Category: Teaching Smarts

Principles-Based Teaching, Part I – Rory Miller

 

Part One Laying the Foundation

Managing conflict can be approached as a huge and complex field. You can find books of techniques, lists of indicators to watch for. You can fill your mind with endless datum and detail. This approach, whether in a verbal communication class or a martial arts class, is common. It is also, in my opinion, largely ineffective. It is teaching and memorizing trivia so that one can give the impression of understanding. This gives the student reams of knowledge and completely bypasses understanding. This approach is the downfall of much of the technique-based training in the martial arts, producing people that can throw a visually perfect punch, but can’t fight. Useless to the student, but the teacher has nice clear lesson plans and infinite detail to correct.

Conflict management can also be ignored: “It’s a natural part of your life, something you see every day. You don’t need to be taught this.” This approach leads to improvement only through trial and error, and error can be expensive in conflict. It doesn’t even require a teacher, and I have seen it used as an excuse not to teach critical skills to rookies.

And conflict can be deliberately mismanaged and mistaught: “I don’t need to learn how to manage conflict! Everyone else just has to learn to be nice to me.” Which is not just an expression of pure selfish ego, but designed to keep anyone who takes that stance as helpless and dependent as possible.

All three of these approaches are easy to teach. I mean that the process is easy for the teacher. They are not good ways to develop complex skills in the students.

Principles-based teaching is more challenging for the instructor. The instructor can’t get away with just parroting what he or she was taught. It requires a depth of understanding.

“You must turn your toe out at 45 degrees in this technique,” is sufficient for technique-based instruction. The foot position is part of the technique, defines whether the technique is correct or not. The teacher and student can both see it. The teacher can grade it, and if it is taught consistently, the foot position will be part of the system far into the future. A tiny bit of information is all that is necessary, and no real thought whatsoever.

You must turn your toe out at 45 degrees either has a mechanical advantage or it doesn’t, simple as that. There is a simple law of physics or physiology that makes that foot position important (in that position/time/situation) or there isn’t. And if there is, that 45 degrees will be completely wrong in a different situation.

Technique based: “You must turn your toe out at 45 degrees in this technique.”

Principles based: “Generally, you want to keep your knees bending over your toes to keep your knees from getting injured.”

Learning your principles is getting into the “why” of things. Why do techniques work or fail? What are the physics of techniques in general?

The “why” leads to the “how.” Once you understand the principles and start learning how to apply them in action, the “whats” (the techniques) flow from that. They don’t need to be taught, because they can be automatically derived.

That may seem counter-intuitive, and it would be if the training methods of rote training were applied. More on methods later.

You need a few things to get skilled at this way of teaching:

  • You need to understand the principles of your system inside and out
  • You need to understand the goal of your training
  • You need to have a way to gauge (I did not say measure) progress towards that goal
  • You need to know your audience/students
  • You need a thorough understanding of how humans learn complex skills
  • And you need humility, because your students will get good, maybe better than you, very quickly

After outlining this teaching method to a very successful school owner in another country I got one of the best compliments of my life. “I see what you’re doing, but you couldn’t keep a school running that way. The students will get too good too fast. There’s no way to make a living at it.” Cool. But I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.

Understanding principles will come in a later article. If you want homework, though, here it is: Sit down and derive a list of the principles critical to your system.

How do I define a principle? Principles are the underlying things that make techniques work. It’s a principle if it applies to striking, grappling and weapons and there are no exceptions. Leverage, for example, is critical to all three and good leverage is always superior to poor leverage. Now, I went with my hand-to-hand core there, but you can pick anything– business, gardening, negotiations, auto mechanics– and there will be a solid core of principles.

Understand the goal of your training. This one blends with gauging, knowing your audience and humility. Quite simply, many people are not teaching what they think they are teaching. They intend to teach self-protection but put hours into how to win a one-on-one sparring match against a friend in a controlled environment.

Gauging your training. People like measurability. “That which gets measured gets improved.” But in certain fields, measurability has almost no correlation with applied ability. The arrest and control techniques taught at police academies are often complex, multi-step locks. Very easy to grade the students in class, almost impossible to apply in real life. In high school or college, were the people getting A’s in English or Communications the ones getting dates?

