Honest review of ECQC, Couer d'Alene ID

[Cecil Burch]

Thanks for the review. I would have liked to have been in that class but I am starting a new job in less than two weeks and did want to risk injury.

Could you expand on what you meant by the above quote about jiujitsu?

Not the OP quoted, but I think maybe I have a clue about this.

Essentially, BJJ is phenomenally important for an entanglement. Not just on the ground, but standing as well. It gives you needed skills that work better than anything else, and can't be substituted for. HOWEVER, it does not mean you can take a good BJJ game, walk in to ECQC sight unseen, and directly translate. There is about a 2% shift needed to make the skills fly easily. It does not take long, nor is it hard. From years and years of watching, participating, and teaching, most good BJJ people need about half a day to make the adjustment. Once they do, they will dominate EVERYONE.

The great challenge is in employing all the skills needed in an ECQC fight at the appropriate moment in the appropriate context. There will be a moment when the best thing to do is to stay on top of someone and choke them out. There will be another moment when staying entangled on the ground is the worst possible answer. So regardless of what skills we have or don't have, it is the need to make the right choices. Hence, BJJ is key, but it is not the only key. So a good BJJ player who is dominating his opponent can still make a poor choice and lose against someone who is not really his physical or technical equal, but who understands context.

My two cents, based on a little bit of experience.

[Mark D]

Pps. I ran the course with a J-frame: it really wasn't all that much more work, so long as you have a reloading block and a ton of speedloaders.

Thanks for the AAR. Was the J-frame an advantage at all? I could be mistaken, but I recall hearing elsewhere that a J-frame can be advantageous at ECQC because: 1) less malfunctions in the entangled fight, and 2) harder to to be disarmed due to shorter barrel length. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue.

[Cecil Burch]

Thanks for the AAR. Was the J-frame an advantage at all? I could be mistaken, but I recall hearing elsewhere that a J-frame can be advantageous at ECQC because: 1) less malfunctions in the entangled fight, and 2) harder to to be disarmed due to shorter barrel length. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue.

I ran a 642 in one of my early ECQCs, circa 2007. The supposed advantages of the snubby are over blown.

1) 99% of malfunctions in an entanglement stem from some part of someone's body interfering in the slide. So theoretically a snub is a good solution. A better answer is to shoot the gun form appropriate extension or compression based on proximity of the threat. The semiautos getting jammed up are almost always because the gun is too far forward. A j-frame too far forward may mot get jammed up in a like manner, but it is still too far forward ans is easily deflected or grabbed taking it out of the immediate fight as well

2) A j-frame is harder to disarm, but that does not mean the other guy can't easily get a handle on it and foul it's use just as well as he can an auto.

The answer is not a hardware solution but rather good skills. There is certainly no problem running a snub in that world, but it's only real advantage is that it is SLIGHTLY quicker and easier to deploy than a bigger auto. But that is only a tiny, tiny percentage advantage.

[Mark D]

I ran a 642 in one of my early ECQCs, circa 2007. The supposed advantages of the snubby are over blown.

The answer is not a hardware solution but rather good skills. There is certainly no problem running a snub in that world, but it's only real advantage is that it is SLIGHTLY quicker and easier to deploy than a bigger auto. But that is only a tiny, tiny percentage advantage.

Thanks Cecil. I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful response.

[Hambo]

.38 sim...

It's been a while since I got hit with sim rounds, but I don't remember getting set on fire. What up with that and what kind of ammo?

[Totem Polar]

Could you expand on what you meant by the above quote about jiujitsu?

Sorry about the delay, guys. I was out the last 4 days doing my own teaching/clinic stuff in my own area of expertise and I'm just getting back online here. So then, I've gotta say that @Cecil Burch said it better than I could:

Hence, BJJ is key, but it is not the only key. So a good BJJ player who is dominating his opponent can still make a poor choice and lose against someone who is not really his physical or technical equal, but who understands context...

