Whenever I talk about ongoing training, I like to bring up the idea of such work as being a lifelong process. Now, I often say this with a dreamy, faraway look in my eyes, as it's one of the top three best things about doing this work -- the idea that I can continue to learn, refine, and build the skill for as long as I draw breath.
Not everyone hears it this way. Some people think I mean that it actually takes a lifetime to master -- and I'm the first to admit that's not such a hot idea. Who's got the time, right? (Well, by definition, you do -- you got the rest of your life coming to you... but I digress.) You are right to be suspicious of anything that takes a lifetime -- outside of growing a family & accumulating wisdom.
The use of violence is the very definition of a NOW tool. It's silly to have something that you could very well need for survival in the next half-hour require a lifetime to be of any use to you. Good luck surviving long enough to master that!
When I say 'lifelong,' I mean that you could potentially spend the rest of your life working on it, constantly increasing and never get bored. How many avocations can you say that about? Music... maybe. This simple fact gets me excited about hitting the mats -- in fact, just thinking about it makes me wish I was there right now in a good, solid tussle with high throws and contorted limbs, everything pushed to the edge in a rush of blood and total domination.
Back in the days of my martial arts training, I was resigned to having to spend the rest of my life studying as many arts as I could cram into my lifetime -- not to mention having to manufacture my own coupling devices to get them to work together. What I really wanted to know is what you all have at your disposal, but it didn't exist in a format like this. So, as I neared my Tae Kwon Do black belt test, I was getting my head screwed on at the right angle to put on a white belt again and study Aikido... Judo... Jiu-Jitsu... Kung Fu... Chin Na... Muy Thai... and on and on and on. Because, quite frankly, I wanted to know it all. And it was obviously going to take me the rest of my life to get there.
I wasn't happy about it -- it didn't feel like opportunity, just a whole hell of a lot of work, much of it spent slogging through hierarchies and physical fitness challenges. And making Aikido work with Karate is tougher than you think -- especially when the instructors find out you're not just attending another school, but (gasp!) another system!
What I really needed were the base principles that underlie all violence -- the common elements between striking, joint breaking and throwing; multiman and knife, stick, and gun; and a way to tie all those elements together between the pendulum swing of structure and motion.
This is why I get the Homer-drool look in my eyes. I don't have to spend a lifetime to learn all of those things, one at a time, and then try to stitch them together through trial and (possibly fatal) error. I have the base principles, and like knowing the rules of chess I can play every game that's ever been -- or every will be -- played. I can spend my life running as many permutations as I like, confident in the knowledge that it'll never be the same twice.
And if every iteration is novel, that means I get to learn something new every time.
The principles of violence are easily grasped in less than three days of training. Everything after that is just rearrangement & recombination. It's you, training your mind to wield your body. Sharpening that sword. But really, you're done after that first live training. In that seminar we teach everyone how to:
Seriously injure a man
Drop him to the ground
And kill him, should that prove necessary.
So don't sweat that bit. Lifelong training isn't a 'have-to' -- it's a 'get-to.' It doesn't take a lifetime to master; you don't have to be a Trained Fighter, or an Instructor, or a Master to be able to use the skill to shut off another human being.
BUT
If this information lights a fire in you, like it did in me, well, we got plenty for you to work on. To play with. No matter how good you get, we can give you material to challenge your abilities, to push your farther, to make you that much better. Better than you can imagine.
It's a great question, and one that I get asked frequently. We spend a good chunk of our non-mat time trying to educate people in how to tell the difference between appropriate and inappropriate uses of the tool of violence. After more than 20 years of doing this work I figured it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to me -- but we all know what happens when you make assumptions.
Instead, I found an interesting dichotomy -- everyone walked in the door ready to 'kick ass' but then suddenly balked when I showed them how to crush a throat or kick a downed man in the head as hard as humanly possible. Suddenly, there was a disconnect between the tool they wanted and the tool I was teaching. And that difference is the (anti)social - asocial divide. Everyone wants to kick ass and essentially get their 'man card' punched, but they realize that maiming, crippling and killing are hideously inappropriate to the bar fight or dust-up between inebriated compatriots. And it is.
