Author: Garry Smith

Stalking Part II: Getting Past the Obvious – Tammy Yard McCracken

“I stalked you on the internet…”

“I’ve been lurking around his Facebook page”

“I totally follow every social media site for ________”

Sounds creepy. Only it isn’t in our world of social media. Constant internet access has created a culturally acceptable context under the nomenclature of stalking. We follow each other around on Facebook, Instagram, webpages, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. and joke about stalking people online. We joke about it because it is acceptable behavior. Sometimes we tell on ourselves, sometimes we don’t. If someone tells you they stalked your Facebook page, it is because they are perfectly comfortable with their actions and expect you will be too. It’s what we do because we can – information at our fingertips and all that. This is not an overt indicator of future violence. Nor is it an indicator –in and of itself – of twisted social scripts, and if they never tell you…you will be completely unaffected. Calling this new form of voyeuristic research stalking is an unfortunate, albeit loosely accurate application of the language; but it is not an expression of violence or risk.

What puts stalking on the spectrum of violent behavior is when it involves evident assumptions of license against the autonomy of another human being. While it’s true that not all stalking includes physical violence causing pain, injury, damage, or imprisonment; it is nonetheless well inside the parameters of violence dynamics. It assumes license against autonomy because, at a point, the hunter has made unilateral decisions about the target’s future. Before taking this deeper, two quick reminders from the first article:

  • all stalking, socially sanctioned or not, is hunting
  • there is a point along the trajectory of the hunt at which the stalking becomes evident to the intended target

On the first point: predators stalk their prey. Humans are predators. Therefore, if you are stalking someone’s Facebook page, you are hunting. Maybe you are just curious about what an old friend from high school is up to, but it is still hunting.

On the second point: the hunter must reveal itself to complete the hunt. This reveal may be overt, like an ambush; or it may be a gradual build from secretive to evident behaviors demonstrating a toxic spin of standard social scripts. In either category there is a point along the continuum in which the target becomes conscious of the hunter.

When the awareness hits, our understanding of what it means to be prey kicks in. Our lizard brain opens both eyes and knocks on the back door of our monkey and human brains. Senses heighten and a variety of physical warning signals begin to flash in the target’s body. Reports of feeling the presence of the predator long before there is visual contact are not paranoia. This is our instinct-driven ability to identify subtle changes in the environment necessary for survival when we lived on the savannah following herds.

In our current reality, most people have never met their Lizard brain. This is not a bad thing. It is good to experience safety and security. Because most people have not met their primitive Lizard brain, most people in domesticated societies do not know what it feels like when the Lizard brain begins to stir. The consequence is dismissal. If the Lizard brain begins to shake off its hibernation and you have no context for it, your monkey brain will resist it.

This is critical. Even in the mid stages of a stalking timeline when the Threat’s actions are becoming more obvious, targets will create justifications for their primal alarm system and work to dismiss/justify the Threat’s behavior.

I have the odd distinction of being hunted by two distinct types of stalkers[1]. Drawing from these experiences, I can look back at the timelines and see any number of red flags that were present early on in the hunt. I did not identify them consciously because they didn’t match any of my mental blue prints. My Lizard brain stirred and I ignored it. Too primitive. Too visceral. Too antithetical to my social scripts and schemas.

This is what makes conscious boundary setting a complex and uncertain process when we try to apply boundary setting to stalking dynamics.

Dismissing the early indicators guarantees the hunt will progress and the hunter will grow more confident. Early awareness is no magic wand. Awareness is insufficient without action and early action may or may not shut the stalking behaviors down. Early detection does give the intended target a greater number of options. Uninterrupted, the stalking timeline escalates. Always. As the timeline escalates, options for the target shrink and standard boundary setting becomes increasingly ineffective and has been known to periodically escalate the stalker’s aggression.

What are the early indicators? In reviewing the common published bullet points, the material generally addresses behavioral indicators of the stalker, which means the hunt has progressed fairly deep into the timeline. If the behavior is observable by the target or a third party, the hunter is getting more confident and doesn’t mind being seen. Again, once the hunting behavior is openly observable, the timeline is deep.

I want to press back even farther. Instead of trying to find ways to see a hunter in stealth mode, let’s go to something potentially more reliable at an earlier point on the timeline. The movement of your Lizard Brain.

