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The fastest way to ingrain the TFT System into your subconscious is to follow a specific path of instruction. Now there are two ways to accomplish this.
You take your family on a drive along a beautiful mountain road.
The kids are looking off to the left at the amazing view as your car hugs the mountain on the right.
Suddenly, small rocks begin dropping, hitting the road, and pelting off your car.
In a moment of terror you recognize it’s the start of an avalanche. You’ve thought about this possibility in the past and now its ‘go’ time.
What are you gonna do as the rocks continue to fall — faster and bigger?
You want to take action, in fact, your foot is straining to hit the accelerator. Yet you hesitate!
Why?
Flashing through your mind you see yourself getting a felony speeding ticket for reckless driving if you take action. And this dilemma causes you to freeze, frantically trying to think of another answer. But the rocks just keep falling — bigger, faster and now there’s a lot more of them…
A ridiculous situation? Of course. And obviously, unless you are a fool, you’ll hit the accelerator and do everything you can to get your car to safety to protect you and everyone else in it.
Yet as obvious as this situation is to you, I get the same question posed to me about various self defense laws and the liabilities you may face if you take action to “defend” yourself in a life-or-death situation. Usually people are very thorough in their analysis of the the situation and ask me for exact levels of response that they may “safely” use to protect themselves yet be “proportional in response to the threat.”
After dealing with sane, socialized clients for the past 20 years I understand what you’re grasping for with such questions. Unfortunately I’m constantly forced to be the one dumping a bucket of ice water on these reveries of “self defense realities.”
I do this first by quickly asking people the “scenario” you are imagining. If it does not constitute a life-or-death situation then I summarily dismiss the situation.
If the imagined scene is a life-or-death situation I then walk folks through the above “mountain road” analogy. And you quickly see that once the rocks start falling you must hit the gas and go for it all out. Any other course of action will leave you crushed under tons of rock.
At the point of violence when someone attacks you with the intent to do “grievous bodily harm” (yep, I threw in a popular legal self defense term) there are no options and no such thing as a proportional response.
Furthermore in that very scenario the only person concerned with the law is YOU. The other guy is too busy stabbing, stomping or shooting to be concerned about laws nor does it matter to the asocial criminal. It’s the dirty little secret most self defense and reality fighting programs leave out of their training. In fact they often go overboard with the legal aspects of such incidents while ignoring the physical realities of violence.
In the above mountain road scenario once the rocks are falling you need to hit the gas — not worry about getting a speeding ticket.
Now an intelligent question to ask is what decisions did the driver make before traveling that road. Did he ignore warning signs? That is when you can really make a difference in avoiding even the possibility of facing an avoidable ‘avalanche’ in your life.
I wrote a whole book on that subject and it’s the best Self Defense insurance you can buy. My job is to make sure my clients avoid every possible personal self defense avalanche in their lives so they never freeze when they should, instead, be hitting the gas!
Koscheck and Johnson Stopped By Basic Self Defense Moves
So as I watched UFC 106 the other night it was interesting to see the Koscheck/Johnson fight repeatedly stopped by the referee for “illegal” strikes on at least 3 occasions during the match. Now I absolutely agree that in a combat sport match the rules need to be adhered to so the fighters are allowed to pit their athleticism and skill in a controlled setting to see who can win.
Here is an excerpt from a report on the fight:
“The bizarre nature of the fight began in the first round. When Koscheck was down on both knees, Johnson threw a huge knee, sending Koscheck to the canvas. Johnson was immediately apologetic, as he knew that he had screwed up, but that didn’t help as Johnson was deducted a point. After quite a few minutes and a check by the fight doctor, Koscheck returned to the fight to immediately take over the first round, and win the round using wrestling.
The fight continued to get weird as Johnson, who was reported to be fighting at 200 lbs, was then on the receiving side of two unintentional eye pokes. Johnson is especially sensitive to eye pokes, as he was on the bad end of a terrible eye poke against Kevin Burns, and had to have surgery to correct eye problems.
