CQT Class at NHA

The Nebraska Hapkido Associate (Read: Sabumnim) held a Close Quarter Tactics (CQT) class at the Dojang awhile back.

First, I want talk about CQT a little bit and the nature of guns. We talked about these things in the class, but also just in Hapkido as a whole.

A lot of gun people who teach CQT classes tend to focus entirely on the gun and shooting. They show you how to draw from concealment, maybe some hip-shooting/”indexing”, car scenarios/getting out of the car, verbalization and perhaps some disarming techniques. These things are important, but they aren’t the most important thing. The most important thing is this: Don’t Get Dead.

Yes, a gun is a useful tool—like a fire extinguisher, a pocket knife, or a flashlight. However, in CQT it is not the only answer. If you can’t draw your gun, you can’t use it. Sometimes even if you can, it won’t be enough or it’s more risky than leaving it where it is. Sometimes you will need to use other tools like your arms and legs instead. CQT isn’t about learning how to use a gun, it’s about learning to be effective with a tool in self defense.

The bottom line is, although this class was geared toward learning to use your gun (the tool) in very close situations, it is not a gun class. We used our Hapkido techniques to gain space (in distance and time) but it isn’t a Hapkido class either. It’s a self defense class.

In the class we used our real carry guns. Each person was required to have a barrel blocker, no ammo was allowed in the room and you had to show your partner clear before every drill. Yes—I find breaking the gun laws to be generally a bad thing, but in this case, to learn it was necessary. The guns were made as “safe” as possible.

As always, Sabumnim was sure to talk about the legality of using a gun. This is important. Know your self-defense law. Know your rights. You can’t just shoot someone who’s yelling at you across the street. However, as always, protect yourself from the attacker first and the courts later. Keep yourself safe.

A lot of the drills we ran had to do with knowing when to use the gun. We did drills in which the “attacker” (a Hapkido classmate) ran forward at you. You had to draw your gun and pull the trigger before the attacker was close enough to either smack the gun away, or attack you. The space you need is more than you think, and one shot may or may not stop them. The drill was useful though, you learn really fast that you need a lot of space, or you have to back up! We did another drill where they ran forward and us backward. Running backward in a curve is better than straight; it’s harder for them to follow.

After we had worked with a draw from concealment, and some situations where the attacker was running straight toward us, we worked with some where the attacker was within arms reach and had a knife. This adds another level of difficulty, as you must first either gain enough space to draw and shoot (completely disengaged) or at least get them under enough control that you can draw and get off a shot or two.

It is embarrassing to have someone shoot you with your own gun—which we had happen. It is difficult to shoot with someone jamming your gun hand against your body. Being cut does not being being dead. Having a gun does you no good if you get knocked out and killed before you can draw it. Even someone who isn’t experienced can get in a lucky shot. As was emphasized—use your self defense skills not just your gun skills.

These situations are difficult. When someone is attacking you with a weapon in many cases you must neutralize their’s before drawing yours. There were some cases, when running these drills that I never drew my gun at all. Sometimes I could get away, take the knife or immobilize them some other way. I got cut a couple times, but never enough that I really would have died.

Most people will focus on the weapon and not on the fact that they have other extremities they could use to defend themselves: don’t fall into this trap. As we learned, this can sometimes be difficult.

We also worked on some wounded shooter drills and such—how to wrack the slide with one hand, how to reload with one hand, how to shoot from the ground, briefly about mag-retention. I don’t think mag retention is the most important thing and it wasn’t stressed much in the class. Unless you’re in an all-out gun battle I wouldn’t take the time to retain it.

All around the class was really useful—I will be looking forward to any CQT 2 Sabumnim decides to put on. There are so many situations and so many things to learn. And there is ALWAYS more practice you can do. I think more important than quantity of topics is quality/depth of instruction and the number number repetitions you get in. You need to train yourself not to panic under pressure, and staring down the barrel of a real gun is quite the eye opener.

We went over each exercise several times and Sabumnim watched and talked with us about what we could have done differently, or better. As I said before, the number one rule is Don’t Get Dead. If you lived, from an SD perspective no one can tell you, you did it “wrong”.

I am not sure how effective this class would be for someone who knows nothing of body movement or self-defense technique. There are so many things you would need to learn before you could really learn the things we learn. You could learn to draw from concealment. You could learn about the legality, but when it got down to “grappling range” there are other things you need to know.

And not just know HOW to do them, but have enough repetitions under your belt that you WILL use them. You can’t afford to think about how to do a block during self defense. Just do the block. The things I generally used for the class generally boiled down to this: blocks, jams (as in using your body to tie up the other person), knees, and elbows. I saw some others attempt locks or holds, but I never got around to it.