Garry Smith – Page 22 – Conflict Manager

You Could Die Laughing – Al Overdrive

Street prank videos – What they can teach us about conditioned response, context and situational awareness.

At first glance prank videos are mindless entertainment; taking advantage of the element of surprise and have little value or interest to people interested in self-defence or street awareness and conflict-survival. Like many people, I find some of them funny, and some I find cross a line making me wonder “ How did these people not get knocked out for doing it?

Recently after Escrima class, my Instructor (Charlie Warren @ Urban Escrima) and I were discussing how physical training is only part of the self-defence puzzle; Regardless of if you have spent years perfecting a technique in the dojo or bench-pressing in the gym, you can’t rely on this alone, nor on the assumption that people will react the way you expect them too. Environmental awareness and consideration of unexpected factors are just as important.

This is where prank videos can be a useful tool in the self-defense practitioner’s repertoire by critically assessing the behaviour and reactions of both the prankster and the victim during an unexpected interference in public. Most conflicts we experience in ’the street’ begin either by ambush or by escalation from a minor unexpected interruption, which one party having intent and the other wondering what is happening. This is where the prankster and the attacker share a starting point and mindset.

In this piece we are going to look at four videos, from low risk through to high risk pranks, with the final video leading to a massive escalation in reactions which could have ended in a fatality.

In this first light-hearted video the pranksters film unsuspecting people using the public showers on a beach, constantly adding more shower gel until the victim realises something is wrong.

Each victim is targeted at their most vulnerable, when their ability to see and respond to a threat is reduced. Luckily for the pranksters only one lashed out blindly, nor did any passers by decide to intervene. It is up to use to decide if this was lack of awareness, lack of public spirit or that people saw it as a harmless prank. We see that the last victim panic and run off, believing he is bleeding. Imagine the scenario if what could have happened next if someone passing by him was mistaken for the prankster, or if the pranksters had been caught mid-act by him. Here a lack of consideration for others could have lead to this prank ending in court or the hospital.

The second and third videos show the importance of context and how it affects responses, and response time; The prankster pulls out boxing gloves and challenges random people to a fight. In one he is dressed as Santa, in the other he is dressed in boxing gear. While dressed as Santa most people instantly work out it’s a bit of a joke and there is no risk of harm. Without the Santa suit, people take longer to drop their mental guard and in the final situation, take their response to a higher level than the prankster was prepared for. Again the pranksters were lucky that no-one walking by decided to get involved or escalate. Again we see the pranksters relying on the public perceiving the gloves as an indicator that its not serious, instead of it being an attack by someone wanting to cause harm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHlM-yAbY6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnJ59YQB1jY

In this final video the pranksters deliberately target people they think will be up for a fight in the street, goad them into escalating to a physical fight and then use a disruption technique to stop the fight from happening. Each time just as the fight is ‘on’ they strip to a mankini, and the shock of this causes confusion triggering he ‘fight or flight’ response.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpLvrxTa6aQ

This video can teach us a lot ; The pranksters were relying on their previous experiences to survive the confrontations, and were totally unprepared for the final victim response.

The first 2 minutes of the video is interesting to test yourself to read the body language of the victims and see when they decide that the fight is ‘on’. Some of the victims take a while to comprehend what is happening, then give the pranksters verbal fences, physical fences and finally prepare to square off. Others go straight to squaring off.

At 2:27 the prank becomes more of an interesting study in pre-fight ; The victim first looks around and attempts to diffuse the situation with laughter, then resorted to verbal and physical fence to distance himself from the aggressor. His body tenses up and he becomes more focussed on the threat. When his boundry is crossed a second time he uses a more forceful push as a last resort readying himself to fight.

At 3:07 The pranksters reliance on previous ‘wins’ makes them take a risk too far and they challenge a gang of five guys. The guys at the back are laughing and aware that 2 vs 5 is not good odds, and don’t take it seriously. At 3:17 you see the guy in red move leave the group and his buddies at the back go from laughing to ‘ready’. The pranksters are so used to this prank ‘working’ that they haven’t considered what could go wrong, and do not pay any attention to the guy in red moving away and circling behind them.

Oblivious to the changes in behaviour around them or the red hooded guy drawing a firearm, the pranksters continue to goad the group of guys into getting physical, and they whip off their pants to reveal the mankini. Only after the video crew join them do the pranksters even realise that they had a gun pointed at the back of their heads.

So what lessons can self-defence practitioners learn from these prank videos?

