SPEAR Blog

All shooting is a balance between speed and precision.

Sometimes you need to be more precise, sometimes you need to be faster. Using this concept, most defensive shooting can be described in the following way: You need to get the hit that you need to get as quickly as you can get it. This statement can be summed up in one word: Efficiency. Efficiency includes effectiveness.

In the Combat Focus ™ Shooting program, we explain it this way:

• The target dictates the hit you need to get.
• Your application of skill determines whether or not you get the hit you need to get.
• It is your confidence, or belief, in your ability that determines when you shoot.

The target determines the need for precision. The size of the target and the conditions under which it presents itself (movement, bystanders, distance, etc.) are what determines your need for precision. You can always make the shot harder—trying to hit a button on a shirt, for example, rather than accepting any hit in the high center chest—but that works against the goal of maximum efficiency. The target and its circumstances are what determine the true need for precision.

It is your application of skill, with your given weapon under those given circumstances that will ultimately determine whether or not you actually get the hit you need to get. The concept should be pretty straightforward, particularly if you understand that we are not just talking about your shooting ability, but also about your ability to judge what is going on around you. Specifically, you may possess the skill to mechanically make the shot you need to make, but the ability to apply that level of skill at the time you need it is vital, which is why we stress training realistically.

Your confidence, or comfort, if you will, in taking the shot at all determines when the shot is taken. The less comfortable you are with the shot, the more time, effort and energy you would put into the shot. We express that effort as “deviation control”. Would you pull the trigger on a gun during a critical incident if you didn’t believe that you were going to be able to affect your target’s ability to hurt you or someone else? The easy and right answer is “no”. Of course there is a big exception to this rule. If you are shooting out of fear, you may be pulling the trigger as fast as you can and hoping for the best. In fact, we know this has happened many times during actual critical incidents.

You may be thinking, “So what? Isn’t this article going to tell me when I should use my sights?” No, I’m afraid it isn’t. The question “At what distance should I use my sights?” is right up there with “What gun should I carry?” as one of the least answerable questions ever asked by a student. These are questions that you have to answer. Certainly an instructor can help guide you, as this article is trying to do, but ultimately, your individual ability and confidence are going to determine when you should use your sights to achieve the level of precision that you need for any given shot. I’m sure that you can imagine scenarios where you would definitely chose to use your sights to achieve a hit and those where you would not need them-only through realistic training can you test those theories.

Through realistic practical training, you will learn more about your ability under the circumstances that you are likely to find during a dynamic critical incident. Furthermore, the more realistic your training, the more likely it is to help you recognize the circumstances of a dynamic critical incident and respond more efficiently. Lastly, this type of training can also help you work with the body’s natural reactions to fear and shock and allow you to overcome the possibility of simply shooting out of fear.

The better you understand your personal balance between speed and precision, the more accurate the correlation between your belief in your ability in a dynamic critical incident and your actual ability will be, and the more efficiently you’ll be able to deal with a lethal threat. Rather than setting yourself for one type of shooting solution, vary your training so that you understand how much deviation control you need in a variety of plausible circumstances.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rob Pincus is a professional trainer, author and consultant, and is the founder of I.C.E. Training Company. Coach Pincus is S.P.E.A.R. System and Personal Defense Readiness (PDR) Certified. The Combat Focus Shooting (CFS) Program is an intuitive shooting program that is designed to wrok efficiently with the body’s natural reactions during a dynamic critical incident. This approach makes CFS Skills easy to learn and maintain for students of all backgrounds, military, law enforcement or self-defense. Unlike many traditional programs, CFS does not take a purely mechanical approach to shooting training in isolation from the context in which the skill must be used. CFS is not simply “point shooting,” it is a training methodology that leads to more efficient defensive shooting skill.

Reach Rob Pincus at: vscrob@msn.com.

 

Popularity: 5% [?]

Overview:

Under close scrutiny, we find that there are inherent deficiencies in many modern martial arts systems in regards to self defense practice. Of these, the propensity for students to always practice personal protection from a position of tactical “advantage” is perhaps the most dangerous.

Similarly, it seems that far too few schools these days understand—much less practice—the actual “kill zone” moments in violent encounters that are the undoing of many well-intentioned, if not well-informed, martial artists.

Introduction:

Enter Blauer Tactical Systems (BTS). Through his lifetime pursuit of solutions to real world violence, BTS founder, Tony Blauer, has developed yet another formula to put the “good guys” a step ahead of their violent opposition: Ballistic Micro-Fights.

