My first-hand account of attending a
Target-Focus Training live training seminar...

 

"EVER FEAR WALKING ON THE STREET
AT NIGHT IN A STRANGE CITY?"

"I DID... UNTIL YESTERDAY."

What happened yesterday?

Here in Dallas, Texas I completed perhaps the most effective 3-day self-defense seminar on earth. One almost no one outside the defense industry has ever heard of. Some of what was taught was for a time classified. If you’re over 40 and live in the 3rd world, or plan on moving there, it’s a seminar I think you should seriously consider attending too.

Why? Like many others, I am a lifelong rambler. Have traveled Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Mexico, Egypt, Israel, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Africa, the Philippines, and maybe 70 other exotic spots around the globe. I well know from first person experience, that many of those destinations are demonstrably safer than most U.S. cities, but some certainly are not. My wide-ranging work as a news executive and lifelong lover of adventure travel has however, on more than one occasion, put me in places that feel less than safe. And as I’ve gotten older, my concerns about personal safety have increased. The world for Americans is scarier today; there is no debate about that. Regular Al Jazeera images of men in my profession, sitting tied on the floor with bad guys, doing very-bad-things to them, have not helped my sense of security since 9/11 either.

Sure, like most men, I somehow still feel I can handle anything (I used to be a good athlete, I kid myself), and I’m still in decent shape. But the reality is I am pushing 53, and cannot do what I once could. To deal with this imbalance here in Texas, one can get a license to carry a concealed gun (I haven’t), but in most of the world just having that equalizing tool in your home, will get you in serious trouble. The phrase, “throw away the key” sort of sums the regional legalities up nicely.

For years, I carried a small flesh-colored hand-sized mace sprayer, but airport security now confiscates them. So what’s a fellow citizen of the world to do? If you're no longer Rambo, or never were, and love travel to those out-of-the-way wild places, yet, would still like to keep your loved ones, wallet and head, safe, attached, and in your possession at all times?

Call Tim Larkin at (360)-582-9578 is my advice.

Tim runs “The TFT Group”, (Target-Focus Training) in San Diego, California. And one could say his credentials are fairly good: He trains the Navy Seals, Delta Force, DEA, FBI, and CIA operatives how to protect themselves, when they travel to the world’s glamorous vacation hot spots. In other words, the toughest guys on the planet pay Tim to learn how to stay on top of bad situations. And in my opinion, he delivers.

What’s my opinion based on? I have 3 years of Karate Training, and was fairly good at it. As a young man I fought full contact (except to the face), as was the odd style in tournaments on hardwood floors with no rings, back before anyone ever heard of using cushion mats, or wore soft rubber gloves, rib vests and protective headgear. Barehanded, I broke ribs and teeth, (other’s and my own,) along with fingers and many toes, and won some of those schoolboy tournaments. I had very good wise instructors. Moreover, I’ve taken Thai Kickboxing lessons in a Bangkok slum (trust me, pass on that opportunity if you ever get it, as the daily lesson is one long highly unpleasant series of sweaty beatings). And regrettably, over rather unimportant, shall we say nuanced differences of political opinion, or unimportant women, (retrospectively), I’ve been bounced against the walls in establishments which sell adult beverages, on an occasion or two.

Was hospitalized for a mugging thence full on face breaking beating I took many, many years ago. And got aggressive and simply refused to be robbed late at night on the street in the US 6 years ago. I am not a big, bellicose or tough guy by any metric. Though, I would surely have less aches and scars at this age, had I been born with a little more healthy fear of the world. I’ve been around more than most as the old saying goes.

Nothing however, I have ever experienced prepared me for Tim Larkin’s techniques.

And the really great part is: using them has almost nothing to do with youth, strength or hyper fast matrix movie style reflexes. The average age in my class of 30 was probably 49, and we had a woman in her late 50s. Mostly the group was made up of law enforcement types, Federal air marshals, (the fool only fools--easy to spot kind I thought) airline pilots, an air force surgeon, an attractive blonde Agent-99 type, a bodyguard driver, a multi black belt holder, owner of a martial arts school, plus various every day middle aged military and civilian consultants like myself.

In other words with a few exceptions, we were mostly past-our-prime, out-of-shape guys, with a uniform over-estimate of our toughness. Folks with a good smattering of education, brains, and real-world street smarts, as well as a lot of gray and thinning hair. Surprising to me was the utter lack of the prototypical young stud Van Damme or Governator weight rat types. Maybe they think they’re too tough or advanced for this. A mistake in my estimate. Or they don’t have the bucks. Probably a bit of both.

Learning what Tim teaches is simple, and by the long end of day three, pretty much everyone in the room had acquired the basic skills he taught us. The skills are, however, like nothing I have ever seen in any self-defense class. And in my travels I have taken more than one over the years.

How are they different?

He does not teach defense. Tim does not teach blocks. None. No slick, complicated countermoves. No high jumping kicks. No board breaking. No Jujitsu Hollywood BS stuff. No mystic Guru gnosis. No pretending to be a bird on one leg, or wax on, wax off grasshopper, or any of that completely worthless claptrap. So, what does he teach? He teaches how to old school hurt people. Very efficiently, and in a manner intended to maim or kill.

