ALIVE! Gunfighting®: AK Rifle Primer BERTRAM April 25, 2015

ALIVE! Gunfighting®: AK Rifle Primer BERTRAM April 25, 2015

By Steve Miles

This past weekend I once again had the privilege of presenting the "AK Rifle Primer" at a superb private range in Bertram, TX.  This class is designed for people who want to learn how to run their AKs in the context of a close-range, frequently reactive, gunfight.  As such it's ideal for civilians or solo LEOs, but there's plenty of good material to be gleaned by team operator types as well.

The class has two main training goals:

First, students will become smarter than the average Soviet bear regarding the AK.  Unusually for an ALIVE! Gunfighting event, the class begins with lecture discussing how the AK functions, it's design, controls, and sights.  Students then zero their rifles at 25m using an offset that very closely replicates a standard 100m zero. 

Later in the day students learn about, handle, and shoot all the major AK variants to include AK-47, AKS, AKM, AKMS, AK-74, AKS-74, AKS-74U and others.  

During this process students have the opportunity to shoot all the other students' rifles as well.  This included some full-auto rifles generously provided by the range owner.

The second main goal is for students to learn the basics of close-range gunfighting with rifles, empasizing speed, accuracy AND mobility.  This included magazine changes, malfunction clearance, and other gunhandling, as well as side transitions, and vertical displacement skills.  Students learn the fundamentals of managing and imposing pressure in a gunfight.  Airsoft "corrections" were administered when students made tactical errors such as remaining stationary and exposed when changing mags or clearing malfunctions. This training forces students to think and function in terms of what will keep them alive in a gunfight, not necessarily what will give them the best scores in a 3-Gun match.

The final skill drill involves explosive horzontal displacement, aka "getting off the X", combined with an accurate first shot in the context of a close-range ambush.

As happens in every class, students begin skeptical of their ability to get hits while running, but after detailed instruction and coaching they are all able to achieve it.

This final drill really opens students eyes to what is possible when one is willing to go beyond "lowest common denominator" training.

Later this year we will conduct another "AK Alumni Course".  There we will build on the basics presented in the primer and explore AK-to-pistol transitions, cornering, 360 degree engagements, and more all in the context of the two-way gunfight using both airsoft and live fire.  Stay tuned!

To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives and ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.

ALIVE! Gunfighting®: Accessing While Under Attack BERTRAM April 18, 2015

ALIVE! Gunfighting®: Accessing While Under Attack BERTRAM April 18, 2015

By Steve Miles

This past weekend I was fortunate to be able to present our flagship gunfighting course twice in one day at a great private range.  There are two main goals for the class:

1. Immerse students in the context of various likely gunfight situations.  Most students know they need personal defense training but haven't really thought about what kind of training is best for their particular situations. It seems obvious that one should have a good idea of what the problem is before one goes seeking a solution, but the status quo in the firearms and personal defense industry is to instead insist on "mastering the (so called) basics" before attempting any sort of force-on-force training.  This is a gross error in teaching methodology.  Without any idea of what the required skill endstate should look like, students (and instructors) squander training time and resources developing skills that may only correlate to a very small percentage of likely gunfight predicaments.

2. Build students' critical thinking skills vis a vis their training choices.  Context is everything, and to ensure they are getting the most out of their training students must constantly compare the context of any training they perform to the context of the gunfight situations they expect to be in.  If contexts are not similar, students must ensure they are not developing "training scars" by embedding responses that are suboptimal for their likely gunfight situations.

At the beginning of both classes I asked students to complete the sentence "I carry a gun because I'm concerned about..."  Both classes gave the same four responses:

1. Street Criminal Assault
2. Witness to Armed Robbery
3. Home Invasion
4. Carjacking

Notice that the contexts that civilians want to learn how to prevail in didn't include "SEAL Team Raid", "SWAT Entry", nor "Felony Traffic Stop".  Yet these significantly different contexts are where much of the firearms training industry focuses their instruction, even for civilians.

A large number of students in the first class were members of the "Austin Sure Shots" pistol league.  The Sure Shots showed up with both skills and open minds and really progressed a lot during the class. By the end of the day everyone was running and gunning as if their lives really depended on it.  Here's the pics:

We'll be doing this class again soon.

To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives and ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.

ALIVE!™ Methodology Monday April 13, 2015

When Speed and Accuracy Aren't Enough

By Steve Miles

Last week we took a look at the "Modern Technique of the Pistol" with a critical eye towards its origins in sport shooting.  We recognized that assumptions made about what it takes to win against cardboard targets were inescapably different than those required to prevail against a live resisting opponent.  This week we will continue to deconstruct Modern Technique and go deeper into specifics of how and why a sport shooting system alone is inadequate for personal defense.

