Category: Teaching Smarts

Back To Life: Back To Reality, Part I – Dave Wignall

The Martial Arts industry is many things. For a start it is very political. No news there really. It is also very changeable and, at times, even fashionable. A bit like the latest ‘Keep Fit’ download or DVD. “Train like celebrity X, you too can be like (insert name)” and all that hyped nonsense. That said, Martial Arts training is also very rewarding, educational, inspirational, confidence boosting, can help improve self esteem, improve on general health and fitness, instil a great sense of achievement and push us to our physical limits. There is indeed an abundance of good stuff that Martial Arts training can give us that would be hard to dispute.

However, sadly, it also breeds bad stuff. Bad stuff that welcomes greed, massages egos, produces inexperienced instructors, encourages ‘untouchable’ and unchallengeable individuals sitting high on usually self appointed pedestals, or offers a second income once you have taken a quick instructor course if you have the cash ready. Naturally there’s no experience necessary. In fact if you don’t have the money to hand, or maybe you don’t even want to put in any amount of work to achieve this superficial instructor level, you can always go online and buy a black belt certification of your choice with a shiny new black belt to match. You can buy a Karate 4th Dan, Ju-jitsu 5th Dan, or even an (ahem) Expert or (ahem) Grand Master level in Krav Maga and Voila! You are ready to teach anyone who wants to pay you their hard earned cash. No questions asked of course. I mean, what’s the point of credibility in an industry that has few governing bodies that rarely investigate, check and ensure that what is being taught to students is safe?!

The quite shocking and dangerous thing with these clubs and organisations is that once the metaphorical smoke and mirrors clear and break, what is left is the stark belief by many that what is being taught, inexperienced or not, is a self protection system that – when transferred to the street – will work. The harsh reality is, of course, it won’t. Well ok, it could have some level of success, but this is generally down to the individual resorting to their own ‘default’, which could be simply lashing out at the attacker and running away at pace. No skill in that and training is hardly needed, huh? Effective? Yes. Looks good? No. So why then do we see so much convoluted, fine motor skill based defences being taught when, in all honesty, they haven’t really got a chance of being successful? The answer? I believe it is because ultimately, very little is challenged. Techniques and concepts are just accepted and it is taken for granted they will work without question, and therefore the ‘parrot fashion’ learnt technique is duly acknowledged by all that ‘x’ is what you do when ‘y’ is presented. No margin for failure, no margin for error, no tactical application, no strategic implementation, just learn by rote.

I’ve found across my many years of teaching in this industry that challenging instructors is something that aggravates them and, to some degree, the students of these instructors can also be equally touchy. This shouldn’t be the case at all because we are all here to learn, right? Why they react in the way they do can be for a whole host of reasons. Challenge or suggested change can be viewed as a direct attack on their teaching ability, their Martial Arts prowess, or their precious discipline. In case it is overlooked, I will mention at this point that I don’t go in for the hero worshipping nonsense. We are all human beings and some of these people were in the right place at the right time. Years of training along a certain ‘pedigree’ does not automatically make that person right in what they say or do. Yes, they may be extremely good at what they do within a safe and controlled environment, but if it were possible to take what they are teaching out of the Dojo, place them in a violent, real life situation, and see how they fare, I think most would be shocked. All theoretical of course but to know what ‘reality’ is, you have to experience it or at least talk to people who know what they are talking about. You can’t beat experience. Mike Tyson once said “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. I tend to agree.

So whatever the reason may be for these challenges being taken the wrong way, there should never be anything wrong with being asked a question. I advocate it in my club. Are we not all here to learn together, grow together, develop together and in doing so, all remain that little bit safer? If a student of mine presented me with a defence/technique/response that seemed more effective, more efficient than one I was teaching, I would willingly break it down, work with it under pressure and if it proved to be a more practical approach than something I currently taught, I would introduce it into the club. No ego, no feelings hurt, no embarrassment, just being truthful and open. By not taking on board the views and opinions of others, by not even opening the door for discussion, we end up building a very closed and insular environment and culture in which we train. This has no benefit to the student or instructor alike yet sadly, experience has shown that when questions are asked and challenges put out there, illusions are disrupted, dents are created in fragile egos and comfort zones breached. Possibly the worst of all is that when a more efficient method is actually presented, and the instructor knowingly continues to teach the less effective option, the teaching becomes dishonest and as a result, is short-changing the student. “My bat, my ball, my club and I teach what I want to, even if my students are being lied to” is an attitude I have seen adopted by far too many people. It fast becomes more about the instructor than it does the student.

I’ve been actively involved in Martial Arts and Self Protection for 34 years now and have been teaching for around 20 of those years. During that time I have been privileged to have met and trained with some wonderful, experienced people who have been at the top of their game and who, as individuals, have taught thousands of students across the world. The thing is, as a student or a teacher, we have to be clear about the nature of our training. Is it a traditional Martial Art, for example, like Karate or Ju-Jitsu, or is it a sport like Mixed Martial Arts? Certain aspects of each of these can of course cross over into the street arena, but it is a dangerous path to tread if the training processes of the student instil a false sense of ability and security. There are exceptions to the rules, of course – there always are – but these are generally few and far between. When, within the realms of regulated competition, even professionals find it difficult to secure an arm bar or a choke, what hope would your average student – training once or twice a week – have against a committed attacker? If, when training in the Dojo, your fast, pressure-tested knife defence works perfectly against your partner – who helps your defence succeed by attacking half heartedly and then stops mid-flow to let you perform your well rehearsed defence – then I’m afraid that you, your partner and whoever is teaching you in the belief that what you are doing is ‘real’ are all being dishonest and naive.

