Developing Imagery Skills Part II – Garry Smith

As we train more and more we can continue to develop our imagery skills. Like any skill the more we use it the better we should get. Last year I took and passed my 4^th Dan in Ju Jitsu, it was a massive test and a huge challenge, it was 8 years since I last graded. So whilst I had effectively been training for 8 years I had also been teaching more and more especially since I took over the club in 2014.

In April 2016 I crashed a motorcycle and sustained a long lasting injury to my right foot, just as that was clearing up I was injured, unintentionally by my training partner, and my right bicep was in a pretty bad way for a couple of months, then 3 weeks before the grading I picked up a pretty aggressive chest infection.

My training schedule was erratic to say the least but I did manage to train in a limited capacity. Thankfully our black belts rallied round and put in some extra shifts for me to throw them around. The trouble was as the grading approached I was not confident that what I was doing was of a high enough standard, yes I listened to and took advice, yes I tried and experimented with different defences to attacks, most of which were random. However, with a couple of weeks to go I was still unsettled and needed to think carefully about what I was doing. It felt too mechanical.

I needed to rationalize and deal with my inner doubts and I did some serious thinking. I came to the conclusion that my problem was that I was not trusting myself enough so I examined each defence and each technique using my imagery skills, well not each one individually because this is what happened.

I started to go through the attacks in my mind and imagined how I would respond, where and how I would move, how I would strike and throw. I closed my eyes and watched. I started doing this with one set of techniques and then modifying my physical response and things started to become smoother, they made more sense and I was seeing not remembering, the thing is I was seeing it as the attack came in, my body seemed to be getting its shit together fast. It was an interesting experience, I stopped worrying about my performance and just decided to trust that my body, governed by my subconscious mind and many years of practice, would make things work.

I knew the theory, I had been teaching others but it took the impending pressure of being examined by my peers to make me practice what I teach others to do.

Well, it worked pretty damn well, if I say so myself I put in a pretty good performance and was complemented by the examiners, including a 6^th dan owner of another Ju Jitsu club, and Ukis, I even pulled off some stuff during the grading that I had not tried out in preparation, I surprised myself to be fair. It just happened, I went with the flow and it felt good, you know when it is working and you are expressing yourself well.

Developing imagery skills is good for the mind and body, my experience, and I am really keen to hear of other peoples, was that the practical application was possible during the act of training. Not just stopping the physical act and creating images in the mind but during the physical act, yes as the punch or kick is coming in. Seeing it immediately before application, well that is what it felt like. I am pretty convinced that this is in part due to the vast amount of hours spent on the mat and in preparation along with all the research and even reading and writing about martial arts, self defence, training and many other affiliated topics. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience and a valuable one.

Mental Conditioning and Neurolinguistics Part 1 – Darren Friesen

As neurology and neuro-linguistics develop, there has proven to be a direct correlation to the words one chooses to how the brain and body are conditioned, including and especially as it pertains to self-defense. A block of its own volition signifies a reactionary move which means the practitioner is forever behind the eight ball of real aggression. Words are not just words. They represent the images, sounds, feelings (both tactile and kinesthetic) and internal feedback of how we process meaning and, therefore, how we act based on that meaning. I have never been a big believer in quick solutions to evolutionary problems as they pertain to a wide variety of things – making money, being happy, having success – as these are all tangible things that are person-dependent. But for combatives or self-defense, my experience is they make a world of difference in the beginner mind. My intent here is to inform, give some different and progressive methodologies to conscientious and open-minded instructors to help keep their students safe. Just some examples of how this connection can be averted into a different entity in the mind of process:

Block becomes destroy (example: “I defended against the punch with a high-rising block” becomes “I destroyed the punch with my elbow)
.Fighting becomes terminating violence (A match or duel with a unknown outcome and no definitive answer for duration of conflict, expectation of victory, pain tolerance and threshold caveats and factoring in potential loss and doubt in the mind becomes a method to overwhelm the threat by any means necessary until the threat has ceased) If you see me “squaring off” outside of an attribute drill (which is what sparring is, it’s not actual violence) I’ve already let things get out of hand.
Defend becomes hard counter/pre-emptive action (transfers the power back to the one on the receiving end and in a proactive manner)
Joint-locking or joint manipulation (I’m not a big believer in either but it’s an example) becomes joint-breaking or hyperextension (a “lock” has no end – either you let go when he submits and start the dance from square one again, he/she becomes accustomed to the pain and resists or you hold indefinitely until tomorrow morning when one of you breaks mentally. A joint-break or hyperextension signifies damage, damage that cannot be undone without medical assistance and recovery time.
Entry becomes overwhelming forward pressure/explosion
Trap becomes limb destruction or disruption
“You did that wrong, do it again” can be “What better and more efficient way do you think you could’ve done that to get the result desired?”
Instead of yelling, cultivate their problem-solving ability
Reverse engineer modern problems with potential and highest-percentage outcomes.
Challenge their intellect and give them the avenue to solve the problems with their own analysis without spoon-feeding them.
Push them. “I’ve seen you hit harder, did that bomb have emotional intent or are you just going through the motions?” Every strike needs emotional intent. What matters most to you that you want to return to. The audacity of this person to try and take that away from you or you from them.”

