Keysi System DVD Review

What sparked this review was a comment on the “Fma talk” forum. The Keysi system was being discussed because of an upcoming seminar and someone made the comment that: “I just watched a few of the demo videos. Looked like a ton of unnecessary movement to me but what do I know... Looks like a similar concept to Libre and Piper but on first glance, they look like they do it better. Particularly Libre. I'd be interested in seeing more of it as it is so hard to get a good feel from promo vids. Perhaps I am wrong on my observations.”

A while back one of my students brought back two Keysi DVDs from an overseas trip and I watched them and made myself some notes. I looked at some of their clips on You Tube also. What I didn’t do, until the last few days and on the basis of the above comment, is to have a look at what people on the Internet have to say about the system.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but there is a great deal of negative criticism floating around. From comments directed at the Keysi website “that website does sound scarily commercial for my taste” to the more technical “for people like us who have been around the block a little the thinking man isn't revolutionary, it is actually an adaptation of crazy monkey boxing that was created by a south african boxing coach to minimize damage when covering”, “isnt this simply JKD-esque with "crazy monkey boxing" thrown in?” , “from the first minute or so that I watched it looks like really sloppy application of the crazy monkey defense” and so on, some of it being a lot less polite than these quotes.

I’m not Batman, I’m not here to right wrongs, aside from which the two founders of Keysi look more than competent enough to demonstrate hands-on that their system works. I just know when I really like something, I’ve been a student of the arts for forty of my fifty years and yes, Keysi does look to me like the long-lost kissing cousin of the Piper I teach, at least in terms of fluid body movement and a liking for the extreme close range, elbows and hammerfists. So I thought it would be fun to look at Keysi (in so far as I have seen it on the DVDs) from a fairly objective viewpoint, given that I have never spoken to any Keysi representative and have no stake in it.

A few points, just to get things started:

1. All martial arts training involves making compromises. Do you spar or don’t you?

If you don’t, you can work eye-strikes, groin rips, biting, spitting, whatever your little heart desires. But good luck with the timing of your techniques under real-life circumstances, with chaotic movement and distancing, with mental toughness and the ability to take a blow. If you spar, do you pull your blows and play tag or do you make contact? Do you make contact with or without protective equipment? What targets and techniques do you allow?

And so on, many of us will have pondered these questions, the problem being that whatever format you end up choosing, there will always be gaps, because, by definition, real combat is an uncooperative, chaotic mess, often involving the odds being stacked in favor of the predator (multiple attackers, weapons, ambushing) and how do you really duplicate such a deadly and nasty shit-storm? What you do, is that you mesh together a variety of techniques, drills, strategies etc. that you believe and hope like hell will save your student’s life, if they are ever forced to fight for it.

2. There are many martial arts and most claim to teach “self defense”, in some form or other. If you doubt me, phone up the neighborhood Tae Kwon Do school, Wu Shu academy or Aikido dojo and ask them if their stuff is useful for self defense. I’d be very surprised if anyone said: “Sure. Some. But if you are working in a life-and-death kind of job, such as being a police officer, bouncer or just live in a really nasty neighborhood, you would be better off at the Reality Based Self Defense School down the road”.

Now, teaching truly FUNCTIONAL self defense is as important a responsibility as being a surgeon in the casualty ward of a hospital. If your dentist messes up your filling, this will not be the death of you. If you are a gunshot victim and the surgeon is an incompetent, you are dead. As teachers of combative skills for “civilians” (as opposed to predators) we have the same responsibility, only at the very other end of the chain of events, at the beginning, before the conflict occurs. If your teaching is good, the surgeon has a quiet night or has to work like crazy to save the life of the damaged predator.

Somehow, the traditionalists don’t seem to get this. If you teach crap and your student dies because what he is using doesn’t work, then morally you are at the very least partly guilty of killing him. Admittedly I’m stating this a little dramatically, but if you teach your students high Tae Kwon Do kicks and brainwash them into believing that they can defend themselves, you are potentially committing murder!

MMA schools have it a little better, as long as it’s a one-on-one situation and there are no weapons involved, and there is no element of surprise, MMA is functional. Problem being, these days that kind of fight usually only happens between teenagers on the schoolyard.

