I've seen people that have trained for years in doing this and doing that have been bashed or stabbed by guys that haven't done any training at all and I never forget that.

This is hard-won wisdom that colors pretty much everything I do as a practitioner and instructor. Thanks for pointing that out.

Thank you very much indeed for taking the time and trouble to illuminate so brilliantly the particular points I raised.

Your detailed answer serves to make the TFT position on these matters much clearer in terms of theory and actual practice for those of us unable to attend the regular San Diego Mastery sessions.

I'm a very satisfied customer!

"This video shows anti-social violence of the kind that happens routinely each weekend here in London. Now let's suppose the victim had been a TFT mastery student and used his intensive TFT training in this situation.

"Later."

I've trained people who have used this skill in the most dire of circumstances — guns, knives, multiman, and at least one premeditated attempted murder. In every case they survived — and won — without having to kill the people who came after them. They could have, and would probably have been cleared given the situation, but they didn't. That's because they achieved, and recognized, nonfunctional before they got to killing.

'Nonfunctional' means simply that you're comfortable turning your back on the man and walking away. This can mean different things for different people depending on the situation. For some it's simple unconsciousness, for others it's the person visibly quitting, being preoccupied with his injuries and behaving like an injured person. We leave this as a judgment call for each individual.

We train people to injure people. More importantly, we train people how to recognize success, and what to do with it. Each injury is a choice based on what they recognize they achieved, and what they want beyond that. We're also very clear on which injuries tend to be life-threatening — giving the practicioner the ability to change their target a few inches to get the clavicle instead of the throat. Or vice-versa.

Most of the time it's over so quickly — nonfunctional status achieved and recognized — that the person chose to stop before inflicting needless harm. In other words, recognizing that they didn't need to stomp on his throat or break his neck because the man was no longer a threat.

In the end, unrestrained violence is only appropriate any time you'd find it appropriate to pull a gun and shoot to kill. If that's not the case, I recommend you go out of your way to avoid the situation. Unlike a firearm, using your body to cause injury gives you a lot of flexibility in the type and severity of those injuries.

For anyone who's interested in training to go physical with the antisocial — for submission, control, or 'fighting' — there are many training options out there. Just remember that you do what you train, so it can be difficult to switch it up in a true life-or-death situation. Also remember the risk you're taking when you choose to engage when it's 'merely antisocial' — most of the time people don't die in such situations, but it can happen. You can accidentally kill someone. And accidentally be killed.

The antisocial/asocial paradigm gives us a rough guideline to understand the avoidable vs. the unavoidable, and how to operate in each. Given that, our physical training is for breaking the human machine in the most extreme ways possible, and yet, our methodology is so thorough that in practice our clients have shown great restraint. Restraint that is only possible when you combine a willingness to truly injure the other person with a complete understanding of precisely what each injury will do.

Thanks for your comments, and I hope this helps.

Somewhere in the series of tubes that is teh Interwebs your following comment got lost. I'm reposting it here so I can address your points:

Terry wrote:

"Chris,

"I find your anti-social/asocial paradigm very problematic. Take the video in question. Was that anti-social or asocial violence? The gang didn't want to kill their victim. If they had they would have acted totally differently – with ten or a dozen kicks and stomps to the head instead of just a couple."

The antisocial/asocial pradigm is clearest at the extremes, say, when comparing the bar fight over a perceived slight against an attempted murder. It gets admittedly fuzzy as you move from those extremes toward the center. A bar fight can turn into an attempted murder just as what looks like a life-or-death situation can be simple aggression. The closer these two poles get the more it becomes a judgment call on the part of the individual who feels threatened.

I always assumed that the difference between 'fighting' and 'killing' was clear and understood by all — my first mistake. The antisocial/asocial discussion came out of a very challenging course we taught in Dallas where everyone was coming at the material like it was for casual play-fighting or some kind of super-badass bar skill. We drew the line so people could get their heads screwed on straight and put the information in the proper context: violence, the way we train it, is appropriate for any situation where you'd need to shoot a person to death if you had a gun. We just show you how to do it without the firearm.

The sole purpose in presenting this video is to illustrate what works in violence. The three men put the tool to good use (though there are many places they could improve). As I've stated before, our problem as sane, socialized people is that we empathize with the victim and try to work solutions from his situation. This is a trap. If we're going to be effective at using violence we have to look at those who 'win.' This isn't easy, trivial, or comfortable… but empathizing with the victim and trying to train from his perspective means we're always going to be a half-step behind, and we're training to behave like desperate prey animals instead of predators.

It's this honesty on your part that gives TFT its credibility, not just with me but with all those lucky enough to have encountered a system that really does add a whole new (scientific) dimension to effective self-offence.

I'm just about to order your Throwing DVD set.

In training terms, we start at the point of first injury. What has happened before that doesn't matter.

As you note, quiet confidence is very different from — and more effective than — bravado. Bravado is a caricature of confidence, it scares off the people you didn't need to worry about in the first place and can actually attract the worst among us.

But even that deterrent confidence can fail us. When people are looking for other humans to prey upon, they'll pass over those exuding that confidence since they're not usually spoiling for a hard fight but for easy pickings. They want someone behaving like a prey animal… just like any one of us would if we were sick, feeling like crap, depressed or preoccupied. People won't pick us when we're ready. Violence is going to come to us literally when we least expect it — and we're least prepared.

Of course, from your post it sounds like you've already got all this sorted out. Keep up the good work!

Where do we start? You (TFT) start when it all kicks off. I start immediately I hit the street, with GTC's 'soft drop' 360 degree radar (and audio) sweep of my surroundings every thirty seconds. If it's good enough for the American Special Forces…

And I don't stop there. I use DETERRENCE (not 'prevention') as a critical further tool in the pre-violence stage. This is NOT bravado in the sense you have caricatured it on many occasions in your newsletters. Instead it is a completely controlled physical and mental rhythm and pattern that is understated but potent. I don't need to say anything or even look at anyone. It's all about me, focused, 'locked down', confident – leg dynamics in motion if you will!

In this situation, if it all kicks off, I'm never caught cold (as at least one TFT instructor has been) because I'm already fully warmed up, ready to explode (pre-emptively if I so decide) into and through anyone who launches, or is about to launch, a direct physical attack on me or mine.

The start determines the end.