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

The words we choose to describe things shade and flavor our perception of those things; this can be to our benefit or detriment. Any given word gives rise to a whole cloud of associations, some better than others. For example, take the words attacker and defender. It’s easy to associate speed, aggressiveness, initiative, strength, power and evil with the role of the attacker and tasked, hounded, reactive, protective and good with the role of the defender.

So which one is better to be, if you had the choice?

Again, this is one of those trick questions where everyone shouts, “Attacker!” and then turns around and uses the language and posture of the defender when it comes down to action. Why? Especially when you know it’s better to be the attacker — it works great for the criminal, the killer, the survivor… it means you have the initiative, you are, by definition, in the cause-state, doing instead of getting done.

And all it gets is lip service.

You do it because socially, it’s wrong. It’s evil, it’s immoral, it’s not what your mom, your clergy, or the cops would like you to do. Such behavior is corrosive to the social fabric; behaving like a killer is to take on the mantle of the killer. It’s unsporting. It’s unfair. It’s the very definition of cruel.

And you can’t think of yourself in those terms.

Now, I’ve tried to talk about this before, but maybe I’ve been too vague or too nice, I don’t know. But I’m here now to tell you:

You either see yourself as the person stomping on the downed man or you are the downed man.

No ifs, ands or buts.

And again, before you protest, check yourself. A lot of the language I see floating around when people talk “reality self-defense” is the language not of killers, but of people trying to justify that role, to feel better about it. Trying on the mantle of the killer, finding it distasteful, and then looking for logical constructs to make it fit better, to give yourself sufficient reason to try it on in the first place.

Justification can only effect mechanical performance in one direction — to make it poorer.

The attacker has no justification. This is why, socially, we find it distasteful, wrong, and evil. But all the attacker has to do is attack. One simple thing.

The role of the defender is a justifiable one. We can explain away our need to behave in a socially unacceptable way by virtue of being attacked. Because we have accepted the number two slot, and dumped ourselves into the effect-state, it’s okay with mom, et. al. The only problem is that being a defender is a very busy job, with lots to try to do. We have to register the attack, attempt to counter it, and only then may we attempt a counter-attack. If you’ve seen our live “knife-defense” demo, then you know how well that works out… And for those who haven’t seen it, here’s the breakdown: it works like gangbusters for the stabber, not so great for the stabee.

Even if you are resolved to be a bloodthirsty and vicious defender, you’re still applying the loser moniker. Best of luck with that.

Ultimately, you have to ditch even the idea of being an attacker — lose the attacker/defender dichotomy entirely. Because really, what makes a difference in violence is not self-defense, or even fighting — it’s all about hurting people. It’s what you’ll do when there are people around you who need to get hurt. Who need to get maimed, dropped on the ground, crippled so they stay there, and maybe even killed.

That’s all I train. When people ask me what I do, the simplest answer is, “I teach people how to kill sociopaths.” Not only is it the simplest, it’s also the most accurate. And after that, I don’t waste my time or breath trying to justify it — and most people demand justification after a statement like that — because trying to make them feel better about it is really just me trying to make me feel better about it. And there is no feeling better about it. In a social context, it’s wrong.

But we’re never talking about a social context, are we? Not unless the Virginia Tech shooting was a garden party. So there’s no feeling good or bad about it — there’s only what’s mechanically correct. And trying to make it sound or feel better just convinces us it’s okay to be in second place. We all know that’s a lie.

Or do we?

Depends on how much mat time you get. The more you actually model the behaviors we present, the more comfortable you’ll be with the mechanical facts of violence, and seeing yourself as the person doing them. At that point it stops being words and becomes the only way to be in violent conflict.

Violence is simple.

How simple is it? We can answer that with two more questions:

1) How can untrained people prevail? and

2) How is it that untrained people can prevail over trained people?

Because for all their blissful naivete the victorious untrained have a firm grip on the tool of violence. This fact stands because violence is much simpler than people would have you believe; it’s much simpler than you want to believe.

The idea that violence is difficult and requires years of training — and that years of training will protect you from the untrained — are comfortable, comforting thoughts.

I read somewhere once that the little lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis, the small untruths that shape our subjective realities are what keep us happy. That the people who see the world and themselves as it all ‘really is’ are the clinically depressed.

Accepting the simplicity of violence is an unpalatable dose of hard reality. To learn that you are never immune and that someone who is completely and conspicuously untrained can murder you is acutely unsettling. Even depressing.

If, that is, you’re a blood-bucket-is-half-empty kind of person.

