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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.
This question tells me a lot about a person’s frame of mind, and how they see themselves in violence. They’ve chosen second place, victimhood, with a wait-and-see attitude that makes them perfect prey for the best predators out there.
Now, this is not a conscious choice — they’re not “wrong” in an absolute sense — and it really speaks to how little violence we are subjected to across a lifetime. The average experience is zero to a mere handful of incidents, not nearly enough to draw operational conclusions. Our collective lack of experience shows what a nice bubble-reality we’ve created here in the First World.
Don’t get me wrong — it is nice — it just leaves us woefully unprepared when the rare, “black-swan” event of real violence intrudes.
A lot of time and money is spent figuring out how successful people think. In business, for example, it can be shown that there are modes of thought that routinely lead to ruin; closer to what we’re up to we can look at professional sports where the winners envision themselves doing the thing they wish to do, pushing away or minimizing doubt and worry, and then act purely to achieve that imagined goal.
Predatory sociopaths, especially those in prison due to society’s recognition of their success rate, thrive because they never see themselves as the victim in a violent exchange — only as the giver.
This leads us to the question:
Would you rather go into life-or-death violence
a) wrestling with live snake,
b) managing a crying baby, or
c) none of the above?
(As for the snake or the baby, I couldn’t decide which would make things more difficult for you, hence the title.)
If you enter into such an interaction with your primary thought process being What will happen to me? then you are bringing along something that will impede your ability to succeed and win. Before you can deal with the other person you must first deal with the squirming thing in your hands.
There’s nothing anyone can do about the biological facts of fear — the body’s response to danger and preparations to handle it (fight or flight) — but the psychological response to those preparations is under your control. Making worry a priority is a great way to kick off psychological panic. You want to use your body’s response to your advantage, not his. Train defensively and you train to help him do whatever it is you’re worried about.
If your primary concern is not getting hurt, well, I share your sentiment, but that’s not really something you get to choose. Expect to get hit, thwacked, cut, shot. These things will happen whether you want them to or not. If we could choose not to have them happen, then believe me, we’d train them. We’d train the hell out of them. But it turns out the only thing you really have control of in violence is what you do to him.
If everyone involved is wrestling a live snake, then we dance around and chances are good no one’s going to get hurt. The real danger is when one person is doing the snake-handling… and the other is unencumbered, free to do whatever he or she wills. If both are focused on getting results then it’s whoever gets it right first.
How do we train, then, for the best chance of operational success? Again, we can take our cues from professional athletes: worrying about losing does not make one win — worrying about winning does. Train for the result you want. Practice smashing targets.
It’s really that simple.
Trade out that snake for “How about if I do [INSERT AWFUL THING HERE].”
There are varying definitions available, but in the global sense, strength is the ability to do work. More specific to our discussion here, strength could be defined as the ability of the neuromuscular system to create force. In strength-coaching circles, strength is classified as one of the many “motor abilities” that permit high-level human movement. Some other motor abilities include aerobic endurance, mobility, ability, coordination, quickness, speed, and power.
When developing physical preparation programs for athletes, strength coaches try to think in terms of which motor qualities are already sufficiently-developed, and which ones need further improvement in order to improve the athlete’s overall performance capacity. When working with “everyday folks,” I take the very same approach — I’m looking to see which motor qualities, if further developed, would improve my client’s performance, relative to his or her specific needs. In the process of conducting such a “needs assessment,” the need for improved strength usually presents itself, for at least three reasons:
1) Strength Is The Basis For Other Motor Qualities:
This involves a concept called “positive transfer” which I’ll discuss in more detail in just a bit. For now, just realize that strength is what allows other motor qualities to exist. This is an important reason why the top male performers in sports that don’t appear to involve strength (such as tennis and golf) will always beat the top female performers — they’re not superior by virtue of being male, or even because they’re taller — they’re better because they’re stronger. In a related observation, the gap between the Men’s and Women’s World Record time in the marathon has been steadily evaporating in recent years. Why? Because women have only recently been exploiting the advantages of strength training, as opposed to men who have been taking advantage of this “dirty little secret” for decades.
