https://youtu.be/kLSZi7KXgNM?t=89 This video is from the Arrow System You Tube channel. I had to dig for one that was overtly useful. The videos on the channel are not like the three DVDs I recommended earlier. The videos on the You Tube channel tend to be from seminars, and with seminars comes a lot of talking. The training DVDs were much more to the point – technique, demonstration, display. Seminars come with talking, and I have to wade through a lot of talking to get to 45 seconds of displayed technique.
This You Tube video starts at about one and a half minutes into the six minute instructional. Valery Kryuchkov demonstrates a defense against a gun, and it is an interesting one. Dropping down and ducking to his left, he moves in rapidly. It’s an interesting technique. He uses geometry in the movements, not just a football or soccer style move of shifting the body as one piece. He first demonstrates it from the side, and then he then moves and replicates the movement as if the viewer is going to receive the bullet. It was a useful change of position, to see it from the side, and then from the position of someone at the barrel of the gun.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, 25 years ago, a lot of security personnel were caught between working for the mob, or moon lighting for private security companies, or doing other sideline work for extra cash. Poverty was everywhere. Some security personnel hired themselves out as instructors. One group put their skills on a video (VHS,…) and sold it inside Russia. I got a copy of it from a book seller in St. Petersburg. The gun play and self-defense method was demonstrated by men who were either retired security service members or men who were active security men renting out their skills. Their method looked a lot like this guy Valery Kryuchkov.
But again, from an earlier post, there will be one kind of training for the larger body of regular members, and other training – unique and more intense – will be for members of smaller special units that require that extra training because of mission. Mission really does shape the training plan. Nothing is really equal in any service.
If I said I was in the Army, many people (but not all people) would assume some level of general skill – fighting, ambush, guns, first aid, etc. But, what if I was a cook? Cooks are very necessary in any service, but they get training in running vital food services. That is a very different world than someone who has a year of special operations training before their first overseas deployment on a Special Forces team. By extension, I’ve grown careful not to assume all training is the same. Work role is a big factor in what training people get. Also, the era – when an army is during a period of improvement, or its peak, or in its decline, and when it is at the bottom, each of these separate phases of organizational life will be a factor in the content and quality of training.
That being said, Valery Kryuchkov appears consistent with the video done by those security service personnel in Russia after the collapse 25 years ago. It reflects specialist skills, not standard skills. I would be surprised if more than 250 people trained in this method at any one time.
