has nothing to do with conditioning, style, or even (surprisingly) strength. The hard part is the mental attitude: you delay all action until the single blow which usually kills your opponent.

Why is strength not important? Because there's no way to build up the front of the eyes, the front of the throat, the testicles, the front of the knees, or the shins. Each of these critical areas is amazingly vulnerable to a strike. Take Arnold Swartzenegger - no matter what he does, his eyes and throat are vulnerable. If a 22-year-old coed knows how to hit him with her full force there, really lay her whole self into a single strike directly into his eyes or Adam's apple, he's toast. That's the principle of CQB, and why it worked for commandos in WWI who were often much slighter and less physical than their German adversaries. You can't strengthen your corneas. They're always going to be extremely vulnerable. Train to strike there, thousands of times the same way, over and over and over, and when the bad guy shows up with his knife and comes at you, you take the cut (you always get cut in a knife fight, get used to it, expect it, don't shy away from being cut) and you take him out by the eyes or throat or nuts.

Little-known fact: a small percentage of men can take a full-force hit in the nuts and carry on just fine. Most of us crumple over and whine and throw up and die a little, but some guys just play on as if nothing had happened (Mohammed Ali was one of these.) This is a "secret", but one I'm not worried about divulging: don't bet your life on a testicle hit. Yes, knee him in the balls if you're close, train for that, but only for softening him up and making him bend over forward to receive your real stroke. But depend on the full-force neck strike to end the fight ... and the man, most likely.

Getting kind of gruesome, so I'll sign off for now.

Take care,
Dwight