“Oh, they’re just fighting,” I said with a sigh of relief.It was day two of the Hand-Stick-Knife-Gun Close Quarter Combatives Seminar the Romeoville Isshin-Ryu Karate Club was hosting. You have to see the flyer to understand my trepidation. The words “combat” or “combative” appeared at least four times and it had the stencil font that makes you think of the military.As the love child of a beatnik and a hippie, things that have overt military themes make me nervous. I had visions of black military fatigues and attendees who had bugout locations hidden somewhere. But, as it turns out, I was worried about nothing. “There’s different ‘types’ of martial arts,” explained seminar attendee Steve Zorn, Warsaw, IN. “There’s sport, art, traditional. And then there’s defensive or ‘combative’ – stuff for survival.”The seminar was led by W. Hock Hocheim, founder and creator of the Scientific Fighting Congress. One of the principles of his program is to “’bridge the gap between the military, the police, the martial artist and the aware citizen.’ Each group knows things about fighting that the other doesn't.” That’s a quote from

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