Sooner or later in this game the question is asked “Ok what type of martial art do you do then?

Usually at this point there is a pause as you try to explain that you don’t train in a “traditional” system but in the much more unorthodox and hard to categorise  “combatives.”

The retort is then a confused “What’s that??  Is it a BJJ style”

“Errr – similar name but no, not quite”

How do you define the answer to that question.  It can mean a whole host of things to different people.  Many instructors have spent whole books trying to give a definitive answer – and have still been nowhere near to a satisfactory conclusion at the end of it all.

It gets even more confusing to the uninitiated when the different “factions” of combatives get together and have a flame-war!  Is WW2 combatives the best, Modern the best, tactical the best, street, core, urban…..the list goes on and on (apologies to any I might have omitted).  Jeez – even I get confused and I have to do it as part of a job!

Personally I just don’t think that there is a definite answer.  Combatives is a catch-all term – it is far too varied and complex for that.  Just as we as practitioners are varied and complex.

But what I can tell you is what OUR version of Modern Combatives is, what its all about and how we define it at the Modern Combatives Group.

Modern Combatives (or combat at close quarters) is a derivative of close combat used during wartime operations by such fighting forces as the commandos, special operations forces, and the USMC.

It is not a traditional martial art or mixed martial arts style, it is instead an aggressive mindset geared towards eliminating your attacker expediently.  For us combatives is more of a “doing” or “action” word rather than a label or title.
Many individuals practise what is termed traditional WW2 combatives and pay strict homage to the syllabus of Fairbairn, Styers, Applegate and Biddle.  All noted Second World War close combat instructors of much experience, skill and toughness.  That is they're choice.

We at the Modern Combatives Group do not.

Modern Combatives utilises the core skill-set but also feels free to introduce other close combat concepts into the training. We tailor what we need to fit the situation at hand for today's World.  If it works USE it - if it doesn't BIN it!

We do after all live in the real world of gang attacks, personal security threats, street assaults and global risks , and as such Modern Combatives is adaptive to the situation on the ground.  Quite often in a violent encounter we will have no second chances, so we have to be as cutting edge as we can be.

This is our approach and viewpoint to combatives and self protection, it is not a style or art but a range of "serial" strikes and counter-attacks designed to help the individual prevail under a violent assault from a determined aggressor.

So, while we train in the more well known techniques of tiger claw, chin jabs and edge of hand strikes, we also intersperse them with a variety of concepts based on our own training and experiences from working in the security industry and from working in high-threat environments worldwide.  It is here that the “Modern” in the title comes into its own.

Our approach to close combat is flexible and we are not locked into a technique or syllabus unless we have confidence in it gained from first hand experience.   I like the Line, "good technique is not a museum piece."

Its says it all.

We don’t get all dewey eyed about the past.  We respect what has gone before, but we can also look to the present and future as well.  We never stop learning and evolving.

For us close combat can be delivering a face smash, punch or chin jab to an attacker, close combat can be using a stick or brick as an impact weapon, it can be biting, gouging, spitting, smashing limbs, breaking bones.

It can be stabbing with an improvised weapon, scalding with a hot drink in the attackers face, slamming them into a wall or kicking them into the ground.  

In extremis it can be jamming a firearm into the bad guy's guts and unloading a half-magazine in at close quarters, or maybe just pistol whipping him to put him down, or clubbing him with our rifle butt………. 

Is the picture we are painting vivid enough yet?

Close combat has no rules and no referees; you do what you have to do to survive the situation at hand.  It doesn't matter what the technique is called as long as you get a result from the strike and it has POWER behind it (This doesn't stop some bonehead prattling on about "ah, but you have to deliver a chin-jab in exactly the only correct way as in the wartime manuals" - nonsense there are many different types of chin jabs/strikes - the only way that works is the way that works best for YOU!).

Some combative instructors, who have come late to the game have an almost zealot-like loathing for future instructors who want to tread the path.  Its as if combative time began when they INVENTED it!!

Look in the dictionary and you will find a picture of these types under "hypocrite." They started out with one martial arts style, then another, now they try to re-write history and play combative "catch-up" in order to gain some kind of legitimacy as the first to promote this.  They have missed the point completely about close combat and what it involves.  After all people where doing this stuff long before these instructors were even a twinkle in their Daddy’s eye….

