Everything is a choice. There are good decisions and bad decisions; there are seemingly good decisions that will set you up for bad ones. Much of reality based self-defense and combat is based around the decisions you make i.e. there are times when it’s sensible to disengage and times when it’s best to engage etc. Sometimes you have to “play the game”, other times you can ignore it and walk away. This is what CQC/Close Quarter Combat training is all about – presenting the possible options for avoiding violence and demonstrating the potential consequences for engaging in it. In true CQC training there is always the option to avoid conflict and from a reality based perspective this is always the one you should choose.

In Krav Maga we talk about “closed” and “open” drills. A closed drill is where there is a predetermined outcome e.g. you respond to somebody’s attack and they behave in a particular way. In an “open” drill there are no such scripts. From a purely physical perspective sparring is the ultimate “open” drill – you and your partner respond to each other as you want and don’t have to play any particular roles. CQC Training is basically the RBSD (Reality Based Self Defense) equivalent to sparring, where you have the chance to behave and act in a situation with few restrictions.

This Saturday’s training illustrated a few things…

Situations occur within environments and environments lend themselves to different types of combat etc, often you don’t know what you will be facing, or what will be required of you. As soon as you enter a situation that is potentially hostile you should be looking to assess the terrain e.g. what movements are going to be difficult – if you are on a train or a surface that is moving, your footwork is going to be restricted etc, are there objects in the environment that can be used to act as barriers and blocking obstacles and are there tools in the environment that can be used (nobody picked up the baton or noticed the knife). All of this has to be assessed in a few moments, often whilst other things are occurring. In our training this was mainly the information that the instructors were providing. It was interesting to note, looking at the video footage that nobody looked behind them when they walked in.  Reality exists behind you as well as in front.

Not all information is relevant and information isn’t instruction. We have a tendency to fixate on certain details and forget to try and understand the entire situation e.g. not looking behind, or checking our “flanks” the moment we understand that we could be at risk. Walking through the door into the training environment was akin to moving from a non-conflict to a conflict aware one (People’s adrenal responses were often clearly visible). There were two buzz words that people heard “gun” and “exit” and different people evaluated them differently e.g. those with a law enforcement background realized the need to secure a hot/live weapon – different words mean different things to different people. There were also two routes to both; not everyone chose the route that was furthest from the most obvious threats – the instructors (we hadn’t booby trapped the training area!) – to get to their chosen target.

There are no right or wrong answers in these training situations, or right or wrong things to do. People were motivated by different concerns and interpretations of the environment and went through different mental processes, and reached different conclusions that made sense to them. The value of these sessions is to consider alternative solutions and understand what these could have meant from a personal safety perspective and speed up the decision making process. I would still stand by the adage that it is better to do the wrong thing than nothing and from a self-defense perspective hesitation is akin to nothing. Reducing and eliminating this is a core goal of this type of training.