In short, Ballistic Micro-Fights are the science, psychology and safety elements behind realistic role playing for self defense and scenario-based drills. The training is created to effect one goal: greater confidence during real life dynamic confrontations.

The Premise:

A Ballistic Micro-Fight, or “explosive, short-term training incident,” helps students take the guesswork out of the “big bang” moments of violent encounters. It does this by looking not only at the static components of an attack, but by putting those attacks in the context of congruent scenarios in which they occur.

Coach Blauer’s replication theory is the key. Through the scripted, focused examination of most dangerous moments of an attack, students can learn either from replicated scenarios of their own experience, from “copying” attacks seen in video or on TV, or from creative training evolutions developed with the assistance of a knowledgeable coach.

When this practice is combined with rehearsed start-to-finish “bad guy” aggressiveness, congruent attacker physiology and realistic physical attacks, students have everything they need to understand real-life violent encounters from the inside out.

An Example:

All martial arts schools of any worth practice basic defenses to a push, a grab or a punch. But, when—if ever—has anyone witnessed an attacker push or punch anyone without an incident or pre-assault indicators proceeding that attack? Indeed, with too sharp a focus, students often lose the “forest for the trees” when attacks, rather than the context of how attacks are launched—or when—is studied.

In the three-dimensional practice of Ballistic Micro-Fights, fight sequences are precisely defined, dissected and drilled to create a cohesive “flow”. Let’s look at a common one:
At a local bar, a drunk approaches;
After a brief exchange, he threatens you verbally;
Before you can respond, he pushes you;
Immediately, he grabs with his left hand, and;
He throws a wild haymaker at you with his right.

Rationalization and Progression:

The process for building a Ballistic Micro-Fight is to first understand the scenario, making certain that the attack (or attacks) is congruent with the situation.

Next, static drills are implemented to help students stress inoculate against each individual “big bang” moment of the progression; first the encroachment, then the verbal assault, then the push, etc.

Following this dissection, the dynamics of dialogue, rehearsed attacker aggression, realistic force-on-force resistance and others are added to ratchet up the speed and accelerate the learning experience for the student.

Finally, the addition of Blauer’s revolutionary HIGH GEAR™ allows for the practice of “alive” training evolutions. Voila! You have just experienced your first Ballistic Micro-Fight: a high-speed training incident that will realistically approximate the time, energy and aggression of a real world assault.

Caveats:

Safety first! As Coach Blauer often states, teaching self defense is dangerous—morally, ethically and legally. After all, eventually someone is going to listen to you and believe both what they practice and what you say!

Beware of “superman tactics and techniques”. Blauer notes that far too many defensive systems focus only on what they can do when they are “on”, prepared for an attack, and firing physically on all cylinders. On the contrary, Ballistic Micro-Fights should never be allowed to devolve into “sniper” board-breaking exercises. The emphasis throughout every BMF training evolution has to remain on realism and proper role playing for them to be a success.

Like weight training and sprinting, BMF practice is never to be approached with your “max” effort or at your top speed. Many question how this “restraint” translates into realism and ask, “So you’re not really trying to hurt each other?”

Coach Blauer responds by pointing out, “No, we’re trying not to kill each other!” When it comes to training, there’s more than a semantic difference in that wisdom.

Conclusion:

There is a vast chasm between what could happen to you in a violent encounter and what actually does happen. Ballistic Micro-Fights can help you understand this by putting our worst fears into the context of the scenarios real-life victims face everyday.

By first studying and understanding the situations in which violence occurs, and then seeking to define the probable attacks that are launched within these situations, we have all of the information we need to define, study and practice varied evolutions of our protective response.

In the end, Ballistic Micro-Fight practice is not about a technique, a “move”, the action or even the result. It’s about the entire training experience and the intellectual capital gained from that experience.

The formula is so simple, it eludes many: How and where to real fights happen? How long do they last? What are the precursors to violence and how do I recognize them? Finally, how can I recreate them, repeat them and evaluate them?

The answer, of course, is three simple letters that have been designed as the only scientific method to simultaneously improve combat conditioning, skill development and decision making under the stress of fear, fatigue and force: BMF.

For more on BMF, check out our video selection, particularly Ballistic Micro-Fights: Force-on-Force Fundamentals & Drills.

Popularity: 8% [?]

By Tom Arcuri 2002
Download this article as a pdf.

