Labels: injury, self-defense training, striking, technique

1. Supplied, 'free' structure (steel frame of the truck, hard pointy-metal bullet, solid oak)



2. Supplied, 'free' acceleration (gasoline, gunpowder, leverage)

Labels: injury, self defense

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

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

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

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

This story, reported by the San Jose Mercury News, is making the rounds through all the nooks and crannies of the Internet today. The short version is:

Teenager with a knife threatens 84-year-old retired Marine.

Marine warns him off; teenager pushes it.

Marine kicks him in the groin, incapacitating him.

Right now the story is being enjoyed on a comedic surface level--an old man kicking a kid in the groin, what a hoot, right? It's the money-shot from America's Funniest Home Videos brought to life. There's also the feel-good old Marine angle--you can't count them out of the fight, EVER. But beyond the comedy, or the social life lesson, this is a textbook example of the use of violence as a survival tool. We literally could not ask for a better primer in the principles of violence. To wit:

Violence is not about competition--it's about injury.
Physically, an 84-year-old cannot compete with a teenager. He can't outrun, out-wrestle, or out-endure a reasonably healthy kid. He can't 'take a punch' in the competition sense. But that's okay--he didn't bother screwing around with any of that--he went straight for the injury. And put his man down.

The knife doesn't matter.
If it did matter, you'd expect this veteran of three wars to have factored it into the equation--with a 'classic' knife defense, or attempting to control the weapon, or, realizing he wouldn't be able to wrestle the knife away from someone almost 70 years younger, capitulating to the kid's demands. But again, he went straight for the injury. And in so doing short-circuited all that knife-defense/wrestle over the weapon crap. With injury he did 'control the weapon' if you understand that the only real weapon present was another human brain. A brain that could not stop the injured body from the betrayal of laying down on the sidewalk and doing nothing while the Marine picked up his groceries and continued on his way.

True injury is unambiguous.
The Marine was able to recognize success in violence, as well as the fact that the kid was nonfunctional--that is, that he no longer presented a threat.

Injured people are helpless.
He had a knife. He had the strength and resilience of youth. And he was unable to bring either to bear in the face of real injury. All he could do was lay down and stay there long enough for an old man to gather his belongings and take his leave.

I could go on--this small, perfect story of a threat of violence shut down by the application of real violence (a single injury)--is the quintessential expression of everything we do in Target-Focus Training. Usually, this story is told the other way around--we're usually left to talk about why a murderer was successful. Thankfully, this time the person who did everything right in violence was one of the Good Guys.

Labels: criminal violence, injury, knife, self defense

Perhaps you've already had the dream: at a park in daylight, with children, or a dark close-in space like an alley, or, the one I remember most vividly, a seedy gas station... regardless of the setting, they come for you. Many or just one, it doesn't matter; you take an eyeball, you break a leg, hell, you break a neck. You can feel it go, popping and cracking from tense to loose in your hands. You slam him down, bouncing his head--now facing the wrong way--off the pavement.

And he gets back up.

Or you dig the eyeball out and it makes no difference, he keeps on coming, keeps on doing what it is here's there for--to kill you.

You wake up in a cold sweat, heart racing. The dreamstuff sticks with you the next day, a residue of unease. Even on the mats, it's still there, nagging at you. That one question:

What if it just plain doesn't work?

The second-most common criticism we get after 'going slow' has to do with the reactions. People can't believe it's that easy--kick him in the groin and he just bends over? Part of the problem is that they don't see reactions like we're talking about in everyday life (admittedly a Good Thing) or in the ring (where career-ending and/or life-threatening injury is rare, by design). But you know what? We're going to take a different tack on this subject entirely.

Because, quite frankly, the reactions don't matter.

They are nothing more than an irritatingly distracting side-effect of what we're really here to do: Get. That. Injury. While the distraction may be yours, the irritation is all mine. I get irritated when people want to argue about the fact that gouging an eye is Good For You and Bad For Him. I get irritated when those who should know better put the reaction ahead of the injury, making 'getting a reaction' the final goal. It's never the goal.

When people worry about whether or not it will work, the 'it' they're worried about isn't injury--I think we can all agree that stomping on someone's throat isn't going to do them a lick of good--it's 'what if he doesn't move like you said he would?'

