Originally Posted by
Mister X
That's hilarious, but did you not read pretty much every post on this thread?
My point was just to get people to take a second look at how they're determining the validity of the material and hopefully segue into a more in-depth discussion about the process and the technical aspects. If you don't have a certain level of experience and training in martial arts, Combatives or ECQ shooting methods other than a Shivworks course or taken only them repeatedly, how can you actually have a well informed and objective opinion? Guess what, you can't. "Well, so and so said it was really good, so it must be." Not necessarily and that's been shown to be true time and time again. How about popularity? Nope. Just look at the various miltary Combatives programs throughout the years. Actually never mind, because many of you are not going to know the difference anyway, defaulting to "it must be super great since big army or the marines adopted it".
I don't need nor want Craig's material explained or proven to me personally and I don't believe I ever asked for it to be. I understand it perfectly well and think I was actually teaching functional solutions to this particular problem years before he was. I like the bulk of his ECQ shooting material, but not all of it. Coming in here cold and immediately offering unsolocited criticism and ways to improve it wouldn't be very welcome. It doesn't really matter if I presented the most brilliant solutions and tweaks, concepts or specific techniques, there would still be immediate resistance, opposition and dismissal. In person, I think it would likely be dramatically different, since it's kind of undeniable in that context, but online it's altogether different. I attempted a clumsy lead in and the devotees immediately closed ranks. A few insisted on knowing my background and experience and when I subsequently provide a portion of it, they become dismissive.
I asked what would you offer to a skeptic as evidence that Craig's material is worth exploring and there were offers to gather specific videos and whatnot, but nothing as of yet. There's really not much there in the OP's video, so it's a bit difficult to discuss specifics without writing a book unless that next step is taken, but all I've seen is mostly snide and snarky replies.
I don't know Craig, but I think he'd probably be receptive to a different approach and legitimate critiquing. And no there is not a consensus that his are the proven optimal method. Someone with a different background will approach the problem through the prism of their experience. Craig's solutions are IMO heavily filtered through his, based on what I see of his footwork, posture, positioning and angles, on which I have slightly different ideas. Same with his explanations as to why something is optimal and even his preferred carry position. Their foundation and framework are different than mine and they can keep pressure-testing it and tweaking the material, but it's still filtered through the same base.
Considering how much Craig's coursework has changed over the years, I think the open laboratory label is fairly accurate. I believe I hinted at that prior to EPF's mention of it and I apologize for not doing a better job of explaining and cropping my comment to him, which provoked his oh so clever, yet mistaken and misguided response....but in all honesty I didn't expect to have to be so careful about those kinds of things here.
It was a humorous Gabe Suarez comment that summoned me once again to this thread, but that seems to have since been removed.
Oh well, I guess I'll slink back to my cave now.