Labels: fighting, Intimidation, lethal

I was recently reading an article on self-defense in which the author was speaking of violence as if you could pick and choose the level of seriousness of the interaction, i.e., if he just wants to 'kick your ass' you kick his ass back, not *really* hurting him, but teaching him a lesson.

If he's a little more serious, then so are you -- and if he wants to kill you, well, that's the only time you're going to use certain techniques and targets like eyes, throat and so on.

"It's the idea that you can choose to hit someone with, say, 60% of what you've got -- and that you'll only ever hit someone with 100% when your life depends on it."

This idea illustrates a fantasy disconnect between 'fighting' and violence, one that deserves a fantasy name: I often refer to this idea as 'dialing in your Spidey-power.' (With many apologies to Stan Lee.)

It's the idea that you can choose to hit someone with, say, 60% of what you've got -- and that you'll only ever hit someone with 100% when your life depends on it. It's being able to look at an impending 'fight' and say 'well, he's not really serious, so I'll dial my Spidey-power down to 50%' and then sock him hard, but not TOO hard, because, after all, you don't want to kill him, right?

Here's the problem: holding back can get YOU killed. There are many ways to hold back:

1. You can wait and see to try and suss out what his intentions are,
   
   
2. You can make certain targets 'off limits' because wrecking them is awful (you'll never hear me say otherwise) -- like the eyes or breaking a knee, both permanent, crippling disabilities, and/or
   
   
3. You can 'go easy' on him by not striking as hard as you can.

Any one of these leads directly to reduced effectiveness, poor results, and in the worst case, can get you killed.

The idea that you can suss out his intentions is a fantastical delusion. If you don't have psychic powers (and my guess is... wait for it... you don't) or can know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men like the Shadow does, then you're screwed. You'll know he wants to kill you because, well, he's doing it. That is not the time to find out. In fact, it's never a good time to find out, right?

Making targets off limits ahead of time ("I'll never take the eyes") will give you a hesitating hiccup if your next -- and only -- opportunity is that target. You will stop. And try to get restarted. If you're lucky, it means nothing. If you're unlucky, the opportunity is gone and you just got shot/stabbed/whatever (perhaps again) and you just better hope he got it wrong.

You always want to strike the man as hard as you can.

Always -- as hard as you can. 'Holding back' reduces the chance of injury. Now we're into the realm of slapping each other around, pissing people off, and delivering non-specific 'light' trauma that is neither a persistent injury nor spinal reflex inducing. It's wasted motion that let's him know it's on.

The author did believe, however, that in a real worst-case scenario a magical transformation would occur -- that even though you'd been neutering and watering-down your training by waiting, making targets off-limits and slapping at them you could suddenly rise to the occasion of your impending murder by crushing the throat or tearing out an eye with full force and effort.

That's a neat idea, but it flies in the face of 'you do what you train.'

So, to that point, how does the way we train serve you? It would seem, on the surface, that we ONLY train for the worst-case scenario, that to use what you know in any other situation would be like using dynamite as a can opener.

Let's put it this way: the 'worst-case scenario' encompasses and includes all other possible scenarios; going in purely to cause serious injury, put the man down and then pile it on (i.e., start kicking a 'helpless' man on the ground) covers, handles and takes care of anything and everything he may have or have wanted to do to you.

But the real beauty is that you can stop at any time.

You'll typically do this the moment you recognize that he's non-functional.

Let's say you start out by breaking his jaw at the TMJ. You get the minimum expected reaction -- he turns slightly, somehow keeps his feet. You come back with a shot to the groin and get a HUGE reaction, he goes down face-first and tries to curl up in a fetal position. You break his ribs and then strike to the side of his neck, knocking him unconscious. At this point you recognize that he is non-functional (to your satisfaction) and stop.

(Notice that I didn't mention any techniques or tools -- that's because they don't matter. Injuries matter.)

This sequence could have been different at each node of injury -- you break his jaw and he spins around three times and lays down, out cold; you stop when he goes fetal after the groin strike; you stop after breaking the ribs because as far as you're concerned, your read on him is 'done.'

You also know how to carry it to a more final conclusion with a stomp to the neck, a neck break, a stomp to the throat, etc. But always as an informed choice -- not out of desperation, and not after having been trained that it is 'wrong' or morally less-than.