If you are teaching or being taught Self Protection, you need to identify where the flaws are. If you don’t do this at all and simply accept that in ‘real life’ it will work, you are treading a very dangerous path and false train of thought. Imagine, if you will, trying a roundhouse kick against an attacker in the street. (I never teach these kinds of moves but for those who are not aware, it’s one of those kicks to the head you see in all Martial Arts films.) It works fine on a shiny polished floor with or without training footwear, but this time you slip over on a puddle of alcohol or something equally as slippery – vomit, grass, mud, gravel, urine, you get the idea. That kick could be the last mistake you make as you hit the floor and your armed assailant closes range and bears down on you for the kill. It works a treat in the Dojo, wins points in competitions, helps towards earning your next level for your grading, and looks great on your promotional videos. How on earth did it fail?

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.

 

Dave Wignall

Chief Instructor – Simply Krav Maga Ltd

CT707 Israeli Krav Maga Systems Instructor

UK Representative CT707 Krav Maga Systems

www.simplykravmaga.com

train@simplykravmaga.com

Contact: 07971 838338

 

The Statistics Trap – Randy King

If I can give you any advice as an instructor, it’s to not get stuck in the statistics trap.  As a person who’s just living their life, in this age of disinformation, where we have way too many people telling us way too many things, it’s very easy to fact-check something over and over and over again, even if the source is incorrect.  What I mean by the “statistics trap” is very simple.  A lot of instructors will read fancy statistics, memorize those statistics, and use those statistics constantly, regurgitating them, trotting them out like a proud parent, but without understanding where the stats come from, what the research is, or any other factor that makes that statistic true.  Very simply put, statistics can be used for anything across the board.

The first statistic I used when I started teaching was related to stabbings.  We are a very knife-oriented gym; we teach a lot of blade work. The city I come from, Edmonton Alberta, is lovingly referred to as “Stabmonton” Alberta, due to the fact that gun violence is low, but knife and machete violence is very high.  We used the general stat that everybody used, which is that 80% of knife attacks come underhand, and that’s how the attack lines work.  

When we built our first curriculum, we designed it off that statistic, since I don’t go around knifing people. I’ve been stabbed, I have friends that have been stabbed, but the studies showed that most attacks were coming underhand to the lower body, side, kidney region.  I ran with that stat for two years. Every day of those two years, people would come to me with anecdotal evidence, saying other things, like, hey when I was stabbed, this happened, or, I’m a paramedic, and this is happening, etc etc.  And I held steadfast and true to the statistic that I had read, in a book from a country that I’m not from.  When I delved deeper, I realized that the survey that the statistics were based on had included prison stabbings.  If you know anything about prisons, the weapons that are used are generally point-oriented weapons.  So, of course, the study was skewed towards  stabbing at that low angle, because so many prison stabbings come at that angle.  

Why bring this up? I had fallen into the statistics trap.  It was ridiculous of me to tell people who worked as EMTs, to tell people who had been stabbed, to tell people who were doormen, that stabbings happened a certain way, when all their experience didn’t line up with the statistic.  It was ridiculous of me to disregard my own story. My favourite joke is that I’ve been stabbed two and a half times – I’ve been stabbed once in the leg, once in the face, and once by a fork (that’s the half).  Every single time I was stabbed, it was an overhand stab, it looked like a monkey dance with a knife, an overhand swing coming at me.  This was also the evidence I was getting consistently from EMTs, people I trusted and respected, but because I had this fancy statistic and I was an “expert”, all of them turned their brains off and stopped arguing with me because of the fact that I could quote a statistic.  

Understand the information that you’re using, understand where it comes from. You can use it as an example, but nowadays most statistics on the internet are written as clickbait.  These sites want to give you a stat like, “1 in every 7 males with blue eyes is attacked by foxes”. That’s a crazy stat!  Obviously, you have to understand how surveys work, and how sample sizes work.  There was a great article by the Huffington Post on the statistic that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted while in places of higher education.  That article then breaks it down very well …  if you read the article, you see it’s not 1 in 4; that number is exceptionally high.  That  number is the 1 in 4 people who took the survey, and it just means that a large number of the people who took the survey were been people that had already been sexually assaulted.  Now, I am not saying that sexual assault is not a horrible thing.  What I’m saying is that the number that everybody’s throwing around, the 1 in 4, was used by the New York Times as clickbait, without the full study being released.  

One of my favourite bits from the great comedian Bill Burr is on stats, and how he hates stats. He does this whole bit on how you can go to iamright.com and use a stat to prove that you are right or wrong, as long as it lines up with your vision of things. That’s the problem with most of this stuff; the statistics you’re using just happen to line up with your view of the world, and so you take that stat at face value without going further into the information. Then you’re disseminating information to people that is not intelligent, it’s not making people more powerful, it’s just making people more crazy about number crunching, just blurting out things to make it sound like they are more intelligent, again just becoming really proud parents.  

The stat Bill Burr uses is about shark attacks.  His bit is, “did you know, most shark attacks happen in shallow water?”  And he pauses, and everybody’s thinking, “yup, yup, yup, that makes sense” and then he states it very clearly, “why do you think that happens?”  

“Because that’s where the PEOPLE are, people are in SHALLOW water, so of course shark attacks are going to happen in shallow water”.  

This problem of the statistics trap is becoming more and more prevalent in the marketing of self-defense programs.  I’m not saying don’t use statistics, and I’m not saying change your marketing plan. I’m saying that every one of those statistics should have a little star beside it, and the star should say, “as of the study here, where they use a sample size of this”.  Because there is no study in the world that takes 100% of the population, who then all send their surveys in, and who then don’t lie, so then that stat is completely true.  You have to take all these stats with a grain of salt.  

