Monday, November 28, 2011

SDTS is NOT Krav Maga

Don't believe the hype. Sure Krav Maga "says" a lot of things similar to the SDTS but you can't judge a system by its marketing. Even though there are some good techniques in Krav Maga, a few good techniques or concepts does not mean it's effective.

In order to evaluate a system you need to look at it from a complete learning perspective. Most people will go through a curriculum technique by technique and judge each individual reaction to a situation as a good or bad, this is the wrong approach. In order to look at any system as a whole you need to look at it from the training experience perspective.

Take mathematics for instance. You learn basic principles and then you discover how to apply those basic principles to more complex equations. The same holds true for self defense. You need to see the same, viable concepts running through every situation. A viable concept must work under the conditions it's intended to work.

The problem with martial arts and most self defense systems is that they are based on the same formula: block, catch or grab the initial attack, strike, then finish with a wrist lock, take down or another controlling technique. They require a set of motor skills and reasoning that are not available under fight or flight circumstances.

Martial arts also attempt to provide different reactions to each individual type of attack. They look at each assault as an isolated incident from the attacker's perspective instead of looking at it from the defenders point of view. Meaning, here's the attack and if I were to disable this guy I would do X.Y.Z. the defender's point of view its about development of muscle memory and your ability to recall those actions under stress when you least expect it. Martial arts focus on your attacker while The SDTS focuses on what you will be able to do when you're attacked.

For illustration we took three attacks, a double collar grab, a collar grab with a knife to the throat and a collar grab with a gun to your head and compared the Krav Maga defense to the SDTS defense. Now we couldn't find any Krav Maga defenses for a knife with a collar grab or a gun with a collar grab either. Maybe they don't grab the shirt a lot in Israel, who knows, but we did manage to find a few to illustrate our point.

At first glance the the primary difference between the Self Defense Training System (SDTS) and Krav Maga are:

Krav Maga uses both gross and finite motor skills
The SDTS uses only gross motor skills
Krav Maga requires you to learn different, unrelated skill sets for each individual scenario
The SDTS gives you only one skill set for hundreds of possible scenarios
Krav Maga requires you to shift focus from weapon to attacker than back to weapon again
The SDTS has no real shift focus, after you clear the weapon it's attack, attack attack
Krav Maga assumes that you're only going to need to strike your attacker once (with the exception in Scenario 2 b)
The SDTS knows that not all strikes hit there mark and trains you to continue your counter attack until the threat is gone

Considerations
We know that under extreme stress you can not use fine [finite] motor skills. Fine motor skills are the coordination of small muscle movements which occur e.g., in the fingers, usually in coordination with the eyes. In application to motor skills of hands (and fingers) the term dexterity is commonly used. When applied to the theory of human aptitude this is called manual dexterity. Twisting the wrist, catching or grabbing an opponents hand, small movements and manipulations are all fine motor skills. On the contrary, gross motor skills involve large muscle groups and body motion.

Under stress you will only be able to focus on a single purpose. We know that once you decide to act you will continue to do that act until it's complete. If you decide to train a wrist lock, under stress you will continue to attempt that lock until you succeed. People fleeing a burning theater will burn to death trying the same locked door over and over again and will never look for another way out. Since you can only successfully focus on one purpose it must be to disable your attacker as fast as possible. Anything less will cause you to focus on something less critical, like a disarm. Look, if you hit him until he's unconscious, you won't need the disarm but if you try to wrestle the weapon away from someone who's has fight left in them you're leaving yourself vulnerable.

Scenario 1 Krav Maga defense against a double lapel grab you see a wrist lock (finite motor skills), and elbow strike and a cross stomp (finite motor skills). Shifting focus from hand strikes to kicks at close range is a little dicey. Why bother when you can just crack him in the head continually.



Notice the "stiff arm attack". When someone does grab you in this manner they do it to intimidate. That means they will jack you up and get eye to eye. Now the instructors does mention this type of attack but refers to a completely different set of skills to defend it! Adding another defense you have to remember.

Scenario 2 A Krav Maga defense against a knife to your throat clears the weapon (good), kicks him in the nuts (good), does a wrist twist (shitty). Here we see only one strike and then a useless wrist twist take down. Also, why does this technique differ so much from scenario 1? You could easily clear the weapon and elbow strike him.

Also note that this is another stiff arm attack. Look, if someone is mugging you in the street they are going to get in your face in intimidate you. They're also not going to want to draw attention to themselves. That means they're going to be as discreet as possible. Coming in close not only is more intimidating, it conceals the weapon from the rest of the world.

