The question of "how much training time does one need?" has been on the mind of late.

A couple weeks ago I was talking a friend through purchasing their first handgun, what training they were looking for, how much practice time they could/should take and so on.

And recently it's been a side topic of discussion with some colleagues over how much training time is considered good or adequate or even above average over in the stage/screen combat world.

And few outside the fight choreography world know this, but there's a particular boom-and-bust cycle usually centered around pilot season. It goes something like this:

1. Combat-heavy show is announced in the trades.
2. Every actor fitting the description of the combat-heavy roles chases what combat training they can get.
3. The show gets cast.
4. The bulk of actors training, not being cast, suddenly lose interest in combat training.

The short answer to my original question is the ever-dependable copout of "it depends."

That said, I did some math on real-world operator training time, specifically USMC grunts.

So the question becomes, on average, how much combat training time to people who fight for a living get?

Grab a pencil and a calculator, we're off!

Call it 8 hours training time a day starting from boot camp (8 hour days, my ass, but long hours plus hurry-up-and-wait time makes it close enough for government work.)

8hrs/day, 7days/week. Figure 3 weeks of actual combat training (as opposed to other business being taken care of). That covers grass week, range week, BWT and Semper Fu. That takes us to 168 hours by the end of boot.

Off to SOI (Grunt school). Now, our non-grunts go to a short version of grunt school. It's a month long, 7days/week. That adds another 224 hours. 392 in total by the end.

Now bear in mind, this is for our cooks, clerks, and mechanics. 392 hours to ensure that even if they do nothing but push paper the rest of their careers, they at least know what a raid, ambush, patrol, and guard post look like from both sides.

Refresher training? Figure about 2 weeks annually. Call it 80 hours/year.

Now back to our grunts.

 SOI for grunts is a 2-month course, minus weekends but similar hours.

That gives us 320 hours in SOI, 488 hours total.

That does NOT give me an advanced level of warfighter. That gives me a boot that can be called upon to shoot who they're supposed to 4 falls out of 5.

Let's be generous and say that on dropping to the fleet, what with this, that, and the other, our new Grunt gets about 2 month's worth of training before deploying. That covers ITX (which they used to call CAX, Mojave Viper, and other things) and about a month's worth of miscellaneous field ops, ranges and so on. Add another 320 hours.

Now we're at 808 hours. To get someone competent in at least 3 weapons systems and familiar in at least 4 more. (YMMV depending on specific MOS).

Now deploy them. 7 months. Full time. Is that always combat? Nope. But I'll use the 9-5 M-F option again to distinguish patrols, raids, and combat from working parties, standing post, and suchlike. Again, mileage may vary, but it's the yardstick we've been using so we'll get some good rough numbers from it.

Now we're at 808 hours of training and 1120 hours of experience. 1928 in total. To create what grunts call a "one-hump chump." Still might be a dirtbag of some variety. But on the whole, generally reliable and effective fighters with their own weapons systems. Some may have effective cross-training outside their MOS. A few might even be ready to lead teams soon.

A good skillset. And like all skill sets, perishable if not used.

Not only that, but keep in mind what these numbers don't cover...

- Workouts. Training burns some calories, PT builds more. So tack a good workout schedule on that.

- Study. There are a lot more bibliophilic grunts than you'd think. For every one that's reading Hustler, there's another that's reading Gates of Fire and On Combat, and a third reading both, along with some Clauswitz, Musashi, and Kipling.

-Any manner of super secret special ninjas black classified elite pick-your-own-hardcore-adjective training. I've been talking about standard Marine ground-pounders. Highly skilled, not-to-be-fucked-with ground pounders, but ground pounders all the same.

Something to keep in mind when judging exactly how well trained a weekend seminar makes you.

So, 2 big things happened recently.
One, I've just become an instructor for the SAFD's Theatrical Firearm Safety Program.
Big deal in my case 1) because it's a program I wholeheartedly support and needs more instructors, and 2) I was in the 2nd or 3rd class to take it as a student when it was first fully developed about 5 years back, so it's a nice milestone for me to step up.

