Tagged: video

Scott Park Phillips: Most Applications are Just Stage Combat

Scott Park Phillips of North Star Martial Arts:

I teach applications. Applications are all about capturing a feeling. A feeling of moving through space, of getting a hold, of clearing, catching, spinning, or tipping. The point of an application is to get a feeling, and then find that feeling again spontaneously in some kind of rough-housing game.

The chances of getting an application from a video are very small. Applications in a video are a type of stage combat designed to recruit students. If you can see it without slow-motion it is usually an illusion. And even if a video uses the slow-motion effect, you can’t feel it. And applications are all about feeling…

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Randy King: Training for Escape

Randy King of KPC Self Defense and Randy King Live has another awesome installment of his Randy’s Rants series. This one’s on training to escape.

Personal story: few years back I discovered an almost 100% reliable way to confuse and eventually piss off a room full of martial artists. Fight only to create an opening for an escape and then take it. There’s a sort of predictable pattern: confusion, OK I get it, haha you’re still doing it, and ok but seriously why aren’t you hanging out to fight me for fun for the next 10 minutes. (Yes, eventually we probably do have to stay in longer than we would so we can learn.)

Randy King: Instructors and Victim Blaming

Randy King of KPC Self Defense:

“If somebody comes to you and they are very vulnerable and something bad happened to them, the last thing they need to hear is ‘oh, if you would have took my system three weeks ago, you wouldn’t have got attacked like that’…”

For a practical, deep dive on not making things worse for students who’ve been through some stuff, check out Trauma-Aware Self-Defense Instruction: How Instructors Can Help Maximize the Benefits and Minimize the Risks of Self-Defense Training for Survivors of Violence and Trauma by Anna Valdiserri. As far as we know, it’s the only resource out there on the subject. (Disclosure: IDJ publisher Nick Grossman helped Valdiserri develop this book.)

Torin Hill: OODA Oops: Col Boyd’s Idea Isn’t What You’ve Heard

Torin Hill of the TORIS Organization explores and clarifies another one of the most catastrophically misunderstood concepts in personal defense training, Col. John Boyd’s OODA loop.

Note that the “orient” phase is orders of magnitude more complex that most of us have been led to believe.

Is Ammunition Safe to Store At Home? Over 400,000 Rounds Burned & Abused to Find Out

Ever wonder what would happen to ammo stored in your home in a house fire? So did SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute) and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, who burned, blasted, drove into, ran over, ground, and shot other bullets at over 400,000 rounds of handgun, rifle, and shotgun ammo to find out.