I recommend that all my students take at least a basic gun safety course at some point. I prefer they do a course which involves live shooting on a range. There are a number of reasons for this.

The topic of guns can be an emotionally charged one. When emotion gets involved, reason goes out the window. A few years back my wife told me that she had always been afraid of guns. I signed both of us up for a gun safety course and we fired a couple of handguns at a range. My wife’s irrational fear subsided and, after the first shot, she found the experience to be fun. Hey – target shooting is a safe sport enjoyed by millions worldwide – it has nothing to do with violence.

USMC marksman Image via Wikipedia

So here’s why I make the recommendation for everyone:

A healthy respect for the danger of firearms starts from understanding not ignorance. Ignorance breeds irrational fear, which breeds poor decisions.

Love them or hate them, guns are part of our world. Even if you live in a country where guns are banned completely, criminals are still armed. You should understand the capabilities of firearms so that you can more realistically learn to defend against them.

If you were to encounter a firearm, say your child found one, or you disarmed an attacker – do you understand how to make different types of firearms safe so that nobody gets hurt by accident?

If it comes down to defending the life of your family, and you had the chance to pick up a firearm, would you know how to use it? Beyond just pointing and pulling the trigger – would you know how to chamber a round, clear a jam, or reload?

Once again, your opinions about firearms are yours to make, but don’t you think they are better coming from a place of education rather than a place of ignorance? Unfortunately, like martial arts, most people get nearly 100% of their information about guns from TV and movies. The reality is very different.

For modern martial artists, learning about guns is like learning about swords for the traditional martial arts.

The Internet is full of haters. Chairborne warriors who grasp one or two principles and use them to shield their weak self esteem by bashing every chance they get. An area of the martial arts under constant attack these days is traditional martial arts.

The criticisms of traditional martial arts tend to fall into a few camps:

1. Modern commando wannabes who  claim that old-school martial arts won’t work on “the street”
2. UFC fan testosterone junkies who think that winning sports matches proves a specific style of martial arts is superior to all others
3. The misinformed who read stuff on Internet forums, grasp onto it, and believe it

All of theses stances are fundamentally flawed.

Even though I no longer train in traditional martial arts, I like to keep my mind open and learn as much as I can before opening my mouth or hitting the keyboard. I may not be the most educated person on the planet, but I have 30 years of martial arts study, which is more education than any doctor, lawyer, or professor. There are many people who can school me, but if you fall into one of the categories above – you are not one of them.

Here’s my take:

1. Most traditional styles come from hundreds or thousands of years of battlefield experience. While many of them have transformed into something more spiritual, the principles and concepts are still there.
2. Being tough, or a good martial artist has almost nothing to do with style and almost everything to do with the individual and the way they train. Good MMA people are good because they train hard and they train smart. Teach BJJ to somebody who isn’t going to work hard at it and they are going to suck. Your style is not going to do the work for you.
3. If you want to train for self defense you train for self defense. You do not train for sport, or spiritual enlightenment. There is nothing wrong for training for sport or enlightenment, but it’s difficult to be all you can be with 3 disparate goals.
4. “The Street” sounds really dangerous. Please tell me where this street is so I can avoid it. (I stole that expression from Raymond Desmarais). Seriously, self defense is not “street fighting”. Street fighting is brutal, but if you agree to fight with someone it’s a sport. Self defense is not about fighting and winning, it’s about surviving and escaping. If you don’t understand the difference, you’re not training for self-defense.
5. If the only toolbox you have is a set of lethal skills, I hope you have a good lawyer on retainer. Training in killer commando techniques only doesn’t sit well in jurisdictions which allow for “reasonable force”. If some drunk guy throws a punch at you in a bar and you collapse his windpipe, you may go to the gray bar hotel for the rest of your natural life. Options are good.

I hear a lot of complaints from people watching skill demonstrations or attribute training that go something like:

• That won’t work against somebody who’s resisting
• That won’t work against someone on PCP
• blah blah blah

This is just ignorance. When was the last time you saw someone in the middle of a round in the UFC pickup a jump rope and start skipping, or drop and do pushups, or start hitting a speed bag? Are you going to  lift weights out on “the street”?

I have been in combat commando type classes where the instructor had rank beginners “pressure test” what we were working on and people got hurt. A friend of mine broke his wrist. Why? Because the people didn’t know what the heck they were doing, hadn’t developed control, and their technique was sloppy as hell. Under pressure everything they learned went out the window and it turned into a slug fest. It takes training a long time to get past this point, there are no short-cuts no matter how tough you act.