Rory Miller sums this up succinctly as well, just to hammer this point across one more time. His favourite saying is, “Correlation is not causation”.  The stat he drops is very simple.  “Did you know, that the more churches in a city, the more violent crime that happens in that city?”  The wheels start turning in everyone’s heads, “oh yeah, that makes sense, uh, obviously more churches means there’s more religious tensions …” and then Rory breaks it down just as simply as Bill Burr does.  He says, “No. The fact that there are more churches in the city means there are more PEOPLE in the city, and more people in that city means there’s more violent crime in that city”.  More in this case not being a per capita rate, but simply more total cases.  The language used and the statistics used are very important.  

So. Do me a favor.  Do your due diligence on statistics!  Find the stat you like, if it fits how your brain works, if you think that this stat is true, read the actual study.  Don’t take the clip, don’t do the thing that happened on IFLS (the science publication), where they put up a headline that said “Cannabis Proven Not From Earth!”  People shared and shared and shared and shared, and loved it, and said “yeah, cannabis isn’t from Earth, that makes sense!” If you had clicked the link instead of just reading the clickbait title, instead of just reading the 1 in 4 – the article actually wasn’t about that at all.  The article was about people only reading headlines.  

As an instructor, it’s your duty not to fall into the statistics trap.   

 

Institutionalization of Flukes – Rory Miller

Last month, I wrote about normalization of deviance, the process by which cutting corners and skipping established protocols becomes simply “business as usual.” This month we’re going to look at the other side of the coin.

Violence presents a perfect storm for ignorance. The events themselves are rare. You will not often meet someone who has personally experienced a hundred assaults. Violent events tend to be quick— the internet is happy to give you numbers such as “6 seconds” or “3-8 seconds.” Assuming that’s true (most of mine took longer, but that ‘applying handcuffs’ step can be slow) a hundred fights would add up to a grand total of  five to fifteen minutes of experience.

Further, anything experienced in this five-to-fifteen minutes of experience tends to be experienced in an adrenalized state, with all the sensory, cognitive and memory distortions that implies.

Acts of violence are complicated on multiple levels. An attacker in a rage is different than one with a plan, even if both are active shooters. Two shooters may have wildly different goals, training, ability, equipment… the list goes on. And the intended victim is also a very complicated and often unknown quantity. Then there are the bystanders. And the environment. And…

Violence is complicated. And idiosyncratic (sometimes downright weird). Frequently, things that make good sense and work in class fail spectacularly in the real world.

But also, very rarely, the stars align and a technique that has no business working saves the day.

These weird successes can happen for a number of reasons.

Sometimes, there is an abnormality in the person performing the technique. Bare knuckle boxers used the term “heavy hands” to describe a boxer who could reliably hit an opponent in the head without breaking his metacarpals. I believe there may be entire systems based on the genetic gift of one practitioner who died long ago.

Sometimes, there is an abnormality in the person receiving the technique. A lot of things work on drunks that fail on sober people, and vice versa. A stomach punch is an entirely different thing to a threat with a full bladder. Accidentally striking or gouging an existing injury can get an unexpected reaction.

And sometimes, it is just dumb luck. Maybe the effortless takedown was awesome or maybe the bad guy just slipped. Maybe your gouge made the grappler spring away… but maybe he flinched when he knelt on some broken glass.

Then there’s the twilight zone stuff. Everyone I know who has survived a close-range knife ambush broke the rule that “action beats reaction.” Several of us have done things when it counted that we were never able to replicate in training.

Institutionalizing a fluke is to make something unreliable part of your tradition or procedure. Assault survival— real self-defense— is very high stakes, very hard to pull off successfully, and there is a dearth of good information.

Tradition is the mechanism humans use for accumulating and passing down rare but important information. Kano Jigoro (I was told, might have been someone else) said, “We must learn from the mistakes of others. We will never live long enough to make them all ourselves.” Tradition is the accumulated successes and failures, the collected knowledge, of a long-standing group.

Tradition— the memory of the system— is incredibly important when information and reality checks are rare. If your tribe faces famine every twenty years, people remember what to do. If your tribe faces famine only every thousand years, what to do must be passed on.

When unexamined and untested, you simply can’t tell the flukes from the effective techniques. Especially when people in positions of authority can’t bring themselves to admit ignorance and invent plausible reasons for stupid things.

There are a few schools of kempo that use a fist with the little finger knuckle extended. They are imitating a famous instructor who demonstrated with a broken finger. Some throw the shuto (knife hand strike) with the little finger bent, imitating a famous instructor who has a severed tendon.

Life-or-death combat also skews knowledge and tradition towards the positive. If something worked, you’ll come back to the training hall and tell everybody. Whatever worked will become part of your tradition. If something failed, however, you don’t get to come back and spread the word. Techniques (and flukes) accumulate, they are rarely weeded out.

This is very different for combat sports. Non-lethal encounters and spectators make for tons of information from multiple perspectives. Sports are also driven by tradition, but it is the accumulated tradition of success and failures; not dependent on the memory of a single adrenalized person and; subject to extensive analysis and experimentation. Sport arts evolve very quickly.

There are two dangers with flukes. The first is obvious. If flawed information has crept into your syllabus over time, you have weaknesses and points of failure to which you are blind. It kind of sucks when your never-fail technique fails and your ass is hanging in the wind.

The second is when the results of a fluke are so desirable that there is a push to formally require others to follow suit. To mandate “luck” as an essential part of the system. In 2013 a man slipped into the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Center, a grade school, with a semi-automatic weapon. Antoinette Tuff, a front office worker, talked him down. Kids didn’t get shot. The gunman didn’t get shot. Responders didn’t get shot. A perfect win— no injuries in a dangerous and highly volatile situation.