Anyway, my point is that if you teach crap, or, more likely in most reality based combat systems, if you pad your system with lots of cool new sensitivity and flow drills, endless disarms, lock-flows and the like so as to sell your umpteenth set of instructional DVDs, then you are as bad or worse than the TKD instructor mentioned above.

3. There is an old martial arts joke that goes as follows: Question: “How many martial artists does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer : “Ten. One to get on the ladder and to actually screw it in, the other nine to observe and comment: Very nice…but in our style we do it this way….”

So: A review is an opinion piece. I’m not fond of headbutting the chest (from experience) and would probably not headbutt someone’s bicep, but that is my opinion, it’s a choice, taking the whole Keysi system into consideration I believe that I have a good idea why they do this and taken within the broader picture of their “theory” it makes perfect sense. Doesn’t mean I will headbutt biceps from now on, but if one embraces the totality of what they do, then it would make sense.

DVD 1 : Urban X Home Study

A couple of the critical comments I quoted above all say essentially the same thing, i.e. that the “Pensador” defensive concept is a bad copy of the “Crazy Monkey”.

About seven or eight years ago, before I got divorced, I was the Cape Town affiliate / representative of Matt Thornton’s Straight Blast Gym, together with one of my best friends and training partner, Steven Bazzea. Steven still represents Matt, I however went through a messy divorce and moved more into the direction of combatives in the last few years. Point being, at the time I was privileged to learn some of the Crazy Monkey from the founder of the concept, Rodney King. Doesn’t mean I’m an expert at it, but I’ve been doing it since then, all my students have to learn it, often combined with the “wall drill”

(defender is up against a wall, can only use the crazy monkey, attacker basically does whatever hand techniques he wants).

So: I know the Crazy Monkey well enough to give a qualified opinion as to whether the “Pensador/Thinking Man” is a second rate copy of it. No, it is not. It is similar, but it is different. There are specific reasons as to why it is different. In the street, attackers swing at you with everything they have. The Crazy Monkey is designed for boxing and MMA sparring, it has to be faster and more mobile so as to cope with the jabs and tricky combos that someone who is good in boxing range will throw.

The Pensador is a more solid structure, the arms, head, neck and back are braced maximally to absorb the impact of the attack. From what I have seen on the DVDs, the Pensador structure is also maintained and used as an entry into extreme close range, whilst the Crazy Monkey or the related “helmet” will unfold into a variety of entries into MMA clinch range. Yes, this might make the Pensador slightly vulnerable to someone with a lightning fast jab in sparring, but in nearly a hundred street fights I was attacked by a jabbing boxer only once and simply rugby-tackled him over a parked motor bike. I lost count as to how many people tried to take my head off with a loping haymaker / wild hook, though. And for that I would prefer the extra bracing protection of the Pensador, thank you very much.

This first DVD teaches the Pensador, in a very thorough, sequential fashion, one variation or drill building upon the next one. Yes, off course there are “gaps” and “problems”, if your attacker has a knife and you see the attack coming you would not do the Pensador, you would avoid the blade if possible or redirect the attack or gain control over the arm holding the weapon, or any combination of these, if you could.

I suspect that that’s what an intermediate or advanced Keysi practitioner would do as well. This is a basic, “white belt” level DVD and you need to start somewhere. The whole Pensador concept is certainly a superb one against the kind of empty hand attacks you would face in the street.

One aspect that no-one seems to have commented on and that leaves me scratching my head a little is the metronome-like rhythm of the movements. The attacker as well as the defender go into a bobbing, weaving kind of rhythm. I’m completely guessing here, but I think that might make it easier for a beginner to learn the movement and the timing of the technique. I would assume that this falls away at a more advanced level, since it is artificial and completely contradicts the chaotic, staccato nature of combat. This may be one of those trade-offs I mentioned under Point 1 above.

Going back to the actual content, it is very logical and well thought out in its sequencing. First you learn to use the Pensador against a single attacker who attacks with a jab, a cross, hook, uppercut, elbows, knees, round kick and straight kick. You then go on to “Pensatecho”, defending against two attackers, one on each side, at high, medium and low level.

