Category: #7 – OCT, 2015

Right Here Right Now – Garry Smith

Fatboy Slim aka Norman Cook aka Quentin Leo Cook is a solo electronic performer according to Wikipedia, I like a lot of his music, in particular I like a track called right here, right now. Its where we live, we think about the past and the future but we live right here right now.

Last month I used this picture in my article ‘Going Forward to the Past’ about Lifelong Learning.

It is one I use when I work with my students, it is something I am always encouraging others to do, to go to the place where the magic happens. A couple of days ago I caught the tail end of somebody a class in a local college as I waited to do my class, and the tutor used the exact same picture to encourage her students to think about their young entrepreneurs project. I thought she was excellent in how she used the material and talked for some time after he class about actually doing it, getting up off the sofa and stepping away from the comfort zone.

Well before I go on here is an update on the motorbike riding. I went out on the road on a 650cc Suzuki the other day, we did a lot of miles at some speed too, it is very early days but I an beginning to feel comfortable but still high on the magic of the new experiences and sensations. I have now bought all the gear short of an actual bike but have been spending quite a bit of time checking out different bikes and their features on the internet, my head turns now as I drive past bike shops and I have an urge to go in and look. I never thought I would do this until a few weeks ago, all my life people told me motorbikes = death, I lost good friends young who died on them, I visited good friends in hospital who had major accidents on them, motorbikes were for looney tunes, I once went pillion a few times with a mate and it scared the crap out of me. I am not sure what that says about me now, have I lost the plot or have I overcome my fear.

We its possibly a bit of both depending on your perspective. When you do this type of thing at 55, something out of character, without warning people first they look at you funny and the words mid life crisis are used, jokingly, but it has been said by a few. That’s cool I can live with that. To be fair I do not really know myself what makes me do these things, when I went to college then university and ended up lecturing in further and higher education it was the same, I really wanted to learn and had to overcome the fear of failure to be ready to do so.

So here I lay bare my biggest fear, it is the fear of failure. It is why we get nervous when we take tests and exams, we fear being the one who fails. When I stepped onto the mat to take my black belt in Ju Jitsu I had trained hard for years, training three times a week for many months and then some. The first this we have to complete are 25 throws and every aspect of each one must be correct, your uki’s are punching full of and there is no room for error, about 10 throws in and I was convinced I had already failed, I felt like shit, I could hardly breathe and had to fight myself mentally as well as my uki’s physically in order to carry on. I passed, its history now.

Last Friday I failed the first part of my MOD 1 riding test, I repeat I failed. I made one mistake right in the middle of the test, I knew I had failed at this point. I still had three difficult tasks to complete, I took  a breath, focused and did them, including the one I was most scared of at the start of he training, the swerve manoeuvre at speed. In the debrief the examiner told me he knew I knew I had failed when I made my one mistake, he complimented me an told me he was really impressed that I completed the rest of the test, he told me it was excellent. My instructor had described my ride prior to the test as fantastic and that was because I had a clear passion for learning to ride, this applied also to my fellow student who did pass.

Later we talked about some other stuff and the subject turned to how we learn things that help us to ride better. I mentioned the above picture and we talked about comfort zones and leaving them. I had already booked a retest for next week, best to get straight back on etc, I know that I did 90% of the test spot on, I know I can do the thing I did wrong, I understand I can do it. I was disappointed but not upset that I had failed, I took the test after 5 days of training, before that I could not ride at all. I got 1 thing wrong and people the feedback was surprisingly good. Putting the failure in the context of how much I think I have achieved, especially venturing up to 60 miles an hour on something I never thought I would ride, something I previously feared I still classed the test as a success.

If you live your life in the comfort zone, you are not living your life.

Fear is horrible, fear prevents us doing things, fear is the most negative of emotions, this we all know. Few people are fearless. Fear can paralyse us and keep us from trying something new. Most peoples lives are controlled by fear and they do not even know it. When we see an opportunity to do something new, whether it is something we have always wanted to do or just something that crops up, there will appear that little policeman in your head that will tell you not to do it, the little policeman will tell you it is not for you, it might hurt, you cannot do it, people like you do not do it and if you ignore all this stuff you the inner policeman will remind you that if you try it you might fail.

The little policeman inside your head uses fear to control you. Fear is a form of social control. I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories, I am not sat here with my head wrapped in tinfoil to stop the CIA reading my thoughts. We are taught fear as we are socialised into society. Learning to fear certain things, poisonous snakes, tigers, sharks etc that are dangerous helps keep us safe. The thing is we also learn to fear failure and yes this has a name, Atychiphobia.

“Atychiphobia is the abormal, unwarranted, and persistent fear of failure a type of specific phobia. As with many phobias, atychiphobia often leads to a constricted lifestyle, and is particularly devastating for its effects on a person’s willingness to attempt certain activities. The term atychiphobia comes from the Greek Phobos meaning “fear” or “morbid fear” and atyches meaning “unfortunate”.

Persons afflicted with atychiphobia considers the possibility of failure so intense that they choose not to take the risk then these persons will subconsciously undermine their own efforts so that they no longer have to continue to try. Because effort is proportionate to the achievement of personal goals and fulfilment, this unwillingness to try, that arises from the perceived inequality between the possibilities of success and failure, holds the atychiphobic back from a life of meaning and the realization of potential.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atychiphobia

The good new is that it is abnormal, most people do not suffer this correct? I think not, this is only my opinion, I think we all suffer from it when we face a challenge, a test an exam. It is not retarding us all the time but how many of us can say we have not felt nervous before or during a test or an exam especially where we really want or need to pass and where failure would lead to us being not good enough. Fear of failure is directly related to how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us.