The Price – Rory Miller

Some advice I received long ago:

If you want to be successful, you only have to answer two questions. “What do I want?” And, “What am I willing to pay— in time, money and sweat— to make it happen?”

Time, money and sweat. Sometimes blood and tears, but we’ll leave those aside for now. Time, money and sweat are the currency of success. Anything you want to achieve, whether a skill or an object, requires at least two.

Time as currency is something all fighters understand. Like money, time can be saved, wasted, or spent wisely. It can also be stolen, invested and even counterfeited.

Anything you choose to achieve takes time. Everything takes time, including doing nothing. I can use time and money to buy another person’s sweat, and I can sell my sweat and time for someone else’s money, but there is no amount of money and sweat that can buy even a second of time.

Time can be used skillfully, however. You can borrow the fruits of someone else’s time. I just read a book that was the product of thirty years of research. The author spent thirty years. I spent two days. I don’t have his depth of knowledge, but the knowledge I did gain might have taken a dozen years of trial and error, not to mention a few dissected human corpses.

Learning a system of combat, you get the benefits of generations of mistakes. You would never survive enough encounters yourself to get that depth of knowledge. In a few hours, you can get the distilled wisdom of generations.

The benefits of time can compound, like interest. Skills you learn young are easier to assimilate and always there, even if you need a refresher. Habits, like fitness, laid down early have life-long effects. Years learning a marketable skill can become a lifetime career. Time spent at a job can, if managed, become a comfortable retirement.

When you really want something, you must manage your time. Be clear about what you want. Be specific about the steps that get you closer. Be aware of the activities that feel like progress, but aren’t. Watching training videos is not training.

Money. Time is a currency, but money is a tool. Money is just a symbol, an agreed-upon thing with no intrinsic power, but it can do almost anything. It can provide stuff, if the material is what you like. But if you like skills, money buys you access to the people who have those skills.

A lot of us come from the martial arts, and we have done a very strange thing with ideas of money and value. We traditionally expect commercially successful training centers to teach crap (we call them McDojos) and we expect some old man teaching out of his garage for love of the art to have the good stuff.

Even if that’s true, do you want the old master teaching in his garage to die in poverty? I don’t.

When you become a student, you aren’t paying for the two hours you spend with that instructor. You are paying for the decades that instructor spent to make those two hours valuable. Do your research. Focus on the instructor that will give you the best time value in the subject you want. If you want a course in defensive shooting, a tactical shooting course is an inefficient use of money and time. Look first at best material for you. Then best teacher for you. And then look at price.

Sometimes the good stuff is expensive. Sometimes it’s cheap, since many people with valuable skills are terrible at business.

And sweat. Sometimes it’s brain sweat, often physical, but most things worth acquiring, especially skills and attributes take effort. No one can give you a skill, you have to take it. No one can get strong for you— you have to pump the iron yourself.

Want to be a master musician? That’s gonna take ten thousand hours. Want to be a good pistol shot? You’re going to get blisters and a callous on the middle knuckle of your middle finger. Want to go to the Olympics in judo? That’s going to be years of sweat and impact.

You can buy sweat, if you want objects. When you buy a car, you are buying the labor of other people (and robots.) But for skills and attributes, no one can do it for you.

Everything worth having or becoming has a price.

Epilogue. About blood and tears. There are a lot of skills you can acquire in controlled environments and the only price will be time, money and sweat. When you test those skills in the real world, whether the skills are self-defense or first aid or hostage negotiations, sometimes the new price will be blood or tears. That’s what makes it the real world.

On Models – Erik Kondo and Rory Miller

Rory and I have a basic disagreement about models. I love them. He doesn’t. No. We are not talking about the beautiful models you see in print or on TV. That a whole different discussion. We are talking about educational models used for teaching.

Rory will explain why he doesn’t like them. But first I will explain why I do.

I see models as teaching tools that provide a framework for understanding. The world is a complex place. Trying to figure out how the world works is a difficult task. Therefore, I see models as a pathway to building a general understanding of a subject. The basic idea is to take a subject and break it down into it’s component parts. Then each part can be examined and discussed both separately and also in combination with the other parts.

Flexible models allow for understanding to grow and become more complex as the person’s understanding of the subject increases. Models provide the student with mental anchoring where he or she can “chunk” information together. As the person’s understanding increases, so does the connections and relationships between the “chunks” increase.