For physical skills, and particularly self-defense, there is no way to measure. The only applicable measurement would be whether someone survived, and the possible range of dangers makes survival in one situation likely irrelevant to the next. You can’t truly measure it, but you can and should develop ways to gauge progress and to see what progress is needed. Conflict management is an open-ended skill. Neither you nor your students will ever get to the end point where you know it all.

You need to know your audience/students. In my mind, the biggest division between martial arts and self-protection is that in MA I am teaching subject matter, and in SP I am teaching students.

Each student is different. They all have different abilities, strengths, talents, resources and weaknesses. They will be targeted for very different types of conflict. Further, they will each have different learning styles.

Understand teaching. Most of what we know or what we think we know about teaching comes from our own experience as students in schools, primarily grammar school and high school. Those were places of regimentation, top-down training, with huge power disparities between the instructor and student. Measurability trumped applicability. And everything was aimed at teaching children, not adults.

It would be hard to design a worse model for teaching assertiveness or conflict management. You can’t teach people to be strong while demanding that they obey.

Principles-based teaching has to be applied with principles of teaching. And principles of learning.

Humility. In conflict training, the instructor’s ego is probably the student’s most dangerous enemy. The instructor will be trusted, will be seen to have the answers. If the instructor needs or desires a sycophantic relationship, it will be toxic to the student. If the instructor is too prideful to acknowledge what he doesn’t know and makes shit up to answer questions, he actively endangers his students. All of teaching is about creating students who will be better than you. If you can’t emotionally handle not being the best, you have no business teaching.

This is the end of Part One, laying the foundation. I’m going to make a suggestion. If you can get a copy, watch my video “JointLocks” available from YMAA.com, Amazon and, I believe as an app. It’s not really about the locks. My stealth purpose for shooting that video was to get a solid example of the principles-based approach in front of people. Locks have a reputation for being difficult. The method we show in the video has gotten untrained rookie cops improvising locks under stress in one hour of training. If you get a chance, watch the video, but for the training method, not just the locks.— Rory

 

Injuries in Firearms Training Classes – Kathy Jackson

Had an interesting talk with a friend and colleague awhile back. This was a late-night conversation, during which I mentioned that nearly all long-term, experienced firearms trainers have had students injure themselves during their classes. That was a euphemism: I actually meant that some students have shot themselves during class. My friend was horrified and a little disbelieving.  But it’s true.
Whenever we as instructors get together to compare notes with other professionals who teach people how to work and live with firearms, it won’t be long before we realize that nearly everyone in the room has at least one horror story of their own to share. Many of those who have been doing this a long time have more than one such story.

The Commitment

As a trainer, my personal motto is, “Not on my watch!” It means I’m going to do everything in my power to stop injuries and accidents before they happen. If someone injures themselves, it will somewhere else at some other time than in one of my classes. It will not happen on my watch.

Every time I step up to teach, I’m acutely conscious of the risks we face when we handle firearms. Every class starts with a detailed safety brief. Every student signs a liability release. Every program begins with dry fire so I can see how students’ trigger fingers habitually behave and so we can fix any bad habits before we go live.

When students learn to draw from the holster, we start very slow and make sure everyone is doing things correctly, and in the proper sequence before we load the firearms. We start slowly and add speed only after students have demonstrated proficient levels of safety in slow motion. We don’t work from concealment until I’ve seen that every shooter on the line can work safely from an exposed holster.

We enforce a “hard break” – a brief rest at the low ready position to give students time to change mental gears – before allowing anyone to put their guns back into the holsters. When they do holster, I make them keep their fingers flagged away from the side of the gun so there’s little chance that the edge of the holster will force a straightened finger onto the trigger as the gun enters the holster. We use a technique that anchors the non-dominant hand out of the way, so nobody will point a gun at their own hand during the holstering process.

My assistants and I do everything in our power to slow down the action and get people doing things safely and correctly before we use live ammunition. We make sure students have built good habits before we add any speed or any stress to their work with firearms. We work hard to keep our people safe.