Most Conflict Manager readers train and/or are trainers. We all know about exam nerves, now we can name the beast that is atychiphobia. Naming things is important part of learning how to deal with challenges and learning how to help others deal with them too. Different individuals will develop different strategies, there is no one cure. Even when you have trained and trained and passed mock test after mock test the real thing wakes up the little policeman inside your head and he starts to go to work. Does this mean I am anti testing? No, the pressure created by facing a test can really focus the learner so can be a good thing. It can also be important in keeping us safe, had I made my one little mistake on my riding test out on the road I could have placed myself in danger, could not would, but I can see why it was enough to fail me.

So life long learning is a wonderful thing, I embrace I, I send out the message to try new things as often as possible, I do it too. In a couple of hours Jayne and I are off to BBC Radio Sheffield to do a thirty minute live slot talking about Ju Jitsu and doing an on air demonstration. This will be Jayne’s 3rd time this year, she was really nervous the first time but did an incredible job, this time we are both looking forward to it and will have a lot of fun, well she will as she will be throwing me around. The request for us to do this is linked to the imminent release of the film Suffragettes and their training in Ju Jitsu. Hopefully this will bring in some new students to our classes, people who simply by turning up are facing one of their fears, of exposing themselves to the possibility of failure. Our job today on air is to show how both Jayne and I did just that, we are senior instructors now but we were complete novice white belts once.

My grandson Billy is five years old and has just done his first 2 Ju Jitsu classes, his mum sat watching is a 1st dan black belt, she climbed the UK’s 3 biggest mountains when she was 7, she is a fully qualified teacher, like her I want to teach Billy, and all my other students, not to fear failure, it happens, we fail, dream of successes and go out and create them.

I told all my students that I failed my test last week, I want them to learn that if they take a test it can happen, if everyone passes the test then it is not much of a test. Our local McDojo sells guaranteed black belt courses. One of their first dan black belts in karate MMA, (don’t start me off), was in one of my sessions recently doing self defence, he had a meltdown and could not complete the class, I said and did nothing about him or his training, I think the poor kid heard and saw things that exposed the dross he will have been filled up with, I felt really sorry for him. We have had their 13 year old second dan black belts come train with us before. They were not even green belts by our standards, their tests are not tests they are purchases.

So please let your students know its ok to fail, taking the test is an achievement in itself, if you do not pass then the work starts to pass next time. Not next week, not next month, but right here, right now. The antidotes to atychiphobia are confidence and passion, inculcate these qualities in your students and you will be doing a fine job, help them to overcome the negative control of fear and you will create winners.

Real Self-Defence – Geoff Thompson

Punch ups, muggings and even fatalities are frighteningly common in a society that is bulging at the waist with unsolicited assaults. Due to astonishing growth-rate of violent crime in Britain, skills in self-defense are almost a pre-requisite if you want to get from the pub to the Indian and home again in one piece.

 In an attack situation, options – from avoiding a confrontation with guile right through to swapping some leather – are useful; the choices are varied and subjective but when your adrenaline is racing and your legs are doing an involuntary bossanova the choice (as they say) will be entirely yours.

 I’m sure you have already seen – and are tired of – the wristlocks and shoulder throws that garnish just about every article and video on self-defence. They only work in Bruce Lee films and on police self-defence courses so I’ll spare you the embarrassment of a photo-shoot-re-run. If you don’t mind I’ll stick to the stuff that works when the pavement is your arena, and there are no referees with whistles and bells to stop a point scoring match turning into a blood and snot debacle.

My premise is basic but empirical, and at some point it might prove life saving.

Whilst some situations actually start at a physical response (in which case you either fight like a demon or you get battered), most are preceded by some kind of pre-fight ritual and introductory dialogue; even if it is only the uninspiring ‘are you looking at my missus?’ The Real art of self-defence is not in bringing the affray to a messy conclusion with a practised right cross, rather it is in spotting the attack ritual in its early stages so that a physical encounter can be avoided.

Hard Target
As a man with a varied and brutal background I can tell you with sincerity and emphasis that violence is not the answer. Reflecting this my opening advice is to avoid violence whenever and where ever possible. Make yourself a hard target by giving volatile environments a wide birth. James Coburn was succinct when he advised us to ‘avoid arseholes and big egos, avoid places where arseholes and big egos hang out’. He could have added ‘don’t be an arsehole and don’t have a big ego yourself’. It helps. The inevitable consequences of toe-to-toe encounters are rarely favourable to either party so around-the-table negotiation should always be exhausted before sending in the troops.

 The interview
Pre-fight management is vital if you want to survive an altercation intact; the winner is usually the one who controls the seconds before an affray. Most situations start at conversation range and with some kind of dialogue. If this is mismanaged the situation normally – and quickly – degenerates into a scuffle and then a scrap on the floor amidst chip wrappers and dog-ends. The current crop of defence innovators recommends the floor as the place to be when a fight goes live. In the No-Holds-Barred (NHB) one-on-one sports arena they’d probably be right, but outside the chippy where the terrain is less predictable and the enemy nearly always has allies in tow, taking the fight to the cobbles is suicidal. It leaves you open to (often fatal) secondary attacks, especially if you’re facing more than one opponent.

 The fence
If you are approached and the dialogue starts (this is known as the interview), take up a small inconspicuous 45° stance and put up your fence : place your lead hand in that all-important space between you and your antagonist to maintain a safe gap. The fence gives you a degree of control without your aggressor knowing. Placed correctly, your lead hand and reverse hand will block the thoroughfare (without touching) of the attacker’s right and left hand. If he moves forward to butt/kick/punch, be prepared to shove him back and/or attack. Try not to touch the assailant with your fence unless you are forced to, as it can trigger aggression and possibly a physical attack.

 If you want to keep your face in place, don’t let a potential attacker touch you at any time, even if he appears to be friendly. An experienced fighter will feign friendliness, even submission, to make an opening for his attack (pic). Another common ploy is for an attacker to offer a handshake and then head-butt/knife you as soon as the grip is taken (pic). If you fall prey to the verbal opener you will quickly become work experience for a student nurse at the ER, so use your fence to maintain a safe gap until the threat has gone.