2) Strength Creates “Margin”
Imagine for a moment the obvious similarities to a barbell squat and getting up from a chair. Both activities involve a very similar motor pattern using exactly the same muscles. Next, imagine a person who can squat with a 500-pound bar across his back, versus someone who’s maximum ability is only 30 pounds. The 500-pound squatter rises from a chair with almost no effort, because doing so represents only a microscopic percentages of his maximum strength. The 30-pound squatter struggles to get out of his chair however, because doing so requires nearly all of his strength in that movement pattern. If we had a “sitting up and down for reps” contest, our 500-pound squatter would be able to perform perhaps hundreds of reps, whereas the 30-pound squatter would be lucky to manage 10 reps. The correlation between squatting strength and sitting can also be used to illustrate the impact of strength on speed: who can rise out of a chair faster— the 500-pound squatter or the 30-pound squatter?
Below: A link to me squatting 280# for 7 reps.
The bottom line is perhaps obvious — the stronger you are, the easier “life” is, whatever life happens to be for you. Recently, I took a mountainous hike near my home in Phoenix, Arizona, with a group of experienced female hikers who were expecting me to have a difficult time keeping up with them, since I’m a big guy who “only lifts weights.” Much to their surprise, I had absolutely no problems at all, and in fact, I managed the hike easier than at least two of these women who claimed to be avid hikers. The reason? I’m strong. When you can squat over 400 pounds, deadlift over 500 pounds, bench press nearly 300 pounds, and perform 15 chin-ups in a single set, hiking up a mountain (at least the one we were one) is comparatively easy, even though I do no endurance training at all. All of this is because of a phenomenon known as “transfer:”
Transfer simply refers to the ability of an ability or capacity (once developed) to either positively or negatively affect another ability or capacity. In strength training, the goal is to develop strength that will positively transfer to a specific activity. Typically there are two ways to accomplish this objective:
Overload the activity itself. This is the most intuitively-obvious strategy, but if often leads to poor results. “Cyclic” activities (activities where a single movements is repeated over and over) such as running, cycling, swimming, etc) can be overloaded with a positive result. For example, sprint coaches often overload their athletes by having them run uphill, against the wind, or against resistance in the form of an elastic tether or a small parachute.
Strengthen the body in a “primal” or global manner, with the hopes that this newfound strength will positively transfer to the desired activity(s). “Acyclic” activities cannot be successfully overloaded in most cases, although many have tried. Boxers, for instance, have long trained by punching with small dumbbells in their hands. There are at least two problems with this method. First, the resistance from the dumbbells comes from the wrong direction — instead of opposing the punching movement, the dumbbells exert a downward resistance, which is 90-degrees from the punching plane. A second problem is that only very light dumbbells can be used to mimic the punching motion, and such light weights are insufficient to develop strength.
Unless you’re looking to become stronger in a very specific skill(s), the second method of strength development is what you’ll want to exploit. If you’re skeptical about such seemingly “non-specific” methods, allow me to share an example that convincingly demonstrates the existence of positive transfer from non-specific strength training to a specific skill:
If I were to teach the deadlift to a healthy, average sized male with no prior strength training background, he’d likely lift at least 185 pounds on his very first session. A question that’s worth asking here would be “where did that strength come from?” It clearly wasn’t from deadlifting, since he’s never deadlifted before. So where did it come from? The answer is indisputable — it came from a variety of activities, including standing, walking, climbing stairs, cycling, skating, various recreational activities or sports he may have played, and so on. All of these activities — some to a greater degree, others to a lesser degree — developed the strength he needed to deadlift 185 pounds his first time out of the gates.
3) Strength Training Reduces Biological Age
Strength training not only makes you stronger, it also increases your lean mass (muscle tissue). Both of these adaptations make you younger in a very real sense. When you’re stronger and more muscular, you’re less prone to illness and injury. Every physical task you need to perform is easier and safer.
Typically, most people become less and less active as they age. This results in reduced strength and muscle mass, with a commensurate rise in body fat. Together, these changes lead to a increased “insulin resistance” (a condition in which the body cannot use insulin effectively… insulin is needed to help control the amount of sugar in the body. As a result, blood sugar and fat levels rise). A recent study (link: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/11/2977.full ) illustrates the ability of strength training to lower insulin resistance.