Best advice is to ignore the log-in legends (and their yes men) and treat them with disdain.  

But enough of negative influences.

I started close combat training in the mid 1980's as a teenager when it was virtually unheard of.  I had an unarmed combat background in boxing intermingled with regular wrestling training and kickboxing skills.  It was a good grounding, however I was looking for more practical skills. 

My first instructor was also my old boxing coach and had served with the Airborne forces during the War. He was a punchy little street-fighter, who knew from first hand experience how to throw a powerful hook punch, chin jabs and put in devastating boot kicks.  Little Tommy taught basics only - basic strikes, kicks, and personal weapons skills, but above all else he instilled aggressive ATTITUDE! It was definitely a condensed curriculum. 

He summed it up with the line, "That's all you need - after that it's up to you to find out the rest and work it your own way."
And it's true. You need one good experienced instructor to show you the fundamentals of how it works in the real world - then the rest of the journey can be yours alone.

It is a personal thing with no rights and no wrongs - ONLY RESULTS MATTER!!

That is what we train for - results. End of story. 

Close combat - to quote Carl Cestari, "is not rocket science" despite the best efforts of some to turn it into almost a quasi-science/psychology lesson.  At base level, and this has been said many, many times before, it comes down to the individual. Who wants it more in a fight, and who has the juice to keep on going when the energy reserves are almost empty.

When it all goes belly up in the dark car park late at night, no combative internet guru will be there to help, the DVD's from "celebrity" instructors will seem inconsequential and probably most of the reading matter that you have researched or downloaded will be the last thing on your mind.   

What will matter will be pure naked aggression and powerful strikes, all gained from realistic and practical training.

Anything else is just "fluff."

I would like to leave you with a quote by the legendary US security operator Kelly McCann, which perfectly sums up what close combat is all about;  "A martial art is what you do with someone, (a reciprocal arrangement of strike, parries, and counter-strikes); combatives is what you do TO someone."

Read it through a few times until you get it - it's all there in that sentence.

Looking forward to training with you soon.  

Copyright – MCG - 2006

“I would consider tai chi to be the ultimate skirmish art” said a night club doorman of 28 years and lifelong martial artist.  “This is exactly what happens on the doors and it gives us the skills to deal with being pushed, pulled grabbed and hit from all directions at the same time, we’re often in a melee and the ability to cope with simultaneous multi directional attacks is essential.”

The mental image that most have of Tai Chi is that of the ‘hippy’ or ‘health’ version and of old age pensioners creaking along to the only range of movement and speed that they can cope with.  Or it may be of the ‘youtube’ version of bodies flying unconvincingly away from an aged masters ‘magic’ light touch or of bad karate or aikido applications to the strange movements.

Tai Chi is a martial art.  It can be taught very methodically.  Those that consider it a martial art often say that you have to practice it for years to be any good, in fact the same can said for any art. Tai Chi starts with the qigong exercises, in the Yang Family these are essential foundation training that releases the body core to allow internal softening, connection and rooting.  They then work methodically through the body, opening the joints, softening the muscle and fascia connections, flexing the spine, correcting the posture and working all the powerful directional movements that a human body can do.  The ‘exercises’ also work the ‘jins’, the energy lines through the body exciting the system to engender a vigorous health and positive, powerful movements and technique.

When skills are taught, they are taught in the exercises first, then put into the hand forms, weapons forms, push hands and finally boxing and grappling applications.

Being taught properly and methodically means that the student is taught what he ‘needs’ rather than what he ‘wants’, this is known as ‘eating bitter’ and can be construed by a part of modern society who want to be ‘entertained’ as boring and painful.  Those people would be attracted to what is known as ‘tourist’ Tai Chi where they are entertained with simple unskillful movements that make them happy and keep the instructors rice bowl full.   This is the popular form of Tai Chi.

To be taught properly, the student needs to learn how to stand, how to breathe, how to think and focus his attention and then how to move.  He must ‘empty his cup’ of whatever he thought martial arts and fighting were to be able to learn the skills from exercise to form in a pure liberated movement free from emotion and wrong intention.  He would then learn how to generate power from the feet, through the legs, manipulated by the core and torso to be fed out through the arms and hands.  Different forms of connected power are used for striking, manipulation, locking, escaping, strangling, choking and throwing.