 Fear
Expect to be scared because, no matter how experienced you are, you will be. Fear is the natural precursor to confrontation. I’ve worked with some premier league players and privately they all tell the same story; at the point of contact they’d rather be any where in the world than where they are. So don’t let self-doubt enter the equation if you feel like crapping your Calvin’s because you’re not on your own, we all feel fear even if some of us pretend that we don’t. Shaking legs, trembling voice and feelings of cowardice are all natural by-products of the adrenal release.

 Verbal dissuasion
If you find your self facing pro-magnum man and he starts to growl, try and talk the situation down. Again, the battle will be more with your own ego than it will be with your antagonist. Don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t want trouble and beat a hasty retreat. Better to follow the Judo adage and walk away with confidence than to end up in an affray that might change the course of your life for the worst.

 Posturing
If talking fails to make the grade (and you think it might work) you could try posturing (pic). I made it work for me as an 11 stone novice doorman so you don’t have to be big to be effective. Posturing entails making like a woolly mammoth in an attempt to psyche out your antagonist. Create a gap between you and your aggressor by shoving him hard on the chest. Once the gap has been secured go crazy; shout, salivate, spread your arms, bulge your eyes and drop into single syllables. This triggers the opponent’s flight response and often scares him into capitulation. As soon as he backs off beat a hasty retreat.

If escape, dissuasion and posturing crack at the spine and if you have honest belief that you are about to be attacked you are left with two choices; hit or be hit. As a self-defence adviser my duty is not to tell you which to choose, only to offer you the options, and allow you to select for your self.

 The pre-emptive strike
If your choice is a physical response, my advice is to be pre-emptive and strike first – very hard – preferably on the jaw (it’s a direct link to the brain). The concept of defence at the point of contact is not only unsound it is dangerous and extremely naive. Waiting for someone to attack you is strategic madness because blocks don’t work! The Kwai-Chang-Cain theory of block and counter-attack is even more absurd, especially if you are facing more than one opponent. There is no finesse about fighting multiple opponents, they do not line up and attack you one at a time they strike like a swarm of bees and luck is the only thing that’ll keep a beat in your heart.

 If you honestly believe that you are about to become target practice for the hard of thinking, hit them before they can hit you. Once you have landed the first strike, run. Many defence gurus advocate a second strike, a finisher. I advise not. Your first strike buys you vital getaway time. If you’re dealing with a determined attacker (many are very experienced in the art of maim) and you don’t leg it after the first strike, chances are he’ll grab you and snap you like a twiglette.

Self-defence is about doing the minimum a situation will allow to ensure your own survival. It’s not about defending a corpulent ego or misguided honour.
 Having been involved in thousands of live encounters the pre-emptive attack was the only consistently effective technique I could find.

My advice is to hit as hard as you can, using your fists (or your head). These are (usually) the closest naturally available weapons to the target (your opponents jaw), and offer the safest and most direct route. At this point it would be a great advantage to have a background in a punching art – preferably western boxing. Most people think they can throw a good punch. From my experience – and certainly under pressure – few can. A great way to learn is to go to a boxing club or do a little focus pad work with a friend to develop the skills (pic).

If you do employ the pre-emptive attack make sure you know your legal rights (a little more on this later) or you might be in for a double jeopardy when you have to defend them against the second enemy – the law.

You dictate reasonable force; although you may have to defend your interpretation of reasonable in a court of law. If you are so frightened by an assailant that you have to hit him with everything but the girl on your arm, then that is reasonable force. If, however, you knock someone to the ground and then do the fifty-six-move kata on their head, you might well be stretching your luck.
 I can’t guarantee that you won’t end up in the dock, but I feel that it’s better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

Armed assailants.
Forget the films where the good guy – using empty hands – prevails over the knife-wielding psychopath without ruffling his own hair or popping a shirt button, because on celluloid is the only place it’s going to happen. Someone once asked me at a self-defence seminar ‘what could you do against a knife?’

‘About 50 miles an hour’, I replied.

I’ve faced a few blades and I’ve been stabbed some in my time (but enough about my ex-wife!) and on every occasion I filled my nappy. If your antagonist is carrying, take the advice of Forrest Gump and run like the wind blows. Even with 40 years of martial arts training under my belt, it was providence and not skill that kept me off the cold slab.

 If you are facing a knife, the best-case scenario is that you don’t die. If a knife is pulled and running away is not on the option list, throw anything that isn’t nailed to the floor at the attacker, and then run. If projection range is lost your only other option is to blitz the attacker with head strikes until he is unable to continue his attack.

 The rule of thumb here is that stabbers don’t usually show the blade, they just sneak up and insert it when you’re not aware. If they do show you the knife they are usually just posturing. Always check the hands of your antagonist – if you can’t see the palms, or a hand is concealed, you have to presume they are carrying (pic).

If the attacker does have a weapon and doesn’t respond to your verbal dissuasion, your options are two-fold: give them what they ask for (and just hope it’s not oral sex) or be prepared to get cut in the affray.

 Self-defence and the law.
As important as the law may be, contemplating the legal implications of defending your self in the face of ensuing attack would be unwise. It can cause indecision, which usually leads to defeat.

I call the law the second enemy: this is not meant disparagingly, but, having been on the wrong side of it a few times I feel duty bound to highlight the inherent dangers of dealing with – what can be – a sticky judicial system, post-assault.
Many people are convicted for what they say and not what they do. This means you could legally defend yourself and yet still be convicted and sent to jail (do not pass go…) if you don’t claim self-defence (correctly) when giving a statement to the police. Many of my friends ended up in prison because they didn’t understand the law. Paradoxically many known criminals have avoided prison because they (or certainly their solicitors) did. So, if self-defence is your aim, then an appreciation of this judicial grey area has to be an imperative.