I hope we can move past the meat-head, energy drink pounding, tribal t-shirt wearing, gladiatorial age that we’re in now. And let’s be clear, I mean no disrespect to any art, including MMA. I do not like the culture of disrespect that is present in so many these days. Someday I hope things change.

It’s been said that the hardest part of martial arts training is getting into the car. I have seen this first hand when 11 people tell me they are coming to train and 2 show up. I don’t take it personally when people tell me they were “busy” or there was “traffic” or whatever. I know it really isn’t about all that – it’s difficult to drag your butt to training sometimes, particularly when you haven’t developed the mental toughness to push past a hard day at work and train anyway.

To get good at martial arts you also need to train solo. There is something about working on the mental and physical aspects of martial arts alone which pushes things around in your brain and makes them stick. You do not get good in class, class is the catalyst that starts the reaction – you get good in solo practice and reflection.

I want to offer up my couch potato plan for getting good at your martial art – even if you think you don’t have time.

The first part of the plan is to make an enjoyable game out of finding hidden time. One thing I suggest is to do some kind of training during TV commercials. If you watch 1 hour of network television a day (and most people watch more), you’ll have at least 20 minutes of training time. You could exercise during that time, practice a kata, throw some punches, whatever.

Like I said, make finding time an enjoyable game – even a couple of minutes here and there really add up.

Another TV related training method which helps reaction time is to do a technique (such as throwing a punch) while watching a show – as quickly as possible each time the scene or camera angle changes on the show. This is a good way to train the perception without a partner.

The next suggestion is to utilize waiting time, and I have two ways to do this. 1. Carry around a martial arts related book with you whenever you think you might have wait time and read. 2. Practice your techniques, or kata, or whatever in your mind without moving. Suggestion #2 will get you good incredibly fast.

When I lived in Boston I would frequently take the subway or a bus. While sitting there, I would  mentally go over foot movements, angles, drills, etc. It really helped me to improve. The mind has a hard time differentiating between vividly imagined practice and real practice. I probably got an extra 5 hours of practice a week in just doing this.

My next suggestion is to find sneaky ways to train. Make all of your movements martial movements without giving away what you are doing. For example, I use tai-sabaki (body shifting) movements to walk around obstacles. I am aware of how I open and close doors and do it in a way that could be translated into a strike or a throw. Doing this will help internalize your movements and burn them into muscle memory. Again – make a game out of it – be creative.

Next is walking around training. When walking around amongst other people mentally note their distance. Notice how you feel as they get closer or move farther away. What are they doing with their hands. If they are standing, do they have good balance or poor balance. Are there any bulges in their clothing that may be weapons. If they had bad intentions, how would they have to move to attack. Do this without staring at anybody. Train yourself to use peripheral vision and short non-threatening glances.

Finally is mental scenario training. Whenever you go anywhere – including changing rooms in your house, scan the room. Look for exits and notice if there are any obstacles there. What in the room could be used as cover or as an improvised weapon? What would you do if armed people came in intent on doing you harm. While you do this pay attention to your breathing and heart-rate. Keep your breathing slow and through the nose.

The important thing is to make these things as enjoyable as possible. If you do, it will be easier to continue doing them.

The other day I posted a statistic to my facebook profile – that 70% of adult males carry edged tools, such as knives, on a day to day basis in the U.S. A couple of people called me on the statistic; I have no problem with that. I do have statistics and research methods training from graduate school, so I think I can shed some light here. Let’s look at the use and misuse of statistics in self defense.

First the 70% statistic may or may not be accurate. I got it from a trusted source, and when I asked him for his source – he had legitimately lost his notes – but pointed me in to a couple of places where it may have come from. I’m still looking. That number includes blades carried for work purposes, multi-tools, and pocket knives. It seems like a reasonable number in my experience. A recent Gallup poll said that 11% of Americans responded that they carried knives for self defense, and that number was higher among men than women.

I was using the statistic the way statistics are often used – to convince people to take action. That action was to get some training in how to handle edged weapon assault. Attacks with edged weapons are fairly frequent in the U.S. and that includes the use of swords and machetes. Knives are very common. Let’s be clear that I am not selling training at this point, and am not using that statistic to scare people for my own personal gain. The real question about the value of the number is this – would following the interpretation of the statistic and getting some training be a good thing? I believe it would.

