…but stupid.

The idea that using your hands is somehow safer than a gun arises from a potentially deadly combination of ignorance and dumb luck.

Common sense says that using your bare hands to shut someone up or make them stop what they’re doing is a viable — and desirable — alternative to pulling iron and killing them. No one really expects to kill or be killed during an ass-kicking. Fighting is viewed as a relatively safe manly pursuit.

For the most part, that’s true. The vast majority of scuffles don’t end in death. But is this due to a lack of will (kicking ass is not killing) and the relative safety of the endeavor? Or, as I stated above, ignorance and dumb luck?

When people do die in a fight it’s seen as a terrible accident.

The killer claims the outcome was not his intent, that a general ass kicking was in order and things went horribly wrong. For such an accident to occur things have to line up just right. The number one way to die in a fight is to fall and strike your head on the pavement, causing an irrecoverable brain bleed. If you think about all the people who will fall today and strike their heads and not die, you can see what I mean by things having to line up just so to result in death.

In fighting, ignorance saves lives.

read this entry »

To be invincible in hand-to-hand combat you need to have at least a passable fluency in all the various forms it can take:

Boxing… Kick boxing… Ground fighting…
Stick fighting… Knife defense… Gun disarms…

Doubtless I’m missing some here.

Once you get all those covered you can look at your skill set and find the bits you missed & sign up for yet another course to cover them. (Something tells me you’re in for a life-long pursuit.)

Sometimes I think it’s just simpler to refer to them all as ‘hyphenated’ fighting, as in ground-fighting, stick-fighting, knife-fighting, etc. That covers the whole sweep in one go.

It’s very much a “this vs. that” mind-set, with the fear that the missing piece in your repertoire will be the one that will take you out:

• The stand up fighter is merely prey for the grappler should he actually get in. Or…
• You have the stand up and ground game covered, but he brings a knife. Time to switch to knife defense… if you’ve got it.

There are some unfortunate problems with this mindset:

read this entry »

…doesn’t exist.*

After eons of tearing into each other it’s all been done, cataloged and trained.  Ad nauseam.  There is, literally, nothing new under the sun.

What we do have from all that awful R&D is a vast spew of systems, styles, traditions, paths and ways.  And in the squabble for recognition and dominance the principles underlying the reason why anybody who wins actually wins get overlooked in favor of arguing approach and technique.

Well, screw all that.

The only thing I’ve ever been interested in is results.

I don’t care who gets it or how they get it:

Debilitating injury speaks for itself.

Breaking something important inside the man is the only thing that makes a difference (unless you’re counting on him to quit, and you really shouldn’t).

Far and away from approach or technique are the two things that line up just right in every disabling injury:

read this entry »

“How do you deal with a Jerk?”

That’s the number one self defense question I get from people who still don’t understand what we’re up to in TFT.

Invariably at a seminar (and at least 10 times a week via email) someone will pose this question to me:

“Tim, (then he describes how some jerk is pushing this guy’s buttons, then says) …I don’t want to kill the guy… but… can’t I just hit him to shut him up?“

Then the guy goes on to ask what targets are “safe” to hit to “hurt but not kill him.”

Well, I guess all my writing and speaking on the subject just isn’t getting through to these people. So I’m gonna share 2 videos with you now that I think will help graphically illustrate my answer. Hopefully this will do the trick.

read this entry »

Going toe-to-toe, blow-for-blow with someone who is bigger, faster and stronger is an incredibly iffy proposition.

Unless you have the conditioning to go the distance (to outlast the exertion over several minutes of struggle and have the ability to absorb the punishment from non-specific trauma, e.g., “take a punch” or 20), the physical strength to overpower him, and the skill of fighting to bob, weave, block, counter and grapple with him, you’re going to lose.

If fighting is hard, being any good at it is even harder.

