I picked up the 4 ShivWorks DVD’s. This is a review of one of them: Practical Unarmed Combat.
Note that I have no connection with ShivWorks or SouthNarc. I paid for these DVD’s out of my own pocket money. I’m just some guy that happened to be a customer, bought the DVD, watched it, and wanted to blog about what I saw.
Here’s the official trailer for the DVD:
Geoff Thompson coined a term, “the fence”.
The fence is a self-defense technique. It’s so simple, but it’s not easy. Basically, the fence is putting your hands up and out in front of you. Poor description, but watch the first video and at about 0:46 you’ll see the fence. Watch the whole video to catch all the subtleties.
The fence aims to control a person: attacker, offensive person, someone in front of you. You’re working to maintain distance, so they cannot get in on you. The thing about the fence is that it’s not necessarily obvious nor aggressive. You have your hands up, you have your hands out. If you’re a person that speaks with your hands, this may not feel too awkward to you but you’ll just have to adapt how you move your hands so they don’t drop below your waist. The fence creates just that — a fence between you and the other person. From there you can control distance, you can use verbal skills to deescalate the situation. If however the situation escalates into violence, the fence puts your hands in a place for immediate action. You can block, trap, strike, parry all from a fence position.
Related to this, consider mantis blocks.
Another such stance some term the “chin-and-elbow cup”. Let’s assume you are right-handed. You will have your right hand cupping your left elbow, and the webbing between the thumb and index finger of your left hand will cradle your chin. This gives you an appearance of being in thought about whatever the dude is talking to you about. Some will say that you should also blade your strong side away. What does this do? It provides your body with coverage: right arm is protecting your mid and lower body, left arm is covering your upper body including having your arm in front of your throat. There are many possibilities and variations on this theme that you can do. Explore.
I have a Renzo Gracie book, Mastering Jujitsu, which discusses a stance called the “prayer stance”. Basically it appears as if you are standing with your hands in a prayer-like state, submissive. But of course it’s a deceptive stance in that it allows you to block, strike, drive in, whatever may be necessary.
There’s Tony Blauer’s “flinch” response:
There’s a lot out there that aims to look at self-defense from a non-agressive yet defensively advantageous position. Fences, flinch-response, and other such stances can be a vital part of your self-defense system, useful to help you avoid the problem in the first place or to help you survive and win if things get ugly.
I believe I first heard of “SouthNarc” and ShivWorks through KR Training. SouthNarc runs a lot of seminars on his own, but my angle in was via “full-spectrum” courses offered in conjunction with Tom Givens’ Rangemaster. Specifically, in September 2009 I’ll be taking a “combined skills” course with Givens and SouthNarc via KR Training. I’m looking forward to it, as both Tom Givens and SouthNarc are well regarded trainers. It should be a humbling but educational experience.
I’ve also become interested in checking out all I can from SouthNarc because he has a background in Filipino martial arts, which I’ve just started studying. As I tend to do when I get involved in new things, I like to devour all the knowledge I can on the topic, so I’ll seek out books, videos, websites, people, forums and obtain all the information I can. I’ve read numerous things online from and about SouthNarc, and watched some videos on YouTube. So the next step? ShivWorks has produced 4 DVD’s:
I purchased them through MD Tactical, who were very quick with order turnaround. I just received them in the mail and have started watching. I’m sure I’ll post some reviews as I complete each DVD.
Updated: added link to my review of PUC v1
Yesterday I mentioned Colin Powell having buyer’s remose over Obama.
Now Ted Rall expresses his. (h/t RobertaX)
He [Bush] was the worst president the U.S. had ever had. Until this one.
On major issues and a lot of minor ones, Obama is the same as or worse than Bush. But Bush had an opposition to contend with. Obama has a compliant Democratic Congress. Lulled to somnolent apathy by Obama’s charming manners, mastery of English (and yes, the color of his skin), leftist activists and journalists have been reduced to quiet disappointment, mild grumbling and unaccountable patience.
I don’t care about window dressing. Sure, it’s nice that Obama is intelligent. But policies matter–not charm. And Obama’s policies are at least as bad as Bush’s.
Some numbers:
Bush was the biggest spender in history, running up a $1.8 trillion deficit with wasteful wars and tax cuts. But next to Obama, Bush was a tightwad. Glamour Prez hasn’t been around six months, yet the Congressional Budget Office reports that he already has quadrupled the deficit by an extra $8.1 trillion. “The total debt held by the public [will] rise from 57 percent of GDP in 2009 to 82 percent (!) of GDP in 2019,” reports U.S. News & World Report.
Obama is sinking us into financial oblivion 72 times faster than Bush.
Where’d the money go? Mostly to insurance companies. Banks. Brokerage firms. Who used it to redecorate their offices and give themselves raises.
Against logic and history Obama claimed his bailout package would create jobs. Instead, unemployment has risen by 1.3 million. Has Obama’s plan saved a single homeowner from foreclosure? Reporters can’t find any.
Some snark:
I liked Bush better. He wasted our money when the economy wasn’t quite as sucky. And he didn’t insult us by pretending to care. Come on, Barack, smirk! Truth in advertising!
Some admission:
Obama has done more damage than Bush. And no one’s stopping him. Which makes him worse.