Why Jerry McGuire you ask? If you have seen the movie I think you will figure it out by the end of this article. If you have not, suffice it to say that I feel compelled to tell this story due to what I now know to be true (IMHO) regarding teaching self-defense.

I have studied martial arts since 1981 and started teaching in 1985. I am making an educated guess that my experiences over the last 28 years are more similar to yours than different. A punch is still a punch even after we add some stylized variations to support a system or style. So do me the honor of emptying your cup and read on to discover what has motivated me to write this article.

I began my studies in western boxing. My father had done some boxing in the Navy during W.W.II so it held a fascination for me. Shortly there after I discovered Bruce Lee, became a “groupie”, and began studying kung fu. My primary orientation was towards self-defense and Bruce’s philosophies appealed to me. A couple of years later I ran across some folks professing an eclectic style of goju karate and have studied and taught with in that system ever since. It is not unusual for a student to go through several styles before one “catches on”. In fact it is generally accepted that we all study a system that “works for us”, (i.e. sport oriented, art oriented or combat oriented). Most of us go to great lengths to profess the virtues of our systems over others; Nothing surprising right?… You most likely have had similar experiences.

I was now ready to further my martial arts education by teaching some students. A friend once told me that “teaching is like learning twice”, so I was keen on sharing my knowledge to further develop my skills. My initial motivation for starting a school was purely selfish. Basically I needed more bodies to train with and on to improve my skills and test myself. Over time I developed an appreciation for the benefits a well-run martial arts school could provide its students. Soon I was developing and incorporating systems within the school to help students realize their goals. I bet our paths are still roughly similar.

Becoming a professional full time school director was now looking like an attainable goal. With the encouragement, support and help from my wife Dana, I made the move to full time and have never looked back. It was a dream come true.

I know you are asking what does this have to do with self-defense, street fighting etc.. Well, now it’s 1991, I am a school owner charged with running a professional school that is supportive of my student’s goals. As you know one of the major reasons people come to us is to learn self-defense. Therefore among the countless other systems, methods, decisions that go into running a school I needed to decide whether or not my combative techniques and systems supported the goal of effective personal safety training for.

My initial efforts were centered on a concept called “freestyle” self-defense. This concept allowed the student to defend themselves with whatever techniques where deemed necessary and appropriate. So we taught techniques and then did drills to test the student’s ability to execute them against an attacker(s). As I attended seminars, researched tapes and books we would add a little judo here, a spot of grappling there and a bit of kali here etc. etc.. This resulted in what I considered to be a very well rounded system. My personal reputation as a respected sport competitor and innovative self-defense instructor grew. However, there was one thing missing; most of my students did not execute at anywhere near my own ability, and to make matters worse they were not using most of the techniques I was teaching. Over and over I would see only palm strikes, and knee strikes. There was no variety in their execution. In fact I graded them on “variety” as part of their exams. I racked my brain on how to “improve” the student’s performance.

I consider myself to be a flexible, result oriented person when it comes to our school, so I accepted responsibility for my student’s ‘lack of performance’. Next I decided to inject some memorized combos into our curriculum. It seemed logical that if they memorized these combos then I would start to see more variety come out in our drills and exams. We worked at this for over a year, injecting approximately 40 memorized techniques and combinations. Students that excelled in memorizing and/or mimicking did show more variety, while performing in the air or in controlled cooperative drills. This was much like a traditional Bunkai that requires the partners to cooperate in order for the applications to make sense. However, when we tried to inject realism into our testing methods the variety disappeared again. While a few exceptional students looked “ok” the majority could not adapt to the aggression and spontaneity of the drills.

Once again I was in the position of not being able to reliably produce students that were anywhere near my ability. I had a gut feeling that they may not be able to successfully defend themselves in a “real street fight”. This gut feeling came from lingering doubts about my own abilities. Yes, you heard right. How could I not doubt myself if I could not reproduce my results with in my students? I knew that this was not an acceptable situation. My integrity dictated that I needed to provide the best self-defense information available to my students. So again the search was on for the missing link.

Now please don’t get me wrong, at this time we were producing the highest quality students we could. Most of you would have considered our SD system effective and you would have seen me as an “expert” martial artist.

I have no guilt or shame regarding this period in my development. I was operating with the best information I had at the time, and within this model I was doing a damn good job. However, the model I used was based on assumptions that were flawed and in some cases simply wrong. Once I was ready to look outside this model I was able to understand self-defense on a whole new level.