There are two potentially big issues with the use of statistics: 1. bad data, and 2. flawed interpretation.

Bad data can mean that the statistic is totally false – that  the resulting data is just made up. This is frequently the case, and I’ll talk about a pervasive lie about self defense in a minute.

With statistics generated from studies or surveys, errors in data can creep in from sampling or how questions are posed. There are mathematical formulas that tell researchers how large a random sample  of a population they must survey or test before their results cannot be attributed merely to chance. If you interview one guy in the United States and that guy happens to be Charles Manson – your data set isn’t going to represent the attitudes of the general population very well. The issue here is getting a truly random sample. Political polls aren’t random, they only poll people who are willing to answer polls – not necessarily those who may vote.

The other issue comes from the way questions are asked in surveys and polls. Look at these two questions: 1. Do you carry a knife? and 2. Do you ever carry edged tools for work or for other reasons including box cutters, knives, multi-tools, or the like? – People are likely to answer those two questions differently. People may be more likely to lie when there is a social stigma attached to the question. I’m aware of a survey done about butter consumption where rephrasing a question swung the results by around 15%.

In my opinion, one of the most commonly held misconceptions in self defense or martial arts is that all fights wind up on the ground, or 95%, or 80% or whatever number you’ve heard. Any number you hear in this regard is most likely completely made up (in other words – crap). This number has been actively promoted by people selling ground fighting systems. It sounds very authoritative, logical, and gives you something actionable to do.

There are only two studies that I am aware of. One study conducted by the LAPD before they designed their newest defensive tactics curriculum showed that in around 60% of hands-on use of force incidents, both the officer and suspect wound up on the ground. This is not only far less than 90%, but if you interpret use of force as an officer trying to take a suspect to the ground to facilitate cuffing – this sheds even more light.

Another study analyzed “street fight” videos uploaded to Youtube – which is not an analysis of all street fights – merely of the ones uploaded to Youtube. The results of this study showed that far less than 50% of fights analyzed wound up with both opponents on the ground. It also showed that the first person to go to the ground nearly always fared worse. Regardless, the term “street fight” does not imply self defense to me – just unsanctioned mutual combat.

So, let’s weigh the statistic on the scale of more good than harm. If you were to believe that all fights (100%) wound up on the ground, and so that you only learned ground fighting for self defense would that be a good thing or a bad thing?  If the statistic is wrong, and you faced an opponent who knew how to keep off the ground, or multiple opponents, or someone with a weapon – that could be a very very bad thing.

So let’s say that we have a rigorously controlled study with good data, and we generate some statistics from that, what could go wrong? Well, even more insidious is the misinterpretation, or deliberately false interpretation of what the data represents. Misuse of statistics in this way is rampant in media and politics..

I once read an article on a newspaper’s web site that had the headline, “study shows that people who own guns are more likely to be murdered.” Really? No. The paper quoted a study that showed that the rate of gun ownership was higher in areas with a high murder rate. To even approach this interpretation, the study would have had to compare gun ownership amongst murder victims – it did not. Just as easily it could have been interpreted as people living in high crime areas feel the need to arm themselves for self-protection, but this would also be false as the study didn’t look at motivation for gun ownership.

So what is a good way to look at statistics?

Let’s take a statistic about sexual assault among college-aged women in the U.S. In some studies it is shown that there is alcohol consumption by either the assaulted or the criminal or both in 70% of reported cases of sexual assault. Without getting into the validity of the statistic, could we safely assume that it’s a good idea for young women to be careful both about their own alcohol consumption as well as being cautious about others around them who are consuming alcohol? Seems pretty reasonable. Could we assume that women who don’t drink have nothing to be concerned about? No, absolutlely not.

Universally, police and self defense experts warn people never to let a criminal take you to a second crime scene. After an abduction, the chances of an abductee surviving drop to almost zero. I do not believe this is in any way an urban myth and I believe the advice to be sound. We don’t know how many of the people who go missing every year are abducted, or how many survive that abduction. From the crimes we know about over time – this advice stands up.

Look to statistics in self defense with an air of skepticism, and think about the consequences of their interpretation.

Martial arts skills are far less generalizable than many people would think. I am reminded of an interview I once heard with Joe Rogan who said, “The UFC has proven that Brazilian Jujutsu is the most effective martial art in the world.” That’s a load of crap.

