While surfing the net, I came across reference to the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, which is a series of self-defence techniques devised by the Corps.

I never joined the military, but I have read quite a bit of military history, especially World War II, so I'm fond of the Corps. And I do like their approach - they have a belt system, but only a few ranks and no one is higher than black belt 2nd dan. And, since they could literally be fighting for their lives, they focus on practical techniques, as opposed to patterns.

One thing, though - they seem to have gun defence techniques, which IMHO are not practical - you can't take a gun faster than he can pull the trigger. And I also don't approve of knife-defence techniques, though, if you can get close enough to grab his knife arm, you may have a chance.

That said, here's a Youtube video of what they do.

I think Stormdragon knows a good bit about military CQC training.

The thing that a show such as Human Weapon showed is that there are horses for courses. Jason Chambers (who presented HW), was a decent professional cage fighter and brown belt in BJJ. He struggled quite a bit when he was challenged with Military based systems in Israel and USA. They had a different trainng mentality to what he was use to.

Although he was technically proficent in unarmed fighting, Chambers had to adapt to miltary based training as he wasn't use to the mentality/strategies employed by professional armies in Israel and the USA.

There were a series of high profile net-videos of the UFC fighters training with the marines, and going through their CQC work and drills with them. They were put on the site last year- check ufc.com, probably still there.

While you may not feel training to deal with armed assailants is a valid thing to do in civilian life, I would ask what choice those who's job is armed combat have? They cant 'run away' like a civilian should consider in a life preservation situation- in the military, they call that desertion

Also, in the unfortunate event that a soldier has to use H2H combat, it means things have gone wrong badly- their position has been overrun/infiltrated, or they have lost their rifle/side arm. Its a last ditch grasp to stay alive, so in those circumstances, 'low percentage' techniques are better than 'no percentage' techniques, ie. sit there and cry while someone puts a bullet in your head.

As for knife disarms, while its unrealistic to expect to succeed with no injury, because of the range involved, contact and control of the blade/arm wielding it is a realistic goal- yes you will have horrible defensive wounds, but again, if someone is attacking you with a blade, would you prefer a little hope or no hope?

[quote=TaekwonDoFan]
One thing, though - they seem to have gun defence techniques, which IMHO are not practical - you can't take a gun faster than he can pull the trigger. And I also don't approve of knife-defence techniques, though, if you can get close enough to grab his knife arm, you may have a chance.quote]

1.You can disarm faster than they can pull the trigger.
2.Being attacked by someone with a knife and having a strong disapproval of the attack isn't much of a defense.
Your opinion is more than likely created from an absence or low level of training in either area.

In a fist fight expect to be punched.
In a knife fight expect to be cut.
In a gunfight expect to be shot.
Expect to overcome it and your opponent.

Duane

I'm curious, what's the difference in mentality?

Cord, you're right - knife defence is very hard, but it offers a bit of hope, as opposed to no hope.

The "mentality" I referred to was that of survival mindset compared to a combat sports mindset.

During the episode where they were in Israel, Jason Chambers was confronted by an attacker in full body padding with a fake knife. Chambers was allowed to to whatever he wanted. Chambers was stabbed something like 11 times in 15 seconds. He made the mistake of attempting to clinch his attacker without getting any sort of control over the knife arm. His instructor stated that Chambers was a great ring fighter but had little ability for self defense.

The instructor then showed the presenters of HW some defences against a knife when you are unarmed. Bull Duff, the co-presenter of HW, stated that the blocking moved they were shown resembled something that you would see in Karate. The point you could take from this is that the physical moves taught in "civilian" martial arts are pretty similar to the moves taught in military arts, it's just they may be structured and taught in a different way.


Another example: A similar incident occured when the show Fight Quest went to Israel. Initially one of the presenters continually went to ground when confronted with an assailant. His instructor berated him for doing so. Now in an MMA match it might be advantageous to go to ground. However, in the drill in FQ the goal was to run a gauntlet of attackers and survive. In that situation going to ground wasn't the right thing to do.

Interesting. And there was a professional boxer, who became a millionaire, who tried to join the Marines but quit after a few days, not because the training was too tough, but because the mental approach was different - in the Marines, he had to adopt the regimented lifestyle, which was not what prizefighters were apparently used to.

Agreed.

I'm Army, however I know a little bit about the USMC hand to hand program thanks to having a lot of Marine friends and the concepts of both services's programs are similar.

In regards to knife and gun defences, think about it this way, in the civilian world 99.9% chance you can just give the guy everything you got, not look at their face, and live. In the military world you're gonna die anyway. It's war, they are trying to kill you not take your stuff (well both usually), so since you're gonna die anyway, might as well go for broke and attack, and if you do that you might as well have been familiarized with actual, refined ways of doing that. It's true you can't outrun a bullet, but if you get out of the bullet's trajectory you might just come out on top. They may well pull the trigger faster then you can move, but not if they are distracted first or just happen to hesitate. Not everyone is the same. There's a chance and so you should try whatever you can. It's not practical for a soldier to stand there and get shot either. Same for knife defences.

Another point I'd like to make, is that all of this stuff is meant to develope an aggressive, hardass mindset, where you truly believe you can overcome any odds and destroy the enemy.

And finally, there's such a tiny chance of being in a situation completely unarmed against armed attackers that it's really a moot point. For that reason, we spend very little time on H2H, it's just not they likely to happen whereas it's incredibly likely that I will end up in a firefight or coming across IED's or something. If I'm on patrol, get into a fight and my rifle goes down, I'll have a whole bunch of friends real close to back me up, and if not for some reason, my rifle makes a good melee weapon and I'll have, likely, multiple knives strapped to me, plus we're loaded down with armor so a large portion of our bodies are protected. It's not as easy as you might think to hit someone in the head, even at point blank range, under stress.
The most likely way you would end up in a close in fight, in war, is while clearing rooms. And in that case, it'll pobably be someone who doesn't have a weapon tackling you and trying to take yours. The answer to this is knife them a bunch of times or headbutt them with your helmet and put them in yoru buddies line of sight to get shot. They also will likely have a knife. You have a much longer and heavier melee weapon so you will probably win in that case.

The USMC approach tends to use more knife and gun techniques then we do and more emphasis is on using them and frankly, it's drilled all the time to develope a killing mindset. The guy who is armed is gettign more out of it then the unarmed guy during the drill.
The thing is, you're approaching it in terms of the civilian world, and that's a completely different animal entirely from the military world.

You might have noticed that while yeah, some of it was unarmed defenses agaisnt weapons such as a pistol, a lot of it was pugil sticks and knife vs. knife where the Mariens where going through a series of stabs and slashes. The whole point is A. to get used to the idea of stabbing and slashing someone to death and B. getting certain targets ingrained. With pugil sticks, it's all about attacking viciously. And everytime you point a gun at someone, even a training gun, you get more used to the idea of doing that for real, so while the unarmed defender learns a technique that could potentially save his life (however unlikely that situation is or the possibility of coming out on top is) the other guy is gettign used to drawing down on a person. Facign a training knife, depending on how realistic it looks and feels, after gettign put through a hellish workout, and having to defend yourself, teaches stress inoculation and to be aggressive and simple when you're exhausted. Most of this isn't really that applicable to an average civilian but for a soldier it's very, very applicable as we're facing people who are only wantign to kill us. Hope all of this sheds al ittle light on the hwole thing.