You also know how to start right off with throat-eyes-neck break, but again, as a conscious choice. If killing is what will see you through, you will kill him. If killing is not appropriate, you can still operate because you know where the line is.

All violence is the same

This is because you are trained in the totality of violence, understanding it for what it is -- a single-use tool that does not have an intensity dial on it. You can't make guns shoot 'nice.' And what a bullet does is the purest expression of everything we're ever talking about. All violence is the same.

So what does this mean for you?

First and foremost it means you understand that violence is not a plaything -- you won't goof off with it any more than you would with a loaded firearm. This is healthy. It means you won't get sucked into stupid shenanigans (antisocial) thinking you can use what you know without any negative repercussions. It means you're going to be smarter about when to pull it out and use it. This is going to save you tons of wear and tear, not to mention legal troubles.

It means that when you do use it, you're going to use it the only way you can be sure it works -- with no artificial social governors restricting what you can and can't do. You'll strike him as hard as you can to cause injury. And you'll take full advantage of that injury, replicating it into non-functionality.

If we view this through a social lens it is savage, brutal, dirty, unfair and very probably illegal somewhere. This was the essential thesis of the self-defense author.

But the question you have to ask yourself is are you going to bet your life the other guy is playing by the rules?

If he is, well, then you're a jerk, aren't you?

If he isn't, you're dead.

The moral of the story is: screw around with violence the same way you'd screw around with a firearm -- don't.

Labels: fighting, intent, Intimidation, lethal force self defense, self defense

Semantics can be a funny thing--reference the title, above: On the one hand, it could mean 'fighting on even though one is injured' or 'enduring in the face of adversity.' On the other hand it could mean 'using injury as a tool when fighting' or 'dirty pool.' Chances are you read it one way, and not the other; which way you read it, on autopilot, isn't up to me, the message-bearer. How you see it is something that happens entirely inside your own skull.

So, same words, two very different meanings. And no way for me to tell which way it's gone.

An essential problem we have in teaching and training violence is that most people have no real experience with the concept. (This is only a bad thing in the context of training. In the context of daily life, it's a good thing that the vast majority of people never experience violence to the degree we mean when we say the word... unlike, say, the population of Rwanda.) It is the never-ending job of the instructor to clue people in, give them physical examples to connect to the words, and to do our best to connect it to everyday experiences. (Like mentioning the 'funny bone' when we talk about nerve targets--nearly everyone's whacked their ulnar nerve hard enough to momentarily kill their hand.) Recently, however, it occurred to me that when speaking of the difference between sport and violence, martial arts and murder, competition and destruction, we've been coming from the wrong side of the argument.

While most people have not experienced life-changing violence, many have, at one time or another, experienced injury in sport. Whether as adults or children, we've all taken a hard hit, been knocked ass-over-tea-kettle, and/or had the wind knocked out of us. We've been contused, lacerated, pulled muscles, tweaked joints and taken a bump on the head that made us see stars. And we've all gotten back up, shook it off, walked it off, and pressed on and fought through for personal honor, for toughness, for the team, or maybe just because we didn't want to miss out on all the fun.

As nasty as some of those things may have felt, or seemed, or been they were not injuries as we must define them for violence--if you were able to push through and overcome the physical symptoms with force of will you were definitely hurt (perhaps even enough to make someone else quit) but you were not injured the way we mean it when we're talking violence.

If you've lived a full enough life to experience the above, you've probably had the misfortune of seeing the other side of it--people broken in such a way that no force of will, no matter how strong, can change the state they find themselves in. They're out cold, or flopping around incoherent, or screaming nonsensically; the match is stopped, the game is paused as medical personnel rush to the fallen's aid. They don't walk off the field triumphantly, they're carried to the hospital.

At a recent live training I recognized some 'sporting types' among the clients--people who were wearing gear associated with martial arts, full-contact and no-holds-barred-style competitions. It can be hard to make our case to such people--when I say 'violence' and 'injury' they nod like they know but it's very often a different picture they see in their head. They see the hard-won results they know can only be achieved in the ring through bigger-faster-stronger, and they are usually skeptical of injury as a show-stopper if only because of the number of times they themselves have 'fought through injury' and won the match in spite of their 'injuries.'