Post-assault, you’ll probably be suffering from what is known as adrenal-induced Tachypsychia. This can cause time distortion, time loss, memory distortion and memory loss. You may also feel the innate urge to talk, if only to justify your actions (Logorrhoea). All of the latter affect your ability to make an objective statement if the police become involved. When/if you do make a statement it is hardly likely to be accurate considering these facts. Six months down the line when you end up in court to defend your right to self-defence, everything will hang on your statement. So make sure you’re clear about your rights. If you’re not clear, insist on waiting until the next day before making a statement or ask to see a duty solicitor (or your own). It’s your right. Don’t put pen to paper otherwise. A police cell can be a very lonely place when you’re not used to it, and the police can often be guilty of rushing, even pressuring you for a quick statement. This pressure can be subtle but effective; being left alone for long periods of time, being told that you might be sent to prison, even the good cop-bad cop routine (yes, honestly). Many a tough guy has turned from hard to lard after a few hours surrounded by those four grey walls. Under these circumstances it’s very easy to say things you really don’t want to say, just so that you can go home.

If you have to defend your self and you damage your assailant my advice is not to hang around after the dirty deed has been done. This minimises the risk of legal (or other) repercussions. Attack victims (especially those who successfully defended them selves) often feel compelled to stay at the scene of crime post assault. Do your self a favour; make like Houdini and vanish? Your life and your liberty might be at stake. Better still don’t be there in the first place, that way you won’t have to worry about long months waiting for the court case and the possibility of suffering from a sever loss of liberty.

 In conclusion
Self-defence has been sold and sold to death. There are a million how-to books on the subject and experts are coming out of the martial woodwork. They all mean well but good advice is rare and bad advice can be get you killed. I can save you a lot of reading and a lot of pain by giving you my tried-and-tested learned-in-the-field system for physical self-defence. It’s only five words long (and one of them is an expletive) – Learn to hit f****** hard.

Principles-Based Teaching, Part V – Rory Miller

Recap: the first four articles in this series covered the concepts behind principles-based teaching. Understanding the goals of training in general and your training in particular. Understanding what principles are. Auxiliary skills that every good teacher needs. Basic methods of instruction.

Teaching and learning are not just technical, physical processes but mental and emotional as well.  On a psychological and emotional level, you have to prep people for learning. One of the most toxic things we have done in martial arts and in some of the reality-based systems is to make conflict special. People come to us convinced violence is alien to them, it is complicated, it is hard to learn. With new students, part of the teaching (cognitive) process is to explain that violence is natural. The physics are the same as any other physical activity and the mentality is part of our evolutionary heritage. It’s been hammered and brainwashed out of your students, but they are all natural fighters, all survivors.

For the physical aspects of self-defense, the teaching pattern is simply:

Game

Skill build

Return to game

Accelerated game(s)

Scenario training

I like having an over-all game that skills tie back to. The game has to be well designed:

  • Known safety flaws, minimal bad habits
  • Contact
  • A competitive element but not a competitive focus
  • No winners or losers

Every live training must have safety flaws. In the end, martial arts is about damaging a human being, yet we must not damage our training partners. So there is always an element of artificiality introduced for safety. You and the students must be conscious of the safety flaw.

Life is a contact sport, and fighting and self-defense are even more so. You cannot develop skill without contact any more than you can learn to swim without water. You must design games that work at different levels of contact, but each level of contact will have different safety concessions.

I like the game to have a competitive element to it, but no winner or loser– you are going to strive to be more efficient than me, but if you excel at that, you haven’t beaten me, just given me a more challenging problem to solve. The problem with full active resistance or any form of direct sparring is that only the winner learns that “it works against a resisting opponent.” The loser, who probably needs the skill more, learns that it fails against resisting opponents. Failure is not a lesson you want to teach at the beginning stage. Dealing with failure is an important lesson, but the student must be ready for it and you must have the judgment to teach that lesson.

I use three levels of play. Each level involves more speed but less contact. I start with the one-step. That’s the slow motion, taking turns, efficiency exercise described in Drills: Training for Sudden Violence, (That’s Smashwords. Link to Amazon Kindle.) Next level up is to blend that into a faster flow drill. The third level of play is infighting randori–fast, all techniques allowed, but very controlled contact.

The one-step helps the students see opportunity and experiment with multiple types of force simultaneously. It is safe, requires very little training and has many variations. It is particularly useful at pointing out the bad habits that come from fast training.

The primary flaw in the one-step is the slowness. You must face speed to be prepared for speed. A flurry attack is often mentally and emotionally overwhelming. The slowness can also be exploited to cheat, if the students can’t get over the winners/losers concept.

Drills are what they are and no more. I never call the one-step a fight simulation. It is a geometry problem made out of meat, and your job is to solve the moving meat problem as efficiently as possible.

The one-step allows thinking time. The flow level speeds up the action and decreases cognitive time, which is a good thing. But any increase in speed has drawbacks:

  • As the students go faster, they see less and thus they learn less
  • As the speed increases, the safety flaws become more necessary
  • As the speed increases the safety flaws have to become more automatic. Speed ingrains habits harder, including the bad ones.

Students need supreme control and confidence to play infighting randori well and safely, and frequently, this one has a winner. It integrates skills better than anything I know, because it is too close and too fast to process cognitively. The range allows all categories of attacks simultaneously: strikes, kicks, strangles, locks, takedowns, biting, gouging, etc. and because of the complexity and speed, it rewards and reinforces adaptability under stress like no other drill I know

Scenario training is an attempt to simulate real encounters. It requires the right equipment and a superbly skilled team to run scenarios well. Done well, scenarios force students to use judgment in tandem with their skills and integrates self-defense skills beyond the simply physical stuff.

Those are the games I use. A student will play the one-step first, before any instruction whatsoever (other than a safety briefing and a demo of how to play the game). This is important, because if they give themselves permission to play, it doesn’t require special training to be effective. This reinforces the earlier message that none of this is special, surviving is what you evolved to do.

