Indigenous Ability

  Old School Warrior Wisdom, be it striking, grappling, or training for warriorship has more than a few nuggets that can, and to my way of thinking, should be used today.   These old nuggets can take the form of the specific application [the tactical] as in “ Fire this elbow this way ” or “ Pull-ups? Nah, not like that, like this.”   Or the nuggets can take the form of an overall schema or approach [the strategic] as in, “ A southpaw fighter will drift opposite what your mirrorwork tells you, skip the mirror when fighting one is on the schedule ” or “ Sequencing is King ”-- training, say arms before back, will kybosh gains in both realms and does not make full use of Hebb’s Rule.   Today’s sojourn deals with the tactical in the physical training realm. We will touch on three principles of overall PT Program construction without going into a specific PT Program itself. I and many of the Black Box Brotherhood use The Unleaded Conditioning protocol which is...

  A landmark of the 20 th and 21 st century martial community has completed his sojourn on the planet—Mr. Gene LeBell. I will not pretend to the sadness that his family and close relations feel. To horn in on that grief strikes me as a bit solipsistic and disrespectful of those tighter bonds that will shed tangible and visible salt-laden tears for Mr. LeBell. Their loss, their pain weighs far heavier than my distant appreciation and affection can compass. Am I saying I am unaffected? Oh, Hell No. I simply offer the perspective that to equate with the proximate ones is a bit short-sighted and blunts the external empathy gaze a bit. My take is likely eccentric and idiosyncratic and of no value. On to the Influence of Mr. LeBell . To say that he was [is] influential is an understatement. If one is involved in the world of grappling, then I will say nothing here of his history that you do not already know. Instead, I will step into the shallow waters of my own exper...

  Let’s talk collar-up attacks.   Let’s talk — J ugulations, Strangulations, Neck-Breakers, & Molar-Poppers .   First, a definition—a collar-up attack is any grappling/scufflin’ attack from the collarbones up.   Why do we make such a specific designation of territory?   The sportive aspect of grappling confines itself to a narrow equator of action—the neck itself, and even here, the neck must be addressed with only a few handfuls of approved attacks [jugulations—more on that in a mo’.]   No neck attack that places the trachea in jeopardy is permitted.   This is the very reason why the “sleeper hold’ is banned in Law Enforcement circles as what is a safe sport-derived jugulation can, in the chaotic scrum of real-world [not sportive chaos] with no referee present, well, it can easily twist into a strangulation and do permanent damage or, in fact, kill the one on the receiving end.   These banned cases are a mixture of...