» The Basics
By Vince on October 16, 2011
I don’t actually remember when or even where I first heard it, but one of my many instructors/teachers over the years first told me, “The basics, done correctly, will save you every time.”
When you are starting out training in whatever you are training, be it martial arts, gun handling or bartending, you always want to do the “cool stuff” first. Even Michael Jordan had to start somewhere!
I remember the first time I saw a jump-spinning back kick…that was “SO COOL!” I wanted to do it right away!
You can all guess what happened next.
I busted my ass.
Spectacularly.
Not a pretty sight.
Now don’t get me wrong, some folks are wonder-coordinated and can pull some (not all) things off more or less on the first try. Most of us cannot.
One needs to look at the basics like the building blocks of a child. They are a beginning…and an end, but more on that later. You have to start at a beginning to get anywhere. You can’t get from Miami to New York, without first leaving Miami.
Basically what the basics are, is, repetition; building muscle memory. Training your body to do a task/move and/or thing without thinking. From a “reflex” that can be cued from a noise, peripheral vision or even a smell.
All basics are normally a simple set of gross motor skill moves. Block this way with this arm/leg when something comes from this angle; grasp your pistol in this way when drawing, etc.
Once learned they are repeated, again and again until you can do them smoothly at will. Once these skills are “mastered” (quotes on purpose) one generally moves on to more “advanced” moves.
Those are then practiced until they become “mastered”. At that point are they now basic moves?
Yes and no.
Yes, because you have now relegated them to muscle memory…
…and No, because the more intricate a move, the harder it is to pull off.
Once you get into “fine” motor skills, they require more concentration and focus. At this point you are not unconsciously making the “motion”. The movement needs to be focused on in order to use it.
What this means is that in the heat of combat, when someone is pounding on you and you are “trying” to do your fancy inertial opening on you Spyderco Endura that looks “so cool” when you are demonstrating it to your buddies, is that you literally throw the knife right out of your hand!
It can be hard to concentrate on fine motor skills when a dude is walloping you about the head and shoulders!
Don’t believe me? Fine. Try it for yourself with a training partner. That is how Guro Tony Torre and I found out. And that was in training. Not something you want to find out when accosted on the street! Use the manufacture’s method for opening the knife. The basic method.
I know you hear me say this and say to yourself, “What does this guy know?”
Well, I thought exactly the same thing.
I’d like to say I came up with this on my own, but I didn’t. I first heard of it at the Riddle of Steel in 1998, from Master at Arms James Keating, a pioneer in modern knife combatives.
But I digress. The basics.
Nothing to really remember because you already have it as a reflex/response. You will revert to that response when a threat presents itself.
One time when working as manager at a major sporting goods chain, one of my employees’ thought it would be funny to jump out at me in the warehouse and scare me. It didn’t quite work out the way he planned.
Yes he did scare me…and yes I did react, but not the way he expected. I blocked the nearest hand to me and hammered him in the solar plexus. I didn’t even think about it, I just did it. He said he never even saw me move. I don’t remember hitting him, just jumping back out of the way, adrenalin surging.
There was no complicated move. Just block and hit to closest/largest target. No fancy jump spinning back kick. Just basic moves. Moves I’d practiced for thousands of hours over the years, moves I didn’t have to think about because my body already knew them and applied them.
It was an eye opener.
Yet even when I’ve practiced the “basic” moves so many times over the years, I find myself learning new things based from them. New applications derived from the “basic’s” I’d already “mastered”!
You too can lean from the basics. As long as you don’t forget them in favor of focusing on the flashy, fancy moves.
I’m not saying those moves don’t have their place, they most certainly do, but don’t forget the basic’s because they haven’t forgotten you.