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“It’s all fun and games ’til someone loses an eye”- Mom
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I was meeting with one of my master instructors and some business associates the other day. We were hashing out the schedule for the coming year and elaborating on the requirements for the new TFT Mastery Program. This program allows clients the ability to expand their skills, even achieving the status of Trainer (a level of fighting education unavailable until now).
One of our associates had difficulty comprehending our clear-cut definition of when to use violence as the solution to a dangerous problem. For us it’s simple, the situation needs to be criminal in nature and “life-or-death serious”, meaning… if you don’t take action you are going to be harmed.
This associate kept bringing up various social situations where someone is verbally (even mildly physically) aggressive but where the physical threat is unclear. In other words, at this point you’d be hard pressed to fight for any reason other than to “teach him a lesson”.
I was just about to handle this issue when my master instructor jumped in and gave a great example of the dangers of “teaching someone a lesson”.
Seems his older brother (while not at the trainer level, still an excellent fighter) had a roommate who caused numerous problems for the other 3 in his house. Apparently the problem child (we’ll call him ‘Joe’) was a large person, and both verbally and physically aggressive. The other roommates had nominated my instructor’s brother (lets call him ‘Tom’) to give ‘Joe’ his walking papers.
Although *much* smaller than ‘Joe’, ‘Tom’ was confident that with his extensive fighting training he could easily handle the situation.
As ‘Tom’ explained to ‘Joe’ that he needed to move out, ‘Joe’s reaction was to get verbally combative and use his larger frame as an intimidation factor.
As he moved closer, ‘Tom’ felt it was time to let him know he wasn’t intimidated and met him with a knee to the groin and a short punch to the jaw. ‘Joe’ doubled over and moved away from the strikes but he was still standing because ‘Tom’ hadn’t followed up his strikes since he was only half-heartedly “teaching him a lesson”.
What happened next was a nightmare.
Wondering if ‘Joe’ was all right ‘Tom’ moved closer but ‘Joe’, now in a violent rage, charged and knocked him viciously to the floor, then jumped over his body and began repeatedly kicking him in the temple with his heavy work boots.
The end result: ‘Joe’ was arrested and ‘Tom’ required numerous MRI’s just to insure he had no lasting brain damage.
Now whenever they instruct class, both my master trainer and his brother use this as a perfect example of why, in a violent threat, there can only be one response… and it’s never an attempt to “teach someone a lesson” or simply an ego boost.
If you are not prepared to leave the other guy in a non-functioning state, you are not committed to fight. You’re just playing with social violence. But in a truly violent situation, the other guy IS going to be committed to *really* hurting you.
In this case ‘Tom’ used violence to “teach a lesson” and ‘Joe’ responded with a lethal attack. You can never know a person’s response to violence. If you use it to “teach a lesson” (i.e., treat violence as a game) you may very well find yourself missing an eye… just like Mom said!
Until next time,
Tim Larkin Creator of Target Focus(TM) Training
http://targetfocustraining.com
PS. My ‘Nuclear’ Weapons video series clearly defines all Target Focus Training system principles. Read more about it at:
http://www.targetfocusweapons.com
PPS. Discover more about protecting yourself and your loved ones using Target Focus Training system principles by going to:
http://targetfocustraining.com/products