Scenario 2 B Krav Maga defense against a knife to your throat requires you to clear the weapon (good), punch him in the face (good), then go to the elbow hook and start stabbing him with his own knife (ridiculous). Again, this starts off great but then get's ridiculous. However, it's good that he repeatedly bashes his attacker in the face, but then he goes for the cutesy, make him stab himself bullshit. Again, more stiff arm attacks from the bad guy.



Krav Maga Scenario 3 starts off great, clears the weapon (good), cracks the guy in the face (great) and then goes to some ridiculous disarm. You have the guy on the ropes, the gun pointing away from you, why not continue to bash his head in?!?!?

The beginning of this defense is similar to scenario 2 defense. What they really should do is use the repeated face punch for ALL scenarios. Heck, guy jacks you up, punch him in the face, the guy sticks a knife to your throat or a gun in your face, clear the weapon and punch him in the face repeatedly. That would be splendid. But they don't, they chose to get fancy and do the same martial arts BS.

A final note on Krav Maga defense 3. Punching your opponent in the head runs the risk of breaking your knuckles on his jaw or skull. Try grabbing anything with a shattered hand and squeezing, let alone performing a wrist lock-disarm, securing the weapon, taking aim and squeezing the trigger. This defense assume two major "what ifs" 1. That you can hit him hard enough once to enable you to disarm him and 2. That you didn't break your knuckles on his skull.

Krav Maga uses the typical martial arts formula is this, grab or block the initial attack, strike and then finish with a fancy wrist lock, take down or controlling technique. You know what the problem is with teaching fancy moves, when you teach them, that's all anyone wants to practice. They gloss over the strike and focus on the harder tasks, the block, grab and fancy finish. It's only natural that you do this, you can't help it. The obvious problem is this: you pay no attention to the most important part, the strikes that will disable your enemy. The result when your stressed is that you will focus on the thing you spent the most time on...the fancy shit that your body has no physiological chance of pulling off (remember the finite motor skill issue?). The result will be some gross motor skill interpretation of what you practiced and it will be neither effective or fancy.

Another glaring problem is that only 1 defense (2b) showed any sort of repeated striking. All of the other defenses assume you're going to knock your target silly with one strike!!!! Those of you who have been there know one thing's for certain, in the street you miss...a lot.

That being said, here's the SDTS reaction to ALL of these scenarios:


That's it, one technique for 3 different scenarios. Sure it's not completely sexy, but it's brutal and it works. It trains you to use one set of techniques. Do you realize what happens when you train similar techniques over and over again? They become awesome. No one got into the hall of fame for knowing a lot of moves, they got there from doing a few things really well. Bruce Lee said it himself, I don't fear the man who's done 1000 kicks one time, I fear the man who's done one kick a thousand times.

Conditioning for combat requires you program a behavior that you will do subconsciously. SAYING that you will remember to hit him repeatedly is not the same as practicing to hit him repeatedly. Once you start to injure him you need to continue it until he's no longer a threat. You can disarm him when he's unconscious. This business of taking a firearm away from a man who's will to point it at you is stupid, movie, Hollywood bullshit.

At the end of the day Krav Maga is like any other martial art. It teaches you separate techniques for each individual situation. It follows the "block or grab initial attack, strike and fancy finish" formula of martial arts. Let's call that the B.G.S.F.F. formula (look another fucking acronym is born!). It also assumes that every strike you do hits it's target with devastating power. The only difference is between Krav Maga and other martial arts is the lack of sparring!

A final note: training to hit and destroy requires that you actually hit something repeatedly. Hitting the air, pulling your punches or striking soft cushy pads doesn't do the trick. We suggest you train to hit things as hard or harder that all the surfaces of the human body have to offer...oh and don't forget about belt buckles, helmets and anything else kids are wearing these days.

I lied...I have yet another final note.

There's another reason why the SDTS doesn't punch and why I highly doubt that Krav Maga was ever anything but a commercial attempt to market the Israeli culture. In a military application, punching is useless. Punching with a closed fist will run you the risk of shattering your hand. When you break the knuckles of your forefinger you can not use that finger. Try squeezing the trigger of your UZI when your hand is smashed to bits. Try gripping a knife or anything for that matter when the for knuckles of your hand are crushed. In the SDTS you learn to use the heel of your hand or the edge of your hand as your primary strikes. You may dislocate a finger or two with the edge of hand, but your primary gripping fingers will not receive any damage. This will still enable you to grip a firearm or edged weapon. Any military system that uses a closed fist is highly suspect. Considering that most of your targets will have helmets, firearms and other gear that will turn your fist into oatmeal.

