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Had an interesting experience with a self defence class earlier in the week.
I was visiting my sick father in my home town earlier this week and I had the chance to train at a few new places. There is a Royce Gracie school in the town and I visited it. It was cool, they had a whole bunch of really talented people. It was open mat and it was a good time because I got to roll with a bunch of people I've never rolled with before and that's always a real eye opener. I mean, my main place has a revolving door of people coming through, I see new people every practice but I think going to a new school is interesting because every instructor focuses on different shit so, the style is way different. For instance, these guys all had really developed guards imho, and really good technique.The subs really 'snapped' like with the triangle, they could shoot it with very little adjustment, so like, the 'dinosaur arm' gaurd pass was not a good idea for instance.
I met this guy in the class who was telling me that he studied TJJ and taught self defense. He was a college kid too, and he was writing a senior thesis on the grappling concepts practiced by different cultures(through history as well as modern, he was mostly focusing on Japan). He had wrestled in High School and he also did kick boxing and he listed off maybe 20 or 30 different arts that he 'studied' in some shape or form, some of the philosophy was kind of Jeet Kun Do-ish but conceptually he was pretty much in line with what most educated observers put forward, in feeling that a mixture of techniques is what bring success in modern mma (boxing, wrestling, submissions, kicking, etc.) with all its facets focused on winning or defending yourself.
He started telling me that he gave this self defense class to make some money and invited me to go to it the next day. He called it TJJ concepts for traditional self defense. He didn't seem that weird when I first met him if maybe a little paranoid (he kind of prefaced what he was saying by telling me that it was 'priviledged' information thats why I'm not going to name names or tell you exactly where it is or what it was called just because he seemed like a nice guy and I don't want to be disrespectful).
The class was interesting. I guess one of the biggest philosophies was "If someone attacks you its better to have a weapon than not have a weapon" so he had all this info on how to get a conceal and carry permit, knife laws, gun laws, etc. that was offered to the class. He had boxing dummies with tape one them marking off kidneys, trachea, etc. and we drilled stabbing them with heavy fake knives (ones that were weighted to feel real. We practiced dirty boxing from the clinch really lightly of course because some of that stuff can really mess you up. He went over where to conceal what. We did this drill with pads where a guy came at you swinging while you had to try to get your fake knife out of your shoe as fast as possible and get them with it (at full power, the blade was foam). Alot of it was very Arnis-like, with fencing concepts and military knife wileding stuff sprinkled in.
There were a lot of business people there and some women, it was a very diverse group of people, it kind of surprised me because its a really small town, there is a pretty big meth problem but it really isn't that dangerous.
I was wondering what you guys think of stuff like this. I thought it was an interesting take on self-defense because it was pretty realistic. I think BJJ and Boxing and other combat sports do make you better able to handle people in real situation but I think that training for the worst is also good. Of course, if some guy is fucking with you at a bar and you flip out and stab them, you probably will go to jail so I don't know if immediately jumping to the conclusion to use lethal force if you're attacked is agood idea. Then again, its kind of a common sense issue and you have to decided the threat level yourself, case by case.
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