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My views on Grappling and Groundfighting
I cannot think of anything that has taken
place in the martial arts that has caused a greater upheaval or a greater
debate than the issue of grappling and groundfighting.
Everyone has their own opinions on this
subject so here is mine.
Knowing how to grapple, or perhaps better
said: how to escape from the grapple is vital to anyone who wants to have
true survival-defense skills.
Only an idiot would argue otherwise.
Sadly I know such an idiot, he is a former
instructor of mine. He will remain nameless, his name is not worth the time
it takes to write it. However it does need to be said that this person, in an
effort to prove himself right, will lie and distort historical facts.
In a "white paper" report that he
wrote on this subject, he uses the names of many people whom he says support
his position. Some of these men taught hand-to-hand in WW II. In the case of
these men he says that they totally discarded groundfighting as useless.
Wrong! I have the books that these men
wrote. It contains groundfighting.
He also sites John McSweeney as someone who
does not believe in groundfighting.
Wrong again! I’ve spoken to John about this
subject on numerous occasions. John’s view is the same as mine-
groundfighting situations need to be addressed within a complete system of
self-defense. Groundfighting does happen.
Now let me clear something up. Grappling
and groundfighting are not the same thing. For easier definition lets say
that grappling occurs from a standing position. It could be as complex as
trying to use a joint manipulation, or as simple as grabbing on and trying to
strong-arm someone. Groundfighting is when one or both combatants is ON the
ground.
Now lets look at what I believe.
- I believe that a person should make every
effort to remain standing. It allows you the opportunity to move and to
escape.
- I believe that a person’s MAIN method of
protection should be via fast powerful strikes.
- I believe that taking the fight to the ground
is a last resort move and should not be your "game plan".
- I believe that despite your best intentions, or
your best laid plans, things can go wrong.
- I believe that some solid, basic groundfighting
knowledge is needed for the times that things go wrong.
- I believe solid groundfighting skills do not
require you to learn a great number of submission holds. Nor do you need
to learn how to counter these holds. The attacker in the street is not
going to try and place you in a submission hold, that’s not reality.
- I believe that simply telling a student to
bite, gouge the eyes and crush the testicles (should you be on the
ground) is not enough. These answers may be all that you have, due to
limited training, and doing them is better than doing nothing, BUT it is
not difficult to add escapes and re-positioning techniques that will put
you into a much better position to use these or other methods of attack.
- I believe that when on the ground you want to
injure the attacker and regain a standing position, you don’t want to
stay there for an extended length of time.
- I believe that it’s foolish to make this an
"either/or" proposition. One should want to learn vital
self-protection skills, who cares what style or method they are from.
- I believe many people are only protecting their
own self interests (i.e. money or reputation). They will dispute the
often mentioned figure that "95% of all fights end up on the
ground". They are arguing over silliness. Let’s say the figure was
really only 20%. If 20% of all fights ended on the ground, isn’t that
percentage high enough to make you want to learn some
groundfighting? If 20% of all attacks involved a knife I can
confidently state that you would be studying knife defense, correct!?
- I believe that you should learn to fight from
whatever position you might find yourself in. It makes no sense to say
to a student: "You shouldn’t be in that position". Don’t tell
me where I shouldn’t be, tell me how to get out of where I am!!!
So there are some of my thoughts. There
really should be no great debate on this subject. To remove either
grappling/groundfighting or striking from your chosen method of
self-protection is deny yourself access to techniques that might prove to be
the difference between survival or defeat.
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