The subtle internal markers of your Lizard Brain coming awake can show up before observable behavioral flags in the Threat. If the hair stands up on the back of your neck or you feel like you need to shake off an interaction – literally – this is the Lizard brain stirring inside its hibernation. There are other indicators of your lizard brain waking up; the instinct to stop and look around for no apparent reason, a gut check that you’re being watched, eyes narrowing (yours) in response to an interaction with someone who bugs you, the little voice in the back of your head that was weird, again as it relates to bumping into the person hunting you.

One of the responsibilities of your primal survival programming is to make you invisible to the Threat. Eyes (and the brains processing the visual information), like things that move. Predator’s eyes are designed to really like things that move. Moving shadows under the cabinets mean potential meals for house cats. It’s why cats like to play with pieces of string pulled across the floor. It is also why mice freeze when Fluffy makes the scene. So do we. Another indicator your Lizard brain is being summoned is when you feel the need to just go still. You are more noticeable when you move, easier to see, easier to assess, easier to track. When you are still, you are less attractive. It is why playing possum works for the possums. No, it’s not quite that simple but the Lizard brain is working off some pretty primal cues.

These are a few examples of what it can look/feel like when your primal survival instincts are beginning to influence your perception. There are more and some will be unique to you and your circumstances. Our lizard brains have not gone extinct for a reason. When yours wants to come out of hibernation, make note. The earliest of warning signs won’t stand up in isolation but if you keep track of little Lizard Brain Alerts, you gain an advantage in the timeline.

Note: I would be remiss to ignore the obvious. Lizard Brain Alerts do not automatically mean you are being stalked, it is a correlation of sorts. Our eyes narrow when we experience something distasteful, that could be any number of things. Right now, this is all theory and throwing darts to see what might be useful, or not.

[1] There are several taxonomies for categories of stalking patterns depending on the research and researcher. No one taxonomy is universally accepted as best I can ascertain.

 

Curriculum Matters – Garry Smith

Many years ago, it seems like several lifetimes ago, I worked in further and higher education. I taught sociology, plus a few other subjects as diverse as map reading and orientation (theory and practice), psephology, statistics to name a few, and I managed a programme responsible for half of the college’s total recruitment. It was overall an interesting period in my life bearing in mind less than 10 years earlier I had walked into that same college as a student with no qualifications at all.

The programme that I ran started with 300 enrolments a year onto part time courses typically lasting 2 to 3 days, within 2 years I had absorbed another programme area into mine and expanded it. We then recruited around 3000 students a year. A lot of students attended a series of courses and some continued onto full time study and eventually to university. I learned a lot from the experiences and together with my experiences managing a number of companies, creating a few companies, and being a director of a few, has helped me in setting up and running my own company for the last 9 years.

So this morning I was chatting with my wife Karen over tea/coffee in the conservatory, I was running some ideas past her, again, she is a very patient woman having put up with me for 28 years. It is true that she knows me better than I do myself. The ideas I was running past her were ones I have also discussed a lot with my CRGI colleague and friend Jayne. I am also influenced by some of the things I have read recently and our steadily growing student numbers.

To date our curriculum offer has had 3 strands, Ju Jitsu, self defence and self defence and fitness, each with its own separate and differentiated content, aims and objectives. I am comfortable with this and yes it is proving successful, we incorporated the Ju Jitsu into our offer in September 2014 and created a management triad of myself, Bill and Jayne and we have around 8 other senior black belts who we consult with when making any significant changes to the Ju Jitsu. The self defence is run solely by me although both Bill and Jayne teach this too.

The decision we have taken is to expand our number of classes and the curriculum offer. There are a lot of very small factors influencing our decision and a few bigger ones. Going for growth presents many challenges but I have realised I am currently sat snugly in my comfort zone. It is an easy thing to do like boiling a frog; I have sat here with the water slowly warming around me so to speak. Luckily for me, I hope, I have an inquiring mind and am open to the opinions and ideas of others. Insular thinking is the cause of stagnation and the enemy of progress. So message received, thank you Karen, thank you Jayne, it is time to begin the process of putting ideas into action.

