The Combatives Association, a relatively new group in the firearms and self-defense training space, is a voluntary collection of passionate defensive-minded instructors. These instructors have a focus on the full spectrum of self-defense strategies beyond standard firearms training. This includes empty-handed techniques, social skills or other soft skills like the ability to read cues. This isn’t to say they don’t care about firearms because defensive gun handling and gun safety, as those facets of self-defense dovetail into that spectrum of self-defense as well.
Training with Combatives Association
Firearms have always been the great equalizer when it comes to potential self-defense scenarios. However, there’s more to knowing how to draw and fire a handgun in order to successfully navigate through a self-defense encounter and prevail–not only physically but legally and ethically, too.
More so, because the nuances of self-defense are often drastically different when the would-be assailants are quite literally “in one’s face” as opposed to some distance away.
All manner of fantastic defensive shooting courses are already available for law-abiding gun owners and self-defense defense practitioners to enroll in. However, the industry is arguably underserved in coursework and curriculum with a focus on extreme-close quarters defensive tactics (or other pertinent skills and knowledge that aren’t directly shooting-related but do tangentially apply).
The Combatives Association strives to bring a platform to its affiliated instructors to close these gaps in the industry. Likewise, they also help shine on lesser-known teachers who possess a legitimate body of work and experience throughout their careers.
What is the Combatives Association
The ranks of Combatives Association instructors are joined by industry luminaries such as Kelly McCann, Matt Larsen, and Craig Douglas, among others. John Valentine is a career US Military conventional-forces instructor in small-team tactics and units, as well as an accomplished martial artist and competitive shooter.
I first met Mr. Valentine in person some years ago during an ECQC course held outside of Austin, Texas. He is the self-described “Winston” to the Combatives Association’s “Continental [hotel]” to follow the metaphor from the John Wick Films. Winston was the point person who served as the connector and facilitator between the film’s characters.
The curriculum that Combatives Association instructors teach does include plenty of hand-to-hand and actual combatives material. However, the association’s purview also doesn’t limit itself to these “bare-handed” tactics either.
Working with items such as defensive blades or saps and jacks play a role, as do intellectual concepts like “verbal agility” and appropriate social communication or body language. If you’re familiar with Shivworks and Craig Douglas, his excellent ECQC course is a good sampling of what the Combatives Association is about. But to a deeper level of detail, nuance, and understanding.
The Combatives Summit
The Combatives Summit is the Combatives Association’s yearly convention-exhibition-seminar event. Like any other convention, this event is carried out with the intention of exposing students to a wide variety of relevant instructors under one roof during a weekend. There’s a mix of presenting instructors, like the ones mentioned above, along with special guests.
Honored guests and instructors will not only have the chance to offer training blocks, but the Combative Summits also include keynote speeches, presentations, and panel discussions. For example, well-known shooting instructor Matt Pranka of X-Ray Alpha LLC will be a guest of honor at this year’s Combatives Summit, where he will teach an instructional block on dry-firing.
One of the Combative Summit’s other goals is to provide a platform for lesser-known trainers with legitimate resumes and bodies of work and give them a chance to showcase their material.
The 2024 edition of the Combatives Summit is around the corner. It will be held at the American Top Team Jiu Jitsu Gym and Training facility in D’Iberville, Mississippi, on the weekend of September 20th. It lasts through the 22nd from 8 AM to 6 PM for all three days.
Combatives Summit 2023 Gallery
The Takeaway
Self-defense skills don’t exist in a vacuum. It can be easy to remain focused on equipment like firearms and ammunition while overlooking other aspects like social skills, verbal agility, unarmed combatives, etc. Truthfully, guns are merely one part of this comprehensive topic.
It helps to think of “self-defense” as a big tool bag that provides several types of tools in order to solve the problem. And even though firearms truly are the great equalizer, as I described them above, their use also comes with heavy legal consequences and ramifications.
Furthermore, not all potential self-defense situations require their use, either. This ties into the goals of the Combatives Association, which is to create a community and instructor network for the underserved aspects of defensive topics.
Even so, firearms aren’t discounted at this event, as indicated by Matt Pranka’s scheduled appearance at this year’s upcoming Combatives Summit.
In a conversation I had with Valentine, he expanded on this.
“At the aggregate level, the topics and curriculum enshrined by the Combatives Association discuss all the topics and circumstances before the ‘start signal’ that occurs in orthodox firearms training. There is a relationship between combatives and force-on-force training with firearms training not unlike the similar relationship that dry-firing has to live-fire shooting.”
Likewise, he adds, “It is also worth considering the after-actions that must be developed to mitigate damage and legal consequences [of a defensive use-of-force event].”
Final Thoughts
Though I haven’t had a chance to attend one of the Combative Association’s Summits yet, it does make a lot of sense for them to exist. After all, the shooting community already benefits from other “convention” type events like Rangemaster’s Tac-Con or the Shooter’s Symposium. So, a different event that focuses on non-firearms stuff with more depth sounds wonderful.
Combatives, after all, are everything that happens between harsh words and hollow-points.
All Photos used in this article, credits: Nick Delgadillo
