I apologize ahead of time for any vagueness, omissions, or mistakes in the AAR, as my notes are a bit incomplete, as there was simply a deluge of information and I was often scrambling to catch up. My hastiness did not help my handwriting either, and I sadly could not decipher everything I had written.
The ShivWorks Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) course is a two and a half day (20 hours) block of instruction which focuses on a multi-disciplinary approach to building functional, combative handgun skills at zero to five feet. The course is designed to instill core concepts of seamless integration and provide the platform for aggressive problem solving during a life or death struggle. A heavy emphasis is placed upon commonality of body mechanics between skill sub-sets, which means that all combative software is reinforcing. Once the student’s skill sets are initially ingrained, the participant will be stress inoculated with force on force drills utilizing marking cartridges and protective equipment.
This is my first formal combatives-oriented course. I have previously taken a Vickers Tactical Basic Handgun, Vickers Tactical Handgun I, a pistol-training.com Aim Fast, Hit Fast, and a F.A.S.T. Inc. Night Self Defense Handgun. I used an H&K P30LS with the Grayguns Reduced Reset Carry Perfection Package, with an X400 mounted with the DG-11 and zeroed for 7 yards, and IWB carried it using a RCS Phantom at about the 0130 position in condition 1. I also had two mag carriers, Cane & Derby Pardus SSLs, a Paul Moore BoB trainer blade carried at my 1100 with the handle angled upward toward the centerline at a 45°, and used a Wilderness Tactical Ti Instructor Belt. I purposely chose to wear what I would normally wear outside of work, besides the addition of a long sleeve Under Armour HeatGear shirt, which meant relatively form fitting jeans and T-shirts, along with low cut Chucks. While I did bring various other protective gear was recommended for the evolutions, such as a mouth guard, kneepads, gloves, etc., I chose to only utilize a cup as my extra protective equipment during the evolutions. I am 5'8", and approximately 140 lbs.
Craig Douglas (AKA SouthNarc) was the primary instructor, with Ferrell Munson as the primary AI, and Justin as a secondary AI. Class started the first day at 1810; weather was fairly hot and some what humid. There were 19 students at the start of the course; one was an LEO, two were trainers, while the rest were civilians, though several had security/law enforcement related jobs (two trainers and a bail enforcement agent). The three repeat students were all civilians. The vast majority of guns were Glocks, with a couple of M&Ps, an XD, and an H&K. With the exception of the LEO, who used some sort of Safariland with a hood, all students utilized holsters without retention, and close to half ran IWB appendix, with the rest going with strong side hip, with a mix of IWB and OWB.
We started out in the classroom, with everyone giving a quick bio of themselves. Craig gave his bio last, and stated that one of the things he realized over the years was that 70%-75% of his formal training was essentially useless in the field, while the vast majority of the training that actually was useful was still generally used in a different context than taught.
We then moved into talking about the criminal assault paradigm, which is to say, how criminals work. The key thing to remember is that most criminals are opportunists, which thus negates much of what standard training tends to be structured, as most adversarial training tends to occur with equal initiative and equal armament. Classic examples would be spars in TMA, in which two opponents start a set distance apart, both knowing the intent of the opponent, with relatively equal weapons. Various knife fighting classes or force on force scenarios operate much in the same manner. Obviously, this does not apply in the real world, where criminals generally operate with ambushes and misdirection. Ferrell and Craig role-played various scenarios to illustrate how a criminal might act, demonstrating how easy it is for them to have both the initiative and superior armament available.
Craig also noted that three core elements were often seen in these criminal assaults: very close range, multiple assailants, and presence of a weapon, yet the vast majority of training, especially in the past, never acknowledged these circumstances. The reasons for this are varied, including the lack of proper equipment, a lack of proper facilities, difficulties in finding instructors knowledgeable about this type of training, etc. Still, the most common reason is probably the simple fact that such training is often outside of people's comfort zone. Yet, as Craig says, being uncomfortable is a critical part of learning (he states that a 50% win rate is fairly standard in the class's evolutions and in actual fights on the streets); the bottom line was that one should train to overcome one's deficits.
