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Extensive selection of instructional tools utilizing all forms of media that take you from base principles to complete and immediately useable applications of the entire TFT System.
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.
Well the debate in the UK about whether or not citizens of Great Britain should be able to protect themselves with effective self defense training rages on.
The Slough councilman in the piece does his best to label me as an extreme response to what he considers acceptable self defense training (read: ineffective, feel good techniques).
He also makes my point for me that traditional martial arts and self defence training take far too long to become even marginally effective in a kill-or-be-killed criminal assault.
I am never surprised when well meaning people miss the boat when it comes to dealing with asocial predators but this councilman even caused me to pause with his position.
After you watch this please share your thoughts.
And remember: as you go through a live training experience with me I assure you there is nothing gratuitous or extreme about TFT when you consider the threat you are preparing for via the training.
If your primary fear is getting hurt then you’re stuck reacting to his actions, pulling back, attempting to defend yourself. Distance-wise, this places you exactly where he needs you to be to get whatever it is he wants done. It also gets you behaving in a non-threatening way, leaving him free to finish it. This baseline ‘going defensive’ is what makes people spectacular victims.
If your primary fear is what he’s doing then you’re stuck going after his limbs to block or counter or otherwise thwart his actions. Distance-wise you’re still too far away, that half-step, arms’-length that means you can’t strike with your mass. This also leaves him in control of his mass and balance, with you as a target right in front of him should he decide to step in and use that mass to strike you.
This is fighting. A dangerous back-and-forth that builds into an epic struggle until someone gets it right and causes an injury. Dangerous for you because the longer it goes on the more opportunities he has to get it right at your expense.
If your primary concern is leaving a human brain in charge of a fully-functional body, then you’ll disrupt that relationship through injury. Or, to be more succinct, if you think your problem is the brain, you’ll go after the brain.
Distance-wise you can’t get any closer — to get at the brain, you have to go through the body. You’ll throw your mass through him, belt buckle to belt buckle, and end up standing where he was.
Going after the brain necessitates displacing him. If you put all that impetus through one square inch of him that can’t take it,the result is an injury. And that means the brain is either offline, busy, or in charge of a broken body.
The failure of most self-defense training is in giving you a goal that is at odds with the needs and realities of violence. What we see demonstrated time and again in successful uses of the tool are these simple facts:
The winners have no regard for what the victim is doing. They conspicuously ignore the actions of the person they want to hurt.
The winners don’t bother with blocking or counters. They put all their efforts into getting the job done.
The winners hurt people. Their only goal is injury, lots of it, following the victim to the ground and making him nonfunctional.
When we see this in action the natural response is: “How do I fight people who fight like that?“
The answer is that you don’t. Either you take them or they take you. Trying to defend yourself from them makes you a victim. Trying to fight them makes you a victim. Operating like they do gives you an even chance — and even that can be bent in your favor with every hour on the mats.
Learn the lesson: it’s always about the brain. And you getting over there and shutting it off.
“The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword” -Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The above quote is often used by men of ideas and throughout history many ideas drafted by the pen have, eventually, triumphed. But many of the original drafters of those ideas paid for their writings with their lives. That is a fact often left out by many who use the above quote.
In the past 20 or so years that I’ve been training men and women of ideas I see it as my job to remind them that we, in fact, live in a physical world. Many of my clients are extremely successful industry leaders whose sharp minds have helped them to achieve great things in their lives.
The human mind is capable of bringing out the best in society but it is equally capable of destroying lives using the crude fact that we live in a physical world. Military and Law Enforcement operators that I train are well versed in this very real fact and need little reminding of its existence.
But my civilian clients often need to be shocked into this reality. I usually do this via a short multimedia presentation that shows video of random acts of violence. Quickly it sinks in that violence cuts across all socioeconomic lines and should you find yourself faced with such a threat it requires a response that is in the realm of our physical world.
As I write this newsletter I know that should someone crash through the door and attack I will not rely on all of the ideas about self defense that I’ve learned and written about over the years. No, rather it will be the thousands of hours of physical training I’ve put in that I’ll draw from to take the other guy out.
It is my actual time of physically being out on the mat (or other training environments) working against other human bodies that allows me to respond with principles and methods that will best serve me in such an instance.
I’ve found that many of my clients enjoy reading about the self defense principles and methods I write about but are slow to actually get out on the mat and do it. The excuses I hear are numerous and clever but ultimately it will be a miserable failure for them if they haven’t got out on the mat and moved their bodies against another human.
