Being in the military meant I never really get to stay in one place for all that long.

In my combatives training, that meant skipping around from style to style depending up what was available on the military base I was assigned to.

Back in the 80’s, before “reality based” stuff really caught on, that pretty much broke down to common traditional karate systems.

Unfortunately, what I often found was that many schools built an entire attack philosophy around more of a “points” system rather than a “kick the shit out of the bad guy” approach.

For example, it’s common in many martial arts schools to use a “snapping” motion with both punches and kicks in which you strike and quickly retract your fist or foot to punch again.

Sound familiar?

This works great if all you have to do is touch a spot on your sparring partner to score a point and need to aim again in case you missed.

It sucks if your goal is to churn some gangbanger’s guts into hamburger!

Here’s why… (more…)