There will be no sudden change, there is much yet to discuss, but it is now a time to commit to action. I am currently reading Smarter Faster Better; the Secrets of Being Productive and it is very interesting, Duhigg uses great analogies and storytelling to put across some fascinating ideas and concepts, it is consolidating and building on my prior experiences and learning. It has given me the encouragement I needed to make my decision to expand the business.

Instead of thinking about all the crap that is out there, see previous articles on McDojo’s, Warriors etc, it is time to build on what we have created so far and take it to the next level, we have good product delivered well by competent, well informed people who I trust.  So I am listening to the voices of those I trust, preparing the ground with the start of a business plan, bringing in those who can help make this happen and visualising the journey ahead. The old maxim that “the only thing constant is change”, Heraclitus, is true.

So it is time to build the team and develop a more expansive, or at least expanding curriculum offer. This is not simply a lets bolt on whatever we can method of building, grabbing random martial arts to fill the timetable so we appear to offer everything to everybody. I have seen that happen and I have seen it fail. Firstly I have made a formal business offer to Jayne and am pleased she has accepted, there is a lot to do and we need to build an academy with a coherent curriculum.

When the terms curriculum or curricula are used in educational contexts without qualification, specific examples, or additional explanation, it may be difficult to determine precisely what the terms are referring to—mainly because they could be applied to either all or only some of the component parts of an organisations academic program or courses.

Having a background in academia I am keen to avoid misusing the terms curriculum or curricula. I personally think it is central to building a lasting and coherent educational organisation. For me, and I would like to think us, the term curriculum refers to the lessons and academic content taught in a school or in a specific course or program.

In many cases curriculum is often defined as the courses offered by an organisation, school or college depending on how broadly those using it define or employ the term.

For ourselves curriculum typically refers to the knowledge and skills our students are expected to learn, which includes the learning standards and learning objectives they are expected to meet; the units and lessons that are taught as well as any books, materials, videos, presentations, and readings used in a course; and the methods of assessment, (grading/tests), we use to measure student achievement and learning. This will involve learning facilitated at the Academy and supported by digital learning packages developed via CRGI.

So we have our emergent plan based on experience, observation and discussion, we have our ambition to build a growing thriving learning organisation and we have the intention of basing it on a sound academic foundation. We have some support from Sheffield Hallam University and we will seek to accredit our learning in appropriate ways where that will improve our offer.

If this does not work out, and it is clearly a work in progress, then we may just be forced to return to the back of an envelope.

So what is the moral of this tale, well we run a Dojo, but it is an aspirational Dojo. The professionalization of what we do is important to us, it is what differentiates us from our competitors, and it is our USP,(unique selling point). As we progress this will be key to our ability to market what we do as gold standard and as such allow us to develop a commercially viable business. We have seen a number of full time Dojo’s come and go as they launch on a well meant wing and a prayer.

Anyone who has built a house, or even an extension, will know that you cannot do so on dodgy foundations. Carefully defining what will be our curriculum offer is the foundation of our expansion; it is worth taking a little time deciding what it will be and how it will facilitate the kind of high quality learning experience we want it to provide where both the learners and the organisation itself operate with a growth mindset and culture as opposed to a fixed one.

We are sure we will learn valuable lessons along the way but if you have already done this and wish to offer us some advice, we are all ears, thank you.

 

Institutionalized Darwinism – Erik Kondo

Many people have a basic understanding of Darwin’s theory of National Selection a/k/a Survival of the Fittest. The premise is that as a species evolve, the stronger more effective traits and characteristics survive and propagate, while the weaker ones dwindle and die out. As a result, the species as a whole is always improving.

Natural Selection can also be seen in certain fields of human performance and their associated training methodologies. Specifically, those areas where the high end of absolute performance in a given field keeps improving. For examples, look at many fields of athletics or extreme sports where performance records are constantly being broken. Achievements and stunts once considered impossible have become routine. Speed records for running, jumping, climbing, swimming, and more are broken regularly. For aerial stunts, single backflips have morphed into doubles, then into triples.

But then there are also those areas of human activity where improvements haven’t occurred. Or even worse, performances have become inferior over time. How can this be? Shouldn’t the effect of Natural Selection create steady improvement in all areas as better methods replace worse?

The first answer is that Darwinism requires a reason/motivation to create change. Without a reason to change or a motivating threat of some sort, Darwinism doesn’t apply. In that case, inertia rules and nothing changes. Training methods are static and handed down from generation to generation. The philosophy is that it is done this way because it has always been done this way.