Well, if you ruptured his eyeball, or broke his knee backwards, or crushed his throat, who cares how he moves after that? He's blind. He can't stand. He can't breathe. Injury is doing it's job, reducing his operational ability. Pile enough of that on and he literally cannot harm you. This is why injury is not just the goal of violence, but really your sole focus. You can't afford to give a crap about the rules of engagement, or what he's up to, or defense, or 'getting ready.' None of those things matter when put up against the facts of injury.

Does this mean that the reactions are specious nonsense? Of course not. They're a physiological fact. They make a nice feedback mechanism to let you know when you've been successful at causing injury. But that's the end of it. They're nice to see--AS A SIDE EFFECT. If you shift your focus off of injury and start to worry about reactions--does it really work that way? Will I be able to 'get' them? Will he really move like that?--you're missing the point in the worst way possible. 'Reaction-centric' training is little better than slap-fighting, trying to tag the button to make the buzzer sound in a stimulus/response sort of way. Not to mention that the whole affair will be fraught with anxiety.

It's key to put the reactions--and the worry about whether or not 'it'll work'--in their proper place: as an epiphenomenal side effect of injury. Injury brings with it a whole host of desirable side effects, loss of function being chief among them. While it is possible to have injury without reaction, it is not possible to have injury without decrement of function. If for some crazy reason his nervous system is so out of kilter that he doesn't react to having his eyeball gouged out of his skull--laughing the whole time--no amount of extreme/exotic pharmacology is going to keep his eyesight intact. Or allow him to walk with a torn-out knee. Or breath through a crushed throat. Injury is, in the end, a process of mechanical reduction that transcends the wishes of the brain or nervous system.

If you can slam a door, stomp a soda can flat, and fall down, you can cause injury. All you ever have to do is get in there and do it. Whatever happens next, one thing is certain: whatever you broke won't work anymore.

And you really don't need anything else.

Labels: injury

This may sound obvious, but there a lot of things violence is not. It is not a particularly rough cage-match; it is not a bar fight where everyone's sharing beers ten minutes later; it's not getting your nose bloodied.

Many people would call those things violence, and under that banner find them repugnant, negative, and to be avoided. While the avoidance part is common sense (unless you're into those things, which is fine for you), none of these are violence as we define it. That's because we prefer to have a much more narrow definition: violence is what happens when someone sustains an injury.

So what's the bloody nose? The lacerated eyebrow? The egg-sized hematoma on the shin? Much like the lay public would call the previous situations 'violence', the medical community would classify those various tissue manglings as 'injury'. But that's not good enough for us--we need a narrow definition: injury is when an important anatomical feature can no longer do its job, resulting in a decrement of normal function. Something so important gets smashed that the man literally cannot go on.

Our narrow definition give us the following picture:

Violence is when people get broken such that they don't just quit, they quit working.

or

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye."

In the end, we have to ask: why bother? Nit-picking over such narrow definitions makes us look like jerks when discussing 'violence' or 'injury'--saying that most of what happens in the UFC is not violence (save the few unfortunate career-ending injuries) and most of what people think of as injury is not really (anything you can 'walk off' is just an inconvenience).

What does hewing to such a narrow definition do for you?

Two things that go hand-in-hand to make you scary-effective:

1. You know exactly what you're gunning for

and

2. You know whether you got it or not.

With a narrow definition, there's no wiggle room, no 'I sorta got it' like you're kinda pregnant. The narrow definition keeps things tight and binary--either you got it or you didn't. It keeps you from having to worry about an entire spectrum of goals or events--you just want one. Injury.

The narrow definition keeps you from screwing around with things like making people submit, tiring them out, besting them strength-to-strength. It keeps you from confusing these things with effective violence.

Best of all it keeps you from being surprised when the guy you thought you just dropped comes back at you.

A narrow definition of violence will save you wear & tear--and maybe even your life.

Labels: injury

One of the key features of the sociopath is that he sees everyone as essentially the same--a piece of meat to be butchered. Sociopaths look at everyone this way, regardless of personality, skill, or ability.

