Indigenous Ability

“ What do I do if I guy had me in this hold?” “What do I do if the guy knows jujitsu?” “What do if a guy is a good wrestler?” Combat Arts Instructors get these kinds of questions all the time. The question usually has a simple formulation with the interrogator not quite aware yet [due to inexperience] that they have posited quite a vast open-ended query. The inexperienced questioner is never at fault for questions along these lines. Here’s where the quibble begins [in Mark’s mind.] Any answer along the lines of: “ Well, all you have to do is just…” The implication that there is a simplistic answer to a large physical endeavor shows a good deal of short-sightedness or a staggering amount of hubris. We never succumb to such simplistic answers to encompassing questions in other physical domains. For example, if our naïve interlocuter asks “ What if I’m playing football and he has the ball?” See?  You immediately would want ...

[Excerpted from our book and DVD set Boxing like the Champs . But…pay close attention, McCoy, was a conman and also loose with the truth—we have always offered our material in good faith that we had the best information for recreations, but , and this is a big but, Crew, I now have in my hands a tract from one of McCoy’s contemporaries regarding how Kid McCoy threw that powerful   “Corkscrew.” The drills we have offered are correct to a point—with the addition of the new insights this punch does indeed go from an elusive curiosity to a powerful clubbing bit of meanness ready to drop into any and all striking arsenals. The new details will be in the book Boxing Like the Champs Round Two to be released in 2020, but we will hep the RAW Crew to the newly uncovered info on ESP RAW 201 , and, of course, we will cover it in the upcoming Boot Camp.] The man born as Norman Selby in 1872, who later becomes Charles “Kid” McCoy (another fighter’s name that he casually adopted as...

RAWarriors, just as we have been doing with resurrecting some little-known or forgotten Old School Boxing and Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble, it’s time to dust off our wrasslin’ ar cheology. We’ve got a tooooon of old-school grappling fun we’ve been sitting on but a deal [book/video] has held up a bit of the unveiling of this material. But now…we’ve got the go ahead for us to start shoveling some fun for the RAW Crew only. [No freebie video that is the producer’s stipulation.] I offer a few nuggets below. A familiar quote we should all hold utmost in our mat-lovin’ breasts: “ Conditioning is the best finishing hold.”- Gene Lebell Here’s the great George Tragos, mentor of the also great Lou Thesz on the what he considered The Four Linchpins of Grappling Education: “ Leverage, balance, holds, and counter-holds .” It is with “counter-holds” in mind and George’s teaching tactics at his gym nicknamed “ Tragos’ Torture Chamber ” where he made it a practice for the gr...

There is not a Warrior culture, a “preppers” blog, a survival account, or an archetype of intrepid explorers that does not tout and shout the ideal of preparation.  No one doubts the value of this advice. Preparation is no guarantee of survival, but also, no one doubts that odds increase for the prepared soul. “ Chance favors the prepared mind .”-Louis Pasteur But, to quibble with the illustrious Dr. Pasteur, that quote is only partially true. Case in point, we all know [ ALL know ] that one vital aspect of the road to good health is moderated food intake, meals that are more wise than not, and getting in a good level of physical activity that robustifies the myriad physical processes that make up our physical self. These choices go a long way towards making the day to day less grumbling, and in hard times give us a higher baseline to work from towards recovery. Again, we all “know” this advice to be true, our minds are prepared but…have a look a round y...

The American Frontier was an ever-expanding loose boundary of westward expansion that began with the coastal exploration along the Atlantic and then made inroads into the thick forests of the east. It is tough to imagine now, but, at one time, practically the entire Appalachian and Ohio valleys were so thick with woodland single-track traces [trails] through thick forest was about all that could be managed.  Once the Mississippi was crossed The Great American Desert [The Great Plains] with perspective skewing grasslands stretching from horizon to horizon was encountered. And, of course, the vast fastnesses of the Rockies, Sierra Madres, boiling deserts from the Sonoran to the Mojave, unforgiving lands from the Malpais to the Llano Estacado [Staked Plains] saw remarkably different terrains and environments from territory to territory. Within these varying terrains isolated by the natural features themselves entire cultures and traditions would spring up, and all cultur...