Now look at areas where absolute performance is deteriorating.

What if Natural Selection is actually happening, but this type of Natural Selection is geared towards to benefiting the associated Institution rather than the Individual?

For example, look at the Martial Arts Industry as a whole (the Institution) in terms of self-defense. Darwinism as applied to Individuals would mean that martial arts practitioners would keep getting better and better at defending themselves. Absolute training times to achieve reasonable proficiency would get shorter. Self-defense effectiveness would increase for more people, and a greater variety of people. But that isn’t happening.

Despite Institutionalized claims to the contrary, overall martial arts effectiveness for self-defense is arguably getting worse, or at least not improving. Does that mean that Darwinism doesn’t apply to the Martial Arts Industry? Or is the Institution of the Martial Arts benefiting at the expense of individual performance?

Institutionalized Darwinism is my name for the process in which the ongoing change benefits the needs of the Institution rather than the needs of the individual. And that may also mean at the expense of the Individual.

What are the needs of martial arts organizations? A few are: to grow in size and scope, to attract more students, to make more money, to sell more products, to become more influential in society. Making martial arts classes non-challenging to student’s egos and promoting fantasy fighting disguised as self-defense training benefits the Institution, but does nothing to advance Individual self-defense effectiveness.

Institutionalized Darwinism explains the majority of YouTube self-defense videos, moves, and tips. The Process of Natural Selection doesn’t weed out the bad and promote the good from the standpoint of the Individual, but it does benefit someone or something. It is up to you to determine who or what benefits from these promoted training methodologies, most likely, it isn’t you.

 

Youtube Video of the Week – Jordan Peterson on Nazism and Communism

After a week of more conflict it is interesting to reflect on what Nazism and Communism actually did, the millions killed, the misery and pain inflicted on billions.

Jordan Peterson describes his motivation to fight back against all forms of totalitarianism, this is for my friends in America in particular, if you want the whole book ‘Maps of Meaning’ is available from the link below.

Stay safe people, lose your strings, don’t lie to yourself and think freely.

Regards, Garry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXXG_sOjPDk

https://joeclark.org/peterson/peterson_mapsofmeaning-en.pdf

Facebook Post of the Week – Liam Jackson

As expected, the defense team for James Fields is already at work painting Fields as a “victim” who was merely fleeing from the scene rather than targeting anti-protesters. Allegedly, people associated with Antifa had assaulted his car with baseball bats just prior Fields driving his car into the crowd. Supporters of Fields claim he wasn’t attacking anyone. He was “just afraid for his life.” Those same supporters claim Antifa and BLM supporters came to the rally armed with bats and other weapons.

Meanwhile, the white supremacist site, The Dailey Stormer, promises “bigger and better” neo-nazi rallies in the very near future. (The Virginia rally begs the question, “How does the DS define “bigger and better? By body count?”

The point of all this? Several, in fact. First, as Fields traverses the legal system, it’s reasonable to expect both extremist sides to become rather animated. (re: violent as hell) If by some twisted act of fate Fields is exonerated or receive a reduced sentence based on mitigating circumstances, the alt-Left will make all previous protests and rallies look like a slow day at Sunday school. And the Neo-Nazi movement will be screaming “blood and soil” from the top of the proverbial mountain.

If Fields receives the maximum penalty, he’s an instant Neo-Nazi martyr.

Now, an excerpt from the Idiot’s Guide to Civil Warfare- Chapter 1: “Escalation”

“Boys and girls, “escalation” works like this: First, you have “differences.” Differences in appearances, social mores, ideals, motivations, and in some instances behaviours. Thus, the Us and Them mindset begins to establish itself. Next, someone from Side A articulates those differences, pointing out the perceived , or perhaps in some cases legitimate inadequacies of “Side B’s” position(s). Side B responds in kind, yet in a higher volume. This, of course, really infuriates Side A. So Side A responds in kind, yet louder still by an order of magnitude. And all the while, both A and B are screaming at any remaining sides “Those rat bastids are out to get ya’! Your only hope is to join us!”

At this point, rational thought has surrendered with a whimper to Emotion. Armed with the ever dangerous Emotion, the arch enemy of Logic, someone resorts to physical violence. He punches someone from the other side. This where the real fun (not!) begins.

