I then found myself explaining it to his (Scotland and GB representative) coach; who hadn't heard of it before. But got it immediately, because it chimed with his experience; he just hadn't heard it described in those terms.
As for the security industry - there are indeed some charlatans out there, for example selling expensive bodyguard training courses, while proclaiming themselves to have experience and knowledge beyond their fantasies of adequacy. Mindful of OGH, I will only suggest that one such individual (who proclaims himself to have been awarded decorations from strange organisations) has entered legendary status on the Army Rumour Service forum... his particular association of bodyguards is not particularly well regarded, however international a franchise it may be, and however qualified he is in Jujitsu.
I was training on the ranges at Bisley when he turned up with a bunch of teenagers, and proceeded with some pre-booked range time. It didn't take us long to figure out that this wasn't a qualified coach introducing some developing target rifle shooters to the 50m outdoor range...
By the end of the day, and after several of us had offered to help what appeared to be an out-of-his-depth coach with said total beginners, we put together various snippets of conversation to realise that these had been paying individuals doing what he had claimed to be "counter-sniper training". Given that the range officer was ex-Royalty Protection Squad, one of us ex-infantry, and one of us a Met Armed Policeman, we were well qualified to say that this was nothing of the sort. IIRC, he was immediately barred from the facility...
AIUI he was selling overpriced training to gullible individuals, implying that this would get them entry to the lucrative "circuit", and a jet-set life guarding rock stars, when in fact they'd be lucky to get a job on a nightclub door.
]]>"Boyd's theory was based on the utterly facile observation that when A did something, B reacted, A did something else, B reacted again etc, forming a loop of action and reaction. The Boyd Loop. Nice work if you can get it, you may be thinking. But Boyd's Eureka moment, which to this day causes his name to be bandied about military academies the world over, came when he hit on the notion that if B could do two things in the space of time it normally took him to do one, he would get 'inside the loop' and the forces of right would thereby prevail.
Lang's Theory, which amounts to much the same thing and a fraction of the cost, is that you punch the other chap's face before he has a chance to get it out of the way."
]]>This is a bit off to one side of martial arts, but similar.
You remember the London Olympics and the Royal Jubilee? Does anyone remember that busload of unemployed people, on an officially endorsed training course, who were dumped under a bridge in London, and supposed to be Stewards for the Water Pageant?
And then there was the collapse of the plan for the Olympics, which let to the military providing the organised manpower for bouncer-level security. Stewarding is apparently the technical term. The stories I heard from visitors were of them doing a good job.
The relevant point to all this is that this work is a regulated business. You need to complete a training course and get a certificate before you can be lawfully employed as a bouncer. And, while there were suspiciously well-connected companies involved in training unemployed people (who had to do the training or lose benefits), the Regulator never seemed to have noticed them. A trainee can work under the direct supervision of a certified steward, but these big companies, which failed to deliver for the Olympics, never seemed to have the resources to deliver the training and get the trainees through the process of certification.
It's nothing fancy, it's often not even at the bouncer level, and, once you had the certificate, and could have said you'd done the job at the Olympic Park, there's all sorts of these jobs. Look at your local newspaper, and see all those crowded fund-raising events. It doesn't look half as bogus as those so-called protection courses.
There's some extra ugliness in all this from the involvement with the unemployed, from the public funding, and from the total failure to deliver. Those not-very-useful martial arts do deliver something, even if they're useless at self-defence. But we do seem to be willing to be conned, and I wonder why.
(There seem to be two distinct con-games running here. One is the general martial arts con over training to fight for real, which extends into things like "protection" training from bogus whatsits. The other is the con-game of government contracts for something useless, what used to be "Tony's Cronies", often arising from the privatisation of government "services".)
(I can see why the Scots can feel so annoyed with Westminster.)
]]>Commonly this is a teenage or young adult male who has drunk way more than his mind can cope with, has utterly failed to pull anything that night and is pissed, slighly hung over and is raging at the unfairness of life, the universe and everything. He's been booted out of a nightclub by the practiced hands of the bouncers, and he's looking for trouble; you look like a good punchbag for him.
Now then, what fighting style do you fancy employing?
]]>In short, about half a dozen techniques will win 95% of fights you are ever likely to get into - if you do them right. How many do boxers need?