The process, from here is simple. Play the game, do a breakout session for skill building. Put the students back in the drill.

Skill building sessions require you, as the instructor, to know your building blocks and principles inside out. You must come up with ways to demonstrate them and, more importantly, ways for the students to experiment, discover and experience the concepts.

One example: Joint locks breakout session.

First talk (Teaching): There are a few principles that are critical for making locks work, so leverage, two-way action, exploiting gravity, basing, and “gifts” (you don’t make locks, you find them) are explained. All principles are demonstrated and the students get to ask questions.

Second talk (Teaching) There are only three kinds of joints you can lock in the human body: Hinge, ball-and-socket, and gliding. Hinge joints are locked by applying force just above the joint and as far down the lever arm as possible.

First game: Challenge the students to come up with eight different elbow locks each. (Elbow locks are safer than knees or fingers at this stage).

First discovery— the students will see that there are both an infinite number of locks and only one.

Second talk and first game are repeated for each type of lock.

Special session on fingers because they are a doubled hinge joint in the same grip space as a ball-and-socket joint and close enough they can be spiral fractured against each other. Fingers are an especially target-rich environment.

Second game: After all the joints are covered, the next game is a lock-flow drill where students practice seeing the gifts.

Then the students return to the 0ne-step. Not to do only locks, but because locks are fresh in their brains, they will see a lot of them.

Repeat the cycle. Break them out of the game to work on something else, like targeting. Then put them back in the game. 

Theoretically, you could, after each skill, increase the speed through the flow and randori levels. 

I don’t do it that way. They can work on the principles in one-step forever. I move them to flow and randori based on their abilities and confidence level. Animals learn through play and the first exposure to randori should be fun and slightly overwhelming but shouldn’t make them feel terrified and helpless.

The last, critical piece to self-defense is to occasionally run good scenario training. That allows them to use their skills in tandem with their judgment. And use more force, because of the armor. That said, scenario training is very hard to do well and safely and easy to do poorly. And poor scenario training can mess up students, physically, tactically and emotionally. It is better to stay away from them completely than to do them poorly. You need not only proper instruction, but practice.

In the end, the goal of real force training is to be ruthlessly efficient. To achieve one’s goal with the absolute minimum of wasted effort and time. PBT is my attempt to apply that sensibility to teaching as well. To use everything we know about how people learn and how they react under stress to create a superior survivor in the minimum time. Principles-based training is a step in the direction of ruthlessly efficient instruction.

There are some caveats, though:

1) Done properly, it allows and encourages creativity. Which means your students will innovate some sneaky shit and beat you far sooner than if they train in techniques. PBT is not a good method for egotistical instructors.

2) It can be hard to measure and test. Using this platform for jointlocks, we’ve gotten untrained officers improvising locks under pressure in an hour. And some of those locks would seem to be advanced. But they wouldn’t have been able to name a lock or to demo a specific lock. Which makes organizations and concrete thinkers uncomfortable.

3) It’s incompatible with most martial arts business models. The student/teacher relationship will shift to colleague/colleague very quickly. I like that, personally.

To quote Melody Lauer, a handgun instructor in the US, critiquing a (completely unrelated to me or PBT) class she had recently attended: “The way the class is structured and the instruction method demands an excellent instructor to pull it off.”

Principles based training elicits excellence from the students, but it demands excellence from the instructor.

 

From the streets to the Ivory Towers and back – the other side of conflict research, Part 2 – James Hall

Last month, the first part of this article offered an introduction to the research into conflict and violence undertaken by Universities and other institutions. This month, we will look at how this extensive body of institutional research can be accessed.

The main channel by which academic and other institutional research is exposed to the rest of the world is academic journals. Tens of thousands of different journal titles are published worldwide, containing articles written by researchers and reviewed by peers, i.e. other researchers in the same field as the author. Journals may be published in print, electronic or both forms. Unfortunately for the lay reader, academic journals are nowhere near as accessible, and often nowhere near as readable, as the books and blogs and websites which many of us are more used to. Most academic journals provide access on a subscription basis only, which for individuals can be expensive – over £100 / US$150 per journal per year in some cases. Some ‘open access’ journals can be accessed free of charge, usually online, but the journals with the strongest reputations for high quality research often charge the highest subscription fees, and vice-versa. Identifying relevant journals from the vast number of published titles can also be challenging, particularly in an inter-disciplinary field such as conflict and violence. Some journals exist which are specific to the field, and relevant research is also published in journals specific to each of the many disciplines which conduct research into the various dimensions of conflict and violence.

Lastly, research in academic journals is presented in a format and style which is intended for an academic audience, not the lay reader. Academic readers will be interested in not only the outcome of the research and its implications, but also in its design, the quality of its statistical analysis, and so on. Sections of some academic articles will be meaningless to any reader who doesn’t have at least some education in statistics beyond High School level. All of these challenges can, however, be overcome, with a little effort.

The most accessible starting point when exploring academic research is Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com). Entering search terms (e.g. ‘teen dating violence’) into Google Scholar will return a list of academic resources matching the search terms. Often, only a summary of each article will be available, but in some cases the full article may be accessible as a PDF or via a web link. However, this is a comparatively unstructured approach which may not be the best if you are looking for high-quality research on a specific topic, in which case your nearest University is probably the best resource.

Most Universities have institutional subscriptions to numerous journals, which are made available for students, faculty and staff via their Library service. Some Universities also offer access to members of the public, although practice varies widely. For example, in the UK: Bristol University offers no public access at all; Oxford University’s Bodleian Library provides public access to its printed and electronic resources for £38 (c. US$60) per year; Birmingham University offers access free of charge to its printed resources for up to ten visits per year, or unlimited access to printed resources and limited access to electronic resources at a cost of £50 (c. US$80) per year; and Nottingham University provides unlimited public access to printed resources and its pubic e-resource suite completely free of charge. In all cases though, resources can only be accessed at the physical location of each University’s library – printed resources cannot be borrowed, and electronic resources cannot be accessed remotely. A good starting point would be to contact the Library service at your nearest University and ask about their public access policy.