And there were a few voices using this as an example that anyone could be talked down, by anyone. That force should never be an option. Do you think none of the victims of Columbine or Newton tried to talk? Tried to reason or argue or beg? Only the successes get reported.

Without more real world experience than an individual could survive, it’s hard to find your flaws.

I’m not going into finding flukes, because, believe it or not, I don’t think that’s the problem. The biggest problem is that people defend their flukes, explain them away, ignore or support them.

People invest not only time and money, but also identity in their high risk games. People rarely “practice martial arts” but are far more likely to say, “I’m a martial artist.” I had a huge amount of identity invested in being a tactical team leader. When humans have invested time and identity, sometimes sweat and blood, it’s really difficult for us to admit that some of it might have been wasted. We tend to double down on the stupid.

I learned the pronated straight punch of traditional Japanese karate. Every wrist injury I saw on a heavy bag was from that punch. It shortens your range slightly. Despite what I saw, including real injuries, I couldn’t admit it was a flawed technique… until a very old Japanese man (and for my psychological purposes he had to have been both old and Japanese) explained that it was intentionally introduced to make the wrist weaker because the Japanese were not as tolerant of the occasional training deaths as the Okinawans.

Don’t get your panties in a bunch if I just offended you. It’s not about you or the system. It’s all about me. When you invest identity, you will sometimes discount personal experience. We work to protect our own flaws.

When boxing gloves were introduced, head punching became the center piece of boxing. It wasn’t in the bare knuckles days, largely because hitting people in the head is more likely to do permanent injury to the hand than even stunning damage to the head. But head punching has become so iconic that it will be part of MMA for a long time to come, and will require gloves and handwraps to make it viable.

Once upon a time, someone tried to stab me in the back. It was done with a lot of resolution and appreciable skill. The only reason I am alive is because I saw a reflection. What I did physically was spin, clap my hands together over the blade hand, and twist.

Awesome. We have one example of a technique actually working in a worst-case scenario. Yay. Let’s teach that. Except…

I couldn’t do it again in a million years. I’ve tried to replicate it in training. As near as I can tell, it’s not possible. The time framing doesn’t work. You can’t spin and get one hand around the weapon so you can hit it from the outside and the inside simultaneously hit it from the inside before a lunge (which started first) can be completed. Can’t be done.  But it happened.

To try to make this a centerpiece or even one technique in a system would be to institutionalize a fluke. It would make the students weaker.

Comment by Erik Kondo
The following video shows a fluke.

Been There Done That – Garry Smith

A few years ago I attended a two day seminar to train with Mo Teague and Hock Hocheim, I had trained with Mo on a British Combat Association seminar, his style involves no nonsense, an absolute gentleman of the first order and as he will tell you he likes to keep in shape, round is a shape. I had never met Hock but knew of him by reputation and he certainly lived up to it, he too was an absolute gentleman and like Mo his training was cutting edge, especially the military quick kills they both taught, could not resist that pun.

It was a fair turnout, mostly instructors or aspiring instructors from all over the UK, people who trained in different systems as you would expect The training was varied and interesting and more than value for money, if you get a chance to train with either of these two then take it. There was a point in the training where Mo addressed the issue of morality and the use of violence. As I said I have trained with him before and had heard this before, he was about to do exactly what a good self defence trainer should do, in this case with people already in the game not fresh off the street students.

He asked people to raise their hand if they had ever killed anyone. Only Mo raised his hand, he then explained the circumstances as a serving soldier and whether or not he was morally justified in taking those lives. He then asked people to raise their hands if they had ever hurt someone, really hurt them, this time I raised my hand along with Mo, nobody else did. It felt a little weird but Mo acknowledged that he knew me and that we had discussed this subject before.

He then asked a few questions of those present pointing out that this was not a game we were involved in, we taught violence, more importantly we teach people how to use violence to inflict pain and harm on other human beings. We therefore had a moral responsibility to consider this very carefully indeed, especially in the light of the fact that almost everybody in the room had not used violence of any real degree on another person before. Just think about that. No disrespect to those who were there, there were some really great people, but it was like asking a virgin to teach about the joy and ecstasy of sex.

Now this is not some only those who have experienced violence can teach violence, notice I am not using self defence or martial arts as nice epithets, let’s call a spade a spade here. Yes I teach both self defence and Ju Jitsu so I have a foot in both camps but in reality I am teaching the use of violence, that is the plain and simple truth. Now we can make it far more palatable when we are talking about legally justified use of violence whether it is applied as part of an official role we occupy or as a citizen acting within the law. That is nice because it makes us feel cosy and safe. At the end of the day we are the good guys and gals, we wear the white hat, we would only use reasonable force (violence) if we were attacked by the bad guys and gals, the ones in the black hats.

Really? Is that so? Do you know that for sure about yourself AND your students? You and I know violence can be unpredictable and spontaneous, we know some of the lies we inadvertently tell to students and ourselves about how well our training prepares and protects us. It may give us an edge, a better chance, but it does not make us invincible. Those who have had violent encounters and have lived to tell the tale will know the truth in this and we know that in order to overcome violence we need to be better at it than the person/s attacking us, or a damn good runner, either will do. Better still if we become proficient at the softer less tangible skills that help us spot something developing at the earliest possible stage we can negate the need to engage in a violent exchange.

The thing is if we, or our students, end up going hands on we have to be able to break somebody, we have to be prepared to inflict sufficient material damage that we break the attackers will to continue or render them completely incapable of continuing. Now back to my main point, anyone can train this, we are shown how to do it by others, some may have actually been there and done it, most will not have, and we can read all the books and look at the good stuff on YouTube etc. Be very careful with the latter. The thing is up to now its all theory. Or you can do what the smart people on the seminar with Mo and Hoch did, you can seek out and train with the people who have been there and done it. We call this gaining experience by proxy.