Intellectually learning how to swim via books and videos without you actually jumping in the water and physically learning how to swim is a dangerous gamble against drowning. Even more true when it comes to self defense training; you need to actually get out there and do it.
Fortunately for my clients I’ve gone out of my way to make it easy to get moving. Whether you attend a live training or opt for home study I’ve got you covered so you see step by step how to get out with another human and physically learn this vitally important information.
Because the sad fact is that living a great life and pursuing your dreams can be suddenly interrupted by a random act of violence. If you merely stay a man or woman of ideas and demand the world should be a certain way then you are a perfect target for the physical thugs of this world.
Whereas if you stolidly ground yourself in the physical realities of asocial criminal violence and put the time in to physically train your body to deal with it you then can pursue your goals in your world of ideas. If violence should enter your life you are not shocked by it and in fact have planned and trained for just such an event.
All the best,
Tim Larkin Founder, Master Instructor Target Focus Training
Prison provides the perfect petri dish to examine asocial violence. When you look at your current self defense, “reality fighting system” (I abhor that term) or martial arts training it’s instructive to view that against raw asocial acts of violence.
This video clip is an expanded version of one I use in my seminars (it’s better because it includes the commentary). It is a prison murder and was well thought out. Hear how the killer describes his actions and what was going through his head.
(If you see what appear to be 2 videos below, click and watch the first. The second is just a picture and occasionally pops up in some browers.)
Again, I post this not to disparage your self defense, martial arts or reality fighting system training but to provoke you to examine if you focus on trying to defend yourself from being stabbed rather than focusing on injuring the other guy.
There’s a big difference within that last statement and it is the key to dealing with an asocial predator.
Does your self-defense training look like the news…
…Or more like a fantasy?
Real violence — one or more people preying on others — has an unmistakeable ‘look.’ It’s like nothing else. Not movies, TV or combat sports competition. Instead of drama, it’s straight to the point. You feel it in your guts, desperately trying to figure out how to make it stop, or what you would do if that were happening to you.
If how you train looks like that — one-sided, to-the-point, and results-oriented — then you’re training for real violence. If not…
If your training looks like movie choreography, a dramatic fight scene, where people take turns and there’s lots of action but no concrete results, then you’re training for a fantasy.
And the killer is that you will do what you train.
If you train like the news, well, then you’ll be doing it the way it really works. If you show up in a Gandalf hat with a toy lightsabre, things will not go well for you.
Be honest — it’s your life we’re talking about. Does what you do look like the videos we’ve been highlighting here? Or are you preparing for something that doesn’t exist?
The August 29-30 session in Boston has a home. And it’s a real doozy.
With 4 Olympic medals, Jimmy Pedro is a legend in the sport of Judo. And his facility in the northern Boston suburb of Wakefield is everything you’d expect from a world champion.
And now we’re pleased to announce he’s allowing us to use his training facility with its 2,200 sq ft of top-of-the-line Zebra mats for this session.
As you know I’m very picky about floor surfaces. It’s one of the reasons we haven’t offered trainings in more locations.
Well, the surface at Jimmy’s facility is the same as what we use in our own San Diego center. And it’s going to help maximize your take-away from this class.
Remember: one of the reasons we chose Boston was because a large group reserved a number of the available training spots. That means there’s less room than normal. So you can’t wait on this class.
If you have questions about live training don’t just sit and try to figure it out yourself. Give Vonnie a call at 360-582-9578 (US Pacific time). Or email her at “admin at targetfocustraining dot com”
She can answer most any question you’ve got. And if she can’t she’ll put you through to one of us.
Thanks and great training,
Tim Larkin Creator,Target Focus Training
PS. As more people watch the DVDs (especially Throwing) and the new online sessions over at our Target Focus Monthly site, some people are voicing concerns that “…your training seems like it may be too rough for me.”
Couple things. First, remember you’re watching instructors execute these sequences (and often they’re Master instructors, folks who’ve been doing this for more than 10 years and often far longer).
In your first class, you won’t go as fast as these guys nor will you be falling as hard as they do.
Everything is done at half-speed.
In fact, some critics of TFT like to complain it’s too slow, that it’s all choreographed. Unfortunately this is just ignorance on their part (and as you might have guessed, none have ever actually been through one of our sessions).
We do have you go very slow. If you didn’t you’d totally destroy your partner. But in the process of going slow there are some huge things happening.
