Immediate Action Combatives

Salt Lake City IAC Coursework January 29-31, 2027.

I know it is early to post this, but I am not doing as many seminars anymore so they will not be as easy to get to if people wait too long, so I think it makes sense to get early word out. I only have 5 in 2026, and it will most likely be the same in '27.

I will teaching my essential core Grappling in a Weapons Based Environment coursework in SLC next January. Soon I will post sign up links, but if you are in the area, pencil it in now!

Two slots opened up for my seminar weekend after next in OKC at the terrific Meadhall Range. Come train in an air conditioned and well matted facility and become more dangerous to bad guys. Anyone can take the class, regardless of experience or physical capacity.

I will be back at the most excellent Meadhall Range outside OKC June 19-21 teaching my foundational coursework.

This is ground zero for understanding grappling in an environment where weapons are present, both on our feet as well as on the ground. It is NOT Fight Club, but rather a deep immersion into usable princeps, techniques, tactics, and training methods for anyone of any experience of physical level.

Real World Application of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Wrestling, and Boxing in a Weapon-Based-Environment (WBE)

Contrary to popular belief, many empty hand fights and those involving weapons, end up entangled, either standing or on the ground. No amount of pontificating or self-proclaimed “expert” posturing will change this simple fact. If you ignore this reality, you may very well find yourself in a situation you cannot handle with disastrous consequences. This course is designed to give the layman a realistic and functional set of concepts, techniques, methodologies, training drills and experiences that will prepare them for a worst case grappling scenario. All techniques and concepts are high percentile applications which span a wide spectrum of confrontations. Training consists of presentation, drilling and Force-On-Force evolutions providing attendees with immediate feedback regarding the efficacy of the skills learned. The goal of this course is not to create a “ground fighter” or grappler. The objective is to provide attendees who have limited training time and resources with solid ground survival and escape fundamentals geared toward the increasingly violent weapon based environments they may live, work and/or travel within. And all techniques/concepts are from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Wrestling, and Boxing and are combat proven over the past 80 years by thousands and thousands of practitioners, including the U.S. Army.

• These methods are for everyone regardless of physical condition – young, old, male, female, athlete or not – You DO NOT have to be a professional fighter to perform at a functional level. This will be a class about physical training, but it is NOT boot camp. Participants may go at the pace that is comfortable for them, while trying to push the envelope of their own individual performance.

• Requirements: loose, comfortable but durable clothes, mouthpiece, cup, notebook, and an open mind. Boxing or MMA gloves are strongly encouraged, but are not mandatory. Blue Guns and matched holsters, and training knives are a good idea, but there will be loaners available.
Surviving/defending/escaping from the bottom
Getting back to your feet / staying upright
Defending against strikes on the ground or clinch
Denying the attacker weapon access – understanding technique, positional hierarchy, and timing
Proper role of “dirty tactics”
Multiple opponents
Essential training principles, methods, and drills
Underlying concepts and mindset for the clinch in a self-defense context
Dealing with the sucker punch/ambush
Fundamentals of the clinch
Controlling the entanglement
Disengaging and making distance for escape, weapons access or orientation reset
Performance coaching and troubleshooting
Structuring and balancing your training for a real world lifestyle

Link to sign up in comments.

Historical Entangled Fights Part 1 - Wyatt Earp

Most of the time when I address the very real fact that entangled fights between private citizens with weapons being involved, I usually focus on the most recent real world incidents. Whether it's a new video or a news or police report, I think it's good to focus on the freshness and the fact that these things happen on a regular basis every single day.

However, One of the things that I have found being a combined history nerd/martial art nerd/gun nerd, Is that these events happened just as frequently in the past, And oftentimes to incredibly famous people. So what I'm gonna do over the next couple weeks is post a number of these incidents because it will be very useful to continue to reiterate the point I have made for 25+ years publicly, that these fights with weapons and grappling are not rare by any stretch of the imagination nor by any definition.

I'm going to start with very possibly the most famous Old West gunfighter, Wyatt Earp. An argument could be madeThe Billy the Kid Is just as famous if not fractionally more, but I think with the past generation or so Wyatt has taken his place AsThe very definition of old west shootist.