A big strong guy with a black belt looks the same to him as a sleeping little girl. The sociopath understands that both their skulls open the same way, their eyes yield to equal pressure, and they both die when their throats are cut.

The sociopath disregards the things that set them apart; he will not interface with their personalities, or the big strong guy's black belt-level skill, or his massive muscles. He will only concentrate on the things that they are both susceptible to.

In order to use violence successfully, in order to have an equal chance of survival, so must you. Don't get caught in the sucker's game of interfacing at higher levels, of showing respect for the person, his skills or physical power. Go straight for the meat.

The Four Levels of Interaction

As a person - social

This is trying to change behavior, mood, or motivation. This is where most people would like to keep the situation.

As a skill-set - anti-social

This is trying to out-wrestle him, or out-technique him in a 90 mph (144+ kph) chess game. This is a duel in which the most skilled practitioner will typically win. It is 'civilized violence' and seen as 'fighting fair.'

As an animal (via strength, speed, stamina) - anti-social

This is pitting your strength against his, trying to out-maneuver or outlast him, going blow for blow - this typically looks pretty brutal and ugly. A lot of struggle where the best specimen prevails. This is seen as brutish, desperate and decidedly 'uncivilized.'

As a piece of meat - asocial
This is regarding him as a physical object beholden to the natural laws of the universe. Paying no heed to the person, the skill, or the ability. This is seen as almost universally 'bad'--people who do this naturally are classified as 'evil' in a social setting. This is interfacing with him as a thing that can be broken down and rendered nonfunctional.

It's interesting to note that these four levels correspond to different ranges and comfort zones.

Interfacing with the person can be done from across the street, a distance from trouble where most people feel safe (they can always take off running if it gets out of hand).

Interfacing with his skill-set is almost always done at a pace away, with the contestants circling to get a feel for the other guy's skill level, feinting and parrying and otherwise dancing around. It’s all about giving yourself enough room to see what he's doing and try to counter it.

Interfacing with his physical abilities is done skin-to-skin, but that's as deep as it goes.

Interfacing with the frailties of the flesh is done beneath the skin--true injury is about disregarding the sanctity of the body and simply destroying it.

What-ifs, Buts and Maybes

The kinds of questions people ask during training can tell you a lot about where their head is at and at which level they're stuck on. The important thing to note is that none of their worries have any impact on injury whatsoever.

The 'Socialist'
The person who is uncomfortable with the whole idea of conflict will ask questions that dance around the issue from across the street, like, "How can I tell if he wants to hurt me?" and such.

The Duelist
People trained in martial arts usually get hung up on interfacing with his skill. They'll ask the most what-ifs, like, "What if he throws a spinning back kick?", "What if he counters my joint lock?" and "What if he's holding the knife like this?" They are also overly concerned with blocking--both in doing it and worrying about having it done to them.

The Animal
Untrained people who can come to terms with the idea of conflict usually end up fixated on physical attributes. For smaller, less athletic people it manifests as worry about how they'll fare against bigger, stronger, faster adversaries; big, strong folks have the opposite problem--they typically believe they cannot be defeated by 'lesser' beings.

Sociopaths & Butchers
Almost no one shows up comfortable with injury as a starting point.

Another interesting thing to note is that progressing through the levels is not linear. Socialists don't usually walk through the others to arrive at injury. They go one of two ways--either they dig in their heels and cram their heads into the sand and will never, ever cross the street, or they go straight from where they are to injury (though sometimes with a short stop-over at the animal level).

Duelists are another thing entirely. It is often very difficult to wean them off of the idea that they need to respect and/or thwart his skill before they can be effective. If they do move on, it's usually with a long stop-over at the animal level. His skill bothered them before; now they've transferred that worry to his physical abilities. Those who have taken the long walk from skill to animal to injury are typically the most evangelical about the whole process. (As opposed to those who went straight from social to injury. They usually don't see the whole experience as that big a deal.)

Animals are easier to nudge into interfacing directly with the meat of the matter. They're pretty close, conceptually, and they just need to be shown how to direct their efforts away from strong points and into the weak ones. (Instead of going strength-to-strength, go strength-to-eyeball.)

If you're reading this I'm going to assume that you don't have a problem with violence in a general sense, that you're not hung up on the social aspects from across the street.

