I'm a pretty average guy with a varied martial arts history from Wing Chun to Kenpo to jujitsu and a bit more in between. I've pretty much felt throughout my studies that it was just that-- studies, with questional applicable qualities. I always questioned the reliance on fine motor skills that evaporate with the chemical dump of a life-and-limb altercation. Maybe this is because every altercation I ever got into, I ALWAYS reverted back to the down and dirty CQC stuff my uncle (a retired Air Force colonel with combat time in Vietnam, Korea and God-knows where learned from God-knows where) had given me through the years before his death. I never really had a name for this aweful stuff until I discovered "combatives." Now, I don't mean some of these repackages martial arts in fatigues. I mean that aweful stuff my uncle used to do to me, that he told me to do to other people if they forced the issue. I mean the "knee-in-the-nuts, push-his-chin-through-the-ceiling, poke-him-in-the-eye-while-you-stomp-his-instep" stuff that I don't want my kids to ever see. I mean all-in fighting. Gutterfighting. WW2 combatives. I read the Fairbairn stuff, the Applegate stuff and it all made sense. Then I heard of guys like Jim Grover (Kelly McCann) and Carl Cestari who were still doing it. I read their stuff (Carl's writing is as to-the-point as the combatives are, by the way...). I watched the videos. I used it to beat on training partners and anyone else who would let me do it. We tried it "for real" with none of the "helpful-uke" syndrome. It always seemed to hold up. Period. I trained it and trained it hard. I jammed fingers on heavy bags and kept on going, beating dried blood out of the canvas, left there the night before when I was working elbows. I kicked and raked metal poles until there were grooves in the instep of my boots. My front yard was the classroom where I gave and received bruised and swollen lessons about what was right and wrong in technique. Thus, this site. It can't improve on what's already out there, and it won't try. But maybe it can at least tie some of the wealth of information I found scattered about into one bottle of jagged little pills so the next poor schmuck won't have to look so long for it. So, with that said-- enjoy and keep up the search! |