The incident I'm going to Recount happened During this days as a Lawmen in Dodge city Where he first came to true prominence. What's really interesting about this particular event is that it involves another well-known old West gunfighter, Clay Allison.

Today Clay Allison is not as well known as he was in the 1870s and 80s, but to those who study the West, he is ranked highly as someone who was involved in a lot of shootings and was a dangerous man.

At one point in 1878 in Dodge City in the line of duty, Wyatt had shot a cowboy named George Hoyt. Hoyt was a friend of Clay Allison's. The story goes that other friends of Hoyt wanted to get revenge and then enlisted Alison to come do it. He traveled to Dodge city and went to confront Wyatt.

In Earp’s own words in a later interview, he describes his confrontation with Allison. After meeting face to face, and they start talking, Earp said:

“His right hand was stealing round to his pistol pocket, but I made no move. Only I watched him narrowly. With my own right hand I had a firm grip on my six-shooter, and with my left I was ready to grab Allison’s gun the moment he je**ed it out. He studied the situation in all its bearings for the space of a second or two. I saw the change in his face.”

So technically there was no entangled gun fight. However, In his own words he was ready to do exactly that. This was not a man Who was a stranger to the idea of going hands-on and grapple with another person while he drew his own weapon. This was not a man who clearly understood that an entangled fight might happen.This was not a man who was stumbling in the dark And trying to come up with something in the heat of the moment. This was a man who understood how to fight against another violent man who intended to kill him, And was well aware that not only might he have to go hands-on, He planned on it ahead of time and was perfectly ready and prepared to do so.

So when you have an experienced gunfighter like Earp Dealing with an incredibly violent known killer, and If Allison had drawn the gun in Wyatt’s own words he was going to grapple while he drew and used his gun.

I would really like to hear from gun-centric people who will try to explain away about this situation and ignore it, when at the same time they might very well quote Earp In other ways with his advice on gun fighting.The mental gymnastics they must go through Is fascinating.

Don’t be like them. Learn from history.

A Critical Self-Preservation Skill

For quite literally years and years I have been telling people that one of the single best skills we can have if we are truly interested in real world self-preservation is the ability to breakfall. It is not sexy or tacti-cool, but it is far more likely to be used and more likely to save you from harm than a firearm or H2H fighting skills.
The simple fact is that everyone falls – whether that is because of slipping/tripping over something on the ground, or getting our feet tied up through bad, hasty, unthinking movement. We all have done this at some time, and some of us have done it a lot. Hopefully, the most negative thing we get afterwards is embarrassment or some broken skin, but all too often the consequences are much worse. For anyone who is unsure about that, look up how many times a senior citizen who falls and breaks their hip then passes away as a result.

At the beginning of my Immediate Action Combatives coursework, I tell people the seminar is NOT about teaching you to voluntarily go to the ground to fight. Instead, it is about "when you do not intend to go to the ground but find yourself there regardless". When I ask students if that is possible and how it would be, they universally answer "after falling", because anyone who is honest will admit that they have fallen at some point in their life. I point out that even if you do not want to, if you have not trained specifically to stay on your feet, finding yourself under sudden surprising violent assault is not the time when your brain is going to be able to do so easily.
Take this video as a case in point, as it is a perfect illustration of what I try to get across.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ2PGmUIAYo&feature=emb_logo

Does anyone think that the LEO wanted to go to the ground? Of course not. It is obvious that was unintended and totally accidental. And because it was accidental, and he was not prepared or trained for it, the single reason he did not suffer worse consequences was that the bad guy had the same reaction. If the bad guy had not fallen over the officer and had a bit more presence of mind, there is a pretty good chance the officer would have suffered major injuries from the bad guy’s knife, and perhaps even have died. The good guy was also extremely lucky that he did not suffer injuries from the fall itself such as hitting his head. Again, nothing good would have followed that.