So where are your hang ups? What are you stuck on? Are you worried about what he'll do if he's skilled? Or bigger-stronger-faster? Be honest with yourself. You're letting yourself down if you lie--you're not going to get any more effective that way.

If the idea of going after a trained Goliath makes you sweat (more than the usual, healthy amount, I mean) then you need buckle down and study up on injury. Seek out photos of sports injuries (for broken joints and twisted, nonfunctioning limbs). Autopsy reports from non-firearm killings--especially where the victim was beaten to death--are illuminating. Troll the internet for videos of prison fights and violent muggings.

Essentially, look for anything where the survivor is interacting with the other person as a piece of meat.

You'll be repulsed and comforted simultaneously.

Labels: combat sports, injury, mixed martial arts, 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

Tim Larkin's Target-Focus Training Combat Training Principles

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

When Surviving Isn't Enough: The Critical Reason Why You Can't Just Survive An Attack -- You Must Win.

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"What can be successfully willed must first be seen and understood."
-Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall
******************************************************

70/30.

That's the split.

Seventy percent of people I train come to me after the fact. They're survivors.

But I'm here to tell you -- today, surviving isn't enough.

It's not even close.

Jim is a survivor.

It was a crisp autumn night he stood frozen with fear as the meth-induced rage of a mugger worked into an unprovoked homicidal attack.

He was stabbed 3 times.

He's still with us because his girlfriend attempted to stop the thug. She was stabbed twice in the neck and bled-out before the paramedics could arrive.

At 32, Jim had years of martial arts training but he lacked the one thing necessary to win.

John is a police officer with 12 years on the force and numerous defensive tactics courses under his belt. He's a survivor.

On a bright August day he pulled over a '79 Chevy Camaro for a dangerous lane change while speeding.

As he approached, the 6'5", 262lbs very drunk driver got out to contest John's decision to stop him.

Before he finished the verbal warning he'd used a 1,000 times before, the driver bum-rushed John, lifted him off the deck and slammed him to the pavement.

Following the techniques he's been drilled in, John fumbled for his pepper spray while the driver only laughed as he repeatedly pounded John's head against the pavement.

John lost consciousness as kicks to the head and torso rained down from the alcohol-fueled rage.
He's still on the force today but in an admin job. Nerve damage to his right side is pretty severe.

His facial reconstructive surgery went well and surgeons think he'll regain 90% control of his facial muscles, eventually.

John's defensive tactics training was extensive. The board that reviewed the video of the incident stated John responded exactly as he was trained.

The only problem was his training lacked the one thing necessary to win.

Jamie is a survivor, too.

She did everything the serial rapist asked.

But the self defense course she took never gave her a technique for the way this 234lbs brut held her on the floor of her apartment.

When she said she'd do whatever he wanted he responded by punching her face and breaking her jaw. From there it got worse.

After 3 reconstructive surgeries, she eventually recovered from the beating but not from being raped.

Her self defense training had great techniques and real life scenarios. Hell, it even had an instructor in a padded suit attacking them, one she could hit as hard as she wanted.

But it lacked the one thing necessary to win.

Now, rather than giving you the answer, I'd like to hear what you think was lacking in the training of these three survivors.

Send your thoughts to me at: http://www.askdatabase.com/campaigns/?af=35874

I'll review them and discuss this further in my next newsletter.

Until then, ask yourself if you are training to survive or training to win.

And more importantly... do you truly know the difference?

Until next time,

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

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.

"When Violence Is The Only Answer"
(c) Copyright 2007, The TFT Group

Labels: injury, Las Vegas self defense class, lethal, self defense, self protection

The first piece of actual (as opposed to pretend) violence instruction I ever recieved came from an elder stevedore named Don. Don was built like a couple of barrels of beef jerky lashed together with steel packing straps. Solid, gnarled, experienced. He was one of the black belts at the karate school I attended as a teenager. We were in the entry area getting a drink from the fountain after a particularly rousing sparring session involving leg sweeps; Don looked around and motioned for my brother and I to come closer. Satisfied no one else was in ear shot, he leaned in and said:

"Now you boys listen to me and you listen good--if you're ever really in the EXPLETIVE you forget everything we've been doing here and you just stomp his EXPLETIVE knee has hard as you EXPLETIVE can. You got that?"