The second big thing is that I'm going back to Pinewood. My first seminar over at Act Tactical was so much fun they asked me to come back for more in August.

The pic says the most of it. If you're in Atlanta next month and interested, take a gander at the page for it and see if it's up your alley.

Had a very successful workshop down at Act Tactical swinging sword & shield. All and sundry worked hard, fought hard, and learned a lot.
All pics courtesy of KMJ Photography.

I've known Matt Clanton (owner of Act Tactical) for a couple of years now. Being the first guest artist down there was a big honor.

Busy, busy, busy over here at the Labs. Among other things, I've been doing a lot of knife throwing lately. Yesterday the Lady had a party, several guests of which tried their hand at it. Most did pretty good.

The above is an intermediate stage of something I've been working on, punctuated by what a friend calls "The Barbarian Voila." I like it.

In other news, I'm teaching a one-day Sword & Shield for Film seminar focusing on Viking styles. It'll be down at the production centre at Pinewood Studios Atlanta. Follow the directions on the pic to learn more.

On top of that, I'm about to pack some knives, shirts, and other fun to head down to vend at the National Stage Combat Workshop in NC. I've been twice as a student and a handful of times as a vendor. If you're into fighting for an audience, it's three weeks of some of the best training possible.

Yep. You read that right.
I'm justifying teacupping.
Hell, I've done so once in a private class and once on a gig in the past month, I might as well keep at it.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, "teacupping" is a derogatory term used for a certain way of gripping a handgun that's currently out of favor.

In fact, nowadays I'd have to say in the top ten of "things to make your firearm advisor happy on set," "not teacupping" might rank just below "calling it a magazine, not a clip," and "not flagging me."

So, what is it? What makes it a bad thing? (if it even is a bad thing?) Why the bad rap?

History lesson time.

For the bulk of its existence, the pistol was a one-handed weapon. Once technology could scale down from the "handgonnes" of earlier times, the pistol became a favored backup weapon alongside the saber and cutlass, not to mention reins or rigging. Until WWI, U.S. Army holsters were designed to cross-draw, reflecting a right-handed officer's instinct to use the sword with the right hand and pistol with the left.  

Here and there, two-handed grips were used for whatever reason, but on an ad hoc basis. It's my personal belief that the first use of a two-handed grip was what we now call The Teacup.

This grip is almost invariably the first two-handed grip that an untrained shooter uses.

The reason is simple. With the pistol operable with one hand, the other is relegated to a support role. The most immediately needed support to a new shooter the vast majority of the time isn't against recoil, but against weight. Pistols are heavy, so the support hand naturally rests under the butt to take some of the weight off of the shooting hand.

Looking at it this way, teacupping is the untrained, but natural and instinctive response to having to hold a pistol two-handed.

It felt so natural the U.S. Army was recommending it in WWII.

(Teacupping ensues at 5:20)

So, if teacupping is a natural and instinctive response, what's the big deal?

Well, the major sin of teacupping these days is inefficiency at worst. When actually shooting, the support hand offers no support against the force of the shot (what with coming from the wrong direction and all), leaving the shooting arm to absorb the recoil.

There's a couple different ways to be more efficient. Jack Weaver took a teacup and turned it into a sort of piston grip by having the support hand pull back while the shooting hand pushed forward. This helped get the pistol back on target after the force of the shot lifted the muzzle up.

The most popular grip these days, however, seems to be a wraparound of one kind or another.

In this particular case, the support hand comes up on the side, fingers sliding into the grooves left on the grip by the fingers of the shooting hand. The shooting hand's thumb curls down and forward, paralleling the thumb of the support hand.

(Hint: if you ever hear gun enthusiasts yell "thumbs forward!" while watching an action scene, this is what they're talking about.)

What this grip ends up doing is keeping the grip balanced between both hands, giving the shooter the strength of both arms (and in some instances, the torso) to alleviate the effects of recoil.

That's pretty much it.