The good guy in the above video was lucky, but I don’t really think counting on luck to save your life is the best plan. That is no different than making poor financial decisions over and over again in the hope that you will hit the lottery at some point. You need to prepare and practice for it the same exact way you practice drawing from concealment with your carry pistol.
If you are honestly interested in self-preservation, than you need to spend a solid amount of time on the things that are most likely to kill you. Having decent health (regular physical checkups, including dental since there is a direct link between poor dental hygiene and heart attacks), not being excessively fat, eating like an adult, being a good driver, knowing CPR and how to work an AED machine and recognize the signs of a stroke, and knowing how to survive a sudden fall. None of these are sexy or can be easily accomplished by buying gear, but they mean far more to your actual well-being.

In the next article, I will talk about how we go about learning and developing the ability to breakfall.

תיעוד הירי בראש העין הסרטון מכיל תיעוד של אלימות וכן של יריThe clip contains shooting and gun violence.The following video is a part of Haaretz news coverage. For the newspaper w...

If you are interested in truly cutting edge instruction in fi****ms training, check out this upcoming collaboration between Simon Golob and Jeff Gonzales on 8/29-30/2026 in Casa Grande, AZ.

The course is not "tactical" vs "gamer", but instead looking at how the two sides can work together and produce a superior student performance.

I will be there at the class, so come and watch me be the worst performer and join in on the mirth!

Everyday Carry: Cold Performance Meets Dynamic Shooting Near and Far: The Complete Handgun Fight is a 2-day course blending close-quarters gunfighting w/long-range handgun skills, from arm’s length to 50+ yards.

Striking vs Grappling in the Real World

This is an interesting video. I'm not gonna comment on the law-enforcement Context, I'm not gonna comment on how they arrived in the situation that they're in, and I am not actually going to make any points about what I think as an inexperienced non-law-enforcement professional what these officers should've done. But I am going to point out an issue that often gets overlooked in the self preservation training community.

Watch the video and notice what the female officer does while her partner is wrestling with the suspect over the gun. She is frantically hitting the bad guy as hard as she possibly can. And we clearly see the results. And said results add up to Zero. .

Further, that Female officer looked to be pretty good shape. She looks to be fit and looks to be the kind of officer that you would hope would show up to deal with stuff. Certainly you could make comments about how her striking could be better directed and the mechanics might be improved, but what she was doing was not really wrong.

What was wrong was that it was completely useless. And here is why. The female officer is not that big. Hard to tell from the video but she looks fairly average size for a female of her age. Again, obviously seems to be in pretty decent shape, but not super muscular nor super large. And that is the major issue with striking that far too many subject matter experts overlook when they bleat endlessly about how grappling will get you killed and what you have to do instead is hit the other person.

That sounds really great if you are a 200 pound person hitting somebody your size or smaller. Probably a decent and effective strategy. .However what is overlooked - whether through willful ignorance or flat out stupidity - Is that physics matters.There is a reason that every striking combat sport has weight classes.You can be the best 135 pound Striker on the planet, but if you go to punch somebody who outweighs you by 100 pounds, it's not going to do a whole lot. Roberto Duran was one of the greatest boxers of all time and his nickname was Hands of Stone, so that lets us know that he could hit really hard. He was lightweight through middleweight champion in the 70s and early 80s. But you know what title he never won, what title he never fought for? Heavyweight. Why is that? Because the worst top 20 heavyweight boxer on the planet would have destroyed him and maybe even killed him. There's almost no boxing commission in the world that would've sanctioned a fight between Roberto Duran and some heavyweight. Because physics matters. So if someone like a Duran would have a hard time hurting someone 80 pounds heavier, what chance does that middle age guy, who has never fought or trained H2H before, and has a short weekend course on it going to be able to accomplish?

You can have all the technical skill on your side. You can be an abnormally proficient striker. But hitting somebody 50, 80 or 100 pounds heavier than you negates most of that and anybody who tries to argue that is lying or they're an idiot. And anyone who tries to say “well, that's why you strike to specific points” has never fought anybody for real. The best we can do is hit general targets as often and as fast and as hard as we possibly can. And if you are substantially smaller than somebody else, that is not going to be super effective as the video here so ably illustrates.