Man, that really is the nut of it, right there. JMO.


Going on:

Thanks for the AAR. Was the J-frame an advantage at all? I could be mistaken, but I recall hearing elsewhere that a J-frame can be advantageous at ECQC because: 1) less malfunctions in the entangled fight, and 2) harder to to be disarmed due to shorter barrel length. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue.

The answer is not a hardware solution but rather good skills. There is certainly no problem running a snub in that world, but it's only real advantage is that it is SLIGHTLY quicker and easier to deploy than a bigger auto. But that is only a tiny, tiny percentage advantage.

Again, Cecil is spot on. This comes with a caveat though, in my very humble opinion: Cecil—and I've seen him teach, myself--is a BJJ God. For him, the perceived advantages are minimal, because his skill set all but equalizes the platforms. I believe him when he says that the J's advantages are overblown.

That said, for a guy like me, who is a BJJ dilettante/retard, there is something to the fact that the J-frame is harder to disarm—exactly because I have not yet developed the skills that Cecil mentions. To wit: in the grounded 1-on-1 evo starting with one hand on the opponent's gun, from the bottom position, I had a pretty easy time stripping/freeing up the j and giving my buddy the business with all 5. I mean, that happened pretty quick (thanks to an *extremely* rudimentary grasp of playing a spider guard on my part), at which point a robust drunken scrabble for the remaining loaded sim gun commenced, since the J had done it's job and ceded the floor. When the roles were reversed, the G17 T FX gun barfed relatively quickly (because my hand was on it, go figure) leaving a nice scramble for the j-frame, since it was the only working gun in the fight pretty rapidly. Circling back to “BJJ being a thing” for a sec; this match, between myself and a young Idaho fellow named Matt, was a pretty good referendum on BJJ effectiveness. Both Matt and I fit into that class of people new to BJJ because of ECQC experience—whether ours, or reading about someone else's and wising up—and as a result, we had a number of people who fit into that “first year BJJ” category, with many of us sitting at roughly the 6 month mark. My recollection is that Matt and I have similar time rolling (months, not years) and the Boyd belts were even: I probably outweighed Matt by 40lbs, and he was probably younger by 20 years. The net effect? The guy on bottom ate the other guy. Even a tiny bit of Jits is huge here: when both hands of both players are occupied, the guy on top has weight on his legs, and the guy on bottom gets to use his legs, with even minimal skills. Hence, me stripping the J in more or less seconds and giving him 5 when I was grounded, and him then getting my j from me and putting burn marks on me with my own wheelie when he started on bottom.

Since neither of us was Cecil, and probably won't be (well, maybe Matt will; he's got the decades and smarts to spare), one takeaway from the unwashed fight was that the J was the gun reliably delivering the hurt in both evos. The other is that BJJ is a thing. Jits skill strikes me sort of like money: a lot more is clearly better; any that's available for use beats the shit out of having none; there are problems that even money and a killer ground game can't solve. JMO.

That's my take on it all, from the bottom of the jiu-jitsu ranking hierarchy, with the addendum that #1) I'm still processing and #2) I'm no Cecil on the mat. I hope that makes sense.


ETA:

It's been a while since I got hit with sim rounds, but I don't remember getting set on fire. What up with that and what kind of ammo?

Sorry, forgot this. Just plain old-school .38 sim rounds that Craig dug out of his stash on my behalf. After the evo, some of the crew standing on my left noted: 'Dude your shirt is scorched with burn marks..." Later, Craig was typically understated: "Yeah , those .38 sims are pretty hot."

No shit. My 9mm hits from last weekend have mostly faded to old bruises, while I still have actual round scabs on my arm from Matt giving me a helping with my own 642.

[Mark D]

Again, Cecil is spot on. This comes with a caveat though, in my very humble opinion: Cecil—and I've seen him teach, myself--is a BJJ God. For him, the perceived advantages are minimal, because his skill set all but equalizes the platforms. I believe him when he says that the J's advantages are overblown.