I would rather not have to explain the difference. It takes away from time we could be working on the mechanics of injury -- jaw flapping is near useless when compared to mat time. In the end it's an important take-away for our clients; it simultaneously focuses them on the reality and seriousness of the situations we're training for -- life-or-death -- and hopefully saves them the wear and tear, emotional trauma, and life-changing legal troubles surrounding violence used stupidly and inappropriately.
I would love for such problems to be abstract, but they aren't. They turn up all too frequently in the media, and if you're paying attention, you can connect the dots every couple of months or so. Like this case here in my hometown, the third such one this year:
"I was preoccupied with what I was going to do to him."
My wife came back from grocery shopping this weekend with a chilling story: a man stalked her in the remote parking lot behind the store. Now, the story obviously had a good outcome -- nothing happened -- but it was the way she talked about it, what was important to her and how she processed the event, that stuck with me enough to write about it here.
(Some facts about my wife: she's 5'2", had a couple months of training more than 16 years ago (and hasn't been on the mats since). She also took out a guy who came after her in a parking garage around that same time.)
Her story:
"There was a guy across the street who was obviously unbalanced, homeless or nearly so. As soon as he saw me, he looked around, saw that we were pretty much alone behind the store, and then began to cross the street toward me.
"It was clear that I had triggered something in him, maybe I reminded him of a girlfriend, ex-wife, or his mother, I don't know. But it was obvious to me that he was agitated by my presence.
"My first thought was what I would do to him if he came near me. I figured I'd smash him in the neck and sit on his hip to drop him, and then kick him in the head when he was down on the ground. It's worked for me every time I've done it in training."
(When I asked her to clarify, she said that she found she could dump larger, heavier men reliably into the ground this way.)
"Then I figured I'd give him the benefit of the doubt -- up to a certain point -- and loudly warn him off if he actually stepped into the parking lot, about 50 feet away. If he didn't stop then I'd take him out.
"As he got to my side of the street he seemed to reconsider and paused at the sidewalk. I continued calmly putting groceries in the car, and making sure he could see I was keeping an eye on him. He seemed to come to a decision and slinked off down the street. So I got in the car and came home."
Several things struck me about her narrative. The first one was a total lack of fear-language or a sense of victimhood. I even asked her, "Were you worried about what he might do to you?" She shook her head. "It didn't even occur to me. I was preoccupied with what I was going to do to him."
Note that is not bravado or empty posturing. She was resolved to hurt him, put him down and make sure he couldn't get back up. Her body language transmitted that grim determination and probably played a role in getting him to wave off. His prey was suddenly giving off predator signals, and he had to make the choice between a hard fight or easy pickings elsewhere.
Of course, it might all have been a terrible mistake; maybe he just wanted some change or a bag of chips. But that wasn't her read on the situation, and I trust her judgment.
The second thing that struck me was her confidence in her ability to get it done -- even without having trained in a very long time -- because she took ownership of the tool of violence way back then, and, unlike a specific technique or a spinning back-kick, you never forget how to hurt people.
It's been a long, long time since she had to think about it... but when she realized it was a potentially bad situation, it was there for her. She knew what to do and she was resolved to do it.
She was, regardless of what most people might be led to believe, in her element. That kept her from behaving like a victim. It probably helped to change a would-be predator's mind.
As much as this is a real-world, close-to-home reminder of why I do this work...
"Book learning doesn't mean anything if you can't actually get out on the mats and do it."
That's the bowdlerized version of a quote from my brother--the original is profanity-laced and, perhaps, clearer in its rejection of the intellectual in favor of the actual. The key phrase there is 'get out on the mats and do it.' A handy imperative, and one that you should seek to fulfill at least twice a week. Because in the end, it won't be about what you've read or watched or listened to, it won't be what you've thought or talked about, it won't be dynamics or fitness work--your life will depend solely on what you have physically done on the mats.
You already know that getting a reaction partner and hitting the mats is important, but did you know it's so important as to be the only thing that matters? This singular importance hit me today as I was thinking about teaching, about what I knew--and I realized that the bulk of what I know came as a side effect of my mat time. No one taught me the things in the Source Book or the Striking Manual. What I learned were the base principles, the gist of which can be summed up in less than a page. The rest of my knowledge comes from computing as many iterations of those base principles on another human body in real-time. Everything I know is just memories of mat time.