Therefore, I see models as problem solving tools. They are starting points on the journey of understanding.

“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” — Box, George E. P.

But, I do agree that models also have their disadvantages. Models are only representations of reality. They are not reality. As famously stated by mathematician, George Box, they are also invariably wrong to a certain extent.

For example, Newtonian Physics is essentially a model that is wrong under certain conditions. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is a model that is also incorrect under certain other conditions, but it solves some of the flaws of the Newtonian model. So why not skip Newton and go straight to Einstein? Because Einstein’s theory is very hard to understand and it requires a fair amount of prerequisite knowledge. And one practical prerequisite, is to understand the Newtonian model first.

I think that much of the practical problems of the Newtonian model can be mitigated by realizing that it is both an imperfect and limited model.

When it comes to models for conflict management, I think that people run into trouble when they assume that the Model will give them the correct answer to their specific problem. Instead of viewing the Model as a problem solving tool for them to use to come to their own solution, they see the Model as already having the solution.

In this case, blind faith in the Model causes them to be rigid and inflexible in their thinking. This is an example of not having a flexible or growth mindset. People without this type mindset tend to see models in this rigid fashion. As a result, learning a model actually could be detrimental for them.

These are the people who want a definite answer to the question of “If he does this, what should I do?”

This is a different question than “If he does this, what are some of my alternatives?”

Ultimately, I think models are useful for helping people who are willing to teach themselves. This type of person will benefit from a model as a starting point. Then he or she will discard the model in favor of his or her own personalized model or means of understanding.

But there is no telling how a person will use a model. Therefore, I think that if models come with full disclosure of their inherent flaws, then their advantages will out weigh their disadvantages. That is why I use them – a lot.

Here is Rory’s take on models.

Models have their place. In closed systems, models or formulas work very well. A closed system is one in which the conditions are known and there are right and wrong answers. Erik brought up physics. Newtonian physics (I don’t know enough about advanced physics to make the same assertion) is a closed system. There are a handful of known constants and laws and if you know the variables (length of lever, distance to both load and force from fulcrum, amount of force applied) you will a always get the same answer.

Most of what we learn in school are closed systems. Math. Geography. Writing is an interesting one, because the fundamentals of writing (grammar, spelling and even story structure) are taught as a closed system, but good writing can and does break all of the rules. Think of Faulkner. Effective writing is an open system, but we tend to teach it as a closed system.

Conflict management is a classic open system. It is broad and deep. There are many variables and the majority of those are outside of your control, unknown to you, or both. There is no single definition of a win and the exact same outcome in a situation can be interpreted as a loss or a win by two different people and each individual can even change their mind about whether it was a win over time.

Models are used for a lot of reasons. In closed systems, they make sense. Bureaucracies like measurability and open skills are not really measurable. But the nature of the beast is that surviving violence is predicated on adaptability. On changing the situation. On breaking social rules and taboos that try to keep a student on a socially acceptable script. Cheating, in other words. And you can’t make a model for breaking models.

But I think the most common reason people try to apply models to open systems is simply fear. If you can take this ugly, immense, complicated problem and give it nice neat labels and put it in a box, it looks less scary.

That’s classic fear management, not danger management. Willful blindness.

My take, as an instructor, is to normalize the chaos. Our world, life itself, is an open system. We evolved to deal with that level of complexity. Humans rock at dealing with unknowns, if they let themselves.

I do use models in my teaching. Partially because I went through the school system like everyone else and it’s a hard habit to break. But when I use them consciously, it’s never to give answers. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, for instance.

A prescriptive instructor would use Maslow to say, “An assailant working from the security level of the hierarchy will… and so you must…” Used properly (in other words, my way) the same level gives you, “If no one was going to help you and your children were starving, how would you get money for food?” Followed up, after the class has answered the question: “Get it? An addict doesn’t think differently than you, they just have a level of problem very few people in our culture have had to deal with…”

The purpose of models, when I use them well, is to add layers to the depth of understanding. Most models, however, are used to cut out variables and complexity that the instructor is unprepared to deal with.

There is one other reason to use models in an open system, and it hinges on the instructor’s assumptions and biases.

If you assume that your students are intelligent and adaptable, you give them tools and information and trust them to find their own best solutions by their own definitions with their own personal resources. This is the “gains maximization” strategy, looking for the best win.

If, however, you assume your students are stupid and will generally make things worse if left to their own judgment, in that case you will need to rely on models. You need to tell them what to do and be prescriptive. That’s the loss minimization strategy.

I personally reject that point of view. But that’s me.