Before I continue you should know that we still teach kata and sparring. I teach the same style I did before my paradigm shift. Here’s where our paths may differ. I simply teach self-defense as a separate subject in onto itself. I do not relate self-defense to kata or sparring. (More on this later.)

What is a real street fight? It is a fight you cannot avoid. This is an important distinction. We should not prepare people for macho ego based fights that need not occur, and are more accurately described as sport fights. I was concerned about addressing violent bullies, rapists, muggers, road rage, and domestic abuse. Now here is the kicker… who is mostly at risk in the above-mentioned attacks? The answer is overwhelming women and children, civilian adult males are far less likely to have a real street fight (remember the definition). This meant that the self-defense system I taught had to be practical for women and children first and foremost.

I teach annually at a summer martial art camp www.Super-Summer-Seminars.com. It is a great camp that I highly recommend. As it happens, while we were realizing our approach was not working, I met Professor Arthur Cohen at this camp. Art is a well-known self-defense instructor, author and lecturer. He introduced me to the first important concept that helped me get out of the box. I attended his lecture on the physiological effects of survival stress on the human body where he described the effects of an adrenaline dump during a “real fight”. Tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, rapid heart rate, etc., were discussed. The moment of discovery for me was when I learned that during survival stress situations fine motor skills decrease and gross motor skills are enhanced. This means that a person’s ability to execute self-defense techniques that require multiple movements (fine/complex motor skills) is greatly diminished while under attack. Conversely gross motor skills where not effected and even enhanced during extreme stress. Remember when I mentioned that we used to monitor student’s ability to demonstrate “variety” during self-defense exams? We saw the same gross motor skills over and over because of the effects of stress. So variety is no longer graded, results are now the paramount measuring stick. I no longer cared how many techniques a student knew I was only concerned with how effective they were at extracting themselves safely from the situation. So I spent the next year revamping our drills to resemble realistic scenarios while emphasizing gross motor skill counters and an awareness of the physiological effects of stress.

As it happens, a year after hearing Art Cohen’s lecture I was at the same summer camp and had the opportunity to attend a class by world-renowned self-defense instructor Tony Blauer. Coach Blauer explained that his primary business was training elite military and law enforcement throughout the world. That got my attention right away. I am sure you will agree that martial artists/school owners have nowhere near the real world experience of these groups. As the saying goes, if it’s good enough for them…I was all ears. Coach Blauer explained that his system was three-dimensional (emotional, psychological, physical). He explained that if you do not train in all three dimensions you are predisposing yourself to failure should the situation go outside your comfort zone. In other words, if a student trains a lapel grab without injecting realistic levels of physical and verbal aggression, when faced with a real attack in the street the student may experience a “psychological void”. Their brain has no comparable experience making it difficult or even impossible for them to respond effectively. Coach Blauer went on to explain the startle flinch response, the cycle of behavior, fear loop, ballistic micro fight and the basics of his S.P.E.A.R. system. He also talked about the legal, moral, and psychological consequences of fighting. How many of us spend a significant amount of time teaching our students confrontation avoidance and diffusing skills? Now without going into detail beyond the scope of this article, suffice it to say, “the student was ready and the teacher had appeared”.

I had committed to standing up in a friend’s wedding that same afternoon and had to miss the last hour of Coach Blauer’s class. As my wife and I drove to the wedding we feverishly discussed the class and immediately recognized that Tony Blauer’s concepts would be the basis of our future self-defense curriculum.

Upon our return to the martial arts camp I spoke to several other instructors present at the Blauer seminar and inquired about the material I missed. They proceeded to give some general descriptions of the spear tactic and a drill or two. However, none showed very much enthusiasm for the concepts. It was difficult for me to understand why they did not share my enthusiasm. I now realize that I was already three-quarters out of the box when I meet Coach Blauer.

One of the reasons the SPEAR system is more widely accepted by the law enforcement and elite military groups is that they are focused on results in the real world. Safety and survival are paramount for professional warriors. I ask you …shouldn’t it be paramount for civilians also?

As a group we tend to be control freaks, ego centric, and a bit insecure regarding our skills. This is ironic since we emphasize self-confidence and constant devotion to self-improvement to our students. We spend an inordinate amount of time arguing to be right even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Knowing forty or four hundred techniques gives us control and feeds our egos, but does it enhance our student’s survivability in a “real street fight”? Remember, it’s women and children that are more likely to have to defend themselves in our society.