Here are a few to start it off:

People tolerate different levels of space invasion before responding.
People have different ideas of ‘appropriate level of response’ to you
During a conflict always be aware of the possible involvement of third parties.
People may share different values and not get ‘the joke’

People are unpredictable when you threaten their self-image.

Book Review – ‘The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements’, by Eric Hoffer

Sometimes in the rush to keep up with the latest releases we fail to catch up with some older works, especially ones that predate our arrival on this spinning rock. Mass and social movements was one of the modules on my undergraduate course at the University of Warwick, taught by Professor Jim Beckford, the course was excellent and well put together but I cannot remember a reference to Hoffer, not surprising really as we were in the sociology department and not philosophy. I am still interested in how mass movements emerge and grow, be they scientology, radical Islam or popularist politics focused around Brexit or Trump, they do seem to share certain characteristics.

So when I started seeing increasing references to quotes from Hoffer, I had to take a look, I was particularly intrigued by the true believer aspect. I have been a true believer in several guises, I found sanctuary at times in the shelter offered by groups seeking to change the world for a better place. Many of us have been through this phase, those emotions, some are still there, others move on.

I found the book very interesting and thought provoking, it was what I expected. It was dated but still incredibly relevant. I sit writing this on Easter Monday, yesterday I was greeted by ‘He is risen, hallelujah’ messages on Facebook from true believers, I later watched clashes between Antifa thugs and pro-Trump thugs on the same platform, I read about the rhetoric emerging from North Korea as America and the Chinese tighten the noose around Kim Jong-un’s neck. All of which are understandable if we look at the how these people, groups and societies for their belief systems and how this informs their behaviour and actions.

We now live in an increasingly echo chamber world, I would have loved to read Hoffer’s thoughts on how that was accelerating the ease with which we become true believers. There were things in the book that would have benefitted from a more recent view but it was written post WWII at the beginning of the cold war, the reader needs to exercise a few gymnastics and if they do this book is very useful to analyse what we see around us today.

The Jonestown Massacre was post ‘True Believer’ but I bet Hoffer would have used it, referring to the 918 members of the Peoples Temple cult led by one James Warren ‘Jim’ Jones, who committed suicide by drinking a cyanide laced drink in November 1978. Jones was a Disciple of Christ pastor and was a voracious reader, as a child and studied Stalin, Marx, Hitler, Mao and Ghandi carefully noting the strengths and weaknesses of each. Jones was a charismatic leader made for the true believers, and he found them.

For me there was another interesting angle. I really enjoy the diversity of the world of martial arts, it is where I train and I earn income from it. I am always happy to explain how we train in Ju Jitsu, its strengths and weaknesses, yes you got that right, weaknesses. You see I am not a true believer in the sense that I can ‘sell’ my martial art as the new way to train and live complete with warrior code of behaviour, Bushido. I see too much of what my friend and Conflict Manager contributor Jamie Clubb calls Bullshitsu, (put his forthcoming books on this subject on your must read list), out there.

The world is full of Kool-aid drinkers and there are plenty of them in the martial arts too. If you think a friend is beginning to get a taste for the Kool-aid do them a favour, buy them a subscription to Conflict Manager and Conflict Research Group International. Go read Hoffer, it is very thought provoking.

Reviewed by Garry Smith

Positive and Negative – Rory Miller

About the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative.’

In operant conditioning, behaviors are changed by either reinforcement, which increases the target behavior, or punishment, which decreases the target behavior.

Behaviorists break down reinforcement and punishment further as either positive or negative.

Positive and negative in this context are not value judgement or ethical markers. “Positive punishment” does not mean “good punishment.” They are also not like the mathematical values of positive and negative. “Negative reinforcement” absolutely does NOT mean “punishment.”

In behavioral psychology, “positive” refers to presence and “negative” refers to absence. If I am using positive reinforcement, I am introducing something into the system to increase the behavior. If I am using negative reinforcement, I am removing something from the system to increase the behavior. Food can be positive reinforcement because it tastes good and simultaneously negative reinforcement because it removes hunger. Corporal punishment is positive punishment because it introduces pain into the system. Confinement is negative punishment because it removes stimulation from the environment.

There are some conflict and life management skills that require this understanding of positive and negative. I’ll describe a few here.

The first is a very basic positive speech pattern. You will find clearer communication if you are careful to use positive language. Again, positive does not mean happy or encouraging.

Positive speech is to give instruction on what to do. Negative speech would be to give instruction on what NOT to do.

