Beta 8 Syllabus a Four-Star Product

I've just been through the entire Beta 8 Syllabus and it is fantastic. Clear, complete and as ambitious a production as I've ever seen. Grannon has served up a classic here, and at about $80, what you might pay for a single one-on-one lesson, it's the single best value in MA instruction anywhere.

I was wonderng if it would be a good idea to set up a separate department on the forum devoted to the Syllabus and the issues students encounter in training it.

Thanks, Richie, you just set the bar a heck of a lot higher than it has ever been before.

--4444

I completely enjoyed the first three and can't stop checking my mailbox every day since ordering them. After that I'll get back to you with what I think of the rest, but I doubt I'll do anything other than repeat your sentiments.


Keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

thanks very much- thats an excellent suggestion- it would be nice to get some videos up of people doing the training so we can critique and assist each other as well as making new suggestions on drill/ technique development- rememebr it still an open unfinished system, open to development and evolution

One thing I'd like to comment on is the opener.

We've been drilling that hook/cross hybrib you showed as our pre-emptive strike (not the up close boxers hook but not a straight cross down the pipe). However, last time we pressure tested I was suprised to find that, rather than open with the big right I always instincively threw a left/right combo, not unlike the variation Reg demonstrates on Disc 5. Again, both punches were half way between hook and cross.

I guess it's from 14 years of kickboxing but the left fires out as a range finder instinctively, even though I know I'm definitely in range. Perhaps there's a bit of a double tap effect too because the target gets tagged both sides of the jaw in quick succession. Quite disorientating according to my lucky stooge

wow, i ordered these and it really did arrive in 5 working days.
now my gf wont let me open it till Christmas, argh!
can anybody tell me what equipment ill need for the curriculum?
i really like the idea of a special part of the forum for this too.

Hey Tangle,

The main thing you need is a partner, as the whole Beta-8 series is geared towards partner drills and nothing solo.

You will also need a helmet (two if you want, but it isn't nesscary for most of the drills) and some MMA gloves.

thanks mate.
so no groin guard, focus or thai pads needed?

Groin guards will be good incase anything goes wrong. Pads and focus mits are esstential for other training but I will say its just an extra for Beta-8 training.

Beta-8 is excellent stuff. As a base it is probably the best out there. I like the structure of the beating. It is interesting to note that after becoming completely disillusioned by the martial arts and trying to find anything like a core truth by eliminating everything but the effective violence itself from consideration. (law, ethics, social stuff and so on) I ended up with a very similar "process", for lack of a better word. It only had three stages but the essence was basically the same. Generally speaking, to finish the guy off with a coup de grace, you need to beat/throw/fart him down with heavy attacks, and to be sure to get that in you need to open him up for it. Euphemistically; open, destabilize, control. Which it could also be at more moderate levels of brutality but I sort of had to approach it from an extreme to find the truth and then to moderate it with the other factors like law, ethics and so on. I.e., how do you walk up and simply beat someone to death. Or think of a lion hunting, opens by getting it's claws on the prey's ass, drags it down and proceeds to kill it. It's the closest I've ever come to figuring out anything like a basic truth of anything so I think you really nailed it with the Beta-8 syllabus. As far as I can tell it is the simplest model for how to effectively beat people up outside of that accursed dueling paradigm. I like your thinking.

My only disagreement is in the threat greediness. Greedy as I am there are two threat factors I won't let go of and that is groups and knives. Which I obsessively feel a need to structure into everything because they are fairly common and especially dangerous. Like anyone and their brother I've known they are dangerous as fuck scince the beginning but it's only recently I've begun to truly appreciate what a challenge they represent as far as devising reliable tactics aganist them goes. That stuff just will not forgive a mistake. Then again I think the core model stays the same but the choice of tactics and techniques must assume knives and groups. Movement and hand-avoidance/nullification seems to deal effectively with both of those, but I'm still chewing on the problem though.



On the other hand I'm not worrying too much about snipers. Unless... Hey what do you do if you are faced with a group of snipers? Or an armored battalion? (didn't rambo singlehandledly take out a charging armored battalion with an AK47 once?)

Apart from that I'll just say what 4444 said. This is excellent stuff. Training partners are a bit of an issue but such is life.

glad you liked it mate

this is just the "1 to 1 syllabus" so the objective of this particular syllabus is just to train you to do one simple observably quantifiable task with a clear skillset: batter someone of similar height and weight

of course I could do a syllabus for knives or multiples or larger opponents but that just isnt what this particular syllabus is- I wanted to keep it conservative and specific

its obviously not very clear!

I'm just being greedy.

Up until recently I've held knife, group and beating up individuals a bit separate, but due to things like hidden knives and knives simply not being recognized as such in the heat of the moment i.e., that fist may well be an incoming punctured lung instead, not to mention that scum travel in packs I think the implications of that are that as far as possible the tactics against that, and especially the knife, need to be embedded in whatever you do to your unarmed mirror image. At least as much as possible without compromising the beating process.