I like to look at it from the other side — the blood bucket is half full, and I’m going to use him to fill it the rest of the way up. If violence is so simple that even the untrained can use it and survive, then even a little bit of training is going to make you really, really good at it. And if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already had a little bit of training. You’re way better than you think, if only you’d let yourself be.

(The only thing that could possibly hold you back is a lack of intent; what the serial killer lacks in technique he more than makes up for with a monomaniacal will to get the job done. But you already knew that.)

Violence is much simpler, even, than we present it to be.

We spent a lot of time teasing out the common elements and finding ways to communicate them to you. It comes across as a ton of material that people mistakenly believe they must master before they can be effective.

For all that, we’re only ever really talking about the rock to the head… and what is the rock to the head but a big hunk of kinetic energy driven through a vulnerable target?

Everything else is just detail work, an exploration of all possible combinations and configurations for using your body as a human tissue wrecking machine, with and without snap-on tools. Violence seems complicated if you think this detail work is required to be effective. If you think you need a black belt before you can seriously injure someone.

Forget everything you think you know about how it should go down: violence is you injuring people. It’s throwing yourself at him to break things inside of him. You are the bull in his anatomical china shop, the Enola Gay to his Hiroshima. It’s you violating every tenet of polite society and destroying the only thing that any of us ever really own.

It’s simpler than you think because it has nothing to do with thinking.

Violence is all in the doing.

There is a level of confusion about what it is exactly that we do, confusion that I am, quite frankly, tired of hashing and rehashing. There are deep-seated biological, psychological and societal reasons for this confusion — and so it is perfectly natural for this confusion to persist — but as an instructor it frustrates me because treading back and forth across this well-worn rut doesn’t make you any better at doing violence.

The only thing that makes you any better is getting the mechanics down pat — how & where to cause injury, and how to best take advantage of that fact. Everything else is just mental masturbation that feels important because it tastes like philosophy with a little bit of work mixed in. You think you’re working while avoiding doing any of the real work that will make you better at doing violence, namely getting a reaction partner and hitting the mats regularly.

I am going to flog a dead horse again today, but my goal is to flay it to the bone (or finally sell it off if you take the original meaning); I want to take it to its absurd, logical conclusion beyond which there is no more jaw-flapping:

What we teach is violence, which is what you need to do when someone wants to murder you.

So where’s the confusion, you ask, that seems pretty clear-cut. And that’s what I think, too. But then the questions start:

Why would I ever need to know how to kill someone?

Won’t I get in trouble if I use this in a bar fight?

But what if he’s got X and/or Y and he’s coming at me like so?

How do I do it to someone who knows what you guys know?

What if he does it first?

Or one of the infinite facets of the question that tells me you don’t really believe that bigger-faster-stronger doesn’t matter. You WANT to believe, but you don’t.

Where does all the confusion come from? It arises because you think you know what you’re seeing, and you’re looking at it through the wrong mental porthole. When fists and feet are flying, you see monkey politics. You see competition. It’s all Great Apes working out dominance and submission. Don’t feel bad — you’re hardwired to recognize and respond to this. It’s only natural. Which is why I want to start the violence conversation off with one guy shooting another guy to death.

Watching one person kill another with a firearm won’t ping your monkey brain. It’ll go far deeper, down into the lizard-level, the primeval predator level. You’ll see it for what it is — killing. If we look at the underlying mechanics we have:

kinetic energy delivered through anatomy, wrecking it

And now we have the perfect model to work backwards from. Keep the killing context, keep the wrecked anatomy in mind and now look at other ways of effecting that outcome:

kinetic energy delivered through anatomy, wrecking it

So, a fist, a boot, a pipe, a shin, etc., etc., it doesn’t matter what as long as it’s doing the work that a bullet does, if only in a generic sense. So now if we line up a series of killings and look at them side-by-side, a shooting, a bludgeoning, a knifing, getting hit by a car — we should be able to see the clear, underlying principles that govern all of these equally and immutably. Learning how to wield these principles is the ‘getting the mechanics down pat’ I mentioned earlier.

All clear, right? No, back to the confusion: everyone gets the gun and the car, but they feel iffy about the pipe and the knife, and downright scoff at the fist, boot, or shin.

Why?

Because you read it with your monkey politics filter and think there’s something you can do about it. “I can’t dodge bullets but I can block a punch.” This is the ultimate in hubris and sends you down a negative feedback spiral: if you can ‘handle’ a punch, then of course he can ‘handle’ it when you’re trying to do it to him. You’re pissing in your confidence reservoir and your training will look hesitant and spotty. And that’s exactly where your skill will go. You’re thinking that you’re fighting when we really want you doing something completely else.