When Johnson returned to fight, the two started the slugfest fans were expecting until Koscheck took Johnson down and started to ground and pound. He took Johnson’s back, and sunk in a rear naked choke with just seconds left in the second round….”
As I watched the match it was amazing to see how two highly conditioned MMA fighters could absorb numerous kicks and punches to the body yet as soon as they were injured they were helpless. For all 3 of the “illegal” strikes the referee had to intervene to protect the other fighter as he was unable to continue for a short time. On the street this would’ve been the time the other guy would finished the man.
All three of the “illegal” strikes are basic to any self defense program and none of the 3 strikes were thrown with real intent or follow through by either fighter yet still would’ve got the job done on the street. Nor does it take a lot of skill and ability to quick learn any of them.
So this should be a good template for any of you that think being bigger, faster, and stronger is the ultimate answer when it comes to surviving real violence. Learning to injure is the most direct path to shutting down another human.
Until next time,
Tim Larkin
TFT Group
PS: To get a complete library on “Illegal” moves that can save your life check out our Striking DVD program . It wont help you in the Octagon but it’s great for shutting down killers!
Looks like the UK press is still wrestling with the idea that in a life or death criminal assault effective self defense may mean you need to injure the assailant. I was interviewed for this article last month from arguably the worlds most prestigious newspaper, The Times of London.
The reporter was a very nice guy and seemed interested in the subject but uncomfortable with what it takes to survive in an extreme asocial criminal assault. Again the writer focused on the injuries an innocent person would put on the criminal that initiated the unprovoked potentially lethal attack.
There seems to be a disconnect about the fact the assailant attacked the innocent person with intent to do grievous bodily harm (GBH). But maybe I’m biased…
Read the article and let me know your thoughts on the subject. Is it extreme self defense or murder OR maybe just effective self protection?
I can’t tell you how much Tim & I are looking forward to the Weapons Course in November.
We do a pretty thorough rundown of knife, stick and gun in the basic course–what the tools for violence do and don’t do, how to use them to your advantage, and how to take out the armed man. The only issue there is how much time we have to spend on getting people up to speed with violence–defining it, getting you to go where a sociopath would go, training you to destroy targets… much of the basic course gets spent disabusing people of the social niceties and into tearing apart another man.
The topics covered in a typical 2-Day course include:
Intro to Violence
Target Assembly (identifying and destroying targets)
Free Practice (how to take it to nonfunctional)
Striking Assembly (how to break things with your mass)
Grabs, Holds & Chokes
Social-Antisocial-Asocial (when violence is, and is not, appropriate)
Knife
Stick
Gun
Multiple Attackers
Across two days, I figure we get to spend maybe four hours, or 1/4 of the total course on weapons.
At the upcoming Advanced Weapons Course, we’re going to spend the entire 16 hours on that topic.
That’s four times as much as the basic course!
And because we don’t have to spend any time on the how or why of base violence, we can literally hit the ground running and explore as many aspects of the use of tools as we can cram into those two days. And we’re planning on cramming in a lot.
We’ve got tons of information that we usually don’t have time to get into in the basic course… and even then, it’s only really useful to someone who has the basic knowledge and hands-on skill that comes from completing either the 2-Day or even the $99 Half-Day training. Either qualifies you to attend this one.
It’s going to be an absolute pleasure working with people who know what’s going on, how to get it done, and want to know more.
Did I mention I’m looking forward to this? Tim got into town last night & it’s all we talked about, so, yeah, I can’t wait.
…but if you're walking at the end, it's worth the effort.
David L. writes:
I have been an email subscriber for some time and have purchased one of your books.
Your guidance helped me avoid a potential social violent situation yesterday. I was in a restaurant eating lunch when another customer thought I was staring at him and his girlfriend. I overhead him make the comment that if "that mf'er doesn't stop looking at us, I'm gonna…" He was about twice as big as me, very muscular, tattooed and overall scary looking. I ignored his comments and went about reading my newspaper and thus a potential conflict was avoided. This could have easily escalated but I remembered your advice about avoiding violent situations if at all possible.
