Tim Larkin - Target Focus Training

Owning Violence: How to Look More Like You

A common question we get from clients is, "How can I learn to move like you?"

The answer is, "You can't."

Now, this isn't a haughty, ego-driven response. It's the truth -- the only person you're truly going to move like is you.

And that's the key to owning violence -- figuring out how you, with your idiosyncrasies, can best get the job done.

I realize that's all very nice to say, but what can you do to get there?

Hew to base principles.
Every act of violence is unique -- that is, no two start the same, progress the same, or finish the same. This fact makes violence look like a big knot of chaos. But inside that knot are the common threads that make up every possible snarl. Intent, penetration, rotation, injury, cause and effect. Know what these are -- study them in order to turn them from abstract concepts into concrete choices and physical action. When you look behind the curtain, this is really all we are ever doing. Make sure you got them down cold and can give a physical, 'real-world' example of each one.

Look at what has to be done, not how it's done.
This is the main reason techniques blow. When people see a technique, they immediately concentrate on the method, losing the results somewhere along the way. But a technique, really, is just a single solution to a single problem posited by a single person. It's not universal -- only the principles that underlie it are.

What you want is to 'use your mind to unlock a problem in violence with the key of your body.' This is terribly subjective, and gets us back to the idea that violent acts are like snowflakes (while no two are alike they're all made from the same stuff). If no two violent acts are alike, then you're on your own. You're going to have to rely on yourself to solve every violent act you're ever going to be involved in -- because not only will I not be there to help you, but by definition I've never experienced exactly what you're about to go through.

If it's all up to you and all on you, then none of my personal favorite solutions will make any difference for you at all.

Keep an eye firmly on the results you want and then plow a path from where you are now to where you want to be. This makes it yours. Our results are universal -- injury -- and so the finish line looks the same every time. But how you get there will be all about you. You'll start in a unique place, and you'll get across that line of final injury in your own inimitable way. You'll derive the perfect solution on the fly.

Make it work for you.
This is about how you train. When you're getting floor time with a reaction partner, look at what you want and then make it happen. If you think 'I want to throw him down on the ground from here,' then figure out a way to make it so. Perhaps you can stomp on his knee. Or step in and strike him to the side of the neck and then hip throw him. Or strike the neck while you buckle his leg to drop him. The idea is not to get stuck on doing a specific, huge hip throw, but rather to injure by way of throwing.

This makes your training generic and takes the focus off of 'doing techniques' and puts it rightly and squarely on problem solving.

This is really the gist of this entire rant:

In order to look more like you, practice solving problems, not 'doing techniques.'

In other words, this is a really long-winded way of saying 'as you practice so shall you perform.'

Being good at the skill of violence doesn't mean emulating anyone; when you're good at violence it means your mind is good at applying the tool of your body against the problem of violence. In a generic and far-reaching sense.

Labels: self-defense training, technique

www.targetfocustraining.com
All content including text and images
Copyright ©2008 by The TFT Group. All rights reserved.

The Beating, the Breaking, or the Fall from a Great Height?

The intelligent use of violence involves every means available -- all bets are off and no holds barred. You literally do whatever you want to the man (this is, after all, what we mean by 'free' in 'free fighting'). We have the ages-old rock to the head; we can break his joints by putting the torque in Torquemada; we can use the happy constancy of gravity and other assorted physical laws to line up the ultimate rock to the head, by throwing him into the regolithic embrace of Mother Earth.

But which one is better? Which one is a more intelligent use? Is there veracity to the implied hierarchy of striking, joint breaking and throwing?

The answer to all of those questions lies in the definition of injury in violence: body weight in motion applied through a target. We all know that injury is the only thing that means anything in violence, it is where violence begins and simultaneously ends, it is the ultimate goal. We also know that striking, joint breaking and throwing all result in injury when done correctly. What most people don't realize is that these three seemingly disparate 'techniques' for causing injury are really all one in the same -- they are three different expressions of the same idea.

Striking is easy enough for people to grok; body weight in motion through a target, the rock to the head. Or, to 'fancify' it, the fist through the ribs, the stomp to the throat. Every human being has an innate understanding of this, whether they know it or not. Add a stick or a knife to the outer end of this and we have what looks like choreography for the six o'clock news. Everybody, everywhere, is doing it!

Joint breaking is where almost everyone gets left behind. It puts the 'fancy' in 'fancy pants.' Now you must possess the wileyness of the monkey, the speed of the cheetah and the suppleness of the cockroach, right? Probably not, given that an excellent joint break can occur 'accidentally' in an American football game from nothing more advanced than one guy falling on another.

Throwing is even more 'advanced' than joint breaking, right? I mean, it's last on the list, and who really has the inhuman strength to pick up and hurl a 300 pound screaming man to the deck? Well, very few people, if you put it in those terms. If we change those terms, say to defining a throw as an uncontrolled fall into the ground (uncontrolled for him, not you), then literally anyone can do it. If a two-year-old can trip a grown man such that he ends up with a broken wrist, then so can you.

All three of these are still body weight in motion applied through a target. Striking is obvious because the body weight is yours and the target is something obvious, like a knee or a groin. Joint breaking is still body weight in motion through a target, only now the target is a joint that is stressed at its pathological limit, i.e., 'ready to blow.' Throwing is the only truly deceptive one -- you will typically use your body weight in motion to get him off balance and falling, using his body weight in motion applied through a target (him falling on his head) with the striking surface being the planet rather than one of your body parts.

Let's take a look at a truly simple application of all of these ideas simultaneously: you've injured him, he's down on one knee, his back to you, slightly off to your right. You have his left wrist held fast in both of your hands, his arm straight out from his body (parallel to the ground). What happens if you lunge through his arm, striking the back of his extended elbow with your hip, and then rotate 180˚ to your left (a lunge with a full pivot into the other forward stance). Well, let's see: his elbow will break and he'll be hurled to the ground by the drive and full rotation.

Is it a strike, a joint break, or a throw?

Rhetorical, I know, because you already have the answer -- it's all three at once. Body weight in motion applied through a target results, in this case, a strike that breaks the elbow and powers a throw.

So which one is superior? Does this mean that striking 'comes first?'

Hardly. What it means is that joint breaking and throwing are just special cases of striking -- striking can't come before either because they are themselves strikes.

There is no hierarchy. There is only ever body weight in motion applied through a target. It's how you mix up those two elements that decides whether it ends up being a vanilla strike, or a broken joint, or a hard fall.

And injury being injury, they are all equal in the eyes of the ER radiologist -- and so they should be to you.

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

www.targetfocustraining.com
All content including text and images
Copyright ©2008 by The TFT Group. All rights reserved.

Injury or Technique? - Furious vs. Fizzle Part 2

TECHNIQUE

Technique is a punch, a kick, a cool joint lock.

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

What's the difference between furious & fizzle?

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