A punches B. B retaliates by buying mace. A retaliates by hitting B in the head with a stick. B retaliates by hitting A with a thrown brick. A says “Screw this hand-to-hand stuff, I’ll just run over B with my trusty Prius.”

B is madder than hell, now, and says “you can’t run me down if I shoot you!” A responds with, “You can’t shoot me if I blow your home up while you’re sleeping!”

Meanwhile, Sides C and D. neither of whom have any other direct involvement with either group (other than a love for drama, or are easily moved by fear-mongering) are slowly but surely drawn in, eventually drinking the Kool Aid from A or B.

And Side E, safely insulated from the chaos, sits back, prodding all the aforementioned sides with a very long stick, waiting patiently to devour the “winner.” (re: the last standing Loser)”

End of excerpt.

Stalking: Getting the Conversation Started – Tammy Yard McCracken

This is going to be a series. Digging into stalking is paradoxical. It is both straightforward hunting, and complexly twisted socially driven asocial behavior. It’s going to take more than one article.

Starting with the straightforward. Stalking is a robust behavioral expression of humans as apex level predators. A four-legged predator stalks the herd while determining where and when it will act on the targeted prey. If you watch a domesticated house cat stalking a bird, mouse, or bug; the body posture, pattern of movement, eye gaze are all billboard level telegraphs that scream I Am Hunting.

A stalking cat’s behavior is subtle to its prey, that’s why it works and has evolved as an innate skill set. Observing from outside of the species, the behaviors are obvious and leave no doubt about the feline’s intentions. Just as cats can stalk subtlety enough to go largely undetected by their Target, so can humans.

Humans in stalking mode don’t generally panther-crawl their way down the street behind the Target. Like cats, humans develop stalking skills adapted to their specific prey. Panther crawling through the grass would be comically obvious….the subject was apprehended while belly crawling up the walk behind the intended target, no one was more surprised than Mr. Jones in discovering he was being hunted. Onlookers were equally stunned. “We just didn’t see him coming…” Not how it would go down.

People hunt like people, not like cats. Wait. That’s not entirely true. Like cats, people stalking other people will invest significant energy to ensure they don’t get caught in the hunt. They don’t want to scare the prey before it’s time to pounce. Once pouncing commences, hunting in stealth mode no longer matters.

In human terms, this means people who stalk will blend into the environment. They will work through the social patterns and to a degree, the mores of the group. And like the mouse or bird who skitters in surprise when the cat materializes out of nowhere, so too do humans startle when they realize they have been in the cross hairs. By the time an Intended discovers s/he has been the focus of stalking, the game is deep in play. More on that in the next article.

In my experience, it isn’t just the Intended who gets startlingly disconcerted when the stalking comes to light. People listening to details of stalking situations tend to have a significant reaction as well[1]. Perhaps there is something uniquely creepy about discovering we stalk one another with the same proficiency as our four-legged friends. Maybe because stalking is such an invisible threat, the nature of it is disconcerting. Maybe, stalking is a little too theoretical because we only hear about it happening with the famous and noteworthy figures of our culture.

It’s not as uncommon as this assumption indicates if we look at statistics from the Bureau of Justice.  The BoJ stats show across any given 12-month span, 14 in every 1000 people 18 and older are the intended targets of stalking. The numbers are based on reported stalking, which means there’s a good chance the numbers are higher. Add to this, the first stalking laws didn’t go live until 1990.

The numbers aren’t accurate but they provide a soft baseline. Emphasis on soft. Part of the problem in working with Stalking from a prevention/defense perspective is how deftly stalking grows out of standard socially scripted (i.e. accepted) behaviors. This is evidenced in the substantial variation state to state regarding what is prosecutable behavior under stalking codes.

The Bureau of Justice Summary as an example:

  • State laws vary regarding the element of victim fear and emotional distress, as well as the requisite intent of the stalker.
  • Some state laws specify that the victim must have been frightened by the stalking, while others require only that the stalking behavior would have caused a reasonable person to experience fear.
  • States vary regarding what level of fear is required.
  • Some state laws require prosecutors to establish fear of death or serious bodily harm, while others require only that prosecutors establish that the victim suffered emotional distress.