Being a good fighter requires a huge amount of dedication, time and effort to build your athleticism and skill.  You need to “weaponize” yourself by getting on the bigger, faster, stronger curve and pushing it as hard and far as you can.  You need to get in the ring, get knocked out and choked out, in order to practice — and perfect — the craft.  Those who excel in this realm are models of single-minded drive, physicality, and art.

Simply hurting people, by comparison, is easy.

How easy?  Easy enough that one of our Master Instructors has a 6’4″+, north-of-300-pound relative who doesn’t have a spleen anymore because his five-year-old nephew ruptured it during a rough-housing session. read this entry »

A frequent question I hear has to do with the so-called ‘unavoidable antisocial situation’ — the belligerent drunk who picks you, you get the luxury of seeing it coming, but there is no escape. What then?

I invite you to read this tragic article about the recent death of a soldier under similar circumstances:

Soldier dies after bar fight over Jimmy Buffett song

My heart goes out to his friends and family — as someone who has lost a loved one to violence, I know how it feels. It punches a hole in your life, hollows you out, and nothing is ever the same again.

Also note that we had three similar incidents here in San Diego just last year — an argument goes to fisticuffs, and someone winds up dead. In all of these cases, that was not the intent of the activity. But that’s how it wound up. One life needlessly taken and innumerable others changed forever.

Regardless of what you may think, you don’t have to go there. Most of the time when people claim it’s unavoidable what they’re really saying is they don’t want to leave, not that they can’t.

Everyone gets the difference between the antisocial and the asocial, or at least when we paint it in bold strokes — the senseless and avoidable bar fight on one end, and home invasion/murder on the other. The answer to the first one is don’t play along — use your social skills to solve it, up to and including just plain getting the hell out of there. The answer to the second one is injury, injury, injury.

But what about that fuzzy part in the middle?

First, a couple of things about why it’s even a question:

1) You recognize that you don’t really want to hurt him, and this lack of intent pretty much defines the antisocial. You know violence is inappropriate in this situation and that even if you’re victorious there could be serious legal repercussions.

2) I don’t think you’re trying hard enough to get away. I think you’re still hung up on the ego of the whole situation and you’d really rather not leave. Whether it’s because you think others will think less of you, you’ll lose face or social standing, or can’t face yourself — you’ve still got ego tied up in it. And that’s a proven killer.

And now, some answers:

Q: Is it possible to ‘take someone out’ without hurting them?

A: Sure, as long as they’re a quitter to begin with. If they’re not, you’re in for a hell of a fight. And if they read the situation differently, you can end up in the hospital or dead. It ends up as a roll of the dice — most of the time people don’t die in bar fights. When they do, everyone’s really sorry. And while I’m sure the dead men never expected it, it only had to happen to them once.

If you’re interested in such things, pretty much everybody else out there trains for the antisocial. Just be aware that you’re stuck doing what you train, and it’s almost impossible to switch back and forth. It’s far easier to train for violence and then literally go out of your way to avoid the stupid stuff.

And as a cop friend of mine says, “It’s all stupid stuff.”

Q: Does violence work in the antisocial realm?

A: Yes it does. Like gangbusters. Regardless of the venue, from sport to competition to brawling to killing, breaking things inside of people is a show-stopper. And while you can go a long way by avoiding targets known to be killers — crushing the throat, breaking the neck, bouncing the brain off the sidewalk or kicking a downed man in the head — you’re still rolling the dice.

I’ve read at least one paper that discussed a fatality from a strike to the side of the neck, and heard tell of another, so you never know. You can go in to ‘just knock the wind out of him’ and end up giving him a heart attack, should he already be at risk (not something you could know just looking at him).

In the end, you risk your life whenever you break the physical plane. I won’t hesitate to bet my life when my life’s at stake — but it’s just plain stupid to bet your life when it’s about ego.

Go out of your way to get to the rest of your day. If that means there are establishments you just don’t go to because they have a reputation for aggressive antisocial behavior, then so be it. If it’s your kink to hang out in places like that, just realize you’re choosing to ignore the risk and it’s all on you.

