September, 2010
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
27 September 2010: Trip, Punch, Pull, Tackle - How They Take You Down
How do they take you down? It appears there are four major ways victims of crimes and/or law enforcement officers end up on the ground during fights and criminal attacks. They are from tripping and/or pushing, punched (mostly sucker-punched), pulled down, or tackled down.
Several major studies were recently released in recent years from sources like the United States Department of Justice and universities specializing in criminal justice. This new information, included with the many prior studies tabulated by police training organizations, correctional employees and citizens who were victimized by crime, has many of the same common causation threads.
First, how many victims actually land on the ground? You must first note that all surveys are regional and in some cases anecdotal. There is no one national or international clearing-house amassing ground fight statistics. Police reports do not have a singular check-off box or entry line tracking the elements of ground zero combatives. Such info is often ignored or buried in the text portion of reports and require time-consuming, investigative mining to unearth, if even mentioned at all. These overall studies range from 40 to 70 percent hit the ground in a fight. People who sell ground fighting courses have claimed as high as 95% to all. They have ground courses to sell. You might find many facts and opinions, but we can all agree on these four basic problem areas.
Cause 1) Tripping and/or Pushing
Tripping leads the list as the major cause of hitting the ground, as in stumbling over unseen, unpredictable indoor and outdoor terrain. An attacked person often has a natural reaction to retreat a few steps to buy more time, vision and space. Often this produces a rear fall over an unforeseen curb, furniture, irregular terrain, other people-or any number of things. Inside many of these trips, as one cause of the stumble some research includes pushing. Many times a push leads to a trip and it seems undecipherable in these studies to draw exact distinctions between the push and the trip.
Cause 2) The Punch: Haymakers, Suckers and Sport Punches
The punch accounts for the next largest method. More specifically, other examinations conclude that the sucker punch is king. The sucker-punch may well be the most successful street and battlefield fist tactic, one virtually ignored in martial training. Countless case-histories record an opponent standing before a victim in a neutral position, or turning away arms down, only to suddenly crank back with a punch to the face. In most probable order these punches are:
Punch 1) The Sucker punch
Punch 2) The Haymaker
Punch 3) The Sport Punches (the common public is the least trained to execute these punches)
Note: EVERY strike (and kick) can have a sucker punch application
Cause 3) The Pull Downs
Fights occur at ramming speed. Either someone is ramming into you or you are ramming into them, or there is no fight. A crash and clinch is a very strong possibility. If one party loses balance while clutching the other, often there is a pull down of the other person. There are even martial tactics where this takedown tactic is performed on purpose! The practitioner simply leaps on a person and hangs on, toppling all but the strongest of foes. The next common pull down is when your opponent has been downed and as you hover over him in standing or knee high positions, he yanks you down to his level. In most probable order, these pull downs are:
Pull Down 1) Standing Pull Down: A grab and fall.
Pull Down 2) Ground to Standing: A reach up, grab and pull down
Cause 4) Tackling
Many children and young adults in America play football, as many in other countries play rugby and “footie.” It is said that if a man played football as a boy, should he get into a fight thirty years later, he will most likely tackle his opponent. This tackling training plays right with an almost instinctual desire to tackle in fights. In most probable order these tackles are:
Tackle 1) The Wild Man Tackle: Anything goes leap and grab
Tackle 2) The Football/Sport Tackle: The leaping grab we so often see in sport events
Tackle 3) The Wrestler's Tackle: A grab, lift and drop
Summary
All these studies concluded that anywhere from 40% to 70% , of these fights ended on the ground, not the heavily marketed 95% or even the touted “all” fights end on the ground, as spited by ground wrestling systems. In the USA there is a motto, “All fights START standing up.” There are counters and skill drills to defeat each one of these takedown attacks. Train with the statistics. Work against the probable first, on down to the improbable.
Adios Amigo
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23 September 2010: Paladin Press and Knife Ground Fighting
Right after the Sunday seminar in Denver, Colorado I beat feet up to Boulder, where we started filming a DVD set on knife ground fighting. Tim Llacuna flew in and Scott Pederson and Larry Cline drove up to help out. It's from an outline I have been working on and teaching from, for many years. When Paladin suggested I cover the title subject on film, I really bore down and finished the subject matter into a clean, essential, organized progession...suitable for "framing,"... er, I mean "filming."
