Defensive Tactics Training

As a matter of course for my job, we have periodic refresher training in defensive tactics. It usually consists of performing some fairly static repetitions on a few selected techniques. Rarely do we practice at full speed. I understand the reasoning behind our primary trainer's philosophy, so it's not a matter of questioning our program.

We're currently going through an in-service training cycle, but this time the defensive tactics portion was a little different. It was designed to incorporate a live scenario with a decision making process built in.

Without getting into a lot of detail about the actual training or the specifics of the scenarios, I wanted to share a little bit about my experience. The scenarios had trainers acting as roll players. My scenario involved getting a "drunk" out of bar. Upon contacting the "intoxicated man," he became uncooperative and ultimately resistive. After repeated commands, I moved in behind him and easily affected a takedown and then mounted him. It wasn't anything unusual for me, but as I mounted the trainer, I could see he was wide-eyed in astonishment, as to how he ended up in that position so quickly. I easily controlled him while I got him handcuffed. The scenario then ended. as I was removing the handcuffs, all he could say was that he didn't know what in the hell I had just done to him, but he wanted to know how to do it.

What I did wasn't anything that any seasoned Jiu-Jitsu practitioner couldn't do. It's just nice to be reminded that what we do is extremely effective. Sometimes we get caught up in performing Jiu-Jitsu against one another, trained practitioner against trained practitioner, that we forget how devastating it can be against an untrained opponent.