Another important benefit of strength training is increased bone density. During strength-training exercises, tensions generated by your muscles are transmitted to your bones by ligaments and other connective tissues, which creates increased bone density at these attachments sites.
In the final analysis, people who exhibit a high level of strength also tend to have greater lean-mass than their weaker peers, and more muscle means greater health, functionality, and biological youth across the board.
How Do You Get Strong?
Although I frequently reference my bias toward weight-training, the fact is that there are many different methods and equipment choices available for strength training. For example, for novice trainees, calisthentics such as pushups, chin-ups, and lunges can be performed, which require no equipment whatsoever. Elastic tubing is another possibility. For some of my clients with injury issues, we even use isometric (“without movement”) drills which allow the development of muscular tension with minimal joint stresses.
Strength-training machines, such as those found in nearly all commercial gyms, can also be used, although they are not my preference: machines force you to overcome resistances over a pre-determined movement path, which removes the all-important skill component of the exercise. More often than not, the strength gained from machine exercises tends not to transfer to “real life” movement. Further, from my experience, training on machines is not as intrinsically rewarding as free weights or other forms of movement training.
What Does This All Mean To You?
I trust I’ve made a convincing case for the importance of strength training for anyone desiring optimum health and performance. When I examine the course of my nearly 25-year career as a fitness professional, it’s easy to see my ever-increasing reliance on strength training as opposed to other modalities (such as endurance or flexibility) for most of my clients. In the battle of life, all else being equal, the strongest shall survive (to borrow from the title of Bill Starr’s classic book). In future installments, I’ll provide practical tips and strategies for unlocking the secrets to physical excellence.
Target Focus Training is a “principle-based” system, meaning that instead of starting with moves or techniques we seek to identify and understand the elements at work in every successful use of violence.
Once you know why the winners win and the losers lose it becomes a simple thing to discard useless movement and technique and replace them with action that makes winning the most likely outcome. Instead of doing what’s popular or cool or fun to train — or even what seems to make sense from a sane, socialized perspective — we seek to do what the untrained victorious do, to physically emulate those who spend no time on the mats and yet win in spite of that lack.
The reason an imprisoned sociopath wins is the same as a highly trained military operator… or really anyone who comes out on top in physical violence. Not because of hate or rage or training or practice, but because of debilitating injury. Period.
Before we can discuss the principles that underlie game-changing/game-winning injury, we must cover some baseline assumptions for how to make the choice to “pull the trigger” on physical violence, in other words, first principles to drive the decision-making process and initial contact.
The essential problem is one of variability in the amount of force used, or the fact that half-measures expose you to greater risk. read this entry »
For my first post here at Target Focus Training I thought I’d share my responses to 7 fitness-related questions that I’m commonly asked when people learn that I’m a fitness “expert.”
These questions reflect several common misconceptions that many people hold about fitness and the process of acquiring it. My hope is that my responses clear up some of your own questions and perhaps inspire some additional inquiry of your own.
If you’d like your own question in a future blog post, please send it to [email protected]!
1) “What do you think of that new “Insanity” workout?
This was recently asked of me by an employee at the Apple Store when he learned that I’m a fitness coach. I told him that sane workouts are a far better alternative. One of the most limiting attitudes people hold regarding fitness is the idea that the more it hurts the better it must be. While discomfort is the often unavoidable outcome of getting out of your comfort zone, it shouldn’t be a barometer for assessing the value of a workout.
Instead, focus on your performance: if you own your own business, you know that you get paid on what you produce, not how much work it took to produce it. Try thinking this way in the gym and you’ll be much better off.
A singularly misunderstood element of TFT is the fact that we preach slow practice.
It’s easy to dismiss what we’re doing at a glance since everyone knows that violence happens at full speed, right?
And, unfortunately for us, it requires several layers of explanation and then a fair amount of hands-on experience to get what we’re up to.
The two things you need to make injury the most likely outcome are accuracy and correctness. You need to strike a part of the body that can actually be broken (and gives good results when that happens) — but you also need to strike it hard enough and with enough follow-through to actually break it.
