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Extensive selection of self defense tools utilizing all forms of media that take you from base principles to complete and immediately useable applications of the entire TFT System.
The fastest way to ingrain the TFT System into your subconscious is to follow a specific path of instruction. Now there are two ways to accomplish this.
If your primary fear is getting hurt then you’re stuck reacting to his actions, pulling back, attempting to defend yourself. Distance-wise, this places you exactly where he needs you to be to get whatever it is he wants done. It also gets you behaving in a non-threatening way, leaving him free to finish it. This baseline ‘going defensive’ is what makes people spectacular victims.
If your primary fear is what he’s doing then you’re stuck going after his limbs to block or counter or otherwise thwart his actions. Distance-wise you’re still too far away, that half-step, arms’-length that means you can’t strike with your mass. This also leaves him in control of his mass and balance, with you as a target right in front of him should he decide to step in and use that mass to strike you.
This is fighting. A dangerous back-and-forth that builds into an epic struggle until someone gets it right and causes an injury. Dangerous for you because the longer it goes on the more opportunities he has to get it right at your expense.
If your primary concern is leaving a human brain in charge of a fully-functional body, then you’ll disrupt that relationship through injury. Or, to be more succinct, if you think your problem is the brain, you’ll go after the brain.
Distance-wise you can’t get any closer — to get at the brain, you have to go through the body. You’ll throw your mass through him, belt buckle to belt buckle, and end up standing where he was.
Going after the brain necessitates displacing him. If you put all that impetus through one square inch of him that can’t take it,the result is an injury. And that means the brain is either offline, busy, or in charge of a broken body.
The failure of most self-defense training is in giving you a goal that is at odds with the needs and realities of violence. What we see demonstrated time and again in successful uses of the tool are these simple facts:
The winners have no regard for what the victim is doing. They conspicuously ignore the actions of the person they want to hurt.
The winners don’t bother with blocking or counters. They put all their efforts into getting the job done.
The winners hurt people. Their only goal is injury, lots of it, following the victim to the ground and making him nonfunctional.
When we see this in action the natural response is: “How do I fight people who fight like that?“
The answer is that you don’t. Either you take them or they take you. Trying to defend yourself from them makes you a victim. Trying to fight them makes you a victim. Operating like they do gives you an even chance — and even that can be bent in your favor with every hour on the mats.
Learn the lesson: it’s always about the brain. And you getting over there and shutting it off.
“The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword” -Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The above quote is often used by men of ideas and throughout history many ideas drafted by the pen have, eventually, triumphed. But many of the original drafters of those ideas paid for their writings with their lives. That is a fact often left out by many who use the above quote.
In the past 20 or so years that I’ve been training men and women of ideas I see it as my job to remind them that we, in fact, live in a physical world. Many of my clients are extremely successful industry leaders whose sharp minds have helped them to achieve great things in their lives.
The human mind is capable of bringing out the best in society but it is equally capable of destroying lives using the crude fact that we live in a physical world. Military and Law Enforcement operators that I train are well versed in this very real fact and need little reminding of its existence.
But my civilian clients often need to be shocked into this reality. I usually do this via a short multimedia presentation that shows video of random acts of violence. Quickly it sinks in that violence cuts across all socioeconomic lines and should you find yourself faced with such a threat it requires a response that is in the realm of our physical world.
As I write this newsletter I know that should someone crash through the door and attack I will not rely on all of the ideas about self defense that I’ve learned and written about over the years. No, rather it will be the thousands of hours of physical training I’ve put in that I’ll draw from to take the other guy out.
It is my actual time of physically being out on the mat (or other training environments) working against other human bodies that allows me to respond with principles and methods that will best serve me in such an instance.
I’ve found that many of my clients enjoy reading about the self defense principles and methods I write about but are slow to actually get out on the mat and do it. The excuses I hear are numerous and clever but ultimately it will be a miserable failure for them if they haven’t got out on the mat and moved their bodies against another human.
Intellectually learning how to swim via books and videos without you actually jumping in the water and physically learning how to swim is a dangerous gamble against drowning. Even more true when it comes to self defense training; you need to actually get out there and do it.
Fortunately for my clients I’ve gone out of my way to make it easy to get moving. Whether you attend a live training or opt for home study I’ve got you covered so you see step by step how to get out with another human and physically learn this vitally important information.
Because the sad fact is that living a great life and pursuing your dreams can be suddenly interrupted by a random act of violence. If you merely stay a man or woman of ideas and demand the world should be a certain way then you are a perfect target for the physical thugs of this world.
Whereas if you stolidly ground yourself in the physical realities of asocial criminal violence and put the time in to physically train your body to deal with it you then can pursue your goals in your world of ideas. If violence should enter your life you are not shocked by it and in fact have planned and trained for just such an event.
All the best,
Tim Larkin Founder, Master Instructor Target Focus Training
Prison provides the perfect petri dish to examine asocial violence. When you look at your current self defense, “reality fighting system” (I abhor that term) or martial arts training it’s instructive to view that against raw asocial acts of violence.
This video clip is an expanded version of one I use in my seminars (it’s better because it includes the commentary). It is a prison murder and was well thought out. Hear how the killer describes his actions and what was going through his head.
(If you see what appear to be 2 videos below, click and watch the first. The second is just a picture and occasionally pops up in some browers.)
Again, I post this not to disparage your self defense, martial arts or reality fighting system training but to provoke you to examine if you focus on trying to defend yourself from being stabbed rather than focusing on injuring the other guy.
There’s a big difference within that last statement and it is the key to dealing with an asocial predator.
Does your self-defense training look like the news…
…Or more like a fantasy?
Real violence — one or more people preying on others — has an unmistakeable ‘look.’ It’s like nothing else. Not movies, TV or combat sports competition. Instead of drama, it’s straight to the point. You feel it in your guts, desperately trying to figure out how to make it stop, or what you would do if that were happening to you.
If how you train looks like that — one-sided, to-the-point, and results-oriented — then you’re training for real violence. If not…
If your training looks like movie choreography, a dramatic fight scene, where people take turns and there’s lots of action but no concrete results, then you’re training for a fantasy.
And the killer is that you will do what you train.
If you train like the news, well, then you’ll be doing it the way it really works. If you show up in a Gandalf hat with a toy lightsabre, things will not go well for you.
Be honest — it’s your life we’re talking about. Does what you do look like the videos we’ve been highlighting here? Or are you preparing for something that doesn’t exist?
You’ll go after what you’re worried about.
