Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Police Tactical Footwork from Bagua?

Dojo Rat has an interesting post with video of Bagua footwork being used for  handgun drills. I’d love to hear from any law enforcement firearm instructors on this one. Click the picture to watch at Dojo Rat’s site.

Bagua footwork for handguns Bag

1 comment:

mostlygenius said...

Classic. A martial arts expert is teaching 'tactical footwork', but can't seem to get his thumbs out from behind the slide. This has less validity than taking a class in ball room dancing.


By the numbers:

1. Rule violations (like pointing your gun at things you don't want to shoot) isn't a useful addition to training. In fact a lot training time is spent to get people NOT to do this.

2. Tactical movement needs to improve your sight picture, otherwise you would just run (in whatever direction appropriate) as fast as you can. When shooting firearms only the good hits count.

3. This is footwork for footwork's sake. Mobility is always a compromise against stability. A ballerina can spin 360 on one toe, that doesn't make it a combat skill. Crossing your feet is an exceedingly bad idea - probably why you don't see it any contact sports.

4. If you know which direction you have to move next and the time you have to get it accomplished you can always produce a cool demo. Here is one for the home audience: stand with your feet shoulder width apart, but your toes pointed to the right as far as they can go. Turing right is very easy, but turning left is about twice as hard. The more toes you can get pointed in the direction of travel the easier the pivot will be, the problem is that in reality you will NEVER know which direction you need to pivot at any given instance.

There is nothing wrong with the practice of any martial art. What is wrong is when we take those skills and practices out of context and start pretending that we have discovered a universal truth that transcends a particular application.