If you tell a child, “Don’t play in the river” the child may not hear the “don’t.” The child may actively focus away from the “don’t” and honestly believe he or she was ordered to play in the river. Further, proscription is not as limiting as we would like. The child can follow your order while choosing to play on the rocks above the river or with the alligators next to the river, or decide building a dam is working on the river not playing in the river.

Positive speech is to tell the child what to do, not what is forbidden. Negative: “Don’t play in the river.” Positive: “Go play in the treehouse.”

The second. Whenever possible, use positive instruction and praise over criticism. Telling a student he is doing something wrong does not help him do it right. Even if instructions are included, e.g. “Don’t do it that way, do it this way” there are two messages to understand instead of one and all of the problems of negative speech described above are still in play. Simply saying, “Do it this way” will be far more easily understood.

Using instruction instead of criticism, has other value as well. Criticism, no matter how well delivered or well intentioned is always a punishment. It will always decrease behavior. When poor behavior need to be stopped, it has some uses, but when you are trying to increase good behavior, whether in interaction or instruction, criticism does absolutely nothing.

If the instruction is good, following the instructions makes life better in some way. Pretty much by definition, if any training or instruction makes life worse, it’s bad training. This means you do not have to reinforce behavior, the results reinforce the behavior for you. When reinforcement or punishment comes from a person (you, in this case) the lesson can always be denied by the subject if he or she decides you are being unfair or have an ulterior motive.

A third application of the positive/negative mindset is very powerful. It is easier to do nothing than something, but it is far easier to do something than to not do something. Confused?

Animals are inherently lazy. In nature, animals rarely burn calories unless they have to. It is easier to sit and watch a gazelle than to chase one down.

However, one of the hardest things for people to deal with is a void. When you are used to doing something, not following that habit becomes hard. It is always easier to substitute a new good habit than it is to quit an old bad habit.

Most people have a hard time dieting because they are giving up foods they like. It is far easier to change diet if you think of it in the positive sense: not giving up food, but looking for new foods you like better. Not buying potato chips is hard. It is a negative. Buying celery instead of potato chips is considerably easier. Quitting smoking is hard. Taking up a hobby, like knitting, so you have something to do when you want to smoke is not easy, but much easier.

Cutting bad things out of your life is the negative (absence) approach and can be quite difficult. The positive approach, substituting good things for the bad is far easier and more effective.

The Elephants in the Dojo – John Titchen

What’s in a name?

I’ve used the term self defence because most people understand what is meant by it, even if it is not the most accurate term. We can play semantic games with terms such as Conflict Management, Personal Safety, Physical Intervention, Self Protection and Self Defence – but what most people ‘think’ they are looking for, and therefore search for is self defence. Martial arts training can comprise aspects of self defence, but unless the art has been specifically devised for that purpose recently, it isn’t the same thing.

The elephants in the room

Elephant number one. Let’s call her Nellie. Nellie is the fact that while most classes you attend are physical, and most people want or expect a physical session, the majority of self defence is comprised of knowledge/experience that does not really come with physical training. Nellie isn’t in class, she’s packed her trunk and said goodbye to the (martial arts) circus. Nellie isn’t necessarily an effective use of your instructor’s time in regular training, given how little time your instructor spends with you. Most of what Nellie has to offer can be covered in a seminar or taught via books and videos.

What is Nellie? She’s the non-physical element of self defence.

Avoidance – knowing what does and can happen and strategies to reduce your risks of being a recipient of social or asocial violence, aggression or sexual abuse.

Deterrence – knowing how to move and behave in a way that does not make you a target or a challenge.

Negation – knowing ways to behave in situations of social aggression that can ease tension and reduce the risks of a physical altercation.

Legal – knowing not only where you stand with regard to using force, but also how that underpins your trained responses, and how to describe your actions so as to minimise the risk of prosecution should your actions face investigation.

Physiological – knowing what is likely to happen to your body during and after an aggressive (and possibly a physical) altercation, how it will make you feel, and strategies for dealing with it during and after.

Psychological – admittedly this does carry over into the physical class, having the resolve and having made the decision to act when necessary to protect others or yourself and to handle the consequences of that.

Aftermath – knowing strategies to cope with the impact of an event after it has occurred (physiological, psychological and legal).

These things can be difficult to cover in an average class. Obviously good instructors allude to them where possible, but people generally come to classes for physical training. One strategy that can work well is to cover this material in either a written syllabus that students are given, or in youtube videos for students – in addition perhaps to suggested reading of texts by authors whose work you recommend to broaden their thinking. To help ensure exposure to this external material, introduce short (one or two line answers) multiple question open book theory exams with each grade.

Elephant number two. The king of elephants. Let’s call him Babar. Babar is the fact that actually most people do not need self defence training, they only think they do.