]]>...the British response is generally "fix bayonets". Useful, because even the daftest and least situationally aware soldier realises that this signals a significant change in expectations. As a trigger, it is psychologically very powerful. Watching a female conduct a properly-run bayonet range was enlightening.
The Israeli response is apparently intended to give a young soldier the confidence to try to defend themselves against the situation where they turn a corner and are cut off by a weapon stoppage, a few yards, and enough seconds from the rest of their section.
The US example I heard was one in which the local Taliban decided that they would snatch hostages from a meeting with village elders, because mob handed at close range against unarmed Westerners? Those soft types who can't fight without their air support? To the discovery that five or six scrawny 5-foot-eight types came off second-best against severely motivated six-foot-plus, well-fed, well-trained, muscled from carrying a 40kg+ load everywhere for six months, trio of soldiers, and then the sidearms came into play...
]]>From what (admittedly little) I've seen of IDF Krav Maga training the focus is on situations where a soldier is rushed by a group of people and needs to get out of it as quickly as possible. That often requires using whatever is available as a weapon; that jammed rifle will be held in both hands and used as a barrier and club and the soldier will attempt to do what it takes to get away.
]]>I don't know the current drill, but in the Lee-Enfield era, and earlier, it made use of the bayonet and butt. Kipling mentions that in one of his poems.
Ho! My! Don't yer come anigh, When Tommy is a playin' with the baynit an' the butt.
Whatever the limits of the current rifle, and it's a dangerous tactic in modern warfare, Mr Tommy Atkins can sometimes still match Mr Kipling. And would you want to stick around?
]]>Don’t know about Bayonets but he believed in keeping the enemy at a distance and he told me of This Technique...
" Published on 14 Feb 2014
This short video shows how to charger-load a Lee-Enfield and how to cycle the bolt rapidly while maintaining reasonably aimed fire. I keep the bolt between my thumb and the ball of my hand while pulling the trigger with my forefinger. For the purposes of this demonstration I'm using my own reloads of 23 gr IMR 4759 behind a Sierra 150 gr .311 spitzer bullet, giving about 1900 fps. It's a reasonably powerful load for practicing the technique before moving on to full-strength military loads. The rifle is a No 1 Mk III* made in 1943 at Ishapore in India, with lots of dings in the wood that indicate field use; there was sand in the butt-plate when I .."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QAGe7s-LOE
Apparently a really practiced soldier of the Great War could do even better, though some of my Grandfathers comrades believed in the efficacy of short barrelled shot guns as a back up.
It seems to me to be sensible to keep the bloke with the big sharp pointy thing as far away as possible from your delicate tummy as you kill him.
Oh, and my next door neighbour is a former professional soldier and he was trained to be a sniper in the 1950s ..with a varient on the good old SMLE that was still in service back then.
Since its Bobs birthday real soon now I looked up this for his wife ...
http://www.fultonsofbisley.com/firearms/service-sniping/65-f1324-enfield-no4-t-303
She didn't ask me to do the research but, well ..he bought her a box set of Catherine Cookson D.V.Ds for her birthday and so..is it too much to ask for?
]]>The minimum standard for a British Army infantryman in August 1914 was 15 hits in 1 minute on a 12-inch target at 300 yards. The record, set by Sjt Alfred Snoxall, is 38 hits.
The basic methods were still being taught to soldiers at the end of the Second World War, but the standards of the 1914 professional soldier were black-belt level.
My own grandfather said a few rude things about the American units he was attached to in 1918. Too many of them, he said, would get themselves shot. The British Army learned how to defeat the Germans. And then they had to do at all over again.
What is it about pustulant posturing politicians who want to start wars?
]]>I think a better characterization would be:
You and your opponent are both running OODA loops. If you can run yours faster, for any reason, then at some point your opponent is using old information, at which point what you are currently doing looks like magic to him, and is not predictable.
And it doesn't matter how yours runs faster. Those old masters? They might not be so quick on the 'act' part of the loop any more. But because they have vast experience, they can execute the 'observe', 'orient', and 'decide' so much faster it doesn't matter how quick your fist is.
The entire climax fight of The Musashi Flex is predicated on this very point.
]]>Sam Harris wrote a couple of blog articles about self-defense which were also very insightful.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-pleasures-of-drowning
]]>