Keep Your Crotch in the dirt

There is a phrase used when taking Knife Control Concepts that, outside of flow, is kind of one of the more foundational concepts of the program. It’s rather crass so I will give you a more elegant version of it and let you use your imagination, “Keep your crotch in the dirt.” When teaching self-defense, I emphasize movement over moves because reaction verses response is more effective in my opinion. A person during an altercation is not likely to pull from their brain and execute productive exact moves to counter the other, at least not without a massive amount of repetition. If you throw in adrenaline dumps and freeze responses, “Flight of the Sword D,” against sewing machine stabbing is probably not going to fly. Pun intended. Its going to be an ugly scramble at the very least. That is why I love the KCC curriculum so much and why I am so pumped to see it in action with other things.
 
With Knife Control Concepts you are learning to use the other persons energy against them, to trace the weapon, and react in small ways for big response to their body movement. That last concept is very Jiu Jitsuie (making that up). When grappling you tend to want to view it as a puzzle, not muscling; setting a person up for where YOU want them to go. I have obviously not reached that zenith in this art because #whitebelt4eva, and I spend most of my time trying to get out of side control while not getting my chest caved in, but the movement over brute strength is what makes it useful for smaller people. KCC standup and ground modules follow this philosophy and then go farther by adjusting it to managing a person yielding a weapon. That makes for a major game changer, one I have felt.
 
Back in my karate days I had a messy at best, theory in my head; based on my size, if I wanted to increase my success rate, I needed to learn to react to a person’s movement, not the assault as a whole. I didn’t know how to word or honestly even phrase it in my own brain, but was starting to see that learning multi-faceted specific moves to counter someone else in a fight created too many variables. Anything past two on three gets jumbled and I haven’t found the effectiveness if the other person isn’t just in the right spot holding exactly the right position. The flow of reaction is what gives you more of a leg up in a fight than a move dedicated to a person stabbing you in one specific overhanded way. 
 
I have yet to take a course where what I have learned wasn’t worth the money I spent. In fact, I have gone back a couple of times to the same one to try and pick up what I missed the first time around only to realize, damn, I need to take it a third or fourth time. That being said, Knife Control Concepts is like the glue that ties all of them together for me. 
 
A few years ago, I remember analyzing adrenal responses and testing out how to problem solve physically in an altercation where that becomes the case. Later I would learn even in the pre-game of a possible assault your brain can fire off funny things, tunnel vision can occur, heart rate can affect thinking and so on forth. Hell, more often than not, I am executing things wrong and definitely have many more losses. If there ARE wins, they are usually wrapped up in the losses. KCC helps with that as well. I found myself just doing what needed to be done, rather than thinking of an objective. In a recent pistol class, Rogue Methods Close Contact Gunfighter, I was able to see this more clearly. Of course the goal was to get the gun and shoot the other person, but the mid-fight thought process was reactionary, almost trusting the flow would get me to where I needed to go regardless, and that helped in remaining calm which in turn kept heart rate lowered. Not saying I wasn’t winded, I totally collapsed heavily at the end of each one out of breath and possibly dying, but there was not a point in any of those that I felt I could not go on. That is huge
 
I hate/love watching videos of myself sparring, boxing, or evolutions. Even if I am feeling confident in how it’s going, if I feel fast, if I feel efficient, I will watch later and can point out a thousand mistakes and wonder at how I could feel so BA in the moment and look so sloppy on video. And those are the ones I feel good about. But on the flip side I get to see where it went wrong and how to improve. (Note: I am aware I said “feel” like a thousand times in this paragraph, I tried to problem solve this and it just wasn’t happening.)
 
This concept of movement was proven to me a couple weekends ago, so much so that I felt I needed to commend even more what KCC has going on. In this close contact pistol fighting course I had several different drills and evolutions fighting for, trying to draw, attempting to prevent their draw, tracing which hand their gun was in, malfunctions and more, and the biggest thing I can say is that the flow drills from this knife course seamlessly glided into pistol altercations and it was amazing. Not saying I won, I lost a lot if you watched any of the videos, but being able to react to my partner and stay on where his gun was, at all times, was a win for me and showed just how revolutionary this knife course is. 
 
Even more so to this point is what happened when I didn’t do what I had been taught. Eli and Mike, during the ground portion of KCC, spoke of it being natural for a Jiu Jitsu practitioner to want to slide the leg through from side control to position the crotch, face up while maintaining pressure on the body, for more control (I have done this in class, and I am sure there is a name for what it is… I don’t know it). One of the main takeaways from KCC is back to the crass statement from the beginning, keep your crotch in the dirt. The reasoning for this, according to Aaron is, “for the most part where your pelvis is pointed, is where your power is.” This is key for smaller people that struggle to maintain even a small amount of control. I must be able maintain a base, effectively trace the weapon, and you will see in the attached video, the moment I turned my pelvis to the sky at about the 40 second mark is when the fight went to crap. 
 
I am not just blowing smoke when I say KCC is truly a necessary binding agent for fighty things. What is even more awesome, is that it is something I could recommend to anyone, no matter where their walk in martial arts/combatives is, and they could glean massive amounts of instantly applicable information to bring back to whatever they are pursuing. Give it a shot, KCC is hot. (couldn’t use “stab,” because, you know, it wouldn’t rhyme….so yeah.)
 
#selfdefense #usefeelalot #KCCishot #pistolfighting #knifefighting #knifedefense #losesomelosesome #reactionnotresponse #stabbymcstabberson #keepyourcrotchinthedirt