You can fact check the stats here: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=973

This is a damned wide variable. How do you determine the difference between a hard crush, a determined suitor, and criminal stalking?  How scared are you? And what if you are terrified but the fear is based on paranoid projections and delusions? How will we know? Not everyone with clinically paranoid ideations wears a tinfoil hat.

What is the plumb line for answering the question is this stalking? Am I an Intended Target?

 In here somewhere we stumble into the conversation about boundary setting and how that interplays with the advanced stage of the behavior because remember, most Intendeds (intended targets) do not know they are being stalked until the Threat has been manipulating the hunt for quite some time. Weeks, months, years.

Research into the accepted practice on advise-giving for people who believe they are being stalked follows a fairly standard set of behavioral directives when compared across a broad span of resources. What is also standard or common to these suggestions is they are advising the Intended Target once there are open indicators of the stalking dynamic. Useful information applied to a point in the timeline well past the early stages where prevention is an option.

Once you have the obvious evidence, prevention is moot. You can work to prevent deeper escalation but the time for authentic prevention and early de-escalation with effective boundary setting is past. Add into this, regardless of the point of awareness and intervention, boundaries are established in network of accepted social patterns. This raises the question: how can boundary setting be effective when the Threat’s perception of boundaries is toxically skewed, or nonexistent?

No solid answers, a few thoughts and ideas though. That’s what this, and the next two articles in this series are digging around in.

[1] These startled reactions include people experienced with violent encounters. This seems noteworthy.

 

The ‘Real’ Gladiator Diet – Mark Hatmaker

Imagination Time-Call forth images of the lean and mean, jacked and ripped cast of the television show Spartacus. You know the body-type I’m talking about, the taut, toned, chiseled body-fat of 5% physiques that reek of 2-3 HIT workouts per day and scrupulously avoiding all sugars and carbs, while piling on all the paleo-approved goodies that you can choke down.

Got those enviable images in mind?

Terrific!

Before we get to The Gladiator Diet, allow me to ask another question of our Spartacus cast-members.

No matter how jacked and ripped these performers are, no matter how much undoubted discipline and hard work goes into attaining these forms, do we think this translates to true gladiatorial skill? Actual combat prowess?

Of course, not.

Don’t get me wrong, hard-work is hard-work and we are able to do more with a fit athlete than an unfit athlete but these performers would be the first to tell you they eat and train to look like warriors not to be warriors.

With this said, what did the actual gladiators consume to fuel for actual gladiator combat? Might there be a difference between training to be a gladiator and training to be a pretend gladiator?

You betcha.

Paleo-pathologists Karl Grossschmidt and Fabian Kanz, both of the Medical University at Vienna, have been doing analyses of more than 60 gladiator skeletons found buried in a mass grave in western Turkey [formerly Ephesus.] They subjected the remains to isotopic analysis which allowed them to assay for trace elements and determine the composition of the diet that went into making these warriors of the Colosseum.

So what did they find? Were they Paleo? Were they on the Zone? Were the gladiators on the South Beach Diet? Surely, to God, they were at least on the Mediterranean Diet considering where they were. What exactly fueled these real gladiators?

Turns out, they were primarily on a vegetarian diet. Not just that, a vegetarian diet heavy on the carbs.

Keep in mind the diet was not based in poverty or a dearth of protein sources as other non-gladiator skeletons from the same region do not show this same dietary make-up. Also keep in mind gladiators, whether slaves or voluntary were a valuable commodity and it seems they weren’t being deprived of meat, but rather being fed as well as the gladiator Ianista [trainer] could afford to keep his athletes in peak condition for the performances.

The results of the isotopic analyses should be of little surprise to the deep digging historian who is aware that contemporaneous accounts of gladiators often referred to them as hordearii [that is, “barely men.”] Many extant purchasing bills for the gladiatorial schools reflect a diet heavy on barley, heavy on legumes, that is lots and lots and lots of beans. Lots and lots of carbs.

It seems, despite our images of Spartacus or 300 cast-members, that gladiators were groomed to be a bit, well, fat, and what is more, purposefully so.

One To increase mass as we are dealing with a no-weight class competition [the opposite of what we have in today’s tamer combat sports] and…

Two To allow the subcutaneous fat to act as a sort of dermal armor. Grossschmidt states, “Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat. A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.”