Instead of my usual competition vs. destruction rant I simply asked the question:

"How many of you have taken a hit, had the wind knocked out of you, seen stars, had something hurt like crazy in a game or match and yet you were able to fight through it, keep playing, continue to compete, etc.?"

Most people raised their hands. I was actually a little bit surprised by that. So far so good.

Then I asked:

"How many of you have seen someone go down in a match or game such that they couldn't get back up, the refs went crazy trying to stop the game so medical personnel could get to them, and they had to leave the field on a stretcher and go straight to the hospital?"

Fewer people raised their hands, but still a goodly amount.

"Okay," I said, "In violence, we're only ever interested in the second one."

And then I added, "Because, as you all know, you can shake off the first one, no problem."

I swear my third eye was blinded by all the psychic light bulbs going off. Everybody got it. Everybody. And I didn't even have to argue the point.

Best of all, the most hardcore of the competitors lost their skepticism and became acutely interested in getting to work.

Labels: combat sports, competition, fighting, injury, MMA, self defense

Tim Larkin's Target-Focus Training Combat Training Principles

"Secrets For Staying Alive When 'Rules' Don't Apply"

The Mindset To Survive And The Will To Win

***************************************************************
"A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. You must act as you breathe." - Georges Clemenceau
***************************************************************

So what was lacking in the training of the 3 survivors mentioned in my newsletter titled, When Surviving Isn't Enough: The Critical Reason Why You Can't Just Survive An Attack -- You Must Win?

To refresh your memory we had a seasoned martial artist, a woman who attended numerous self defense workshops, and a 10 year veteran police officer with extensive defensive tactics training.

Each survived their violent encounter but none of them survived and won. My question to you was what was lacking in the training of each of the survivors?

Well according to the literally thousands of responses you readers gave me, here are the top 2:

1. Mindset


2. Will

Mindset by far was the most popular response. Often it was coupled with another term like "aggressive-mindset." Most who responded with this answer felt the survivors' training failed to develop the proper mindset to survive and win these encounters.

Those that offered "will" as the lacking ingredient usually stated that the training of the 3 survivors failed to provide them the "will" to use violence.

Some of you provided some very well thought out responses and your efforts are much appreciated. This exercise helped me to confirm that most people are being led off track by buzz words and tough talk favored by many chest-thumpers in the self protection industry.

All the talk about 'mindset' in this industry makes everyone sound the same. Most people still believe you need to be in a certain 'state' to be able to respond to violence. Color charts are drafted and everyone feels good about how to get ready to 'kick some ass.'

And then there's 'will'.

Some people stated that the 3 survivors lacked the will to do injury and this was a failure of their training. But how do you train will? Think about how useful will is when it comes to things like losing weight or working out.

Believe me, many in this industry will tell you that's exactly what to do. They'll lecture you on mindset and come up with numerous drills to 'install the will-to-kill.'

But neither mindset nor will is what lacked in any of the survivors training.

Large amounts of the training in all 3 of the survivors' cases were devoted to proper mindset and will. Yet, as properly noted by you, it was not there when they needed it.

That is because mindset and will are NOT training objectives.

Proper training develops everything needed to survive and win. The problem is there is very little proper training offered to the general public.

Here's an example:

We just got word from a TFT instructor traveling through Europe who saw an old training partner. This training partner was short and obese and had not trained in years yet recently he survived, and won, a violent encounter with 2 thugs.

When asked what happened he said he was in the city walking home one night when these 2 thugs, much bigger than he, jumped him.

The instructor asked what happened next.

The training partner said, "I knocked out the first guy and ran after the second but I got too tired and couldn't keep up, so I just walked home."

The instructor asked if there was any more to the story and he said "No." He'd just been attacked by 2 thugs and he pretty much treated it as no big deal, even though this was his first encounter with real violence outside of 'training.'

The fact that he was trained properly provided this man with the ability to survive and win a nasty criminal encounter against 2 bigger, stronger and faster thugs.

Here's the thing. He wasn't concerned about mindset nor did he have to rely on will to take action.

He was never told his obesity was a detriment to his ability to injure someone. He was given the skills necessary to get the job done using his human machine not by trying to look and move like some athletic instructor.