What troubles me is I feel like a wimp. Do you think I handled the situation the right way and what could I have done had he chosen to escalate the situation to a violent level?
David,
First off, I want to congratulate you on a job very well done. You successfully navigated and defused a sticky social situation that had the potential to get needlessly ugly. Everybody got to get on with their day. Nobody had to go to jail, the hospital, or the morgue.
In the social/antisocial realm, this is an absolute victory.
But it isn't easy, is it?
If it were easy, we wouldn't even have to talk about it. Hurting people is easy–it's everything else that's hard. Navigating that social fog, using empathy to suss out emotions, body language, voice and social skills to steer the situation into calmer waters. Whether it's talking your way out of trouble, ignoring it and disengaging, or simply getting out of there, that stuff's complicated. What if he's just having a bad day? Or, deep down, insecure?
On my worst days, it's a struggle to be patient and let the stupid stuff slide, especially when that other guy has earned my anger.
And then there's always ego.
What if I look weak? Is it really victory if I let him 'win'? And my answer is that anything that gets you on to the rest of your day, the rest of your life, is victory. In the social arena this means avoiding the avoidable… in violence this means hurting people.
Successfully avoiding the stupid social stuff doesn't always feel good. There's the whole ego-driven aspect of feeling like a wimp, or a coward. And really, the problem there is that killer ego. It's important to leave ego out of anything that could edge toward violence… otherwise it can be the thing that drags you over the line.
What we'd all want to do in your situation, at least in our heart-of-hearts, is face down that guy and tell him just where he could stuff it, give him the icy stare, make him afraid and then, if things got out of hand, beat the living daylights out of him in front of his woman. That would show him. And make a hell of a story to tell our friends, to boot.
I think we all know that's not how reality tends to work out.
You risk getting stabbed or shot to death, getting knocked down and brained on the concrete. At the very least you're going to be marked up and unnerved with loose teeth. Or, if we flip it, best case scenario gets you sued for medical expenses, worst case is prison for manslaughter.
And for what? Ego.
So much less hassle to just let it go, claim the moral victory and enjoy the rest of your uncomplicated day.
Everyone I know who's made a serious study of violence, of taking the human body apart, of stomping people into the ground so they can't get back up, all those people will literally go out of their way to avoid the avoidable.
In terms of ego, I will admit that this is made far more palatable by coming as a choice, instead of feeling like it's your only option. In other words, it's a lot easier to let a jerk have his way if you know what to do on the other side of that. Knowing how to hurt people allows you to graciously accept the luxury of choice.
If you're feeling bad about it because you didn't feel it was a choice, but rather the only thing you could do, I recommend you train to give yourself other options, if only to take the ego out of the equation, to divorce yourself from the idea that:
social threat –> aggression –> violence
is an unavoidable, everyday chain of events. And then I recommend you keep on keepin' on, just like you did, successfully avoiding the avoidable.
Daily victories like that earn you the same thing as hurting people in life-or-death situations: it gets you out of a sticky patch and into the rest of your life.
Keep up the great work!
Chris Ranck-Buhr TFT Master Instructor
PS. As for what to do if the situation had escalated, there's always getting the hell out of there. Again, much easier to do when it's a choice. If it got to him doing violence to you, the only answer, unfortunately, is to hurt him (that's why we have self defense classes &DVDs).
It's also why we go out of our way to let the stupid stuff slide. Once you cross that line, there's only one answer, and it ain't pretty, and no one's going to be happy when we're done.
PPS. Lastly, I've been in restaurants where the seating and lack of decor is such that every time you look up, you're staring right into the face of another customer. And since repeatedly looking at someone can be construed as aggression, this can lead to situations like yours.
I remember a story from a guy I trained with long ago, from when he was traveling in Thailand. This guy was a no-nonsense, get-straight-to-it kind of guy, and if it looked like violence, he'd be the first to get at it.
He was sitting in this cafe and every time he looked up, this tough-looking ex-pat was staring right at him. He tried to let it go, but after several minutes of this he figured if it was on, he was going to get it done first. So he pushed back from the table and got up to go after the guy–and noticed that there was a TV above his head with the sound off. The guy was just watching TV.