Sorry, Mr. Bush. If I’d known what was coming, I would’ve been nicer.
The sad thing is, if during the election folks just looked at Obama’s track record (you know, his actions while he was in the US and Illinois Senates, not all of his charismatic election-time talk), you would have been able to see this coming.
I just read on BW&BK that former Crimson Glory singer “Midnight” has passed away.
I remember discovering Crimson Glory and thinking they were pretty cool, especially the vocals… the guy could sing. Powerful, operatic.
Here’s the video for their song “Lonely”, which really showcases his vocal abilities… and their huge hair (dang!).
James Rummel has a cool posting on 5 weird guns.
I like the Machinegun HDH. That just looks cool.
Colin Powell expresses his concern over the current adminstration:
“I’m concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them,” Mr. Powell said in an excerpt of an interview with CNN’s John King, released by the network Friday morning.
[…]
But, he said, “one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all.”
“And we can’t pay for it all,” said Mr. Powell….
Remember that segment in Eddie Murphy’s Raw where he talked about crackers? Back before November 2008, Obama was a Ritz cracker. Now people are discovering he’s just a Saltine. 🙂
A few choice quotes:
He hates the communists. “Communism makes people lazy. Yah!”
And this is most telling:
“Joe”, he said, “People complain about how unequal things are with the rich executives in a capitalist society. But it’s just the same under communism–it’s the politically connected that have the money and the people that aren’t connected don’t have anything. I know. I lived it. Communism, it’s very bad.”
Oleg Volk discusses the ethics of weapon use. (h/t to Robb Allen)
For those that may not want to click on this figuring it’s just some pro-gun justification rah-rah article, give it a read. Oleg has a rather well-thought out line of reasoning.
This came over a mailing list I subscribe to. The poster, Jeff Mau, is an instructor at a respected training school, in addition to being a police officer and SWAT member, amongst his other credentials.
Shooting someone with a pistol in soft tissue is like sticking them under a drill press and drilling holes, or as Dr. Shertz states it is like poking them with a #2 pencil. It is simply not impressive to a motivated attacker.
For FMJ
- A 9mm will make a 9mm hole with around 50 inches of penetration
- A .40 S&W will make a 10mm hole (I don’t have depth of penetration info on hand, but it will be a lot)
- A .45 ACP will make a 11.5mm hole with with around 65 inches of penetration
For quality JHP
- A 9mm will make a 15.5mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
- A .40 S&W will make a 17mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
- A .45 ACP will make a 19mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
50 plus inches of penetration is suboptimal. For defensive purposes, a quality JHP round is necessary.
The moral of the story is that all pistol rounds suck. Your skill to shoot a reliable weapon system fast and accurate is far more important than bullet size. That being said we all shoot 9mm.
And the reason they (the instructors at that school) all shoot 9mm is because they can shoot it faster and more accurately than the other 2 calibers. I’ve previously expressed my preference for 9mm.
Updated: Let me add some clarification.
There’s a long and seemingly endless caliber war on 9mm Parabellum vs. .45 ACP, and these days .40 S&W can get thrown into the war as well. Why is there a war, because the issue of “terminal ability” between these rounds is about the same. If one was distinctly superior in the area of “terminal ability”, there’d be no war/argument/discussion. Sure .45 ACP makes a bigger hole than a 9mm, but does a bigger hole necessarily equate to better terminal ability? In the laboratory, probably so. In a real life self-defense encounter? There’s far too many other factors involved. While caliber is important (.22 LR is not ideal for defensive work, but is arguably better than nothing at all), there are many other factors to take into account when choosing a handgun for self-defense. When talking about “all pistol rounds suck”, it is generally alluding to the terminal ability of the round, and in the end, all of the “major self-defense handgun calibers” are about the same in terminal ability.
Thus, if the 3 calibers are essentially the same in that area, what can differentiate them? Recoil for one. The recoil of .40 S&W is greater than the recoil of .45 ACP is greater than the recoil of 9mm Parabellum. If all things were equal other than the gun’s chambering, I’m sure first shots of guns in those calibers would all get off just as fast. But how about follow-up shots? The more the recoil, the slower follow-up shots will be. If you have more recoil to manage, it’s more effort to keep the sights in your field of vision and reacquire them before peeling off the next shot. To me, why exert all this extra effort and have to fight my weapon system more than is really required? Maybe it’s the engineer in me that likes efficiency, but if I can exert less yet get the same or better results, why wouldn’t I do that?
For me, shooting 9mm allows me to be a more effective handgunner. 9mm provides less recoil, so I can shoot it faster and ensure greater accuracy when I shoot it. This isn’t to say .45 or .40 are less accurate rounds, just one’s ability to shoot them. Sure I can shoot .45 and .40 fairly quickly and accurately (tho I admit I don’t care for the snappiness of .40’s recoil), but I can shoot 9mm better. Then you add in the increased capacity, less cost per round, and other such factors, and that’s why I prefer to shoot 9mm.
I’m not against .45 ACP. I think it’s a fine round. If you determine that .45 ACP works best for you, by all means use that. In the end, the key thing is to have something as that’s better than nothing. Then get training, practice, get more training, more practice, and become proficient with it. In the end, that “software” is going to take you further than any hardware.
Stuff From Hsoi 