Are Striking and kicking based Arts a priority for Defence Force Members?

Boston

DaBrow wrote: »

I feel this is very important.... If other armed counterparts are taught striking-based or Hybrid-Based Arts that include Grappling, shouldn't we consider learning these as a means of preventing a time when they are needed?

I just recall the old saying "It's better to know how to fight and not needing to, rather than needing to fight and not know how."

If we ever ended up fight china, the whole world would be compeletely ****ed to such a degree that unarmed self defense wouldn't matter. Money isn't wasted on fantasy, the Irish Army, any army infact, have to focus on practical realistic threats. It takes an enormous amount of time and training to become "deadly" in unarmed combat. Time would be better spent training soliders in solidering rather then walter mitty'ing. Your ideas seem to be complete divorced from this plain of existance. You might as well be arguing that we need to train Krav Maga for when the Zombies attack.

As for my realistic war games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw0WFp0eYl4

martic

As an ex member (and an ex Instructor) of the Irish defence Forces,I will try my best here.As part of "MY" basic training every wednesday night a local Karate instuctor (I trained in Athlone) was brought in to take the platoon for unarmed combat classes,this involved strikes,kicks,throws,locks and various ways of how to disarm an attacker if they had a knife or a pistol. This was mainly taught for a scenario if you were on patrol and someone attempted to disarm you or attacked you at close quarters.Another reason why unarmed combat is taught to Defence Forces members is that if you had to say storm a building (stop laughing:D) and had to fight in a small area and it came to a fist and knife fight it was important to know the basics than nothing at all.Nowadays with the progression of modern warfare techniques and weaponry I dont think a throw,a kick or even the best attempt at the rubber guard would stand up much to the daisy cutters that the Americans were dropping on the Tora Bora's

DaBrow

martic wrote: »

As an ex member (and an ex Instructor) of the Irish defence Forces,I will try my best here.As part of "MY" basic training every wednesday night a local Karate instuctor (I trained in Athlone) was brought in to take the platoon for unarmed combat classes,this involved strikes,kicks,throws,locks and various ways of how to disarm an attacker if they had a knife or a pistol. This was mainly taught for a scenario if you were on patrol and someone attempted to disarm you or attacked you at close quarters.Another reason why unarmed combat is taught to Defence Forces members is that if you had to say storm a building (stop laughing:D) and had to fight in a small area and it came to a fist and knife fight it was important to know the basics than nothing at all.

Thank you... I'm glad to see we are to a fair extent reading from the same hymn sheet.

The scenarios you mentioned above are exactly what I'm talking about, these situations can easily occur and people should be prepared for them.

Doug Cartel

Martic, how well do you feel the karate you learned would prepare you for a battlefield situation?

Did the karate instructor teach you karate? (Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but it's just something I want to clarify.)

Do you think what you learned would be any better than judo or boxing, or basically anything?

Doug Cartel

EDIT: I had something that could be interpreted as style bashing here, but it's not really a road I want to go down.

Dave Joyce

A couple of points. Firstly I do believe there are modern day warriors out there (and it may not be PC but these guys fit the definition of warrior), in particular a lot of the various Special Forces from many countries. Their ability to learn and then reproduce the results after a short amount of time, their open mindedness, contrary to belief their intellect and finally, their unbelievable level of physical fitness is something to behold.

To the OP, I find some of your posts confusing as they seem to suggest there are probable times during conflict when Military Personal are unarmed and then later on you seem to suggest (maybe I'm wrong) in the event of some kind of unarmed contest.......well if that is the case then we are going down some kind of competitive arena and away from the original point.

I've been fortunate enough to have been involved and assisted in the teaching of some US Navy SEALS, Green Berets and Special Forces guys on a couple of occasions and believe me when I say these guys are RARELY unarmed even when off duty and even in these rare cases, they fight as a unit whether thats with comrades or family. However, as a poster pointed out about the VERY limited access of vunerable spots in an empty hand context, they have a primary, side arm (and they don't have to be an officier to have one), possibly a second one and then they will have some amount of bladed weapons eg tomahawk/multiple blades. They are constantly looking to devise ways of deploying and carrying of weapons.

