INFO ARTICLE #1

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CETA

CETA was synthesized from a number of other martial arts to address the problem of the ineffectiveness of the traditional martial arts versus real combat.. Many martial arts are now sports or dance-like art forms and have limited  or almost no use for self defense.The following systems played a major role in the formation of CETA.

 THE WW2 COMBAT SYSTEMS  The Fairbairn, Applegate, Styers, Nelson,  and O'neil systems, Bill Underwoods Combato, USMC Combat Judo, (WW2 version)  The Feldenkrais  system (Israel)  are all similar and come from the same source. The father of all of these systems was William E. Fairbairn, the  Chief of Police in the city of Shanghai  in the early 1900's. Shanghaii was a British colony and one of the most violent cities in the world at that time.The term Shainghied ( kidnapped)  comes from there. Fairbairn had a background in judo and kung fu. He adapted and developed his skills during of hundreds of close combat encounters both armed and unarmed.The incredible effectiveness of these systems has been proven over and over again in real combat all over the world. The reason these systems are so effective is that  the techniques are extremely destructive and  they are also very  easy to learn. There are only 10 or so techniques in the entire system so remembering them is not a problem, unlike the traditional martial arts. Some of the systems vary from one another by also employing certain judo/jujuitsu techniques, some punches or minor stance variations. They all have these techniques in common -  the side of the hand strike, the chin jab, the the smashing tiger claw to the face/eyes, finger tip stabs to the eyes/throat. elbow,and knee strikes,and a handful of kicks and stomps to the groin, knees, shins and feet. Also taught are the killing use of knives, sticks, clubs and other modern weapons. These systems are no longer taught to the various western military special forces or government  special services probably because it wouldn't be "politically correct ." These systems survive today because they are the matrix of other systems like CETA or AMERICAN COMBATO..

BRADLEY STEINER'S AMERICAN COMBATO This is where I developed the CETA  tactiics of close quarter combat. Brad Steiner was the first to publish an excellent book on tactics and how to employ them in real combat.Your traditional martial arts totally exclude tactics from their training and do so at their students peril. Even the best expert in anything can be taken out of commision by employing the proper tactics .The best technique could fail if your tactics are wrong.Tactics are just as important as techniques in real combat  and depending on the situation, possibly even more so according to Bradley Steiner.I  highly recommend his websites for a lot of excellent free material and for very reasonably priced books. Those are americancombato.com and seattlecombatives.com.

KENPO   We utilize many of the concepts of kenpo for speed and power hitting which actually came from Chinese Gung Fu,such as the flow principle. IN CETA  however, our combination strikes are simpler and more streamlined for actual combat.. In CETA we  have 5 angles of attack which are  straight, foreswing, backswing, rising and falling. Each angle of attack has its own set of body mechanics or  " powers ". Rising power, falling power , fore swing power, back swing power,forward body mass power and whipping power are developed and trained in every strike for maximum striking effectiveness..

JEET KUNE DO This is a composite art developed by the late Buce Lee.The main arts that go into JKD are Wing Chun, Boxing. Fencing (for the footwork) and to a lesser extent savate, grappling and as Lee said " whatever works". His philosophy was that ther was no superior art but there imay be a" best art " for a particular situation or a particular moment in time. Sort of like a game of rock-paper-scissors. In other words boxer need not be engaged in punching range but might be taken out with low kicks or a grappler might be destroyed with a double thumb eye gouge just as an example. Streamlining your techniques for maximum spped and power and the straight blast are other concepts taken from JKD.

FILIPINO KALI  There are many styles of kali, the native martial art of  Philippines These systems employ unarmed combat, stick and knife and an assortment of other weapons. Although we use some of the whipping and slashing kali stick and knife maneuvers we put greater emphasis on the lethal more linear western systems of stick and knife. Another thing we took from Kali was the excellent 2 person training drills like sumbrada ,numerado, hubud and the pananamjackaman kicking drills. Keena Mu Tai is a kali sub art consisting of biting and gouging .These techniques are employed if you ever find yourself on tho ground . Instead of trying to out grapple a possibly stronger enemy, we attack the eyes ,throat, and  testicles with gouges/tears and there are over 200 points on the human body that  one can bite.

THE DAN TE SYSTEM Many of the ripping gouging, tearing , and slashing techniques of CETA came from or were inspired by this system. DAN TE means deadly hands and was developed by karate expert  John Keehan AKA Count Dante out of Chicago in the mid 1960's. Keehan published book " THE WORLDS DEADLIEST FIGHTING SECRETS "and became wealthy through it's sales through comic book ads.He was a colorful character and  eventually became a pariah in the mainstream martial arts community.Unfortunately ,he died in his mid 30's of bleeding peptic ulcer possibly caused by his chain smoking of menthol cigarettes. My only criticism of the system is that some of the "poison hand techniques" are difficult to form in an emergency situation and are unsuitable for real combat.. Also in CETA we differentiate between tearing. slashing, gouging, ripping and gouge/rip claws and train each clawing technique separately.

TIGER CLAW, EAGLE CLAW SYSTEMS OF GUNG FU From these systems CETA takes clawing methods to the highest level. In CETA a clawing technique can slash (tiger)gouge or seize/crush (eagle) smash and slash (smashing tiger or bear)  gouge in and slash out ward (eagle - tiger ) hook in and rip out , also called fishhooking (dragon )

CONCLUSION    In order for a technique to be incorporated into the CETA system it must meet 2 criteria. It must be easy to perform and it must be extremely destructive hand to hand combat wise. Most martial art techniques are not..The reason they use punches and flashy high kicks in their tournaments is that these are exciting to watch and are  very safe techniques. Even in full contact bouts, very few of these contestants are ever injured. Almost all of the techniques of CETA or other true combat systems are banned from even the toughest of these contests.But I remind you, we are not sporting contestants, nor are we "artists. "Train Hard and Stay Alert !    Brooks .