The actual prevalence of aggression and violence for the majority of the population (particularly in first world countries) is so small that most people with a little common sense (see Nellie if they have grown up in a nice enough environment not to develop ‘street smarts’) will only see ‘unavoidable’ violence on screen. The majority of violence that does occur doesn’t happen to the people coming to your classes, or if it has, is not likely to happen to them again. Attendance at a martial arts class is a bit like car insurance, it’s something you hope you never need, and something that is rarely used, but we feel better for having it. While the training aim for the attendees may be self defence, what they actually need is a good product (a martial arts class weighted towards self defence) that will give them confidence and reassurance, and what they need more than self defence is a form of physical fitness training that will provide good health (which is not necessarily exclusive to good self defence). The strength of martial arts is that it can provide excellent mobility, balance and coordination training as well as aerobic and anaerobic development in a mentally stimulating fashion that suits a broad range of ages, personality types and body sizes.

Integrating martial arts and self defence in regular classes

This is where a lot of well-meaning instructors fail. They know that their potential students want self defence, so they use it in their advertising, but because they have no clue about the reality of aggression and violence (due to lack of experience/information or plentiful but limited experience distorted by the prism focus of a particular environment (military/security/LEO)), they don’t offer an appropriate self defence focused class. The problem can be compounded when they are part of a larger organisation with a set martial arts syllabus comprising externally set forms, set basics and pre-arranged sparring.

So how can such an instructor orientate their classes more to self defence?

Impact.

The big difference between real violence and pretence is that people actually hit things. I’m not suggesting that students hit each other (though that is beneficial for psychological conditioning), but that they hit pads. Hitting pads is how you develop and test (the two are not exclusive) your ability to reliably deliver force.

Pad work is the most common nod to self defence I see in martial arts classes, and it is also one where I tend to see a classic error in understanding the issues of real violence.

Guard – Don’t assume that an altercation will be one on one. If you aren’t using a free hand to hold then it should be used to protect the head, the most common target. It’s great to see people do aerobic pad work routines that stretch their stamina and mental resilience, but if they are so tired that they are dropping their guard then they are engraining bad habits. Most violent incidents barely last a few seconds; from a self defence perspective, drilling good habits is more important than drilling stamina.

Head shots and hands – Most people, given pads, immediately focus on head shots. In doing so they are overly focused on the head as the target and the fists as a delivery system. This is a perception skewed by a few factors: firstly the knowledge that head shots can be very effective; secondly the use of the head as a target in both contact and non-contact combative sports. Hitting the head with an unprotected fist is very different from hitting a pad with an unprotected or gloved and wrapped hand, particularly if you aren’t engaged in any other form of hand conditioning. The fist is a useful weapon, but choose targets with care. In pad drills use the fist, but focus more on developing power with forearm and elbow strikes, knee strikes and open-handed strikes and don’t under-estimate the ability of body shots to safely negate most threats.

Pre-emption – pad drills can be an excellent way to incorporate real bread and butter items of good self defence training such as smooth pre-emptive striking skills, combining verbal distraction and striking, experiencing verbal aggression, and utilising appropriate fences. In addition to this they can also isolate and train classical martial arts techniques so there is a real win-win for instructors balancing the needs of self defence and a martial arts syllabus.

Making greater use of the their forms

The technique weighting in classical martial arts forms is interesting. It is quite different to what you will see in competitive martial arts drills where certain types of techniques score higher points, or certain types of protective equipment make certain strikes more viable.

While we do see punching in martial arts forms, it is not the most common movement, particularly in karate forms. You’ll see other techniques that can act as strikes with the forearm or elbow, grappling movements, shielding or parrying, trapping, throwing, kicking or kneeing occur far more regularly.

Learning and training good quality self defence focused applications for your kata not only ticks the self defence box, but also helps students develop as martial artists within the confines of an organisation (and helps expand the organisation’s future instructor knowledge pool).

Hitting through a training partner and simulating impact.

Try to hit people.

This does mean adjusting your drills. Pulling contact is a bad habit that can develop incorrect distancing and a lack of understanding of how people move when hit. It’s useful when you are only training to touch a target, but if you want to train to make contact effectively you need to hit people.

I’m not suggesting that the class be full contact. What I am suggesting is that attacks are made at a distance where an on-target hit would go through the target, and where (a slowed) response will push through its target, thus creating body movement and a more realistic picture of follow up responses. Is hitting people slowly a compromise? Yes it is, but not perhaps so great a compromise as practising missing people, particularly if you are also practicing hitting the pads full power and by actually pushing through the human target you are getting a mental map of tactile response, potential follow up tactics, and gaining stability feedback.