If you miss, nothing happens. If you hit it but not hard enough to break it, nothing happens. The problem is that accuracy and correctness cannot be learned with speed in the mix.
The most common mistake I see in training to wreck the human machine — beyond poor targeting and worse tools — is people lashing out with their arms and legs while they leave the belt buckle behind.
For most of us, our center of mass rests behind our belt buckle — if it holds still, or worse, moves away from the strike, then your mass is not involved. You’re hitting with the strength and mass of the limb alone. And while it is possible to cause injury doing this, a debilitating injury is not the most likely outcome.
Hitting, or limb-only punching and kicking, is not nearly as good as striking, where you move your entire mass through the target.
“I expect the idea of being able to condition oneself to take a real hit and continue as if nothing happened is BS. But I have seen people so unbelievably sensitive to pain as to render them helpless for a short time. I have developed a high pain threshold over my life by enduring pain. Not because I tried to endure pain but because I was in pain at times. I look at my grandsons, who have never even felt a lick on their butt and tell them to avoid a fight at all cost as the first hit will wilt them the other guy will beat the crap out of them.
“This bothers me as I can’t condition them to fight through pain. In high school boxing we got hit and learned to continue, no matter what. So many children now are so sheltered that they have felt very little pain. Consider that as a kid, I didn’t get novocaine to get a tooth drilled. Now I avoid the numb feeling as I prefer a short term pain over hours of numb mouth. Try to find a dentist who will drill without the needle!
“Yes, pain hurts but sometimes you have to ignore the pain and fight through it.
“I have taught my grandchildren all of the age-appropriate self defense I can, top of the list being avoidance. But if they ever have to mix it up I don’t think they will come out on top.
Injuring the Groin – Part 1 covered the myths and misconceptions of strikes to the groin. I appreciated all the responses to that blog and now want to focus on illustrating real injury to the groin.
To do so I have 3 different videos that clearly show the effects of a groin strike as well as some graphic pics of male anatomy showing the results of strikes to the groin.
I don’t show this graphic material to be gratuitous but to educate and ( at the risk of offending some people) I feel strongly that you cant sugarcoat this information.
As always, please leave your thoughts and comments below.
Tim Larkin
Founder, Target Focus Training
PS: Some of you are asking me to increase the size of the videos. This may easily be accomplished after you start the video by sliding your mouse on the video and clicking the full screen icon at the far right of the timeline bar (it’s a little icon with arrows pointing out at a 45 degree angle). This allows you to view the blog video in a full screen mode.
PPS: Don’t forget our Thanksgiving sale that’s currently in progress. You can check it out here.
Continuing down that basic path, today I want to look at probably the most talked about yet most misunderstood and misguided target on the body — the Groin.
Since there’s a lot to share with you, I’m going to break this into 2 parts.
This video focuses on the ‘misunderstood and misguided’ I mentioned above. In Part 2, we’ll look at actual results of groin strikes including some pictures I must warn you now, are very graphic and possibly difficult to view. I’ll discuss more about this in my prelude to Part 2.
Again, thanks for your feedback as we continue using this medium to deliver information.
As always, please leave your thoughts and comments below.
Usually the question is leveled as a kind of shocked riposte, a condemnation for what it is we train.
Through experience I’ve found that the easy answer, “Well, wouldn’t you want to know how to do it if that’s exactly what you needed to survive?” fails, weirdly, as the initial question itself shows a revulsion for holding the idea—let alone the skill—within themselves.
It’s no more appealing than putting a live snake down their pants. The real answer is, “If a loved one needed it, wouldn’t you want them to know how?”
As distasteful as the idea is to see yourself thinking it, training it, doing it it’s just a tad more palatable to imagine someone you love surviving the worst day of their life and making it back home to you. Of course, the logical extension is wouldn’t you want to do the same for them? That is, take responsibility for your own well-being and do your absolute best to come back home to them?
Situations requiring the hands-on physical destruction of another human being are thankfully rare, the same way that you probably haven’t had to save yourself from drowning too many times. (I’ve personally had to not-drown twice, and I hope to never, ever have to do it again.) If what we’re training for is so very rare, why spend so much time and energy training for it? Why train at all?
“But what if he [INSERT AWFUL THING HERE]?”