Back To Life, Back To Reality Part II – Dave Wignall

Recap from Part I, Well, the reality is that you have been negligent in your considerations. You have not realised the stark differences between the environment in which you train and the environment outside. You finish training, pleased that you have just learnt a certain technique, strike, weapons defence, lock, choke, takedown, whatever it is, but then open the door and walk back onto the street to make your way home. Back to life and back to reality. Your Dojo is a cocoon of like-minded people who don’t want to hurt you (well, not too much) and will aid you, unknowingly most of the time, in helping you succeed. That is a great and wonderful thing of course, and something to be welcomed. I am proud of all of my students, the mutual respect they show for each other, the understanding, the stories, the insights, the questioning, the laughs, the fun – mostly the fun – but we never lose sight of the fact of why we train like we do and why we train at all.

So how can we identify flaws? Well here is something I work to that follows a basic scientific process of analysis and test.

1. Ask questions
2. Do your background research
3. Construct a hypothesis
4. Test (slow then fast under pressure, preferably not with someone who just yields because you are the Chief Instructor) and analyse your data
5. Draw your conclusions
6. Present your results

During my classes I am already at point 6. It is then open for my students to ask questions, do their own research and so on. If the defence technique works when performed slowly, then falls apart when practised fast, then you have identified a weakness and have something to work on.

I’ve found that much of what is taught, across the many disciplines I have either been involved in or studied and analysed, is not based on or even remotely looks like reality, rarely takes into account how people actually react, and is generally far too assumptive. Real fighting is messy, ugly, unrehearsed, aggressive, violent, usually bloody and let’s face it, quite abominable. Real fighting is all this and more. The flaw in all of our training is that none of it is real, but we can at least introduce some semblance of reality. Even in MMA, Boxing or Muay Thai, where an opponent can be struck with full force, there are still huge issues with those disciplines. For example, there are rules, a referee, time limits, people sitting at your corner waiting to help you recover each round, a towel can be thrown in the ring to stop the fight, doctors are on hand, plus as you enter the ring, you should already have an idea of what you are letting yourself in for. In addition, there is only one opponent not multiple, no weapons are carried nor are any laying around to be used. Biting, gouging, strikes to the throat or groin are not allowed. No hair pulling, no scratching, no kicks to the head are allowed when your opponent is on the floor etc etc. The list is quite long. Even during the 1920’s in the days of bare knuckle Vale Tudo (Portuguese for ‘anything goes’), you could kick and stomp to the head while standing above your opponent, but there was still the absence of weapons and multiple attackers. As harsh, hard, aggressive and violent as it was, it still had flaws in that it wasn’t ‘real’ in the context of this article. The thing is, it didn’t profess to be something it wasn’t and there is, of course, nothing wrong with that.

You can see, however, that the more you take steps to train without rules, the more effective your defence can become. Why do we not have kicks to the head on a grounded opponent in UFC? Why doesn’t MMA contain strikes like ploughing a knee square into the face of an opponent kneeling on the canvas? The answers are obvious, I would hope, but you can do that in real life if the threat is such that the level of force is proportionate and justified. I have personally trained with some very proficient Brazilian Ju-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts fighters and although they were more experienced in their field than me, I stopped my partners in their tracks when I applied an eye gouge, struck to the groin or applied some pressure on the windpipe with my elbow. This of course did not make me any better than them – far from it; these guys were very able in their art. It’s just that I was responding without the consideration of rules. I did what my survival default told me to do. If you apply rules, it isn’t reality training because there are no rules in a real fight. If your responses require fine motor skill applications, it isn’t reality training because things happen too fast for you to apply them; if you only ever train against one person, it isn’t reality training; if your training does not involve any form of pressure testing that is unscripted and non-choreographed, it isn’t reality training. There are many other aspects but you get the idea.

During my 18 years training and teaching Shotokan Karate, whenever I taught anything that remotely resembled a real attack, the defence fell apart. Students were lost when their practised defence failed. There was no contingency and no real mention of what happens if your first line of defence or counter strike fails. I understand that of course because again, it is a traditional Martial Art that is structured, generally follows a strict syllabus and is full of techniques that don’t work. It’s too scripted, too ‘clean’, too convoluted, and far too assumptive. Real fighting is none of those.

In 2006 I was invited to Japan to attend a Ju-Jitsu World Congress. Over 200 Students from around the world and a good number of very qualified instructors were all teaching their thing. What was noticeably constant was that for all demonstrations, opponents were compliant and it was all pretty much choreographed. Again I understand that. What was being taught was a traditional Martial Art. Yes, there were techniques that were applied with a certain level of force and yes, there were indeed some responses that could work. However, not once did I see anything that resembled a real attack. Students moved and responded in a certain way that would aid the defence response.

I’m aware that you are unable to attack 100% with full force. There are a finite number of students and your club would not last too long, but with padding and body protection the pressure could’ve been increased to get close to something a little more realistic. Fighting is far too dynamic and contains far too many variables to have the time to apply fine motor skills, flamboyant and over-technical responses, and, against a committed attacker, even a padded up one, it should highlight just how impractical a lot of these traditional defences are.