We are trying to teach you how to kill murderers. Everything that fits that narrow model benefits you. Anything that sounds out of place or silly in that context is nothing but crap.

That’s why ‘murder’ is the final word in context. Almost no one knows what to do when that’s what’s up. ‘Fighting’ and ‘defense’ are worthless in that arena — remember that defense wounds are found on corpses and tell the coroner that that person ‘fought for their life.’ You’re not going to fight anyone for your life. You’re going to kill a murderer.

Armed with this ‘new’ context, let’s look at the common questions:

Why would I ever need to know how to kill someone?
If that someone is a murderer, then ipso facto. It’s like asking, “If drowning can kill me, why learn how to swim?”

Won’t I get in trouble if I use this in a bar fight?
Yes. Yes, you will.

But what if he’s got X and/or Y and he’s coming at me like so?
[cue sarcasm] Then you should act enraged and execute a bluff charge and pray he’s playing by the same rules — that he’s spoiling for a fight and not a murder. Would you ask the same question with a firearm or a steering wheel in your hand? Of course you laugh, but a crushed throat and a gouged eye don’t care if it was bullets, hood ornaments or boots that did it. So why should you?

How do I do it to someone who knows what you guys know?
Injured is injured, dead is dead, regardless of talent or training.

What if he does it first?
Then you have nothing to worry about.

Bigger-faster-stronger?
The murderer doesn’t care — in fact, that’s one reason why he’s successful. And that should inform your thinking on the subject.

Here’s the bottom line: check yourself and stick with what matters. Is your question, your doubt, your worry rooted in the mechanics of injury or is it stuck in monkey politics, in ‘fighting?’ Be honest with yourself. If it’s the mechanics, we can work on that, show you what to do, how to do it. After that it’s on you to hit the mats with a partner and take ownership of it. If it’s competition, monkey politics, or has anything to do with communication or changing behavior, then it’s immaterial and meaningless in the context of killing a murderer.

Because you don’t talk to, try to best or even fight with murderers. You kill them.

Violence starts where choice ends.

For social and antisocial interactions, this means you get to choose whether or not to be involved, and how deep your involvement will go.

On the asocial side, you won’t have that choice.

This gives us a nice, clean delineator between violence and Everything Else.

As you’ve heard us say time and time again: if you have to ask, the answer is probably ‘no.’

The reason we say this is because once you commit, your choices dwindle dramatically. Once you cross that line, you’re in it ’til you finish it.

There are, to be sure, small choices to make–which target to wreck next, when to stop–but none of them involve ‘unviolencing’ him. Once you break that wrist, you can never go back to just holding hands.

Make the choice you can live with.

Be man or woman enough to be called a coward.

I’ve walked away from situations where I was legally and morally in the right and no one present would have objected if I’d laid the jerk out. I’ve walked away while dodging ego-withering epithets and slurs to the accompaniment of the loud and obvious sound of my social standing peg being taken down a notch.

I did this gladly because I was handed the luxury of choice and, to be quite frank, I just didn’t feel like it. ‘It’ being the stomping, the screaming, and then having to do it to all his friends while getting punched in the head three or four times, maybe getting stabbed or shot or killed, or arrested and spending the night in jail, making bail, paying a lawyer and then getting sued. Not to mention having to look over my shoulder every time I stop to take a piss.

All that crap is worth my life, but it’s not worth my time.

Social standing is a manufactured illusion; losing it is nothing compared to the loss of an eye, or freedom, or your life. If your friends are truly your friends they will remain so; everyone else can go hang.

Asocial means you have no choice, or, rather, the choice is something decidedly unchoosy like ‘kill or be killed.’ (Which one would you pick? Yeah, everybody picks that one, too.)

Because it’s hallmarked by a lack of communication, asocial comes on without warning, without preamble, like lightning out of a clear blue sky. One minute you’re worried about which curry joint to patronize and the next you’re getting stabbed. You’re down to those small choices, like which target to wreck next, and when to stop.

From a purely mechanical point of view, in social and antisocial situations he gets to choose whether or not a technique works. All of your sundry come-alongs, pain compliance, joint locks and submission holds fall into this category.

If he decides you ‘got him’ and gives up, all well and good.

But if he decides the pain in his wrist doesn’t matter, well, now you’re stuck holding the tiger by the tail.

