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LSUTiger wrote:I not interested in sport,only self defense.

I recommend you read some of the year-old posts above.

With over 40 years of martial arts experience, I can tell you one thing: Almost nobody teaches martial arts and handgun combined...at least, nobody that does it well.

I've taken a class with Kelly McCann, and that was about the closest I've come to a melding of combatives and firearms.

Your mileage may vary.

sawdust wrote:Methinks that many of us fall prey to a scientificly-established study that has uncovered a substantial problem - M.I.S. - the Mirror Image Syndrome.

I think that changes sometime between the early- to late-50s. We may not automatically become wiser with age, but ya simply can’t ignore that joints hurt, make mysterious grinding noises (I’ll never sneak up on anyone in silence again), and that getting out bed becomes far more of an adventure than you ever thought it would be when you were 20.

In fact, I wrote this last night as part of that over-long post, but deleted it ’cause I couldn’t find a suitable place for it:

My best advice regarding unarmed skills: be a male between the ages of 19 and 29, be 5’11” to 6’4” tall, weigh 200 pounds or more, be very strong, be very fast, be very athletic, and be very fit. Simple! No formal training involved!

So your point is well taken. The demographics of Texas CHL holders finds the belly of the bell curve at that very 50-to-60 age group, so something tells me a lot of us become more realistic when looking in the mirror once we reach...uh, er, a suitable maturity.

74novaman wrote:One that has absolutely zero application in a real world defense scenario that I loved (did it 10 hours+ a week at my most avid) was fencing. It is a good workout, and has been described as "physical chess". You have to read your opponent, understand distances and timing, attack and defend...

Hey; not true. Fencing has a lot of practical application in real-world scenarios. I highlighted essentials that are applicable to any combatives technique.

In fact, a lot of fencing footwork has found its way into tactical training. The familiar “Tactical ‘L’” is based on the Inquartata and Passata-sotto, and in Filipino Arnis, the footwork known as ritriada is awfully similar to fencing’s Ballestra.

That’s another thing that happens as you start to move officially into senior citizenship: you start to see similarities in many different things that used to look distinctly separate. Hey, there’s gotta be some advantage to getting older...

It’s a very valid question, though I do believe there is a distinction between the person who carries a firearm and one who does not. Many individual techniques will be identical, but the intended results of empty-hand defense will be guided by the fact that we carry a handgun; it means that we have a force-multiplier to utilize...and also must defend against its use against us.

I think we should be very clear and up-front for newer Forum members that the defensive priorities are always: number one, awareness; number two, avoidance; number three, de-escalation; and number four, escape.

Truly the only way to win a fight, any fight, is not to fight at all.

You can quote me on that.

Seriously, the vast majority of civilian, non-LEO encounters we read about could have been prevented entirely by awareness and avoidance. If you come home to an open front door, don’t try to clear the house yourself; if somebody cuts you off in traffic, don’t try to get payback; if someone verbally challenges you, don’t get into an altercation; lock your doors, stay alert, and for goodness sake remember that little that is good happens after midnight.

Even if you take great care, sometimes awareness and avoidance aren’t enough. Urban areas are more densely populated than ever before and, if you live and work in a big city, just stop and consider the number of times each day you come within six to 10 feet of strangers, even strangers your Spidey sense might profile as...well, iffy.

Inside a radius of zero to 10 feet, defending your life is about fighting, not marksmanship. Statistics show that a deadly-force encounter is most likely to happen at less than 10 feet from the assailant (see NYPD’s Department Order SOP 9, a study including over 6,000 individual cases). However, very few CHL holders practice any techniques whatsoever at close-contact distances.

Also keep in mind that, as CHL holders, we have more burden of law placed upon us with regard to presenting our firearms than do police officers. We have to be darned certain that when we draw, it is justified. And we have clothing covering our weapons that we have to get out of the way before we can even start the draw.

In practical, outside-the-home street situations, the CHL holder is always going to be at the wrong end of the action-reaction curve if something serious starts to go down. We can’t pull our guns preemptively, we probably don’t have an armed partner backing us up, and we may have loved-ones with us that we need to protect.

That we carry a gun does, for me, change the criteria for applying unarmed combat techniques.

