Outside of my schoolyard days I haven’t had any confrontations that even went violent. I’ve been pretty good at avoiding & de-escalating & I think most people would be if they would refrain from needing to have the last word. I don’t care what some random person thinks of me. What’s important is that I get home to my family. If that means I walk away while someone calls me names that’s fine. If it means I have to clinch them up, fight for positional dominance & burn them down from a high 2 position then that’ll suck considerably, but I’ll still be around & the end result that is most important to me will be the same.
A lot of people get all ramped up with the Warrior Mindset stuff but fail to accept that, for the most part, the Civilized Human Being Mindset will get them along much better in life.
The skills in between are an interesting area because there is so much fluff & BS about this or that hand to hand system is used by __________ or MMA is trash on the street you need _____________ or whatever. So, instead of going to an MMA gym, or getting some combatives training people wander around with gun, mouth & no other options. What a lot of the critics fail to realize (intentionally or out of ignorance) is that the dojo/cage/mat/whatever techniques can be applied, with minimal changes to a real world confrontation.
A couple things that limit training are laziness & lack of creativity. The first is seen when someone gets winded walking 5 yards to tape up a target & the other is seen in something like “I don’t carry pepper spray because I don’t want to have it blow back in my face.” The first guy is going to do no good in a fight unless he’s suddenly attacked by zombie IDPA targets & the second has such a shallow understanding of a particular tool that he’d rather not think & give up an option than put a little mental effort into it & figure out the proper application. That could be said for any tool, be it OC, a light, knife, etc…
The gun stuff is cool. Everything else is work. The lazy will do whatever they can & use any excuse they can to avoid work.
How do we fix it? The simple answer is exposure. Once people are put in a situation that’ll expose their weaknesses they’re more likely to train to them if they’re of the proper mindset. Others will play ostrich, & they’re harder to get to. The easiest way to get people exposed is to offer up free seminars. Now, we don’t get paid for these so from a money making perspective it may not make sense initially, but we’ve increased our student base every time we’ve run a simple 1-2 hour evening freebie seminar. Well worth it, in my opinion, to pass on 2 hours worth of some solid info to 15 people if we get 2 of them to sign up for paid training. The ones that are there for the freebie aspect may eventually turn around. Same goes for the ostriches. Especially if our freebies-turned-paying students come & share their experiences during the session.
This is more than just a training company issue or a community issue, or a personal motivation/mindset issue. It’s all of the above & unless we, as instructors, teachers & coaches work to figure out how to reach the “I don’t need ___________” group, they’ll always be out there.
In the end, the way we reach people is by answering the 3 year old’s question. “Why?” Why do I need this? Why does _____________ work? Why can’t I just _________? Etc. The ostriches won’t ask the questions so we have to answer them & hope it clears away a little more sand each time. That’s why I keep flying the FOF flag here & at our classes, the hand to hand flag at our gun classes, the gun flag at our hand to hand classes, the “other” weapons flag at all of the above. We have to be persistent, coach & set the example for our students & they’ll follow. It’ll take some longer than others to catch on & some never will, but we can get the ones worth the effort if we make the effort.
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