And your Plan B better be really, really sharp. Especially if the choice he makes is to take it into the asocial and get to the work of injuring you.

The mechanics of the asocial, violent, interaction can be summed up in a single word: injury.

Injury removes choice from the equation.

He has no say in whether or not his eye comes out of his skull or if his throat crushes. He has no say in how his body will move next.

The physical laws of the universe, and how well you’ve employed them, are the only arbiters here. If you did it right, everything breaks. He may wish double-plus hard on a falling star it wasn’t so, but it’s not going to matter one whit.

Violence is the absence of choice, and he’s just along for the ride.

Now that I have your attention…

This post is about the moment it all changed for you, the moment you realized you needed to know how to hurt people. The moment when the puzzle that is your personality, your social network and the world beyond your driveway all fell into place with a kind of awful clarity and made you sit back, winded, with a newfound unease in the pit of your gut. An unease that could only be quelled by knowing how to beat a man to unconsciousness or death with your bare hands.

The moment you realized that knowing how to use violence was the only thing that was going to get you back to enjoying life like you did in your prior state of blissful ignorance.

I’ll tell you about mine.

Lucky for me, it was one of those easy-to-miss two-paragraph news items on page A21, stuffed down as filler between all those ads for tire alignments and mattress stores. And yet, it must have been the perfect time for me to see it, because it hit me like a ton of bricks. Here’s the gist of it:

A local San Diego college student went down to Tijuana for some bar-hopping with his buddies. At some point during the night he became separated from the group and vanished. A couple of weeks later he was found in central Mexico, all splayed out on a voodoo altar, having been ‘used up’ in some hideous ritual. Bled out and eviscerated.

I was a college student in San Diego at the time, and had, on occasion, been to TJ. My first thought was, “That could have been me.” My second thought was, “No matter what, I am NOT going out like that.”

Up until those two small paragraphs I had been training — but casually, and with some ‘funny’ ideas about how violence worked. I found the idea of taking a man’s eye or breaking his spine (or otherwise permanently crippling him) to be morally reprehensible. I devised an elaborate system of target selection based upon the intent of the other man. In other words, if he just wanted to duke it out, then I’d only stun or knock the wind out of him. If he wanted to kill me, well, then it was on. But still, that whole eye thing bothered me.

‘Used up in a voodoo ritual’ burned all that crap out of my system in a searing flash — the world was not what I imagined it to be. If I wanted to continue living in it I would have to get deadly serious about the staying alive part. And that meant doing ANYTHING.

If things went to violence, no matter who chose it, I was going to be the one doing all the ugly, awful things — not the other way around. Period.

My wife came back from grocery shopping this weekend with a chilling story: a man stalked her in the remote parking lot behind the store. Now, the story obviously had a good outcome — nothing happened — but it was the way she talked about it, what was important to her and how she processed the event, that stuck with me enough to write about it here.

(Some facts about my wife: she’s 5’2″, had a couple months of training more than 16 years ago (and hasn’t been on the mats since). She also took out a guy who came after her in a parking garage around that same time.)

Her story:

“There was a guy across the street who was obviously unbalanced, homeless or nearly so. As soon as he saw me, he looked around, saw that we were pretty much alone behind the store, and then began to cross the street toward me.

“It was clear that I had triggered something in him, maybe I reminded him of a girlfriend, ex-wife, or his mother, I don’t know. But it was obvious to me that he was agitated by my presence.

“My first thought was what I would do to him if he came near me. I figured I’d smash him in the neck and sit on his hip to drop him, and then kick him in the head when he was down on the ground. It’s worked for me every time I’ve done it in training.”

(When I asked her to clarify, she said that she found she could dump larger, heavier men reliably into the ground this way.)

“Then I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt — up to a certain point — and loudly warn him off if he actually stepped into the parking lot, about 50 feet away. If he didn’t stop then I’d take him out.

“As he got to my side of the street he seemed to reconsider and paused at the sidewalk. I continued calmly putting groceries in the car, and making sure he could see I was keeping an eye on him. He seemed to come to a decision and slinked off down the street. So I got in the car and came home.”

Several things struck me about her narrative. The first one was a total lack of fear-language or a sense of victimhood. I even asked her, “Were you worried about what he might do to you?” She shook her head. “It didn’t even occur to me. I was preoccupied with what I was going to do to him.”

Note that is not bravado or empty posturing. She was resolved to hurt him, put him down and make sure he couldn’t get back up. Her body language transmitted that grim determination and probably played a role in getting him to wave off. His prey was suddenly giving off predator signals, and he had to make the choice between a hard fight or easy pickings elsewhere.