At the end of the day Krav Maga is really no different than any other martial art. It's just marketed better.

Train Honestly,


Damian Ross, CEO The Self Defense Company


Damian Ross is CEO of the Self Defense Company and developer of The Self Defense Training System, the most lethal and effective self defense system in the world, The Guardian Defensive Tactics Police Combatives Program, 60 minute Self Defense and the Family Safe Program. Mr. Ross also founded the Self Defense Instructor Program that helps people develop their self defense careers from the ground up. Mr. Ross is originally from Ridgewood, NJ where he was a High School Hall of Fame Athlete in football and wrestling as well as a varsity wrestling coach. He then went on to Lehigh University where he was a varsity wrestler and football player. Mr. Ross has 3 black belts, 4th Degree in Tekkenryu Jujutsu, 2nd Degree in Judo, 2nd Degree in Tae Kwon Do. In addition to his martial arts experience, Mr; Ross spent 8 years in the professional security and personal protection business. He is internationally recognized as one of the foremost authorities in reality based self defense.

11 comments:

Jared said...

VERY enlightening. Thanks Damian!

Connor said...

Hello Damian. That was a nice blog you just left there buddy. Im sorta new to martial arts and started out recently on Shotokan karate and Jujitsu. Ive been doing some homework and I believe that all these BS martial arts could hardly work against a larger opponent. Im an ectomorph (basically a small, skinny b**tard if you werent sure) and just know id get a right beating against any larger well built opponent. I guess this is well proved considering the different weight categories in MMA. I'd appreciate your honest opinion on my concern and would like to know more as to how your system can help us little dudes :). Maybe your next blog would be good for this topic. Thanks alot pal!

Kosta said...

Nice post Damian...

Here's something you might find useful. Many years ago a friend asked me if I honestly thought that I could hit harder with an open palm that a closed fist. He said it doesn't seem to make sense and that a closed fist just seems like it would hit harder.
I asked him if he would repeat what I was about to do with my open palm with his closed fist.
He said sure, ok.
I then walked up to a brick wall and repeatedly slammed my open palm strikes against it almost as hard as I could.
I then showed him my palms which were a little scraped up but nothing serious, I wasn't even bleeding.
Then I said ok your turn...

He was sold, and no he didn't attempt it with his closed fists.

Jason (Australia) said...

I started training in martial arts when I was 15, primarily for the fitness and the sorely needed discipline, but being a skinny youth the confidence I felt from having the skills was also a big part of the equation. I trained in GKR, Muay Thai, Australian free-style Tae Kwon Do, Go Ju Ryu, Hap Ki Do and traditional boxing. Whilst I always enjoyed my training, and still do, i
t became apparent to me when I started doing security work that what I was learning in the Dojo and what I was seeing in my job were not compatible.
Since finding the SDTS on the net, and practicing what I have seen, I have reconsidered my whole approach to self-defence - it's practical and nothing more needs to be said.
Hopefully my DVD's will arrive soon and I can start getting into this shit for real ! 'Train honestly' has become a personal mantra - thanks Damian.

Eduardo said...

Yes, I too would like to see what a little bloke would have to do against a bigger opponent.

Regards:

Eduardo

Anonymous said...

That was Awesome! My favorite blog yet! Matt Montes, your friend from facebook here, (yeah, I know you have tons of them) I just had to chime in with how much I loved this blog. I usually like to keep an open mind about things, so when I see people advertising these different systems I try and put aside my bias towards SDTS, and look at what they have objectively. So far I've seen some interesting things, but they all seem to fall short in some way or another. The STDS is the only training that I've seen that is simple and effective, and nothing else. No B.S. no fluff.

It makes me laugh when I see other people claiming to be "no B.S." and then they proceed to teach wrist locks and ridiculously complicated takedowns.

Long story short, the SDTS is simple to learn, easy to execute, and although I've never had to use it yet, based off of logic and common sense, it seems very effective. I love it.

Anonymous said...

Urban Krav Maga? That's one of your sources? That is NOT true Krav Maga. That is someone making his own system up and calling it Krav Maga because he wanted to jump on the bandwagon. The other video (3) was from Krav Maga World Wide which has watered down Krav Maga to make it look sexy. That is not the defense true, authentic Krav Maga gives. The other videos wouldn't play on my phone.