My brother and I went pale with shock.

"Don't screw around with that leg-sweep nonsense, you just stomp his EXPLETIVE knee. Got it?"

We swallowed and nodded.

Needless to say, I was stunned. Everything up to this point had been about technique, coordination, timing and so on. This was the first time I'd heard anything so direct, stupid-simple and obviously awful. I mean, stomping on someone's knee as hard as you can? That can't end well... for him.

As it turns out, Don was right. It works great. And it puts him, an injured man with a broken leg, in the perfect position for a kick to the head. As hard as you can.

That's how easy it is to do violence. Stupid-simple easy.

I spent a decent chunk of my hour mat time yesterday doing nothing but

1) stomp to the knee
2) kick to the head

It turns out that not only are there lots of ways to get that done, but it's deeply satisfying to boot. (Pun intended.)

At the first sign of trouble you simply stomp the nearest knee into the dirt, tearing it out and putting the man down. Then, as if continuing to walk forward, you simply kick him in the head as hard as you can. You want to get the maximum acceleration of the head (for concussion) and bounce it off the pavement to keep him down.

The ease, effectiveness and satisfaction of 'stomping through him' by stepping twice really wrecks the idea that violence is challenging, takes coordination and training to do.

(I suppose the opposite of 'style' is 'pure ugly'.)

I'm afraid to say that the way it felt, looked, and ended with so little effort will be what I'll think of from now on every time someone goes on about technique, this or that style, countering, etc. In other words, anyone who wants to build violence up to be only for the elite, fit, coordinated and highly-trained.

I think the Ol' One-Two would make a great 'Ultimate Self-Defense' pamphlet... or a sign posted in areas where violence may occur, much in the same way they put those Heimlich maneuver posters up in restaurants in NYC.

Chris Ranck-Buhr
Master Instructor
Target-Focus Training

Labels: injury

Todays entry deals with the real goal behind Self-Defense.

This definitely is not what you'll read in most Self-Defense Books, see in Self-Defense Videos, or hear taught in Self-Defense Courses. But I think you'll agree this unquie perspective really makes the thought of dealing with violence much easier.

See what you think...

THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT VIOLENCE -- A MANIFESTO

For too long fallacies have held sway while common criminals exploit fear and ignorance; the simple facts that govern the effective use of violence as a survival tool are well known to them, and denied to the law-abiding, successfully socialized citizen.

Know, then, these simple facts and let your power increase:

Violence is available to everyone.

You are a predator born with stereo vision for hunting prey and teeth for ripping and tearing flesh. You are a member of the only species that makes an art of war. The average human body is an awesome engine of destruction, driven by the most dangerous thing in the known universe--a human brain. You are a survival engine, the descendant of winners; your ancestors didn't get you here by laying down and giving up. They made the losers do that. Violence is your birthright.

Violence works on everyone.

Superior physical ability, knowledge, experience and iron will are all trumped by the thumb in the eye. There is nothing anyone can do to make themselves immune to the laws of the physical universe. Bullets are not swayed by opinion or presence, they are maddeningly impartial.

Another way to state this, and the above, is: "Violence: anyone can do it and no one is immune."

These two facts, taken together, are simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. Reassuring in that you can get it done on anyone. Terrifying in that anyone can get it done on you.

We tell ourselves comforting lies to get over it ('if I do this-and-such a technique there's nothing he can do' and 'if I'm stronger/faster/meaner I'm better off'), but you're much better off accepting the reality of it: all you can ever really do is level the playing field.

Knowing how to use violence as a survival tool--and being willing to do so--puts you on nice, flat terrain, even and equal with the worst of humanity. You can see the people who still have their heads in the sand, asses up, and the predators who stalk among them taking advantage.

Before you knew how to grab the tool of violence in both fists and swing it hard and sure you were at a disadvantage. Now that disadvantage is gone, and in its place is the stone--cold truth--you're responsible for you, all alone. Either you can rely on yourself or you can't; either you'll get the job done or you won't.

You have a choice: you can be afraid, or you can be resolved.

Violence is biomechanical.

