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July 9, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
12:24
Integrative PREPPER skills and drills
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This is going to be a relatively short podcast, but it's an important one.
It's about the integration of your preparedness skills.
This is crucial, and it's something that's a missing link in a lot of people's preparedness plans, and has been in my preparedness plans for a long time as well.
But I've been doing a lot of integrative training, and let me really define that for you.
It means that instead of just having isolated skills, such as, let's say, ground fighting, Getting out of holds or getting back onto your feet, whatever.
That's one skill set.
Some people train in that, in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, for example, or MMA, ground fighting, or wrestling.
Versus, let's say, handgun skills, pistol skills.
Usually people don't train those things together.
And, for example, recently I was very fortunate to locate an instructor who is a special forces guy and a Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, and he was able to train me on integrating these two skill sets, such as, you know, getting out of...
A mount or a hold on the ground and being able to fight off other attackers coming your way.
Do a little ground and pound and then work with the pistol.
Integrating these skills.
Taking somebody to the ground and then shooting at another potential enemy or someone trying to kill you coming right at you.
So integrating different skill sets is crucial.
Some other examples.
You might have rifle shooting skills, let's say, and navigation skills, but have you ever used them in conjunction with each other?
Now, for those of you who are hunters, which I am not, I'm not a sport hunter, but a lot of people are, so they're integrating usually navigation and rifle skills, which is an integration that can be beneficial outside of hunting.
What about gathering wild foods and fire starting?
You know, starting a fire, a cooking fire to cook your food.
Two skills that obviously go together.
But a lot of people, they'll go gather wild foods and then they'll cook them in their modern, convenient kitchen.
Well, have you ever gathered wild foods and then started a fire and cooked it using just your campfire with the pots and pans and utensils that you have available to you in your campfire kit?
That's an integrative skill set that can be extremely useful.
Cordage skills, stringing up a tarp, building a shelter, lots of survival skills that people have, but they tend to practice them on nice, warm, sunny days.
Well, it's a different skill set to practice these in the rain or to practice them on a very cold, windy night or to practice them in the snow or just low light conditions, Do you have the ability to integrate your skill set into other contexts and other environments, such as low-light or low-temperature or...
Even for some skills such as being wounded in one hand.
For example, getting back to pistol, a lot of people can reload their pistol effectively with two hands, but are you able to reload your pistol with one hand?
Can you rack the slide with one hand using typically your belt is the way that's done.
Can you clear a jam with one hand?
Can you shoot with one hand?
What if it's your off hand?
Or what's called your weak side hand, typically.
Can you defend yourself with your weak side hand if your strong arm is wounded?
And what about applying a tourniquet?
A great combination of skills is pistol skills and then applying a tourniquet.
So I always recommend that people have a tactical belt where you've got your pistol mags, your rifle mags, and your pistol, but you should also have an emergency first aid kit on that belt.
And I always wear, when I'm doing shooting and drills and training, I'm always wearing, of course, at least one tourniquet and a pair of shears and some gauze and bandages and so on.
Blood stop, blood clotting gauze and things like that.
So one skill that is very useful to practice is shooting your pistol and then immediately simulating the fact that you got shot in, let's say, your strong side arm.
So now your strong side arm is useless and you need to apply a tourniquet to it to stop major bleeding.
How do you apply a tourniquet with your weak side arm and pick up the firearm and defend yourself in between applying the tourniquet?
And then you can start layering those things on top of each other.
How do you apply a tourniquet with your weak side arm in the snow at night?
The wind is blowing.
You're hungry.
You're wounded.
You're bleeding.
That situation is really what you need to train for because hopefully that never happens to you.
But if it does, you're ready for it.
You've done it before.
You've been there.
Here's a little factoid that a lot of people do not remember.
Most gunshot wounds in pistol fights, I'm not talking about on the battlefield.
I'm talking about in a convenience store shootout or a home invasion shootout, something like that.
Like an urban shootout.
Most wounds occur on the hands.
It's amazing.
And you can ask cops about this.
Where do you get shot?
Where do bad guys get shot?
You get shot in the hands all the time.
You get shot in the fingers, you get shot in the palm, or you get shot in the forearms.
Why?
Because that's what you usually have sticking out there.
Your hands are out front.
Your hands are where your gun is and your hands are maybe, you know, around, like, outside of cover.
Maybe your body is behind cover.