It takes time and effort (the meaning of the words ‘kung fu’) to work these skills into the body until they become natural and any form of trying to force them will result in unnatural tension and anxiety.

Development is a lifelong process, it’s said that the student will first learn in feet, then inches, then hundredths of an inch, then thousandths… then hundredths of a thousandth of an inch.  BUT….. he is better on day 2 than he would be on day 1, any skill learning is the same process.  ‘Tourist’ technique in any art may work until the student meets a powerful, internally connected fighter, who will simply walk through or disrupt anything he has to offer.

The difference with Tai Chi is that it is a skirmish art; it is a continuous double helix spiral of movement and momentum, during this continuous movement the practitioner remains actively powerful and responsive in all directions for every hundredth of a thousandth of an inch.

The founder of the Yang style, Yang Lu Chan, was the son of a farmer who loved the Martial Arts and had studied Shaolin Hung Quan with a local instructor before studying in the Chen family village under Chen style Master Chen Chang Xin.  Yang Lu Chan was his most talented student and eventually returned to his home village at Yung Nien where he taught for a living.  He was undefeated locally and in his travels where he won many matches utilising his soft and yielding art that as a result became known as ‘mien quan’ (cotton boxing) or hua quan (neutralising boxing).  ‘Cotton boxing’ because for the opponent, it was like putting their hands into soft cotton and finding a needle in the middle!

By the time he was middle aged Yang taught at the Imperial Court and was tested by experts many times and never defeated, this earned him the title ‘Yang the Invincible’.  He became the martial arts instructor to the Shen Ji Battalion and taught in the Royal Households earning the title 'Ba Yeh’ (Eight Lords) because eight princes studied under him.

Teaching at the Imperial Court was a grave responsibility in that he was obliged to teach well or it would be considered treason with a probable death sentence!  It also gave Yang the opportunity to meet with and compare his skills with the best in the land.

Yang was a hard taskmaster to his three sons with one dying early, one attempting suicide and one frequently running away and attempting to become a monk.  Eventually both remaining sons became masters in their own right and both taught at the Imperial Court.

‘Cotton boxing’ is an interesting term because it indicates where the vital secret of Yang Tai Chi Chuan lies.  In combat the mind tends to be coarse and responds only to harsh and sudden movement ignoring the soft and sensitive.  The Tai Chi practitioner develops the skill of  ‘four ounces to move a thousand pounds’ and when the opponents mind is going coarse, his becomes more sensitive and works on a subliminal level neutralizing the opponents force with light touches, sticking, following, redirecting and controlling with power connected from the feet and legs up through the core, manipulated by the waist and out through he hands.  The ‘soft’ strikes carry that same connected power that although deceptively soft, carries the ‘kick’ of a donkey!

It becomes a ‘skirmish art’ because the body moves in that framed, posturally aligned and internally connected manner and is able to repel attackers from any direction at any time.  I remember when I talked about ‘fa jin’ being ‘like a whip’ to Ma Lee Yang she thought about it for a moment and then said that it was more like a ‘pin ball machine’.  This troubled me for ages, as I couldn’t see her point until I grasped the double helix and the ability to bounce or send power to any point of the body and in any direction in an instant.  A whip has vulnerable points in its’ movement and is committed – the pinball isn’t.

It makes the martial aspect of Tai Chi very different to that of most other martial arts.   I don’t think there is a ‘best’ art, only the best art for the character of each student.  It’s never the art, but the person that practices it that makes it efficient.

Good Yang style Tai Chi as a ‘skirmish’ art certainly suits doormen, security personnel and law enforcement officers.  I have taught all 3 categories successfully for over 3 decades.  Sometimes you have to search for the right instructor and art and not be put off or be influenced by others or by the first instructors you meet.  It can take as much time and effort to find the right instructor as the actual training itself!  People have often said to me “I always knew it was there in Tai Chi, it was just not easy to find”…..

Steve Rowe is an International Tai Chi Instructor teaching Presidential Bodyguards, Security Personnel, Police Self Defence Instructors and runs an association with over 15,000 students across Europe.  He is also an 8^th Dan in Karate, 3^rd Dan in Iaido, 2^nd Dan Jodo and 1^st Dan Ju Jitsu.

He is the Chairman of the Martial Arts Standards Agency and Shi Kon Martial Arts International.

You can read his blog and articles at www.themartialarchive.com and his website at www.shikon.com