US Army Combatives

Stoic1 said:
I am level 4 certified in MACP. The highest level you can go in Army Combatives.

I did a ton of Judo, kickboxing, and BJJ purple before I ever got into the Army. I was level 0 and tapping level 4's when they gave us their rudimentary training. It was garbage. Basic Gracie Jiu Jitsu garbage. At the time there were a couple of drills and a few submissions. In a 40 hour course you probably got 2 hours of actual rolling in. And probably less than 20 hours of technique training by dubious instructors. That was around 2006.

Now in 2012 I got my level 3 and 4.

Level 3 is no joke. 160 hours of training. Every single day you are rolling. First week focuses on boxing. Second week focuses on kickboxing. Third on putting it all together. Fourth week culminates in tactical body armor with weapons, etc. Each week you have 3 bouts in whatever week you are in - example: Week 1 you will have 3 rounds of boxing full out with someone. Week 2 kickboxing 3 bouts. Etc. The final week are honor grad bouts with pancrase rules 1x10min round for each weight class. Dudes are getting fucked up.

But keep in mind the program has changed. They are trying to add more combat focused stuff in there while trying to make you a competent fighter. How to pull a resisting suspect out of a car through the window, 2 on 1 scenarios, grappling matches where the instructor suddenly drops a stun gun on the ground nearby, guys in blauer suits are jumping you trying to take your M4 away after tackling you.

This whole thing about "grappling" got a bad rap in the Army. First, they sucked at teaching it. Second, it doesn't work very well in a full kit. So now the emphasis is becoming more tactically focused.

Now the level 1 certification teaches just very, very basic skills. The average soldier *MIGHT* remember the armbar and scissor sweep in a month - but probably not. They do a punch drill where they must achieve a clinch 4x on the instructor while they are wearing boxing gloves punching the students. The culminating event now is an "action front/rear" drill where guys in Blauer suits face off against students in body armor, helmet, and a weapon. Usually the student just gets tackled.

So to sum this huge post up: The Army is moving away from a grappling focused curiculum and towards a tactical response that centers on using your weapon first, having your buddy arrive soon, and not to get caught up rolling around on the ground.

Take a look at what the Army is really looking for these days in Combatives:

http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/197th/combatives/
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Yeah, as muh as it's TRUE that military training is a terrible way to learn to fight (and especially grapple), it's not a very fair criticism. Grappling pretty irrelevant, and it would be a waste to put any significant time into it.
 
dualityzme said:
Can anyone confirm or deny or just have additional info?
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Confirmed.

"Primarily what we do is based off of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as taught to us by the Gracie Brothers, Rorion and Royce Gracie.."

@ 2m 5s



From: http://gracieacademy.com/military.asp

After the UFC took the world by storm in 1993, people all over the world realized that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was the only system that would give someone a realistic chance against a larger, more athletic opponent.

The US Army was among the first to recognize the effectiveness of our self-defense system. In 1994, they contacted Rorion Gracie and asked him to develop an intensive course based on the most effective techniques of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, which would give soldiers maximum hand-to-hand combat effectiveness, in the least amount of time, with the least amount of injuries. The result was Gracie Combatives.

Since the inception of the Gracie Combatives course, we have taught the techniques to special operations forces including US Army Special Forces, US Army Rangers, and US Navy SEALs, the CIA, and conventional units in the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, and US Coast Guard.

In January 2002, the US Army officially adopted Gracie Jiu-Jitsu as the foundation for its Modern Army Combatives Program (MACP) with the publication of a manual based primarily on the original program designed by Rorion Gracie.

Concurrently, members of the law enforcement community asked Rorion to develop a program that police officers could use that was non-violent and court-defensible. The result was G.R.A.P.L.E. (Gracie Resisting Attack Procedures for Law Enforcement), a specialized defensive tactics program that has since been adopted by virtually every federal law enforcement agency, including the FBI, US Secret Service, and US Border Patrol, along with countless state, county and local law enforcement agencies.
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Retired Air Force here and here's what I found on youtube. It's the 2013 Combatives from Ft. Hood.
 
I wonder how much of MCMAP Brian Stann actually uses in his fights...
 
I'm sure that any soldier finding himself in a scenario where he has to use his grappling "...fucked up a long time ago" :p

That exhibition where they put a bunch of UFC guys in the woods and had them go against soldiers was hilarious.

Before the UFC guys were able to halfway get their bearings and figure out how their stick worked, they'd gotten stabbed ten times by three different dudes who were already in the process of neutralizing another UFC guy fifteen feet away.
 
TheSubmissionCh said:
Army Combatives sucks. Absolute shit programme. I have my own stories, but I will save them. Lots of instructors believe they are 'experts' and will be not only COMPLETELY wrong with their answers to questions but be disrespectful/dismissive when you are asking them a question. Pointless.

