Mike Brewer

You're welcome!

Well there's you're problem, right there! I only ever had one piece of tail in my whole livin' life, and being the marksman that I am, that nice tight shot group ended up a son! Ain't been laid since.

And for the record, I'm not defensive at all. This is a common discussion following a common script. I don't really see any need for any of us to be worked up about it. Discussion is what we're all here for, right?

Look at it this way, though, if for no other reason than the sake of academic debate.

MOST of the fights you'll ever see or be a part of in your day to day life are the sorts of unserious affairs that do not require a great deal of lethality. In those cases, boxing skills, wrestling ability, MMA chokes, and things of that sort are plenty. I've been in lots and lots and lots of fights in my lifetime, and only maybe a dozen of them involved weapons of any kind (firearms, impact, or edged). A higher percentage involved groups, to be sure, but I nearly always had a group of my own, so the odds were definitely in my favor. So even in my own life, where I exercised piss poor judgement and accepted jobs where my own hands were tied by excessively stringent rules of engagement, I've only had to deal with the "worst case" scenario a handful of times. The rest of them - easily passing the 90% mark - were settled using old-fashioned sport-style chokes or jabs/crosses ot the nose. I added an occasional elbow, knee, headbutt et al in for my own edification, but I feel confident in saying that I was coming to most "fights" way over prepared.

The simple fact is, most fights are just scuffles. And since most fights never reach the realm of lethality, it truly makes sense to have some training methods and tactics that are better suited to "scuffles" than eye gouges and lung punctures.

It's this statement, I think, that causes confusion among many:

To me, this doesn't explain how you're training. it doesn't shed any light on the alternatives. It doesn't tell us anything except that sports are no good for reality. That leaves room for a very justified question:

What methods are you suggesting people train with? Reality itself? Does that mean that training is no good? I'm really not being nitpicky, I'm just having trouble seeing what kind of a progression you are using in your own training if you go right from learning the techniques to using them in real life. Can you please clarify what kind (if any) of sparring you do? Or maybe describe the kinds of drills and methods you might use to build skill that exceed the things sparring and sports like boxing, wrestling, MMA, etc. provide.

No one is saying you're wrong, TT. At least, I'm not. I think you have a very valid point. I'd just like to see it explained in greater detail so that you're telling us how the weaknesses of all these sports are fixed, for example, by the way you do things.

On the surface, it's very difficult for me to understand, because I have been a soldier, a martial artist, and a trainer. I know that before I had my first serious fight, all I'd done was trained. "Training" by definition is not reality. So by the way I read your logic, I should not have been prepared. But I'm here, same and sound, despite my lack of preparedness and experience. Likewise, the first time I ever faced a knife, all I'd ever done was spar with them, one on one, in controlled and mutually agreed conditions. That's not reality, but it seems to have prepared me well. First time someone fired shots at me in anger, it was kind of the same deal. I had never been in that situation before, and all I had to go on were mock ups and drills. No perforations...I must have been at least somehow prepared by the methods I was using, even though they were far from "reality." And since the vast majority of soldiers who come home safe after their first firefight have also never been exposed to "reality," something short of reality has to be working.

Once again, this is not defensiveness. It's just discussion. It happens to be a discussion that comes up a lot, and since we know you have a lot of solid life experience upon which your opinions are based, I think we're just looking for the alternatives.

Much appreciated.