Three This layer of fat provides a better show. Grossschmidt again, [Surface wounds] “look more spectacular. If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on. It doesn’t hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.”

Think of this as being akin to blading, juicing, gigging, or getting color in professional wrestling in which the athletes intentionally cut themselves on the sly to add to the drama of the spectacle.

An intriguing addition to their isotope analyses reveals a high calcium content, meaning that the gladiator athletes were supplementing their carb heavy diet with calcium supplements. The historical record shows that gladiators often garnered this calcium not with a trip to the nutrition store, but by chugging concoctions that included calcium rich substances such as charred wood or bone ash.

Then, as now, anything to pursue an advantage.

So, with the science and history in mind, real gladiators looked less like Gerard Butler in 300 [Spartans and not gladiators I know, but you get my drift] or anyone in the cast of Spartacus and perhaps a bit more like UFC fighter Roy “Big Country” Nelson.

Whether or not this actual gladiator diet would work for us or not is not the point of today’s fun. But rather to point out what is often the wide gulf between reality and the comic book images that we often allow to intrude on fact.

The proof, more often than not, is in the hard work and the diligent drilling than it is in what you digest and/or look like on the beach.

At least that’s what the gladiators and scientists would tell us.

http://www.extremeselfprotection.com

 

 

 

Gaining Experience by Proxy Part III – Marc Macyoung

Cont’d.

Another place where experience does tend to matter is when it comes to ‘off the curriculum’ questions. These are the kinds of questions that every teacher is going to run into. I’m not talking about ‘what if monkeys’ (the guys who ask what do you do when you’re walking through a dark alley and you’re attacked by 27 ninja with uzis), I’m talking about legitimate questions about stuff that is not on the syllabus, but is related to the topic. The reason this gets a .75 as well is this. On one hand a person with experience can reach back into their own history and answer the question with what he or she did, experienced and felt. (Often these questions have to do with overcoming internal issues.) Furthermore, an experienced person can often take in the information in the question, assess it and come up with a functioning answer. So for on the spot responses, experience can be a powerful tool.

On the other hand, one person’s experience does not the whole subject make. What’s more, just because the instructor could do it, doesn’t mean the student can. There are a lot of variables that went into the experienced person’s success in those particular circumstances — and this includes mental and physical capabilities. So just because it worked for him, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everyone. More over, different people who have been there came up with different answers. Answers that also worked. Keep this last in mind because it’s important.

It’s important because there can also be a downside to experience. That is, when you’ve had someone try and kill you, you can get extremely conservative about ‘what works.’ Some people take it past that and get into ‘MY WAY IS THE ONLY WAY!” This is especially true if they develop the curriculum and didn’t have it vetted by others who have also been there. So yes, the instructor can fall back on his experience, but his experience isn’t the only way to handle the problem.

The reason ‘off the syllabus’ questions and experience is a .75 issue is both someone who has been there and someone who hasn’t need to use the same strategy for dealing with them. That is referencing the views of other people who have been there.

The thing to consider is that often these kinds of questions are generally predictable. As an instructor you will be asked these kinds of questions. That means you can prepare for them.  For example, someone who hasn’t been there can still answer these kinds of questions with “About that, Marc MacYoung says (this). Rory Miller says (this). Peyton Quinn says (this).” A person who has been there can also use the same tactic. “I say (this). Marc MacYoung says (this). Rory Miller says (this).” In both cases, this allows the student to consider different points of view and assessment of what he/she is asking about.

Why is this important?

Let me put it to you in these terms: I’ve spent nearly five decades fighting, engaging in violence, dealing with its repercussions, training, preparing, studying, researching, writing, teaching and lecturing about violence. I am a court-recognized expert witness. I have taught police and military in nine different countries and have over 22 titles published about violence, crime avoidance, personal safety and professional use of force.

I tell you this to put something into perspective. Every morning I get up and am nearly overwhelmed by what I don’t know about the subject of violence.

So you ask can someone who has ‘not been there teach?’ Well, the bottom line is nobody has been everywhere. Everyone has holes in his or her experience and can only rely on both getting and providing quality information regarding the subject.