First, this is to take nothing away, or in any way insult BJJ, MMA, the UFC, or anyone who teaches, studies, or competes in those systems. I do not denigrate other systems or teachers as a rule. However, and person that claims that one martial art is superior to another is either ignorant or intentionally misleading people. There is no such martial art – never has been, never will be. I’d like to share a video that I think highlights this:

What you’ll see here is some of America’s most skilled combative athletes going to experience some of the U.S. Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). The most interesting section, to me, is where the UFC guys go to do an exercise called “The Last of the Mohicans.”

Holding a weapon and suited up in armor, they are to run a distance and face multiple opponents who are likewise armed. There are no rules, their goal is to “kill” their opponents. In the video presented, you’ll see a couple of the guys just freeze up until their Marine escort yells at them to attack. Once they begin to attack they are usually taken out by a second assailant.

One of the participants, talking to the camera, admits that he went 4 times and didn’t survive a single encounter. Does this mean that these guys suck? No, not at all.

What you have is people (both Marines and UFC guys) who train specifically to achieve certain goals, under certain conditions, in a certain environment, with certain rules. They are both the best at what they do. However, take a UFC guy and remove him from the ring, eliminate his rules, give him gear he isn’t used to carrying, and face him against multiple opponents and weapons – his skills will only translate so far. Take a Marine who is the best at what he does and throw him into the UFC, give him rules, change his environment and his opponent – again, he’ll only do so well.

Specificity is the key. Martial skills only generalize so far. Want to defend against a knife? Better train that. Want to defend against multiple opponents? You better train that. Do you want to be a good sport fighter? Train that sport.

Arguments over which style is the best have been going on for decades. It’s a waste of time. You should understand why you are training, and make sure you focus on that.

Make contact, keep it. That’s a basic philosophy of our system or ketsugo jujutsu. When someone throws a punch or a kick, or moves in to grapple – they are giving us a gift by presenting us a set of targets for attack.

It’s a good idea not to box a boxer, or wrestle a wrestler, or out-kick a Muay Thai kickboxer. So, what should you do if faced with someone with greater skill, or speed?

One thing that neutralizes a great deal of speed and skill is proximity. Move in as close as you can. In our practice I tell students to try to wear your opponent like a suit. This takes a little bit of courage as beginners usually like to create greater distance. As a beginner distance is probably your friend, it does take some skill to move in on an attacking person.

The thing about boxers, kickers, even grapplers is that they are all most effective in the range their tools are designed for. We like to be even closer than grappling range.

What? Isn’t grappling range as close as possible? Not really. Yes grappling frequently involves body to body contact, but you can neutralize most takedowns and throws by eliminating space even farther and melding your bodyweight onto your opponents. I’ve done it with judo players, MMA guys, and wrestlers.

Once you’re inside this range, you should have an arsenal of very close combat tools – flesh tearing, joint locking,eye poking, etc. Knees and elbows become tools of choice.

I just returned from Bonny Eagle High School, a local school, where I taught a group of 24 seniors an 1 1/2 hour self defense class. I have probably done a couple of hundred very short self-defense seminars such as these over the years, and I draw a few distinctions between teaching martial arts and teaching a self defense seminar.

Let’s be clear – the martial arts I teach are 100% geared towards self defense. The people who come and train with me week in and week out get very good at purse self defense very fast. However, I can’t teach a 1 1/2 hour seminar the same way I teach the people who train with me 4 hours a week for years. The main issue is time. What kind of training can I impart in a very short 1 1/2 hour class?

To toot my own horn – I can teach awesome advice, strategies, and techniques in 1 1/2 hours that can save lives. Over the years I have boiled down a curriculum to a complete array of useful tools. Yes, I mentioned the “t” word – technique. This is the big difference between my regular classes and the one-off seminars – I focus on several high-value techniques. There just isn’t the time to teach concepts and principles and have people go through the exercises to internalize them.

The students in my seminars will get some very important concepts and principles as part of the teaching, and I have sneaky ways of getting people to learn them without learning. Most “the 10 deadliest moves to win any street fight” type courses you can buy off the Internet teach a set of “unstoppable” techniques – most rehash the same old stuff over and over.

For the technique approach to work with beginners in a seminar setting the techniques must be:

• versatile – able to work from various angles, under different types of attacks etc.
• large muscle movement based – small muscle groups and complex motor skills will not function correctly under stress
• easy – the techniques must not require extreme balance, flexibility, or coordination
• stackable – the techniques must leave room for follow-up techniques, suicide throws and the like are not great
• simple – one or two steps, large target areas, etc.

