Kraken Combatives

09/16/2026

Good guys and bad guys play by different rules.

He knows what’s about to happen. You don’t.

The bad actor has already made some decisions. He chose the person. He chose the place. He chose the time. He may have some pressing motivation that you know absolutely nothing about.

Meanwhile, you’re trying to figure out:

Where the hell did he come from?

Why is this happening to me?

Is this really happening?

Am I misunderstanding this?

Can I get away?

Is he really going to force me to hurt him?

Am I legally justified in doing something?

And perhaps most importantly:

What happens if I’m wrong?

Those are good inhibitions. They’re part of being a decent human being.

The problem is that the person creating the situation may not share them.

It may just be Tuesday for him.

That creates an asymmetry. He may already be acting while you’re still trying to understand what’s happening.

Training shouldn’t make good people reckless or eager to use force. It should help them recognize what’s happening, accept it sooner, make better decisions, and act decisively when action becomes necessary.

Avoid when you can. De-escalate when you can. Use the lowest level of force that solves the problem.

But understand that good guys and bad guys play by different rules.

Your training should account for that.

09/15/2026

What are you afraid of?

That’s a question people who prepare and train often get asked.

My answer?

Not necessarily anything.

Take these donkeys, for example. I’m not actually afraid of them. But I certainly respect the fact that they can bite or kick the hell out of me for no apparent reason other than I wasn’t feeding them cookies fast enough.

So I interact with them accordingly.

Because donkeys gonna donkey.

There might be a broader lesson in there.

I try to be a decent person and go about my life minding my own business. But I also acknowledge that there are people in this world who are perfectly willing to victimize someone else when the opportunity presents itself.

They aren’t constrained by the fact that I’m trying to be a good person. They aren’t constrained by my plans for the day, where I happen to be, what time it is, or whether I want anything to do with them.

So I prepare.

I train. I do my best to stay aware while still going about and enjoying my life.

If I see something that doesn’t look right, I’ll do my best to avoid it.

If I can’t avoid it, I’ll deal with it using the lowest level of force necessary, disengage as soon as I can, and get back to living my life.

That isn’t living in fear.

It’s recognizing that the world contains some things worth respecting, interacting with them accordingly, and being prepared to protect the life I already enjoy.

And sometimes bringing enough cookies.

09/14/2026

You don’t have to be a professional “door kicker” to benefit from some basic tactical knowledge.

In this photo, a rolled-up wrestling mat is standing in for cover or concealment. There are details involving distance, angles, positioning, visibility, and how much of yourself you expose—but the larger point isn’t to turn ordinary people into SWAT officers.

It’s about the minimum effective dose.

A civilian defender who is confident in basic fi****ms skills and understands a few sound tactical principles is a much more formidable adversary than someone who owns a gun but has never learned how to solve a problem with it.

How do you use available cover? Where should you position yourself? What can you see—and what can the other person see? When should you move, hold your position, communicate, or disengage?

You don’t need years of specialized training to begin answering those questions. A relatively small amount of well-designed instruction can replace dangerous intuition with better decisions and give you meaningful advantages when the stakes are high.

That’s the fi****ms dimension of Kraken Combatives: not collecting advanced techniques, but developing useful capability across the problems an ordinary person might actually face.

Full Spectrum Self-Protection.

09/14/2026

A tidbit from this past weekend’s Fi****ms at the Lake event.

Three shots tell me a lot.

I often start a range session with a ¾-inch black paster on a cardboard target at 3 yards and ask the student for their best three shots.

Before they shoot, I give them every advantage I can.

To borrow a phrase from Tom Givens: get all the stance you’re going to get. Get all the grip you’re going to get.

Establish the sight movie you need. Prep the trigger. Take all the time you want. The paster gives you a small, high-contrast aiming point, and we’re only three yards away.

No timer. No pressure. No significant distance problem.

Just show me what the gun and you can do together.

Those three holes tell me quite a bit.

How precise are you—how tightly are the shots grouped? How accurate are you—where is that group relative to where you intended it to be?

From there, the questions get interesting. Tight group in the wrong place? Loose group centered around the aiming point? Tight group exactly where you intended? Each tells me something different and helps determine where we spend our training time.

Then, after a day of instruction, practice, recoil, and increasingly demanding shooting, we do it again.

Same paster. Same three yards. Same three shots.

Sometimes the simplest drill tells you the most.

Fi****ms at the Lake
Kraken Combatives

09/10/2026

Preparing for Fi****ms at the Lake, James Gaines is a beast!

09/10/2026

GRAPPLING DOESN’T MEAN GOING TO THE GROUND.

When people hear “grappling,” they often picture two people rolling around on the ground.

That’s certainly grappling. But it’s only part of it.

A tremendous amount of useful grappling happens while we’re still standing: hand fighting, frames, underhooks, head position, wrist and bicep control, two-on-ones, controlling posture and taking angles. All of that can help us manage another human being without immediately putting either of us on the ground.

For civilian self-protection, I think that distinction matters.

Sometimes taking someone down is absolutely the right answer. But the ground comes with tradeoffs. I become more entangled with one person, my mobility decreases, getting away becomes harder, and my ability to maintain awareness of what’s happening around me can deteriorate quickly.

That last part becomes especially important when the person I’m fighting may not be the only problem I have.

And once again, we’re probably not on mats. Concrete, asphalt, curbs, furniture and the side of a car can change the consequences considerably.

So my preference isn’t “never go to the ground.” Absolutes like that don’t survive contact with reality very well.

My preference is to understand what going to the ground buys me—and what it costs me.

If I can use grappling skills to stay standing, control another person’s posture and limbs, create an opportunity to disengage, or solve the problem without becoming more entangled, that’s often a very good outcome.

If taking someone down is what the problem requires, I want to be able to do that too.

Grappling is a toolset. The ground is a place.

Don’t confuse the two.