Hick’s law, named after British psychologist William Edmund Hick, describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has: increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically. So from a Self Protection angle, the more complicated the technique, the more choice we have in the syllabus, the longer it will take to process, and therefore the longer it will take to apply. During an attack, time is not on our side.

So, as I mentioned earlier, we have to understand and be clear on what we are learning. If we are being taught something that we are told is Self Protection and yet when put under pressure, the defence falls at the first hurdle, then it must be addressed. A student should be made aware from the outset if what they are learning, for example, is based on a traditional system. By that I mean they need to be aware if it has been handed down through the years and as a result would very likely have been changed and adapted, would usually contain certain techniques that may well have worked in feudal Japan, but is neither practical or workable for your average non-warrior in the street arena of today. It is important that the student is under no illusion.

Another way to identify flaws is to introduce elements of reality. It’s a simple task to get a well-trained student to perform a series of set techniques against an opponent who is attacking in a particular way. It will work fine. Transfer that same scenario to the street, mix it with a cocktail of adrenaline, non-adrenaline and endorphins, include a level of fear which you have never experienced or comprehended before that makes your legs turn to jelly, makes you want to vomit and empty your bowels and renders you incapable to talk or think straight, and you will discover that they are worlds apart. All of that without yet being hit, without seeing your own blood in your hands, without trying to make sense of what is going on, all without a real knife at your throat, or a firearm pointed at your head. A bit different, huh?

It would of course be ridiculous for me to suggest that I could even try to mirror this full-on street scenario during my classes, for obvious reasons, but what I can do is educate, analyse and develop. We can make our training honest and open to the fact that we can fail and mess up. If we don’t understand or even acknowledge where the weaknesses are in what we do, how can we possibly grow and progress in the right way? Nothing is set in stone and nor should it be.

I teach Krav Maga (Hebrew for Contact Combat), an Israeli system that, before its military links were established, was developed to help civilians defend themselves, irrespective of size or gender. By maintaining that ideal, it enables me to stress tactical and strategical implementation over technique. Whatever the defence is, it has to be able to work for anyone, and if what is being taught is based purely on technique alone, the result will be that it will work for some and not for others or may even fail completely. This is a major consideration when students are supposed to be learning something that should be protecting themselves, yet find they are one of the students the technique doesn’t work for!

So what can we do to overcome a technique only based system? I teach a three part strategy: disrupt the thought process of your attacker; unbalance your attacker; inflict damage/cause pain to your attacker. How you implement this strategy however, is not that important, but success in application will increase your chances of survival. The individual has to adapt to what he/she is presented with and, with so little time available to respond, the response should undoubtedly be quick, efficient, and take little thought process. When a technique fails, where do you go from there? If you have a plan and that fails, do you have a plan B or C? Do you have a contingency? If the strategy fails at any point, you can pick it up, overlap, and begin the strategy again, and again, and again. Implement an applicable strategical process and you will be able to continuously adapt to the stimulus.

It is important to remember that if something is principally sound and taught to students in their thousands, it does not by any means make it flawless, honest or real. Indeed the automatic acceptance of something that is taught that way because “just look at the pedigree, it must be correct” is rarely if at all questioned. It is also important to be aware that there are many that look to feed the money machine, fill the pockets of those at the top, exploit the naive and uneducated, and serve to set the pedestal of the untouchable instructor even higher.

Whatever it is we are learning or teaching, we must operate within the realms of reality and seek the truth. With something that is as important as surviving a life threatening attack, the analytical breakdown and defence responses should be commensurate. What we should be left with is something that is honest, practical and workable. Reality and life should not be different because they are one and the same. Life is our reality, and if what we are learning does not reflect this, then we need to question ourselves and what we do before it’s too late.

Conflict Management and Practical Karate Part IV – John Titchen

PERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

This element of de-escalation tactics is perhaps the most important and most neglected area of personal discipline.

To successfully de-escalate a situation you usually

want to achieve a peaceful resolution,
need to have the self confidence to believe that avoiding an unnecessary violent or aggressive event is indicative of mental strength not weakness.

For many people the ego is the Achilles heel of successful conflict avoidance. It is not unusual to find individuals who have either set false standards of behaviour for themselves, inappropriate goals, or believe (often incorrectly) that others expect certain types of behaviour from them. Many have a needless value that they put on the (temporary) perception of themselves by others.

Conflict de-escalation is still a form of conflict. In simple terms to prevent force or greater aggression from being used the other party needs to feel that they have either won, or at the very least that they have not lost. In many instances this is about saving face (in front of their peers) and to do this you may need to be seen by them (and perhaps by some bystanders) as having given in. The paradigm shift that a lot of people need to get their heads round is that this does not mean that you have lost, rather you need to understand and appreciate that your victory is in achieving a different aim (lack of violence, criminal damage, injury or prosecution) and one that may not be immediately apparent to the other person.

