I often get angry at the majority of self-proclaimed “master close-combat instructors” trying to make a quick buck by selling impractical and dangerously ineffective “self defense training programs” to the uninitiated. Although there certainly is some good material out there, it seems to me that almost every time that you see a self defense instructor trying to look like a scientist and act like he really knows what he is talking about, he ends up just proving that he has no idea whatsoever about what he’s trying to talk about!

For instance, there’s a lot of talk these days about “ranges of combat.” You often see an instructor lecturing to his video audience about kicking range, punching range, trapping range, grappling range and ground fighting. Then he goes on to tell you what techniques you are allowed to use in each range.

What’s wrong with that? Well, let me tell you as someone who has not only a lot of experience teaching self defense, but also much experience dealing with street violence myself that the last thing you want to do is limit your students in their way of thinking!

When I teach someone to fight, I show him where to hit to get immediate effects and I explain a few ways to effectively strike or crush those areas. Of course, there’s a lot of mental training and tactics that are also covered, but one thing that you will never see me doing is telling someone that he should not use a certain technique from a certain distance!

Listen, there are no “ranges of combat” on the streets or in self defense. There’s damaging an aggressor or aggressors and there’s limiting yourself as to how to damage an aggressor, which results in giving him the opportunity to damage you first, resulting in him winning and you being raped, injured or killed. How you injure an aggressor doesn’t matter to me and it shouldn’t matter to you, either, as long as you survive the attack!

For instance, kicking range is supposed to be the range where you are close enough to use an ineffective long-range kick, but are out of boxing range, or too far away to reach your opponent with your arms. In boxing range, you are “allowed” by your instructor to hit your opponent with arm techniques, but not allowed to kick, because you’re supposedly too close to kick effectively. In the clinch, or grappling range, you should only use throwing and locking techniques.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m in so-called “grappling range,” where I’m only “supposed” to use wrestling techniques and I see the opportunity to stomp on some degenerate’s knee joint and tear various ligaments and tendons, I’ll certainly do so and be happy to have survived the attack! Even if that means having used what another instructor would have called “the wrong technique.”

If an aggressor goes to the ground, whether I tripped him or he simply fell, I won’t hesitate to kick him while he’s trying to get up and attack me again. Ask me if I care about having kicked someone in so-called “groundfighting range,” where I should have gone to the ground with him and try for some submission hold. Why go to the ground if he’s laying and you’re standing anyway? To give him the opportunity to stab me with a knife that I wouldn’t have seen coming from so close or to give his friends, who weren’t aware of the fact that kicks aren’t allowed in “groundfighting range” the chance to kick me into a bloody heap?

The bottom line is this-if someone attacks you, your only job is to injure him as soon as possible, without being injured in the process. And I don’t care how you do it, as long as you get the job done!

Kravmagathailand.com