Indigenous Ability

George “Machine Gun” Kelly, was a Depression-era gangster with one of the most colorful names going. Let’s face it, it beats the hell out of Baby Face or Pretty Boy, or Creepy. Despite the formidable name Kelly was a little less deadly than the moniker belies, associates in Alcatraz where he spent 21-years of his life referred to him as “Pop Gun” Kelly due to his model prisoner status and less than gangstery ways. George Kelly, though not a cold-blooded killer, was, indeed, a criminal. He had numerous charges of bootlegging which in and of itself is not so glamourous a crime. It seems his wife, Kathryn Kelly, played the role of reputation-promoter, she gave him the name “Machine Gun” and sought to create the reputation that George himself did not really warrant. The world may not have taken much notice of the dapper bootlegger had it not been for a switch in modus operandi . It seems the Kelly gang thought that there might be more money to be made in kidnapping than illegal...

Footwork is a mainstay of combat sports and martial reality. The feet are the deuce-and-a-halfs that get your munitions to the field of battle. The feet are your mode of retreat to get out of harm’s way. Your feet are the two pegs you use to cut angles to better deflect, diminish, evade an attacker’s gambit and apply your own meanness. Footwork is, was, and will always be vital to matters martial. But…Just as important is what you can do on your feet while basically standing stock still. How much heft can you generate from this on-point position? There is a huge archive of material from the historical record showing how much emphasis was placed on static stances, but this static base was seemingly not the primary focus of static-stance drills. It seems that static balance in-the-midst-of-power was the treasured attribute. The ability to deliver “ Oomph! ” while retaining poise. The historical record presents us with more than a few drills that seek to dev...

ROUGH & READY Old World Strength & Conditioning for Modern Warriors [ The following is a preview of our upcoming book to be released this Fall .] “ A Western Apache warrior named Palmer Valor who came of age in the mid-19 th century recalled that his mother had encouraged him to swim in icy streams and endure other hardships when he was a boy so that he would be ready to take on any opponent .”- The Way of the Warrior Looking for a way to get in the best condition of your life? I’m talking real-world strong, life-tempered stamina, truly useful explosiveness and agility. Of course, you are, we all are. What if I told you there was a way to do this that required minimal gear [not a barbell in sight], cut out trips to the gym [not to mention gym fees], a way that turned out to be fun [albeit grueling], and oddly inspiring. Yeah, we’ve all heard those claims before. Consider this, Lewis and Clark with the Corps of Discovery Expedition made an 8,000-m...

For today’s historical-combat exercise let’s follow a weave of martial endeavor that moves from the American Frontier Rough & Tumble strategy of “ Attacking the Buckler ” to a bit of Viking archeology, to some “chicken or the egg” bragging rights for which came first between a French martial art and one of the Emerald Isle, and end with what all this historical and archaeological speculation has to do with modern day approaches to self-protection. Let’s start our journey in the wilds of the American Frontier. A rough and tumble land that sparked a fighting style of the same name. A fighting style that was all -encompassing and vicious in war, and a bit more restrained [but still mighty vicious] for “friendly” competition. The early days of frontier survival called for ready skill with musket, tomahawk, and whatever else was close at hand. When nothing was close at hand, the violence fell to the hands themselves plus other natural weapons of the body. The rough and tumbl...

Hey Crew, this is a conversation I had with Fernan Vargas in his excellent book AmericanCombat Masters. The book is chockful of interviews with some thoughtful folk; I have excised some of my own Q&A in hopes that if you find this interview or any of the other fine folks involved of interest you put the dollars in Mr. Vargas’s pocket. Big thanks to Fernan for the insightful questions and the yakkity-yak opportunity! What martial arts have you studied? And to what degree? Oh, man, it’s been almost exclusively boxing and wrestling in whatever form I was digging at the moment. I have dabbled in many other arts with good folks thru the years, but with only so many hours in the day I always ballparked on what held my attention most, the old-school stuff.  Which martial art is your primary discipline? Throwing hands, twisting limbs, gouging eyes that is, boxing, wrestling, and rough and tumble. How do you view your art a self defense art? A sport? Or a...

“ We were wild animals for seven million years. We learned a lot of lessons. We should be careful not to lose them .”-Lee Child Let’s keep that quote in mind as we compare a couple of definitions, the first— Domesticated or D omestication, (from the Latin domesticus: "of the home") is the cultivating or taming of a population of organisms in order to accentuate traits that are desirable to the cultivator or tamer. For today’s lesson it is important that we hew closely to the scientific definition of this word. Merely finding a baby squirrel and keeping it as a pet is not by strict definition “domesticating” that animal, you are merely acculturating it to abnormal surroundings and there is a high probability that this “taming” will not survive sexual maturity. This is a lesson hard learned by chimpanzee and big cat owners, often what begins as an exercise in cuteness ends in the animal being what it is-wild. By the way, never the animal’s fault, it is merely bein...