I've found that people are intensely more interested in the phantom fury surrounding violence rather than the violence itself.

And so we'll go there, if only to get over it and get into what truly matters.

So what is this 'intervening terror?' This is the not inconsiderable space between where you are when you realize there's mortal trouble and putting everything you've got through a ruptured spleen. Or an avulsed eye. Or a broken neck. It's the space between NOW and INJURY.

Those who do not understand violence, how it works, what it means, what's at stake often have no real conception of this space--they tend to be far more interested at looking at the whole affair as a contest or a dance or indeed magic.

Those who understand violence are horrified by the idea of making a competition of it, after all, now we're going to play dice for your life? It would be laughable if it weren't so awful. But achieving that understanding, refusing to compete and being resolute in what's required leaves you with a newfound terror, that intervening terror. There's a no-man's land that must be crossed and it is in this space that you can die.

On either side of the gulf things are clean and mechanical. On the nice side we have your daily life and social interactions. We have what amounts to masses of luxurious boredom. On the other side we have an injured man, little better than a sleeping one for all the trouble he's going to cause.

It's the in-between that can keep you up nights.

Let's take it to the extreme for analysis: he's got a gun. Maybe there's several of them, with guns. On one side, there was you, a second ago, happily oblivious that such things could be. Across from where you are now is an armed man with an active brain riding around in a fully-functional body. It's all up for grabs. Anybody can get it right--anybody can die here. Will it be you? Will it be him? Both? Neither? You are smack-dab in the middle of the intervening terror. Oh, how you pine for the certitude of either side. Anything, anything but this yawning awfulness you find yourself mired in.

When do you go? Now? Then? How about now now?

Luckily, I have the answer for you:

I don't know. But you do.

Unfortunately, it's not the kind of answer you were hoping for. Sorry. But I'm a firm believer in reality over sugar-coated magical thinking.

So what's with the 'I wanna slap a Zen master' answer? I can't know--I won't be there. You will. And you'll have to live (or die) with your decision. Just remember that the only arbiter of success in violence is survival--that means if you walk out alive, you did the Right Thing. Period.

Still, it keeps you up at night. How will you function in there? What will you do? Will you do the Right Thing?

As I said above, when someone truly understands violence, what's at stake, the magic dance of competition melts like a Dali landscape into an expanse of pure nightmare. No matter how long you run, there's always more stretching endlessly ahead...

But this is an illusion. Remember that on either side things are mundane and strictly mechanical. Easily parsed with social skills or the sundering of precious anatomy. So here's the deal: keep it simple. Stay out of the no-man's land of uncertainty, or, failing that, keep your time there as brief as possible. Either keep it social, play the game, work it out or cross over like a bullet would and smash something vital.

That's all there is. That's were the certainty lies. Anything else is just telling yourself ghost stories before bedtime and giving yourself fitful nightmares.

And that wraps us around to training--the only thing that really matters. If there's nothing we can do about the intervening terror or in the intervening terror but resolve to keep to either side, then that's where we have to spend our effort and energy. On training.

You all are (or should be) facile in the social realm so we don't have to spend time there. Instead, make training a small habit, soak and absorb.

Just as you smile and hold doors as a habit, work the other side with just as much steady diligence. Showing teeth and breaking knees are two sides of the same coin, pressed together to minimize the space between.

Labels: criminal violence, lethal force self defense, self defense

Last week I wrote about how we have found it far more useful to keep training for violence grounded in the physical instead of the metaphysical. We received a lot of thoughtful responses to that, some of which I hope to respond to in kind (that is, thoughtfully and respectfully) in future installments.

One thing that stood out in the responses was the many ways people interpret intent. It seems to take on an air of philosophical mystery, to become Intent with a capital I, an ineffable, nigh unattainable Mystic State that the sociopath is somehow able to turn on and maintain. This is, of course, the danger anytime the conversation veers out of the physical.

In isolating what makes violence effective, you can clearly see that debilitating injury is key - it changes everything in your favor and converts that awful, scary man into an injured man, helpless to keep you from causing further harm. Injury is the result of penetration (body weight in motion) and rotation (the complete follow-through) through a vulnerable piece of anatomy. Again, this can be clearly seen in video evidence of successful violence. (As well as accidents involving people colliding with people and people colliding with the ground.)