Craig then demonstrated with Ferrell how vast majority of non-electronic human interaction, both malignant and benign, occur at arm's reach. This, of course, negates much most of the advantage of a concealed firearm. Still, every little bit of range counts, which Craig demonstrated with a simple drill: standing arms length away, try to touch his hand before his hand touches your stomach. The success rate was extremely low at arm's length, yet shot up to 100% when Craig moved a mere half a foot length backwards. This emphasized the need to have as much range as possible, no matter how small the extra distance might be. Range is maintained by situational awareness; unfortunately in today's world, many people fall prey to task fixation, which drastically decreases situational awareness, which in turn tends to draw in criminals.
Even with situational awareness, one must be able to identify the people who encroach upon your space. Normally, various factors come into play in to how close you might allow a person to you, such as age, gender, dress, race, demeanor, etc. However, Craig notes that these selection factors are hardly foolproof, and that for the average person just starting MUC, the easiest way is to have just two classifications: people you know, and people you don't know.
Once you have identified an encroacher as someone you don't know, the next step is to stop them from further encroaching upon you. However, there is a fine balance between simply keeping people at bay versus being confrontational. Craig starts out with a simple, polite request, e.g., "hey man, can you just stay there for me?". This gives people an opportunity to stop coming toward you without any kind of escalation. However, it's quite possible for people to ignore such requests for perfectly benign reasons, ranging from simply not hearing you to outright ignoring you due to them being in a state of panic; in the latter possibility, they may even seem quite threatening at first, as they would most likely be moving toward you in a very rapid fashion, which most people would associate with malicious intent. Craig then moves on to a command, generally in a much louder and authoritative tone, in order to jar people and make them actually understand what you're saying. If that fails, and you still have enough distance to still continue with verbal commands, profanity can be tried, although this risks confrontation. There are two key points to note for the usage of profanity. The first one is to keep from insulting the person; there is a large amount of difference in "back the fuck up" as opposed to "back up, motherfucker", in terms of how confrontational one is. The second point to remember is that profanity is an integral part of criminal cant, and its usage by someone who typical does not curse can easily become unconvincing and a sign of weakness; as Craig stated, if you're generally not one to curse, this is not the time to start.
Another key part of the verbal exchange is to think of it as a monologue rather than a dialogue. In order to process what the other party is saying, you would take away precious focus, which in turn slows your reactions. Craig likened this exchange as a tape of sorts that you should play when confronted, rather than try to think of something on the fly.
At the same time the verbal exchange occurs, one should strive to maintain, though not necessarily increase, the distance between one's self and the encroacher. If spacing permits, do not move backwards, as you can't see what's behind you, and a backwards movement tends to put people on a heel to toe motion, which greatly weakens one's balance and position. Instead, try to move laterally in an arc: if the unknown contact is at 0600, while you are at 1200, try to get to their 0300 or 0900. Moving in an arc rather than straight laterally helps defend against multiple assailants, as one can now see what used to be one’s rear with the peripheral vision while keeping focus on the main contact. It also helps moves the field of the threat into a more manageable position, potentially from a 180° to a mere 45°.
During this time, you should be keeping your hands up at what Craig calls a ready position, to keep a barrier up against the contact. The hands should be high up on the chest, and compressed, and can be thought of as a fence. This helps make the two main goals of staying conscious and staying upright much easier, as by having the hands in a high compressed state gives you less time needed to use them to defend the head.
Thus, MUC is essentially composed of three distinct points: what we say, how we move, and what we do with our hands. Craig notes that practicing MUC is not mutually inclusive with being paranoids; for example, if an unknown contact asks you to help render aid at an unknown location, one could do so while practicing MUC by asking the contact to lead you to the location, rather than taking the lead to return to the location.