• He teaches the application of highly focused direct, immediate brutal offense. Target-Focus Training (TFT) it’s called.

• The theory behind this is radical, bone-numbingly simple and has, whether you realize it or not, been standard operating doctrine since the early 90s for the Pros of the tactical community, who practice the dark arts in our defense.

• In a bumper sticker, the theory codice is: The faster you injure some one threatening you or your loved ones, the faster and more certain you return to being back in a safe zone. Don’t waste opportunities or precious seconds on defense.

• Go after the threat. Forget what’s in his hand. Go attack his space and put an injury on him as fast as humanly possible. The more incapacitating the injury (s) you inflict, the less chance you have of being hurt.

• Eliminate the threat with extreme prejudice. No more threat to worry about. Have a nice day.

I was frankly astounded. An hour into the documentary crime film presentation part of the class (just after the colorful moment with the inmate putting the shiv in the guy’s chest 67 times), we took a break, and when the lights came up, there was a sort of stunned open-mouth, jaw-dropping silence, which hung palpably in the air. Those are cold, very hard tactics to accept and adopt, even in the face of such animals. Self-defense, I was taught is about defending yourself from harm, not harming someone else. I intellectually resisted it at first. Judo is called the “soft defense.” The Korean Karate of my youth was known as the “hard defense.” Simply put, Tim’s tactics come from another universe, (the smart caveman prisonyard universe). And don’t describe the world the way I want the world to be. Upon first encounter they offended my value system, accruing from long ingrained traditions of schoolboy tournament fair play, values and mores.

I am a cultured, educated man I tell myself. I’ve earned 4 degrees. I gave the Commencement speech for my class at Harvard Graduate School of Business. I have a Masters Degree in the Liberal Arts, and earned a professional dispute mediator’s certification. I am a Christian, and we don’t intentionally try to maim or kill those who have not harmed us yet. Tim’s driving principal tactic is called first mover advantage, and its use is maleficent and unfair I was taught.

But upon giving the matter some serious thought, I am sorry to say, in this progressively ever more crazy and dangerous world, I know he is in fact spot right on. Pick up any paper. Turn on any news channel. There is evil in this world—lots of it. And I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I was in Cambodia at the tail end of their civil war, and know there are people you cannot negotiate, or reason with under any circumstance.

And a straight line is the fastest way between two points. No matter size, age or strength, he who injures the other guy first prevails almost every time. Every desperate fight I ever saw went that way rapidly.

Once someone is badly injured, it’s over for him and he’s on the ground, or will be there very shortly. Then it gets ugly, fast.

Maybe not up on the silver screen or in boob Tube land. But that’s the cold unvarnished calculus of how violence really works out on the tera unfirma of the malevolent street-- and always has. Ask any Gang Unit cop in any country on earth.

And it’s not new: General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the up from the ranks, vicious, self taught southern cavalry genius, and scourge of the northern armies atritibuted his regular against huge odds victories to the application of the same base stratagem: explaining it, he said we win cause I make sure we get there “the firstest and hit em with the mostest”, it’s over real fast that way. Any, experienced Russian or Nigerian bouncer will tell you the same thing. It’s not fair, it’s effective. What matters when your life is on the line?

There is no swagger or macho braggadocio associated with any of this literally clinical medical presentation of how to hurt people. Tim tells you violence is ugly. “It's rarely, if ever the answer, but when it is the answer, it’s the only answer.” When your life is in danger, the sooner you attack a threat and neutralize it, the sooner your chance of harm goes mathematically back to zero. Any competent actuary, in any insurance firm in the world will tell you, less time of exposure = less total risk. Like it or not, this is indisputably the hard military math of risk and consequences + time line of exposure = total aggregate risk. More is bad. Less is better. None is best. Ask Allstate.

The seminars are taught a couple of times a year in Dallas, Miami, New York, London, Hong Kong and Sydney. Fee is $500 per day for the 3 days. Money returned no questions asked at any time, should you think that’s not good value. Given he took in perhaps $40,000 for the three days of his time, I don’t believe you have to worry about whether you will get your money back, should you ask. As it would seem in a dangerous world, he has to put it bluntly, no shortage of clients seeking tactical advantage shelter from the culture storms.

If you can’t hit one of the road seminars, you may schedule to take one during the year in San Diego. (They’re out there because that’s where the Navy Seal community is.) Tim was one of the principal developers of these techniques as a Spec War Intel Officer. Look’s the part, 6’2 and maybe 250 pounds of seriously trained, steel-eyed 40-year-old hard guy. Not the big talking roids pumped up, wrestling loudmouth TV type. He’s more the seriously dangerous, stripped down professional street model. Highly grounded powerful posture, (he walks like he has earth magnets in his shoes) and an air of calculating efficiency describe the enduring impression of the man. Affable, but the kind of man you would be very glad to have by your side in a tight spot.
The force type Menken described, as those rough men who stand ever ready in the night, to visit violence upon those who would do us harm in our beds.

