My Take On A Path To Competence

[Cecil Burch]

In an attempt to answer a ton of PMs and emails I constantly get on what are good steps to get better at the H2H portion of what some people refer to as the "Shivworks Paradigm", I wrote this article on my website. Understand that these are my thoughts (admittedly based on some decent experience of teaching people and seeing people come through this type of coursework) as expressed as best I can. Hope it helps some people make some informed choices.


http://www.iacombatives.com/2016/11/...to-competency/

Whenever I do seminars, I always get a great number of questions relating to how to sustain or even gain proficiency in the H2H skill set outside of the short course format. I also get a lot of PMs and emails about the same subject. It can certainly be daunting, trying to assimilate all the things we need to integrate to be a functional multi-disciplinary thinking tactician. And then adding the task of trying to figure out how to actually get fluency in a brand new skill set makes it so much harder, especially when someone is having their first exposure to said skill set. In this article, I will try to give some basic advice that hopefully will help somewhat.



The following is based on over ten years of teaching this material to a wide range of students in open enrollment coursework. It is not based on what I myself like to do, or what fits my personal desires. I need to make sure this is not ego driven, but what can truly be found to work the best for the majority of people. I am also using decades long experiences of some good friends and training partners who teach similar coursework – folks like Craig Douglas of Shivworks, Paul Sharp of Sharp Defense, Chris Fry of MDTS Training, Larry Lindenman of Point Driven Training, and others. Between all of us, we quite literally have almost a century of time teaching, and we have seen thousands and thousands of students. I think I can safely say there is a good body of evidence to show what a good training pathway is..............

[Wondering Beard]

I read it a few days ago on your site.

Excellent stuff.

[SLG]

What kind of hippy dippy Arizona nonsense is this? Real men fight on their feet, not rolling around like crazy teenagers. Plus, you can't be taught how to fight in some school. You were either born with it or you werent. Maybe this stuff works if you have to wrestle the remote out of your wife's hands and you don't want her to have to miss work the next few days, but certainly not against a guy who knows how to hit. Or kick you in the head. Then you're done.

[ford.304]

I'm 10 months into the sort of BJJ routine recommended in this post, and I've got to say that it's awesome.

Also that I never thought in my life I would regret not wrestling in high school (seriously, you wear spandex singlets and hug dudes?), but now I wish I had every day.

[xmanhockey7]

Great article Cecil. Thank you

[Cory]

I'd like to start BJJ. Right now I honestly can't afford it. When I eventually can, I only know of one good school in my area, and they seem to be less of a "martial" place and more of a competition place judging from their website. Seems there are far more GI schools than non GI schools as well.

When finances afford I intend to add BJJ to my cardio and firearms practice.

-Cory

[OnionsAndDragons]

I'd like to start BJJ. Right now I honestly can't afford it. When I eventually can, I only know of one good school in my area, and they seem to be less of a "martial" place and more of a competition place judging from their website. Seems there are far more GI schools than non GI schools as well.

When finances afford I intend to add BJJ to my cardio and firearms practice.

-Cory

This is my situation as well. Though, we have what by all accounts is an excellent BJJ school with a really good head instructor.

I've been sacking away money for tuition for myself and the youngest. I really want to be able to dedicate a solid 6-12 months of 2-4 days a week. Both to get the biggest bang for the buck as it ain't cheap, and to just put in the time and work. I'm mostly doing this because the class times are often times when I try and put in a couple extra hours at work, so I don't want that loss to impact the family or give me an extra excuse.

I've put in a lot if work the last year on basic strength and fitness; BJJ is my next step on the Path.

[SLG]

I'd like to start BJJ. Right now I honestly can't afford it. When I eventually can, I only know of one good school in my area, and they seem to be less of a "martial" place and more of a competition place judging from their website. Seems there are far more GI schools than non GI schools as well.

When finances afford I intend to add BJJ to my cardio and firearms practice.

-Cory

Don't get too wrapped up in gi vs no gi, or sport vs martial. I do think it matters, but much less than some would have you believe. I also think just doing it is the most important part. A good school is always the best way to go, but if you only have a mediocre school, it's still better than nothing, imo.

[MVS]

Cecil, obviously you are far more qualified to have a valuable opinion on this than I. My comment would be with BJJ being your base art as it were, you are really only emphasizing one aspect of the fight. As well, you are emphasizing the one you really don't want to go to. Yes, I know about learning to grapple to be able to ungrapple and all that, but still, I would rather not go to the ground in the first place. When taking MDOC with Paul he asks what area you would like to work on most. For me it was the clinch as that was an area I had very limited training in and seemed very valuable. Of course as you point out with your Greco comments, it isn't something that is easy to get trained on.

Be advised, I am not arguing with your conclusion per se, because I have no better answer to offer and I could be totally wet. Always looking to learn more.

[SLG]

Cecil, obviously you are far more qualified to have a valuable opinion on this than I. My comment would be with BJJ being your base art as it were, you are really only emphasizing one aspect of the fight. As well, you are emphasizing the one you really don't want to go to. Yes, I know about learning to grapple to be able to ungrapple and all that, but still, I would rather not go to the ground in the first place. When taking MDOC with Paul he asks what area you would like to work on most. For me it was the clinch as that was an area I had very limited training in and seemed very valuable. Of course as you point out with your Greco comments, it isn't something that is easy to get trained on.

Be advised, I am not arguing with your conclusion per se, because I have no better answer to offer and I could be totally wet. Always looking to learn more.

MVS,

I used to think exactly the same way, but as I have gotten older and looked at the fights I have been in (as well as all the others I've seen or know enough about), I have come to a different conclusion.

It is true you don't want to go to the ground for all sorts of reasons. However, that is not only not always in your control, (as you know). BJJ offers the only art in the world (IMHO) that consistently allows a smaller weaker person to defeat a larger stronger person. So it kind of comes down to: Do you want to avoid going to the ground, or do you want to be more likely to win? My whole life I have been a striker, and it has worked pretty well for me. As a smaller person though, you have to be MUCH better than a bigger person to be likely to win. In addition, getting older, I just don't want to hit people much anymore. My hands get injured too easily, and I recover too slowly these days. There are really no old strikers running around winning fights. There are a lot of older BJJ guys who can still handle their business. Those factors are what led me to BJJ. Better late than never.