One thing the instructors did everyday after lunch was have us watch and discuss passed UFC fights. This gave us some time for our lunch to digest and watch something interesting. After watching a few of Royce Gracie fight and a few others, we then discussed how Royce Gracie was able to dominate his opponents at this time.

Royce Gracie was able to dominate his opponents because he was more prepared for these kinds of fights, meaning his opponents had no ground game, and as soon as he took a stand up fighter to the ground he was able to finish them.

So, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu proved to be a very effective martial art in fighting other fighters who only had a standard stand up game. However, as years went by other fighters began to noticed that they needed to add some grappling and submissions to their arsenal of fighting skills.

The instructors were sharing this with us to show us that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is very effective, however, it is not the best martial art in the world. Nowadays, MMA fighters need to have multiple skills in a variety of martial arts, such as Muay Thai, Wrestling, Boxing, etc, to compete and be an all around fighter.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is just one of the many martial arts that are taught in the US Army Combatives program. Since grappling is relatively easiest to learn in a short amount of time, and is effective for ground fighting, it is the Combatives technical base, and what is taught first in the program.

By the end of the course, we were doing open hand slaps to the face and punches to the body. This was different for me since I never trained for this type of fighting. I was able to protect myself and come away unscathed, but it did open my eyes to a whole new  arena that I need to train in. Since coming back from Combatives Level 1 course, I have taken up boxing. This will prepare me for Level 2, which I hope to attend by the end of the year.

Overall, my instructors where bad ass, and all of them train in MMA on the civilian side. I am actually going to keep in touch with them and find out when they are teaching the Level 2 course. Level 1 was an awesome course and it is awesome to have this kind of training available to all soldiers.

I attended Army Combatives Level 1 training from May 5-9th, 2008, in Monmouth, Oregon. I thought this course was going to be a course to expose me to the Army Combatives training program, however, the course was actually to be certified as a Level 1 Army Combatives Instructor. There were 23 soldiers in this course with three instructors.

On day one, the class was instructed on gaining dominant body positions; front mount, side control, and rear mount (we also went over some escapes). Later in the day we sparred for gaining dominant positions, no submissions. After sparring for about 1o-12 minutes straight with different people, we then moved on to a little competition. We competed against each other for dominant body positions. The instructors placed us into two groups with each group lined up on the mat on opposite sides. The instructor then selected one soldier from each side of the group and each soldier sparred starting from the knees in the middle of the mat.

Once someone gained a dominant position and was able to hold it, the winner went to one side and the loser went to the other side. After everyone went through, the winners went against each other for round two. Next came the last and final round. I made it to the second to the last match. I was exhausted by this time, and I was not looking forward to another match.

I have to share something I later regretted. Being the smallest guy in the class at 140 lbs., I did not want to end the first day by being the “one” guy everyone wants to get, because I know how some people get their egos hurt when they can’t take on the little guy as easy as they thought. So, I let the soldier have the match, and he went onto one more match and won the competition.

I should never have done that. I “really” let myself down and I regret making that decision. Who cares if I would have been the one everyone wanted to get. That would have just pushed me harder! Even though I made this decision, it did not hide the fact that I knew BJJ, and everyone could tell. That was fine, because it opened the door for me to help my fellow soldiers. Believe me, I learned from this decision, and I will not be making it again.

Day 2 was more techniques and going through those techniques in drills. Did I mention we had to “sit “and “stand up from sitting” in a certain way? Yes, every time we sat down we had to “sit in base” and when we stood up, we had to “stand in base”. We drilled that too, hundreds of times.

Stay tuned for more on my experience at Army Combatives Level 1 training…

Next week I will be attending the Army Combatives Level 1 course. I am in the Oregon Army National Guard, and this will be my first expose to the Army Combatives course. I did not have to go through Army’s bootcamp because I am a former Marine. So, I have never participated in any Army Combatives training.

From what I hear, since I have been training in BJJ for over a year now, I should have no problem getting through the course. I hope to learn some new things, but if not, that will be fine. There are four levels of Army Combatives. I plan to get through as many levels as I can before any deployments I may be going to.

When I return, I will post my experience and what I learned.