Me, I’d rather not have my night — and a nice dress shirt — ruined by an antisocial run-in I was too ‘manly’ to avoid. Even if you ‘win’ chances are you’ll need stitches and a lawyer. And if you lose, well, it could mean your life.

For what?

Chris Ranck-Buhr,
TFT Master Instructor

PS. If you missed them, check out both my recent comments on the post below (just click on the ‘comments’ link, mine are near the bottom of the screen that opens up).

You can tell how serious someone is about dropping a man by where they place themselves to get the job done.

Angry or aggressive fighters will go toe-to-toe, literally stepping up to the man and then reaching out with their limbs to cover the intervening distance through their target.

A ‘true badass’ will put his foot between the other man’s feet.

The killer puts himself completely through the other man and ends up standing where his victim once stood, and then repeats the process into the ground.

Stepping up to the man and reaching out is the hallmark of monkey politics, the antisocial cuffing, shoving, punching to show primate displeasure. It’s usually followed by stepping back and away from the other man after making contact. It shows a lack of desire to cripple and kill, fear of the other man, and respect for his personal space.

As a result, injury is unlikely outside of a lucky traumatic brain injury (concussion), the most common fight-ending injury seen in both street fights and competitive matches.

The ‘badass’ steps in close enough to put his foot between the other man’s feet, into his personal space and underneath his center of gravity. I say ‘badass’ because that’s the usual assessment of bystanders — if toe-to-toe was aggressive, stepping into the man’s personal space is absolutely ‘badass.’

It also increases effectiveness: the proximity will give greater follow-through, dramatically increasing the chance of injury and knockdown. Also, this amount of penetration is usually followed with another step in as the man falls back, as opposed to stepping away from the man. This forward motion only enhances the bystanders’ assessment of the dedication required to pull it off.

The killer throws his entire body through the other man, not content with merely stepping under his center of gravity, he replaces it with his own. He breaks the plane of the man’s belt buckle with his. This maximizes injury and overrun, almost guaranteeing a knockdown. This is followed by a thorough stomping of the downed man.

Now imagine driving your forearm through a man’s throat or a knife through his rib cage — where would you want to be to get that job done? The place where it might work? The place where chances are good it’ll work?

Or the place where it’s guaranteed to work?

Until next time,

Chris Ranck-Buhr
TFT Master Instructor

I was recently reading an article on self-defense in which the author was speaking of violence as if you could pick and choose the level of seriousness of the interaction, i.e., if he just wants to ‘kick your ass’ you kick his ass back, not *really* hurting him, but teaching him a lesson.

If he’s a little more serious, then so are you — and if he wants to kill you, well, that’s the only time you’re going to use certain techniques and targets like eyes, throat and so on.

“It’s the idea that you can choose to hit someone with, say, 60% of what you’ve got — and that you’ll only ever hit someone with 100% when your life depends on it.”

This idea illustrates a fantasy disconnect between ‘fighting’ and violence, one that deserves a fantasy name: I often refer to this idea as ‘dialing in your Spidey-power.’ (With many apologies to Stan Lee.)

It’s the idea that you can choose to hit someone with, say, 60% of what you’ve got — and that you’ll only ever hit someone with 100% when your life depends on it. It’s being able to look at an impending ‘fight’ and say ‘well, he’s not really serious, so I’ll dial my Spidey-power down to 50%’ and then sock him hard, but not TOO hard, because, after all, you don’t want to kill him, right?

Here’s the problem: holding back can get YOU killed. There are many ways to hold back:

1. You can wait and see to try and suss out what his intentions are,

2. You can make certain targets ‘off limits’ because wrecking them is awful (you’ll never hear me say otherwise) — like the eyes or breaking a knee, both permanent, crippling disabilities, and/or
3. You can ‘go easy’ on him by not striking as hard as you can.

Any one of these leads directly to reduced effectiveness, poor results, and in the worst case, can get you killed.