You're standing behind a wall, let's say.
So you're protecting your body.
But your hands, in order to take that shot, Your hands have to be exposed.
So your hands are taken fire, or your arms is very common to get shot in your fingers, hands, or forearms.
So depending on where you're hit, you need to be able to stop the bleeding and continue to defend yourself or aggress toward the attacker, if possible, to take them out, because obviously they're shooting at you because they're bad guys.
They're trying to kill you.
They're trying to kidnap you or whatever the scenario is.
So You know, a lot of people go to gun ranges and they just practice standing firmly, full daylight, shooting paper that's not moving and not shooting back, and they don't have a tourniquet, and they've never used a tourniquet with one hand, and they don't have a first aid kit, and they've never really been through what I would call an integrative scenario.
It's really holistic thinking, if you really ponder this.
You know how I'm into holistic nutrition and holistic health, using herbal medicine, using full spectrum nutrients, superfoods, all these things.
You need to think about your preparedness in the same way.
So holistic self-protection is really a viable concept.
Holistic self-protection means you're training yourself through the application of multiple layers of skills in combinations and also in bad condition.
So you're getting more challenging contexts of these skills.
So, for example, let me just give you a great example.
Something that my instructor did for me.
So we're simulating keeping somebody on the ground with like a grappling push, like shoving your knee into their chest and putting your body weight on them, but then drawing your pistol and shooting some other enemies that are trying to kill you at fairly close range as well.
So you got to keep control of one person on the ground while you're shooting these targets that are advancing toward you.
Well, guess what?
The guy that you have on the ground...
He's not volunteering to go along with this.
He's fighting, he's moving, he's wiggling, whatever.
And in this scenario, you're trying not to shoot that guy at point-blank range.
You're trying to keep him alive, but you need to fend off these approaching attackers.
Well, guess what?
Your pistol aim is going to be total crap because this guy is wiggling and writhing and...
Probably can't breathe because you're shoving your knee in his sternum, by the way, which is what you're supposed to be doing.
Every cop knows this.
Every cop's been trained in this maneuver, the very special maneuver that cops love to do against certain types of uncooperative perps, by the way.
But you shove your knee across their sternum and you put your body weight on them.
You get heavy.
And then there's a threat.
You pull out your gun.
You fire.
Not at the guy on the ground, again, but other people approaching who are maybe coming at you with baseball bats or chains or machetes or other pistols or whatever.
So you got to do this.
This is called integrative training.
And sadly, very few cops get this training.
Very few soldiers get this training.
Believe it or not, a lot of run-of-the-mill soldiers.
I'm not talking about the Special Forces guys or the Navy SEALs.
I'm talking about just run-of-the-mill, sometimes just called army grunts, let's say.
They are not given this kind of training.
They're given very sufficient training in marksmanship and rifle skills and some hand-to-hand, but not...
Not the kind of integrative training that you want for real life-saving scenarios.
Now, Marines often will tend to get more training in this kind of combat, which is great.
Marines are tough dudes, and they get stuff done.
Don't mess with Marines.
They know their stuff.
They're good marksmen, too, by the way.
I've never met a Marine who couldn't shoot well.
It's actually quite impressive.
They're great shots, and usually they're great people, too, come to think of it.
But again, they may not get as much training as you would want for your own personal survival situation where you're not trying to fight some Russian army on the battlefield or whatever.
You're just trying to make sure that you don't get overrun by gangbangers at your house or your property or your apartment building or wherever you are.
And you need holistic skills.
You need to know how to run a flashlight, how to use a flashlight to blind people.
You need to know how to use a pistol and a flashlight.
You need to know how to get out of a grapple attempt against you and shoot your pistol and get back to your feet and defend yourself against a punch or a kick.
You need to be able to integrate all this stuff.
It's pistol skills, it's fighting skills, it's grappling skills, it's...
Survival food is land navigation.
It's situational awareness.
It's adverse weather events, cold weather, hot weather, wet weather.
You need to be able to do this when you're wounded, when everything's not great.
Because whatever plan you have for survival, God is laughing at you because your plan is going to go to s*** in about five seconds.
So have a backup plan for sure.
So, I hope this has been useful.
Thank you for listening.
You can follow more of this at survival.news.
My name's Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and I am also a survivalist as well.
So, go to survival.news or gear.news.
Thank you for listening.
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