Indigenous Ability

Let’s talk forgotten dog breeds, American Indian hunting tactics, pick-pocket strategy, the Ali Shuffle and then tie it up with a big pretty bow declaring these are all one of a kind.
First, Dogs.
You’ve herd of retrievers, setters, scent-hounds, herding dogs et cetera.
Now, unless you are a major dog enthusiast, you may have not heard of a toller.
About the only tolling dog officially recognized by organizations that love to recognize such things is the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. They look like small Golden Labs. Gorgeous dogs.
But just as with the words retriever or herder or setter, the word toller originally referred not to a specific breed but to a specific behavior. Then man, being man, bred for sought after behaviors to create stronger and stronger manifestations of the desired behavior in each generation that followed.

We all know what retrievers do, they retrieve, herders herd, but what about tollers? Are they bred for patiently residing in tiny huts monitoring small ch…

This Bit of Video Hits 2 versions of the Shoulder Choke to get to the preferred [from this position] Shelf-Choke.
The 2 Primary Keys are…
One-Proper Forearm Stacking to created cervical-separation leverage.
Two-The Sliding Sprawl.


The Shelf-Choke allows us to by-pass tripoding [and High-Base countering] and leaves “squeezing” behind. We allow leverage and angular-torque to cure what ails us.
Far more details on this tactic and more are available on ESPRAW 197.
Big thanks to Chris “Headhunter” Osborne for the use of the cranium!

Let’s talk “making an entrance,” Vikings, action heroes and what can be gleaned from these for our day-to-day use.

By “making an entrance” I refer to how we step through any and all doorways. [BTW-This material might best be consumed in tandem with our lesson on The Killing Hand.]
To begin our journey let’s go back over 1,000 years to an Old Norse cycle of poems that in compiled form are known as the Havamal (“Sayings of the High One.”) The authorship is attributed to the God Odin, but we need not sweat the fictional origin of the wisdom to realize that the advice offered is grounded in the pragmatic and the tactical.
The passage we shall consult for today’s lesson is:
Allar dyrnar,
áður en þú ferð áfram,
ætti að líta á;
því erfitt er að vita
þar sem óvinir geta sest
innan bústaðs.
That is:
“All door-ways,
before going forward,
should be looked to;
for difficult it is to know
where foes may sit
within a dwelling.”
Here, our fictional God is “writing” at a time when strife was common and offers a…

[The following is excerpted from our book No Second Chance: A Reality Based Guide to Self-Defense.]


We, humans that is, have, like our primate cousins, opposable thumbs which enable us to grasp any object we see fit. One of the attributes that separates us from our primate cousins in the use of our opposable thumbs Is the myriad objects we see fit to grasp and how we utilize these objects once we grasp them. Our species is descended from a line that sought to grip objects and use them in ever more unique and creative ways. This grasping of an object and then turning it into a tool of some sort was (and is) so pronounced in hominids that one branch of our family tree has been dubbed Homo habilis or “Handy man.”


This ability to see wide and varied applications in grasped objects is the result of the neo-cortex, that vaunted overlay of brain matter that we find in our species. The neo-cortex is what allows us to pick up a hammer and see it both as a tool for construction or destruction. It…

Before we get into the scientific nitty-gritty, let’s do a little self-experimentation.
I want you to stand up right now and hit ten rapid Hindu Squats [deep-knee bends for the non-grappling minded.]
Did you do it? Ten hard and fast?
Now, let’s self-assess. How do the legs feel?
There is a possibility that the lungs required you to puff a wee bit and the heartrate elevated, but I wager that the low repetition number has not made any fatiguing demands on your legs. They are probably good to go for another ten.
Since the effects we are feeling are not leg fatigue but maybe elevated heart-rate and respiration let’s hit ten more but…
This time I want you to time them in the following manner.
·Rather than ten hard and fast, let’s go leisurely, drop down for Squat 1 and stay there for one solid minute, then return to standing.
·That’s rep one. Continue on down the line for a total of ten.
I wager the majority who submit to the self-experiment will do the first hard fast squats no problem but will b…