You hold a knife on the ground fighting against a knife and stick, and gun threat attacks. What to do. What to do. What to do! Then we shot some subsequent footage for a self defense project they are working on. 
Once again it was a complete pleasure working with the Paladin crew from their President Peder Lund, Dave and Brad and the boys on down. Super-professional. They are working on a million things over there and it might take some ten months in their schedule before it gets published in their rotation for the public. Mucho thanks to Scott and Larry. And Llacuna just flat tore up the screen with a high octane performance!
And more projects with Paladin in the works...
Adios Amigo
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18 September 2010: The PAC "Mano-Mano" Requirements
My Unarmed Combatives course is a very nuts and bolts, generic, essence of combat program, but when I teach the Pacific Archipelago Combatives Program to the die-hards who want that Japan, Philippines, Indo, Hawaii mix, I ask way more of them in terms of mastering the materials. This question of difference comes up from time to time so I thought I would document the list right here. These are the required skills and knowledge for a PAC Level 10 Black Belt:
1: All strikes/blocks ( includes the skill drill progressions Hubad, Horizontal Blasts, Windmill, 5 Elbows, etc...) Here
2: All kicks Here
3: Sufficient mastery of kick boxing and related skill developing drills (gloves to bare knuckle as goal) Here
4: Sinawali Boxing Here
5: Combat Clock Footwork/Maneuvers standing and ground Here
6: Outside invasion series Here
7: Inside invasion series not on film
8: The Joint crank progression series Here
9: The Takedowns and counters to takedowns modules Here
10: Weapon disarming module Here
Note, the above already seamlessly includes ground fighting
Adios Amigos
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13 September 2010: Striking Combinations
This subject popped up on the Combat Centric talk forum. Someone asked for some "hand strike combinations." Presuming we will not include traps, grabs, kicks or knees, I have an old list I used in my classes that was quite thorough. I don't like to use the list in typical seminars because I think of this workout as a regular classroom workout or a personal one, not a good seminar subject. Not special enough for a seminar. The UC course emphasizes the following striking list:
UC Module 1) Finger/eye attacks
UC Module 2) Palms, (pushes, slaps and web-hand strikes)
UC Module 3) Forearms
UC Module 4) Hammer fists
UC Module 5) All punches
UC Module 6) Elbows
UC Module 7) Body Rams
UC Module 8) Limited and/or emergency use of the head butt
Combination striking of these has two purposes. Set-ups and hitting targets. Opening to opening to opening. The "strike" of body ramming may send the body too far off for subsequent strikes but rather may be useful for escapes and long-range kicking. See how the list just shifts within itself in each follow-up column. 
The Matrix format would work down the list. For example:
The Forearm strike:
...Forearm and eye attack
...Forearm and palm strike
...Forearm and hammer
...Forearm and punch
...Forearm and elbow
and so on.
Combination Strikes Basic Training - work these lists hitting a heavy bag or focus mitt. These basics are mandatory for basic body synergy, speed, power and familiarization.
Combination Strikes Advanced Training - develop high percentage combinations based on actual reactions. This includes three components, flak, set-ups and openings. As the chart cautions, with each attack, the opponent will shift position. A practitioner has to work through these, and determine high percentage movements by the opponent. This creates the list of pragmatic combinations. High percentage combinations. Opening to opening to opening to opening is the best equation for combo strikes. (start noting where grabs and traps might be included)
* Flak - throwing stuff that won't land on anything important, but confuses
* Set-ups - throwing stuff that makes holes to targets
* Openings - throwing stuff into the holes/target
To me, "real fighting" is always more like checkers than chess. I wouldn't go 4 to 12 steps deep on this. Rather study 4 sets of three moves.
Discuss here!
