Indigenous Ability

  Put on your goggles as we will commence mud-flinging at THE   most common form of training that claims to be reality-based or reality focused--- Duel Based Training To get us going let us define terms. Duel : A contest between two people with deadly weapons to settle a point of honor. No-brainer there, huh? That definition is standard and holds, while there may be a variety of weapons at play, and some differences in how the two Honor-Wounded approach the game, but, overall, we have two at play in a contest. [See Barbara Holland’s delightful Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk for the staggering same-ness of it all. Wounded pride, mano y mano , tragic outcomes, etc.] No one doubts that the stakes of the duel are high. Life or death, or perhaps till first blood wounding, which was still a fearsome prospect in the days before antibiotics. Hence many duels being conducted stripped to the waist—even female duelists—clot...

Crew, “Bench Kicking” was a catch-all term for seated or semi-seated strikes used in Days of Yore. The mini-sermon hints at there being more to this facet of Rough n Tumble Combat than meets the eye. For access to the Drills mentioned see RAW 241/Black Box 31   Or put your ears to our podcast Mark Hatmaker: Rough n Tumble Raconteur

  The Wisdom of the Plains Warriors, and experienced Frontiersmen demonstrate remarkable “philosophical” agreement on many points. Let us look at one facet of agreement and perhaps learn a little [or a lot] from the Cheyenne Warrior, Little Wolf. ·         Little Wolf had long experience in battle both with other tribes [notably the Sioux] and many engagements with the “ Vehoe ” [“spiders” aka “White Folk.”] ·         Little Wolf, although a warrior, was noted for his equanimity, his compassion, or best expressed as his keen-eyed perspective. That is, he only responded to that which required a response , and in that response, sought the appropriate measure. ·         Charles “Ohiyesa” Eastman, the noted mixed-blood Lakota physician knew Little Wolf in his later years and offered that it was Little Wolf’s compassionate nature that made him such an effective war chief. · ...

  So, a few weeks back I removed myself to Apache, Sinagua, Navajo, Yavapai canyonlands to acquire some hard-to-find resources and, perhaps most importantly, put to test a few Old School ideas that I’ve been studying on for some time. I wanted to test tactics [conditioning, movement, and combative] in the environments where they were borne to give full consideration to whether they held any merit or were mere legend. One of those experiments was seemingly simplistic—the mere act of walking. But…as with all things—be they the correct way to throw a jab, swing a tomahawk, nerve glide a double-wristlock, there is more than meets they eye, as the devil is in the details. One of the most jaw-dropping experiments that met with rousing success was Warrior Walking. Walking? “ Are you kidding me, Mark?” Snore, right? Stay with me… Indigenous Warrior Walking There’s more than meets the eye or foot here. ·         There is beaucoup meth...

Crew, a little MythBusters test to disabuse the idea of tomahawk “hooking” [at least in the modern iteration.] If you try the test—go EASY. There was indeed tomahawk hooking in days of yore, off of the 3 three quickdraws directly into “follow the elbows” and then inertial follow-ups that make full use of the weapon’s characteristics but…the modern full-haft, duel-position method, nah, not how it was done—as the test will reveal. To skip blab-blab and get right to drilling see RAW 241/Black box 31 here: https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/store/p/esp-raw-241-the-black-box-project-31 The Black Box Combat & Conditioning Training Warehouse https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/ The Indigenous Ability Blog https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/ The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker