March 29, 2011 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
Anonymous writes:
“I wanted to find out exactly what you are focusing on and your state of mind when you are practicing on the mats.
“After all the training you have had are you focused on the bullseye of the target? And what is your state of mind? Are you calm? Angry? Enraged?”
Chris Ranck-Buhr responds:
I would describe my state of mind as a kind of heightened mono-focus — the confident and distractionless excitement of the predator. I look at what I have in front of me, pick what I want to do and then make it happen.
None of it is about him, what he wants to do, or what he’s trying to make happen.
While it’s intense and mentally exhausting to keep it up for an hour, it’s ultimately calm and devoid of emotional content. It’s much more unconsciously analytical and physical, like catching and throwing a ball, than theatrical. While there might be emotional content before the ball is thrown to you (performance anxiety, what-ifs, etc.) and after you catch and return (elation at a good throw, self-criticism of poor execution), the act itself is best left untouched by emotion. Now imagine that moment of catch-and-throw extended across an entire mat session.
One thing I noticed recently is that I don’t see faces when I’m on the mats.
read this entry »
March 21, 2011 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
I was recently asked how I go about helping the passive and meek develop the intent to cause injury.
This opens up an interesting pillowcase of rattlesnakes along the lines of the nature/nurture debate… is intent innate, or can it be taught and learned?
There’s evidence for both sides.
The most unlikely people become human demolition machines with a little training while the biggest, baddest guy in the room faints at the mention of gouging an eye and can’t bring himself to stomp people when they’re down.
Size, stature and presentation say nothing of what’s really deep down inside. You can’t tell, just by looking, who’s got a hard core and who’s got cream filling. Especially when the hard core will act demure to hide that fact and the sponge-cake crew will bluster and scowl to mask their fear.
Some people show up for training pre-set with intent — all I have to do is show them where to put it. I’ve had others take a year or more before suddenly throwing the switch and doing good work the way it needs to get done on the mats.
So, nature or nurture? It’s equal parts both.
November 22, 2010 by Tim Larkin
“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 »
October 5, 2010 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
Much is made in the media over our brutally direct and stripped-of-sugar-coating training for life-or-death self-defense. Tim’s experiences in London last year and our recent coverage by a CBS affiliate focused almost entirely on the shock value of “killing with your bare hands” and the obvious moral and legal distance between stomping a downed man and what constitutes both a fair fight and “reasonable force.”
The chief problem here is a disconnect between what we’re teaching and the civilized person’s understanding of what’s acceptable to do in a “fight.”
I’ve illustrated this ridiculous gap in the past by writing about how you can append any problem you think may result in or require violence with “…so I gouged out his eye.” Let’s go straight for the bone on this one and change it out for “…so I broke his neck.”
- “A guy gave me a dirty look… so I broke his neck.”
- “A guy called me names… so I broke his neck.”
- “A guy wanted to ‘kick my ass’… so I broke his neck.”
- “After emptying the clip into the crowd he started to reload… so I broke his neck.”
Only one of those comes close to making any sense at all, and yet it’s the first three nonsensical constructions that the media focus on. Why?
read this entry »
October 1, 2009 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
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.
Chris Ranck-Buhr
September 11, 2009 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
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.
August 28, 2009 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
You’ll go after what you’re worried about.
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.
Chris Ranck-Buhr
TFT Master Instructor
August 5, 2009 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
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?
Your comments & questions are welcome.
Chris Ranck-Buhr
TFT Master Instructor
July 2, 2009 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
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).
June 5, 2009 by Chris Ranck-Buhr
There’s only one way to train — HARD.
If you think going slow means easy, soft, light and painless, you’re dead wrong. Slow means correct — spot-on targeting, constantly driving your body weight through his structure to buckle it, full follow-through. When it’s done right it’s implacable, methodically cruel, painful, and, yes, even bruising. As it should be.
There’s a huge difference between pain and injury. Pain hurts, and then it’s gone — injury is lingering and long-lasting. Pain tells you that what’s happening would be truly terrible at full-speed, it reminds you what you’re here for. If you know what to do with it, pain can help you focus your efforts and fan the flames of your intent. Injury simply removes you from training and teaches nothing you didn’t already know.
If I hit the mats for a painless hour and walk off not feeling like I’ve been in a fight — not a mark on me the next day — I might as well of gone to a Jazzercise class instead. Really. I hit the mats to feel it, not play at it or pretend. I carry with me for the next couple of days the badges of honor that show I trained hard for violence — bruises, scratches, the marks that training knives leave on the body. The best are the most accurate and controlled, like dime-sized contusions precisely over the heart target.
This is not limping the next day. Or a nagging ache that never leaves your shoulder. If it impacts your ability to train after a day of rest, it was too much — that’s an injury, no matter how small. Pick up enough of those and pretty soon you can’t train at all.
As we’re fond of saying, “Anybody can take a punch. No one can take injury.”
I’m not telling you to ‘beat the crap’ out of each other. I’m telling you to get it right, every time — on your turn, you take exactly what you want. Your reaction partner doesn’t get to pick what happens, or how it goes down. He or she just gets to react. And you should expect no less when it’s not your turn. In fact, you want to demand it. Otherwise your parnter is slacking off and playing at it. Laxity is a sure sign of not taking it seriously. Or of a potentially deadly misunderstanding of what we’re up to here.
Precision is about control. Control means everything is tight, focused, and right at the edge without tumbling over. I want my partner to have total control over what I’m doing and where I’m going at all times during his turn — so I don’t get dumped on my head, thrown haphazardly onto one shoulder, or get something broken because he held it loosely and went for the target with sloppy technique.
When he gets it right it’s going to hurt — even going slow he’s going to put one bony square inch of him through one soft & squishy square inch of me with immovable structure behind it, meaning my rib cage will bounce off his elbow, and not the other way around. It should feel like I ran into a steel knob at the top of a concrete-filled post. I’ll save myself from true injury by reacting, but only just.
I’m going to do the same to him on my turn because anything less is screwing around, and sloppy gets you killed out there. I must practice with total precision and control so I can drive that head anywhere — straight into the concrete or tucked under for a roll as I will. I’ll tuck it one the mats, exactly, and I’ll pile-drive it outside, precisely. Getting exactly what I want instead of hoping for the best. When done right in practice, it’s gonna hurt. Just not permanently.
They say that pain is a great teacher, and I know this for a fact; I seek nothing but instruction every time I hit the mats. I’ve learned that what we do works, I’ve learned that pain can’t stop me, and I’ve learned to use it to focus my intent.
The trick is to get hungry for it… in lieu of that, there’s always Jazzercise.
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