Do not think that you have to win, think rather that you do not have to lose.

Gichin Funakoshi

If you have good trouble avoidance protocols then the likelihood or frequency of your being involved in a de-escalation event with potentially serious consequences while surrounded or observed by people that know you well should be low. In such instances, acquaintances whose judgement you value should not view you harshly for taking action that avoided any escalation in aggression or violence, even if that means ‘giving way’ or apologising for something that was not your fault.

If a similar instance occurs when you are surrounded by strangers who you are unlikely to ever see again, should you care what they think? If you are in a venue where even saving face for the other person carries a high risk of being attacked for being weak then you are in the wrong place. A location where a level of aggression that risks or inevitably results in physical conflict is the only acceptable response is not one any sensible person should frequent.

Whether strangers or acquaintances, people whose judgement you value should recognise the value of taking steps that avoid risking injury (and property damage) and further repercussions to both yourself or another person.

Pride in your combative skill-set can be a dangerous side effect of martial arts training, one that brings for some a subconscious fantasy promoted by films where the subject uses their skills to beat or humble another person. It doesn’t help that this is the mental picture and expectation that most non-martial artists have of their martial art practicing friends.

You do not need to let your pride go, you just need to change its focus.

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

Sun Tzu

Afterword

This four part series has been described as a brief introduction to de-escalation. That is all it is, no more than a starting point. Each of the four umbrella headings that I’ve chosen are arbitrary, and represent summations and generalisations of a vast topic. Since I have generalised while writing this not everything that I have said will be right or applicable all the time.

I do encourage you all to do your own research and training on this topic, but caveat emptor. There are a number of writers and training providers out there who may make you mistakenly feel ignorant or inexperienced because they use ‘specialist’ terminology to refer to most elements of what they are teaching. In my experience this is marketing dross rather than a useful educational tool and it simply creates a false divide between those ‘in the club’ and those outside. In the majority of cases the specialist terminology employed has no basis in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, criminology, medicine or policing – it’s simply an in-house teaching tool.

Conflict Management and Practical Karate Part III – John Titchen

Conflict Management and Practical Karate Part II – John Titchen

De-escalation Tactics

This four part series is designed to be a brief introduction to the field of non-violent resolution tactics.

PART TWO – VERBAL APPROACHES

This is such a huge topic that it seems trite to try and narrow it down to a simple set of guidelines that will help people. Some people don’t need (much) advice or training. They already have the ‘gift of the gab’ and can smoothly talk their way out of trouble under pressure or indeed talk another person out of trouble.

Unfortunately if you are not naturally talented then the best way to improve is practice. Real practice comes with risk and potential cost and in any case unless your job requires it your primary aim should be to avoid putting yourself in situations where de-escalation skills are required. Despite that, the underlying principles of good de-escalation are those of good communication, and those are skills that we can all work on all the time.

What you say will depend on the circumstances. I can’t tell you exactly what to say. What I can do is share a teaching mnemonic that I use to outline underlying approaches. This mnemonic is deliberately simple, with each headline word conveying an overall message and each heading letter summarising a number of different skill sets.

READ to LEAD to DEAL

We want to read a situation accurately so that we can lead it to a successful or safe resolution by achieving a deal that both parties can accept.

RECOGNISE if a verbal strategy is viable or appropriate under the circumstances.

EXPECT a physical response at all times and maintain alertness and a safe posture.

ADAPT your tone, volume and phrasing to that of the other person and if possible use to build a connection for good communication.

DECIDE on and constantly re-evaluate what you think is the best course of action.

LISTEN to what the other person is saying.

EMPATHISE with their point of view to enable you to ask how best to help or offer a solution.

ACKNOWLEDGE the issue that is being raised and try to offer a solution.

DISTRACT (and defuse tension) by asking open-ended questions, by involving other people, or (if necessary) to create an opportunity for a pre-emptive strike.

EMPATHISE with their point of view to enable you to ask how best to help or offer a solution.

ACKNOWLEDGE the issue that is being raised and try to offer a solution.

LISTEN to what the other person is saying.

LEAD to DEAL is not simply a catchy mnemonic. The fact that the meanings are the same but the order has changed is a reminder that communication is a constantly changing fluid process.

Conflict Management and Practical Karate Part I – John Titchen

This four part series is designed to be a brief introduction to the field of non-violent resolution tactics.

