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Thread: Philosophy on fisticuffs?

  1. #1
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    Philosophy on fisticuffs?

    I know this a mostly gun-centric forum, but a lot of you guys have done ECQC and some pretty impressive unarmed combatives courses. With the aftermath of the Zimmerman case, I've been considering what I would have done, and it all boils down to "If I could reach my gun, and an unarmed guy was on top of me, I'd probably be able to sweep him off his mount and maybe flip the tables." I've trained some in Judo, but I really want to increase my skills. I live in Illinois, so that also means that nearly every other business I'm in has The Sign out front.

    What styles do you train? Do you train for groundfighting or do you avoid being taken down as much as possible? Is your philosophy when you walk out the door to immobilize an assailant and hold them or to injure them and escape? If you want to share personal experience, you may. My experience pretty much started when I got my booty whooped by a boxer who showed up to the local YMCA "kerotty" class to do some sparring. Showed up some pretty serious flaws in technique and the realization was "Hey, I got what I paid for, but I didn't pay to get my booty whupped."

  2. #2
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    Fairfield County, CT
    Do ECQC or EWO (Edged Weapons Overview) to safely see what the suck of reality is like.

    Then, find things that would address the suck found in those courses.

    I wish I had done that, rather than try to build skills I THOUGHT would be relevant and realistic... but weren't.

    "Define the goal, build the answer" is a better approach than "throw skills into the toolbox, hoping you stock appropriately."

  3. #3
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    GA
    Paul Sharp is in Illinois. He's your guy. Hit him up on TPI.

  4. #4
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    Odessa, TX
    I wrestled in high school. I figured this was enough to manage most problems against opponents most. I took ECQC, and got a great reminder of how I really needed to improve my grappling to deal with people much bigger than me, and how to deal with knives in particular. I've since taken up jiu jitsu. Now, I knew I suck at punching and kicking, but I only have so much time to train, and I'm no MMA fighter. I'm looking to take an edged weapons class in the near future to supplement the jiu jitsu.

    As far as mindset and goals, I'm looking to focus on controlling an assailants ability to do damage to me. In my mind, that means controlling hands, and hips/cg if it goes to the ground. I don't plan on necessarily holding the assailant until the cops arrive. Does he have buddies that I don't see? Are the people near by going to help them or me? All I want to do is attack the deck in my favor as much as possible, because the goal is to get home and live a normal life if anything were to happen.

    If I can prevent from being in the Zimmerman situation through better ground skills, then maybe I don't even need to utilize the pistol to get out in one piece. That could save a ton of legal woes and unneeded publicity.

    Just my thoughts. I'm a real newbie at all this.
    Last edited by Will_H; 07-18-2014 at 03:16 PM.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by PT Doc View Post
    Paul Sharp is in Illinois. He's your guy. Hit him up on TPI.
    This.
    His MDOC course is pure gold, as is Cecil Burch's Immediate Action Combatives. They'll give you some stuff you can work even if you aren't training regularly in martial arts.
    If you do want to train regularly, BJJ is a good bet (ground fighting seems to be the hardest to learn).
    At any rate I'm sure Sharp can point you in the right direction. He's been at it a long time and probably knows most of the gyms in Illinois.
    Last edited by NickA; 07-18-2014 at 03:35 PM.

  6. #6
    The R in F.A.R.T RevolverRob's Avatar
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    Not to act like a pimp for another forum - But I think you'll find a lot of really great discussion over at SouthNarc's place on this and related subjects, if you don't know of it, send me a PM and I'll send you the link. Basically, I was/am in the same boat, since I 'live' in the NPE my focus on firearms training is mostly a personal challenge for fun now, and was driven by a misplaced mindset that focused on tool use in the past. After chatting with Cecil Burch and a few others I decided BJJ made the most sense for me. Unfortunately, I only got as far as touring a couple of gyms and attending a few rolling sessions, before a change in work commitments forced me away from that training route for the remainder of my time here in Austin.

