Sunday, January 16, 2011

who, what, where, when, how and why

In the who, what, where, when, how and why of life, positioning falls into the "where" category. Where are you? Where is he?

To me that is big topic. From the macro to the micro. In BJJ or any submission wrestling tunnel vision, positioning means only the micro, the very small little positions of your body versus his body. Inches. Half-inches. less. How many times have you heard a BJJ practitioner declare-

"the most important thing I have learned is positioning."

MAN! I have heard it a lot of times.

Think about that. Think about what that actually means inside their world. Think about what that means to them within their confinements. Does it really mean positioning to get a submission hold or a choke? When I hear that remark from a BJJ practitioner (and by that, I mean ANY submission fighter...wrestlers too) I always feel a little uncomfortable for them. I mean, I know what they mean. Yes it is important. But it is very micro in body and mind. It is actually as important as everything is important. I mean, if I said the most important thing to me in a ground fight is breaking the guy's nose, someone would agree me. Positioning my body and my arm so that my hammer fist can be position onto his nose. About six times. Why not seven?

To me, positioning means MANY things, like getting behind cover in a gun fight. Getting outside someones arms for a take down. Working my way to a door way to escape fast. Cutting off an escape route for a fugitive. All that is real world positioning.

If you know me for years now, you know I have these commandments of fighting system doctrine preparation. Macro to micro. Mission. Strategies. Tactics. Situations and on down to micro - the smallest positions. Your training doctrine depends on your mission. Look at this from a WW II perspective:

Mission - invade Europe on D-Day
Strategy - how do we do it? By boat. Beach landings. Air support.
Tactics - what generic tactics do the troops need to execute this strategy
Situational - what specific tactics will a soldier need to fight in these identified
situations. Identify the situations and train those tactics
Positional - the last little section. Probably the most intricate, if there is time to
train it. Learning these tiny specifics of those tactics in those situations.

A wrestlers world is very small. If your world is small, you can worry more and fuss about small things. You can meet at 8 pm twice a week and roll around, working on a mat doing small things, for years and years and years - work for many years, which will do almost NOTHING for preparing you for a wolf pack attack by three thugs at an ATM machine, or killing a Nazi hiding with a subgun in a ruined building. Or dodging a crack head. I mean there is SO MUCH. AND so MUCH positioning involved in everything, that for a fighter to declare that minuscule positioning in a matted ground fight is the most important fighting attribute....is small. That is not a system geared for real word survival or self defense. You are not just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. You are on the wrong boat.

That kind of micro positioning is not everything when it comes to a mixed weapon, mixed person (size, shapes, strengths) mixed terrain world of combatives.

We fight in a mixed weapon, mixed persons, mixed terrain world.

More on this later.

Hock
http://hockscombatforum.com/index.php

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