Take the teaching of locks for example, we teach people to apply them until their willing partner taps, does not try to escape or punch them in the face, but taps nicely. That is great for early learning, there comes a point though where it is unrealistic, unless you are legally obliged to use as little force as possible then breaking an attacker’s arm, wrist, whatever is the smart thing to do if you are subjected to a committed attack. We are not talking an argumentative uncle Arnold here at your sister’s wedding, not wanting to leave the room, but when it has all gone tits up. If you want to try to control somebody then a lock may just work, circumstances dictating of course, or if it’s time for ending it quickly then it’s snap time.

Be prepared for the screaming and the howling, the accusations you have gone too far. I once headbutted a guy hard in the face to get rid of him, I had already wiped him out in a fight minutes earlier, after the headbutt his nose was smashed his lips burst and there were tears , blood and snot everywhere, he looked a real mess a few years later when I next saw him with one really bent nose. That is one enduring memory I still have of the consequences of using violence. Did I give him the option to tap, to walk away, no I finished it there and then. The fight previously had been the worst and our third, he kept coming back, it had to end, it did, that nasty headbut was the full stop.

There is a whole wider context to that little story but that is for another time, the thing is sometimes we have to use a level of violence that has immediate and lasting consequences, these may be legal too, go read ‘In the Name of Self Defense’ by my friend Marc MacYoung. If someone attacks you with a weapon and you grab the arm and apply a lock is that it game over like on YouTube? Or would breaking that arm be a better idea? Well of course it would all depend on the context and the circumstances, we know that, we also know that training time is finite and the variables of an attack infinite. So is there an answer, well in my opinion the best you can do when training yourself and others is to be honest about the limitations of training and how it will play out in real life violence, now go read ‘Meditations on Violence’ by my other good friend Rory Miller.

Better still be honest with those you teach, never lie, never exaggerate, use the good examples of others to fill in your gaps, that is what I do, explain why experience by proxy is important. As you read in Rory’s July CM article we have a fine mix on the board of CRGI and in our growing family of contributors and affiliates. Some have experienced violence at its worst, they are true violence professionals. . Their insight and experience is beyond that of most of us, make use of this resource, use it to teach your students but first use it to teach yourself. This is Been There Done That self defence.

Filling in the blanks is what a really good instructor will do, helping their students fill in their blanks is what an outstanding instructor will do. The latter will also take their students through the legal, moral and ethical minefields that surround the use of violence. What is fun in the dojo is certainly not fun outside it. Breaking bones and smashing faces to pulp if necessary is the nasty, messy side of what we do, and that is without all the other complications, the screaming, the ranting the full on confusion of an out of hand real life encounter, and the aftermath.

Violence is what it is, let’s not pretend otherwise.

Back To Basics – Toby Cowern

I’ve been travelling a lot over this summer, and it has provided many chances to catch up with old friends, many who I have not seen for the best part of a decade!

During conversations, a similar point kept getting raised no matter where I was. A lot of my circle are ‘old school’ in their training methods and mantras both in Martial and Survival aspects. The point recurring was the continuing retraction of ‘harder’ training. While this was discussed across a broad spectrum I’ll keep my focus here on self-defense and martial training.

To put it simply, we are now seeing such an exclusive focus not only on teaching/learning of technique, but, even more so, complicated and difficult techniques to the detriment of core basics.

I’ll put it more bluntly. If you are not allowing your students to explore levels of pain thresholds, and teaching them to push through pain barriers in training you’re doing a HUGE dis-service.

This isn’t just a case of ‘not sparring hard’, it’s having such levels of safety control that there is no pain experienced in classes at all. It’s all well arguing (or excusing with) it’s about ‘student retention and satisfaction’, the simple fact is, it the teachers job to articulate why this facet of training is necessary.

I’m not saying Instructors need to unleash on students and beat them (that just makes you a massive asshole) but having students that have never undergone discomfort or a level of physical coercion in training is presenting them with a false reality of what a physical altercation will be like.

Times this thought by a hundred if you are doing any training at the lethal force end of the spectrum. While I will give way, to a point, that verbal caveats are used when training sessions are short and introductory, if you are spending any amount of quality time with students the introduction of pain awareness and management must start to be covered physically.

I’ve witnessed on a number of different occasions now, students be exposed to a very minor degree of discomfort, unexpectedly, and their reactions have ranged from a ‘freeze’, to, on at least three separate occasions, instantly bursting into tears… While these reactions are perfectly natural they must be conditioned against and worked through in order to give the students any chance of coping with a real situation.

While it is a physical and emotional uncomfortable part of training it still is essential to cover.

I desperately do not want this article too come over as a rant, but as I look around I feel exceptionally strongly a heavy contingent of the market place need to get back to basics and allow an element of their class time to be given over to realistic hitting and getting hit…

Experience and Insight – Rory Miller

How did CRGI come to be? A few years ago, Garry Smith (the man who is now editor of Conflict Manager) asked, “If we were to do a full blown, accredited, bachelor’s degree program in self-defense instruction, what would be in the curriculum?”

I said I didn’t know exactly what would be in it, but I had some definite ideas who I would tap to help design the curriculum. That list, with Garry’s insight and experience, became the board of CRGI.

The members of the board are very different in some ways. Some were bad guys, some very bad. Some were good guys. Some are physical monsters, some were monsters in the day— and a few have physical concerns that affect every decision they make. One has been dead, and many have been close. Most are martial artists, but not all.