The classroom portion of the course ended at this point, and we started practicing the MUC component we just learned, switching partners every so often. After a couple of rounds of it, Craig paused the MUC practice to point out something that many people do: the so-called interview position, where the weak hand is held high, but out, while the strong hand was placed low, near the belt, generally near or even on a holstered gun. Craig states that while this is a classically trained response came about as a way to make the draw faster, while being able to also have a boost in the ability to boost the gun, especially if the hip is bladed back, as this would make the distance from the contact to your gun even further. While it is true that ever little bit counts, Craig noted that the distance gained is actually quite small, while it also significantly weakens your ability to take frontal impact (he noted how football players kept their hips square to where they expect to take the impact, not bladed). It also telegraphs to the contact that you have a weapon, while also tying up a hand from protecting you. The fact that your hand is not compressed also makes it very easy for you to get sucker punched.
Most of us, myself included, found it rather counterintuitive to arc around the contact rather than simply going laterally or backwards. I was guilty of using the interview position, as I also tended to drop my right thumb into my right pocket, both because it was where I kept my waved Emerson, and because I tended to do that whenever trying not to wave my hands around.
After finishing MUC practice, Craig states that one of the benchmarks we could use for it is to react odd enough to get avoided at the water cooler, but not enough so that we’d get an HR complaint; an LE equivalent would be to be odd enough to get someone to feel very uncomfortable, but not be able to articulate it enough that it could become an official complaint. He states that the mere usage of the arc is often odd enough to get people to disengage, as it is a very unnatural and jarring response; it could be seen as being a real life “Jedi mind trick” of sorts.
Craig then went over the four main physical and behavioral tells (what he called pre-assault cues) that hinted at an imminent physical confrontation: the grooming cue (any hand movement in which there is touching of the face or neck, such as rubbing of the hair, the chin, picking of the ear, pinching of nose, etc.), target glances (darting eyes to the side or behind), a definite weight shift (weight shifts from a balanced stance to a load stance, generally feet will become 90° to each other), and furtive hand movements around the waist (pulling of the shirt, rubbing a particular area, touching the same place repeatedly, etc.; generally denotes the presence of a weapon). He stated that if one starts looking at the many fights on YouTube or other social media video sites, they become telegraphic to those who know what to look for. Craig demoed what each tell looked like for us as he explained. He then had us do the MUC practice again, but this time, the contact would role play out movements and have the person being approach have to call out “cue” whenever we performed such a cue.
The drill was a little hard to pull off convincingly, simply because it would often interrupt the flow of our attempts to MUC when calling out “cue”.
Craig then showed us a good way to create distance while performing MUC: the eye jab. While having the hands in the ready position, use one to suddenly strike forward in an arcing motion, being careful not to telegraph. The fingers should be somewhat curled, a bit like holding a ball and throwing overhand; they should not be splayed, nor should you attempt to palm or pluck at a person’s eye. This is generally good for creating distance and signaling intent, and gives you time to disengage and retreat, while at the same time, not particularly confrontational or damaging; if you make the an erroneous assumption about the hostility of the contact, the worse that could happen is probably a scratched cornea, versus a potential broken bone or other more serious injury if one decides to throw a punch. To practice this, we first tried it by simply practicing an eye jab on a boxing glove that was put on backwards by our partner. We then tried to use it while practicing MUC, with the contact putting up the glove at random times and other person having to react properly to it. In the second drill, there was often a “cognition gap” for most people, in which people would have a noticeable pause and flounder for a second as they transitioned from talking to performing the eye jab once the glove came up.
I had to focus hard to not telegraph my movements. I also was not keeping my hips facing the contact, as I had a tendency to blade. Beyond that, I also tended to keep my hands too far out, rather than close in, leaving me open to attacks.
