My Disappointment In The US Marines
In my first article I described in some detail (not as much as I’d like to) my training experience with the US marines. The feedback I received back was actually quite strange. I got support and positive feedback from US marines. This surprised me a lot as I expected them to think I was taking some type of cheap shot at them, but I got a lot agreeing with me… Worried they wouldn’t be fit enough, strong enough for the situation at hand or would get shown up with the other marines when they first joined. However, this wasn’t the case.
Now from the general public the response was slightly mixed and match– Some completely agreed, while others disagreed, which was fine. Unfortunately, the people who disagreed didn’t really give any “valid reason.” I got stuff such as “the tactical squat doesn’t matter.” This had me bursting into laughter, as the United States of America spent over 400 million dollars on personal coaches, and one of the most important things to be taught was the tactical squat. So trying to say it doesn’t matter or that it’s not a common place to shoot from is insanely stupid.
How often do you see photos, or videos of the troops firing back and forth while in the tactical squat position? It’s quite common. So it’s not hard to believe a guy who can control his lactic acid build up and hold the position well would certainly be able to have an advantage over a guy who gets cramps after 3-4 minutes.
Not only this but being able to do the tactical walk out from the tactical squat position while firing at your enemies who now are forced to stand up/run due to not being able to hold the position, let alone move through it as well as you can do is a huge plus point!
Another silly point made to me was that it didn’t matter if a guy could squat, dead lift, or even workout well, if he had a gun that was all he needed. Sorry, but this is extremely illogical. You are in a fire fight, you are outnumbered, your partner who is also a great friend is hit, you have the time to move him, you grab him put him on your shoulders, he’s heavy, you are not strong enough. You attempt to run, but because you have no stamina due to your lack of training, you get your head blown off, or worse you get captured and tortured before being killed.
Training with that gun really worked well then, didn’t it?
Another response was how great the United States technology was that they didn’t need to learn to train properly.
Tell that to all the US solders that are now dead then, shall we? Or how about their family members?
Anyway moving on with the next part of the article and what happened next in the story. We began to move on to doing gun disbarment and eventually knife defense. First, we started with a gun.
I was excited on this and the goal was at close range how easy it would be to take a gun off one another, we did different starting points, such as the gun facing you from the front, with an issued command as you’d expect to issue in battle, we then did different scenarios, such as the attacker already starting with a hand on the gun, or the defendant on the floor while the guy with the gun pointed it at him, the usual stuff you expect in these type of situations.
We ran through this before I noticed a scary pattern developing, I would grab the gun and redirect it from me before they could fire, the marine would grab hold of the gun holding it as hard as he can pulling back, baring in mind he had a “wooden” training knife on him that he was allowed to pull out and numerous other things. But no, he’d grab the gun and go into a tug of war– usually the stronger guy winning. When the first opponent tried this with me, I elbowed him, not as hard as I could but he let go letting a huge “fuck…” What the hell?
I have his gun now and pointed it at him.
This happened countless times throughout. I’d let them pull over the gun while smacking them, none of them having the common sense to hit me first or turn it into a fight. This carried on into the knife fighting What the most common event was is I’d hit them and take the knife while they struggled for it, or we’d go in into a strange kind of grapple where I’d throw them down and they’d STILL hold onto the knife, work and effort wise in this was quite impressive. Even if I lowered my foot onto their throat, they’d still try to hold onto it. Granted I didn’t step my foot down to crack their head open like I would in a real life situation, and I didn’t choke them with my foot as I again would in a real life situation.
Afterwards I got plenty of nice words and compliments from them, but the lack of common sense was astounding to me. None of them realized the danger they were in and I think it’s ALSO important to note some of these had been serving for over FIVE years, so there’s no argument that they SHOULD HAVE BEEN much better than they were. This is fact.
I was impressed by those wanting to learn.
A bonus little story is the US military recently went to the Philippines. After getting their asses kicked (and yes, they did), the US has tried to hire coaches there on a private contract to teach a martial art style. Even with MMA training and the other styles that are while good, not always perfect for real-life situations, they are now trying to get a private contract to learn.
Balintawak. I will be doing an article on balintawak later, it is a great martial arts style and certainly does suit the marines and us military, while I believe you should take everything you can from countless styles, it will help a lot of those who are not in the best shape and fitness level. And it is better than just “average” boxing skills for what they are doing on a daily basis.
I give the US government credit for trying to improve the military and accepting there is a huge problem there with the level of training, especially compared to other nations.