Videos and manuals inform the physical training spectrum; the training spectrum (dynamics & coordination sets) is there only to inform your mat time. From the very beginning, everything is a pointer for your time on the mats.
Another way to look at it: there's getting ready to work and then there's doing the work. Hitting the mats is doing the work. Everything else is just getting ready. When done in equal measure--getting ready & then doing--you have a complete training system that will allow you to experience the highest grade violence possible, with your fist firmly on the grippy end of the stick (as opposed to the wet end). Doing the work without getting ready is fine, though a little on the rough side. Doing nothing but getting ready all the time means you're not doing any work.
And when your life is on the line all you will have is what you've physically done.
Your performance won't be about how much you got ready--it'll be about how much you did.
All I'm doing whenever I teach is reporting on what I've experienced on the mats. Anything I tell you is a distillation of subjective, physical experience. As such, most of what I know is of very little use to you; most of what I know applies only to me & how I have to move to get stuff done. What little I know that is useful to other people I share freely in the hopes that it will improve your performance on the mats and give you the keys to unlocking your potential so you can end up knowing what I know--but for you, and you alone.
"Get your ass on the mats and make it all mean something"
For that to happen, you have to do the work. You have to hit the mats with another human body.
Everything we say and do is to improve the quality of your mat time. So read, listen, watch, think, talk, do your dynamics & fitness work--but then get your ass on the mats and make it all mean something.
Slap a clown... everyone has a good laugh. But slap a killer... and you're likely dead. Let me explain.
The grainy black and white security cam footage is stark to the point of nausea. Like all murder, it's a kick in the guts how awfully stupid-simple killing really is. And, like the worst ones, it comes out of nowhere, sudden, final, and totally unexpected.
They don't even bump shoulders in front of the convenience store, just a casual brush of forearms, but enough to piss somebody off. The guy in the black sleeveless t-shirt turns and says something to the guy in the football jersey as he walks away. It probably wasn't nice. Football Jersey turns, probably answering the invective with a challenge. Black T saunters up, almost casual, and punches Football Jersey in the face. The blow does nothing more than rock his head back. Jersey takes a couple of steps away, though not from the punch. Because he wants to. There's an eerie calm about him. Black T swaggers toward him, slow, arms akimbo, body language questioning, "what now, coward?" In no particular hurry, Jersey pulls a nine-mil auto and empties it into Black T's head and chest.
The crowd breaks and runs, their backs strobe-lit by muzzle flashes.
What started as a usual Saturday night ends in death for the guy who, by all accounts, was on top of it. He was badass enough to insult people in public. He was confident enough in his fighting skills to throw the first punch. He was brave enough to push it and close distance to finish the job.
In the end, he lost his life not because the other guy had a gun, but because he slapped a killer. A mistake you usually only ever get to make once. He waded in, confident and in charge because every other time he did it he was slapping clowns. Every other time it ended in amusement for his friends as the clown laid down or ran away. This was obviously the first time he’d ever slapped a killer. And as it usually works out, the last.
This video is an ugly, awful reminder of how screwing around in violence can be lethal. Lethal for the confident, the skilled, the scrapper who's come out on top of dozens of altercations. Lethal for the competitor, the martial artist, the trained black belt. Lethal just that one, last time, the time you slap a killer.
If a killer kills someone... no one is much surprised. Likewise, if the killer is killed by his intended victim, that's understandable irony.
But if no one meant to kill anyone, and someone ends up dead, well, then it's cartoon exclamation points all around. Everyone, including the newly-minted killer, is surprised. Cries of "How could this happen?" and "But I didn't want to kill him!" ring out. In the end it gets labeled as an unfortunate accident.
But these 'accidents' happen often enough that when a new one pops up I can still recall the last one I read about. Primates have a territorial dispute, and begin vocalizing at each other to communicate their displeasure, then aggression in a sideways request that the other capitulate. When neither one backs down, it goes to blows, again to run the interloper off. Usually, this works out fine, as nature intended. But when it's bodyweight + brain + concrete, one can end up running their rival not just off their territory, but off this mortal coil entire.