Craig then talked about how in most traditional martial arts, there is a tendency to be reactive, to pick a certain countermove in response to a move initiated against you. However, this diagnostic tasking approach tends to work poorly in the real world, and so he advocates the usage of a default position. The non-diagnostic defense position that he advocates begins with a level change, which is when one drops their pelvis lower, keeps their back straight, and widens their feet a bit. The head should be within 15° of the hips in terms of orientation in order to keep stable. One then creates a “vertical elbow shield” with the weak arm, which basically has the left hand on the back-left side of the head, arms brought in as close as it can be against the face, and the shoulders raised. The strong arm then creates a “horizontal elbow shield”, in which the right hand is touching the outside of the left arm, the elbow tucked in front of the forehead, shoulders also raised. This helps protect the temples and jaws, and prevents neck movement, which are paramount to keeping conscious (the level change helps keep with the staying upright). Craig notes that boxers cover up rather than block, which is exactly what this defense position does. The only real weak points that this position has is against upper cuts and groin attacks, and the latter is still largely mitigated by the level change, which makes it very difficult to get low enough to get inside the elbow shields. We then practiced this defense position, with one person defending, the other attacking lightly, albeit with as little telegraphing as possible, with boxing gloves. This drill was first done without any kind of MUC, then MUC was incorporated.
I had practice Shotokan as a kid for a fairly long time, though never seriously. However, I would tend to go into the classic horse stance from Shotokan when doing the level change, which tended to be far too low and wide. I also had a tendency to bend my head further way further than my hips, which also unbalanced me.
Craig then went over the need for there to be pressure in training, how most training done today did not have any real pressure. In ECQC, the rest of the drills done with a partner would be described as a combination of five different classifications: consensual, non-consensual, competitive, non-competitive, and technical. We then tried out the next drill, the so-called mountain goat drill: place your forehead against your partner’s and then, while keeping your back straight, try to push your partner back as they attempt to do the same thing. This was to help us learn about how the role that the pelvis would play in positional dominance, particularly the elevation of the hips. This drill was done non-consensual and competitive.
This drill certainly illustrated the importance of the height of the hips. It also left many of us, myself included, with a raw sore spot in the middle of the forehead, something was particularly noticeable while showering that night and visually the next day.
After the mountain goat drill, Craig then showed us a way to try to further exploit positioning to drive someone back, which is the usage of cutting the corner. In this particular drill, one would side step, and then drive one’s forehead into the neck/shoulder of the opponent on the side of the side step, and then push. This would get the opponent’s pelvis in a bladed-type angle, weakening their positioning, allowing you to push them back using both your chest and your head. The drill to practice this was done consensually and non-competitively, to help illustrate the point.
The difference was indeed huge. However, I sadly did not pick up the entire lesson, and it took multiple drills the next day to drive home the need to not only position the hips correctly, but also the head into the neck.
Craig then went into the various possible ties and hooks: the underhook, the overhook, the bicep tie (the grabbing of the elbows), and the wrist tie (the grabbing of the wrist). He specifically excluded any kind of head tie in ECQC, as that leaves at least one arm open for the accessing of weapons, something that does not exist in most traditional forms of grappling and wrestling. Instead, the focus in ECQC would be primarily on limb control, as this in turn controls the access to weapons, thus the emphasis on entanglement in the curriculum. Craig then showed us how to defend against a single overhook, by using the arm being hooked and pushing back on the hooking arm on the triceps. We practiced that drill technically and consensually, switching off on arms (one arm was doing hooks while the other arm was simultaneously fending off a hook).
Like previous drills, I had issues with poor pelvis orientation, as I kept going bladed.
Class ended at about this time, which was about 2200.
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Originally Posted by SkyLine1
In the first evo I got hammered hard, like not coming back tomorrow hard (again, it was more of a mental beating than physical). I ended up on bottom, mouth full of helmet padding, getting punched in the face, utterly exhausted and helpless to escape. 
