Most people only give lip service to them. Or pretty much ignore them altogether.

But are targets really... the magic bullet?

Before we get into what targets are and what they can do for you, let's go over some things they're not:

Targets are not 'weak points'

To say that targets are 'weak points' is to imply that it is 'easier' to break them. This misunderstanding leads to unfortunate outcomes - believing that it is 'easier' to cause injury to a target will lead you to give less than your all when you go after one. It's going to take everything you have, all the time, whether you're lacerating a cornea or tearing a hip out of its socket. To do any less is deadly tomfoolery.

Another problem associated with thinking of targets as 'weak points' is that it implies that if only you could strengthen them, you could make yourself impervious to harm. By extension that would make a bigger, stronger man's 'weak points' less weak than a smaller, weaker man. This is a load of poppycock. Take the skull, for example: resilient, flexible, and hard as all get-out. And easily obviated with a judicious application of concrete and gravity. Or a tire iron. Or something as simple-stupid (and ancient) as a stone in the fist.

Targets are not 'pressure points'

Call me old-fashioned, but I think of 'pressure points' as places on the human body where, if properly squashed, one can staunch serious, life-threatening bleeding. Period.

Thinking of targets as 'pressure points' implies that simple 'pressure' (pushing, pinching, squeezing or poking) will have some kind of desired effect. Does it hurt to have any of those things happen to a target? Of course it does - we've all been on the bad end of that sort of treatment during mat time. But the difference between pain and injury is an insurmountable gulf. Each can each exist independent of the other. While pain can be a result of injury, injury is never a result of pain. In short, pain and injury are two very separate things. Whether or not something 'hurts' him is immaterial - breaking things is everything.

Pain compliance and submission are not things to bet your life on - rendering parts of him useless is.

We also end up with the same problem of thinking in terms of 'weak points' - a reduction in effort. If you really think you can simply pinch-poke-squeeze instead of giving it your all, you're screwed. The magnitude of success is directly proportional to the magnitude of effort. Giving it your all gets you everything. 'Poking a pressure point' gets you nothing.

Targets are not 'mystical energy nodes'

Is there overlap between the target list and an acupuncture diagram? Sure. And there's also overlap between the target list and sports medicine. So I guess it's up to you to pick one.

Chi is notoriously fickle when it comes to the laboratory. Somehow it always manages to defy detection - truly, it is mysterious. I think it's safe to say that something undetectable and mysterious counts for nothing in violence.

Thinking of targets as 'mystical energy nodes' also gets us back to the 'pressure/weak point' problem - thinking that it's 'easy' to cause a life-wagering change in them. Once again by tapping, squeezing or even zapping your own chi at them. This is magic. Magic is fun at nightclubs and little kids' birthday parties - but you don't want it in the operating room, the cockpit, or the nuclear power plant. Or in your own head and hands when your life depends on what you do next.

If you want to try and pinch off his chi when your life is on the line, go for it and best of luck to you. I'll send flowers to your loved ones.

The only energy I'll bet my life on is kinetic.

The difference between what targets aren't and are is the same as the difference between a 'strike chart' and what we have, a target list.

A 'strike chart' shows places to touch. A target list is a litany of destruction.

Thinking of targets as places you touch, rather than destroy, leads directly to a lack of injury. This is due to a belief that 'hitting the target' is sufficient for results. But you can hit the target and not cause an injury. That's because injury doesn't come from touching or 'hitting' the target. Injury comes from blasting everything you are through the target to make it come out the other side.

So what exactly is a target?

Targets are places where injuries occur

Targets are prone to injury when people collide with people and people collide with the ground. They are the parts of the human body that turn up time and time again in sports medicine literature. This is distinct from trauma medicine in general - while a shattered femur is indeed an excellent injury, it does not tend to happen when people run into each other and then fall down.

Another way to look at this is that targets are virtual injuries. You need to visualize this in three dimensions, not as a dot on the skin. The 'knee target' is a potential broken knee, bend backwards or sideways all wrong and loud. It's falling and not being able to get back up. The 'spleen target' is broken ribs and a bruised (or ruptured) organ. It's the inability to breath and internal bleeding that can lead to shock. That's what those targets mean to me, that's what I see when I look at them, on you, standing at the lunch counter.

Targets are virtual injuries much like Schroedinger's Cat. It's not dead or alive until you tear open the box and check. Possibilities are a lot of nothing until you make them into certainties.

Targets are an anatomical structure that can be crushed, ruptured, broken or otherwise rendered useless

That's not to say they are 'weak' - we've covered that idea - but that they are important to normal functioning. Contrast this idea with 'socking someone in the pec.' Painful? Sure. Any guy worth his antisocial salt has both given and taken this kind of abuse when amongst friends or siblings. But socking the pec doesn't make something important stop working. Targets are the important places in the body. The eyes, the throat, the organs of generation, joints, motor nerves, etc. - these are things the body can't do without if it's going to run around and function at peak performance. Like kicking the legs out from under a chair: kick out one and it's a wobbly stool, kick out two and you can't even sit in it anymore. Snap the back rest off and it's no longer a chair. If you start by tearing the seat cushion off, well, it's still a chair (albeit an uncomfortable one). You want to wreck the important things. Those would be targets.

Targets are the entry point for a vector

This is really, really important. If you get nothing else from this rant, remember this:

A target is not a dot on the skin. It's an entry wound. And every decent entry wound has an exit wound. With a tunnel of wreckage between the two. This is what bullets do. And so must you.

The targets on the target list are aim-points for the vector of your body weight in motion. You are going to throw yourself through them, to make whatever tool you're using come out the other side. We don't bother showing this on the target list - though, come to think of it, that would be the most excellent way to get this across. A rotating, translucent 3-D model of the human body with vectors blown through all the targets. Instead of 'dots on the skin' each target would be a cluster of arrows poking through the body. Take a moment (now, or later) to visualize this. The body should look like St. Sebastian or Toshiro Mifune at the end of Throne of Blood.

Most people look at targets and see a point, a circle or dot that could be drawn on the skin that means 'hit here'. When you look at a target it should look like vector-infested 3-D exploded view of sundered anatomy complete with a precognitive overlay, a short-term view into the future where he's folded and broken, the virtual injury made suddenly real. (A dot on the knee looks very different from a broken knee.)

This is what I see when I look through a target - I fold space with my mind like Stephen Hawking. I see the vectors, the way through from here to the injury just on the other side of the veil of time. (And, yes, I'm waxing hyberbolic here.)

Don't merely open Schroedinger's cat box and check. Stomp on the box with the kitten in it. Just to be sure. Because targets aren't injuries until you make them so. And seeing them as dots on the skin is an awfully long way off target.

Labels: anatomy, injury, striking

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

Labels: anatomy, blackbelt, club, gun, hand-to-hand combat, knife, self defense, striking, weapons