I lived in Asia for almost seven years, and studied martial arts in the Philippines and Japan the entirety of that time. For two summers I had a rare opportunity to study a modified form of Indonesian Silat. Later (back in the States) I studied a northern-Chinese system for a few years. I taught and practiced for several years after that.

Now that I’m old, gray, fat, and wizened my informed advice is: KISS. Keep it simple, keep it practical, and require as little as possible of your physical capabilities and mental memory to do it.

If you haven’t read Musashi’s Go Rin No Sho (“A Book of Five Rings”; a thin book, but any translation necessitates multiple readings) I recommend it. One of my favorite quotations: “Do nothing that is of no use.”

There is much in any “traditional” martial art that is of no use, IMHO. Even Filipino Arnis, which intrinsically is a pure fighting skill the history of which is collectively shared by many islands in the Philippines and is not a codified art or sport (ignore Escrima), has morphed into “schools” with their own “traditions” and “lineages” and “styles.” Worse, some of those schools have decided to call the system “Kali,” which never appeared anywhere in the literature until Dan Inosanto decided to try to pre-date Arnis in his book. Don’t get me started.

That’s not to say traditional martial arts are of no value. There are only so many ways you can lock an elbow joint, and all those were thought up over a millennium ago.

But we get back to KISS. Earlier, I mentioned Kelly McCann and his Combatives course. I’ve taken a course from McCann and he’s old school in his approach to hand-to-hand, new school in his approach to handguns and integrating the two. He gets a thumbs-up.

Yerasimos mentioned Geoff Thompson. Some great stuff, including the Wing Chun-derived “fence” technique. But Geoff lives in the UK and, to my knowledge, has no experience with firearms. Another source is Marc MacYoung. Also good, basic stuff, but he doesn’t address the carrying of a firearm.

I recommend Craig Reynolds of ShivWorks. He also has a background in Filipino Arnis and has adapted it to modern, real-world confrontations. Thumbs up.

Folks may dis me, but Gabe Suarez offers courses about being in the “hole.” I’ve taken a couple of his close-range gunfighting courses, and I recommend them.

A follow-on note—just MHO as an old and out-of-shape guy, but one whose martial arts experience goes back over four decades—my opinion is that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and other, similar, ground-grappling systems would not be at the top of my list of hand-to-hand styles best-suited to CHL holders. Three very basic reasons for this.

First, systems that are primarily ground-fighting are practiced on mats or in a suspended-surface ring. It’s a whole ’nuther story when the action is moved to a concrete parking lot (and guess where, statistically, a violent confrontation is most likely: a parking lot). Going to ground on concrete with a physically strong opponent can dramatically change the playing field.

Second, while extremely effective in one-on-one encounters as proven by Royce Gracie when he brought the style to popular visibility in 1993, it suffers when faced with multiple attackers. Now, I would never have wanted to stick my tongue out at Royce with even a couple of other guys backing me up, but ground-grappling practitioners have to be really good to take on multiple attackers. It isn't all that difficult to kick a ground-fighter in the head while he’s occupied applying a rear naked choke to your buddy.

Third, if wearing a firearm, going to ground should never be a first option when having to defend yourself or—most especially—others. You risk trapping the firearm and taking it out of the equation, or much worse, making it available to the attacker for a takeaway. And once you’re on the ground and tied up in a struggle, there’s very little you can do to try to protect your spouse or children until you effectively dispatch your attacker.

I have never seen handgun use incorporated into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or any similar ground-fighting variant. My personal opinion is that’s because the two simply don’t complement each other.

No knock against Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or any of its MMA derivatives in any way. Grappling and joint-locking are very valuable skills. But if I intend to carry a handgun I’d want to be sure to tailor my combatives training around that fact. Ground-fighting just doesn’t do that.

Good for you. And there are more reasons than that to have some basic unarmed combative skills, at any age. PM coming to you.

I don't know anything about the Krav Maga school in Pearland but, from the standpoint purely of "style," I think it's an excellent and practical choice. When interviewing potential instructors, I'd be sure to learn the level of experience they have incorporating firearms into their curricula. I've seen defenses against firearms and firearm retention taught fairly routinely, but few instructors who really understand how to incorporate the use of a handgun as part of the close-contact defensive syllabus.

There's no local instruction for it, but if you can't find a school that really incorporates handgun use, you could always look into traveling to take a few-day course with Kelly McCann and his simple system of combatives.