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[Bryan]

  When Matt Larsen chose to use the term "Modern Combatives" for his training system it guaranteed that we would be seeing the term Combatives for a very long time. While many of the Combatives guys are now gone, Combatives is not going away anytime soon. Some have chosen to complain about Modern Combatives but its here to stay too.

  As far as using the term "WW2 Combatives" I think that's done and over but it will always be a reference point for Combatives. There are some people still around who are second and third generation WW2 Combatives but the reality is that it was never a complete system. It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that with a very hardcore deconstruct and destroy the human body mind & skill set. There is nothing you can do to the human body to kill it that could not and would not be acceptable or adaptable as WW2 Combatives. In fact the greatest and only limitation in WW2 Combatives is it was trained and deployed in a very short period of years so it was never fully developed during WW2, it was hurriedly deployed in many versions.

  What we are really talking about here is more mindset and vocabulary than specific training. That's a big problem I have with many who have limited themselves to a dojo mentality. That is to say, it was not training off a recognized and approved training curriculum by a certified black belt instructor so it dont work when the reality is much different. Let me just say this, you cannot get a black belt in country ass whipping but it is a very effective form of fighting.  If you want to you could just say Combatives is in general "Country Ass Whipping" changed to "Country Ass Killing" and Modern Combatives is a tuned up politically correct set of defined skills but it is not limited to that.

  A few years ago I asked Hock if I could use his term "Hand, Stick, Knife, Gun," which he said he didn't have a problem with that as it was free for anyone to use. I have been working on a new project for several years and and last year I came up with a few new terms but they are direct decedents of the training attitude I learned from Hock. I have always been a mixed weapons guy but it was from reading Hocks writing that I realized instead of just focusing on one thing at a time I needed to include everything together as a system. I plan to write more on this in the next few months but here is what I have come up with relating to Combatives.

  Hand, Stick, Knife , Gun, Combatives for me didn't flow off the tongue very well and HSNGC is way to heavy for a acronym. I have always considered myself a Combatives guy but never limited myself like so many Combatives people have done in the last thirty years. I like Modern Combatives and we are now working towards having competition Jiu Jitsu here in Thailand at my club but Im not a Modern Combatives guy as Im way to old school to ever be defined as only "Modern Combatives" therefore I just broke it down to MMC Mixed Military Combatives and will be promoting that as a term to bring old school and new school combatives under one roof.

BBG Baton, Blade, and Gun, is the weapons module within MMC Mixed Military Combatives and any of it can simply be referenced to as Combatives or even CQC. I never liked the term "Stick" anyway, to me its a bunch of people in a park in California, not Combatives which is focused on the complete destruction of the human body. BBG is also a cute term for Bitch Be Gone, an imaginary spray one can use to rid themselves of unwanted persons which I believe makes it appropriate for its use in Combatives.

  I would be honored if Hock or friends adopted some of my terminology as its out in the public now and free for anyone to use. My only "Terms Of Use" are that in the odd case anyone ever did ask where the terms came from people are honest and say they came from me, outside of that, go for it.

  Basically what all this is saying is look for more Combatives in 2010,

Combatives Is Dead! Long Live Combatives!

[whitewolf]

Bryan- hope so-WW

[Hock]

Hand, stick, knife, gun....very caveman terms and that is why stick works for me. Most Americans hear "baton" and think of high school cheerleaders and I could never use that term, though police certainly do. But night stick, or stick is still in police vernacular. Riot stick is too.

Even the term “mixed weapons” has a martial arts blemish to it. “Oh, does that mean the sai and the katana?” No. Stick, Knife, gun. I use that term with a bit of unease.

I saw this book "Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun" in the 1990s
http://www.amazon.com/Fist-Stick-Knife-Gun-Personal/dp/0807004235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264430127&sr=1-1

and the title stuck with me. It was just in a glance. But it was an important time when I was struggling with what I was doing (karate, JKD, Filipini, Aiki-Jitsu) and that what I was REALLY searching for and wanted to do all along since Army basic training.  I said, “This is really it, isn’t it. Hand. Stick. Knife. Gun.” (and no insane, fat, unworthy grandmasters who were just, imperfect people with inflated egos). I could shuck all that martial arts politics and abstract worship crap and baggage and just to that. Tactics. Generic. Essence of combat. Bridge the Gap and not be the gap or something that needed bridging to something else. Free. Free to give equal time to ground fighting and pistols and ...everything. All else is a trap. Here’s a quick clue - when you have to change your clothes to do each differnt thing? You are missing the point.

But in that book’s title, a “fist” is too defined for "the hand" strike. So, I fell upon the common terms hand, stick, knife, gun. They already fall in a lethal progression.

Since the 1990s I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars advertising that phrase in conjunction with my name. Common words and I have seen many off-shoots. Karanack ads later read "Hand, Knife, Gun." Karanak was cool enough to know he knew jack about the stick and passed on adding it.
But he never did much gun in equal comparison to hand, knife. He could have. But didn’t. Lots of martial artists foolishly think that “gun” is disarming guns. Nope! And others tried "Fist-This-That" etc in combinations. Fist. Feet, Gun. Stuff like that.

