bonk you with the combat wand and suddenly make you capable of doing things that you never rehearsed before. It will not happen.
There must be a continual effort to develop realistic simulations training so the warrior develops a set of skills that will transfer to reality. One two-tour Vietnam veteran put it this way.
“In Vietnam, I was always surprised to find I had done the right thing in tight situations. I sort of went into automatic and didn’t think about what I was doing, or even remember it later. I’m a firm believer in training, that dull, boring ‘If I have to do this one more time I’ll scream’ training that every GI hates. I hated it but in the end it let people like me perform in combat when common sense was telling me to run like hell.”
How you train is how you will perform for real is a truism for law enforcement, soldiers and martial artists. Some martial artists adamantly object to this, saying that they would never react in a high-stress situation in such a way as the examples given above. To them I say simply, “Sorry, but your opinion is wrong. There is too much evidence to the contrary. And if you don’t change your ways, you could be dead wrong.”
Here are a few ways that some martial artists train that could come back to bite them on the behind:
Train to miss: Punches and kicks are pulled three or four inches from their opponent.Has never been hit: Because students are taught to pull their techniques several inches short, they are not conditioned physically or psychologically to take a hit.Take one, give one: Never been trained to take a hit and respond immediately by hitting back.Train to pass by or pass over the target: High kicks are thrown so they pass over the opponent’s head.Ingrained ritual: Every drill or sparring exercise is preceded with a salute (sometime elaborate), a nod, a grunt or an “ooos,” and a pronounced step into a fighting stance.Excessive politeness: Accidental contact is followed by a partial salute and an apology.Acknowledgement of getting hit: A poorly controlled punch or kick hits and the recipient grabs the spot and calls time out.Acknowledgement of hitting: A punch or kick scores and the hitter raises his fist in triumph, turns his back, and walks back to his starting position.Over recognition of an error: An error in a drill receives a curse, a foot stomp, a shake of the head, or some other overt sign.Stop on an error: When a defense move misses or a takedown technique is done poorly, the action stops and everyone starts over.Stop in range: A technique is stopped for whatever reason and the attacker stays in range without doing anything.Stop after one hit scores: The attacker slams one in then stops, backs away, and basks in his glory.False confidence: Believes his weak hits that earned points in a tournament would stop a real attacker.Too many Hong Kong movies: Attacker does an excess of flippy-dippy kicks, somersaults, and tornado kicks.Dropping hands within range: Being in range with guard down and not attacking.Over reliance on safety equipment: Relying on the protective helmet to the extent that the head isn’t covered well. Relying on padded hands and feet too much.Telegraphing: Excessive wind up before punching.Never hitting low: Low blows are not allowed because they are illegal in sport.Targets ignored: Grapplers struggle for a hold while the opponent’s eyes, throat and groin are open and vulnerable.Opponent can’t punch or kick: Grapplers defend against other grapplers who are not trained in how to throw quality kicks and punches.Focus on one technique: Over relies on his favorite technique, no matter how many times it gets blocked, misses, or fails to have an effect.Hands the weapon back: Defender disarms a knife, stick, or gun and then hands the weapon back to the attacker.Doesn’t consider other attackers: Takes opponent down and then fails to look around for other attackers.Doesn’t get up strategically: When moving from the ground to a standing position, he doesn’t do so in a way that he could instantly defend himself.Practices only in the air: Punches and kicks are only thrown in the air and never on a bag. He has no idea what they feel like impacting something solid.Always trains at the same intensity: Never pushes for greater speed, greater power, and greater explosiveness.Never trains with mental intensity: Just goes through the motions as if they were half-hearted aerobics.Doesn’t “see” the opponent: Practices in the air, on bags, and on the makiwara without visualizing an opponent.Never trained all-out: Never pushes training intensity into the anaerobic zone, that place where most fights occur.Doesn’t weight train: Never uses resistance training to increase strength, explosiveness and speed.
Loren W. Christensen’s biography appears in the “About the Author” page at the back of the book.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (Ret.) is an internationally recognized scholar, author, soldier, speaker, and one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of human aggression and the roots of violence and violent crime. He is a West Point psychology professor, Professor of Military Science, and an Army Ranger who has combined his experiences to become the founder of a new field of scientific endeavor, which has been termed “Killology.”
In this new field, Col. Grossman has made revolutionary new contributions to our understanding of killing in war, the psychological costs of war, the root causes of the current “virus” of violent crime that is raging around the world, and the process of healing the victims of violence, in war and peace.
He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book On Killing, which has been translated into several languages. The book is on the US Marine Corps’ recommended reading list, it’s required reading at the FBI academy, and at numerous other academies and colleges.
Col. Grossman’s most recent book, On Combat, co-authored with Loren W. Christensen, is the highly acclaimed and bestselling sequel to On Killing.
Col. Grossman has been called upon to write the entry on “Aggression and Violence” in the Oxford Companion to American Military History, three entries in the Academic Press Encyclopedia of Violence and numerous entries in scholarly journals, to include the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Col. Grossman is an Airborne Ranger infantry officer, and a prior-service sergeant and paratrooper, with a total of over 23 years experience in leading U.S. soldiers worldwide. He retired from the Army in February 1998 and has devoted himself full-time to teaching, writing, speaking, and research. Today, he is the director of the Killology Research Group and, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he is on the road almost 300 days a year, training elite military and law enforcement organizations worldwide about the reality of combat.
To read more about Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, visit his website at www.killology.com
10 Ways to Make Your Sparring Street Smart
By Iain Abernethy
Almost all martial artists include sparring in their training. However, there are many different types of sparring and there is some debate as to what types are most realistic. It’s even fair to say that some question if sparring has any relevance to self-protection situations. To my mind, the amount of relevance that it has to the street is determined by how that sparring is structured. With that in mind, I’d like to raise some of the key issues to consider when structuring your sparring and share 10 ways to help