I recently had a discussion about what to do with an ambush attack from point blank range; an attack meant to kill you. That’s a situation I have been in multiple times. The guy I was talking to, however, had a specific circumstance I’d never dealt with before. That was what to do when the guy grabs your carbine with one hand, jerks the barrel off line and swings a machete at you with the other hand.

Now this is the kind of problem a civilian isn’t likely to have. It is a problem likely to pop up with SWAT officers and people in his line of work. The point is, the response we were discussing had been vetted in actual situations where one of the participants was going to die. The response works to keep the person with the carbine alive. How do we know this? Because the guy with the carbine wasn’t decapitated, and the other guy was dead.

In contrast, I see a lot of people who charge a lot of money for these super cool techniques they come up with. They claim these moves will work, and people get all giggly and excited by practicing them in high-priced seminars. When I look at them, I see techniques that at the very best will result in double kills. At worst, they’ll fail miserably because of the actual physics of such circumstances. Not imagined, but actual physics. The person who came up with these groovy, cool, studly responses had never been in those circumstances or checked the feasibility of those moves with someone who had.

I consider this critical because as a ‘teacher,’ you are putting your students’ lives on the line with the quality of the information you provide. Not just their lives, but large chunks of it if they go to prison for what you didn’t teach them about violence and self-defense.

Like the IED/Humvee training, it doesn’t matter that much if you’ve been there or not. What matters is the quality of the information you provide (and whether it’s been checked and vetted by people who know that topic). As an instructor, whether you’re experienced or not, don’t ever give into the temptation to think you know it all. Keep on researching and trying to learn. As a student, don’t believe anyone who gives critical topics about violence a ‘hand wave.’ (“Oh we teach that, too” before they drop the subject and then get on with the cool macho shit and ass kicking.) Be an informed consumer because you’re staking your life on the quality of the information you’re paying for.

 

The Four W’s – Darren Friesen

I want to say this with a ton of sobriety, clarity and seriousness and zero machismo and testosterone. I’ve always been known as a high-skill/explosive-speed guy. However, as I get older, I question the validity of these alone in any kind of serious violent struggle for my life. They are traits and fallible traits at that.

I am a 45-year old foreigner in Central America, 5’10”, 170 pounds that stands out so take this into consideration (objectivity) as you read this as you’ll have your own personal caveats that affect your evolving life scenarios. As I get older, the need to stay safe and protect my family stays the same. There’s another gap that inevitably widens for everybody. I have visualized and analyzed deeply when I would be able to use lethal force, when I wouldn’t, when it’s inappropriate, when I would have inner resistance over doing so and what the consequences would be of doing so. I have not taken this lightly and, as you all know, I don’t talk tough nor see this industry as a forum to act like a killer. That all being said, speed, skill, strength, stamina…all these things fade as we age, to one degree or another. As I’ve grown older and wiser, I believe that there are 4 elements that will/can keep me upright if shtf and have tried to cater my training and those of my students around:

1. WILL. The intent, drive, intensity and full commitment to go home at the end of the day. Whether peacefully or not so. One of many intangibles that simply cannot be read from a video, a post, a commentary but an internal fire.

2. WILE. Cutting corners, dirty tactics, misdirection, subterfuge. Being creative, inventive and diverse. Gaining the edge psychologically, physically, emotionally, mentally. “The one with the most flexibility on the system, most often controls the system.”

3. WITS. A cerebral approach to self-defense. One that doesn’t dive head-first into the storm without thinking but finding a varied method approach with the holistic view of “being safe” that circumvents style, system or art. Taking into account legal, social, ethical, financial, emotional, mental factors that dictate outcome pre-, mid- and post-conflict. Smart overrules cocky/tough the vast majority of times.

4. WEAPONS. Yes, there is a huge stigma that is omni-present in this area. Online, the ego of will-to-use, aggressive commentary, zero forethought as to consequence, the psychological state that goes into using one on another human being. I have not thought lightly on this. They are, however, a force equalizer and to not acknowledge this would be as naive as the other end of the spectrum just mentioned. As I get older, having to defend my life against someone bigger, faster, stronger or with their own weapons or friends is a monumental task and will increasingly become so as the years pass.

Just some thoughts, think heavily and profoundly on this, base your personal training accordingly and do research on how difficult real violence can be if you haven’t lived it yourself. It’s not as organized and cookie-cutter as many will have you believe.