When the time came for him to use the skills, he was able to easily recognize the situation and apply his training. He didn't need a color chart, to talk tough or to practice sticking his thumb into oranges to have the will to attack the eyes.

When his time came, his training worked seamlessly in the real world -- something that didn't happen for the 3 survivors in the last newsletter.

So be wary if you navigate the world of violence relying on mindset and will.

Neither of these, together or alone, provides you with the proper training. And it's proper training that seamlessly gives you the necessary elements to survive and win, something many hope to tease out of the 'mindset' and 'will' debates.

So now the question becomes, "How do we know what proper training looks like?"

I've written about this in the past but as we dig deeper into the subject of "not just surviving but winning" I'd like to hear your take on what you think proper training is.

Use this link to send me your thoughts:http://www.askdatabase.com/campaigns/?af=36081

Until next time,

Tim Larkin
Master Close-Combat Instructor,
Creator of Target-Focus Training

"When Violence Is The ONLY Answer"

PS. New self defense training class: Las Vegas March 7-9, 2008. This is where you learn to win... not just survive. And you do it in just 3 days. And it stays with you forever... even if you never practice again.

At first, it may be hard to wrap you mind around because it goes against everything you've ever been told or trained for or even believed. But it's what people who win use. And when you understand it, you'll know how to win too.

Las Vegas always fills quickly so don't wait.

(c) Copyright 2007, The TFT Group

Labels: Dallas self-defense class, fighting, injury, Las Vegas self defense class

INJURY
Injury is a crushed throat, a broken knee, a torn out shoulder.

I got an email this morning from one of our instructors getting ready to do a 15 minute TFT presentation in South America. An interested group sprung the opportunity on him at the last minute and he asked me if I had any ideas for the 'closer', i.e., the One Idea to get across so that if you get nothing else out of a TFT presentation remember This One Thing.

Here's my response:

Get them off of the idea of 'technique' (which is what they'll see & try to compare to other techniques they've seen) and into the idea of injury. Most people think about 'fighting' inside their own body, or, at the most, at the end of their fist. In violence they need to shift their focus outside themselves and deep into the other guy's body. What's getting broken? How will that effect him? What does that do for me?

This is the difference between technique and injury.

• Technique is a punch, a kick, a cool joint lock.
  
• Injury is a crushed throat, a broken knee, a torn out shoulder.

While techniques can cause injuries, injuries can happen sans technique. You can break an ankle by stomping on it, dropping your knee on it, even falling and sitting on it with your butt. The technique is immaterial; all we really need is bodyweight driven through vulnerable anatomy. If it's precise and 'fancy', fine. If it's haphazard and 'ugly', that's fine, too--as long as it's bodyweight through anatomy we'll end up with injury.

Injury changes everything in your favor.

When people see and think 'technique' they see coordination and think difficulty. They see the need for years of practice to perfect that technique. They do not expect themselves to be able to do it until they've spent that time perfecting it.

When people see and think 'injury', well, injuries happen all the time, and often due to nothing more than clumsiness, whether on the part of the injurer or injured person. (As an aside, a simple fall is a great example of this: how does someone break their wrist when they fall? They throw their hands out to break their fall and if they land just right we get bodyweight (their own) through vulnerable anatomy (the wrist joint at its pathological limit, meaning it doesn't bend backwards any further without tearing something). All of this is braced and driven home by the planet, resulting in a broken wrist.)

Injuries are less mysterious and easier to 'get' than techniques. While very few people have experienced 'good technique', most everyone has experienced injury.

So, if you can get them all to make the mental flip outside of themselves and into (through!) the other guy's body, replace the idea of technique with the facts of injury, you're well on your way. And so are they.

Chris Ranck-Buhr
Master Instructor
Target-Focus Training

http://www.targetfocustraining.com/

Labels: fighting, injury, technique

The Essential Differences Between Social Aggression and Asocial Violence

Social Confrontation is:

• Avoidable
• Survivable
• Can be solved using social skills.

Asocial Violence is:

• Lethal
• Unaffected by social skills
• and requires decisive action.

The violence that comes from social posturing is avoidable; it is often loud, dramatic and instantly recognizable. You get to see it coming. And that means you can dodge it if you choose to.