The biggest commonality in the group is that I respect their thinking. Every last one of them (except Jayne, I barely know her) at one time or another have told me that I was wrong. Usually the exact wording was “full of shit.” Every last one of them is strong enough to disagree to my face. Every last one of them, when they do disagree, present their facts dispassionately and concisely. Every last one of them can disagree with me and not fall into the trap of labeling someone who disagrees as an enemy. They can disagree honorably. And each and every one has made me better. A better teacher, a better fighter, a better friend and a better man. I love this crew.

In the world of so-called Reality-Based-Self-Defense (so-called as in “Whose reality?”) there is a big divide between the BTDT (“Been There Done That”) crowd and the rest. “What, you’ve never been the member of an elite military force? Never shot a terrorist in the face? How dare you teach…”

Completely aside from the illogic— What does tactical shooting have to do with defensive shooting? What can a heavily armed and armored member of a military team teach about unarmed solo self-defense? What aspects of working a door apply to rape prevention, exactly? And that’s assuming they are even telling the truth about their histories.

Experience is important, no doubt. And the people I envisioned for the board have not just experience, but experience that differs from mine. That’s probably why it is so heavy on ex-criminals. I know enough cops and former cops already. I wanted the experience of the former football (soccer) hooligan and the former enforcer. The former hustler and the former somewhat shady bouncer.

But there are members with very little experience with violence. So why are they here? Because they supply insight. One of the hallmarks of the real BTDT crowd is a profound lack of arrogance. There’s no special threshold or secret initiation that makes you worthy to teach the experienced. I don’t want to die and I am happy to steal any bit of knowledge or refinement of body mechanics that will keep me alive. There are people on the CRGI board who have shot people, and people who have been shot, and one who teaches how to shoot. The person who teaches how to shoot has, as far as I know, neither been shot or shot anyone else… but her grip  is better than mine and her draw is smoother than mine and a few hours with her raised my survivability.

And that’s not all. That’s not even close. She is an amazing teacher, and watching how she handles a class has made my teaching better. And she disagrees on fundamental issues in such a way that I have to research and articulate very well just to hold my own. She makes me better. A better fighter, a better thinker and a better man.

Experience is important, absolutely. But insight is at least as important, and not all insight comes from experience.

Reality-based self defense? Screw that. CRGI represents knowledge forged by experience and tempered by insight. It’s an honor to be here.

 

Stop Using Fear Based Marketing – Randy King and Erik Kondo

Erik: Randy, you wrote a great blog piece on why reality based martial arts instructors should stop using fear marketing to attract students. I think it makes great points and I have included it below:

Randy’s Post:

Reality-based martial artists, stop it. Stop using fear-based marketing, you’re a bunch of asses. I cannot stand people using fear as a motivator to make people buy things from them. Why – why do you feel the need to frighten people all the time about violence when, statistically speaking, they’re probably never gonna see it? Why are you putting up reports from your local newspapers all over your advertising listing all the bad things that have happened, out of context?

So many things in there happen to people whose jobs put them in the line of danger, or those who exist in a world where violence is very common. It’s not “local housewife walks down to store and gets attacked” – which happens rarely, stranger danger being the least common thing yet the most commonly marketed method to get people into self defense gyms. It’s always “man stabbed three times by girlfriend” – yeah, that happened, but what was the context of it?  Taking something from one tiny little statistic and then using that to blitz a marketing campaign on social media, or on flyers, or in schools is low, and it makes all of us look bad.

If you’re not a good enough instructor to bring students in and retain them on your merits, if you have to scare the hell out of them to make them stay out of fear that when they leave your gym they will be attacked by random ninjas and vigilantes and rapists all the time … stop teaching!  Just stop – you’re not doing anybody any favors. If you need to keep people in by making sure they leave terrified, or you bring them in by making them terrified – it’s ridiculous.

There’s a difference between fear-based marketing and awareness campaigns for what is happening. We, for example put up things that are happening in Edmonton, where we’re based, but we put up the context of it, we put up the whole news story – not a sound bite. Stop jumping into sound bite Fox news lifestyle where it’s all about propagating fear and making everybody suspicious of everybody else.

(Stop hitting the panic button! Students who you bring in with fear campaigns will not stay!)

Yes – violence does happen. Usually it happens from people that you know, usually with that violence – to quote Marc MacYoung – it has instructions on how to stop it. “Shut the fuck up and leave” – you shut the fuck up and leave, you’re good. Usually, bad things happen to people in bad situations – they go to places they shouldn’t go, they don’t know the rules, they’re in the wrong spot. Rory Miller has a whole bunch of things listed in his book, Facing violence about this. But to use bad things to profit your own business to me is probably one of the dirtiest, most shameful things you can possibly do.

Erik: Some Reality Based Martial Arts instructors are just one category of what I call the Merchants of Fear. The Merchants profit when people are afraid. Sometimes the Merchants are motivated only by profit. Other times, they may be promoting a worthwhile social cause (stopping violence against women for example). But the end result is still the creation of a culture of fear.

One primary audience for the Merchants of Fear are middle class women who are either in college or young working professionals. This audience typically has the disposable income to buy products. They are coveted by media advertisers. They have the time and passion to support their cause of choice.

The Merchants benefit when it’s audience:

  • Buys their personal safety products.
  • Attends their self-defense training programs.
  • Watch and read their crime centric sensational news stories.
  • Demand their greater police visibility and presence.
  • Support their Anti-Rape and Anti-Violence Organizations.

Some of the Merchants send out varying messages that evolve around the same general theme. All women are likely victims. All women are constantly being assaulted in one form or another. All women need this type of weapon, special training, or society to protect them. Scary statistics such as 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted are prominently quoted.