Jeff Cooper Commemorative Coin

"DVC" was the celebrated motto of Jeff Cooper, an acronym which explained the central elements of Modern Technique as:

Diligentia - Accuracy: You must hit your assailant in order to injure him.
Vis – Force: You must strike your opponent with sufficient force to incapacitate him.
Celeritas – Speed: You must strike him quickly, so your opponent does not injure you before you injure him.

Note that all three elements are "one-way", that is, DVC is solely concerned with achieving incapacitating hits on an opponent.  Speed and Accuracy make sense from the perspective of winning a timed sport shooting match, but Force seems incongruent as no real force is required to punch paper or cardboard targets. So where does the Force element come from?

Cooper seemed nearly obsessed with the .45 caliber 1911 pistol and its legendary stopping power aka Force.  He summarily dismissed the merits of other pistols that today seems like an over-the-top farce:

"As long as one doesn't get into a fight, a nine is fine." (Jeff Cooper)

 "Carrying a double action 9mm automatic pistol for protection is like playing golf with a tennis racquet. You can do it, but why should you?" (Jeff Cooper) 

When one understands the strategy of Modern Technique as "hit and incapacitate first", essentially a variation of "the best defense is a good offense", one begins to understand why the .45 caliber 1911's "one shot stop" mythos was a perfect fit for Modern Technique.  If an opponent can be incapacitated before he can attack, defined as sufficient Force, then Modern Technique's "one-way" strategy certainly works as it does against cardboard targets.  However, when faced with a living opponent who is already applying or about to apply his own deadly force toward the shooter, the "one-way" strategy falls apart under pressure because sometimes Speed, Accuracy, and Force are not enough.

"How Close is Too Close?"

Dennis Tueller was the first to substantively question the utility of a "one way" strategy in a 1983 SWAT Magazine article entitled "How Close is Too Close?".  In the article, Tueller presented the results of his study which indicated that inside of 21' an attacker could likely reach an officer before the officer could draw and shoot him effectively.  In 1984 one year after Tueller's SWAT article was published, a police training film titled "Surviving Edged Weapons" was released that demonstrated Tueller's findings and the work of other knife experts.  Between the SWAT article, the landmark training film, and the subsequent "21 Foot Rule" that has become urban legend, Tueller's study made a indelible mark on police and personal defense training that we still address today.  Although Tueller's conclusion in the article was that officers should retreat to maintain a "reactionary gap" so as to keep a shooting option viable, he irreversibly exposed the deficiency of the Speed and Accuracy  "one-way" dogma in close range active attacker contexts.  

1984 police training film "Surviving Edged Weapons" further expanded on Tueller's work.

Context matters in fighting, and if your shooting system is deficient against active attackers inside of 21 feet, it's deficient in the context of most law enforcement and civilian defensive shootings. To use Maslow's Hammer again, the tools of Modern Technique are speed and accuracy, and thus all their gunfight problems look like cardboard targets. 

An adherent to Modern Technique can either:

a) Continue to chant the "front sight...press" mantra and ignore that Modern Technique is inherently deficient in most shooting situations one is likely to find oneself in? Or..

b) Find a better way to deal with the context of close range active attackers.

Next time we will go deeper into understanding fighting context with the PROACTIVE TO REACTIVE FIGHT SPECTRUM.



To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives or ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.

ALIVE!™ Methodology Monday April 6, 2015

Context is Everything

By Steve Miles

Today we are going to take the ideas about methodology and material that we have covered in the last three weeks and put them to use.  My intention is to walk you through the practical application of some of these concepts to unleash your critical thinking skills.  

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.  (Oliver Wendell Holmes) 

Last week we talked about how material is the "moves", how a system intends to fight, and that material is developed in accordance with the system founder's basic assumption of what "winning" is.  We pointed out that when the material was used in a different context than the founder's basic assumptions it usually needed to be revamped or augmented by other material more appropriate to the new context. As an example we discussed how material developed for a refereed MMA match might not fare well if used wholesale in a knife fight.  That example was hypothetical, so let's now move on to a more specific example: Modern Technique.

Speed is fine, but accuracy is final.

The Modern Technique is a method for using a handgun originated by Jeff Cooper and codified in his 1991 book "The Modern Technique of the Pistol".  Nearly all defensive shooting courses in the US use the "two-handed grip" and "front sight focus" principles of Modern Technique as their foundation.  