To quote coach Blauer “are you teaching what’s probable or what’s possible?” There may be four hundred styles of martial arts but there is only one species of human being on this planet. Are there really four hundred ways for humans to defend themselves in a “real street fight”? The most important Blauer Tactical system maxim relating to this article is “don’t show students what you can do, show them what they can do”. Lets face it, most of us were raised in a culture where the master instructor demonstrated techniques that took most students years to master, if at all. This model predisposes most students to fail in the face of a real confrontation.

I sleep very well now, knowing that I am enhancing our student’s safety and quality of life from day one and each time the train. Coach Blauer’s research lends itself to managing all kinds of conflict not just physically violent ones. We now have a comprehensive approach to bullying that includes effective physical skills, avoidance tactics and diffusing skills. Where it differs from many approaches is the fear management tools that help us do much more than give lip service to self-confidence. We can now create the true confidence to act even in the face of high intensity stress.

Tony Blauer’s S.P.E.A.R. System on which Personal Defense Readiness program (PDR) is based can address scenarios from verbal diffusing to lethal force and everything in-between. Believe it or not, we teach one system to all ages and both genders. I can remember teaching women and smaller men arm bars, wrist locks etc. and pre-framing them that this would not be an effective technique for them in most types of scenarios they might face. I then told them they had to know this to teach it to others. Was I enhancing their safety? Through coach Blauer’s research we have come to realize that ‘control techniques do not work in out of control situations’. We still teach some control techniques but they are for very specific scenarios and for use after you have gained psychological control of yourself and physical control of the assailant.

S.P.E.A.R. is an acronym for Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response. It is based on our behavioral and genetic responses to sudden violence; it is a combative science not a style or martial art. Students learn how natural responses enhance our ability to survive the ambush and how to convert them rapidly into protective and tactical responses. It does not replace a martial arts system… instead it provides a tool to weather the ambush, gain control and then access your personal style toolbox in another words it’s ‘a bridge to your system’.

PDR will help you survive the initial attack gain control and then access the complex motor skills of your style.

As I said earlier, we teach three subjects in our school art (kata), sport (sparring), and combat (self-defense). To earn a black belt in our school you will major in at least one of these subjects and minor in the other two. We go to great lengths to explain the benefits of each subject, but we almost never relate them to each other. This allows the student to develop the most effective mind set for any given subject. For example, your mindset for a point sparring match (cooperation, sportsmanship, respect etc.) will not enhance your response-ability in combat. There are many methods of class scheduling to accomplish this, we teach a rotating four-week schedule in which we teach basics in week one, self-defense in week two, sparring in week three and kata in week four. We also offer specialized PDR/SPEAR training weekly and seminars quarterly.

The difference in our student’s response-ability has been remarkable. Remember, your top students will be able to perform moves at a high level regardless of what you teach. However, how will they perform under realistic combat stress? Our top students are still our top students athletically but the ability gap between them and our average students while under stress has narrowed drastically. The most profound substantive change is the increased capacity of our student body to understand fear and stress. They react to it faster and more proactively.

The Personal Defense Readiness (PDR) program has brought me full circle back to my roots. I now teach self-defense confident that I am enhancing the lives of all of our students and their families. It is based on real human responses in high intensity scenarios and is easily accessible to the average human being. The S.P.E.A.R. system is more reliable and much less perishable (easy to remember) than any thing else I have seen in twenty-eight years of training and teaching.

Thank you for doing me the honor of reading my Jerry McGuire like treatise. I sincerely hope that I may have motivated you to step out of your box, and explore the possibility that this system can greatly enhance the survive-ability and response-ability of you and your students. You can get additional information at www.BlauerTactical.com

Sincerely
Tom Arcuri – Tom@PDRTeam.com

Popularity: 11% [?]

For many years, much “squabbling” has occurred in procuring the best model of success for achieving proficiency in armed and unarmed conflicts. With a lack of similar and interchangeable defensive tactics and firearm programs at the academy level, and an ever increasing field of commercial use-of-force systems, discerning a certain and appropriate use-of-force program for a department has become difficult. More importantly, many programs have failed to recognize the basic principles that define and substantiate the use-of-force: control and self-defense. In the quest for marketability, these principles have become clouded through
techniques not applicable to the officer’s environment, a lack of situational training, and through unqualified use-of-force instructors. As a result, not only is the safety and security of the officers and our public in jeopardy, but administrators have a difficult time getting their prosecutors “on board” when it’s time to review use-of-force incidences that result in injuries and litigation.

View full article as a pdf.





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