He sat back down and finished his meal in chagrined silence. Ever since that moment he always took the extra second, when given the choice, to be sure the threat was real before hurting people. And he always felt that it cut down dramatically on the number of bad situations he ended up in.
It boggles my mind sometimes, how we can be as careful and clear as possible in making the case for surviving and winning in violence and still have it come out garbled on the other end.
But I suppose people hear what they want to hear, and if all your preconceptions about violence have you in the victim role, then all violence is about victimization. And fear.
I’ve always said I’d much rather teach the resolute than the fearful — people who are resolute take the tool in both fists and get busy swinging it; the fearful need to be coaxed to even get near the tool. (I’ve had plenty of fearful people become resolute after exposure to the tool, but having to overcome that victim-mentality just adds a needless speed bump to the process.)
Seeing yourself first and foremost as the victim in violence colors everything that comes after.
The simple idea of gouging an eye becomes you getting your own eye gouged out. You may not have considered it before, and now you’re aware that there are people out there — in this very room! — who not only think about it, but know how, and, most chillingly, are willing to do it. Again, fear finding fear, and growing.
Someone who approaches the tool of violence pragmatically realizes two things about a gouged eye:
If they do it first, the situation resolves in their favor and,
They themselves are not immune to such an injury.
Number one is simple enough. It’s what separates the winners from the victims in violent conflict. The real power, however, comes from number two. If it works the same on you, then it probably works the same on every human on the planet.
This base understanding — that violence is available to everyone and no one is immune — is simultaneously liberating and cautionary. It’s liberating in that you can stop worrying about what a badass monster that guy is, how mean he is, how dedicated, how big, fast and strong he is — his eyes are just as susceptible to injury as yours are. It’s cautionary in that no conditioning, training, or skill can make you immune.
It should follow then, if this training does nothing to protect you from injury — indeed, if there is no way to protect yourself from violence — that you should be very reluctant to use the tool. That’s just being smart about it.
If given the choice, the answer is ‘no.’ The luxury of choice gives you more options than just ‘injure’ — you can ignore, talk, or run. All three of these are brilliant social tactics, and I’m sure you’ve used them all to great success.
But they don’t work when you have no choice.
If you’ve already been stabbed because stabbing is what he’s up to, ignoring it, trying to talk to him or running only keep you in the victim-space he needs to get the job done.
We have never advocated using violence while social options are open. Violence is only appropriate when it’s either injure him or die.
This should be an incredibly rare event. About the same as you shooting someone to death.
If you’re smart, a full understanding of violence should make you literally go out of your way to avoid the avoidable. For the leftovers, that very small sliver of true life-or-death situations, you take responsibility for yourself through preparation. You consider the unpleasant, the awful, the unthinkable and learn what to do should you find yourself smack dab in the middle of it.
No one wants to swim to save their life. For all of us who know how to swim, only a small percentage have ever had to swim or die. If you’ve been there, you’re really, really glad you know how to swim. If you’re lucky (or smart) enough to never have had the need to save your own life by swimming, it’s a comfort to know you could. And only the stupid would willingly put themselves in that position for no good reason.
Victims are trapped seeing themselves on the wrong end of the tool, for violence is the tool of choice for victimizers.
The resolute understand that the severity and seriousness of the tool brooks no screwing around — pulling it out is only appropriate in the most dire of circumstances because there is only one way to swing it: in both fists, as hard as you can.
Look for the full version to be published in their newsstand magazine as well.
The final US 2-day class for 2009
Since we’ve already had questions about the next US class, I know at least some missed the note in the PS of my last email.
The next full, 2-day live training in the US this year is also the LAST for the year in the states. It’s in Dallas, October 17-18, so just around the corner.
Registrations have increased dramatically with everything happening over here (and wait until coverage hits from The Sunday Times and its worldwide circulation).
Jerome Taylor meets the Californian who believes that now is the right time to bring his lethal fighting technique to Britain.