The Marine programme, I know nothing about. I know a but more about one of their competition teams. The one(s) based in CA were always on the grappling comp circuit. Lead by a legitimate BJJ Brown Belt; cool cat. All of them would be unnecessarily rough/brutal (think wrestler with no submission skills that you have gone against [on their day one]), some were laughably arrogant/cocky. Baret Yoshida absolutely bloodied and grapplefucked one of the cockiest ones once and it made me smile.

Anyway, they were decent grapplers at the beginner/intermediate levels. Some of the more serious ones did advanced/expert -- you can tell they trained BJJ as well, at an academy. They would be getting paid for travel/et. cetera when they went to competitions on weekends because it was considered work. So badass.

In closing, their team was a fairly cool assignment if one were so lucky to get it. Their coach/instructor was legit. I never lost to any of them because of their inclination to grossly over-commit (backtaker's dream). Good wrestling though. (Pull guard) - E

Postscript. Army combatives ABSOLUTELY sucks.
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I am a level 1 Army Combatives Instructor and I have to sort of disagree with you. The course teaches basic jiu jitsu. It shows the soldier the hierarchy of grappling positions with some basic attacks and basic escapes. The course is only a week long so I think people just need to maybe change their expectations. I train in BJJ outside of the military and I always try to encourage soldiers to go out and train more if they have any interest in it because obviously a week of training is not going to get you far. So there isn't anything wrong with the training in my opinion if you have a good instructor its just that these guys (and girls) don't have time to develop their skills.
 
Matt Larsen, Alliance bb under Jacare, is credited as the father of modern Army combatives.

Jacare and his local bb's regularly train soldiers and are involved with the 1st 75th ranger bn at hunter army air field.

all i know is i've rolled with some army guys and their JJ foundation is OK but very limited. i'm pretty sure in basic training they are training toward the lowest common denominator, and not everyone keeps up with the combatives.
 
esteven said:
Heh, I train with a special forces intstructor . . . He's blue belt, and I'd say he rolls appropriately for blue.

On the other hand, I also train with a cop who's a pretty legit brown. All in all, the cops I've met habe tended to be more formidable than the (much more numerous) servicemen. It only makes sense; they're the guys who have to grapple in the course of their jobs. Not so much wih Marines.
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I was just repeating what I was told but as I said the guy only had about 4 months worth of training so a blue belt would be good compared to him
 
anhedonia said:
I am a level 1 Army Combatives Instructor and I have to sort of disagree with you. The course teaches basic jiu jitsu. It shows the soldier the hierarchy of grappling positions with some basic attacks and basic escapes. The course is only a week long so I think people just need to maybe change their expectations. I train in BJJ outside of the military and I always try to encourage soldiers to go out and train more if they have any interest in it because obviously a week of training is not going to get you far. So there isn't anything wrong with the training in my opinion if you have a good instructor its just that these guys (and girls) don't have time to develop their skills.
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When I went through level 1, the instructors taught the Gracie gift pass. That was pretty much enough for me.
 
BMFOAT67 said:
I've had a few similar situations. Three of them actually just during my last deployment.

I was in the gym and ran across some Army dudes doing some grappling, so I approached them, introduced myself and asked if I could join in. At this point I stressed to them, (and again I'll stress to you) that I am a novice at best. I'm a white belt in BJJ and only have a couple of months of very sporadic training under me belt. The both told me that they were Army combative level three certified (there are four levels I believe). I was really tentative for the first 15 seconds or se during the first roll before realizing that this guy had absolutely no clue what he was doing. Within 5 minutes it was painfully clear that these guys had been pushed through some completely bullshit course, given a certification and told that they were killers. It was honestly shocking. I'm Air Force and had never trained with any other branches on the mats and was expecting a lot more. After a few rolls these guys were floored at how good they thought I was, and I couldn't bring myself to tell them that I'm actually not very good at all, it was just that they are terrible.

Then they told me that I needed to meet a buddy of there's who was a Marine and a BJJ Brown belt. Like an idiot, I got my hopes up that this guy would actually know what he was doing and that session went even worse than the one I just described.

I really wanna stress that I am a WHITE BELT, and at the time I knew no BJJ other than what I had seen on Youtube and practiced with some buddies. So the next time somebody tells you about how badass they are due to there branches combative course, that it with a grain of salt.
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I see what you're saying, but the military combat shit isn't designed to grapple with civilians. It's designed to disarm, maim, kill your opponent. In any actual combat situation, "rolling" is not going to happen, if the fight goes to the ground, there's a knife/eye gouging/fish hooking/biting involved. So to say the training is bullshit because they couldn't grapple with a BJJ guy is pretty absurd.