The Reality

Nevertheless. A great many people whom I deeply respect, who are just as cautious as I am, have had students shoot themselves during class. This has not happened because they are bad instructors, or because they are lazy, or inattentive, or unobservant. It isn’t because they are less than professional or because they don’t know what they’re doing or because they don’t know what to watch for and what to do when they see it. And I’m no smarter than these guys, no more alert, no more cautious.

It’s impossible to eliminate the risk of handling firearms. What we do is dangerous. So we don’t eliminate risk for the students. We manage it. That’s our job as instructors. – John Farnam

That’s an uncomfortable truth.

Ultimately, no matter how careful we are, no matter how many good safety procedures we put in place during class, we cannot remove every possible risk when our students are handling deadly weapons. As an experienced trainer, I’m acutely aware of that.

Learning to use a handgun safely requires an absolutely perfect, unwavering and unflawed attention to detail from both the instructor and the student. And sometimes even the best people blink.

An illustration

For those who are new to this endeavor, or who believe that it’s always possible to control everything that every student does on the line, I’d like you to watch an online video. Before you do, here’s the mental exercise I want you to perform: I want you to visualize yourself standing right next to this shooter in the ideal “range safety officer” position. That’s within close arm’s reach just behind the shooter’s strong side shoulder, where you have a good clear view of the shooter’s trigger finger and holster, and where you can easily reach the shooter’s gun hand just by reaching forward.

Starting at 0:25 and continuing through 0:28, watch only that short section of video. There’s a slow motion replay a little later where you can see every last bit of the drama in excruciating detail. But please, don’t watch the rest right away. Pause the video at 0:28 and answer the questions below based on one viewing of the section from 0:25 to 0:28 only. That’s at normal speed, the speed at which these things actually happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYvAxLX6OzE

Of course, we all knew a negligent discharge (ND) was coming because I just told you it would be, and because we’ve either seen the video before or at least because we read the headline before we hit “play.”

But still, even though you know the job is artificially easy for you because you could see it coming, mentally put yourself in the place of an imaginary instructor – someone standing right there, staring directly at the shooter from within close arm’s reach. Realistically, would that imaginary instructor really have the reflexes to stop this shooter’s negligent discharge before it happened?

If you were that imaginary instructor …

  • Would you have been fast enough to reach over and physically prevent him from pointing the gun at himself as soon as you saw his finger going to the trigger?
  • What if he wasn’t your only student, and if you had two or three or five other students to watch at the same time?
  • What if you were calling the range commands from a few steps farther away, rather than hovering right over his shoulder?
  • Would you have predicted this event, or seen it coming in time to stop it, if you had been working with this shooter all day, and had not seen any previous unsafe behavior from him  (especially if you also had other students to watch who had presented more of an ongoing safety concern throughout the day?)

This is why we require liability releases from our students before the shooting starts.

If you aren’t a complete control freak with an almost obsessive compulsion for range safety – while simultaneously being able to accept that some risks will always be outside your control – then being a firearms instructor isn’t the job for you.

So, it’s hopeless?

That’s originally where I intended to leave this article, on that very sobering note for instructors. But when I showed it to an early reader, he was horrified. “Do you mean, shooting accidents can never be prevented? You’re going to scare people away, they’ll give up on firearms training entirely because, because, because … well, what’s the use?”

He was right. You as the reader might very well have come to that conclusion. So let me be Little Miss Sunshine here and give you even more good news.

An ounce of prevention…

First of all, of course this ND could have been prevented. All NDs can be prevented! That’s why we call them N-for-Negligent, rather than A-for-Accidental, discharges. Negligent means someone neglected to do something they really should have done, something that would have made a difference in the outcome.

In this particular case, the shooter in that video could have avoided any hint of danger by choosing better gear. A holster that requires you to use your trigger finger for anything other than pressing the trigger is a bad design. And it certainly doesn’t pair well with a mental habit of trusting an external, mechanical safety to keep you out of trouble. (We hear that mindset expressed in the shooter’s explanation of what happened and how it happened; listen for it when you watch the entire video.) A bad gear choice does not pair at all well with complacency and a misbehaving trigger finger! So the shooter himself could have stayed safer simply by choosing better gear, by building a better safety mindset, and by having a better-behaved trigger finger.