Adios Amigos
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10 September 2010: This Illegal Immigrant Thing! Part 3 The moral of the story, the thing must people wonder about the good ol' days, is why every cop in Texas, every cop in any border state and eventually in all 50 states weren't arresting busloads od illegal aliens back then. Just as the new law in Arizona suggests, you only arrested them when your paths cross legitimately.
Here's how my old agency handled this. Back in the day, we were...unofficially...required to do at least "5 pieces of work" each shift. That is, let's say 1 ticket, 1 arrest, 2 crime reports and an accident. or any combination thereof of any significant police activity. Too much of one thing meant you were obsessing about one topic. Well rounded was appreciated. There was no "mark," no piece of work for an illegal alien arrest. Such was uncounted and unrewarded. ANYONE could walk out into the street and fill a busload. We simply could not handle the enormous job and could not over-reward some obsessive officer who did 5 illegals a day. So they simply went uncounted. The operative order was leave them alone unless something happens that causes you to take such action (and even then, it didn't count). I certainly did not want to arrest illegals back then. Too much paperwork! The charge was a tool for some other goal.
Then suddenly, I think in the late 1970s or early 1980s the word came down from the Feds that we were to stop arresting them at all for those charges. At first it seemed like a temporary legal issue. But it never went away. I became a detective and had other related problems. Illegals were afraid to report crimes. Afraid to become witnesses. Fugitives fleeing to Mexico. Lots of problems. We had to work with the now, so-called "coyotes" and then some of what might be called Mexican Mafia, the area people who transported, hired and housed these people. Some of these guys were taking a percentage of their pay, selling them cars...it was much like the old coal mine stories.
"You load 15 tons and whatta' ya get, another day older and deeper in debt." We had a local kingpin that owned and operated out of a barber shop. I'll call him Mayan Cando here. The shop looked like the northeastern mafia pizza parlor or some such place the Sopranos would operate. Cando had a gaudy mansion in town with very Mexican design architecture. He ran the runners, the housing, the jobs and the justice. Made loans. Smuggled relatives in for fees. Sometimes he would be a big friendly help to us and other times, a real pain in the ass. I dealt with him on a very grass roots level. A personal level about Hispanic on Hispanic crime. Sometimes to chase down Hispanic fugitives. It was that classic, uneasy alliance. I never knew quite how I would be treated when I walked into the barbor shop.
The USA has big problems now. Security problems. I want everyone to enter legally. I like that new expression, "tall fences and big gates." This would help clean out the underworld, shadow network that prostitutes these poor people.
Today in my old city, the Latino groups have constructed a picnic grounds-like area for those standing around seeking some "pick up" work. This evolved through time. Like a fancy, covered bus stop. Almost daring the authorities to challenge the spot and the cause. It is an uneasy alliance. The cops drive by. The employers stop, hire and pick up. The Mexicans work very hard in the heat and in the rain and on holidays. It is almost like the people talked about in the news are not the same people we see everyday. Adios Amigos
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6 September 2010: This Illegal Immigrant Thing! Part 2 Once in the living room - well, it was once a living room - I saw quite a number of people were sleeping on the floor in makeshift beds. Mexican women screamed and children cried as they emerged from various hallways and doors. They were not shoved by the agents. Herded. Some men busted a move for a door or a window. One ran for the front door and I played a game of side-to-side tag with him until an agent grabbed him.
Honestly, it felt like I was in a science fiction movie where they rounded up the people for some reason. Like Soylent Green or something. Agents outside were still yelling. Everyone was handcuffed. Man, woman but not child. Lines were formed. Two buses were called in on a handheld radio. I stepped out onto the yard. The buses pulled up in front of the house, making those old, big bus brake-and-stop screeches and gushes. The doors were shoved open by levers and an odd hue of yellow and orange lights came on, peppering the lawn and street.
I was surprised at the long line emerging from the house. That many people were in there? Sleeping? Living? They were seated on the buses. A bus and a half of Mexicans. The remaining agents jogged to me and passed me. One said, "the second house."
Okay then, to the second house. It was only three blocks away. The same game plan unfolded. The third house. The same again. I drove back to the station along with the last of the buses and agents. The diesel engines of the buses groaned and chugged on the city hall parking lot as the agents said goodbye to us. They climbed into their cars and drove off with the buses full of Mexicans.