But if for arguments sake we were to assume that there are always at least one more punk around, so we never get bogged down and too occupied with one individual, and that their hands are sharp and red hot glowing iron, avoiding contact with them in both defense and offense to thwart both grabbing and stabbing. I think that adds a level of protection against both knives and groups, and without getting too much in the way of simply beating the shit out of them. Of course when you have a confirmed knife or group you just take whatever other precautions that might apply.

That's what I'm thinking of so far anyway, but I've begun some heavy looking into knife and group defense simply because I realized I've only dealt with that stuff very superficially. Which is odd when I think about it because they are both common and two of the worst possibilities, at the same time. It's important to be a pessimist when engineering things... Yeah, so five abnormally quick bodybuilders with a knife in each hand is what I'm going to build for.

On a more serious note that particular scenario is extremely unlikely to occur. But at least to eliminate as much as possible any weaknesses against those kinds of unforgiving dangers so that it's simply there as an extra layer on you unarmed Vs. unarmed skill would probably be worthwhile. Of course, there's a ton of good stuff against knives and groups already out there, no need to invent new stuff. The challenge is to simplify it and interweave it.

Blah blah, these post have a tendency of growing... How it affects and relates to the 1 to 1 syllabus then... Not that much actually when I think about it, because there's no fluff in there to get rid of. For me it pretty much boils down to what tactics and techniques you fill the basic game plan with, as well as being extra fast and hard about it to prevent standing around being a target. I got the idea from Don Pentecost's book on prison knifing. "put 'em down, take'em out." In which you'd immediately seize control of his left shoulder (assuming you stab with your right hand) so that you go outside and get to his side or back if you so choose. (It worked ridiculously well in some scenario stuff. Testing it out for the first time I "killed" 27 guys, only 3 survived, because they took me out before I could get on them, and there was a rule that if they connected solidly with one hit I'd be "dead" to give them a chance. The 27 "dead" recieved about 20 - 40 stabs to the lungs, spleen, kidneys,, liver, neck and so on.) Furthermore, getting on the outside like that looks very similar to what I've seen some of the redzone knife defense guys do. Which lets them control one arm and puts the other out of effective range for doing very much. I don't see any reason why we can't take that position while unarmed too and start pummeling the guy from there.

But then again I don't know. I'm still researching and just throwing ideas around for the moment. I guess it sounds too fucking complex the way I ramble on about it all but the general idea is to make it ridiculously simple so that it's a minor modification of the normal beating, but that covers a few of the variables at the same time. More extensive knife, multiple and larger opponents syllabusses's'sses... would of course cover aquiring the ability to handle each of those specific threats properly because realistically I think there is a lot more to each of those scenarios than can be seamlessly and surrepetitiously slipped into the unarmed 1 to 1 approach, and without doing some serious modification to it that would be more in the way than anything else if there were no knife or group.

beware the threat greed demon, keep your core skills sharp and shiny and your brain switched to "ON" and you will never annoy a team of abnormally quick knife weilding bodybuilders or a gang of snipers... but take comfort in the fact that if you do, it will be over quickly, training or no

I bet it's not even edited (save for the text) and taken right off of some dojo's ad. I've seen dragons and chi balls and all sorts of shit in ads like that.

It's true though. Threat greed in moderation when indulged in at all... Don't get me wrong, core skills are absolutely fundamental to everything. But knives and groups are common enough and serious enough when they occur that getting rid of most inital openings through which these things can sneak up on you seems important. Naturally, full fledged anti group or knife stuff is a little too greedy to begin cramming in there and would most likely interfere with the unarmed 1 on 1 work more than it would help, and that wouldn't be very useful so it's only a few minor adjustments I'm thinking of. Basically it's just a couple foundational considerations when it all comes down to it. Or at least that's what I think at this point. So it should be within safe levels of threat greed.

Hey, at least I've left out guns, blunt weapons, dogs, diseases... eh... grenades and siamese twins. (not to mention lava and oversized broken bottles)



There are only the two that seem worthy of being a little greedy about.

@RichardB:
Obviously you've picked up by this time that I am also very interested in the blade - what it can do, and how you can increase your odds of living through an encounter. I agree it is a threat to be thinking about, and I believe training with a blade gives you a great deal of insight into being on the other end of it. Also blade training is, as you say, less forgiving of errors, so it sharpens all your senses and improves your hand eye co-ordination, evasion skills, and accuracy in many ways.
The 'sewing machine' shiv attack is a scary one - and so is not seeing the blade at all in close range.
My most basic insight into how a blade changes the scenario is that there is exponentially more danger, much sooner than in an empty hand scenario. If they close and you haven't thrown them off their game, you are in trouble. Like the choke hold thread .... you only have so much TUC - time of useful consciousness, or in this case, blood pressure. That is why awareness, psychology, and pre-emption are all key.
Now the siamese snipers with exploding attack dogs ......