Our imaginary instructor – who was not present in real life – may very well have stopped this ND long before the drawstroke started. As many professional trainers do, our imaginary instructor could have forbidden the use of a suboptimal, trigger-finger-activated holster during class. Or the instructor could have insisted that the student not switch from one holster type to another once the class had started. Either of those rules would have avoided the shooter’s crosswired confusion, which was caused by using two fundamentally-incompatible holster systems on the same day.

The instructor could also have insisted that the student do a large number of slow-motion repeats of a correct, safety-conscious drawstroke with the unfamiliar holster before allowing him to load his firearm. Those extra repetitions in dry fire would very likely have extinguished the bad trigger-finger behavior before it became truly dangerous.

At a more basic level, just the mere presence of an instructor, or at least of a separate videographer, would likely have eliminated the shooter’s distraction with the video recording process. Getting rid of that particular distraction may have improved the shooter’s overall attention to what he was doing with the loaded gun. That, too, would probably have increased his safety and reduced his risk.

All of the above is true. There were many ways this ND could have been derailed before someone was bleeding on the ground and well before lightning-quick reflexes were needed to avert disaster.

But what’s also true is that once those extra safety layers have been used – once the gear has been chosen, once the instructor has taught and demo’d and supervised and otherwise made the process as safe as it can humanly be made – well, at some point all those extra safety layers go away. The student loads the gun, the line goes hot, the timer starts.

At that point, the only safety layer left in place is the shooter’s own behavior. Nothing else.

The reality is, an outside human’s reflexes just aren’t fast enough to stop everything dangerous the shooter might do. That’s why, as instructors, we work hard to control all the variables we can control. It’s why we act early to extinguish behaviors that can cause trouble later on. We do it because we know that after the train goes a certain distance down the track, our outside reflexes won’t be fast enough to stop the trainwreck from happening.

The student’s dilemma

Some people might wonder, “Well, then, if an instructor cannot absolutely guarantee that I will always behave safely during class, and if they can’t fly across the range faster than a speeding bullet to stop every possible danger in my world, does the benefit of going to class really outweigh the risk?”

Yes. Yes, it does.

In the long run people always behave more safely when they know what to do than when they don’t. You, me, that guy over there – all of us are going to behave more safely when we’ve been taught how to make safe choices than when we haven’t. We’ll be safer when we’ve been encouraged to choose safer and better gear, to practice new skills in dry fire rather than with loaded guns, and to pay close attention to the details most people miss when they teach themselves. We will behave more safely when we have received good, solid, honest feedback from an outside observer than we will when we haven’t.

You’ll certainly be safer for having practiced your gunhandling skills under competent supervision on a calm day at the range than you will if you try them out for the very first time on some dark night when someone is trying to kill you.

With focused supervision from a good instructor, with careful attention to detail and multiple repetitions of the skill, we work to prevent students from doing anything unsafe during the class. Even if the students do something foolish at some point, the multiple and redundant layers of safety enforced by an observant teacher will sharply reduce the risk of injury.

How do people get hurt?

For those who would avoid firearms training class for fear of being shot by the other students, let me offer one tiny bit of cheerful news: when mishaps do happen, far more people shoot themselves unintentionally than shoot others unintentionally. This is particularly true within the confines of a good class, where an alert instructor maintains safety protocols that reduce the opportunities people have to point firearms at others.

By far the most common pattern for unintentional injuries involves a gunshot wound in the right leg or the left hand. The injury to the right leg usually consists of a stripe down the outside of the leg, directly in line with the student’s holster. It happens because the student tried to holster the gun without removing his or her finger from the trigger, with predictable results.

“Every gun owner believes that his or her gun handling is safe, regardless of how good or bad that gun handling is. This is an example of illusory superiority, a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. It’s also known as the Lake Wobegon effect, because none of us believe we are below average.” – Karl Rehn

The injury to the left hand happens when a right-handed shooter carelessly puts the left hand directly in front of the muzzle while handling the gun – sometimes during a reload, but more often (you guessed it) while holstering the gun.

My advice: if you’re concerned about being the victim of an unintentional gunshot injury, learn everything you can about how to safely use a holster. Don’t just assume that because any fool could figure out how to drop a gun into a gun-bucket strapped to his waist, you’re good to go.