We actually have you gently ’strike’ and push through each target on your partner. This slowly locks the movement memory into both you and your partner’s subconscious and nervous systems. It takes repetition to do this. But by the end of class, your body’s able to instantly recall these movements without conscious effort on your part. And that’s the way it’s got to be if you’re to survive a true hostile situation.
But the bottom line is: anyone can do this. Big or small. Weak or strong. Experienced or rookie. Doesn’t matter. And because you only go at the speed you and your partner are comfortable with, no one ever gets hurt (outside the occasional scrape or bruise that happens when you spend a day on the mats).
The other thing is all this is anything but choreographed.
We call it “free-fighting,” and for a good reason.
There is NO preset sequence you ever follow. Everything is random, made up by YOU as targets unfold during your turn.
We don’t teach you specific techniques for specific situations, then have you endlessly practice those, as others do.
Violence doesn’t happen like that. It’s totally random.
And that’s why we teach you how to strike targets using very specific principles that allow you to react instantly to anything that unfolds.
While this may be a bit difficult to imagine here, once you go through your first free-fighting session it becomes instantly clear. And 100% natural. That’s also why people pick it up so easily and so quickly.
Here’s the thing: teaching this all over the world as we do really limits the number of classes we can offer.
That’s why it’s important you take advantage of these unique sessions and REGISTER NOW while spots are still available.
This CCTV footage is graphic. I’ve posted the link to the story and video below. This is another visual example of how quickly anti-social behavior can go asocial. Here’s a Link to the Story: Aussie Footballer Choked Unconscious While Helping Friends
I don’t post videos to merely show gratuitous acts of violence. I strongly feel we need to study these clips in order to better understand what real violence looks like as opposed to the media images or the images we see in the combat sport world. Also much of the Martial Arts and various self defense training rarely accounts for how real violence goes down. I will let you readers make your comments first then I will post mine later this week.
Here is surveillance camera video of a fatal stabbing at a UK university from the recent past.
There is no audio with this video. I’ll reserve my comments on this clip until you’ve had a chance to post yours. (Hint: Be careful from which perspective you make your comments on this act of violence. I’ve covered my thoughts on how to view these items in my book and other past posts.)
Also, if you see what appear to be 2 videos below, just click and watch the first one. The second is just a picture and is occasionally popping up in some browsers.
You can’t call it an accident because it was intentional though the judge determined that the other boy did not have the “intent” to kill the victim.
Problem is most people are ignorant of the effects of throwing a human body against the planet. This throw landed the victim in a way that caused considerable head trauma and ended up killing the victim days later.
Instead of this kid teaching the other kid a “lesson” for putting him in a headlock, he ends up with a manslaughter charge.
It’s a grim reminder of why we culled our research data on putting injury into the human body from injuries documented in Sports Medicine Journals.
In the realm of Self Defense you must study relevant data on injuries to the human body so that you can reliably know how to injure someone when your life is truly threatened… and to avoid the anti-social behavior quagmire of unintended consequences.
As always your thoughts and comments are encouraged.
Regards,
Tim Larkin Master Instructor Target Focus Training
The UK is dealing with the grim fact that no matter how strict you make your laws concerning guns, knives, and bats there’s one self defense weapon that can never be outlawed… and it has proven throughout history to be the most dangerous weapon any human canpossess.
Take a moment now to read this article published in London’s Daily Mail:
I’ve been training self defense seminars in the UK for the last 10 years and before that I trained UK/NATO Military Units and Special Law Enforcement Teams. I’ve had access to UK data on violent crimes that isn’t general knowledge.
It’s interesting that the pot has boiled over to the point where this is now a topic openly discussed in the media. Of course you can skew data and I’m sure there are political and media oxes to gore in these reports. But the fact remains the UK is a very different place than when I attended University as an exchange student there in the ’80s.
Same is true in Australia.
Last time I was in Sydney there was a law enforcement report circulating that combined the criminal violence statistics of the 5 most populated cities in Australia. Those populations combined added up to a major US city population (New York, LA, etc…) and it was shown that if those Australian cities created one US city, it would, by far, be the most violent city in the US.
Now I bring this to everyone’s attention NOT to point fingers at the UK and Australia but to show that this is the case in two 1st-world countries that have some of the most restrictive weapons laws in the world. But…
“Laws can’t protect you from the most dangerous weapon… the human mind.”
Using the law as your self defense option is a risky proposition.