Of course, it might all have been a terrible mistake; maybe he just wanted some change or a bag of chips. But that wasn’t her read on the situation, and I trust her judgment.

The second thing that struck me was her confidence in her ability to get it done — even without having trained in a very long time — because she took ownership of the tool of violence way back then, and, unlike a specific technique or a spinning back-kick, you never forget how to hurt people.

It’s been a long, long time since she had to think about it… but when she realized it was a potentially bad situation, it was there for her. She knew what to do and she was resolved to do it.

She was, regardless of what most people might be led to believe, in her element. That kept her from behaving like a victim. It probably helped to change a would-be predator’s mind.

As much as this is a real-world, close-to-home reminder of why I do this work…

I’m just glad she’s back home safe.

If a killer kills someone… no one is much surprised. Likewise, if the killer is killed by his intended victim, that’s understandable irony.

But if no one meant to kill anyone, and someone ends up dead, well, then it’s cartoon exclamation points all around. Everyone, including the newly-minted killer, is surprised. Cries of “How could this happen?” and “But I didn’t want to kill him!” ring out. In the end it gets labeled as an unfortunate accident.

But these ‘accidents’ happen often enough that when a new one pops up I can still recall the last one I read about. Primates have a territorial dispute, and begin vocalizing at each other to communicate their displeasure, then aggression in a sideways request that the other capitulate. When neither one backs down, it goes to blows, again to run the interloper off. Usually, this works out fine, as nature intended. But when it’s bodyweight + brain + concrete, one can end up running their rival not just off their territory, but off this mortal coil entire.

These things happen often enough that I would suspect you’re more likely, on balance, to be involved in this sort of situation than purely asocial violence. In other words, you’re much more likely to get slapped at than outright murdered. Misery comes from confusing the two.

If you train to kill and think that means you’re physically trained to handle the antisocial, it’s the same as carrying a gun in case you get into an argument.

If you train to kill and think that means you get to ignore the antisocial, you’re setting yourself up to be ready for the most unlikely event while ignoring the most likely. Chances are, you’re going to get caught wanting.

Because we train to use our bodies to cause injury, it’s easy for people to get the wrong idea — on the surface, martial arts and combat sports look similar to what we do. And since martial arts and combat sports do a great job of preparing folks to navigate that antisocial fog-zone, then they tend to think we’re training for the same thing, only in a ‘super effective’ way. That’s like pulling a gun in a bar fight and ‘shooting to subdue.’ There’s no such thing.

Still, people get all eager to lock horns. It’s funny to me (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) seeing as how we can still end up with unintended fatalities. If you ask a gun owner, “How many gunfights do you want to be in?” the sane ones will all tell you, “None.” The sane ones understand what goes on in a gunfight, and would never choose to be there if they didn’t have to. If they should find themselves there, they will shoot to kill. But they don’t walk around looking for gunfights.

This is painfully obvious when we talk about guns. But for some reason it’s less obvious with the empty hands. Why? It comes down to expectations. We expect someone to die if a gun is involved — that’s what the modern handgun is for, killing people at close range. We don’t expect someone to die from a standard, everyday session of monkey politics. And yet death is one of the possible outcomes.

Me, I expect someone to die every time violence is used, and then breathe a sigh of relief when everyone survives. I have absolutely no interest in going physical with monkey politics. I don’t leave the house looking for opportunities to use my skills.

My aversion to violence runs so strong that it makes me something of a walking contradiction to my friends — I will do whatever I can to avoid physical, antisocial confrontation and yet won’t hesitate to stomp someone into the morgue in the asocial realm. I’m like Gandhi with a nuclear weapon.

For those of you feeling eager, or emboldened by your training, some advice:

You’re all set for the asocial. If someone wants to murder you, you’re well prepared — knowledgeable, practiced, resolute. But don’t forget to make sure you’re prepared for the antisocial — sharpen those social skills, actively think about how you want to be in those situations. Will you join in and play along? Throw fuel on the fire? Push until he either backs down or goes for you? Or will you go completely sideways on him, defusing the situation, seeking to reduce his fear and channel his anger elsewhere?

Know where your triggers are and puts lots of padding between them and the outside world. Work to recognize when you’re being pushed into a corner. And remember that simply walking away could save your life — or keep you out of prison.

As with the asocial, so with the antisocial: be prepared.

Chances are you’ll go your entire life without anyone trying to kill you. I wouldn’t make the same bet about some jerk calling you out.

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.