Yet, after all those thousands of dollars of my ads, the knife has caused me the most recognition, though I will debate with anyone that my unarmed, stick, even gun course - which emphasizes simulated ammo - ranks in the best of the best doctrine to be found anywhere. As the politicians say “I welcome that debate.”

There is no cool or cute acronym to hand, stick, knife, gun. I wrote a brief essay here somewhere about forcing one’s doctrine into a cute acronym, at the sacrifice of the doctrine itself. Why MUST you have an acronym anyway? Really? If there is no magic acronym after a brainstorming session? Just let it go.

If you are smart? You are looking for a niche. No one owns the words hand, stick, knife, gun. No one owns the simple word combatives. And simply using those terms is no key to any success at all.

AND...BUT you do own your own name. Your name - by that I mean reputation and personality of the person. A major key to progress and success. Titles and words will never cover over one’s foilables and inneptitudes for very long.

Hock

[Hock]

And back on the subject...
I have seen a lot of stick people try to become gun people. And gun people try to become knife or stick people, all gravitating toward the hand, stick, knife and gun over view.

Not sure that they have made the blend, and kind of given up, as they know where their bread has been buttered so to speak and having cut their teeth in one field first.

Hock

[Bryan]

  I just noticed you changed some of the forums names and included Baton Combatives, good for you. I'm very big on knives too but the term knife no longer cuts the combatives mustard for me. I hate the whole "Knife Fighting" nonsense, to much association to people and groups I do not want to be associated with. Blade covers about every kind of sharp instrument and Blade Combatives covers it all.

BBG, Baton, Blade, Gun, Combatives

[Hock]

Are you saying I just recently changed the topic titles? NO. They have been the same titles for years now. It is possible they have been that from the beginning in 2005. But certainly unchanged for a few years. I have added some new subject, titles a few months back on action movies and Walter Mitty.

As for the term "blade" versus the term "knife?" Blade is just not cavemen enough for me. Too..well uppidy? Or martial artsy. I'll stick with knife.

(oh...I also had the course name "Knife/Counter-Knife" years before someone else became ..."Blade, Counter-Blade." Typical. Someone emailed me today of a new hand, stick, knife and gun combatives webpage...using an elephant as a logo!) 

Hock

[Hock]

Thinking about it....that northwestern gun school that started "Fist, Feet, Gun" and started to run with it? What a bad title. What about palm strikes? Elbows? Knees? If ya' can't go there in some kind of full context? Don't go there. "Fist, Feet, Elbow, Knees, Gun." Oh, head butts! Darn! Forgot head butts! And I do them so often too! How could I forget them!

Come to think of it...I once saw saw the FFG on one of those cable off-channels... WAAAAY off-channels where they have them-thar shows nobody sees on channels hardly anybody has on their cable systems. More people watch toilets flush at any given moment than these shows (sort of like MSNBC). More people watch Anderson Cooper on CNN! YEAH! (In a nation of 300 million people, about 800,000 people watch Cooper each night. 900,000 people watch their toilets flush.)

An episode of the Billy Bob Dingo's weekly gun show on the Outhouse Channel, sponsered by (Wingo Willy's Beef Jerky and Madame Louise Shoe Leather) featured this "Fist, Feet, Gun" school. In this episode, the FFG instructor was standing in front of a man holding an Airsoft pistol. The genius instructor was holding a common focus mitt. The instructor started step-and-sliding footwork on the school floor and flashing up the focus mitt - off to his side of his body! The trainee shot at the focus mitt. This was interpreted by host Billy Dingo as genius innovation at work. (Break to commercial. What shoe leather!)

Dear FFG instructor (and Dingo) ....the whole entire fucking idea of Airsoft pistols is to shoot people. Get people use to shooting people.  Why not throw up your hands, while holding a knife and let the student shoot you right in the chest. How's that for some muscle memory training?

Wonder what's on Anderson Cooper tonight?
Hock

[redcap]

I have to say your gun stuff is very different to what most teach over here, although that might be changing. The idea of having a target shoot back is too scary for most people, yet we used to do it with air rifles and fencing masks back in the early 1980s. It increases the pucker factor by multiples of ten just getting ready. I have read of that style of training used as far back as 1943 by SOE trainers in Ceylon, so it has been around for a while. But it can't compare with the versatility of those airsoft guns you use.

If we had them freely available here I would still not run courses with them except for the disarming and unarmed counter training scenarios. Not my thing anymore. Nowadays I can't even get a packet of sandwiches out of a coat pocket quickly let alone a gun. I don't teach knife fighting anymore either. I just tell them to 'kill him with this' and let them go. Then work on the counters.

So I guess I'm more the stick and hand kinda guy, but definitely agree about the use of the terms 'blade',  'baton' and 'fist'. I prefer caveman. Whatever works for each I guess.
Redcap