The idea that you can suss out his intentions is a fantastical delusion. If you don’t have psychic powers (and my guess is… wait for it… you don’t) or can know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men like the Shadow does, then you’re screwed. You’ll know he wants to kill you because, well, he’s doing it. That is not the time to find out. In fact, it’s never a good time to find out, right?

Making targets off limits ahead of time (“I’ll never take the eyes”) will give you a hesitating hiccup if your next — and only — opportunity is that target. You will stop. And try to get restarted. If you’re lucky, it means nothing. If you’re unlucky, the opportunity is gone and you just got shot/stabbed/whatever (perhaps again) and you just better hope he got it wrong.

You always want to strike the man as hard as you can.

Always — as hard as you can. ‘Holding back’ reduces the chance of injury. Now we’re into the realm of slapping each other around, pissing people off, and delivering non-specific ‘light’ trauma that is neither a persistent injury nor spinal reflex inducing. It’s wasted motion that let’s him know it’s on.

The author did believe, however, that in a real worst-case scenario a magical transformation would occur — that even though you’d been neutering and watering-down your training by waiting, making targets off-limits and slapping at them you could suddenly rise to the occasion of your impending murder by crushing the throat or tearing out an eye with full force and effort.

That’s a neat idea, but it flies in the face of ‘you do what you train.’

So, to that point, how does the way we train serve you? It would seem, on the surface, that we ONLY train for the worst-case scenario, that to use what you know in any other situation would be like using dynamite as a can opener.

Let’s put it this way: the ‘worst-case scenario’ encompasses and includes all other possible scenarios; going in purely to cause serious injury, put the man down and then pile it on (i.e., start kicking a ‘helpless’ man on the ground) covers, handles and takes care of anything and everything he may have or have wanted to do to you.

But the real beauty is that you can stop at any time.

You’ll typically do this the moment you recognize that he’s non-functional.

Let’s say you start out by breaking his jaw at the TMJ. You get the minimum expected reaction — he turns slightly, somehow keeps his feet. You come back with a shot to the groin and get a HUGE reaction, he goes down face-first and tries to curl up in a fetal position. You break his ribs and then strike to the side of his neck, knocking him unconscious. At this point you recognize that he is non-functional (to your satisfaction) and stop.

(Notice that I didn’t mention any techniques or tools — that’s because they don’t matter. Injuries matter.)

This sequence could have been different at each node of injury — you break his jaw and he spins around three times and lays down, out cold; you stop when he goes fetal after the groin strike; you stop after breaking the ribs because as far as you’re concerned, your read on him is ‘done.’

You also know how to carry it to a more final conclusion with a stomp to the neck, a neck break, a stomp to the throat, etc. But always as an informed choice — not out of desperation, and not after having been trained that it is ‘wrong’ or morally less-than.

You also know how to start right off with throat-eyes-neck break, but again, as a conscious choice. If killing is what will see you through, you will kill him. If killing is not appropriate, you can still operate because you know where the line is.

All violence is the same

This is because you are trained in the totality of violence, understanding it for what it is — a single-use tool that does not have an intensity dial on it. You can’t make guns shoot ‘nice.’ And what a bullet does is the purest expression of everything we’re ever talking about. All violence is the same.

So what does this mean for you?

First and foremost it means you understand that violence is not a plaything — you won’t goof off with it any more than you would with a loaded firearm. This is healthy. It means you won’t get sucked into stupid shenanigans (antisocial) thinking you can use what you know without any negative repercussions. It means you’re going to be smarter about when to pull it out and use it. This is going to save you tons of wear and tear, not to mention legal troubles.

It means that when you do use it, you’re going to use it the only way you can be sure it works — with no artificial social governors restricting what you can and can’t do. You’ll strike him as hard as you can to cause injury. And you’ll take full advantage of that injury, replicating it into non-functionality.

If we view this through a social lens it is savage, brutal, dirty, unfair and very probably illegal somewhere. This was the essential thesis of the self-defense author.

But the question you have to ask yourself is are you going to bet your life the other guy is playing by the rules?