Photo to right: Tim Larkin, left, gets to grips with Jerome Taylor.
“Tim Larkin is not a man who minces words.
“The human body is very susceptible to trauma,” he explains. “Disengaging the brain from the body is what we’re trying to do — you have to stop the brain’s ability to control the body.”
====================
…And so begins yet another article in the English press about my visit and live training here.
This one I’ve got to say, is pretty good (once you get by the fact I don’t live in California).
I’ve been interviewed it seems like 100 different times since I’ve arrived and the big learning lesson is simply this: no matter how clear I am, the press always find the dramatic and runs with it… often at the expense of the facts.
It’s situations like this one (where I was actually able to demonstrate TFT) that help get the real message across.
But as you’ll see from the comments, few really get it. They’re usually the ones who’ve either been to a TFT training or seen our material. Everyone else is coming from their own background, training and belief… and that’s exactly why criminals prevail today.
Cutting through all the clutter of the tabloids is the fact The Sunday Times of London will cover the training LIVE next weekend (Sept 26-27) and do their own story.
And given their worldwide readership, I expect this will open many eyes.
If you can make it here, I guarantee, it’s a class you aren’t going to want to miss. You can still register here.
On today of all days, I can imagine at least one reason.
In the 14 years that I taught hand-to-hand combat through a university recreation department I got called on the carpet with this, and similar questions, about once every six months. My answer was always the same, and though uneasy, the powers that be were satisfied every time.
On the surface, there is no good reason. Or, more correctly, we don’t like to think we live in a world where there would ever be a good reason for the average citizen to know how to take a life with his or her bare hands. The natural reaction for anyone happening across this information, this training, out of context should be to recoil in horror. It stands in stark contrast to the world we believe we are building and would like to imagine we live in. A world where it would never be necessary for anyone — ourselves or our children — to know how to do this.
But you know better.
There’s the world we think we’re building, but that paradise of love, comfort and all the good things about being social animals really only exists where we can physically reach — the immediate space around us and the confines of our own homes. In those places we live in the world we make on a daily basis, a place where we actively work to do the opposite of acrimony, strife and violence.
But it’s all imaginary.
That’s not to say it’s not real — my own personal and home lives are the exact opposites of the work I do — but it is entirely dependent on me actively keeping it so. And it’s as fragile as a little girl’s tea party with pets and dolls. All it takes is a single person who has chucked the rules and believes in complete opposition as I do and is willing to step across those imaginary boundaries and impose his own physical reality upon me.
None of the imaginary ideas protect you from the physical facts of violence — not fairness, not personal dignity, not how much someone loves you, not even the difference between right and wrong. This is where we become such brilliant victims, when we think these things will protect us from violence. Living well and treating people fairly — being demonstrably good — may work to keep you out of trouble, making violence less likely to start, but it does nothing for you once the trigger is pulled.
I wish we lived in a world where those things did matter in the face of violence. I wish my children had no need or cause to learn how to hurt people. But ignoring it won’t make it go away. Wishing it didn’t exist only makes you a victim when someone who knows the facts picks you as prey. So while I work to build that world we all wish we lived in, I’ll hedge my bet by knowing how to break someone’s neck in case the world of ideas ever fails me.
It is demonstrated, with sickening regularity, that a single person (or small group) who knows how to use violence can wreak great havoc on much larger groups of people who don’t. Having a single person on the other side who knows what to do, how to act, how to meet that threat with an equal threat can change everything. The balance ceases to be one predator among many prey and becomes at least an even chance. Which is far better than most sane, law-abiding citizens ever get in the face of violence.
When confronted with the question, my answer was always the same. It’s easy to dismiss it when it’s just an abstract concept. Breaking someone’s neck is antithetical to everything we hope for. So I made it personal:
“If someone came to kill your mother, wouldn’t you want her to know how?”
It’s not nice, it’s not comfortable, it is the unthinkable. But grudgingly, in the face of the world of ideas parting like fog before the murder’s blade, the answer is yes.