On a contract (that eventually fell through because of the security situation) for a non firearms situation, the SF guys wanted training in ASP's, improvised weapons, pipes and even stickwork as these didn't even look at the prospect of going empty hand even though in this particular case they would not have been allowed use firearms.

Finally, I've had a small amount of contact with our own Army Ranger wing and their interest lies almost ENTIRELY on Primary weapons etc.

pablohoney87

Hi again everyone!

DaBrow wrote: »

However, I do feel that our Asian Counterparts in Korea/Japan/China easily outclass us on the topic of unarmed combat....

Im sorry but this is just pure ignorance. What proof do you have for this statement? I would like to hear why exactly you think the asians are better at hand to hand combat than the rest of the world. Because in 1994 Royce Gracie destroyed one of the most respected karateka japan had to offer in wahat was essentially a no rules combat situation. If your gonna talk about the topic of standards of unarmed combat you cant ignore the top MMA fighters in mma. Our "asian counter parts" pale in comparison to americans and brazillians. If you use the argument that MMA is restricted by rules i will officially lable you as a hypocrite as so are all the Japanese/chinese/Korean martial arts and you have dismissed Krav Maga which as far as i know is only used for combat situations i.e. there is not really a competition form. If there is a competition form of KM could someone send me a video link as i would love to see it.

Boston

martic wrote: »

As an ex member (and an ex Instructor) of the Irish defence Forces,I will try my best here.As part of "MY" basic training every wednesday night a local Karate instuctor (I trained in Athlone) was brought in to take the platoon for unarmed combat classes,this involved strikes,kicks,throws,locks and various ways of how to disarm an attacker if they had a knife or a pistol. This was mainly taught for a scenario if you were on patrol and someone attempted to disarm you or attacked you at close quarters.Another reason why unarmed combat is taught to Defence Forces members is that if you had to say storm a building (stop laughing:D) and had to fight in a small area and it came to a fist and knife fight it was important to know the basics than nothing at all.Nowadays with the progression of modern warfare techniques and weaponry I dont think a throw,a kick or even the best attempt at the rubber guard would stand up much to the daisy cutters that the Americans were dropping on the Tora Bora's

Question, have you ever used any of it in real deployments or simulated deployments.

martic

Doug Cartel wrote: »

Martic, how well do you feel the karate you learned would prepare you for a battlefield situation?

Did the karate instructor teach you karate? (Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but it's just something I want to clarify.)

Do you think what you learned would be any better than judo or boxing, or basically anything?

To be honest Doug it would'nt prepare me for the battlefield if you are talking about a full blown invasion of our Island.It was not a karate class as my 4 yr old has to teach me the kata he is learning at the minute:D.Since my time in the army I have been training Jiu jitsu and have competed in mma and to be honest martial arts in what ever form is a nice to know as a member of an Army but against modern warfare in my opinion is pointless unless you have 2 unarmed men going against each other.

martic

Boston wrote: »

Question, have you ever used any of it real deployments or simulated deployments.

Never, It was something we learned in basic training but was never continued after that.

Boston

Well that kinda proves the point no? Do you wish you'd spend more time training martial arts and less learning others skills? Skill you potentially use alot more?

martic

Boston wrote: »

Well that kinda proves the point no? Do you wish you'd spend more time training martial arts and less learning others skills? Skill you potentially use alot more?

To be honest if that question is directed at me (which I hope Im not getting dragged into any sides of this arguement) I'd rather train as much martial arts as i can because the chances of Ireland being invaded is pritty slim

Boston

lol, I get yea. But you're clearly not taking the zombie factor into account.

pablohoney87

Boston wrote: »

lol, I get yea. But you're clearly not taking the zombie factor into account.

Well then its just irresponsable to ignore that.:P

Doug Cartel

I'm going to retry the post I edited out, hopefully phrased in a way that doesn't tick off the TKD people.

DaBrow, you state that you think that Irish soldiers having black belts in TKD would be a good way to make sure that they could handle themselves in an unarmed situation.