Before we continue, let's understand that Modern Technique shooting is itself not flawed, there are many contexts where it is entirely applicable. The problem is when the Modern Technique material is blindly applied to inappropriate contexts. We are going to deconstruct Modern Technique not to attack its validity, but to instead understand why it developed the way it did.

"Blessed is he who in the face of death thinks only of the Front Sight!" (Jeff Cooper)

Although he started as an innovator, Cooper's instruction became very dogmatic. His mantra of "front sight focus" in nearly all combat contexts is echoed by instructors teaching his method today. But all contexts are not the same. 

We know material is developed in accordance with the system founder's basic assumption of what "winning" is, so let's examine what Cooper had in mind when he developed Modern Technique.

Jeff Cooper Bio 

Cooper was a great American who greatly advanced the shooting art. As a Marine veteran he was decisively focused on combat shooting, and many Modern Technique concepts are applicable to gunfighting.  However, when we examine the context he drew basic assumptions from when developing Modern Technique, we find it was far removed from actual combat.  Cooper and his contemporaries developed Modern Technique in the context of what would win sport shooting competitions.  Specifically, he started a series of matches in Big Bear, California, known as "Leatherslap" where contestants were timed to see who could draw and hit a target at seven yards the fastest.  Later the competitions were modified to resemble real-life shooting situations with silhouette targets, reloads, and other sophistication, but they were always done in the context of a one-way range where the shooter's only consideration was how fast he could score hits.  Within a match there was no inherent risk of the contestant being shot by an opponent, "stand and deliver" shooting ruled, and the Modern Technique material derived from these competitions emphasized shooting speed and accuracy without any real consideration of return fire.

"So what?" a Modern Technique advocate might retort.  "If I can get good hits faster than the bad guy I'll prevail, right?"  Unfortunately the question misses the entire point of context, and this is where you must follow closely if you are to escape the Modern Technique paradigm.

Assumptions drawn from a timed sport shooting context are not the same as those drawn from an actual gunfight.  Just like our earlier example of trying to use pure unmodified competitive MMA material in the context of an actual knife fight, attempting to use pure unmodified Modern Technique within the context of an actual gunfight is likewise potentially disastrous.  The reasons for this are many but focus on the lack of real "life and death" pressure in sport shooting.  Without a living opponent also trying to prevail and likewise shoot/stab/smash you, the context is indelibly different.

Fortunately our society doesn't have much real violence as compared to other parts of the world, and this can make the contextual distinction of sport shooting versus gunfighting difficult.  Allow me to use another hypothetical example to further clarify this point, within the context of a sport that nearly everyone understands: football.

Effective Training Partners?

Imagine an NFL team with a new training strategy.  In preparation for the Superbowl the team will exclusively train by running passing drills against an opposing team consisting of stationary cardboard silhouettes.  In this context, the coach proclaims that the quaterback's speed and accuracy is everything, and the entire offense is focused on quickly getting the quaterback the ball and him delivering the pass on target. There is no consideration that the quarterback might be sacked, in fact no consideration of defense entirely, and no practice is done against living breathing opponents.  How is this training going to stand up against a real live team?  Not well, the training assumptions do not match the Superbowl context.

Hopefully we are starting to see the inherent problems with reliance on "stand and deliver" Modern Technique for gunfighting.  To further explain this, next week we will go back to Maslow's Law of the Instrument: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails."  The tools of Modern Technique are speed and accuracy, but the gunfight problems are not all cardboard targets.

To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives and ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.

ALIVE!™ Methodology Monday March 30, 2015

Techniques Dictate Nothing

By Steve Miles

Today I would like to discuss something that could really enhance your understanding of the "hows and whys" of martial arts and fighting in general.  Specifically, I want to address a serious conceptual shortcoming that is a widespread plague in the martial arts and personal defense systems.  That shortcoming is the error of allowing techniques to dictate strategy and/or tactics.

As we discussed two weeks ago, all fighting systems consist of methodology and material.  Material we said consists of strategies, tactics, and techniques: the "moves" of how a system intends to fight.

Material is developed in accordance with the system founder's basic assumption of what "winning" is.  This assumption, along with the founder's other beliefs and values, shapes the material.  It's important to understand that not every system founder has the same ideas about what "winning" looks like, and so these core assumptions can differ wildly between systems.

For example, if a founder's vision of "winning" involved a refereed decision against a single unarmed opponent with minimal striking, the resulting strategies, tactics, and techniques might look a lot like Brazilian Jiujitsu.  And if the founder's vision of "winning" involved surviving and prevailing in armed combat predominantly fought with sticks and machetes, the resulting material might look like Kali-Escrima.