Part One – Underpinning Principles

Part Two – Verbal Approaches

Part Three – Body Language

Part Four – Personal Psychology

PART ONE – UNDERPINNING PRINCIPLES

All aggressive and violent behaviours have underlying causes, which could be summarized under the headings of chemical factors and psychological factors. These are interrelated but for the sake of brevity are listed separately. Understanding and influencing these (through communication) is the best way to resolve conflict.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS

Motivating factors

These may be far more varied than the examples listed below, but can generally be categorized as immediate or primary causes and underlying or secondary causes.

Immediate causes affecting decision-making and behaviour:

Physical presence or (over-long) eye contact interpreted as a challenge, overly alpha or beta male body language, a push or stumble into a person, the spilling of food or drink, a vehicle accident, peer pressure, denial of a perceived need.

Secondary causes affecting decision-making and behaviour:

Family or work stress, suppressed anger (generally linked to the former but inhibited by potential consequence), racism or social/political beliefs, past experiences, peer pressure, the role and acceptability of violence and aggression in both upbringing and normal social environment, fatigue, past success in achieving aims through aggressive or violent behaviours.

Inhibiting factors

These could be categorized as physical and social factors.

Physical factors:

The relative sizes of parties involved, perceived strength and ability of the other party, the ‘known quantity’ of the other party, body language, perceived alertness, company (of either party), immediate consequences, likelihood of injury.

Social factors:

Peer reaction – acceptance or alienation, legal and family or work repercussions, the social acceptability of aggression and violence within the individual’s social group.

Through positioning, body language, listening and using appropriate tone and speech the underlying aim should be to attempt to reduce the individual’s motivation to continue to use aggression and possibly attempt violence, while strengthening their inhibition against such approaches.

CHEMICAL FACTORS

Drugs

Alcohol or other substances weaken inhibition and can reduce awareness and comprehension. This will affect the ability of another person to influence the individual’s motivation and inhibition.

Underlying medical conditions

Due to a pre-existing health condition the other person may not necessarily be on the same ‘operating system’ as everyone else and may not respond in the same way.

Adrenaline

Aural and visual exclusion along with other side effects of adrenaline may hinder communication and attempts to influence the individual’s motivation and inhibition.

It is unlikely that there is much that you can do once an incident has already begun that will mitigate underlying chemical factors. If spotted early enough then the effect of drugs such as alcohol can be reduced by slowing absorption into the blood stream by providing food and withdrawing further alcohol (if safe to do so), but these are factors that are largely outside your control.

It is important to be aware of the role of chemical factors as ‘tipping points’ in an individual’s behaviour patterns. Whether they are part of the primary or secondary cause of the problem they may lower the probability of a successful non-violent de-escalation.

Escape and Evasion – Randy King

Every self defense program I’ve seen so far has an escape protocol to it; it has some part in the curriculum that mentions that escaping is a great idea, how to escape, where to escape, and what to do. I find, though, that most people don’t actually train to escape, and this becomes quite the issue when it comes to conditioning-type training. If you are part of the relatively new school of conditioning-based training, operant conditioning, or response-based training to stimulus, it is very important that you give your students the opportunity to escape, and reward them for escaping when you’re training the drills. A lot of instructors pay lip service to escape drills – they say that you should have an escape plan, you should have an evasion plan, you should make sure you know what’s going on, you should be able to de-escalate – but then no training time is devoted to the skills of escaping, evading, or de-escalation!

What I find in of a lot of self defense programs is that they are still just a fight program. To use the paradigm that Rory Miller set up in his book Facing Violence, there are seven things that must be considered for self-defense. You need to understand the legal and ethical ramifications, you need to understand violence dynamics, you need to understand escape and evasion, you need to understand operant conditioning, you need to understand “the freeze”, you need to understand the fight, and then of course, the aftermath of all these things. On this paradigm, which I find is the best I’ve seen so far for self-defense, escape and evasion is in the first three things you need to learn! Everybody talks about it, but it seems nobody actually does it. So, when training with your students, you need to make drills where escape is the best option, and it is a rewarded option – running away is okay! Redefining a win becomes very important.

I want you to understand that most of the time, when people come to a martial arts/self-defense class, they expect to learn the fighting part of the situation. But if they’re only learning the fight part, it’s just martial arts, we’re just passing a system down. We’re just showing them that there are ways to deal with violence, but when people get into violent situations, there’s always a lead up, and then a follow up portion. Understanding the lead up to self defense situations is far more important than the self defense techniques themselves. Saying this, you might do every single thing right, you can pay attention, you can follow all the rules, you can know who the bad guys are in your neighbourhood, you can plan escape routes, you can know where the fire escapes are, you can understand where to run and how to run, you can have a great sprint time, and you can still get attacked. I’m not saying that this is going to make you invincible. Understand that there are times when the fight has to happen, but that’s not always the case, and in fact it’s rarely the case.

