WHY DO WE TEACH LETHAL SELF DEFENSE?
Much is made of the fact that we teach barehanded killing. It’s the sensational tagline for media reports on what we do, and it’s the first thing people notice when they see us training. Just the other day, one of the instructors at the TFT San Diego Center lamented about the difficulty in talking to […]
SELF PROTECTION: NATURE OR NURTURE?
I was recently asked how I go about helping the passive and meek develop the intent to cause injury. This opens up an interesting debate about whether self protection is nature or nurture… Is intent innate, or can it be taught and learned? There’s evidence for both sides. The most unlikely people become human demolition […]
PROTECT YOURSELF: BUILD A BETTER MONSTER
Invariably, when we’re giving instructions on how to protect yourself, we get questions along the lines of: “Okay, I get all that violence stuff — but what if he’s bigger/faster/stronger and has a knife/stick/gun/three guns?” That’s a great question. Or it would be if that were what they really meant. More often than not, people […]
WHEN YOUR LIFE IS ON THE LINE, HERE’S HOW YOU PLAY BY THE RULES
In the self-protection training environment, anything works as long as we all agree it does. On the street, the only things that work are the laws of physics. If you don’t get an injury, nothing changes in your favor. Nobody’s going to “respect your technique” just because they’re supposed to. People will keep going as […]
SLOW YOUR SELF PROTECTION TRAINING DOWN
People often ask why we insist they start with slow practice for self protection training when everybody knows that real violence is fast. One way to answer this is to think about firearms training, especially your first day on the range. If yours was anything like mine, you started with the firearm in a hip […]