Since getting ye olde black belt, I’ve been thinking a lot about what things still make me uncomfortable, or things that I want to spend more time looking at. While digging around, I gave an in-depth read to Marc MacYoung’s website, which we’ve been kicking around the dojo for a while. Marc is really a thinking man’s asskicker, and offers a ton of very sound advice on how to deal with violence and violent people. I especially recommend checking out this link which is a profile of a rapist, abuser or stalker. Personally, I think this is a profile of people you just need to stay away from in general, because they’re guaranteed to have a negative impact on your life, regardless of whether or not it escalates to something criminal.
I’ve also been checking out a variety of schools or systems of what the martial arts world calls RBSD or Reality Based Self Defense. A lot of these definitely have an element of fantasy about them, preparing for hugely exaggerated threats or verging on end of the world militia type training. But I stumbled onto a clip(caution bad language) of a fellow named Richard Dimitri, doing some knife work with a Krav Magraw group, and I really liked his ideas, and his attitude about delivering them. I pointed a fellow dojo monkey at the clip and he dug up some more over at this guy’s blog from a seminar in Australia.
Rich runs a group called Senshido, which focuses on realistic responses to street scenarios, and relies heavily on training at full speed and using scenario play to simulate real situations. In one session, he had all the participants drink the equivalent of 3 shots of vodka, and sprayed pepper spray into the air. This is just my kind of training. It’s less about static drills and more about “if this person is attacking me full force and trying to hurt me, what can I realistically make work?”
Rich’s group trains up in the great white north of Canada, so I probably won’t be training with him directly any time soon, but I did order a set of their fundamentals DVDs to try and get a feel for the overall concepts, philosophies, and strategies. There’s also a training group down in Tucson that works this stuff. I might try to get down there for a couple of days and work this stuff with some experienced practitioners.
Of course, this is all in addition to my normal training, but it’s certainly going to contribute to what I’m doing in To-Shin Do.
I’m also looking around for a place to do a little Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training here in the valley, but I’ve just started with that. I’ve checked out one place so far, and I’m hoping they’re not all like that one. I’ve said before that I love martial arts, but I really dislike martial artists. The place I checked out was a good reason why. There’s a really bad jock “I could kick your ass” attitude that seems to emanate from a lot of people at MMA gyms and unfortunately that bleeds over into BJJ as well, since they are so intertwined these days. The posturing and butt sniffing get really old in normal dojos, but a lot of MMA guys have a crazily inflated sense of self worth stemming from their perceived ability to kick ass, and need to blast testosterone at everyone who walks in the door. Yes you’re large and have a number of tattoos. That’s very nice. Yes I’m sure you can kick my ass. You look very tough. Good for you.
Bullshido.net is a forum for martial artists, and was originally meant to expose BS in the martial arts. Unfortunately most martial artists believe every art but the one they study is BS. And since the advent of the UFC, every art but MMA takes quite a rhetorical beating. Eventually people can be calmed down to admitting that anyone who cross-trains in multiple arts (usually BJJ+Kickboxing+whateverelseyoudo) is generally an acceptable human being. But if you’re not training ALIVE, than your art is worth less than dirt. If you want to see martial arts dick wagging at it’s best, bullshido is the place to check out. This is not to say the forums suck. They are actually awesome, but the cross art bashing does get old.
End of Line