My Take On A Path To Competence

[Mister X]

Good article and Good thread.

It would indeed be difficult to find GR wrestling instruction in the context of self-defense, but IMO it is becoming increasingly hard to find a relevant BJJ school. The reason being is so many focus on competition and sporting applications. Some are teaching sport oriented methods and don't even know it. Those that claim to teach self-defense actually teach dueling and that is not what self-defense is about. Don't get me wrong, BJJ has much to offer and I have spent quite a bit of time incorporating elements from it and on the mat with some of the best in the business, but I feel like my wrestling background is probably more useful in terms of self-defense. Wrestling is generally superior for staying on the feet/defending takedowns, movement and control standing and on the ground. Takedown defense is an afterthought in many BJJ schools. The thinking in BJJ is often "why would the shark mind being dragged into the water". That's fine in a sport or challenge match context, but horrendous from a self-defense perspective. Sport based arts including wrestling will need to adapted and modified to be suitable for self-defense and there's generally no one stop shop where you'll get everything you need.

[Shootingrn]

Thank you for the response Cecil...I actually took your class in Ilinois at Larry's place a few years ago and it really brought together quite a few thoughts and questions I had been working on through the introduction of your infight triage.

What I understand from your post is that putting in the work is a given, the sweat equity must be paid...but it is the way we structure and earn it that that sets up the results. Understanding now that the ground fight is not a ground fight but just a way, that the dominant position is not just for dominance but for optimizing options really make sense to me after reading the statements.

Thanks again for your input.

[Cecil Burch]

that the dominant position is not just for dominance but for optimizing options really make sense to me after reading the statements.

Thanks again for your input.

Glad it helped. I started using that language a couple of years ago and it really seems to resonate with folks. It seems to get people to look at solutions across the board rather than in a narrow alley. I emphasize the language even more so in a standing entanglement and have had some decent success in keeping people from hyperfocusing so much. It helps gun-centric people even more than BJJ guys.

[Shellback]

What I would say is that when someone gets really dedicated to training something, it can be become very easy to hyper focus and unthinkingly default to that response regardless of the contextual application...

I ran into this last weekend at William Aprill's class and I don't think I would have ever noticed had Chris not said something to me. We were running through William's gun disarm block and rather than utilizing the strike that had just been shown I reverted to an under hook, duck under, and taking the "bad guy's" back. I believe my intuitive reaction to solving the problem would have worked in that situation, but it's not what I wanted to work on, and wasn't what was being demonstrated.

After it was pointed out to me it was easy to remedy. But, had Chris not pointed it out, I'm not sure that I would've ever caught the fact that I was reverting to BJJ. At that point I made a conscious effort to focus on the actual technique being presented and not just defaulting to a grappling solution.