Thing is, getting a black belt in TKD would require them to learn a lot of extra things that would be of no use to them. Namely the forms, the high kicks, the spinning kicks, the punches with hands chambered at the side, the sine-wave, the wrist grab stuff, and probably some other things I'm forgetting.

Now as has been stated before, a soldier has a finite amount of time to train, and any time spent on hand to hand combat is going to take away from their ability to train in something else. Therefore, they need to make sure that they only learn what they need. So they'd be better off with something less fancy, like muay thai or kickboxing. These styles have got all the punching and kicking you're so eager for the soldiers to learn and they could be combat ready in a fraction of the time.

This brings us to your assertion that because some Korean special forces require a black belt in TKD, it 'proves' that it is necessary for all soldiers to learn some TKD/HKD like martial art. If the Koreans were primarily concerned with combat effectiveness, why would they enforce a 1st dan in TKD, when they could just have their guys train in a more basic kick-boxing like style in a fraction of the time and spend the rest learning soldier things? The answer is because it's a pride thing. Their soldiers are great because they know TKD, TKD is great because it's what their soldiers do. It's all about instilling national pride, so that they'll be more willing to give whatever it takes in the name of their country.

I'm not sure why I just typed this. I know you're not going to even try to understand it.

kowloon

I think you're confusing organised warfare and hand to hand.

You can talk about Japanese (as an example of asian) martial arts 'till the cows come home but the vast majority of Japanese armies, at the pinacle of their art, consisted of peasants.
Their training involved learning to fight in blocks, fighting with polearms as a mass. The fight would end long before it devolved into anything resembling one on one fights. Battles tended to end when one side broke cohesion.
The martial classes valued horsemanship and prowess with the bow, sword and polearm above hand to hand.

Martial arts were never the primary feature of warfare, we developed tools for hunting, the bow and the spear, that were far more effective than hand to hand long before we had even escaped tribal society.

If martial arts weren't considered highly then, how important do you think they are now? It's more important for a soldier to be trained in skills relevant to their job, be it surveying or driving. Hand to hand engagement is almost non-existant in the grand scheme of things. Even small-arms account for a much smaller percentage of casualties than you would expect, although the nature of Afghanistan and Iraq seem to be reversing the trend.

TrollHammaren

Hey, long time lurker, first time poster here; feel free to let me know if I'm doing anything wrong ;-)

As far as I'm aware, very few units within the Irish Defence Forces actually train in hand-to-hand combat at all. It also varies from unit-to-unit which styles they practise. I do know that most of the infantry lads do a small amount of boxing and they, along with a few other units, also practise what I'd consider a pretty watered down version of Judo.

Some units are occasionally trained by Patrick Cumiskey, who claims to train the Army Ranger Wing, in Krav Maga. What use this is, or how often this happens, I'm not sure.

But with regards the efficacy of either grappling arts such as Judo, or striking arts such as TKD, I'm not too sure either would be much use in a CQB situation. Strikes are simply not going to work against an armoured opponent, and anyone who ambushes a soldier in a CQB situation isn't going to throw down fisticuffs. Chances are, they're going to close the gap and jump on you, and TKD does little to teach you how to defend yourself if an assailant has gripped you and is either on top of you or is in dangerously close proximity.

Judo could be a little more useful here, but as mentioned earlier, it could only serve to take down and pin an assailant until your teammates arrive to shoot or incapacitate him.

The American Marines train in MCMAP and Jiu Jitsu, but as one MCMAP instructor put it, they're highly unlikely to ever have to use it, and the reason they train is to turn soldiers into warriors.

My main problem with Karate or TKD being taught as a close combat system is that a soldier using it would very quickly have to determine the amount of armour their attacker is wearing, which is almost impossible during an ambush. For instance, an elbow strike is almost never going to work if the attacker is wearing a helmet, and a spinning kick is almost impossible to perform whilst wearing full gear.

I really think that the Defence Forces lads should be concentrating on their arms drills, and any martial arts training should be supplemental to their main training.

Niall Keane

To follow from my previous post #17.

I believe that the question is to the relevance of empty hand martial arts in the military, and specifically for the OP the South East Asian empty hand martial arts?