    From a personal perspective, BJJ makes a lot of sense because it's an art that is focused on positional dominance, control, and manipulation of your opponent. If things go hands-on, I want the skills to attain positional advantage to end the fight quickly, be that by deploying a tool or through a choke/hold/strikes/whatever. Realistically, that close to someone anything can be effectively used to incapacitate an opponent if you have the mind and skills to get in the right position. From a mindset perspective we are mostly tool-driven users and think of problem-solving solutions in terms of tools, which is a really bad way to look at it, in my opinion. Your brain is the solution provider, the number of solutions is infinite, the way you arrive at solutions is to use your brain and then you can access tools available and select an expedient and efficient way to solve the problem. The advantage of BJJ is that it actually forces you to do a few things. First, it tests your physical limitations. Second, it tests your mental limitations. Third, it does all of that by forcing you to work against an opponent that is trying to do the same things you are, test their physical and mental limitations. Fourth, it does all of those things for 60-90 minutes a session pushing you hard. Fifth, because it's focused on hands/grappling skills, once you learn to achieve dominant position, you have the ability to choose from an array of additional tools and deploy them or not, but you have to control the fight first, hence why 1-4 become so important.

    I forget are you in the Chicago-area or not? If you are, I'm also looking for a place to train in the Chicago-area in the near future for the long term, so we might be able to help each other out finding a training group/gym, let me know if you're interested.

    -Rob

  7. #7
    Site Supporter Totem Polar's Avatar
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    Hard to argue with any of the recommendations above.

    I'm not going to bother with advice, but I will share my own path and thinking, just for kicks. A decade and a half of traditional okinawan karate at a fairly serious level (my own dojo, teaching for my local PDs DARE program) eventually segueing into FMA/combatives hybrid POIs (since I have a reasonable fear of edged weapons) including guys like Janich and Frank.

    Right now I am on fire for good old western boxing, mainly because I'm old and slightly doughy, and I can't do much about the first problem. The first chance I get to study with Douglas, I will, but for now I'm loving training boxing alongside bouncers, ex cons, accountants, docs and full-time moms. Because I love it, I'll keep going regularly, and that sort of trumps all the weekend seminar stuff I've done thus far--not to say that those seminars aren't extremely valuable in a combatives sense; they are, but I also need something that keeps me in shape while adding kinesthetic memory. Plus my coach is both ex-contract fighter and experienced bouncer--as well as a friend--so it's a good addition to whatever skill set I've already got, such as it is.

  8. #8
    Boxing with some form of grappling will put you WELL ahead of the game. Get the mechanics well solidified and if you can fit in some semi-regular training, you'll be in pretty good shape. Physical conditioning and size play a big role as well.

    I've found that a good working technical knowledge of BJJ had definitely helped to get position on people on the ground, even against MMA fighters (amateurs) who've had HS wrestling backgrounds. I think the sweeps and fighting from the back help a lot and are not ubiquitous in grappling.

  9. #9
    It's all speculation until you take something like ECQC or MDOC (or get in to the real deal). I would encourage you to take one of those and go from there.

    The short version of TPI is to build a foundation on the following core fundamentals.
    -MAnaging Unknown Contacts
    -brute strength.
    -boxing
    -BJJ and wrestling skills
    -firearms
    -blades
    -weapons retention
    -non-lethal others (OC, etc)

    Adapt this list to what you are capable of training and the weaknesses you find in your training.

    I took ECQC for the first time this summer. I found that my firearms skills were acceptable, additional boxing skills would not have helped, brute strength was a minor problem and lack of BJJ/wrestling skills was a huge problem. Edged weapons and non lethal were not a factor. Weapons retention is a minor issue that would be solved with better BJJ/wrestling game.

    That's what I came away with but YMWillV.

    Cheers,
    D

  10. #10
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    DFW, TX
    ECQC taught me not to get involved with fisticuffs.

    A man's got to know his limitations.

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