If you don't choose to (or cannot) leave, these sorts of problems can be handled with the social tools we're all familiar with. We've all talked our way out of a bad situation-you wouldn't have made it this far in life if you weren't good at negotiating.

We all know how to calm someone down. We all know how to capitulate. We also all know how to act like a jerk and add fuel to the fire and turn an argument into a shouting match, a shouting match into a fist fight. The important point here is that in social situations, you have a choice.

Social aggression is also eminently survivable. The typical goal in a bar fight is not to kill anyone-it's simply to best the other person and dominate them physically. Does this mean you can't be killed in a bar fight? Of course not. What we're saying is that the death rate in the typical Saturday night punch-up is far lower than one would expect, with the bulk of fatalities being accidental, and the rest because one person really did want to kill the other. You can get killed in a bar fight, or an argument over a parking space, or any other trivial social status confrontation. It's just highly unlikely.

Asocial violence, on the other hand, cannot be handled with social tools and is far less survivable. Negotiating with a serial killer is like arguing with a bullet-if it's coming your way words are not going to deflect it. If someone has decided to stab you to death, capitulation only makes their work easier.

Confusing the Two

The big problem arises when we confuse the two-when we don't know there's a difference between competition and destruction, between social and asocial violence. No one's going to get confused in the ring; we are all very good at recognizing social competition, a contest of strength, skill and desire. We cheer for our favorite and the best man wins. It works out great as long as we're all playing by the same rules.

The big problem is competing with someone who wants to kill you. As social beings we try to drag our rules into a realm that is completely devoid of them-the asocial violent act. This is where things go terribly wrong. While we try to impose our rules to keep everything fair and above board, the killer is only recognizing the laws of physics and how they relate to physiology.

In other words, he's going to stab you when you're not looking, he's going to kick you in the throat when you're down. If things don't look so hot for him he'll capitulate to get you to let go so he can pull a gun and shoot you. He'll use your social baggage against you.

Violence has nothing to do with competition or communication. It's purely about destruction. The scariest person in the room is not the shouting, screaming, gesticulating weightlifter making snarling faces-it's the 5'4" gangbanger quietly sliding a blade out of his pocket. He's not going to draw attention to himself; if he wants to kill you, he's not going to talk about it. He's just going to get it done.

The good news is that true sociopathy is rare. The bad news is that you can't really tell the difference. Nor can you read people's minds to find out their intentions. Faced with these realities, you need a tool that is going to work 100% of the time on 100% of the population-one that is going to work equally well on everyone you use it on. Social persuasion techniques like pain compliance and submission holds require the other person to play by the rules and capitulate.

It's not going to work on everyone, and the people you want it to work on most-criminal sociopaths-are just plain not going to cooperate. This begs the question: why is it that the people who are most successful at using violence have almost no training? What makes the criminal sociopath so effective?

Social Permissions: Monkey See, Monkey Do

As social, sane people, we tend to think of violence in social terms-either by framing everything as the schoolyard David and Goliath or by believing that if we take our social rules with us into the void place we can somehow hang onto our humanity and therefore not stoop to 'their' level.

We tend to think of violence as a force continuum where if he yells at you, you can yell at him. If he pushes you, then you can push him. If he throws a punch then you can hit back. We also believe that the worst kind of violence, that which results in death, happens somewhere out at the end of this progression, if it gets pushed far enough.

The problem is that it is not necessary to get "worked up" or walk through all these various steps to get to serious crippling injury or death; punching someone in the throat or stabbing them in the neck is readily available at all times, in all places.

This is what the criminal sociopath knows.

Can someone ramp up through all the steps and whip themselves into a frothy frenzy that ends in killing? Yes. But what the criminal sociopath knows is that he can get there instantaneously. He can go from smiling and shrugging to stabbing in the amount of time it takes him to reach into his pocket.

And the really scary part is so can you.

Violence is always available; you just have to choose to do it. You don't need to walk through the social dance one step at a time to get there. You don't need to get ready, or drop into a fighting stance, or give a verbal warning. You can swing the tool of violence whenever you wish, at a moment's notice. And this is exactly what you must to do in the face of asocial violence in order to survive.

Wednesday... Part 3, the final installment of this Social vs Asocial Violence post.

All for now,
Tim

http://www.targetfocustraining.com/

Labels: fighting, lethal