(btw interesting to see those with actual military experience concur that group considerations, i.e. strategy and formations are still paramount and hand to hand ability secondary, however when most here think that hand to hand had more relevance in the 16th century they are incorrect, even then, where sword and spear ruled the day, making a master warrior was way down the list of priorities to formation and strategy training as I stated previously, here’s the quotes from Chi Chi-Kuang and his 16th centurary contemporaries.

Chi Chi-Kuang is considered one of China’s greatest generals, and author to a military classic second only to Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Interestingly he described the Shaolin monks after visiting their monastery to witness their art as being decadent and practicing flowery forms rather than martial arts, this was in 1550’s, of course this would be one of the lesser disclosed secrets of Chinese martial history.

The quotes:
Chi Chi-Kuang:

“Bare-handed techniques are the foundation of the martial arts”

“Mastery of his art makes a man brave”

“In practicing the martial arts you should imagine that you are striking an actual opponent and not just study superficial techniques.”

“Without obvious postures and techniques, you will be effective with one move; if you do make the mistake of posturing and posing, you will be ineffective in ten moves.”

“The reason for postures in the martial arts is to facilitate transformations…..Forms contain fixed postures, but in actual practice there are no fixed postures. When applied they become fluid, but still maintain their structural characteristics.”

“Among the martial arts styles past and present there are ….. Although the names and postures differ somewhat, in reality, the distinctions are minimal….. Although each of these is superior in some respects, they are all guilty of either emphasizing the top to neglect the bottom, or the bottom to neglect the top. Even if one is successful in overcoming an opponent with these styles, this is no more than one-sided mastery. However if one were to practice all of these styles in combination, this would be like the battlefield deployment known as “Mount Chang Snake Formation” If the head is attacked, the tail counter-attacks, if the tail is attacked, the head counter attacks, if the body is attacked the head and the tail both counter attack. This is what we mean by mastery of both above and below, and victory is assured.”

“The techniques of bare-handed combat would seem to have little relevance to the science of mass warfare.”

His (almost a famous and respected) contemporary Hsieh Chao-Che in his book “Wu Tsa Tzu” states:

“Bare-handed combat is one of the eighteen martial skills. There is a man called Hsiao Ssu-P’u, who is an invincible martial artist and is like a little tiger. There is another man called Liang Hsing-fu, who is a martial arts hero in his village, but these types are useless on the battlefield.”

Perhaps this might clarify the consistent historical to modern difference between a warrior or perhaps better described as the Knight Errant, I.e. those that involved them selves in duelling etc. and a soldier. Many with experience have stated that striking a modern armoured soldier is pointless, well guess what they wore armour back in 1600 too, also soldiers worked in formation then too, so likewise you relied on your comrade to back you up if you lost your weapon or got tangled up. As for throws, well look at all traditional wrestling, Chinese, Turkish etc. you only score if you remain standing, and contact period is short, throws have to be preformed within certain time limits once contact is made, obviously this takes into account weapon play.


I added some quotes there that perhaps don’t have direct relevance to this thread, but relate to the practice of traditional forms, and the reason for such and how to do so, and to “mixing” the martial arts, some may think this sounds like Bruce Lee, others like modern MMA, Chi has practiced 16 different martial arts, and distilled them down to 32 postures, many kung fu styles followed suit even some argue adopting Chi‘s postures into their syllabus, e.g. Tai Chi Chuan contains 24 of them.
In fact if you consider the bulk of contemporary debate on martial arts, the relevance of traditional practice, the specialist versus the broad skills base, the relevance to the military, etc… Chi has commented and tested (being a general) all these ideas and documented and wrote about them in 1550.…. Nothing new under the sun!!!

suey71

What happens in a situation where, for example, the Irish troops are on a peace keeping mission and although armed cannot fire their weapons unless fired upon. Then out come 2 or 3 local lads and confront a couple of soldiers, telling them to go back to Ireland etc. One of the locals throws a punch at a soldier. The soldier goes down, guns are drawn, but cant be fired because its a peace keeping mission and these locals are probably just a little drunk and pissed off with a foreign force occupying their country.

A quick kick in the stomach and a "Get the F*ck back" would sort the situation out a lot easier without having to shoot them.