These things happen often enough that I would suspect you're more likely, on balance, to be involved in this sort of situation than purely asocial violence. In other words, you're much more likely to get slapped at than outright murdered. Misery comes from confusing the two.
If you train to kill and think that means you're physically trained to handle the antisocial, it's the same as carrying a gun in case you get into an argument.
If you train to kill and think that means you get to ignore the antisocial, you're setting yourself up to be ready for the most unlikely event while ignoring the most likely. Chances are, you're going to get caught wanting.
Because we train to use our bodies to cause injury, it's easy for people to get the wrong idea -- on the surface, martial arts and combat sports look similar to what we do. And since martial arts and combat sports do a great job of preparing folks to navigate that antisocial fog-zone, then they tend to think we're training for the same thing, only in a 'super effective' way. That's like pulling a gun in a bar fight and 'shooting to subdue.' There's no such thing.
Still, people get all eager to lock horns. It's funny to me (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) seeing as how we can still end up with unintended fatalities. If you ask a gun owner, "How many gunfights do you want to be in?" the sane ones will all tell you, "None." The sane ones understand what goes on in a gunfight, and would never choose to be there if they didn't have to. If they should find themselves there, they will shoot to kill. But they don't walk around looking for gunfights.
This is painfully obvious when we talk about guns. But for some reason it's less obvious with the empty hands. Why? It comes down to expectations. We expect someone to die if a gun is involved -- that's what the modern handgun is for, killing people at close range. We don't expect someone to die from a standard, everyday session of monkey politics. And yet death is one of the possible outcomes.
Me, I expect someone to die every time violence is used, and then breathe a sigh of relief when everyone survives. I have absolutely no interest in going physical with monkey politics. I don't leave the house looking for opportunities to use my skills.
My aversion to violence runs so strong that it makes me something of a walking contradiction to my friends -- I will do whatever I can to avoid physical, antisocial confrontation and yet won't hesitate to stomp someone into the morgue in the asocial realm. I'm like Gandhi with a nuclear weapon.
For those of you feeling eager, or emboldened by your training, some advice:
You're all set for the asocial. If someone wants to murder you, you're well prepared -- knowledgeable, practiced, resolute. But don't forget to make sure you're prepared for the antisocial -- sharpen those social skills, actively think about how you want to be in those situations. Will you join in and play along? Throw fuel on the fire? Push until he either backs down or goes for you? Or will you go completely sideways on him, defusing the situation, seeking to reduce his fear and channel his anger elsewhere?
Know where your triggers are and puts lots of padding between them and the outside world. Work to recognize when you're being pushed into a corner. And remember that simply walking away could save your life -- or keep you out of prison.
As with the asocial, so with the antisocial: be prepared.
Chances are you'll go your entire life without anyone trying to kill you. I wouldn't make the same bet about some jerk calling you out.
And as the title explains ("The Art of Head Trauma: Dumps, Drops and Throws") these videos go way beyond merely tossing someone to the ground. Instead they break down every aspect of putting someone on the ground -- permanently -- into simple step-by-step movements you can execute the first time you see them.
Listen. During the past 2-3 years the hands-down #1 request for a new DVD product has been throwing.
And while we've wanted to get it out, the fact it involved people flying head-over-heels and landing in some pretty precarious positions required particular care.
But after a frustratingly long gestation, it's finally ready. And it's gonna knock your socks off.
Now, so you can get an idea of the unique nature of these DVDs below is a short video clip taken directly from the series.
What you'll notice is pretty well described on the back of the box the set comes in:
"While throwing (with its smooth motion and flowing arts) has long been regarded as the premier technical skill in the realm of fighting, the inherent fallacy with this is the almost complete focus on 'technique.'
"What you'll notice here is how this series dramatically re-focuses this powerful tool squarely on the one thing that truly matters most: results."
In this short video clip from the new DVD series, watch as Tim Larkin describes how 2 of his TFT instructors demonstrate the huge takeaway you'll get from watching this series ...a total focus on RESULTS!
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