It is purely the interplay of physics and physiology. Magical thinking and psychic powers are trumped by the tire-iron to the head.

All violent acts are identical.

Regardless of the infinitude of circumstances leading up to the violent act, and the myriad of outcomes on the other side, the actual point of violence--where injury occurs--is always the same. The thumb in the eye, the boot in the groin, the bullet in the brain--they are all identical in that they are injuries.

Violence is about destruction, not competition.

The breaking of the human body, the shutdown of the human brain, these are the things that success in violence are made of.

Anything that takes the delivery of injury and tries to transmute it into a tit-for-tat exchange (his technique vs. my technique, defense, etc.) is missing the point, and will very likely get you killed.

To believe you are engaged in a competition is to plant your head in the sand. Violence is simply one person injuring another. The serial killer who just wants to murder will be undeterred by counters.

The one doing the violence tends to prevail.

Violence is one person injuring another person. This is the definition of the effective use of violence. While all violent acts have injury in common, they also share another trait: at the end, the person walking away is typically the one who did it.

The one getting the violence done to them tends to get injured.

Defense wounds are found on corpses. 'Nuff said.

It takes no training or physical conditioning to murder someone.

Serial killers are rarely impressive physical specimens. They tend not to lift weights or take kung-fu. They are, however, intimately familiar with the contents of this manifesto.

Violence is neither good nor evil.

It is a tool, and as such it takes on the moral color of the user--but only after the fact. Bludgeoning someone to death with a claw hammer can be murder in one instance and justified homicide in another--but in both cases someone bludgeoned someone else to death with a claw hammer. Knowing how doesn't make you a bad person.

The goal of violence is injury. Period.

This is last because it is most important--you will not forget it. Anything that advances this goal is useful to you; anything that ignores, postpones, or otherwise hinders this goal can get you killed.

After all is said and done, the only thing you need to remember is... INJURE HIM... NOW!

Labels: competition, injury, self defense, self protection

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

In a word, injury.

You can have the most wicked, lightning-fast technique on the planet, but if the end result isn't fight-ending injury, then it's little better than a parlor trick. That's not to say that technique, in and of itself, is 'bad'--a technique that gets that injury, repeatedly and reliably, is pure gold. You can bet your life on it.

The question is, how can you tell the difference? Easy. The crippling, fight-ending techniques are the ones that target a specific square-inch of vulnerable anatomy and then wreck it so it can't do it's job anymore. We're talking about the burst eye ball, the crushed throat, the blown-out knee. None of these things are going to be able to do the important job they're supposed to do--these injuries degrade the man's ability to function normally. As you shut him down you save your own life.

You can ask these questions about any given technique you know, or are shown:

• What specific square-inch of him does it effect?
  
  
• Is what's behind/inside that square-inch important for him to function normally?
  
  
• Does the technique wreck it such that it'll only recover with medical intervention?

If you're not sure about the first one, the other two are moot. If you can't answer the other two specifically, by way of physics and physiology, you probably shouldn't bet your life on that technique. I know I wouldn't.

Another interesting exercise you can do is seek out video of fight-ending injuries that happen in the ring--they're typically viewed as unfortunate and sickening 'accidents'. But we can learn an awful lot from them. Look at everything that happens up to the actual injury--techniques are flying, the competition is fierce--but no one is getting injured beyond those things that the resolute can 'walk off': lacerations, contusions, pain and other non-specific trauma. It's when the specific trauma occurs that things change dramatically--competition ends, the fight is called and medical aid rushes into the ring. Often, people walk around stunned and confused at what's transpired.

What's to be learned from this tragedy?

We can look at what was different when that specific injury occured. What set it apart (other than the result) from all the ferocity of the preceeding competition? You'll find, in general, it was bodyweight through a specific square-inch of important anatomy. And that anatomy gave out in a body-rending, mind-shattering injury, changing everything suddenly and irrevocably. It literally ended the fight.

This is where we have to start if we're talking about violence where your life is on the line. That fight-ending injury isn't where we're going, or what we're trying to do--it's where we start.

And if you're not starting there, you can't bet your life on it.

Chris Ranck-Buhr
Master Instructor
Target-Focus Training
http://www.targetfocustraining.com/

Labels: competition, injury, technique