Surely incidents like this occure quite alot on a peace keeping mission.

And a soldier can't shoot everyone that picks a fight with him.

I personally feel that martial arts should be thought to the Irish defence forces, Army and Gardai.

Maybe an Muay Thai type system with some take downs.

I've seen situations where the Gardai where involved in fights outside of nightclubs and get punched and kicked by drunken yobs when they go in to try and sort out a situation, relying on their uniform to be enough to frighten the sc*mbags and are shocked that they get hit.

Surely they should be trained in MA.
Maybe in the case of the Gardai, a little escrima wouldn't go amis.

On a different note, an Army going into battle would be a different thing altogether.

cowzerp

suey71 wrote: »

A quick kick in the stomach and a "Get the F*ck back" would sort the situation out a lot easier without having to shoot them.

1 of the worst posts ever, so you get into a fist fight with a person, when you are armed? then what happens if they get the gun?

Either shoot them or smack them with the butt of the gun, dont do a straightner with them!

pablohoney87

suey71 wrote: »

I've seen situations where the Gardai where involved in fights outside of nightclubs and get punched and kicked by drunken yobs when they go in to try and sort out a situation, relying on their uniform to be enough to frighten the sc*mbags and are shocked that they get hit.

Surely they should be trained in MA.
Maybe in the case of the Gardai, a little escrima wouldn't go amis.
.

Gardai are not technically allowed to kick or punch someone. They do have an asp tho and recieve training in that.

yomchi

these locals are probably just a little drunk and pissed off with a foreign force occupying their country.

Goddam locals. :rolleyes:

arybvtcw0eolkf

suey71 wrote: »

What happens in a situation where, for example, the Irish troops are on a peace keeping mission and although armed cannot fire their weapons unless fired upon. Then out come 2 or 3 local lads and confront a couple of soldiers, telling them to go back to Ireland etc. One of the locals throws a punch at a soldier. The soldier goes down, guns are drawn, but cant be fired because its a peace keeping mission and these locals are probably just a little drunk and pissed off with a foreign force occupying their country.

A quick kick in the stomach and a "Get the F*ck back" would sort the situation out a lot easier without having to shoot them.

Surely incidents like this occure quite alot on a peace keeping mission.

And a soldier can't shoot everyone that picks a fight with him.

Hi, I'm here again :P (great Christy Moore concert in Tullow last night!).

I'll deal with this one.

This is a scenario which I've some personal experience of, ie the peacekeeper being attacked like this (in fact it indirectly lead me to be called as a witness in a murder trial, unrelated but one where the defendent tried to claim Post Traumatic Stress Disorderl!!).

If a soldier, or section of men are attacked in such a manner they'll be shot, pure and simple. Its happened lots in the past and our Defence Forces are well covered in law (even on duty at home) to open fire to prevent themselves being being injured or forcibly disarmed, and to protect their comrades, government property and lots of other situations where I simply can not go into now - needless to say it would be a very, very stupid person who believes that at home or abroad, on peacekeeping or peace enforcement missions that our troops would be an easy target.

Anyway, back to unarmed combat training.

OP, I can only assume at this stage that you've never trained in a style which required too much 'live' training because you'd know that without constant training and conditioning your skill sets diminish pretty quickly, our army simple does not have the man hours to give over to constant and regular 'live' unarmed combat training.

In this clip of our troops in Kosovo you'll see the level of protection our troops enjoy, and the level of training and discipline we're equipt with to deal with tense situations.

OP, I really can not see the need or justification for our troops to regularly train in unarmed combat. Of course if we were sitting around scratching our nuts with nothing else to do then unarmed combat training would be a very nice distraction, but thats not the situation now or ever.

One final thing OP, more than once you've threatened to leave threads or the forum.

Personally I hope you don't, and as a Mod I'll give you all the protect from abuse that I can, but if you constantly threatened to leave and don't, my patience will wear a little thin and I'll be forced to consider your position here, read into this as you will - but like I said, I hope you stick around.

Boston

Martial Arts training for an Unarmed police force is an entirely different story.