But something's missing from that seemingly perfect equation. The way that successful person gets it done. He's not timid, he doesn't dance around, he's not counting coup, scoring points, or behaving as if he's worried he'll be countered, or even killed. He goes in like the result is a foregone conclusion.

How do you define that?

We also knew how we would do it - plow in, focused above all on getting that injury, not stopping until we got all the injuries we wanted. Was it the same thing we were seeing in the videos?

Again, how to describe this so others can do it too, not just the insane and the highly trained? Is it 'confidence?' 'Pure offense?' We've used both of those descriptors in past training, with varying degrees of success - 'confidence' clicked for some, 'offense' clicked for others. Still, both had almost metaphysical connotations for most, providing not a ramp to success but a speed bump.

We settled on intent. As in, 'intent to cause harm.' This felt like the cleanest, simplest way to express what we could see in the videos and feel for ourselves when we worked.

Intent is wanting this:

http://www.scrum.com/images/content/knee.jpg

To the exclusion of all else.

Now, this unfortunate image is not showcasing intent (one would hope). It's purely a picture of gut-wrenching injury. It's unambiguous, it's horrible, and it's what you have to want more than anything in order to survive. When you go after a man's knee, this is the result you have in mind, and you won't be happy with anything less.

This is what the sociopath wants, and it's what he's gunning for when he comes after you. Maybe not a broken knee specifically, but a broken something. A broken anything. He knows nothing changes in his favor until he gets it. So he goes straight for it. No fighting stance, no blocking, no engagement - just straight to injury. And he gets this idea not from a book, or meditation, or mental exercises... he gets it from the simple realization that he doesn't have to do anything more complicated than 'hurt people' to get what he wants.

Intent is making a beeline for the desired result. In violence that result is injury.

Labels: criminal violence, injury, intent, mind-set, self defense

"Why don't you guys train a mind-set or philosophy?"

This was the essence of a question I received recently in an email.

The writer was pleased with the physical side of our training, but was curious as to why we didn't provide a psychological or philosophical component to tie it all together. He argued, and rightfully so, that mind-set training can have a positive impact on performance. Something along the lines of 'think hard, be hard.'

I agree that mind-set training can be beneficial (my previous posts on Building and Being the Better Monster are essentially speaking to this), but only across a longer timeframe. In the here and now, especially for people who are going to train once or rarely, it's of very little use.

It's far more important that they practice the correct physical realities of violence than work to get themselves wound up into a meat-eating lather.

Look at it this way: If someone accidentally trips and falls into another man such that the impact breaks that man's knee, we end up with a very interesting situation. We have a 'fight-ending' injury that results from nothing more than physics & physiology. No mind-set required. In fact, part of the definition of an accident like this one is an absence of malice.

This is the cleanest possible example of why mind-set doesn't matter. We'd all like to think it does, to get ourselves psyched up, to give ourselves some kind of mental yardstick to show whether we are ready or not--but in the end it's going to come down to biomechanics. Period.

After all my years of teaching I've come to the conclusion that talk of mind-sets gets in the way of what has to be done--injuring another human being.

I can't tell you the number of times I've watched someone work beautifully on the mats only to have them ask me afterwards, "Do I have killer instinct yet?"

It's far more useful to talk about intent, or, simply 'the willingness to get it done.' This is what the sociopath has--no training, no practice, but scads of intent. They just want to do it. And that want drives the physics forward into the physiology.

It must be said that there would seem to be little difference between the two, intent on the one hand and a particular mind-set on the other. But the difference is this: While we talk about cultivating a mind-set and believe we are being clear, it ends up being a Mystery (with a capital 'M') to most people. A mystic state, like Enlightenment, to be sought after. Yet, somehow, the sociopath lucks into it naturally and without the effort of mental gymnastics.

Instead of TALK it's much more powerful to DO--that is, physically model success in violence serially, over and over and over again until it's easy. Second nature. Out of that physical experience you can organically grow your own confidence in your skills and, consequently, the intent to drive it home.

In other words, physical work will do far more than philosophy to prepare you for actual violence.

We can, of course, get into a 'chicken & egg' debate on this--mind-set training to drive the physical forward or physical training to give rise to intent? Over the last 20 years I've done it both ways, and while they each (eventually) arrive at the same endpoint, pushing the physical first has produced the best results. 'Results' here being minimizing training time while maximizing survival.

Or, more concretely, having someone attend a 1-Day Seminar--or view a single DVD--and then take out someone who meant to do them harm. Not merely surviving, but winning in the biggest way possible.