Along with this, I found him a very good, clear communicator, as well as a patient, focused talented teacher: he has obviously been doing this a long while. And given the way his fine subordinate instructors responded in their interactions with him, it was my impression; he is likely an all around good man also. They seemed to think so.

Surprisingly, given the intensity of the theorem being demonstrated, and unlike my Karate classes of yesteryear, the instructors do not beat on you. There was zero, none of that. They are fairly vigilant also, about keeping you from seriously (granted it’s a relative concept) hurting each other. Though accidents in that manner can, and I am sure must occasionally happen given the subject at hand.

Bangs and small bruises aside, no one was injured in our class. Even though he made us do parts of the sessions out in the July, roasting-hot parking garage, sweating and working our attacker over, (and then in turn he us) down literally on the concrete floor between the parked cars. This to get us better used to the feel of applying the techniques on imperfect footing in poorly lit, unfriendly environments. Makes perfect sense, as very few people in my wide travel experience, are ever actually jacked, attacked or robbed on the clean soft mats, under the aircon in well-lit upper-class gyms.

Interestingly, and at times oddly, all the practice training is done in ultra slow motion, silent-mime mode, this to help your brain acquire, and lock the sight pictures, and hence improve long-term memory retention of the motor skill sets.

That’s state-of-the-art applied learning theory these days in professional and Olympic sports coaching. However, you do not need to be a highly trained athlete to acquire or apply these basic techniques. Rather, you learn to drop and transfer your body weight in the form of kinetic energy, rotating and penetrating into vulnerable targets: not use big muscles, to wreak bone-smashing damage on soft joints. And trust me a little bit of that middle-age spread applied judiciously, with a modest dollop of gravity, goes a long ways toward very easily accomplishing those ends. While that may all sound very high tech, at a fundamental level it’s not. A mean Boston street cop in the 19th century would be familiar with most of the moves.

I should also add, the physical techniques are only a part of what this stygian skill set is about. It’s difficult to summarize it’s focus component in a few words, and do it’s complexities and subtlety any justice: suffice it to say there is a very large mental noetic core driver to TFT. Making this proactive attack theorem yours deep down requires frankly, a continental and value contemplative shift in your inner reference points concerning violence. One, which takes considerable time to fully absorb or embrace. I know I am still kicking it around in my own internal dialogues.

In Grappling, Boxing and the Martial arts, one trains to win or subdue by scoring points, or gain leverage control in compliance with mutually agreed rules. These ancient sports employ different tactics and rules, but all share the same ultimate goal. And that is attaining a public display of male dominance.

Where TFT training is intellectually so different; is that it trains one to focus on intentionally breaking things (ankles, thoraxes, collarbones, spines). Its goal is not points, or public submission. Its all out only focus goal is to render another nonfunctional. Larkin says, “the weapon in his hand, is not the threat, the intent in his brain is your threat.” The TFT goal is to make it (his body or his brain) stop functioning, thus making the weapon irrelevant. Accomplish this, and you go on with your life, fail at your peril. Because in truly life threatening situations: there are no points, rules, referees or judges, who can help you if you fail in achieving those results. Do it to him, or he does it to you. Train to make points? Or train to break ankles? They are different skills. Granted, it’s a very different mindset. A cold blooded one. A valid one if you have a gun in your face. I understand why they teach it to the Seals.

Possessing these rough skills will, change your attitude about the purpose of injuries, and your situational options if need should arise, to inflict them upon those bringing asocial behaviors to a theatre near you.

The classes also include sessions with, and on making intelligent decisions when dealing with bad guys with knives, batons, and guns. All of them are seriously: eye-popping (grim pun intended) and cutting-edge street smart in their simple applications.

If you can operate a gas-powered weed eater for 30 minutes on a hot afternoon, you are in good enough shape to do the course and to learn these threat situational lessons. But make no mistake: it will change the way you view yourself. As somewhere late in day one or two, you will begin, a little darkly perhaps, to realize;

You are capable of systematically inflicting violence on your fellow man, in a cold, methodical, efficient manner.

Not in the hero false-myth cartoon sense. As real, ugly, and manifestly brutal violence, this could not be further from that. No, this is something more akin to an assembly line, metal-taste-in-your-mouth thing, or more aptly put: a cold meat locker dis-assembly-line sense.

A sense and neurologically ingrained capability Tim posits, which is as simple, results-oriented and old, as rock against the back of the head. Not moves you may ever need. But should you ever need them, you will be very glad you took this seminar.
I know I am.

Three days will not make you into Rambo, Bourne or Bond, by any stretch of the imagination. (You need to go to San Diego for a year of daily sessions as they did for that). Thankfully, this course is modestly geared down for us non 25-year-old Seals.

No matter, as you will still, absolutely be better able to handle a bad situation. There is no doubt in my mind about that. And as a result you will walk a little less tentatively down some of those interesting funky streets. The ones so many of us like to stroll, out in that big colorful, and unfortunately conflict-filled world.

C. Lee Bruner Jr.
USA NEWS NETWORK
© Copyright 2008 USA NEWS NETWORK

You may want to use this link to register for the same class
that Mr. Bruner attended.

If you missed the original email
detailing the new pricing for the last classes in 2008,
you may see it here.