Getting your students familiar with the mechanisms ahead of time, making sure they understand how people attack, making sure they understand violence patterns, making sure they understand how to run, and where to run, is hyper important. It can be really hard to add this aspect into your curriculum, especially if you like the kicking and the punching and the choking and the throwing. It can be very hard to add some kind of escape drill, because maybe you feel like it’s not fun for your students, maybe you think just paying lip service to it is okay. I’m here to tell you that it’s not okay. It’s your job to build drills that use escape, or that give your students the opportunity to escape.

Something we talk about all the time is that 60-80% of human communication is body language. That includes task-based stuff, so if you say every day “Oh, and don’t forget to escape” but you never let your students physically escape, and you never wire their brains for escape, they won’t believe that escaping is a proper option. When the brown matter hits the fan, they’re going to have trouble going to an escape pattern, as opposed to an attack pattern. Attack patterns are important, but I think escape patterns are even more important, especially in the real world. Yeah, it’s great to be Rambo and beat the bad guy up, but almost every fight comes with hard-won knowledge. Every single fight you’re in, you might hurt yourself, you might break a bone, you might twist an ankle. All these things can happen, and they will affect your life outside of that fight. Most people focus on the thirty seconds to a minute of most violent encounters, where the outside surrounding part of it is much more important. So – how do you teach people to escape and evade? By building escape drills into your curriculum.

There’s only really four things you can do in a fight. You can escape, you can control them, you can disable them, or you can lose. Obviously losing is not on the table – you don’t want to train your students to lose, there’s no point in putting reps into losing. You can choose to lose, you can choose to submit, you can do that, that is fine. You can choose to curl up in a ball and get kicked, you can choose to let people do what they’re going to do to you, and that also can be a viable strategy. You may have been training them in disabling an attacker, you’ve been training them in kicking and punching, you’ve been training them how to restrain people, but you’re taking one-third or one-fourth of their options off the table if you’re not teaching them to escape.

You need to teach your students where to escape and how to escape, and how to map a pattern in time and space to get away from the attacker. You could build a drill where it’s “all right everybody, you’re going to do your counter ambush drill, you’re going to do your favourite setup and instead of going to your follow-up I want you to escape, and I want you to escape to a doorway.” The problem with this is, setting a fixed position for an escape is beneficial for the first one or two reps, but the human brain is lazy, it’s a pattern recognition machine. Its job is to create the most efficient pattern possible. As soon as you create one static place in your gym to run to, after two or three reps the brain is just going to have a pattern to do that and they’re no longer developing the skill set to escape.

You also need to define the parameters of escaping. If we’re escaping from asocial violence, we obviously want to run towards lights and people. More people means more witnesses, and more witnesses usually prevents asocial violence. Lights also mean more people that can see you. If you are trying to stop social violence, you are going to try and escape away from crowds, because if it’s social violence and I run into a crowd of people, and the other person’s trying to fight me and they’re trying to gain status in their group, the more people that watch, the better it’s going to be. So for social violence, you need to get away from the surrounding people, you need to create an environment where they’re not going to gain the social standing they need. Identifying the type of violence is a whole different article – there’s already a number of them in this publication about that. Just understand you need to define the parameters of escape, what escaping is, lights and people, or away from the people who are trying to fight you.

There is a drill I have created that rewards escape, and this is by far the drill that is most stolen from me by every other instructor who meets me, so I definitely want to give this drill to you. I call this drill the “High-Five Drill”. This is a great solution to the problems mentioned above.

For this drill, we start with a person attacking you, and you do whatever movement pattern you’re working on that day, if you’re working a pass or a sweep or a throw or whatever, doesn’t matter. After the student has done the technique, I want them to run, and they’re going to run to an instructor. Why we call this a high-five drill is very simple – the instructor is going to walk around the room holding up their hand in a high-five position, and they’re going to keep constantly changing position and moving around. This forces the student to actually look and find the person, to scan the environment so they find the safe path, and then they have to get to it. The bigger the group you’re in, the better this drill gets. The reason is you get every single person in the room doing the drill at the same time – it’s a “you go, I go” drill. So, my partner attacks me, I do whatever technique I’m working on, I put them on the ground, I do my counter ambush, etc. Then I have to scan the room and find the person who has the high five, and I have to get to that person as fast as possible in the safest way possible.

The rules of the game are simple. I have to find the quickest, safest way to get to the high five person. I have to do the high five from the front, not the side or the back, and this is for the safety of the person doing the high five, and I cannot bump or smash into any other person in the room. In this game, the other people are barriers, rather than people. In real life, you could obviously smash your way through people to escape, but for this drill these people are barriers, corners, alleys. We need to move around these “human pylons” in order to map a safe escape path.

In closing, what I want you to do is make sure your students have an escape pattern, have the parameters and goals of where to escape, and then have a training regimen that rewards the fact that they can escape, and then you’re teaching a true self defense program.