From the author of the Army’s field manual on hand-to-hand combat! Matt Larsen has brought together reality-based strategies for mastering close-quarters fight situations in Modern Army Battle-Proven Techniques and Training Methods. Based on lessons gleaned from battlefields and several martial arts, and packed with photos, this book teaches the critical skills of hand-to-hand combat.
Larsen started training in the martial arts as a young Marine infantryman and later joined the Army. Holding black belts in several martial arts, Larsen eventually trained the 75th Ranger Regiment in combatives. His concepts revolutionized combatives training and the culture of the U.S. military. Modern Army Combatives is a must-have for students of self-defense and martial arts everywhere.
On my first reading I uncharitably skipped to the techniques and found that not all of them were easily transferable to unarmed civilian h2h combat. Obviously not universally true, but you get the idea.
On the reread, I actually read the philosophy behind the decisions they made, especially the competition stuff. This guy really understands fighting, he seems to not only express the techniques and their principles, like leverage or follow up moves, but also the broad philosophies of the arts themselves.
Even to the point where he has evidence for what works with his trainees in the field, and so he’s able to find limitations in the arts which you may not hear from the great thinkers from individual disciplines.
Military martial arts systems (usually rightly) get a lot of flak, simply because most Krav guys can’t fight. But I think some of the solutions presented here, the careful balance between competition and practicality - something seldom achieved in all your favorite BJJ gyms - could change something like Krav into a system which everyone respects.
The whole bit about the cultivation of a culture of training is huge!
As a civilian I thought this was a really interesting look inside combat. Even though I am not a fighter, I learned more than I expected about the techniques our armed forces use. In theory only, of course.