Illinois First Nat'l Guard State to Hold Combatives Summit

By Capt. Dutch Grove, Illinois National Guard Public Affairs 

The Illinois National Guard's 129th Regional Training Institute (RTI) hosted the state's first Modern Army Combatives Program (MACP) Instructor Summit in conjunction with the Adjutant General's Combatives Championships Sept. 14-15 at Camp Lincoln in Springfield.

Chief combatives trainer with the RTI, Staff Sgt. Nicholas Grant of Caseyville, Ill., planned the Instructor Summit and said MACP has evolved over the last few years to include new training to meet the tactical needs of forces on the ground.

"Many of the techniques and training methods we will cover during the summit were adopted from the Special Operations Combatives Program," said Grant. "We will train on how to fight with weapons, weapon retention and transition during hand-to-hand combat, hand cuffing and vehicle extraction techniques, and most importantly, how to conduct MACP training at the unit level in a safe yet realistic manner."

Grant attended the three-day Army-wide national summit at Fort Benning, GA., in 2012.

"That sparked the idea to create a summit for our combatives instructors here in Illinois," said Grant. "Our intent is to make this an annual event to coincide with the TAG Combatives Championships each year."

He said combatives instructors at the unit level are spread throughout the state and it is difficult to get them all together to update the training after their initial MACP instructor certification.

"This summit will provide a priceless opportunity to bring dozens of our MACP instructors all together at one time to train on the latest and greatest that MACP has to offer and provide a rare opportunity to network with other instructors to share ideas on training methods and unit-level combatives program development," said Grant.

With the idea in place, Grant said it was a considerable challenge to prioritize the vast amount of material and squeeze it into one day of training.

"The combatives program has progressed so much in the past few years we could easily spend several days training on new stuff and hopefully next year we will," said Grant.

He hopes the instructors will return from the summit to their units with more tools to conduct safe and realistic combatives training.

"Plain and simple, combatives saves lives. Whether directly by providing the tools needed to dominate an enemy in close-quarter-combat or indirectly by providing the courage, confidence, resiliency and warrior ethos needed to survive in a combat environment," said Grant.

For more information, visit the Illinois National Guard Facebook page.