Movement in Combat and the Historical Imperative

I don’t know about you, but my jaw hit the floor watching this guy. I think part of the reason for my amazement was he literally, in the span of about 5 minutes, through historical fact and obvious demonstration of SKILL, broke every stereo-typical ideal I had about archers in combat.

Think back to every movie you have seen set in Medieval times; what are the archers doing? Standing still, casually drawing their bows, aiming to the sky (the enemy force is typically a few hundred yards away) and on command, letting loose their arrows, right? Wrong. In fact, I was thinking back to the most recent movie I watched involving archery and combat, Robin Hood with Russell Crowe (a terrible movie btw, one of his worst IMHO) and in it, we see all of these stereo-typical fallacies promoted, including: Standing still in Combat and Running around with a quiver of arrows (which Larson in the above vid proved was BS). Lesson to be Learned? Not really new advice. Hollywood is full of sh@#! Don’t take anything you see on the screen to heart. Most historical films get it wrong on so many levels it is not funny. Moving on….

So here we are in the present time, 2015 not 1515. We have replaced our horses with humvees and our bow and arrow with Glocks, AR’s and AK’s. But surprise, surprise, our tactics have not really changed a lot when we fight. Movement is still key to survival just like it always has been. For the soldier, it is “Fire and Maneuver”, for the Cop, it is  “Get out of the Kill Zone” and for the Civilian it could be “Get off the X” or all 3 phrases combined!

So fellas it all boils down to this: If your self-defense combat training does not involve movement, ie, moving and shooting, you are not only being unrealistic, you are ignoring the Historical Imperative! Get with the program!

I leave you with these words from the Bible, which pretty much cement what we have been talking about:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.  (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Stay Alert, Stay Real, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!