When I teach in the seminar setting the teaching must be fun, fast paced, but still allow room to inculcate the skills I want to impart. I’ve developed some teaching methods which I have found maximize retention and understanding in a short time.

Kuzushi (崩し) is a Japanese word for unbalancing an opponent. It comes from the verb kuzusu, meaning to pull down or demolish. You’ll find it commonly used in jujutsu and derived arts such as judo and aikido. Normally it is the act of taking an opponent’s balance rendering them incapable of counterattack. In most schools kuzushi is a physical process.

In our school of Ketsugo Jujutsu, as taught be Peter Freedman, sensei – we recognize three levels of kuzushi – mental, physical, and spiritual.

Physical kuzushi is where the jujutsuka (practitioner of jujutsu) does something to take an opponent’s physical balance – which can often lead to a fall, takedown, or throw. Sometimes kuzushi means that an opponent must take a step or otherwise move to regain balance – which may create an openening for another attack. There are many ways of creating a  physical kuzushi – pushing, pulling, bumping, locking, striking, kicking, or merely moving out of the way at the last moment.

Mental kuzushi is the act of creating confusion in one’s opponent (mental unbalance) causing their mind to slow and thus their reactions. Mental kuzushi may be caused through trickery, words, confusing phsyical techniques, hidden strikes, etc.

When we talk about spirit, this is more akin to “fighting spirit” than the religious sense of the word. We are talking about emotion. Spiritual kuzushi causes emotional unbalance, frequently sapping the will to fight, or causing rash action. An example might be causing an opponent to bleed or pointing out that they are bleeding. In a multiple attacker scenario, sometimes taking out the “alpha” attacker takes the fighting spirit of the rest of the group. Extreme pain can also be a spiritual kuzushi.

A single defense against an attack may encompass all three types of kuzushi. When an opponent strikes, let’s say we shift out of the way at the last moment. Our movement may cause the opponent to off-balance himself physically. We may land a hidden strike which, combined with our last minute shift, may confuse him. And, he may grow angry, upset, or even frightened that his attack didn’t work and he’s now in unexpected pain – a spiritual kuzushi.

All martial arts and systems of self defense will, in some way deal with range. Range, in this sense, means the proximity of your opponent, his ability to attack you, and your ability to attack him. Many systems have a ton of different ranges, kicking, grappling, striking, weapons etc. While there is nothing wrong with this, I prefer to simplify. Upon simplification, we can then internalize the principles and realize spontaneous appropriate response.

Let me make this abundantly clear: Until you internalize and intuitively understand range, memorizing a bunch of ranges will be no good in combat. Knowing that your striking range is 28 inches is no good, if you can’t instantly look at your opponent and understand whether or not you can strike without conscious thought. There is only one cure, simplification and practice.

I have simplified my range system into three basic ranges – long, medium, and short range. Why? Because at each of these ranges – choice of tactics changes. Breaking these ranges down any further makes no difference to the way we practice. Here are my definitions.

Long range: At long range, none of your body parts (or your opponent’s) are immediately available to attack without closing the distance. In other words, for your opponent to attack you, he will need to move towards you in some way.

Medium range: Medium range begins where, if you and your opponent were to outstretch your arms, your fingertips would touch. Since every part of the body can attack or be attacked, we are no longer in long range. The limit of medium range is reached when you are able to touch the torso of your opponent.

Short range: Once you are able to touch an opponents body or head area, you are in short range. Short range would include grappling and close combat distance in other systems.

Now, I can hear many people saying – “but that would mean that each range changes as different weapons are used.” You bet. Long range for a sword is different from a kick or a punch. Missile weapons, such as firearms, are really the only exceptions that don’t fit well into this system.

So the next criticism might be, “well then you have to memorize a bunch of ranges for different weapons.” Yes, and no, but mostly no. Remember, the idea is to have a little bit of knowledge and then internalize the principles. You need to intuitively know when you’re inside medium range of someone holding a stick, knife or broken bottle. There are no shortcuts here, you must practice with opponents empty handed and holding different weapons. And, by the way, you would be surprised at the number of sword and machete attacks in the U.S. every year, so don’t count out long blades even for reality-based training.

Your tactics at each of these ranges will depend on your style. If you want to learn ours, you need to come train with us.