I stood on the lot beside Lt. Green who smirked at me and said, "they gotta' do that every once in awhile." He turned to the rest of us and said, "you all check back into service. Fill out a general report."
We wandered back to our squad cars. It was about 6 am now, and a red sun was just barely cracking open a new day. I still had a few things to do before shift change. I got behind the wheel of my car, but sat still for just a moment. "That was weird," I thought. Three houses raided. Crying women and kids. Men. Bus loads of them. Carted off to Dallas. Where they would be "processed." I had an idea what that meant. Then shipped back to ol' Mexico. Probably see many of them back in three weeks.
Weird because about 6 blocks from the police station, about 20 or more illegal Mexicans would soon be gathering at at well-known street corner looking for day work. Seven days a week. And nobody cared. In fact, people needed the help. Nobody would raid them. Cram them in buses every single morning. Not us. I guess not the Feds either. I recall every other Texas city I'd been to has these "street corners."
In fact we'd see dozens of illegals every day, everywhere. Dozens and dozens of them. Did we arrest them? Why not?
Part 3 coming soon... Adios Amigos
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3 September 2010: This Illegal Immigrant Thing! Part 1 “Units 61, 63, 69 report into the squad room,” the dispatcher said, interrupting the 3 am calm of a Fall, midnight shift, circa 1977.
“10-4,” as unit 64, I answered. This was new to me. Several units called in like this? Such a thing not mentioned in the squad room briefing as a meeting or training? This was still my first year at this job in 1977, so maybe everything was still new to me? I drove across town, parked and walked into the squad room as ordered. I did take notice of four large buses on the front parking lot of the police station.
Sgt. Eric Jackson and Lt. Gene Ray Green were in the room with about a dozen or so other men and women dressed in brown and some in black. Border patrol and Immigration. The Feds.
Sgt. Jackson spoke up and said that the Feds were raiding several known illegal alien houses through the city and we were to offer support. He handed us papers with addresses on them. There were three houses just off the interstate in my south side district. I recognized them immediately. Very large, older wooden homes that we all knew housed illegal immigrants from Mexico. Many illegal aliens. Lots of them. The Feds were gathered to arrest them and the buses on the front lot were for transport.
The other officers present from our agency had done this work before. As a rookie in Texas I hadn't, but I gathered the Feds would be doing all the heavy-lifting. I noted they were armed and badged-up. We all filtered out to the parking lots and I introduced myself to guys hitting District 64.
“Anything in particular you want me to do?” I asked the senior agent.
“No. Not really. Just be there in case something happens. We like to have local law enforcement present.”
I nodded. Frankly, anything that didn't involve any extra paperwork was just fine with me. I mounted my squad and drove over to the first house on the list. I parked up the street and waited. Several black sedans slowly drove by me, waved at me and parked quietly by the house. Suddenly they all bailed out and I followed suit. No car doors were slammed. They flooded the massive house front, sides and back and I didn't quite know which way to go?
Silence shattered! Doors where kicked in, some windows busted out. Yells. Screams. I heard all kinds of intro shouts, “Federal agents!”
“Immigreccion'”
“US Border Patrol ”
I had nothing to say to add to that. I dashed through the splintered and bashed front doors….
Part 2 coming soon...
Adios Amigos
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1 September 2010: Angst and Shit A Buffalo Nickels Essay (best you not read this if you are easily offended or upset. Just don't go there. - editor Ever think about what wusses people are? Humans. Look around at the animal kingdom. Then look at us. It's scary. We have no fur. No armor. Even a little fucking turtle has a shell. No talons, though I knew an Asian hooker once with some nails that would cut diamonds. "Oh! The lovely pain! Mon Ami!"
... ok, what was I saying? Oh yeah, we have no natural protection. Our skin is a thin sack like a water balloon that can't take a scratch from a branch or a bite from an ant.