So, why teacup in a gunfighting scene if you know that?

Any number of reasons: an untrained character, a period piece (wraparound grips didn't become popular until the great pistol technique argument was kicked off by folks like Cooper, Weaver, and Chapman in the late 50's-early 60's), character fatigue or injury (where a steady shot is more important than recovery for follow-up shots), or any number of other reasons.

I can recognize the teacup isn't the best grip out there. But it's there for a reason. And knowing why and how lets me and my performers come to a more informed choice, and ultimately, a more nuanced story.

~J.

The 2014 A-Town Throwdown has come and gone.
I love combat workshops. Color me addicted. Having one nearly in my backyard has made the Throwdown a special one for me since it began 4 years ago.
And of course, the second that happened I had to attend to everything else that was on my desk, so here's the big points:

~ Knife and hawk throwing outdoors was greeted by some sunny but cool weather on the first day. I've been working on some hawk tricks, but my throwing knife collection is somewhat limited. Getting to play with a variety of blades, throwers and targets is always fun.

~ Renewed small sword (with a Terry Pratchett scene against an old friend, no less). It's a rarely used weapon, but it's really elegant (and nasty, if used right).

~ Taught an intro (theatrical) firearms class. Fun had all around. Had a serious "I feel old" moment when I realized less than a quarter of the class had ever seen The Crow. That muffled sound in my closet is the pile of black t-shirts weeping at their own irrelevance.

~ As is my wont, brought a handful of my colleagues to Cafe Istanbul. One of my favorite places in Atlanta, and one of them is just up the highway from the workshop. Pillow seating, incredible food, talented belly dancers, it's a me kind of place. 

~ Capped off the three-day workshop by going right back to training day Monday. My friend Sara stuck around to pick up some gun tricks, so we mainly concentrated on those between us and Kat (my go-to assistant, who has a firearm-heavy feature coming up). But even unofficially extended events must come to an end, and I had an important date with some arnica and tiger balm.

Mixed in and around this is more good conversation and time with some of the best friends and colleagues a Barbarian could ask for. Even more fun is that my lady got to come out and hang around with the other fighters. (She's met many over the years, and is rather fond of quite a few. But she's not in the industry at all, and consequently rarely gets to see many of them).

Can't wait until next year.

Anyways, more fun stuff on the horizon. Inevitable gets released on the web May 27th. I did a little fight work and appeared in a small role for that a while back. I'm doing pre-vis work for a project I'm not at liberty to discuss (my colleagues have been calling it the Vague Project of Vagueness. Eh well, Blue Harvest was already taken). A couple of articles are still in draft form, and of course there's knives and leather and more kniv

Been a busy time the last month and change.

The biggest for anyone reading this is the move of the site over to the current digs, which are much, much easier on my limited coding skills. Between a host and a wysiwyg editor that even a savage like me can understand, I got this place up and running in an afternoon, where the old site would have taken me weeks. As an unfortunate consequence, the old email (Jay at Jaythebarbarian dot com) no longer exists. It was mostly a redirect anyway, and there's a handy button at the top that will accomplish the same thing.

Went up to Cincinnati OH to T.A. at the Cease & Desist workshop. Fun was had all round, saw a lot of old friends and made some new ones. Actually went up a day early to go shooting with some friends. Ready Line outside Cincy is a brand new facility with a really nice setup.

Did some work on Public Enemy #1 (an action-comedy short) and a music video for a film school bud of mine, along with a day of military advisement for a production of Ruined.  

Gig-wise, its been a tad slow lately. But I haven't minded, as that means I've had the time to photograph and catalog my rental stock page. Local business has already picked up, and made the "Jay, do you have a ...?" questions answerable with a quick url.

And in the coming soon section, the Theatrical Firearms Handbook, penned by Kevin Inouye over at Fight Designer. Definitely looking forward to this one.

Spent the last several days in the shop, making about a dozen viking-style round shields. By the end I may well have enough to build a literal wall.

~J.

Oh yeah, my new business cards came in the other day, too.