In A Violent Confrontation...
You Always Do What
You Train

I was introduced to this concept when I was just a kid. I was very fortunate that I had a grandfather who very early on introduced me to combat sports, particularly American boxing. I remember as a very young kid he would give us boxing lessons. He would look at us and he’d say “Now boys, this is what you do in the ring” and then he would point outside the door and say “But when you’re out in the real world and somebody’s trying to hurt you, this is what you do.”

There were two different methodologies. Meaning, he’s very clear that if you agree to be in a sporting contest, then you agree upon a set of rules and if were to excel in a sporting contest, you’ve got to be bigger, faster, and stronger... you’ve gotta put a lot of work in. You’re going up against a guy and pitting skill against skill.

But he was also equally clear that once you stepped out into the street there were no rules. If somebody was going to try to use violence against you, you had to do everything in your power to make sure that you didn’t let him or her do that. And that meant there was no hesitation, there were no targets that were off-limits, and there was nothing that you had to restrain yourself from.

This really comes full circle because a lot of what I saw happen in the military arena and the law enforcement arena was when they went to hand-to-hand combat. They went to try to use some of the very effective training that goes on from the sports world and martial arts world and they were astonished at how much they didn’t understand, until they saw the consequences.

If you try to use methodologies and principles that require you to have rules and referees and things of that nature, you’re going to fare miserably against somebody who isn’t constrained against things like that.

You absolutely do what you train. If you train with a set of rules, then you’re going to respond to that set of rules, and you’ll respond in ways that are going to surprise you.

We recently saw out here in the southwest a Jujitsu practitioner who was an excellent, excellent sport fighter and a fantastic grappler.

He was attacked while getting into his car. One guy had a knife and the other guy came at him, I think with a club. He took the guy with the club out, knocked him out right away. What was interesting, when he went after the guy with the knife as the guy tried to stab him, he grabbed his knife hand, and he was able to execute an arm bar by basically taking the arm, pulling the elbow into a hyperextension as they both lie pulling on the floor. It’s an extremely painful submission move.

Anyway what was amazing to everybody but not so amazing when you understand that you do what you’re trained was as this Jujitsu grappler had the arm hyper-extended, literally holding the hand that held the knife, having this guy completely immobilized, the grappler responded to a competitive sport submission. And what do I mean by that? The guy that was having his arm hyper extended, started slapping the side of his thigh repeatedly and in the sport combat world, that is a submission movement. That is, I give up. What everybody couldn’t believe was this Jujitsu practitioner his life on the line, weapon-wielding attackers coming after him, actually let go of the arm. He let go of the arm and unfortunately was stabbed twice.

He survived the incident, but again, horribly, horribly attacked in a situation where he clearly had the advantage. Where he had a disadvantage was he trained with rules and in a serious life-or-death situation, he actually responded to those rules.

One other situation that I’d like to talk about is with a well-known police agency. They had a range master come out who ran the firing range where these officers trained. And this was in the days when they still used revolvers, six shot revolvers. Now, there’s a special combat reload that you do. It’s the fastest way to empty your weapon and reload it. This involved shooting your six rounds, popping out the cylinder, hitting the plunger, exiting all of the empty cartridges, letting them hit the ground, then pulling out your reload (your speed loader), loading another six, popping the cylinder back up and firing. That is the quickest way to do a combat reload on a revolver.

Well, the range master came out and noticed that a lot of the officers after they were done shooting would not pick up the empty cartridges and it was leaving empty cartridges all over his range. He was horrified by that so he sent out memos, he yelled at people, he tried to discipline. But nothing worked. He finally instituted a new rule that these officers would draw their weapons, shoot their targets, pop the cylinder open, put their other hand out, hit the plunger on the weapon, empty all the empty cartridges into their hands, put the empty cartridges into their pockets, then they could reload the weapon at that point.

It solved the problem. The range was clean, no empty shells, and everybody was fine.

Until there was a bank robbery and a shootout. Two officers were found dead in this shootout. One of the officers had a fist full of empty cartridges and the other officer had his hand in his pocket, putting empty cartridges into it.

Now, these were two officers whose lives were on the line. They’re being shot at by bank robbers and what did they do? They resorted to their training. And their training was to empty cartridges into their hands and put them into their pockets, regardless of the fact that it was much quicker and much faster just to let the empty cartridges hit the ground.

That is the way you do it for real. But if you do not train that way, you will not do it, even under stress.

TFT makes sure that everything you do works exactly the way it’s going to work when you’re going to need it. There’s no differentiation. Everything that we compare our methodologies and principles against are the standard of, How does this work against real criminal violence. That is the only standard that TFT has.

We don’t compare ourselves against other martial arts or combat sports. We compare how effective our principles and methodologies are in dealing with the real world of violence.

If you train for anything less than that, or if anything hinders you, you’re severely hampered when facing real violence.