Barry.Oglesby

At last count..... 654 people claimed to be "training Ranger wing" in Ireland. I don't know how many of those actually train Ranger Wing, but assuming only 10% of them are telling the truth, then Rangers have no time for all that shooting business, they're too busy doing krav maga.

Ridiculous thread. How many times has the same point been made now. Soldiers use weapons 99.999999% of the time which means that training for unarmed combat is a waste of time that could be used elsewhere. I was on a course with a marine once and his answer to how do you train for combat was "I put rounds in on the firing range" or words to that effect. He did his martial arts to keep fit and because he loved it.

Ug Lee

I have not read through all these pages so sorry if this has been asked before.

Ok, so some guys in various armies train martial arts for recreation, etc.
In the Irish army is there mandatory instruction in self-defence/unarmed combat/martial arts, etc in any of the units?

Dave Joyce

Soldiers use weapons 99.999999% of the time which means that training for unarmed combat is a waste of time that could be used elsewhere. I was on a course with a marine once and his answer to how do you train for combat was "I put rounds in on the firing range" or words to that effect. He did his martial arts to keep fit and because he loved it.

As Barry pointed out above, this is how the vast majority of operatives think/work. However,

A quick kick in the stomach and a "Get the F*ck back" would sort the situation out a lot easier without having to shoot them.

this is so far removed from reality, that its not funny. I remember one of the Green Beret guys telling us how he was figuring out the best way to position his blade for fastest deployment. It was because (similar to the type of scenario speculated by the poster above) his primary had been grabbed by the barrel in a packed market place in Afganistan and contrary to popular belief he couldn't just open up on the individual but obviously couldn't let him do this either. His first reaction in the aftermath was how he could have deployed his blade to the guys hand to get off the weapon.

He did his martial arts to keep fit and because he loved it.

As a matter of interest, a number of SEALS were really big into BJJ or Muaythai. However, these guys need to be in top levels of physical fitness and spend as much time working on this also. These guys would just decide to run a marathon on a whim at short notice:eek:

suey71

Some interesting comments in the 6 or so pages here

suey71 wrote: »

What happens in a situation where, for example, the Irish troops are on a peace keeping mission and although armed cannot fire their weapons unless fired upon. Then out come 2 or 3 local lads and confront a couple of soldiers, telling them to go back to Ireland etc. One of the locals throws a punch at a soldier. The soldier goes down

Surely most soldiers would be well capable of blocking a punch , especially when confronted, he would be on guards so to speak.

TrollHammaren wrote: »

Some units are occasionally trained by Patrick Cumiskey, who claims to train the Army Ranger Wing, in Krav Maga. What use this is, or how often this happens, I'm not sure.

My own view would be ocassional lessons in Krav Maga would be fairly useless. I wouldn't be any way handy at martial arts, I did kick boxing for a bit in my younger days but wasn't particularly good at it, I did a weekend course in Krav Maga, at the time I was grossly unfit and hadn't trained in a while so it was quite a challenge for me at times. The last part of the course was 7 or 8 of us would all attack one person for a minute or so. I was hoping that my time to be attacked wouldn't come as the finish time was approaching. Anyway loads of grappling and grabbing etc and eventually it came to be my turn to be attacked. So the seven others attacked me, now some of these lads were at Krav Maga quite a while and were only on the course to make up the numbers as the interest was fairly poor. Anyway when they started attacking me I instinctivally kicked one of them in the groin, I'd it done before I realised it, luckily the guy was wearing a groin guards. Anyway the 7 folks who went before me didn't punch or kick out at all, I reckon that some bits of Krav Maga are worth knowing and I would like to be good at it but I think a background the likes of kick boxing or something would be needed to complement it.
The chap didn't even attempt to block the kick too.

TrollHammaren

RoverJames wrote: »

My own view would be ocassional lessons in Krav Maga would be fairly useless.

That seems to be the general concensus, and I couldn't imagine any martial art being of any use if you're not routinely practising it.

yomchi

TrollHammaren wrote: »

That seems to be the general concensus, and I couldn't imagine any martial art being of any use if you're not routinely practising it.

Then that boils down again to exactly what you're practicing.