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Military Self Defense - MCMAP 8 Years Later

To say that the military self defense program called MCMAP -- the Marine Core Martial Arts Program -- has been a success would be a dire understatement.  The Marines who undertook this program refer to themselves as "Semper Fu" practitioners, and consider themselves knowledgeable about the most effective self defense tactics on the planet.  

Eight years after it's inception, it's 2010, and the Corps is looking at how the program is maturing.  The military self defense syllabus is currently broken into five 'belts'.

Tan Belts,  which recruits must achieve to pass Basic Training, include several hand strikes including hammer fist, straight punches, uppercuts, hooks, and elbow strike; a few foot strikes including stomps, front kicks, knee strikes, and side kicks; basic bayonet usage; basic grappling and counter-grappling; knife fighting; and something called "basic weapons of opportunity" training.  

Grey Belts expand on the Tan Belt syllabus without adding new categories of combat except a profound emphasis on ground fighting and and a single entirely new element: baton fighting.  

Green Belts continue to develop the techniques of the lesser belts, but begin to expand into areas previously unique to the martial arts, including muscle gouging, unarmed manipulation techniques, and complex counterstrikes.

Brown Belts add some complex throwing techniques to the previous belts' self defense tactics and begin to develop unarmed vs. armed techniques including disarming firearms and how to retain your own firearms.

Black Belts delve deeper into unarmed vs. firearms scenarios, pressure point strikes, advance upper-body crippling strikes, and "master-level weapons of opportunity" training as well as learning to fight with an empty rifle, short weapon, and unarmed versus an opponent armed with a ready-to-fire rifle.  

To say that the MCMAP is a military self defense school or a martial art is to fail to do justice to the syllabus the Marine Corps has put together.  As it moves into it's second decade, the Marine Corps is entertaining notions to make Grey Belt a necessity for recruits to pass Basic Training, as well as adding hundreds of new instructors, facilities, and on-call field doctors to address injuries sustained during MCMAP practice.

The Corps is also looking at modifying or doing away with a restriction that currently prevents a soldier from wearing a particular belt if he has not been promoted to a sufficiently high rank -- a restriction that is currently keeping thousands of skilled combatants from applying for a higher belt.  

The most fascinating element of the MCMAP that has made it so popular and effective is not it's lethality -- rather, it's the option for lethality that separates it from the Marines' previous unarmed combat style.  In the '80s and '90s, Marines were trained in extraordinarily lethal techniques...and that was all.  Today, military self defense doesn't mean killing your foe, which makes studying the MCMAP style an option with much broader appeal to the American populace as a whole.

About the Author

For more details about military self defense & self defense tactics, please visit http://www.closecombattraining.com/.

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