Enforcer,
You can find all the links you want, of who you want... the fact is that Paul Vunak was in charge of training the SEALS and there is nobody laughing at them.

Are you basing your opinions on other peoples opinions? Do you have first hand knowledge in re to special forces or any type of military service that would have considerable time with line training/H2H?

Are you willing to tell me that the training our Marines engage in is useless?


Heres a link for you... www.parrisisland.com
Plenty of hand to hand going on there.

I think you're all missing the point here, training is the issue. Is it a better Idea to train in fighting against resistance with a non-cooperative partner. Or is it better to talk about what a bad ass street fighter you are. The debate here is: should you talk about your teacher who had lots of real life fights, so you base everything on what he maybe told you. Or Should you ware shorts and train in a clean place with rules, and actually learn by dealing with a guy who's trying to beat you up.

Enforcer,
Once again you missed my point entirely.

Try reading my post again, slowly.

WOW, a really intense thread!

Tim, I gotta say, knowing how government works, the fact that the army uses BJJ as a base for their (current)CQB doesn't mean jack, as they are prone to fads as much as anyone else.

Enforcer: Paul Vunak is in no official capacity the instructor for the SEALs. They pick their own hand-to-hand combat(unofficially) instructors, he just happened to be one of them.

Chi-Craig: Living in a safe western nation, you can talk •••• about Systema; try that in Serbia. Russians use real-world examples to shape their training, and they aren't afraid to lose some lives in the process.

BTW, Tim, does it seem that people put words in your mouth that you never said?

Jack, we've probably broken somebody's arm at some time or another.

I train the SEALS!!! I feed them fish and give them that ball to balance on their noses. I'm the ••••••• SEAL trainer here! You got that!

from former jarhead:

Each unit picks ther expertise from those in the ranks who have that kind of specialty, or they contract for 'experts' who can show, not talk, what the troops can accomplish. These guys are are designated official trainers.

BJJ is realistic. Judo is realistic. I am looking at concepts and principles. People grab as first instinct so how do I get away and break hi sneck or use my weapon. (Obviously in combat, one's weapon is always with him).
SpecOps and similar group need surprise and in kost cases they get in and out 'invisibly' so training paid off.

Chi-Craig, oops, sorry, I read the wrong name.

"Tim, I gotta say, knowing how government works, the fact that the army uses BJJ as a base for their (current)CQB doesn't mean jack, as they are prone to fads as much as anyone else."

Kenneth,
"Government works" because governement is force. Government has to be effective force or it doesn't work. Ergo, what the militaries of governments practice to hone their skills is signigicant. That's the law.
"We live in a world of walls. And we need men on those walls."

and you come down here in your faggity white outfit.....

Yacking, is that why the military spent $125.00 for a $1.58 jeep part? Why the Bradley IFV was a death-trap as originally designed, and took whistle-blowers and congress to redevelop? Why the new XM-8 rifle, part of a failed weapons system that millions were wasted on, was adopted in order to save careers that were responsible for that waste? Nothing against their H2H, ideally what you say is the way it SHOULD be, but after being in the army and working as a govt contractor for 17 yrs, you see all the decisions made nobody will have to answer for if wrong, or if caught, takes forever to pursue through beaurocratic channels, and if punishment is meted falls on a scapegoat, not to mention the casual waste of tax dollars, the petty backbiting....AAARGHH!! I gotta take a pill.

The military is definitely not run in an ideal manner. Hopefully we can all use our critical thinking skills to gleam useful insight from what the military does without assuming it is all worth embracing.

Obviously the pushup and chinup must be great exercises, and obviously BJJ and JKD must be effective methods of learning H2H combat. But it would be a stretch to say anything more than that.

Richard
(Who has never been in the military but has a brother-in-law with great stories about his 10yrs in the Airborne Rangers )

Since we're on the subject of the military. Having spent several years in the military, I must say that the military really sucked at fine-tuning fundamental skills. They always got the big picture correct, but it's foundation was shoddy because they failed to hone the details that mattered the most. For instance, rifle marksmanship. It's easy to go to the range and fire some rounds at a motionless paper target. It's easy to go the pop-up range with your M16 sitting atop of sandbags and qualify. The problem is that they never really factored in the reality of real marksmanship. For some reason, it was always about the numbers. We qualified X number of soldiers and that qualification is good for 12 months. Yeah, they zeroed their rifles and popped some rounds down range, but is that what they will experience in real combat? More than likely not. More than likely they will be under incredible stress, out of breath, tired, hot, confused, and shooting at a rather intelligent enemy combatant that actually shoots back at them. In other words, if the training is not realistic, then what the hell good is it? They talk a lot about training how you are supposed to fight, but it's typically a load of lip service.

The reality is that proficiency with a soldier's weapon should be one of the primary fundamentals that is practiced over and over again until it is second nature. If you can't get a soldier proficient with his weapon, what the hell good is it going to be to teach him to roll around on the ground with another guy? How many times is a soldier going to encounter a situation where he is applying his newly acquired jiujitsu skills in the combat zone? Probably never.