 Suggestions that women have the natural resources/ability to defend themselves from assault in certain situations are sometimes denigrated as “victim blaming”. Some of the Merchants of Fear depend upon their target audience’s sense of victimization to further their respective businesses and causes.

The Merchants gain from its audience’s reduced Peace of Mind. Certain social causes pit the needs of the Individual against the needs of the Cause. The greater the victimization that appears to be occurring, the greater the support for the Cause. Society loses by increased feelings of helpless and fear, but the Cause wins more support.

Political candidates are increasing using the tactics of the Merchants of Fear to attract supporters.

Erik: Randy is there anything else you would like to add?

Randy: I have always found that there are two types of clients. Proactive and curative. The second group are training because something bad had happened to them. If you use fear based marketing, you not only rub their experience in their face for “not training sooner” (which is a giant pile of bullshit and you should know that!) you also run a huge risk of re-traumatizing them through your program.

The first group which thankfully is far larger, if you recruit them through fear, the only way to keep them is through the same method. You have to keep them scared, to pay your bills. If creating victims to scared to leave their home so that you get rich is how you roll…I hope that we never meet.

Natural vs. Traditional – Armin Hutter

After being unsatisfied with teaching some very traditional fighting technique again, I decided to make an experiment and dedicate part of the next three training sessions to the most ancient art of unarmed fighting: the traditional cavemen-style (for those, who don’t know it, it’s like crazy monkey kung fu, just without the kung fu). The results were quite interesting, but let’s start from the beginning.

I started the experiment with 5 participants of different stages of fitness and martial arts experience:

  • 1 young woman with 2 month of martial arts training and very good fitness level
  • 1 young woman with 5 month of martial arts training and mediocre fitness level
  • 1 older woman with 6 years of martial arts training and very low fitness (and health) level
  • 1 mediocre aged man with 6 years of martial arts training and good fitness level
  • 1 mediocre aged woman with 30 years of martial arts training and mediocre fitness level

With Bruce Siddle’s (Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge) recommendations for teaching survival skills in Mind I tried to…

  • let Students learn basic components within three minutes
  • let Students see Technique work
  • let Students experience the technique personally in the first training session

The recommendation to let Students have a positive field experience would come in the last training session.

I introduced the flailing forearm strike in our first training session, which lasted about 15 minutes. During this time we handled the basic understanding and the power generation. Training the technique first in slow motion with a partner and after that with full power and speed on a kicking shield, I expected us to need at least 20 minutes to half an hour for the beginners to learn and understand. I also expected the more experienced participants to overcomplicate things. I underestimated both (the old stagers thought it through afterward, but it worked without thinking anyway). We even added some „extras“ like using the same motion for a hammerfist strike at slightly longer range and everybody was happy.

The results of the first training session:

  • the two young women at least tripled their power and speed
  • the older woman at least doubled her power
  • the man (who already did hit hard) doubled speed
  • the last woman (who already was fast) doubled speed and power

So far a impressing result for the first 15 minutes. Let’s see what comes next…

In the second training session we started with a brief revision of the basic technique, followed by some work at the dummy. We talked about targeting and then everybody got a chance to try his skills with full power and speed versus an human looking target.

The results of the second training session:

  • the two young women were surprised by the pain they experienced when hitting the dummy but got over it with the second round
  • two of the women had glitches when striking an human looking target. This mixed up their targeting: they didn’t dare to strike to the neck or head

So we have speed and power combined with some good targeting and found some glitches. For all of this we needed about 30 minutes.

In the third training session we started with a revision of the basics again and then introduced some dynamic stress test. Our “bad guy“ in heavy torso and head armor (with additional earplugs) would grab a participant from behind, trying a kidnapping or beatdown. Once the participant turned with a sweeping forearm strike the “bad guy“ kept this drill fast moving with a lot of forward pressure.

 

The results of the third training session:

  • every participant did hit even faster and more powerful, even when moving backward
  • only one of the women still showed the glitch not to hit the head or neck

So after 30 more minutes we erased one glitch, let students have a positive „field experience“ and enhanced power and speed even more.

To get these results in 75 minutes of training a traditional technique (by which method ever) seems hard. Since our short experiment, we included an additional drill to our regular training, combining progressive boundary setting with our “new technique“. I walk toward my students holding a big kicking shield. When I get too near, they raise their “visual fence“ with a verbal “no“. When I advance further I get a second  “NO“, and when I touch the  “visual fence“ with the kicking shield they explode and push me once through the room with their forearm strikes. And they still get faster…

Less Stress Seminars – Toby Cowern

I recently had a great discussion with a number of instructors about organizing and running seminars. Seminars are exceptionally commonplace in many industries and depending on the organization and instructors involved will run to widely varying standards.

One of the points we discussed in detail was ‘new’ students who maybe attending a seminar for the first time and have little or no experience or background in the subjects too be covered.

While it is always great to have new people interested in the subject you teach, there is potential for things to go awry if the student is unaware of expected behavior.

One of the things I routinely do for courses I run is provide a comprehensive set of ‘Joining Instructions’ that provide details on logistics, equipment, itinerary and expectations for the course. While some seminars do not need this level of detail, it strikes me that providing a clear and simple ‘Guidance List’ is of great benefit to students and Instructors alike. With some great help form my peers the following list was produced as a ‘start point’ for communicating ‘Seminar Standards’ to Students.

1) Be a little early on the (first) day. This gives you time to get orientated and complete any necessary paperwork/payments.

2) Be punctual for all other timings given, especially breaks. You don’t want to wait for the instructor. The instructor and other students do not want to wait for you.

3) Be clean. Bring fresh clothes for each day, especially if it is a multi-day seminar.

4) For sensitive or personal questions consider waiting for a break or when the instructor is alone before asking.