Practitioners take a founder's fighting system and put it to use.  When a fighting system is employed within the original founder's assumptions, practitioners can be functional.  However, trouble can  arise when a practitioner attempts to use a system in a set of assumptions that are different from the original founder's.  For example, when an Olympic Boxer is forced to use his art in a street fight, or a military commando tests his shooting skills in a 3-Gun match. The resulting disconnect forces practitioners to improvise and adapt, and the results usually vary along two lines: successful and sub-optimal.  Sucessful practitioners adopt strategies, tactics, and techniques from other systems that correspond with the new assumptions, or they improvise entirely new material based on the new assumptions.  Sub-optimal practitioners either stubbornly insist on using the original material despite the changed circumstances, or they attempt to apply strategies, tactics, and techniques from another system based on assumptions that do not correspond to the changed paragdigm.  The rest of this post will be dedicated to helping you identify sub-optimal material selection when you see it.

Sub-optimal selection of material can be summarized by the adage commonly known as Maslow's Hammer: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails."

Maslow's Law of the Instrument

Material represents a hierarchy of task and purpose.  To be functional, material must be developed in a linear fashion whereby strategy dictates tactics, tactics dictate techniques, and techniques dictate nothing.  Just because a technique works in one particular fighting context doesn't mean it is applicable to all paradigms.

For example, in a grappling system a strategy might be "close the gap, take the opponent to the ground, and finish the fight".  Several tactics would be needed to implement this strategy, one of which might be "set up a takedown".  One specific technique to support this tactic could be "close the gap and pummel to a clinch".

MMA Pummeling to a Clinch

Now, let's throw a new paradigm up against this grappling system and see what happens.  Instead of the original MMA assumption of an unarmed opponent, what if the opponent is armed with a knife?  The pummeling technique is inappropriate for the changed assumptions about the fight, in fact, just closing with a knife-armed opponent is a very risky proposition.  If a sub-optimal grappling practitioner tries to close and pummel against a knife-armed opponent the fight will likely not end well for him.   A successful practitioner might use material from a knife-context system, or improvise some other technique on the spot like "throw a chair and run".  In any case, we must recognize when the basic assumptions about the fight differ from those of our system and not allow the techniques we know for one context dictate the appropriate strategies and tactics for another.

The above example is fairly obvious, few would argue the applicability of pure MMA technique to knife fighting.  Next week we will examine another dubious case of "techniques dictating tactics" that is still widely accepted as combat gospel: the "Modern Technique of the Pistol".

To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives or ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.

ALIVE!™ Methodology Monday March 23, 2015

Balance of Training Components

By Steve Miles

Last week we concluded by saying: "what is conceptually important is to understand that the key to fighting competence lies in having the proper balance and sequencing of components."

So what are the COMPONENTS we are supposed to be balancing?  Glad you asked!  This seemingly innocuous question is the gateway to unlocking an understanding about training that eludes many in martial arts and personal defense training.

Training COMPONENTS have been described many different ways, with Shotokan founder Gichen Funakoshi probably having made the most commonly used description in his Kumite-Kata-Kihon categorization.  But ALIVE!™uses the terms developed by Scott Sonnon to describe the different COMPONENTS of training: Competition-Practice-Training.

"The Three Dimensional Performance Pyramid"

In his book "The Three Dimensional Performance Pyramid" (3DPP) Scott Sonnon models training as a three-faced pyramid, where each face corresponds to a different training COMPONENT: Competition-Practice-Training.  Here they are with the definitions we use within ALIVE!™:

• Competition "The Red Triangle": Facing a resistant partner who is trying to "win" within any limits on tactics or specific environment proscribed by the instructor.  This is most commonly described as sparring or force-on-force.  Although both partners are seeking collective development of their skills, the key is both partners having opposing goals within the activity, not one partner assisting the other realize some goal.
• Practice "The Blue Triangle": Skill development through static, fluid, and dynamic drill.  This COMPONENT comprises such things as combat techniques, flow drills, and other partner drills up to the point where there are opposing goals.
• Training "The Green Triangle": Individual skill and attribute development, both physical and mental.  Examples include paper target shooting, board breaking, burpees, plank holds, cardio work, heavy bag, speed reloads, meditation, etc.

Now here is where all these COMPONENTS come together and you (hopefully) get the epiphany I did when I heard all this for the first time.  The three COMPONENT faces of Sonnon's 3DPP model come together in the shape of a pyramid where each side is only as big as the relative quantity and quality of training one does in that COMPONENT, and one's overall fighting competency is determined by how tall the pyramid gets.  Got that?  Here's a simplified example using a common martial arts training protocol:

At a hypothetical martial arts school each class is 60 minutes long.  Typically they do warm-ups, stretching, and work on basics for about 30 minutes (Training) .  Then they do about 20 minutes of combat techniques with a compliant partner, "he does this, I do that" kind of training (Practice).  Finally, they put on foam gloves and instep guards and do some point sparring for that last 10 minutes of class (Competition).  

