Archive for October, 2011

How to be a Samurai Cop: The Bushido Code on America’s Streets

One thing about being a mem­ber of the police ser­vice is that eth­i­cal, as well as legal, issues always come up involv­ing the use of force. What is rea­son­able and what is not rea­son­able force? That is the ques­tion offi­cers face daily. The lev­els of force options are well defined yet ambigu­ous at the same time.

The Bushido Code can help solve this dilemma.

Those in the mil­i­tary who wish to become non-military law enforce­ment offi­cers must rede­fine their “Rules of Engage­ment” to com­ply with what applies to daily life as a street cop in the United States.

Reality Based Integrative Firearms Training

I bor­rowed the word “Inte­gra­tive” to describe my approach to firearms train­ing from “Inte­gra­tive Med­i­cine.” True Inte­gra­tive Med­i­cine uses FUNCTIONAL heal­ing meth­ods from all over the world, be they ancient or mod­ern, east­ern or west­ern. They only thing that mat­ters is if it really works. Like­wise, in my Inte­gra­tive Firearms Train­ing Pro­gram we use meth­ods that are both ancient and mod­ern, east­ern and west­ern and most impor­tantly fully func­tional. What I mean by func­tional tech­niques is that they have been pres­sure tested in an alive man­ner through force on force adren­a­line stress con­di­tion­ing. The way to do that is through Sce­nario Based Training.

BJJ For RBSD Part 2

In my blog post enti­tled “BJJ For RBSD” I cov­ered sev­eral mod­i­fi­ca­tions that we needed to make to turn Brazil­ian Jujutsu into a viable Real­ity Based Self Defense method. There are two other impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions that we need to be aware of as well.

The first is that in a real life ground fight, we’re not going to “sub­mit” any­body. Let’s think this through, you’re attacked, the fight goes to the ground, you catch the bad guy in an arm bar, he taps and you let him go. NO! That’s ridicu­lous! All of the sub­mis­sion tech­niques taught in BJJ have to be taken to the point where you hyper-extend the joint so that it can no longer be used as a weapon against you. There’s no ref­eree that’s going to stop the fight due to a sub­mis­sion. Be your own ref­eree and tear your attacker up like a buzz saw.

Burton Richardson’s FOR THE STREET Martial Arts

“If you want to learn how to fight, you must prac­tice fight­ing against some­one who is fight­ing back!” Bur­ton Richardson

I’ve been a fan of Guro Bur­ton Richard­son for nearly two decades. My recent blog post “BJJ For RBSD” had at it’s core Guro Richardson’s STREET RULES, namely the Weapon Rule, the Mul­ti­ple Oppo­nent Rule, the Slam Rule and the Bite Rule. These are very well laid out in his JKD Unlim­ited For The Street Asso­ci­a­tion Octo­ber 2011 E-Newsletter.

I invite you to explore Guro Richardson’s Real­ity Based Self Defense “For The Street” approaches to Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do, Kali, Silat, Brazil­ian Jujutsu and Mixed Mar­tial Arts.

BJJ For RBSD

Brazil­ian Jujutsu (BJJ) has a lot to offer the prac­ti­tioner of Real­ity Based Self Defense (RBSD), how­ever there are sev­eral key mod­i­fi­ca­tions that we have to make in order to turn a sport sub­mis­sion grap­pling sys­tem into a func­tional per­sonal pro­tec­tion ground fight­ing method.

If you’ve only prac­ticed BJJ as a sport, than you’ve ben con­di­tioned to leave your groin open to attack, as well as not see­ing your attacker’s groin as a viable tar­get. We have to pro­tect our groin against both strik­ing and grab­bing attacks, while at the same time aggres­sively tar­get­ing our attacker’s groin.

Protect Your Treasure

It’s always fas­ci­nated me how the Chi­nese Mar­tial Arts, par­tic­u­larly the inter­nal arts of Taiji Quan, Xingyi Quan and Bagua Zhang are inex­tri­ca­bly entwined with Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Med­i­cine (TCM). The inter­face between the mar­tial arts and the heal­ing arts were taken to the high­est level in ancient China. TCM includes QIGONG longevity exer­cises, Acupunc­ture, Acu­pres­sure, Herbal­ogy and Nutrition. Many truly for­mi­da­ble mar­tial arts mas­ters were also pow­er­ful healers.

Comprehensive Combatives

For a com­bat­ives sys­tem to be truly com­pre­hen­sive it has to include these four broad cat­e­gories in it’s training:

1. The use of AND defense against the FOUR RANGES OF UNARMED COMBAT, namely Kick­ing, Punch­ing, Clinch­ing and Ground Fighting.

2. The use of AND defense against the FIVE PROTECTION TOOL CATEGORIES, namely Impact, Edged, Flex­i­ble, Pro­jec­tile and Com­bi­na­tions of these.

The Best Self Defense Techniques Against Multiple Attackers

The best self defense tech­nique against mul­ti­ple attack­ers is to not be where the bad guys are.

If you can avoid dan­ger and are aware of your sur­round­ings, you’ll get through life with­out ever hav­ing to bruise a knuckle.

The sec­ond best self defense tech­nique against mul­ti­ple attackers?

When it comes to sur­viv­ing a real world street fight­ing — one where you’re sur­rounded by a group of adrenaline-fueled thugs look­ing to stomp you into obliv­ion with their steel-toed work­boots — your best option is to run!

That may sound like a whuss move to you, but frankly, it’s most often your best one.

Remem­ber, self defense is NOT about your black-ops assas­sin bag of tricks to decap­i­tate every hood­lum in sight.

In fact, SURVIVAL is your only goal!

If you can RUN…then do it!

But there’s a prob­lem here…

Listen To My Interview

Jeff Ander­son, Com­bat­ives and Fit­ness Mas­ter Instruc­tor as well as the Founder and Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety of Close Quar­ter Com­bat­ants; The World’s Pre­mier Reality-Based Self Defense Resource, will be inter­view­ing me tomor­row night, Thurs­day, Octo­ber 13th at 9:00 PM EST. The theme will be “Mod­ern Day Ninjutsu.”

To lis­ten in, allow your­self to go to the ISCQC web­site at:  http://​iscqc​.org/.

BJJ Professor Extraordinaire

Pro­fes­sor Pedro Sauer, a cer­ti­fied 8th Degree Red/Black Belt under Rick­son Gra­cie, was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where from an early age, he began train­ing in the mar­tial arts. At age five, he began West­ern Box­ing and later took up Judo and Tae Kwon Do. At age fif­teen, how­ever, his friend, Rick­son Gra­cie, invited him to train in Jujutsu with his younger brother, Royler, who at the time was only nine years old. The out­come of this expe­ri­ence con­vinced him that Jujutsu was the most effec­tive of all the mar­tial arts for him, and he began train­ing the very next day.