The Empirical Fighter: Rules for the Serious Combatant by Mark Hatmaker

 

Part 1: Gear Idealized or World Ready?

1/A: Specificity of Fitness/Preparation

If you’ve been in the training game for any length of time likely you have witnessed or been the subject of the following realization.

You’ve trained HARD for the past 90 days, say, put in sprint work and have worked up to your fastest 5K.

Your handy-dandy App says your VO2 Max is looking shipshape.

You go to the lake, beach, local swimmin’ hole with your buddies and one says “Race you to the other side!”

You, with your newfound fleet-of-foot promotion to Captain Cardio, say, “Hell, yeah!”

You hit the river and cut that water like Buster Crabbe in “Tarzan the Fearless” with your overhand stroke….for the first 50 yards, then this thought hits as the lungs begin to gasp for air, “Am a I gonna die in the middle of this river?”

This experiment can be repeated across many domains of physical endeavor.

·        The man with the newfound Personal Record in the Bench Press getting smoked in a push-up contest.

·        Or, to flip it, you with your commitment to 200 push-ups per day getting humbled under a bar with your bodyweight on the plates.

·        Or, …

I wager your personal experience will already be ahead of the example curve.

In scholastic parlance, a domain is a specified area of study or applied endeavor, be that archeology or Thai Boxing; what we focus on is, in essence, a domain.

Specific skill-sets are domain specific, they do not necessarily transfer across domains.

When was the last time we saw a champion marathon runner who also rip-sorted in powerlifting and vice versa?

Crossing domains is also unlikely in matters intellectual. For example, studies show that elite performance in chess does not translate to similar like savviness in other intellectual endeavors, no matter the brainy stereotype.

The Rule of Specificity dictates, broadly, that the largest gains will be in the area of focus with some [some] spillover effect to contiguous areas.

1/B: Cross-Training as a Solution

Awareness of the strictures of specificity is the primary motivation of any athlete/combatant who uses cross-training modalities.

This mindset is embodied in the two statements.

“I can outrun the lifters and outlift the runners.”

Or…

“I strike with the grapplers, and grapple with the strikers.”

This is not a bad way to tug a bit on the specificity harness but, notice that the statements themselves are an admission of subpar performance in a given endeavor.

Admitting I can’t run as well as you, but I’ve got a better bench is not too far off the statement of a child who says, “So, I’m not good at football, I can do a cartwheel.”

Don’t get me wrong, I have great sympathy and empathy for broad-based preparation, but we must never lose sight of the fact that we are admitting to a deficit.

Perhaps we can hear it more starkly in these re-phrasings,

“Sure, I can’t beat you at chess, but grab that PlayStation!”

Or,

“You’re good at that, I don’t want to play that anymore, let’s do something I’m good at.”

If a single sport, or at the most one or two others sports is the target, then training for those specific endeavors and forgoing all else is wise.

If general overall exercise performance is your goal and not necessarily an applied targeted sport focus, then this broad-based exercise approach is just what the doctor ordered.

Choose what supports your end aims—trim the rest.

1/B: Gear Adjusted

Specificity does not just hold for how we gear the body to performance, our bodies adjust to the gear itself.

We all know this. A few examples to wake up the slumbering thought…

Ring Dips vs. Bar Dips vs. Mantling

·        Broadly the same exercise but, quite a difference, a humbling one in some cases.

·        The bar provides stability, the rings do not, and the mantling needed by rock climbers, alpinists, and the backcountry cadre, although similar in appearance is a different beast altogether.

Treadmill or Flat Track Running vs. Terrain

·        Shifts in actual terrain, true hills, honest-to-god rock-strewn scree traverses can never be replicated by a treadmill no matter the incline setting.

·        Yes, we may improve a base fitness on the treadmill, but we are astonished how little actually translates to utility once we hit the slopes of The Flatirons in Boulder, Colorado.

False-Weapon Mock-Ups vs. The Real Deal

·        A full-weighted tomahawk with a live-blade is real viscerally, and aesthetically that in no way resembles working with a toy.

