My wife came back from grocery shopping this weekend with a chilling story: a man stalked her in the remote parking lot behind the store. Now, the story obviously had a good outcome -- nothing happened -- but it was the way she talked about it, what was important to her and how she processed the event, that stuck with me enough to write about it here.

(Some facts about my wife: she's 5'2", had a couple months of training more than 16 years ago (and hasn't been on the mats since). She also took out a guy who came after her in a parking garage around that same time.)

Her story:

"There was a guy across the street who was obviously unbalanced, homeless or nearly so. As soon as he saw me, he looked around, saw that we were pretty much alone behind the store, and then began to cross the street toward me.

"It was clear that I had triggered something in him, maybe I reminded him of a girlfriend, ex-wife, or his mother, I don't know. But it was obvious to me that he was agitated by my presence.

"My first thought was what I would do to him if he came near me. I figured I'd smash him in the neck and sit on his hip to drop him, and then kick him in the head when he was down on the ground. It's worked for me every time I've done it in training."

(When I asked her to clarify, she said that she found she could dump larger, heavier men reliably into the ground this way.)

"Then I figured I'd give him the benefit of the doubt -- up to a certain point -- and loudly warn him off if he actually stepped into the parking lot, about 50 feet away. If he didn't stop then I'd take him out.

"As he got to my side of the street he seemed to reconsider and paused at the sidewalk. I continued calmly putting groceries in the car, and making sure he could see I was keeping an eye on him. He seemed to come to a decision and slinked off down the street. So I got in the car and came home."

Several things struck me about her narrative. The first one was a total lack of fear-language or a sense of victimhood. I even asked her, "Were you worried about what he might do to you?" She shook her head. "It didn't even occur to me. I was preoccupied with what I was going to do to him."

Note that is not bravado or empty posturing. She was resolved to hurt him, put him down and make sure he couldn't get back up. Her body language transmitted that grim determination and probably played a role in getting him to wave off. His prey was suddenly giving off predator signals, and he had to make the choice between a hard fight or easy pickings elsewhere.

Of course, it might all have been a terrible mistake; maybe he just wanted some change or a bag of chips. But that wasn't her read on the situation, and I trust her judgment.

The second thing that struck me was her confidence in her ability to get it done -- even without having trained in a very long time -- because she took ownership of the tool of violence way back then, and, unlike a specific technique or a spinning back-kick, you never forget how to hurt people.

It's been a long, long time since she had to think about it... but when she realized it was a potentially bad situation, it was there for her. She knew what to do and she was resolved to do it.

She was, regardless of what most people might be led to believe, in her element. That kept her from behaving like a victim. It probably helped to change a would-be predator's mind.

As much as this is a real-world, close-to-home reminder of why I do this work...

I'm just glad she's back home safe.

Labels: criminal violence, intent, mind-set, self defense for women, stalking

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

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

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

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

How do you define that?

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

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

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

Intent is wanting this:

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

To the exclusion of all else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Ranck-Buhr
TFT Master Instructor

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