This would have been unthinkable in the days when we pushed mind-set training first.

Chris Ranck-Buhr
TFT Master Instructor

Labels: intent, mind-set, self-defense training

Violence is binary--either you are doing it, or you are not. There is no middle ground, no levels of severity. You can't tear out someone's knee or stab them in the heart 'just a little bit.' It's all or nothing.

Attempting to put degrees on violence by going easy on the man or pulling punches only creates opportunities for him to get to you first. Remember that only serious, debilitating injury triggers a spinal reflex. A 'boo-boo' (like a minor laceration or contusion) won't even slow down a dedicated person, much less stop them cold. (Here's the quick and dirty way to look at it--if it wouldn't stop you, what makes you think it'll stop him?)

Simply put, trying to apply violence by degrees of severity will get you killed.

So what real choices do you have in violence? The short list says two. The long list says three. Either way, that's not many. That's why we always say that violence is a narrow tool, only good for one thing--shutting off a human being. It's also why we say that while violence isn't always the answer, when it is the answer it's the only answer.

The short list is the binary one--on or off. You're either plowing into him 100% dedicated to tearing his head off, dropping him, and stomping him into non-functionality, or you're not.

Everyone has a pretty good grasp on the 'on' part. The 'off' part, strangely enough, is the one that causes the most unease. That's because it's all about the ego. It's the walking away from a verbally abusive badass, it's letting the jerk have 'your' parking space, it's shrugging off a heated shove. In our darkest fantasies we would all love to give the above miscreants their just deserts--a good, solid beating to 'teach him a lesson.' It sounds good, it feels right, and it can get you killed. A good, solid beating to teach a lesson is not the same as tearing a man's eye out of his skull and wrecking his body to the point where he could end up with serious brain damage--if he survives. Lesson-teaching is a social interaction. It's about status. Communication. And that means it has nothing to do with violence.

The 'off' part is also about choosing when to stop using violence--when you recognize that he's non-functional. We'll get into that in more detail in just a moment.

The long list has three choices: on or off, and what targets to wreck. The third choice is the one that gives you a little bit of latitude in the outcome, but not a lot. Driving your fist into his solar plexus is very different from driving it into his throat--with the solar plexus his chances of dying as a result are small; with the throat you would expect him to die without medical intervention.

Target choice gives you a little bit of latitude, but violence is still violent. You're always going to hit him as hard as you can, every time. And while the difference between a broken jaw and a broken neck is obvious, the broken jaw can still kill him if he's got a bad heart, or if he goes down and strikes his head on the curb.

This is why violence is like doing surgery with a chainsaw.

If you're going to do surgery with a chainsaw, you really only have three choices:

1) When to start in on him,

2) What part(s) to lop off, and

3) When to stop.

'Starting in on him' is when you touch him with the chainsaw. I think we can all appreciate that once you start, you're committed. You can't ever undo what you just did, e.g., you can't 'unbreak' a knee.

You can decide what parts to lop off: taking his head off with the chainsaw will have an obvious effect, but even if you opt for the leg, he can still bleed to death. It's a chainsaw, after all. It isn't going to be nice and clean like a proper surgical kit.

The only other choice you have is when to stop. This is when you stop touching him with the chainsaw and turn it off. You'll do this at the point where you recognize, to your satisfaction, non-functionality. Much in the same way that true injury is obvious and unambiguous, when someone goes non-functional, you'll typically register it as you prepare the coup de grace. This is why, under optimal conditions, you'll never accidentally kill someone with this stuff. That doesn't mean it isn't possible--it is. But unintentional death becomes less likely when you know which injuries are life-threatening and which are typically not.

Violence is a very narrow tool--it's only good for a single job, and you only ever have (at most) three decision points when using it: when to start, what to wreck, and when to stop. That's it. Superuncomplicated. When applied in this way, when applied like chainsaw surgery, you maximize your chances of being the one to walk away. Fiddling with it, adding extra levels or 'what ifs, buts and maybes,' pulling punches or otherwise trying to use it to do things it can't do can get you killed.

Remember, when doing surgery with a chainsaw everything's screaming, messy amputations. The most delicate procedures become gore-fests. And if the problem can't be solved by on, off, or how bad, it isn't a problem that can be solved with violence.

Labels: anatomy, criminal violence, injury, lethal force self defense