Frequently I hear the phrase "another tool for the toolbox" used to describe the idea that the more fighting skills one learns the better a fighter one becomes. On the surface this seems reasonable, but as students of violence are we really just seeking to "collect 'em all", blindly amassing a huge library of skills that we hope we can recall when needed? In this edition of ALIVE!™ Methodology Monday we will examine this concept and look at some alternative strategies for prioritizing our skill development.
First we need to address the expression itself. "Another tool for the toolbox" is an idiom that doesn't necessarily have a literal meaning. However, the use of the word "tool" does allude to a significant deficiency in how most people look at training: that is; they are "tool focused" instead of "fight focused". Specifically, people say they "need to get some carbine training", or "need to build some knife skills", but are tool skills really what they want? I submit instead what they really want are fighting skills. This isn't just semantics, it goes to the core of the way most of the training community has bamboozled itself into believing tool operation is equivalent to fighting.
At a typical pistol or rifle "operator" course the focus is entirely on handling of the weapon and shooting paper targets without any actual opponent involved. With no opponent present, the training is largely "tool operation" and not fight training (see the
April 6 post for more about what constitutes fight training). Even in a knife skills course, if there are no actively resisting opponents, aka "sparring" etc, how many actual fighting skills are being learned in a way that will enable them to used against a criminal assailant? Not many, if any.
So beyond the issues with tool fixation, we must also address the concept that "more is better" when it comes to "another tool in the toolbox". How many tools do we need that essentially do the same task? At what point will we be confused as to which tool to use for which task? How do we know what the tasks are?
One of the innovative things that ALIVE!™ does is provide an entirely new way to look at training, see what the required tasks actually are, and efficiently prioritize skill development. In essence, ALIVE!™represents a brand new toolbox.
Planning on bringing this to the fight?
When a repairman arrives at your home he doesn't bring completely different tool sets for plumbing, air conditioning, and other home repair tasks, the repairman has one set of tools for the most common tasks he will face.
ALIVE!™uses a single set of skills for knife, pistol, impact weapons, empty hands and even rifle to streamline your training requirements. With one comprehensive set of skills, no training time is wasted learning separate gun skills, knife skills, ground skills, empty hands skills etc and then attempting to fuse them together into a functional system yourself.
Likewise, the repairman isn't wheeling a full-size industrial tool box behind him. Instead, he usually walks in carrying a small tool bag with only a few essential tools. He knows what tools he is most likely to need because he has seen jobs like yours many times before.
ALIVE!™ allows you to examine the context of the fight situations you are most likely to encounter and experience them in opposition against fully resistant opponents. By understanding the context of the situation, having experienced it in training, one can effectively prioritize training.
How does ALIVE!™prioritize training? ALIVE!™uses several models to analyze and understand your potential fight situations, and then ensures that your training actually addresses them. One of these is the PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM.
ALIVE!™ SIMPLIFIED PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM
The PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM helps one to identify the context of the fight and ensure appropriate material is trained. "Proactive vs Reactive" is an either/or input, either the fighter is initiating action in that moment (proactive end) or reacting to an opponent's action (reactive end). Note that the chart applies individually to each participant in a fight, there could be two fighters both reacting or two acting in a proactive context. However, typically opponents end up at opposite sides of the spectrum. The PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM is a component of a larger model, the FIGHT GRAPH, that uses additional inputs to map out the entire realm of possible fight contexts. The simplified chart above shows some examples of where specific contexts might appear along the spectrum.
Why is this chart important to training? What the PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM does is allow us to begin to categorize different fight contexts. Not all fight situations are the same. Different fight contexts require different tactics and techniques. Once we categorize fight contexts we can see that the appropriate tactics and techniques are similar for contexts in the same category, and less applicable for contexts in other categories. For example, the skills one needs to make a proactive shot against a hostage-taker are very different than the skills needed to use a pistol to reactively defend against a knife attack. If this sounds like an all-too obvious assertion, rest assured that it is not obvious among many other personal defense systems.
A few weeks ago we discussed the "Modern Technique of the Pistol" and how Dennis Tueller's "21 foot rule" drill showed a major deficiency in relying entirely on static "front sight focus"shooting systems for personal defense (see that blog post
HERE). Using the PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM we can see that the "front sight focus" shooting technique is most applicable in proactive fight contexts and, because different contexts require different tactics and techniques, it is less applicable in the kind of reactive fight contexts armed civilians typically find themselves in.
The PROACTIVE/REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM, like ALIVE!™itself, applies to all aspects of personal defense to include knife. Common dogma in many knife systems is "there is no such thing as knife defense, only knife offense", or a variation of "we use our situational awareness to ensure we always attack first". Both of these positions suggest one will always be proactive, and this is simply not the case. Because situational awareness fails, the other guy might just be faster, laws, and many other reasons one can not always be the one initiating a fight. But when fighting systems ignore this reality and instead prefer to "live in denial" by not prioritizing reactive knife defense they are doing a grave disservice to their students.
Going back to prioritizing training, if one finds that most of their potential fighting contexts are on the reactive end of the spectrum, one should not be spending most of ones time training skills that are appropriate for proactive contexts. Instead, train tactics and techniques that hold-up under the pressure of an unexpected criminal assault. One must constantly question whether the skills being trained are appropriate to the context of the kind of fights one expects to be in.
Stay ALIVE!™
To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives or ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com
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