I took Kubotan training with Massad Ayoob and have been wanting some additional training for repetitions and, perhaps, some further training. I searched the forums here without much luck and the internet as well. Is this a thing?
happy shooting, Jerry
"Draw fast, shoot well," Mike W.
Kubaton training nowadays is scarce outside of individual instructors that might have had contact with Takayuki Kubota or the Gosoku-ryū style of karate. It was popular in Nevada and California at one point and was taught in my first LE academy. A very useful tool for come-alongs and quickly proning people out. Mas Ayoob is a member here. You might try a PM to him to see if he knows of current resources.
-All views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect those of the author's employer-
Mas has certified people on that thing in days past, so I agree that he’s the first guy I’d ask. I was in Greg Ellifritz’s Kubotan module at PeP3, so I know that he is up on the tactics, as well.
That said, I’ve taken several classes over the years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s too high a failure rate. A certified instructor was unable to make a pain compliance wrist lock work on me in a class years ago, and Greg *broke* not one, but two Kubotans on a guy’s arm at PeP3. My feeling is I don’t want to rely on anything that I can shrug off, because I’m not exactly a raging steroid monster. OMMV.
That all said, Kubotans are still cool, because anything hard and force-focussing that one can hammer fist a face with is always cool. JMO.
Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.
-George W. Bush
Was Ellifritz running a solid aluminum pocket stick or a polymer one? And what diameter? I've broken resin/polymer pockets sticks in some near full-contact training in both a dojo and as a demo "volunteer" for beat cops in the '90s but have never seen a proper aluminum kubotan fail. The ones with a chamfered through hole drilled for the keyring. My father still has and daily carries his original one showing all its miles, vehicle extractions, and arrests since the mid-eighties. I've got a decent pain tolerance and his old stick has put enough pressure on me in more than one demo fight to almost add airspace to my wrist joint. P.S. Headbutting, no matter how partial strength, your dad in a sparring match ends poorly and I stayed on the floor for a bit after taking a not-as-pulled-as-usual kubotan jab to the solar plexus and a couple other possibly gratuitous strikes. He set me up telling me to resist as hard as possible and not half-ass the demo but I was still shown that an old dog can improvise, too.Originally Posted by Totem Polar
As for pressure points and locks, they are situational like anything else. A righteous pressure point with some body weight on it applied between collar bone and shoulder blade helped me get control of a second arm and not be stabbed by a suicidal patient who decided to assault me for stopping their rush to swallow a bottle of pills and turned into a ground fight in a hallway and attempt to get a hand on scissors. That was a flashlight already in my hand when the vigorous patient assessment kicked off. The other EMT was useless but I still have the flashlight in a pack.
At a party, a troubled teen in the family circles decided to try slapping their mom around and party goers just saw them fall to the ground shrieking when I stepped over, grabbed their wrist, and barked something colorful in a step above command tone. An ASP Key Defender was perpendicular to their arm bone above their thumb while both my hands crushed it in with a little rock back and forth and pulled them back toward me while rotating their hand up with the stick as a fulcrum. From what I hear, the wall-to-wall counseling session they got from their father when he got home and his wife told him made me look downright friendly by comparison. Kid turned out fine over the next year.
And a dog needed to be relatively discreetly rebooted in front of some children once. A pocket stick was slipped under its collar as a windlass to crank it down enough choke the beast into passivity after establishing a dominant position enough to avoid getting bit. That trick is hit or miss and dependent on reading the collar as most will break at the clasp before tightening enough as well as having the intuition to tell if it is a dog that will simmer down after the choke is released.
My 5/8" handmade copper sticks made from a scrapped grounding rod on a job site I cut to length and shaped against a belt sander have never been used. Good luck breaking one, though.
Anyway, i just keep up the same way my father did:
Beating upSparring with my kids.
A few pressure points and bony prominences to target, being able to lock a wrist quick enough on a resisting opponent, and hammerfist targeting on someone fighting back cover about all Joe Average needs.
Two of the standard plastic ones available everywhere.
Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.
-George W. Bush
Thanks gents. A couple of leads here.
happy shooting, Jerry
"Draw fast, shoot well," Mike W.
Look into RYU TE, Taika Oyata’s system, Chisa Kun Bo.
Sticks are about 5” long , 1” diameter, rounded taper to about 1/2” ends. They have a cord finger loop.
I do not like the loop, handicapping one hand and possible degloving issues.
Than being said, they really concentrate force in a hammer fist, closed ridge hand strike or pressure point.
I trained this but do not carry them. I use the end of, light, pen, markers, closed folder etc… I do not need more added to my loadout.
Modesty Blaise used the variant she called a Kongo. It could be the handle of her purse, the core of hair in a bun, etc.
Code Name: JET STREAM
Haven't carried or used one of the plastic ones for many years. I often choose pens for their ability to be use in that exigent role, though. I was packing up some old gear the other day (moving from CA to WA) and came across an old aluminum one I picked up somewhere a long time ago, in the bottom of a box of old gear.
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