Introduction and a Question

[Matthew Miller]

Greetings all, I am Matt Miller, and although I am not yet an ARMA member I hope to be soon.

Anyway, the group I practice with wants to try a new method, specifically tactical scenarios. Our current plan is for one man to have his waster or wasters (be they a longsword, dagger, one-handed sword, or even buckler if it is called for) in frogs on his belt, stand facing one direction, and to have one or to men with armaments unknown to the first man to his rear at a distance of about 25 feet. The second and or third man will charge and attempt to surprise and "kill" the first man before he can turn and draw his arms.

So here is the question. Should we include this as part of our regular practices? If so, how can we refine or change it to be better?

Thanks, Matt Miller

[Gene Tausk]

Greetings all, I am Matt Miller, and although I am not yet an ARMA member I hope to be soon.

Anyway, the group I practice with wants to try a new method, specifically tactical scenarios. Our current plan is for one man to have his waster or wasters (be they a longsword, dagger, one-handed sword, or even buckler if it is called for) in frogs on his belt, stand facing one direction, and to have one or to men with armaments unknown to the first man to his rear at a distance of about 25 feet. The second and or third man will charge and attempt to surprise and "kill" the first man before he can turn and draw his arms.

So here is the question. Should we include this as part of our regular practices? If so, how can we refine or change it to be better?


Thanks, Matt Miller

Talk to Aaron Pynenberg about this. He will have some good information and he is a (reasonably) good guy. I would PM him.

[Matthew Miller]

Thanks Gene, I will do that.

[Jake_Norwood]

Hi Matthew.

Actually, I got this same drill from the ARMA website about 4 years ago, though I don't remember where. It's a good one, and I've done it (and many variations of it) in my practices for more than the last 3 years. I highly reccomend it.

Jake

[Allen Johnson]

I think I remember doing this as part of some ones Senior Free Scholar testing in Provo some time ago?

[Aaron Pynenberg]

Hello Matt et all,

Thanks for the vote of confidence Gene! Matt this question, while seeming pretty easy is actually very complex and touches on Tactical scenario based training. It is based around the adult learning method and reflex conditioning theories.

Scenario based training is all the rage right now in Police training programs and is being used by many diffrent high stress professions to teach adults important decision making skills quickly. It also allows new people in many professions to get practical, safe expirence quickly.

The concepts for setting up this training are simple but the reasons behind the set-up are complex. I am not going to delve into all of it but I suggest you folks sit down and look at two things. 1-most important what basic reaction or response are you looking to learn. example- how to beat a right shoulder thrown Zorn. Break that down and have a role player throw it at the new person. let the newbie expirence it without knowing what the goal is, then work through it together until it's beat and repeat. 2-If newbie fails then the group helps to discover the solution together and then move on.

Do you see how specific it is? Throwing someone into the mix with sparring is good too, but this is sometimes overwhelming and discourages a skillset building process while specific scenario based learning encourages one skill at a time.

Hope that makes some sense it's very easy when explained in person, AP

[Matthew Miller]

Thanks Aaron. It did make sense, and it should help us a great deal.