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Please visit our new website and blog at www.pistolcombatives.com!

COMBAT Hard Blog is back!

Making updates to the blog and cleaning house.  Will be up and running in the near future…

Training Tips

Here is an article on American Combato’s site that makes some really great, practical suggestions for close combat and self-defense training.  Shaking things up a bit in the training environment is certainly going to make you more adaptable in reality!  There is so much great stuff on this site, and I encourage you to explore it further.

http://seattlecombatives.com/?cat=4

Five Women Subdue Another Woman’s Attacker

I definitely snagged this article for the crime file.  I’ve begun collecting stories like Charles Nelson did for his students, which he used as teaching points.  I thought is was very interesting that not only did these Good Samaritans intervene to help another woman, the victim’s attacker (whom she knew and sought legal protection against) was wielding a knife and had already stabbed her.  Nice going!  That is an extremely dangerous mission, indeed.  Who knows if the victim would have survived this harrowing ordeal without the intervention!  I would love to know how they got the knife away from him and brought him to the ground.

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/142711.html

Ferocious Resolve In Action

Dr. Ruthless posted this article on Facebook.  This is a great example of ferocious resolve.  I think the woman is Hatmaker’s “crazy cat” in this scenario.  Definitely a strong will to survive!

http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S1509158.shtml?cat=10114

Animal Analogies

I was contemplating Mark Hatmaker’s analogies about the creatures we can identify with when it is time to kick off in a life-threatening encounter.  He gives two examples to live by: the Tasmanian Devil, and a crazy cat.  Of course, we are talking about the cartoon version of the Tasmanian Devil—the critter that whirls around and mows down everything in his path.  I can certainly understand the cat analogy better, since I have had cats as pets.  Once they get angry and very pointy (teeth and claws), they are extremely hard to control, no matter how much I outweigh them.  Mark talks about his tiny, eight-pound cat that struck fear into the hearts of accomplished martial artists—mostly because of the cat’s unpredictability and ferociousness.  He recommends we choose one of these analogies, or something similar, to identify with when we imagine ourselves in the event of fighting for our lives.  What an awesome idea!  The more fast and furious we are at the onset of a physical confrontation, the more the scales are tipped in our favor.  Once you break into someone’s OODA loop and gain the upper hand, the more you force the other party to react and the harder it is for them to catch up.  Imagine an attacker’s surprise, when he has targeted you as his next victim, expecting you to submit, and you launch into him like a tornado with pre-emptive strikes.  Even if he gets the first power move and uses force, perhaps he still imagines that will scare you enough to submit.  No!  Imagine yourself taking that first strike and transforming into a whirlwind of teeth (yes, Mark recommends biting despite most people’s distaste for it), claws, and your other eight personal weapons: (fists, elbows, knees and legs).  Well, nine personal weapons if you also fancy headbutts.  Simply put, this behavior represents what we like to refer to as ferocious resolve, and we have talked about this before in discussions about Marcus Wynne.  I recall him saying that all the skills in the world are nothing without the right mindset to use them.

So, which animal are you going to be like?  Get your mind right about it NOW—remember that the imagination is a powerful training tool!

Self-Protection Books

Holy smokes!  It seems like I just cannot catch up on all the books I want to read.  I was given Mark Hatmaker’s book, No Second Chance: A Reality-Based Guide to Self-Defense, for Christmas.  My friend already read it and said it was great.  If you haven’t already, you really need to check out his website: http://www.extremeselfprotection.com/. 

In addition to that, I have another book entitled Meditations On Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sgt. Rory Miller.  I found this book while browsing for yet another book (imagine that!) regarding real-world violence and self-protection.  I am very antsy to delve into this one, as it promises to have some great information on pre-incident indicators, target hardening, the nature of predators, and things like that.  It almost got two book awards (I guess that is what they mean about finalist?), ha ha ha, but it actually got quite a lot of good reviews on Amazon.

Hmm, now about my stack of articles on the shelf, here. . .oh, look!  Another book on sociopathic behavior that I started reading a while back.

Same Blog, New Address!

Hey Guys!

Here is the new address for Combat Hard’s weblog.  We still believe in Gutterfighting, but we are streamlining and want to keep with our company name, Combat Hard, hence the new URL.  Soooo, I have basically mirrored the old WordPress site and made a couple new updates, including an option for you of getting emails each time I update the blog.  Some of you will have to change your subscriptions to the feed (sorry for the inconvenience!!).  If you have any questions, concerns or comments, drop me an email at combathard@gmail.com.

Thanks, and welcome aboard (again)!  🙂

IKFF Military Advisor

Steven Mosley

We are very pleased to announce that Combat Hard’s very own Steven Mosley was recently invited to be the North American Military Advisor for the International Kettlebell & Fitness Federation, Steve Cotter’s kettlebell organization.  This is a tremendous honor, as we have learned so much about kettlebell lifting from Cotter.  IKFF tirelessly travels the globe, sharing their knowledge with the world, and we are so excited for Steven to be affiliated with this organization.  Congrats Steven!

http://www.ikff.net/about/north-american-advisors.html

 

Hock Hochheim Seminar

Holy smokes!  I am thumbing through this giant tome we purchased over the weekend while attending Hock’s seminar.  The manual is on Knife/Counter-Knife Combatives.  There are at least eleventy-million pictures and diagrams in here and plenty of stuff derived from military manuals.  I’ll have to let you know what I think of it later after I have had some time to really go through it.  The dude is prolific, without a doubt!  I was looking at his vast collection of DVD’s for sale and he has been busy.

The seminar was interesting.  Hock is quite a character, and he draws some interesting characters, as well.  He has a lot of stories and by my estimation, he has seen plenty of action and knows a lot of stuff.  Hmm.  Still processing. . .