That said, for a guy like me, who is a BJJ dilettante/retard, there is something to the fact that the J-frame is harder to disarm—exactly because I have not yet developed the skills that Cecil mentions. To wit: in the grounded 1-on-1 evo starting with one hand on the opponent's gun, from the bottom position, I had a pretty easy time stripping/freeing up the j and giving my buddy the business with all 5. I mean, that happened pretty quick (thanks to an *extremely* rudimentary grasp of playing a spider guard on my part), at which point a robust drunken scrabble for the remaining loaded sim gun commenced, since the J had done it's job and ceded the floor. When the roles were reversed, the G17 T FX gun barfed relatively quickly (because my hand was on it, go figure) leaving a nice scramble for the j-frame, since it was the only working gun in the fight pretty rapidly. Circling back to “BJJ being a thing” for a sec; this match, between myself and a young Idaho fellow named Matt, was a pretty good referendum on BJJ effectiveness. Both Matt and I fit into that class of people new to BJJ because of ECQC experience—whether ours, or reading about someone else's and wising up—and as a result, we had a number of people who fit into that “first year BJJ” category, with many of us sitting at roughly the 6 month mark. My recollection is that Matt and I have similar time rolling (months, not years) and the Boyd belts were even: I probably outweighed Matt by 40lbs, and he was probably younger by 20 years. The net effect? The guy on bottom ate the other guy. Even a tiny bit of Jits is huge here: when both hands of both players are occupied, the guy on top has weight on his legs, and the guy on bottom gets to use his legs, with even minimal skills. Hence, me stripping the J in more or less seconds and giving him 5 when I was grounded, and him then getting my j from me and putting burn marks on me with my own wheelie when he started on bottom.

Since neither of us was Cecil, and probably won't be (well, maybe Matt will; he's got the decades and smarts to spare), one takeaway from the unwashed fight was that the J was the gun reliably delivering the hurt in both evos. The other is that BJJ is a thing. Jits skill strikes me sort of like money: a lot more is clearly better; any that's available for use beats the shit out of having none; there are problems that even money and a killer ground game can't solve. JMO.

That's my take on it all, from the bottom of the jiu-jitsu ranking hierarchy, with the addendum that #1) I'm still processing and #2) I'm no Cecil on the mat. I hope that makes sense.

Many thanks for the additional detail. I'm also on the "crawl" end of the BJJ crawl-walk-run continuum. It sounds like the J-frame may offer a very small but noticeable advantage for folks like us.

[Totem Polar]

It sounds like the J-frame may offer a very small but noticeable advantage for folks like us.

I think the snub is more forgiving of mistakes. I'm still making a lot of mistakes.

[BJJ]

@Sidheshooter and @Cecil Burch

Thanks for your commentary.

[Cecil Burch]

Guys, I’m not downplaying a snub because of personal belief. I’m downplaying it because of over 15 years of working the problem and seeing a lot of results. Can the snub work well? Sure, without a doubt. But looking at one or two evos and thinking it is an answer is not a good base of study.

As I said earlier, the snub is harder to disarm. It MAY be a tad harder for someone to get a hold of. But there will absolutely be far more situations where it is a moot point and the other guy WILL get a grip on it, or the gun can’t come out to be deployed, or etc. we are talking a tiny percentage where it may work best. If that is understood, then it’s cool. But I’m seeing some “this will cover up some issues” type thinking and I can tell you unequivocally that is the wrong attitude to take.

Is my skill set helping me? Absolutely. Realistically I feel comfortable running a j-frame in a pocket and I’m pretty sure I can deploy when I need to in an entanglement. Mostly because I have done that very thing in train8ng against some bad ass train8ng partners. But that is not why I am saying the things I’m saying. It’s years and years of dealing with this and seeing a lot of people succeed AND fail at the same scenario.

If you choose to run a snub, awesome. That’s great and I encourage it. Just don’t fool yourself that it will work the way you expect every time.