What we know does work from decades and decades of jujutsu and MMA is that you can be a smaller person and win at grappling against a bigger person. That is not a debatable point. I can point out an incredibly dense amount of empirical data to prove that. It's easier for a smaller person to win through grappling than it is through striking.

Am I saying that striking sucks? Obviously not. I have spent an inordinate amount of my own personal training time working striking. But we have to be conscious of the limitations of striking. It absolutely has its place, but it is almost never a more superior tactic than grappling in the real world.

PoliceActivity 18K likes, 8.9K comments. "Suspect Tries to Take Officer’s Gun During Struggle in Portland"

Another “Rare” Entangled Fight with a Private Citizen and Weapons 4/7/2026

While many online commentators keep bleating about how these things are rare, we have another one that just happened in Oklahoma. Take a look : A high school principal tackles an attempted school shooter with a gun. Not only was it entangled, but it went to the ground, where the fight was ended successfully.

‘Saved lives’: Video shows principal tackling gunman at Oklahoma high school Surveillance footage from a high school in Oklahoma appears to show a gunman getting tackled by the school’s principal.

Just published the first of my new YouTube series that I am calling Mat Side Chats.

I will use these as informal quick discussions talking about important issues and needs that require a bit more nuance than can be covered by writing a post or article.

The first one gives the viewer tips on finding the right facility to train combatives. This has been one of the most frequently asked questions to men over the past 25 years, and it is crucial to make the right and informed choice.

I post it here, but I would really appreciate it if people would view it directly on YT to help my channel out, as well as hitting like or even subscribe. My channel is NOT monetized and this is completely free information, with no BS of me trying to get you to buy stuff from me or giving me money to get access to the real details. All of my videos will be exactly what I would tell you in a private lesson or in seminars. So if you could support me with likes/subscriptions, it would be super cool!

Mat Side Chat 1 - Finding the right Combatives Gym A short chat with some key guidelines to finding a good, functional, and safe Combatives facility to train at. Making the wrong choice can be costly not just...

It continues to amuse me that people in the fi****ms training community still try to deny obvious evidence. I posted yet another “rare” entangled fight with weapons and private citizens, and even wrote how that the Flat Earthers use ambiguous language and terms, and I even had commentators on my post still use that language without even a bit of self-awareness.

So I am going to do it again. The following incident just happened and it was reported by a major news source, the New York Times on March 15th. A private citizen stopping a potential mass shooting by not only going to an entanglement, but actually and purposefully taking the bad guy to the ground. No lives lost, good guy wins by using grappling against a handgun. I must be living in Princess Bride land when I hear certain people use the term “rare”.

“"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Armed Man with 100 Rounds of Ammo Tackled in Texas Church The New York Post is reporting new details on a March 15, 2026, incident in which an armed man was tackled in Eden Church in Houston, Texas.

The past is another country

We can read about it, study it, learn from it, but we can't live there. Or, at least, we shouldn’t.

It is important to learn from the past. Whether we have made mistakes or we have made good choices and done good things, It's always good and useful to touch base with those things to help us ensure that our future path is as good as we can possibly make it.

But we can't wallow in it. Whether it's a great decision or a poor decision. Whether we had a fantastic experience at some point in our past or we had a horrific one. Dwelling on any of it does no good. You cannot move forward while dwelling.To move forward we must live in the present and plan for the future.

For example: I had an opportunity in high school to follow quite literally the best strength and conditioning plan a person could follow. I had the book and the template. If I had followed that template I would have been in much better condition, far less injured, and had a base of health and vitality that would've followed me to this day at 61. Instead I followed trends and what was popular and what I thought was the cool thing. I wasted a good 15+ years. That mistake is certainly embarrassing to me and disappointing in what I missed out on. However, letting it guide me going forward is literally a waste. It would do me no good to beat myself up over and over and over again and cry about what if. Instead, I put my focus on building Health and Vitality the correct way and using that book and that old template to move forward. I'm not gonna waste any more time whining about the past because the future is too exciting.

Focus on where you're going and ensure that your path is as smooth and productive as possible. Learn from your past mistakes but leave them there in the past. They can be monuments, but they should not be an albatross around our necks.