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“Red Scalping”: Submission Chains vs. Pain Trains by Mark Hatmaker

 




Let’s open with advice from Civil War Naval hero, Admiral David D. Farragut.

“The more you hurt the enemy, the less he will hurt you.”

No quarrel there, I wager.

But…let us make sure we actually practice what we may have just assented to.

Our discussion today will primarily deal with the world of grappling: Both old school and new, both vertical and horizontal.

But…let us use wisdom from the striking arts to set up our strategic story.

Strikers use combinations.

“Punches in bunches” is an expression of strategic and tactical wisdom.

The attack that contains the following: Jab/Rear Caulk Kick/Spearing Rear Elbow/Lead Cram Elbow/Lead Chopper is made up of 5 Offensive Elements.

On bag, on pads, on partners, in the street it is assumed to be delivered 1/2/3/4/5 in a lickety-split no-pause manner.

I wager I have said nothing ground-breaking here.

I also wager we would agree that these same five assaultive elements delivered one at a time in a staggered tempo no longer adheres to the definition of a combination.

Instead we have thrown a series of tools in a manner more akin to a probe or full-power gambling of a “sure thing.”



But…we all know, there are no sure things, hence, combinations, punches in bunches.

Why?

We are gambling that if the first one don’t get ya, the second one will, and if the second don’t do it, three, four, and five are right behind it.

At no point in the combination do we feel full fistic bite and halt.

That is, we don’t find a small bite of meat on the jab, a good negligible bark of shin on the caulk kick, but then feel full bone-chunking on the spear elbow and simply stop on that satisfaction.

“In bunches” wisdom says, we keep throwing till the toes are up and the deed is done.

Why do we use combinations this way?

It is superior offensive strategy.

It is superior defensive strategy.

I repeat the Admiral’s dictum.

“The more you hurt the enemy, the less he will hurt you.”

If you have stuck with me thus far, likely you are declaring this offering from, yours truly, a long-winded restatement of the obvious.

And you are correct in that estimation.

Let’s talk grappling now.

It is when we hit the clinch, or the ground that this hallowed advice we all agree upon seems to get royally defenestrated.

We yell, “Punches in bunches!” in training, but once the grappling commences, we see a shift towards “Knock-out blows,” or “Swing for the fences” tactics.

That is, our combinations become more about the maneuvering and less about the tactical arsenal.

We are willing to take three, four, or more complicated steps to get to the rear-naked choke, or work on canny crisscross hip-shifts for arm-bars treating steps towards an end result as a stand-in for combinations.

But I ask, [and the old-timers would ask as well] why do we abandon incessant offensive attack once it gets to the scuffle?

Of course, I am not de-valuing the aggressiveness of the scramble, the rides, floats, pins, set-ups required to get to the hoped for “KO” blows.

Wrestling maneuverability, when done right, is physically assaultive in and of itself, but…I think we can easily see it still falls a bit short of the same “incessant intention to harm” we find in the striking aspect of the game.

“I hear where you’re coming from, Mark, but isn’t that the wisdom of the submission chain? Aren’t these counter-for-counter chains the grappler’s correlate for the striker’s combination?”

Good question. An informed one at that but…

Submission chains have only a surface correlation to “Punches in bunches.”

Submission chains are less a long series of attacks in the Admiral Farragut sense than a causal link of assumed failed KOs.

That is, a submission chain operates under the following assumption…

·        If my Cobra Choke is blocked…

·        I will transition to a Stacked Wrist-Fold.

·        If it is blocked I will off-set to a North-South Dorsal

·        If I miss the Knee-Pin I will…

·        Ad nauseum.

Each chain in a submission is an admission that what was attempted prior did not work.

And let’s be clear, submission chaining is a superior way to work but…

It is still not the same combination strategy of the striker where each and every strike is an intended bite even if a preceding bite bit HARD.

That brings us to…

“Red Scalping.”

Admittedly the term “red scalping” only pops up a few times in the old vernacular but it stuck with me. The term may be rare but the strategy of the old days most definitley was not.

To “red scalp” is nothing more than to take a wrestling chain and treat it not as a “run it till you hit your success link,” but…

Hit each submission/hook/rip/crank/rip with full authority on down the line in true striker’s combination fashion.

“Red scalping” in this manner becomes overwhelmingly offensive and kyboshes much grappling defense as you have ripped and blown by often before a semblance of the defense can be implemented.

A double-wristlock chain that has 5 more red scalp links on it is meant to be run till its end.



One or more, or all of these rips is gonna shred along the way. To the old-schooler this overwhelming incessancy of attack was the ideal and not “Whoops, I guess I’ll try this next.”

“The more you hurt the enemy, the less he will hurt you.”

The intent is to take submission chains and turn them into a steaming locomotive that will run the submission track come hell or high water, creating less a chain than a pain train with an end destination of victory and a track of devastation left in its smoke.

For a lookat a syllabus that outlines such an approach see here.

In The Black Box Project we provide old-school combat nitty-gritty straight from the historical record.

For skinny on The Black Box Project itself.

[For techniques, tactics, and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School Boxing, Mean-Ass Wrestling, Street-Ready Frontier Scrapping & Indigenous Ability culled from the historical record see the RAW Subscription Service, or stay on the corral fence with the other dandified dudes and city-slickers. http://www.extremeselfprotection.com

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