Very much in line with the light bulb joke, I would do it a bit differently. Instead of having the student in the middle keep on and on defending with the Pensador, I would have him block two or three blows and then work his way around one of the attackers, so as to put one attacker smack-bang between himself and the other attacker.

Again, maybe that drill comes later in the program. My reasoning being that the way you train is the way you fight and I’m sure as hell not remaining in the middle any longer than I have to!

They follow this up with defenses vs. grabs. The first level being, he grabs you, you basically let him, he then throws a punch, which you defend against with the Pensador structure. “Light bulb scenario”again, but I hit or counterattack when someone grabs me. Which is what you get in the next drill. He grabs and you circle or otherwise whack his grab out of the way and thrust in and forward with the braced spiky structure of the Pensador. Which still leaves me doubtful as to whether you need stage one with its pre-planned obsolescence, but again, maybe I have only a partial picture.

You learn to mix in counterattacks with your defense, in the form of jabs, hooks, crosses, that sort of thing. My question being as to how this plays out in the street. I had many cuts on my hands from punching people in the mouth, that was in the late seventies, do I really want to become some Aids-dripping criminal’s blood brother these days? Or maybe that is the kind of question which is more relevant in the third world, like here in Africa but not in Europe or the U.S.A.?

And saying “well, in the street you open your hands and do open-handed strikes” is, in my opinion, complete nonsense, we are back to “the way you train is the way in which you will perform under pressure”. It can be done, punches for focus mitt drills and boxing sparring, but then you need to more than equal it out with open hand strikes in technique drilling. Punches to the body being a thing of beauty, of course.

Then there is balance training, in which the defender applies the pensador under pressure whilst on top of a Reebok Stepper or something similar. Against one attacker, then against two.

I really like the use of the Pensador as an attacking weapon. That’s beautiful and, I think, fairly unique. In our own “form style” (empty hand aspect of Piper) a similar protective structure often converts into hammer fist attacks, hammer fist strikes being especially popular because they are essentially identical to Piper’s reverse grip knife techniques, only minus the knife.

Lastly, you are shown the use of the Pensador structure against the Thai neck clinch (although this is attempted rather clumsily from the outside, i.e. it would not work by definition, as opposed to threading your way in, as you would in working the “plum” position in Muay Thai) and against the guillotine (again, it is clear that this works as a defense as your attacker begins to go for the technique. The point I think they are trying to make is that it is

a. the core defensive principle of their system and
b. extremely versatile…which it clearly is.

Will the Pensador work against all or even nearly all attacks? No. Is there any single technique or initial response pattern that will work against all possible techniques? No.

Under pressure you want to stick with dear old “Occam’s razor”, the principle which says: “Don’t multiply your entities unnecessarily”. You want a single, instinctive, congruent response for the moment in which you realise: “Oh shit!” (not that you usually get to the second word)

If your brain has to decide as to whether to do response A or response B or C, you are, pardon my French, fucked already.

As a matter of fact, let’s call this “Erik’s razor”: If you are learning a self defense system and it does not have one principle or response strategy that all others are branching out from and that is drilled until you can do it in your sleep, good luck to you, because you are royally screwed!

Please…a streetfight is NOT a sparring session, you do NOT bounce around like an enthusiastic puppy, firing off jabs, probing his defences. You are under attack you react as quickly and efficiently as you can and you shut your attacker DOWN, right NOW!

Which does not mean you should not spar, I believe that you must. It means that you need to program that one response more than any other. As I said, there are only a handful that will do the job that I have come across in forty years…and I would definitely count the Pensador as one of those!

A very brief note on the production values, graphics, music and artistic aspects of these DVDs: They are all excellent, a lot of work has clearly gone into this and this seems to pervade their approach. Very professional. Which of course has idiots everywhere going on about “marketing”. If you believe that what you are offering may save people’s lives, should you not perhaps do your best to sell them on the idea of getting this knowledge and making it their own? I’ve harped on this before, it’s tiresome, what is WRONG with marketing, unless of course your product sucks!