Identifying relevant and credible journals is just as much of a challenge for students as for members of the public. Consequently all University libraries have expert staff who will be happy to offer help in this regard. Demand for this service from students tends to be greatest as deadlines approach, which tend to be towards the end of terms / semesters, so the Librarian service (or equivalent) may be more available in the middle of term / semester when student demand is lower.

Examples of relevant journals include:

Subscription-based:

  • Psychology of Violence (http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/vio/)
  • Journal of Interpersonal Violence (http://jiv.sagepub.com/)
  • Violence and Victims (http://www.springerpub.com/violence-and-victims.html)

Open access:

  • Journal of Aggression and Violent Behaviour (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/aggression-and-violent-behavior/open-access-articles/)
  • Journal of Injury and Violence Research (http://jivresearch.org/jivr/index.php/jivr/index)

Some subscription-based journals offer open access to selected articles, e.g. the International Journal of Conflict and Violence (http://www.ijcv.org/)

The credibility of journals and individual articles can often be gauged by the number of times a specific article, or articles published in a specific journal, are referenced by other researchers. The databases to which University libraries often provide this information, and again the Librarian service should be able to show you how to access this information. This is only one indicator, however – newer research will obviously have been referenced by other researchers less frequently than older research.

Gathering the important information from journal articles is largely a matter of understanding how they are written. Articles presenting different types of research will be presented in different formats, but most will follow a structure resembling the following:

Abstract: All articles will begin with an abstract, which is a short summary (usually no more than 200 words) of the article. A well-written abstract will state why the research was done, how it was done, the main outcome of the research and the main implications, in a style which is easy to read. The purpose of the abstract is to enable the reader to decide whether to invest time in reading the full article, which is important for the academic audience, but for the lay reader the abstract will often provide enough information by itself. Subscription-based journals which are published online often make the abstracts of their articles available free of charge, charging only for access to the full article.

Introduction: The main body of the article will normally start with an Introduction, which sets out the background to the specific piece of research and why it was done. It should clearly state the ‘research question’, i.e. the specific question which the research aims to answer. This section usually contains references to earlier relevant research, so it is always worth reading the Introduction as it can point you in the direction of other articles which may be of interest.

Method: The next section normally describes the method by which the research was carried out, which could be anything from an online questionnaire to a complex lab experiment to a thirty-year longitudinal study. This section is vitally important for the academic audience, as it enables other academics to attempt to replicate the research in order to confirm or challenge its findings. Where the article is based on studies of real people (as opposed to published statistics or analysis of other research), for example psychology experiments, this section should include a description of the Participants, i.e. who took part in the study. This description should consist of the number of participants, the range and average of their ages and the proportion of males and females. In some cases, particularly in large or long-term studies, researchers will select their participants very carefully in order to try and make their sample as representative as possible of the population in general. In other cases, researchers will use ‘opportunistic sampling’, i.e. whoever is available. Understanding the profile of the participants is important in deciding the extent to which the findings of the research apply to the population as a whole. If the sample is strongly weighted in favour of one gender, or drawn from only a narrow range of ages etc., the less generally applicable the findings may be.

Results: In a well-written article, the Results section should set out the results of the research in plain English (or whatever the language of publication happens to be) and provide the statistics to back it up. The plain English part should suffice for those of us not expert in statistical analysis.

Discussion: The Discussion section usually links the findings of the study back to the earlier research identified in the Introduction – e.g. whether the study supports or contradicts earlier findings. It should also set out the implications of the research, for example whether it challenges the accepted understanding of a phenomenon or current social policy. In a well-written article it should also identify areas for further research and the authors’ reflections upon their own research, e.g. with hindsight, whether the method could have been improved.

In summary, while the language in which academic articles are written may not always be easy for the non-expert reader to follow completely, by understanding the typical structure of an article it is possible to find and absorb the most important pieces of information.

Following the work of specific researchers is another way to keep up with developments in relevant research areas. All journal articles will give the name of their author(s) and their institution(s). Institutions normally provide a ‘People search’ and/or ‘Contact search’ function on their website, which will enable you to find the web pages and contact details of the author. Many researchers are happy to be contacted by people interested in their research, and of course some will be active bloggers and users of social media.

Currently, it seems that there is little crossover between the worlds of experience-based and academic research into conflict and violence. I hope that this article will be a starting point in developing links between these two worlds, and that you will start to explore the immense body of institutional research into conflict and violence for yourself. I personally am about to return to study with the intention of getting into research into the psychological aspects of conflict and violence. It’ll take a while to get there, but along the way I hope to develop more and stronger links between the worlds of practical self protection and institutional conflict and violence research. If you would like to stay in touch with my progress, or discuss any matter covered by this article, please find me on Facebook (/james.hall.902819) or e-mail me at hall.jp@gmail.com.

 

From Your Heart! Passion is a must. – Robert Frankovich

When students perform their techniques, whether in drills or patterns, it is very easy to tell if they are actually trying or merely dancing around. This is one of the tricky parts within training…or any education.

I had a student tell me that the way to fix that is to make them work harder. How does that get accomplished? Make the drills longer? Count louder? Stand over them the whole time? Nope. Never going to make their training better that way. If their passion hasn’t developed yet, no external factor will change the behavior.

Does training actually fit their goals? Are they looking for physical improvement? Maybe they just want the socialization in a subject matter that interests them. The only way that a student will improve and develop skill is when they choose to. This is a deceiving point, too, though. I’ve asked students to adjust technique to make them more effective and have gotten “That’s what I’m doing!” as a response. (We won’t discuss the respect issue now) But since it makes no sense that I would waste my time asking for things to be adjusted/corrected for no reason, they still haven’t chosen to learn the technique past what they “think” it is.