·        Even working firearm disarms with a triple-checked unloaded firearm with firing pin removed is a different breed of cat than a rubber toy disarm.

Gear-Adjusted training rears its head large in the arena of combat sports and reality prep.

We are training because we assume stakes to be high.

Training for high stakes with low-stake items is a head-scratcher.

Part 2: Bust Your Own Myths So the Battle Doesn’t Do It For You

In the last half of our discussion, we’ll keep it all matters martial.

Let’s begin by reminding us of the title of today’s sermon: “The Empirical Fighter.”

To call something empirically verified is to say we have tested by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

To be empirical is to select and test for reproducible utility under live conditions.

To be empirical is not merely “making a good case” for something with words, speeches, theories, seemingly sound logic or legend.

Yet…

We often add tactics, techniques, tips, and cool moves to our toolbox by three choices.

1.     “I’m a completist and I put everything in my toolbox!”

2.     “Oh, that move is cool as hell, it’s going in!”

3.     “This has survived refutation, it’s in the arsenal.”

If our eye is on reality, option three is the only correct one.

Let’s borrow an idea from Dr. Karl Popper, the esteemed philosopher of science.

You formulate a conjecture. [New tactic, technique, strategy.]

You then start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong.

That last sentence is key.

False Testing Is a False Step

Most of us do not work in this manner. We land on something new, cool, or captivating to the attention and add it with no testing or…we do false testing.

To false test is to find all the ways to make an idea right. In Popperian vernacular, we seek ways to confirm that this new toy is the bestest toy ever!

We see one cooperative but oh, so flashy demo of a double-rolling leg bar or a pinch-grip disarm that makes us all weak in the knees and set out to create perfect conditions for this rare beast to exist in reality.

If our eye is on reality or efficient effectiveness, false testing is not the way to go.

Finding confirmation in martial arts is, in essence, choreography. We can all love us some Old School Kung Fu flicks or the “John Wick” film franchise, but intelligent adults are painfully aware that much of what we enjoy here exists only in the rarefied compromised atmosphere of agreement between performers.

Refutation As Time-Saver & Life-Saver

If we adhere to the Popperian logic of refutation, we will take each new tip, tool, tactic, etc. and begin by attempting to refute the idea.

Find tangible experiments or testing scenarios that would prove the idea false, therefore refuted.

If it is refuted, you save yourself further time by dropping it from training and putting that precious resource into tactics that have withstood refutation.

You have also upped your survivability ante by forgoing the dubious or merely “cool.”

Refutation: A Simple Idea, But, Oh, So Hard

I wager I have very little dissent about what I have just presented—we’re all high-speed, low-drag, eyes on the target cadre, I have no doubt about that but…

The human animal is still prone to “false test” their pet hypothesis.

In other words, if we like an idea or are attached to it, we tend to skip refutation [or make meagre stabs at it] and go the confirmation route.

Example: Let’s say you decided, “This new diet is where it’s at!”

You read all the blog articles on it, you set the grocery list App on your phone, you listen to podcasts on the scientific veracity of the newfound eating smartness.

How often do we seek to refute our newly chosen diet?

I mean, really refute it.

Will these carbs really make me fat?

My daily intake of cookies says no.

Usually we use soft-refutation of our own ideas but go hard hard-ass science on other’s pet ideas.

Example: I’ve read all about my diet, it’s Boss. I’ve read all about yours, it’s stupid!

In a nutshell, that sums up the human race, we seek to confirm ourselves and to refute others.

We’re at our best and most efficient when we keep the refutation lens on our own toolboxes, or own performance, our own ideas and attitudes.

It saves us time, it saves us argument, and in the case of combative tools it may save us pain and/or our lives.

In The Black Box Project we provide old-school combat nitty-gritty straight from the historical record, and yes, it is empirically verified or it ain’t in.

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/Black Box Subscription Service, or stay on the corral fence with the other dandified dudes and city-slickers.