Incorporate HAOV.

Admittedly this is harder to do if you are working within a tightly regulated syllabus, but if you aren’t actively practicing defending against HAOV in the physical classes, including not only the most common initial attacks but also the likely follow through and compromised positions in which students may find themselves, then you aren’t teaching self defence.

How can you do this in a tightly regulated martial arts syllabus? We’re back once again to training applications for the forms. Pushing, grabbing, pulling, haymakers, headlocks, clinching, barging, tackling even ground escapes – the counter tactics and escapes are there waiting to be trained. Doing so brings focus to the rationale behind ‘obscure’ movements and stances, stays true to the martial arts, and hits the physical self defence brief.

If you can address Nellie in your syllabus and gradings, target Barbar with appropriate incorporation of aerobic exercise, and bring good pad work, form use, appropriate contact and HAOV into your physical classes, then you’re offering something beyond a simple martial arts class, you’re also offering self defence.

Clarification, Scepticism and Individuality Part IV – Jamie Clubb

Individuality

Martial arts were created as tools to serve people. They are not tangible entities. They are ever changing concepts, shaped by individuals. They evolve and mutate all the time whether the teachers want them to or not. No one person trains, practises or teaches exactly the same way as his teacher. Indeed, we have countless examples of teachers changing the mind regarding the emphasis or even core concepts of their system over time.

Does that mean each and every student should be taught in their own unique fashion? Unfortunately, and this goes against the innate human desire to be seen as an individual, despite countless studies and a huge amount of popularity, there is no empirical evidence that argues tailoring a teaching style to a student’s supposed learning style is effective. Furthermore, it has been argued, that purely by playing up to a person’s apparent strengths and preferences means that they never get a good opportunity to address their weaknesses. Nevertheless, combat reveals that different people fight differently. We all have different combat personalities and this can be seen throughout the history of interpersonal violence. Humans have thrived as a species due to the many ways they can adapt. So how do we correlate this information?

When it comes to cross-training the individual is running their own show. They are building new data based on previous experiences. Putting an individual at the centre of their education needs to be done with care and with caution. Individualising training shouldn’t be about pandering to their wants, preferences and prejudices of one person – be that person yourself or your student. Rather it should be an exploration of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. A combatant will develop their own style. The way that style is learnt and developed should not be through a straightforward agreement between teacher and student. The teacher seeks to prompt the student to take responsibility for his own education. He acts as an honest advisor, an unbiased critique critic and a supportive coach. He doesn’t seek to adapt his teaching style to the perceived niceties of a student’s learning style or to feverishly consult a catalogue of categories that some supposed education expert has conclude, but he provides an environment that prompts the student to find his own way.

The student cross-trainer uses his individuality to better understand what works best for him. This is where cross-training defines itself as being more than a sum of its parts. This is where the hours of solo training comes in. This is the time spent recruiting various different partners to test and train outside of formal lessons. Individuality in learning is most successful when it is underpinned by clarification and scepticism. An individual often discovers what he needs through clinically testing what he thinks he wants.

[1] See my chapters “The By-Product Myth” and “The Calypso Effect” in my e-book “Mordred’s Victory” for in depth discussions on how martial artists often get side-tracked in their training objectives.

[1] Ibid.

[1] See my chapter on “Attribute Training” in my aforementioned e-book to understand how to get the most out of these lessons.

[1] My chapter on “Specific Training” in “Mordred’s Victory and Other Martial Mutterings” details the importance of specialised pressure tests.

[1] I have a chapter on “Solo Training” in “Mordred’s Victory and Other Martial Mutterings” that can help provide more insight into this often abused side of learning.

The Instructor – Toby Cowern

Meet Toby Cowern of Tread Lightly Survival School and CRGI founder member. The man who devoted most of his life to the art of survival. Living and surviving under the extreme conditions of the Far North became an art for him. Here he shares some of his thoughts on survival and being an instructor.

Visit Toby’s website to learn more.

http://treadlightlysurvival.com/

CRGI Live #1 – Erik Kondo, Terry Trahan and Varg Freeborn

In this the first of a series of interviews Erik, Terry and Varg discuss violence addiction, the realities of violence, mindsets for dealing with violence and much much more.

This is dynamite stuff, this is learning by proxy.

https://vimeopro.com/user47283856/crgi-live

A History of Violence – Steven Pinker

Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. I explore how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature.

AMBUSHES AND THUGS