Combatant: Extreme Self-Defense

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by aikiMac, Dec 17, 2016.

  1. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    Got it through Netflix. It's an hour and a half of self-defense scenarios with experts in four different martial arts: krav maga, wing chun, kali, and "Fear Adrenaline Stress Training" (aka, FAST Defense).

    If you're an experienced martial artist you're not going to get anything new out of this disk, but even still, what I liked about it was seeing four different responses -- with explanations -- to the same scenarios, side by side. The scenarios were a "haymaker" punch, side kick, tackle, angry guy with his finger in your face, baseball bat, 2-on-1, knife robbery, knife slash, gun robbery, and a gun robbery variation.

    A scenario was played out by actors, and then the four experts, one at a time, addressed it. Repeat with the next scenario.

    For most of the scenarios the wing chun guy did two or three versions so as to allow for variations in distance; e.g., for the tackle, he played it out with both early and late timing. I liked that. I would have preferred all four instructors do that.

    And at intervals on the dvd, each expert got to explain and give a commercial for his martial art: what's the origin, what's the overriding principle(s), what's the general approach to fighting for this art, what attracted him to this art. That, too, was good, because the novice martial artist wouldn't know the difference between, say, kali and krav maga, and even if you're not a novice it's nice to know the background of the person who is instructing you.

    What I didn't like: It gets slow sometimes. But maybe that's because the target audience is a martial arts novice, and I'm above the novice level. I also was not impressed with the kali grandmaster for the reason that he couldn't do the same thing twice. The point of an instructional dvd is to do the same thing many times, at different angles, but with this guy it always came out different. On the one hand you can say that self-defense situations are inherently chaotic and unpredictable, but on the other hand the FAST guy was able to explain variations while still showing the same thing. And the wing chun fall-guy (we'd call him the "uke" in Japanese martial arts but I don't know the Chinese equivalent) sucked. The wing chun guy himself was fine, but really, for purposes of a self-defense video the attacker should be very big and he should give believable attacks. He should not be a pencil-thin guy who is always off-balance.

    I liked that the FAST instructor's "uke" was dressed in full armor so the instructor could hit him for real. And kick him for real. He took some nasty groin shots over and over. :D

    In short, it was worth 97 minutes of my life if only to see four very different experts address exactly the same scenarios.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2016
  2. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    Did you catch the name of the FAST guy?
     
  3. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    I'm not always a fan of the FAST guys technical material but Bill's "Missing Link" DVD really opened my eyes to wider issues in self defence.
     
  4. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

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