If he is, well, then you’re a jerk, aren’t you?

If he isn’t, you’re dead.

The moral of the story is: screw around with violence the same way you’d screw around with a firearm — don’t.

Semantics can be a funny thing–reference the title, above: On the one hand, it could mean ‘fighting on even though one is injured’ or ‘enduring in the face of adversity.’ On the other hand it could mean ‘using injury as a tool when fighting’ or ‘dirty pool.’ Chances are you read it one way, and not the other; which way you read it, on autopilot, isn’t up to me, the message-bearer. How you see it is something that happens entirely inside your own skull.

So, same words, two very different meanings. And no way for me to tell which way it’s gone.

An essential problem we have in teaching and training violence is that most people have no real experience with the concept. (This is only a bad thing in the context of training. In the context of daily life, it’s a good thing that the vast majority of people never experience violence to the degree we mean when we say the word… unlike, say, the population of Rwanda.) It is the never-ending job of the instructor to clue people in, give them physical examples to connect to the words, and to do our best to connect it to everyday experiences. (Like mentioning the ‘funny bone’ when we talk about nerve targets–nearly everyone’s whacked their ulnar nerve hard enough to momentarily kill their hand.) Recently, however, it occurred to me that when speaking of the difference between sport and violence, martial arts and murder, competition and destruction, we’ve been coming from the wrong side of the argument.

While most people have not experienced life-changing violence, many have, at one time or another, experienced injury in sport. Whether as adults or children, we’ve all taken a hard hit, been knocked ass-over-tea-kettle, and/or had the wind knocked out of us. We’ve been contused, lacerated, pulled muscles, tweaked joints and taken a bump on the head that made us see stars. And we’ve all gotten back up, shook it off, walked it off, and pressed on and fought through for personal honor, for toughness, for the team, or maybe just because we didn’t want to miss out on all the fun.

As nasty as some of those things may have felt, or seemed, or been they were not injuries as we must define them for violence–if you were able to push through and overcome the physical symptoms with force of will you were definitely hurt (perhaps even enough to make someone else quit) but you were not injured the way we mean it when we’re talking violence.

If you’ve lived a full enough life to experience the above, you’ve probably had the misfortune of seeing the other side of it–people broken in such a way that no force of will, no matter how strong, can change the state they find themselves in. They’re out cold, or flopping around incoherent, or screaming nonsensically; the match is stopped, the game is paused as medical personnel rush to the fallen’s aid. They don’t walk off the field triumphantly, they’re carried to the hospital.

At a recent live training I recognized some ‘sporting types’ among the clients–people who were wearing gear associated with martial arts, full-contact and no-holds-barred-style competitions. It can be hard to make our case to such people–when I say ‘violence’ and ‘injury’ they nod like they know but it’s very often a different picture they see in their head. They see the hard-won results they know can only be achieved in the ring through bigger-faster-stronger, and they are usually skeptical of injury as a show-stopper if only because of the number of times they themselves have ‘fought through injury’ and won the match in spite of their ‘injuries.’

Instead of my usual competition vs. destruction rant I simply asked the question:

“How many of you have taken a hit, had the wind knocked out of you, seen stars, had something hurt like crazy in a game or match and yet you were able to fight through it, keep playing, continue to compete, etc.?”

Most people raised their hands. I was actually a little bit surprised by that. So far so good.

Then I asked:

“How many of you have seen someone go down in a match or game such that they couldn’t get back up, the refs went crazy trying to stop the game so medical personnel could get to them, and they had to leave the field on a stretcher and go straight to the hospital?”

Fewer people raised their hands, but still a goodly amount.

“Okay,” I said, “In violence, we’re only ever interested in the second one.”

And then I added, “Because, as you all know, you can shake off the first one, no problem.”

I swear my third eye was blinded by all the psychic light bulbs going off. Everybody got it. Everybody. And I didn’t even have to argue the point.

Best of all, the most hardcore of the competitors lost their skepticism and became acutely interested in getting to work.