I was in my yard last week cutting the grass, and I had to look down at my K-Mart sandals. On the top of my foot was a tiny, almost invisible black ant. A spec. But this little fucker was gnawing on the top of my foot, his jaws grinding and so tightly hooked on me that when I looked closely, his whole body was writhing up in the air, held up by these meshing mandibles. This little fucker really hated me!
"Whadda' I do to you!" I said! I was just unlucky I guess. Wrong place. Wrong time. In this whole yard. I picked up this pissed off little ant. I squished the little angry bastard with my fingers. The ant got unlucky.
But the scary thing was that I felt it at all. Two little ant teeth. Like a rat biting Godzilla. Then the next two days a pimple of yellow puss drew up and the head was three times bigger than the ant! What damage. A little ant's jaws and a little invisible dot of his ant poison. The DOD or CIA needs to bottle that shit! Ant Poison. How would you like to have that job? They have people who collect snake poison. What would you get paid to collect ant poison from ants? Tedious little project, huh? Can you picture that? Squeezing a little ant's face to pump out the poison. Oh be careful. Don't hurt its head! We need to milk him again tomorrow. But that is not my bone to pick with God or the Devil. Its about human brains and what we think about. When a bug bites me, I expect an itchy spot, a swelling up. I might get some welt. Could I loose my foot? This is the curse of having brains, having smarts! You see if a dog breaks its leg, Fido feels pain, but if I break my leg I feel pain, and then I have mental pain too! We all do. That makes us special...and wusses.
In 1970 I was standing where I shouldn't have been standing, and I got shot right in the hip. Felt like being hit by a wild pitch in baseball. It spun me round like a top, and I hit the sand on my back. I let go of my weapon but it had a sling and it stayed wrapped around my neck. I guess that's' why you have the damn things. I didn't yell out. I just didn't have time to. Two of my men near me dropped to chest high and low crawled over to me. Not only did it feel like I was hit by a Nolen Ryan fast pitch, but I knew I was hit. Shot! Like 10 things whizzed through my head in no special order.
Was I going to die?
Was I going to bleed out?
Was my weapon barrel clean or stuffed with sand?
I am now a burden to my group.
Can I still play basketball?
Could I get up?
Who the fuck shot me?
Are they coming?
Will I ever walk again?
Will my dick still work?
How long will therapy last?
Look what I have done. I have fucked up.
Then I got fucking mad. The mad of the unlucky.
All at once! All in a second like that! My life didn't pass before me. That or a rerun ain't worth seeing. There was not another shot. Quiet. I looked up and the four others with me were down and still, barrels up. I moved my toes in my boots and raised my knee. That was good. I tried to roll over on my chest, but someone stopped me. I felt my hip, and it was wet.
They wrapped me up and they had to half-carry me out. Two civilian vehicles picked us up, and I laid out in the back seat. My legs hurt. Both of them! And they worked too. My mind worked too, busy feeling guilty and angry. The dictionary would call it angst. Yeah, I was feeling all angst and shit. The docs said the tip of my left pelvis was shot. Bone was shattered.There would be splinters and surgery. And as the doses of painkiller came and went, my mind was busy with the future pain and recovery. And basketball.
If I lost basketball? MAN! If a dog had been shot, he would feel the physical pain, but Fido wouldn't be missing B-Ball. Through the years I've looked into the eyes of wounded people, and I see all that angst in their eyeballs. Medical personnel call it "psychic agonies." And when you treat a man that's down, you have to treat that too.
We are weak compared to many animals. We can't fly and have little foot speed. We can't run very far, and if we trip, something could break. Our sense of smell is bad and our hearing sucks. The least little weather fucks with our day. "It's too cold! It's too hot!" My bald head needs a hat from the sun. My eyes need sunglasses, and now I can't clip my toenails without binoculars.
Frail as we are, we manage to stay in one piece as long as we stay a little lucky too. We somehow remain the King of Beasts. So, YO! You little fucking ants, stay the fuck off my goddamn foot! Or, face the gigantic consequences.
Bye, bye
(We warned you! Sadly, even more Buffalo Nickel's observations can be found here: (The Buff) . Please, we beg you. Do not look.)
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The Historian Thucydides records King Leonidas saying this...
"A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors, will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
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