DVD 2 “Distance Learning Program”

Having absorbed the defensive structure of the Pensador, the trainee is now ready to go onto the basic striking techniques of the system.

I am not going to list every one of them, there is a wide and varied selection: Elbows, hammerfists, headbutts, clawing techniques and so forth.

Keysi is a very close range system. I really like this simply because it is in keeping with my personal experiences. Street fighting gets real close really quickly. The longer the range, the more artificial it is, from a street combat point-of-view.

A lot of techniques are used as strikes to the attacker’s arms. This is perhaps a hold-over from the JKD roots of the founders, personally my preference is to blast in and through the other guy, attacking core targets on the head, neck, throat, solar plexus, groin, shin etc. If the target is open, I will hit it. If not I will hit a target that is open or move past, over or through whatever obstruction there is. To me, the attacker’s arms are seldom if ever targets, especially since they are usually not held in place long enough to do some of the things that are shown in this DVD.

Ditto for some of the actual techniques used. I used a headbutt to the chest against MMA and grappling coach and friend Ludwig Strydom in sparring once, all it got me was a “What the fuck is that supposed to be” from him and a sore neck for a few days afterwards.

I once used a sideways headbutt against a Nigerian criminal I had pinned against a wall, I was throwing my usual assortment of knees, elbows and headbutts. Next thing I know I wake up with the “where the hell am I” feeling that anyone who has been out cold knows only too well. I was still upright, sagging against the Nigerian, who luckily was more than a bit groggy from being hit. I must have been out for a second at most, but who the hell wants to knock himself out in combat? In retrospect, I think I must have bashed the nerve that runs along the skull over the ear (go up an inch from your ear, take a knuckle and rub the area, you’ll find it) against his skull and knocked myself out.

And who can forget one of Vanderlei Silva’s early Vale Tudo fights in Brazil, in which headbutts were allowed and Vanderlei bled like the proverbial stuck pig after headbutting his opponent. If memory serves me correctly, he even lost the fight on a TKO because of the bleeding..the irony!

So, headbutts, used to do them a lot, but am very hesitant about them now. They look “sexy” and, sure, if you can clip his jaw just right so as to dislocate it (been there, it sucks when you are getting up off the floor after being hit, but realise that you cannot open or shut your mouth anymore because it’s “locked”, it’s a panicky feeling), that’s lovely, but your targeting has to be so spot-on….

That’s the thing with many of these techniques in this DVD: they look very sexy or delicious, but like so many sexy or delicious things in life, I’m not sure how good they are for you. I love the hammerfist strikes and elbow strikes, I love the flow and feel of the combinations.

Which brings me to that “other viewpoint” I mentioned initially. Sure, so my experiences have caused me be very hesitant about headbutting. This does not mean, however, that a Keysi practitioner might not use a hundred successful headbutts in his career as, say, a bouncer. Maybe he never knocks himself out. Maybe he only bleeds a few times (or even never) from throwing headbutts and maybe none of his attackers are bleeding as well or, if they are bleeding, don’t have any blood-borne diseases?! Who knows?

And maybe that third strike in a given series, against the bicep, misses because the arm has been retracted but the flow continues powerfully and without interruption and strikes four, five and six hit their targets, as did strike one and two?

If I pretend for a moment that I am not me, but a Keysi practitioner who has put many hours into creating a seamless flow of strikes as I have been taught, can I possibly see how most of my criticisms and doubts (as Erik) do not necessarily apply, then yes, I can conceive that. There are very few arts that make me “smack my lips” when I see them demonstrated, as in “lordy, that’s nice for when the shit hits the fan”. Four that got that reaction from me and that have, at core, more similarities than differences, are Piper, 52 blocks, Keysi and Libre Fighting. It’s a combination of viciously effective close-in techniques and powerful body movement. Should a Keysi academy open in Cape Town, run by a Keysi black belt, I would certainly go there to learn some more…and that, to me, is about the highest compliment I can give to an art. Heck, I liked their system so much I wanted to send them a complimentary copy of my Piper E-book, only to be scared away by their “contact” page, which is one of those monstrosities with all the pre-set blocks for your e mail adress, “reason for message” and message.

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