Let's hope for the sake of the soldier that familiarization with different types of weapons and more realistic weapons training is implemented by the armed forces. The human lab is in effect in Afghanistan and Iraq right now, now it's really a matter of learning from this experience and revamping training methods and standards.

You should not have to be a Delta Force operative, a SEAL, Ranger, Air Force PJ, Marine Force Recon, LRSST, Special Forces, etc. to get rounds to fire and time allocated on the training calendar in order to conduct quality weapons training. If the time is not invested to train a soldier to train on his weapon, who cares about H2H.

Furthermore, when it does come down to H2H training for the military, they need to look no further than the law enforcement community, who happen to have ample experience and training methods. Cops deal with this stuff on a regular basis, aside from picking up their Krispy Kremes and giving out tickets. I would strongly recommend to the armed forces to develop H2H methods that would be useful to them, not jumping on the trend train as mentioned earlier on this thread. Grappling is useful in the right context, but there are numerous other H2H techniques that should take precedence.

So it's wonderful to see the military embrace new forms of H2H and all that good stuff, but it would be even better if they would put some intelligent thought into realistic training that is relevant to the job.

Spoken like a true Army Dog.

You should have joined the Corps.

Everything is fine tuned, then tuned again, then fine tuned again and again, but then people would complain about that.

No doubt about it. I don't like admitting it, but the Corps has the best rifle marksmanship training of all the armed forces and they are certainly some of the best trained and most disciplined troops. But unfortunately, they are not the approved solution to what I was addressing above.

cops generally seem to train aikido or other joint lock bs that even tim admitted doesnt work inr eal life (which I dont know why he teaches chin na since he doesnt believe in it).

Hi Enforcer,

I don't know what Tim did or did not say about joint-locks, but you are correct in thinking that a lot of police departments teach an aikido like H2H system with a fair amount of neutralization and stand-up grappling with joint-locks. If you concentrate on basics and do a lot of partner practice these skills can be learned pretty well. And I would think that those tools are perfectly useful against the majority of people the police officers end up using them against. And those type of skills fit extremely well with the mission and legal constrictions of the police departments.

Jack,
What's a "life victory?"

Anything that forwards your mission outside of entertainment/ recreation. Ie making money, accumulating allies. Or on the humanistic side, defending the oppressed or elimaniting oppressors.

"fighting arts have been corrupted by sports competition, when their highest use is as a learning apparatus for daily life."

Tim, you find it hard to break the competitive mind set. And it's ok, its your bag - do what you want to do, I can't tell you who to sock it to (James Brown?)

Think out side the box, Kung fu is a thinking mans art, That means all thinking as in "fut" not just martial thought.


You can't apply the lessons learned in hard training and competition to real life? You should tell the army (a group I think we'd all agree is training to fight for real) to stop wasting time with their war games and competitive H2H training (that is, incidentally, based on Brazilian Jiujitsu).

What about Jerry Peterson;s SCARS traing that was San soo taught to the SEALs in the late eighties (Not that I am a fan of his).

You always steer the convesation to where you are most comfortable. But, that is because you are a thinking man and your comfort zone is where you operate best.

I challenge you to explore the possibilitires that the principles of kung fu can be applied to other things beside fighting.

I know you probally do not want to do this as I said in an earilier post, most or4dinary people do not want to do anything outside their narrow preference. However, I think you have demonstrated that your are not normal or aveage.

But terryy and think hoe martial principles apply to daily life, such as the kung fu spirit of relentless effective efficency. That can be applied to any task. Even brushing your teeth.



ps. Jimmy Woo was a badass fighter. I heard him say many times KFSS wasn't for sport. I never heard him say sports competition was bad.

Did you ever see him indulge in them. Hey, Jimmy was diplomatic - if you do not have anything nice to say about it, don't say anything at all.


You know damn well Jimmy didn't condone competition.

Kung fu is about rising to greatness - in daily life. Not lowering yourself to greatness in sport.


Sorry - no time to spell check.

Chris, nothing personal. It was FYI only. Kinda like someone telling you you have a bugger on your lip.

Now back to fight talk and super heros of modern day martial arts.... the choir's comfort zone.

Anybody remember Fredy Blasie, now there's a significant human who won a lot of competitive events. (What about the destroyer or Mr. Motto?)

Jack,

What's a "life victory?"

"Anything that forwards your mission outside of entertainment/ recreation. Ie making money, accumulating allies. Or on the humanistic side, defending the oppressed or elimaniting oppressors. "

Cool. Fighting for us isn't always "recreation."

"You know damn well Jimmy didn't condone competition."

I do? I remember hearing the story of Jimmy entering a competition back in the day (the Long Beach Internationals I believe) and, not understanding the rules against excessive contact, being disqualified for injuring his opponent. I agree Jimmy didn't like point fighting rules. Judging by the fact he entered a "competition," he believed was real fighting, are you sure he wouldn't have loved watching the UFC? (a competition close to real fighting).

While we're on the subject of staying in one's comfort zone, I have a question. How many combat sports competions have you competed in?