I was a gray belt in MCMAP (it meant about jack shit to be honest as I never did any training beyond the certification), and nothing I learned ever helped me in any kind of grappling, but I had a bunch of buddies who were brown/black belt instructors, and those dudes were fucking legit when it came to aggressive fighting. Maybe they weren't the best grapplers, but they were extremely aggressive and could handle themselves in just about any situation. I'd put some serious money on a black belt instructor vs just about any guy who trains purely BJJ in a real fight.
 
Stoic1 said:
I am level 4 certified in MACP. The highest level you can go in Army Combatives.

I did a ton of Judo, kickboxing, and BJJ purple before I ever got into the Army. I was level 0 and tapping level 4's when they gave us their rudimentary training. It was garbage. Basic Gracie Jiu Jitsu garbage. At the time there were a couple of drills and a few submissions. In a 40 hour course you probably got 2 hours of actual rolling in. And probably less than 20 hours of technique training by dubious instructors. That was around 2006.

Now in 2012 I got my level 3 and 4.

Level 3 is no joke. 160 hours of training. Every single day you are rolling. First week focuses on boxing. Second week focuses on kickboxing. Third on putting it all together. Fourth week culminates in tactical body armor with weapons, etc. Each week you have 3 bouts in whatever week you are in - example: Week 1 you will have 3 rounds of boxing full out with someone. Week 2 kickboxing 3 bouts. Etc. The final week are honor grad bouts with pancrase rules 1x10min round for each weight class. Dudes are getting fucked up.

But keep in mind the program has changed. They are trying to add more combat focused stuff in there while trying to make you a competent fighter. How to pull a resisting suspect out of a car through the window, 2 on 1 scenarios, grappling matches where the instructor suddenly drops a stun gun on the ground nearby, guys in blauer suits are jumping you trying to take your M4 away after tackling you.

This whole thing about "grappling" got a bad rap in the Army. First, they sucked at teaching it. Second, it doesn't work very well in a full kit. So now the emphasis is becoming more tactically focused.

Now the level 1 certification teaches just very, very basic skills. The average soldier *MIGHT* remember the armbar and scissor sweep in a month - but probably not. They do a punch drill where they must achieve a clinch 4x on the instructor while they are wearing boxing gloves punching the students. The culminating event now is an "action front/rear" drill where guys in Blauer suits face off against students in body armor, helmet, and a weapon. Usually the student just gets tackled.

So to sum this huge post up: The Army is moving away from a grappling focused curiculum and towards a tactical response that centers on using your weapon first, having your buddy arrive soon, and not to get caught up rolling around on the ground.

Take a look at what the Army is really looking for these days in Combatives:

http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/197th/combatives/
Click to expand...

Thanks for this post, I found it quite helpful. Also, the video looks to me like things they should be focusing on rather than unarmed grappling one on one. Then again, that's just my $0.02.
 
ok, so there are lots of post here so far so I'm not 100% sure if the initial question was absolutely answered. YES! ARMY Combative is based off of Gracie JJ. If there is a guard, which I know there is because I'm Level II certified, then is Gracie JJ; which is BJJ. GJJ and BJJ are synonymous. The guard position was developed in brazil by the Gracie.
 
Given the fact that the Army FM specifically states that it is based off of Gracie JJ, I'd say yes.
 
vinniefebs said:
ok, so there are lots of post here so far so I'm not 100% sure if the initial question was absolutely answered. YES! ARMY Combative is based off of Gracie JJ. If there is a guard, which I know there is because I'm Level II certified, then is Gracie JJ; which is BJJ. GJJ and BJJ are synonymous. The guard position was developed in brazil by the Gracie.
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The guard was not developed by the gracies and despite popular belief they are not the only lineage of bjj. Since they are not the only lineage then technically BJJ and GJJ aren't synonymous since the other lineage does BJJ but does not do GJJ.
 
vinniefebs said:
ok, so there are lots of post here so far so I'm not 100% sure if the initial question was absolutely answered. YES! ARMY Combative is based off of Gracie JJ. If there is a guard, which I know there is because I'm Level II certified, then is Gracie JJ; which is BJJ. GJJ and BJJ are synonymous. The guard position was developed in brazil by the Gracie.
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No, sorry, this isn't true. BJJ may have expanded and refined the guard greatly, but it was around before in judo, and almost certainly in jujutsu.

This book contains a fair amount of guard work and is from 1906: http://fliiby.com/file/834999/kfmlf05qvy.html
 
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I stand corrected, I was told by many that the concept of fighting from the guard position was developed by the Gracie.
 
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