Now, I’ll give credit to those putting in effort and working but poor technique can only be helped so much by strength and commitment. There is some passion there, although needing direction. I came across a saying the other day which is very accurate. It stated “If you can’t do it slow, you can’t do it right.” which fits the piece above. The idea of being able to go slow would mean that your mind is in the work as well and that will show in your hands (and legs).

I would wager that, if you are able to put your mind into the focus of the work, your heart is involved also. This changes the fear and anxiety and nervousness into enjoyment. Those feelings and emotions fade as the passion grows. The development of your passion is seen in the performance of your techniques. You start to see deeper and understand more. The desire to see others succeed rises and helps create the desire in you to work harder and learn more. It brings students together as a community…family…who supports each other off the floor as well as on. You are now building your passion.

The activities that are physical can easily illustrate how passion grows the skills and knowledge. You can find many YouTube videos of a 13 year old playing an awesome guitar piece. Another can be seen with the number of 16 and 17 year olds performing on “The Voice” talent show.

Physical talents are not all, though. Recently, our high school junior son had a classmate over. The discussion turned to the plant on the kitchen window ledge. Once he saw it, his eyes lit up and he started commenting about the leaves and their size. That lead him to the 20 plants that he has and their growth cycle including blooms and developing offshoots. This was not knowledge repeated from a book. It was the knowledge born from his passion for plants. It kind of makes sense, then, that he’s focusing on chemistry and biology among his AP & Honors classes. He stated that it would probably be his best route to get into a career field that will let him work toward a botany position.

These factors to improve your training are the same as those you need to develop your career, regardless of the field. If you don’t have a passion for what you are doing, how can people believe that you are knowledgeable and competent? Make sure your heart is in your training.

Understanding how to direct passions into jobs that pay the bills is an important point. If you can spend your time earning money while learning and developing your passion, then you have success and will enjoy more of your life.

 

MISTAKING MODELS FOR THE REAL THING – Mark Hatmaker

We’re going to take a weird sojourn through 17th-century French theater, an eyewitness account (names withheld) of an embarrassing demonstration, 10-day weather forecasts, and end (hopefully) with a point about taking drills too seriously.

First, a trip to the theater with an excerpt from Moliere’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, the premise of which is that a shopkeeper newly come into money decides that to be one of the upper-crust he needs to take great pains to “become cultured.” He engages numerous “culture instructors” who gladly take his money and leave him none the wiser or better cultured.

One of these “culture instructors” is a fencing master who teaches him a few basics in the form of a call-and-response pattern (sounding familiar?) Later, within the play, our cultured dupe decides to display what he know about fencing with an un-cultured person who knows nothing about fencing.

Mr. Jour: Goodness me! The fencing master seems to set your teeth on edge. Come here, and I will show you at once your senseless impertinence. (He asks for two foils, and gives one to Nicole.) Here, reason demonstrative the line of the body. When you thrust in quart, you have only to do so; and when you thrust in tierce, only to do so! That is the way never to be killed; and is it not a fine thing to be quite safe when one fights against anybody? There, thrust at me a little to try.

Nicole: Well, what? (Nicole gives him several thrusts)

Mr. Jour: Gently! Hold! Oh! Softly. Deuce take the wench!

Nicole: You tell me to thrust at you.

Mr. Jour: Yes; but you thrust in tierce before thrusting at me in quart, and you haven’t the patience to wait till I parry.

Familiar scenario, huh?

Now, the eyewitness account (my own). In the distant past I observed a renowned instructor in the midst of a seminar-based video shoot ready to show a “fool-proof” top-saddle/mount escape. He hits his back, asks someone to mount him. The volunteer is simply a “Nicole,” by that I mean, he had no special training, just a good sort doing what he was asked to do by the man in charge.

Our “Nicole” takes the top position and our “instructor” does his thing which appeared to be a boisterous wiggle to which “Nicole” posts his hands on the mat and remains stubbornly on top. Our instructor tells “Nicole,” and I quote “You wouldn’t do that.” I and a few others present exchange looks with cocked eyebrows that say “Well, obviously he would.”

Instructor bucks again, Nicole does what he would not do yet again, and again is chastised. The third time is the charm as Nicole “behaves” properly and the fool-proof escape and scene from Moliere is now complete.

I’m sure we’ve all seen countless demonstrations of “if you do this, I’d do this to you.” Uh-huh, sure you would.

Yes, drills have their place to teach us a vocabulary, but often the rookie (and unfortunately some beyond that stage) behave as Mr. Jour and believes that the drill is the real thing- the map is not the territory.

The best drills make no predictions further than 2-3 tactical responses in, and even these are “best guesses.” Long-form drills, even if front-loaded with wise choices, become less wise as they continue.

Let’s look to meteorology for a lesson in why that might be the case.

Despite the horrible reputation and abundant bad jokes about weather prediction, in the short term meteorological predictions are quite accurate. Predictions in all other arenas (politics, war outcomes, fashion trends, the next “big thing”) these fail left and right. The weather predictions seeming more wrong than they are simply the result of the fact that they predict every day and when they do get it wrong we are reminded of it by the extraordinariness of the wrongness-the rained out picnic, for example. No one is taken to task for saying Johnny Depp’s next movie will be a big hit, as a theatrical bomb does not rain on our plans.

To see just how extraordinarily right weather predictions can be, keep screen shots of 2-3 day forecasts over the next two weeks and at the end of that period you’ll find that if you go back and compare the 2-3 day out predictions with what did occur you just may gain some new respect for the profession.

But in that same two weeks of keeping screen shots do the same thing for the 10-day forecast and see how often the 9th and 10th days were on target. Not so much, as a matter of fact a careful look at the screenshots will reveal that the extended forecast is constantly changing as new data comes in (and wisely so). In essence, the 10-day is eye-candy, where the real science is in the 2-3 day forecast being re-calibrated each and every day.