I don't know what you teach but before bashing a sysytem that is proven for over 60 years,.why don't you train in it with a true Krav Maga instructor? Or is business slow for you that you need to try and trick people into believing that you are the one and only great instructor in self defense?

Put your ego aside and get some facts straight first. By the way, we do teach how to defend against various weapons when someone has a hold of you.

Pathetic.

Luc Van Laere said...

You picked the wrong Krav Maga clips on YouTube, Damien. The type of Krav Maga I train and teach uses the same principles as the one you show in your clip. Only difference: we stabilise weapons. The motion is the same. I talk about the mechanics that make a technique work, and indeed, there are only a few moves... Also in my opinion, Krav Maga is not a Martial Art, it's a system.

Anonymous said...

Ok, I had to get to a computer to look at the other videos, including your answer to the 3 situations. The 3 "Krav Maga" answers are not what authentic Krav Maga teaches, but even so, it was still a better solution to what you company teaches. What I saw as your answer to the situations will get someone killed. How do you teach a defense against a knife with a big arm swing without running the risk of the victim being stabbed or slashed in the face, neck, or chest. This is simply reckless and irresponsible. Same with the gun. Where was the body defense? You're moving the gun across the body making it likely the victim will be shot during the big arm swing. How have you controlled the weapon? You're hoping that one or two forearm/hammerfists will do the trick? What if it was a smaller woman against a larger man?

You keep teaching that stuff and we'll teach true, Krav Maga that has already saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives and will continue to save lives.

I know you won't post these comments, but you need to hear this.

Damian Ross said...

Dear "Pathetic" Luc and Anonymous,

Umm...bullshit.

True Krav Maga, I hear this a lot and this rhetoric has been used with every martial art since there have been martial arts. With Bruce Lee is was Yip Man and REAL Wing Chun (or how ever they're spelling it these days). There's always some guy in his basement teaching the truth.

If TRUE Krav Maga exists...post a website, a video, hell...MAKE A VIDEO and post it here, I'm sure we'd all love to see it.

You guys act like I fell off the turnip truck. Believe me if Krav Maga was the answer I would have done it 15 years ago. But unfortunately every video, every seminar I've attended is the same old shit that I was learning in Tae Kwon Do class 25 years ago.

If you have something different...SHOW US, DON'T TELL US.

Luc you have one video on your youtube page http://www.youtube.com/user/kravmagadeurne and this hair grab defense is fine. I also learned that in TKD when I was 16. I also have to say that the video of the gun disarm on your site is great. The disarm AFTER he's on the ground is key. I can't comment on the punching because I don't know what type of conditioning you do.

But to really get a grasp of the system, I would need to see a group of several situations and how your version of Krav Maga helps the practitioner adapt gross motor skills sets to all of them. Other than that, it's not fair to you to judge these two techniques. Because I could be a prick and say "specific self defense reactions to two different types of assaults." I'd love to see a few body grabs (bear hugs) a knife attack when the assailants at a distance and a club attack in the same situation.

By the way, thank you for putting your name. You're the only one I can take seriously.

As for anonymous, "get killed doing that." We've been doing that on three continents for 11 decades and we're not dead yet.

Regarding "Not Posting your comment" I post everything.

Listen, what is sold as popular Krav Maga is shiite, if you have something better - post it. Show me the money.

And if any of you geniuses have Krav Maga weapons offensive tactics, like knife, sticks, clubs or some Israeli wand, I would love to see that too. All I' ve seen from Krav Maga is weapons disarms and some improvised weapons that can be learned at most any self defense seminar.

In respect to Krav Maga I took some of the most popular videos and believe me, these were the better ones, sed real evidence to prove my point. While you on the other hand tell me about some guy in a basement somewhere teaching the truth...."Ninja Please", where's your video, where's your link? Hell, at least I did Luc the courtesy of pulling up his videos for him (thank me later).

Don't bother me with words...show me. Uh oh...I feel another post coming on.

Anonymous said...

To all those who spent so much time in the sand pit,and have trained so many hours in Krav Krav.If you do not this this is real please by all means,would you post a vidio on true Krav Maga,with you showing us all the real deal.But until then can you do us all a big fave. and shut the hell up you loosers.Just go back down to youe mommy's bacement play your vidio games,eat your cheetos watch you japaname porn and keep staining your weiner.By the way I have been over in the sand pit,and have seen this first hand..Angus