5) Combined with 4. THINK about the suitability of your questions. If unsure begin your question with ‘Is it OK if I ask about….’. Some instructors are happy to talk about profound subject (e.g. Killing. MOST are not…)

6) ASK before taking photos/video footage, unless this is clearly covered in the opening brief.

7) Keep the questions relevant to the discussed subject.

8) Realize that this is a learning event for everyone, attendees and instructors alike. Be patient, try, and be there for the right reason.

9) If you’re confused about etiquette it’s ok to ask a more experienced person.

10) If you don’t want to participate in a particular activity it’s fine to sit it out and observe, as long as you don’t disrupt the class.

11) Don’t think you know more than everyone else in the room, or persistently question the instructor’s techniques comparing them to something else you saw in another seminar.

12) Be responsible for your own safety and welfare.

Finally, where appropriate, specific guidance should be given on the carry, use and handling of weapons (and training weapons) Ensure students are aware of the ‘Weapon Rules’.
-Look but don’t touch.
-Don’t handle without the owner’s explicit permission.
-Don’t draw a blade without telling people that you are drawing.

I hope the list is of use, and we in the Conflict Research Group encourage you to use and add to the list as you see fit. If you have ideas you would like to share on things that can be added to the list, head over to our Conflict Manager Facebook group and leave us a comment!

Selling Fear – Amanda Kruse

Recently I had a conversation with a friend about the fact that I quit teaching self defense for money (well, in reality, there was never much money involved). My friend, who also has years of  martial arts experience, felt sorry for my “failed” business and encouraged me to try again. He thought if I really pushed to market my teen/female workshops more aggressively I would get more interest.

Let’s look at the “failed” business issue first. I actually don’t look at the end of my self defense business as a failure. The entire experience gave me unmatched personal growth opportunities. The business idea forced me out of my comfort zone (public speaking), provided me with a wealth of knowledge on business and self defense and allowed me to meet and learn from some pretty amazing people* to boot. No regrets here.

As for my friend’s suggestion of using better marketing strategies, well, he’s right. I probably could have done better with the marketing. A bit of an ethical dilemma arises for me on that issue though. Read on.

My workshops consisted of a significant amount of information on prevention and prediction, with actual physical self-defense “techniques” as secondary content. When people think about self-defense, they think of that proverbial stranger that jumps out of the bushes and attacks innocent passers by. Yet, my workshops did not focus on this type of violence to a great extent. The core composition of my workshops focused on the areas that posed the greatest risk of harm to the teens and women attending. In fact, boundary setting was a central theme, along with prediction of relationship violence and ways to avoid situations that could lead to acquaintance rape.

Ultimately, prevention and prediction do not sell as well as so-called knockout self-defense moves that will presumably end the attack on the spot. I say presumably because, as those of us studying self-defense know, you can have some amazing “techniques”, but there is no way to know if you can/will use them successfully when faced with real life violence. Unfortunately, the general public is misinformed on frequency and types of violence and, therefore, tend to erroneously believe that those knockout techniques are exactly what they need for self-protection.    

I marketed my workshops according to the main content, spotlighting use of prevention and prediction to avoid violent situations in the first place, with some self-defense techniques sprinkled in. The decision was made to terminate the business when it became apparent to me that, in order to have an audience that feels self-defense is worth their time and money, I would have to sell fear.

Selling fear was exactly what my friend was suggesting would help with interest in my workshops. He isn’t the first person to encourage me to do this. In fact, I was told early on that I should watch the local news for stories of females, particularly female college students, that have been assaulted. When these stories came out, I was advised to contact the media in an attempt to get a short interview on how I can teach others the self-defense moves that would end an assault such as the one being reported.

In the time since I ended my self-defense business, I have learned a bit about marketing through my pursuit of other business ideas. One of the most important points I’ve taken away from this is, in order to draw in your target audience/market, you have to use the same words they use when talking about your “product”.  If we extrapolate this out and view self-defense as a product, when people talk about self-defense, their words are:

“I think it’s useful for others, but I…

…live in a safe neighborhood”

…don’t feel unsafe in my life”

…know a martial art”

…carry a weapon”

…don’t have the time”

…don’t have the money”

Overall, the message is that people just don’t think self-defense is an urgent need that they want to take the time and money to pursue. In order to get them to think differently, one would have to make them believe that they are, more likely than not, in danger of being assaulted at some point in the near future. Thus, you have to sell them fear.

Selling fear works. News programs sell fear to gain an audience; the more extreme the story, the more people are likely to watch and keep watching, particularly if they believe it may affect their own lives. Politicians are experts at selling fear to gain support. Instead of a focus on solving problems, they prey on people’s fears and insecurities by making extreme, shocking comments to draw attention to those insecurities. Selling fear is a marketing tactic that works like a charm.

So therein lies my ethical issue with selling fear to get better attendance at my workshops. Statistics show a drop in violent crime over the past 20 plus years. Females are much more likely to become victims of interpersonal violence rather than random violent crime. This is not the stuff that sells a self-defense workshop.

Selling fear is dishonest. Anyone can use statistics to claim their position, or their product, is the one that will stop the source of the fear, whatever that fear may be. The marketing of fear adds to paranoia and misinformation.

Does all of this mean I don’t believe in self-defense and will not teach any more? Absolutely not. I believe the information in my self-defense workshops is immensely important and I continue to educate myself on all aspects related to the topic. I still love providing the workshops to engaged groups that seek me out and want the information, though I do it strictly on a volunteer basis. I will teach what I believe is important and right, not what sells.

*Erik Kondo of CRGI was one of the people that I am grateful to have met on my journey. He took time out of his busy life to guide and educate me on the many layers of self-defense, allowing me to pass on the best information to others. Many thanks, Erik.