 Hypothetical Martial Arts Protocol

In this hypothetical school students do three times as much Training (30 mins) as they do Competition (10 mins), thus the Training face of their pyramid is three times higher than their Competition side.  Using the 3DPP model their pyramid's height would be limited by their relatively small Competition side, thus their overall fighting competency could expect to be similarly limited.

Limited "Fighting Competency" height due to imbalanced pyramid faces.

So there it is.  According to Sonnon's 3DPP model we need balance in training COMPONENTS or we will not realize our full potential.  Not trying to offend anyone's particular fighting system, but let's bounce the 3DPP model against the general consensus opinions of certain arts' fighting credibility.  Of all the COMPONENTS, Competition is the most commonly neglected and it's not hard to see that minimal or missing Competition correlates with dubious fighting credibility.

Systems that have a substantial amount of Competition and high fighting credibility: Boxing, Brazilian Jiujitsu, Judo.

Systems that have minimal or no Competition and dubious fighting credibility: (I'll leave this one for you to fill in the blanks).

3DPP is just a model, and it's certainly not absolute in its implications but the correlations are hard to refute.

Now let's take the 3DPP model and apply it to another de facto martial art: gunfighting.  Most modern gunfighting schools heavily emphasize skill development Training, such as target shooting, and almost universally neglect Practice and Competition in their protocols.  Think about it, this is the equivalent of just punching a bag, breaking boards, and then thinking you are ready for the UFC.  Do people who train this way have fighting capability despite having such an imbalanced training protocol vis a vis 3DPP?  Yes, some, but it is in spite of their protocol.  If they were training in a more balanced manner I argue and the 3DPP model supports that they could develop a much higher degree of personal mastery.  And that is why ALIVE! Gunfighting® trains the way it does with a balance of force-on-force Competition and partner drill Practice in addition to the Training staples of square range shooting and weapon manipulations.

Hopefully that made sense to you. For me, Sonnon's 3DPP model completely correlated with what I already knew about training for combat from my military experience.  It resolved a lifetime of martial arts speculation as to why some systems seemed to be more effective at developing competent fighters.  Perhaps more importantly, 3DPP along with other inputs I will discuss later gave me the roadmap to really unlocking my own skills and those of the people I train with.


To learn more about ALIVE!™ Combatives or ALIVE! Gunfighting® contact the author Steve Miles via email to steve@combativestraininggroup.com

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.

ALIVE!™ Methodology Monday March 16, 2015

What is Material and Methodology?

By Steve Miles

Think of any fighting system: Karate, Kung Fu, Jujitsu, Modern Technique, Systema, Kali, Krav Maga, etc.  Every one of these systems consists of two things: MATERIAL and METHODOLOGY.  Today I want to explain these terms in some detail.  Understanding these terms will deepen your understanding of all fighting systems and help you make useful comparisons when evaluating the merits of one system or another.

MATERIAL can be thought of as the “moves” of a system.  Specifically, MATERIAL is the strategy, tactics, and techniques of a system.  Here are some examples:

Strategy: The “Basic Fight Strategy” of Modern Army Combatives

1. Close the Distance 2. Gain Dominant Position 3. Finish the Fight

Tactic: “Defanging the Snake” of FMA Kali-Escrima

Displacing the opponent’s target while striking their hand or weapon

Technique: The Oi-tsuki “Lunge Punch” of Shotokan karate

Works good in armor

The exact assortment of MATERIAL that makes up a system will vary, but many systems share the same or similar strategies, tactics, and techniques. 

METHODOLOGY is how a system trains; that is, how a system (attempts to) make the MATERIAL functional in an actual fight.  METHODOLOGY is the “secret sauce” that makes all the difference in terms of whether or not someone is able to make a system work under the pressure of an actual fight.

Gichin Funakoshi the founder of Shotokan used three components to describe METHODOLOGY: Kumite (sparring), Kata (forms), and Kihon (basics). ALIVE!™ uses a refined model developed by Scott Sonnon that uses the terms Competition, Practice, and Training. 

No matter which terms one uses to describe training modes, what is conceptually important is to understand that the key to fighting competence lies in having the proper balance and sequencing of components.  We will talk more about balance next week.

Copyright© 2015 Alive Technology Inc.