A technique is the procedure, skill or art used in a specific or particular task. In many traditional martial arts, there’s a different, specific technique to respond to every possible attack. So if someone grabs your hair, you do technique A. Technique B must be learned to respond to a lapel grab, C counters a wrist grab, and it goes on ad nauseam.
For true martial artists who have and wish to devote the time necessary to train like this — which included me in my younger years — it’s great.
But technique-based training is the crux of the failure of much of the traditional martial-arts based police use-of-force training. We don’t have sufficient training time to take officers who aren’t already proficient in the martial arts and train them to functional levels of proficiency.
The bottom line is simple: if you can’t become reasonably proficient and retain the tactics you’re learning in your allotted training time, the time you’re spending is wasted.
A concept is a broad abstract idea or guiding general principle. The mantra in training should now be concepts instead of techniques. If a technique can’t be used as a concept, as in multiple situations and in varied environments, it’s probably too detailed and “martial artsy” for the masses, and likely a waste of time to attempt teaching to most officers.
The foundation of conceptual self-defense training should be gross motor skill concepts, such as knee and elbow strikes. These can be used when fighting while standing, kneeling, prone or even supine. By building your system on this foundation, the non-martial-artist line officers will still have some solid use-of-force options after the martial-arts-based techniques fade from their memories.
