Size, age, shape, strength, etc, versus size, shape, strength, age, etc. and I will make up a new word here. “Rev-ness” for the etc. column. How revved up are you? You’ve revved up actual engines on things before. You know what rev means. What about your “revness” in a crime fighting and war fighting In the “zero-to-sixty” car-speed-scale version of fighting, what speed are you at? What speed do you need? They’re WHO, WHAT and HOW questions in the Who, What, Where, When, How and Why.
In sports they have weight classes, essentially “size” groupings. Knowing that restricted-to-size training does not hold up well in real life, in the old Army police academy and old Texas police academies, part of a final exam part, so to speak, was box for 2 minutes against anyone, any shape, size, age, strength, male, female, etc. Names were drawn out of hat. Training for this was rather incomplete and poor. The academies at that time both taught a mix of karate and old school jujitsu. (It should have at least been kickboxing too, but…) The MP academy had off-hours boxing classes, which I attended. Most didn’t attend, but I was so use to going to Kenpo classes at night and Saturdays, such was a habit I slipped right into.
The academies’ objective with this little test was to see if someone could “last-fight, out-last” until backup arrived. Two minutes arrival? Ha. But it was symbolic. Some of the match-ups were ridiculous. No one really failed, although it was obvious sometimes they failed and it was pretty gruesome to watch. It was like a little, pressure, sports event really with no cheating or weapons. I had prior kickboxing in Parker Kenpo and their area tournaments in my pre-Army, early 70s, so I was able to “pass” that okay enough.
Then because people were getting hurt once in a while, military and police admins stopped this final “test-thing.” They did the same thing with pugil-stick fighting in the Army, shutting it too down. In those, anybody fought anybody with big, padded sticks.
In all of it I did and saw and heard, two things REALLY counted. Size and revness. If your engine is running at 25 miles an hour? His at 50 MPH? You’re in trouble, no matter what you know. Dan Inosanto said once in a seminar, “Train slow? Fight slow.” (Of course you must learn in a speed progression. As Joe Hubbard use to say, “you can’t learn how to swim in a tsunami.”) And if you’re a big bastard and a little rough with some pain toloerance, you could be a monster.
What is the average size of a person? Where does your size fit? Percentages. I had lunch recently with a bunch of Inosanto old timers, and swapped stories of Bruce Lee on this. Bruce knew his lesser size and knew he would fight bigger people on average. So, he developed drills and plans for this probability, like speed, angles and strength.
(This takedown is usually called “The Firepole.” I first saw it in a Larry Hartsell seminar. Then I saw Ernesto Presas do it with a stick. It is a staple in my Survival Centric and Essential FMA courses. It’s like a half tackle where you attempt to remain standing. A survivalist-combativist does not willingly go to the ground. The bad guy may grab you and pull you to the ground, but we do not go here willingly, “sacrifice fall,” to participate in sport, tap-out, chess. Always learn ground n’ pound. Reality fighting is checkers, not chess.)
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