Vacuum Tactics by Mark Hatmaker

Before we pick apart the titled idea to see if it holds merit, let’s define terms.

Vacuum Tactics are any combat sport or street application that requires isolation or handicapped drilling to develop full facility.

Example 1: If one really wants to step up a boxing game one might forgo kickboxing training for a bit so that the hands become the focus.

Example 2: If one really wants to build a facile guard-passing game one may ban leg-locks as the “easy out” until we see the guard-passing rise to the desired level of leg-lockless facility.

On the surface such compartmentalized training seems to hold intellectual water but..

Let’s drill down past this first trickle of thought-water and see if there is truly a sustaining aquifer below.

Opportunity Costs

Opportunity costs is a concept borrowed from economics that simply means, for every purchase we make, each individual “Yes” decision automatically say “No, thank you” to everything else we could have purchased with the same amount of money.

This is a simple but BIG idea. 

If I spend $35 bucks on an antique volume in a vintage store, I have said “Yes” to that one item and also, truthfully, said “No” to every other available item in the entire world that costs $35 dollars or below at that time.

I repeat, my purchase says yes to one thing and one thing only at the expense of all other like opportunities.

The cost of the item is both the purchase price and the disdaining of everything else those resources could have purchased.

Opportunity Costs holds for all things in life, not just purchased items. What we choose to do, watch, consume, read, who to spend time with, et cetera requires our attention. We pay for those single opportunities by paying attention.

When we pay attention to a given subject or person, we have said no to all other choices we could have purchased at that time with the same resource of limited attention.

This is an even bigger idea in this regard than with money.

As money/concrete barter exchanges are replenishable. We can always make more money. Perhaps not as much as we would like, but it can and is done every single day.

Whereas life, is an ever-diminishing resource. With each tick of the second hand we have less resources in the time-bank to pay attention with.

I reiterate, our opportunity costs mean more in the realm of time and attention than they do in cash on the barrelhead exchanges.

With that in mind we should regret the no longer desired purchases laying on dusty shelves far less than we regret the choices or activities we have said no to, or, more likely, should have said yes to.

We can always buy more stuff, but, once the bloom of youth is gone, the “Should I have asked her out” is gone, the “Maybe I’ll learn to play the clarinet one day” is gone. Every day, including today, features opportunity cost attentional choices from morning till night. 

With opportunity costs in mind, we must cast the spotlight on our lives. Each and every aspect. 

Now let’s bring it back to the realm of combat training.

Presumably, our training, even at the professional level, is a meager portion of our lives. If you are not paid to train, then you must set aside time to do so. That time is at a premium.

With that being the case, vacuum training may simply be asking a bit more of our attention budget than it confers in long-term benefit.

Time being fleeting and limited we are wise to build expertise and facility in high-yield time investments.

This doesn’t just hold for combat sports, but all athletic endeavors. Wise strength coach, Christian Thibaudeau, calls training that is chockful of exercise redundancies and mindless sets “majoring in the minors.” In his domain, strength is built via well-proven broad-based movements that get to the heart of the matter. Or, in other words, we have less need of 30 exercises to get “swole pecs” when a heavy bench will do the trick. The other 29 exercises merely contribute to energy depletion and claim resources that could have been devoted to the rock-solid go-to.

Specificity Does Equal Not Broad-Based Utility

Opportunity costs may allow us to see there is a possible hole in the vacuum tactics idea, but it is not enough to dispense with it altogether. 

There is indeed some wisdom in the occasional hamstringing or handicapping of training to bring a particular tactic or attribute into sharper focus.

But…a concerted task-saturation aka “tunneling” may not led to the stellar results desired.

An Anecdote and an Observation from a Legend.

First the Anecdote

The following is a story I have encountered many a time in one variation or another.

A grappler enters a new grappling academy and has little facility with the back-game but thanks to a catch or sambo background is quite a leg-locker. In the free-roll they tap many a “superior” player with the tools they have.

This individual is then approached post roll and advised, “I didn’t see you try to pass guard once. Why don’t you restrict yourself for a while and skip leg-locks so you can learn to pass purely, once you can you’ll always have your leglocks?”

At first blush, a reasonable request but a second thought leads to… “Wha? Wait you mean this works out of the gate and you want me to perfect what seems to be a second tier tactic so that I can be better at the game I was already smokin’ a bit?”

That same vacuum suggestion means that this hypothetical fighter would no longer devote time and energy to perfecting and further developing what seemed to already be providing an edge.

BTW-This anecdote can easily be reversed. Those with little exposure to a deep triangle vocabulary or canny guard work will be equally stymied. And it is not style-specific, for example, I have seen it in regard to “Don’t punch in the face” rules so that an intricate high-kick game can blossom. The “No Face-Punches” edict was mandated after a simple stop-jab was being used exclusively to stymie the intricate kick game.

Our moral here is not “styles” but demonstrable and sooner-manifesting utility.

An Observation from a Legend

“Punch a jiu-jitsu black-belt once in the face and he becomes a brown belt. Punch him twice and he becomes a blue belt.”—Carlson Gracie

This comes from a man who had deep knowledge of and a love for the jiu-jitsu game. Again, our lesson is not one of “styles” it is one of utility.

Mr. Gracie’s observation is dead-on for our lesson. Any style, jiu-jitsu, boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, Extreme Kangaroo Kung-fu is likely dependent on some rule-set or strategic dogma that curtails it in some sense. 

All styles likely have a merit to them in the athletic attributes aspect. 

All styles likely have demerits in the vacuum tactics aspect.

Wise fighters with eyes on utility costs evaluate what works and what doesn’t.

Even wiser fighters also ask what works well in the quickest amount of time. 

The highest order of wisdom asks an additional question.

You don’t merely want to know what is effective within the style itself, we should revise according to what we may likely face—inside the style or out. 

We desire transferable utility.

Mr. Gracie was not saying that we should give up jiu-jitsu and become one-trick ground ‘n’ pounders. He was implying that a jiu-jitsu game that could alter and deal with that punch in the face AND still deal with crafty jiu-jitsu would make the better jiu-jitsu player.

The boxer who is prepared for the

leg-kick is the better boxer.

The kickboxer who can smell the takedown coming is the better kickboxer.

The street combatives adherent who knows what knee-down work is adds more odds to the survival lottery.

Training in a vacuum prepares one for the vacuum endeavor and nothing else that exists in the vibrant atmosphere outside of that airless environment.

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