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

Bookmark and Share