In short, the shorter the term the more accurate the prediction, and the longer the term the more entropy in the system. (Make of that what you will with 20, 50, and 100 year term climate forecasts).

We would be far wiser if we constructed drills as meteorologists do, that is looking at all the real world data, making our best scientific guesses from there, and assume that we only might be right, not definitely right, and that’s only in maybe the first move, two, to three after if we’re lucky, and then re-calibrate and start the next short forecast.

We all become a bit un-cultured when like Mr. Jour we assume the drill is reality.

 

Being Street Smart Requires Knowing Your Limits, Part II – Erik Kondo

It’s not your fault if you don’t know the limits of your ability. The entire culture of self-defense training is based on getting people to act. It is based around the viewpoint that you are the innocent victim who is suddenly attacked by a “Bad Guy”. You have no choice but to physically defend yourself. And doing anything is better than doing nothing.

The classic example of this culture comes from women’s self-defense classes. The typical women’s class is focused on the scenario of a vulnerable woman who is attacked by a vicious rapist/killer. The woman is assumed to be culturally submissive and afraid to fight back. It is assumed she is afraid to make her attacker “mad”. Therefore, in order to induce her to take physical action, she must be shown how “easy” it is for her to physically defend herself. 

In such a class, the failure of the instructed defensive technique is thought to shatter the student’s confidence. Therefore, the techniques are always shown to work in the simulated attacks.

In these created scenarios, there is no before the attack. There is just the attack. You are told there is no time for good judgement and critical thinking, your training kicks in and you just act. You can’t use excessive force – he is a Bad Guy – a rapist/killer after all. “Better be tried by twelve (jurors) then be carried by six (pall bearers)” is the mantra.

In actuality (statistically speaking), you are unlikely to be suddenly attacked without warning by a stranger (even through it does happen). But you are more likely to be ambushed if you are street dumb. Street smart people are less likely to find themselves in situations they can’t handle because they know and respect their limits. They disengage from potentially threatening situations and urban environments that are beyond their ability to handle.

Dealing with the BEFORE an attack is much more complicated than simply teaching physical technique. It requires having knowledge of criminal behavior. It requires treating the students as individuals with different levels of ability and different motivations. This type of instruction is more time consuming.  It runs the risk of being categorized as “victim blaming”. On the other hand, the easiest and cheapest method to teach a self-defense class is to do the following:

1. Assume all your students are innocent victims that just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 
2. Assume all attackers are uniformly alike. They are evil strangers with the intent to seriously harm your students. But, they will most likely run away if the student does one or two of the taught “highly effective and devastating” defensive techniques.

Given these conditions, a self-defense instructor can teach a few techniques in a few hours. There is also time left for the students to successfully execute the techniques on a compliant attacker. The students leave the class feeling empowered with their new physical skills. They are happy because the class showed them how to deal with what many fear the most – being attacked by a violent stranger. The instructor is now ready to teach the same techniques to the next batch of students with the same irrational (low probability) fear.

This method is also financially sustainable since one or two instructors can teach 15-30 students at a time. The more students in the class, the lower the fee necessary to cover expenses and make a profit. 

Conversely, it would be difficult to teach a self-defense class under the following conditions:

1. Assume the students are all individuals with different abilities, limitations, habits, behaviors, methodologies, psychology, desires, and fears.
2. Assume all attackers are all individuals with different abilities, limitations, habits, behaviors, methodologies, psychology, desires, and fears.
3. Assume that attackers are known to the victim and that there is a buildup to the actual physical attack.
4. Assume that the many attacks are not life and death situations where it is more probable to be tried by twelve for excessive force than to be carried by six.

Under these assumptions, it is clear that a few hours is not enough time to teach 15-30 students to be street smart by one or two instructors. Such a class would require the students to get individualized attention over many multiple-hour sessions. 

Regardless of how much instruction some students received, in an actual situation, some of them would have a high failure rate for their techniques. For every accomplished skateboarder, rock climber, biker and skier, there are many that can barely perform the sport.

A practical problem is the scarcity of potential students who are both willing to devote more than a total of a few hours, and pay more than a nominal fee for training. The end result is a useful self-defense class that is difficult to sustain financially and has few students.

Nobody expects to become a skilled skateboarder/climber/biker/skier in a few hours. Why are the expectations of these activities so different from self-defense training?

In this case, regardless of what their instructor or others may have told them about their ability, upon engaging in the activity, participants get authentic feedback. These experiences provide them with an accurate assessment of their current ability. Gravity is a consistent and truthful teacher. Gravity doesn’t lie. As a result, they learn the true breaking point of their ability. The culture of these activities revolves around what you can actually do, not what you think, or are told you can do.

Contrast this situation with physical self-defense training. The majority of few hour students will never have the opportunity to “test” their physical skills in real life. Those that engage in long term martial arts training don’t ever learn their techniques’ breaking/failure points. Unlike the skateboarding/climbing/biking/skiing culture of constant testing and minor failure in new environments/situations, the self-defense/martial arts culture is one of no real testing and the ever present potential for catastrophic failure in an actual new environment/situation.

Many martial arts teachers actively discourage their students from going to new environments (other types of training styles, locations, teachers, etc.). Cross training is frowned upon. Different training methods are belittled and called “ineffective”. This is tribal behavior. The instructor and his or her students’ egos become wrapped up in how well they perform techniques in the dojo. Complaint training partners are prized. The ability to accurately assess the probability of success and failure of a given technique on different people is not considered.

The culture of many martial arts dojos and self-defense classes is fear of showing failure. Higher ranks and self-defense “experts” are not supposed to fail. They are expected to be able to perform all their techniques, on anyone, all the time.  The end result is people who have taken self-defense classes and/or engaged in martial arts training who are still effectively street dumb.