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Four

I have to apologize to JJ- That's US Deputy Marshall JJ to you- he
taught me something very profound once that I have since embellished
and internalized so that I no longer know what was my add-on to his
thought. So what follows, especially the good stuff, is JJ's and he
deserves the credit. Be safe my friend.

Teaching
instructors and leaders is different than teaching troops. Leaders
have to understand well enough to improvise, know the rules well enough
to break them. They need to know the 'why' of a thing pretty deeply.
Troops should know it too, of course, but part of concentrating that
time at the instructor/leader level is so that they can pass it on at
their discretion.


So, today, teaching basic skills to a leader I had to give him some background.


1) Anything you teach, anything you practice must have a tactical use.
If it is not useful, why are you practicing it? Case in point-
returning a katana to the scabbard quickly, smoothly and without
looking is one of the hallmark proofs of extreme skill. News flash-
getting you weapon into
the holster fastest has never won a fight. There is no tactical use
for disarming yourself quickly. To be fair, the ability to secure your
weapon without looking allows you to pay attention to potential
emerging threats, and that is a good skill.


2)
You must be able to perform the skill moving. Fights (unarmed, guns,
knives, swords or clubs) are not static affairs. They are conducted
moving. You will be moving and so will the threat. If you have to
freeze in order to strike hard or stop in order to shoot accurately,
what you have is not a combat skill. If your opponent must freeze for
an instant to give you time for your disarms or locks to work, it is
not yet a combat skill.


3) Your skills must
work when you are scared. I can almost guarantee that if you ever need
serious close-quarters survival skills, you will be scared. That
affects your mind and your body. If the techniques you rely on require
wide peripheral vision, calm planning, precise hand movements, or even
a fairly complicated coordination of hands and feet they very likely
won't work. Levels of fear change with experience and somewhat with
internal wiring- if you choose to believe that this doesn't apply to
what you do, you are counting on being a mutant. Best of luck to you.


4)
It must work whether you can see or not. Not just because bad things
happen in the dark but because you can't waste time looking at the
weapons on your belt or checking to see which way your magazines are
turned. Something else, like the threat's hands, may well be in your
face. You won't get the choice that the threat will even be in front
of you. Some things, like shooting, require some vision (country western songs
aside) but there is a reason why so much time is spent on low-light and
poor visibility shooting. Reason being, that's how most of them happen.
Touch is reliable. Anything you can do by touch, you do by touch.

Glad to see someone else following Rory's blog. I love his stuff even when he's just ruminating over non martial issues and can't wait for his next book which is in the editing stage and the current one he is writing is sounding like it will be fascinating. Make sure you read the comments at the bottom of the post because quite often some great exchanges of information occur during these remarks.

Keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

I've not read anything other than his blog, which I enjoy - sensible chap . I've posted a few other posts here as well that I thought were interesting.
The comments section is also good.