“Just go to the range and practice a lot”

Unintentional, injurious shootings happen on public ranges and on private property far more often than they happen during professional firearms training classes. There’s a reason for that.

Here’s a fun factoid. In 2013, according to the CDC (http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html), more than 16,000 Americans presented themselves at a hospital needing emergency treatment for non-fatal, unintentional gunshot wounds. That’s one person every half hour, all year long.

During that same year, approximately 800 people were killed by unintentional gunshot wounds. That’s more than two people every single day who did not need to die, people who would not have died if the person handling the gun had known how to handle it safely and had done so by practiced habit.

Learning defensive handgun skills within the confines of a good class reduces your risk of doing something stupid with any firearm, on or off the range, for the rest of your life. That’s one of the primary benefits of a good class. After all, when we have successfully engrained good, safe gunhandling skills to the point of automaticity, so that they will hold up even during the extreme stress of a life-threatening encounter, those same safe gunhandling skills will much more likely hold up during the more mundane stress of an ordinary brain fart. And it’s those everyday brain farts that hurt and kill good people.

Professional firearms instructors know that working to help people become safer and more skilled with their firearms ultimately saves lives. We know it because we have all seen radically unsafe behavior on the range by smart people who simply don’t know any better yet, and because we have all seen the radical improvement in safety consciousness that comes once people have actively been taught how to behave safely around guns.

Bittersweet truths

A well-designed class led by a skillful firearms trainer can reduce the students’ risk during their learning with the gun from unacceptably high all the way down to almost non-existent. But no matter how good we are as instructors, we can never eliminate that word almost. That’s because at some point, we have to take off the training wheels and let the students pedal the bike on their own.

No matter how dedicated and careful your instructor might be, in the end, your personal safety is your personal responsibility. It really cannot be any other way.

Understanding all the above may help us swallow this bittersweet truth, an inoculant against misplaced blame for dedicated instructors: No matter how carefully we watch over our students as they learn, we can never provide the final layer of safety for them. Ultimately, our students must do that for themselves.

 

Knowing Your Audience – Richard Dimitri

As a self defense teacher/instructor I believe it is important to remember what it was like when we first started learning along with a good understanding of who our audience is when it comes to teaching certain tactics and technical applications as we tend to often get locked down on absolutes.

For example, and this one is very popular amongst the self defense crowd who, for better or worse, seem to be divided on the issue of which is better; striking with an open hand or a closed fist? There are of course sub-arguments within the said argument such as the ‘open hand neck up, closed fist neck down’ but that also is kind of absolute isn’t it?

It doesn’t have to be this particular bone of contention either nor does the argument have to be about a physical response, it could be about any strategy, tactics or tool for that matter such as ‘In a knife attack, is it better to stabilize the weapon hand or fuck stabilization and just ‘attack, attack, attack!!!’?

It does indeed depend; as to eliminate either or restrict anyone of either based on the factual statements made on each could very well be limiting someone’s natural or already trained capacity at doing so and who are we to tell anyone that what has worked for them before all of a sudden won’t, and worst, could cost them their lives?

This is where knowing one’s audience in this field in my opinion, becomes critical.  For example, if a very average 70 year old woman concerned about an immediate potential threat in her life was to learn self defense, it would be somewhat ignorant to believe that teaching her any kind of closed fisted striking (to go back to the original example) would render her effective at such strikes, assuming of course the threat she is facing isn’t from an older, blind and paraplegic woman either eh?

Now if a 30 year old, athletic strong female was interested in learning self defense based on the same concerns; offering her the options of both while also explaining the pros and cons of each, and allowing her to figure out for herself which tactic is most natural, suitable and sensible to her being, and then allowing her to experience each in training to ease her decision would be the way to go.

Switch that to a 25 year old male, heavy weight golden gloves champion, who is interested in learning self defense. To take his natural and proficiently trained ability to strike with a closed fist and ask him to change it to open handed striking as the main and only method of defense doesn’t make sense either.  

The same approach should be taken as of the one of the 30 year old athletic female.  Teach both, show the pros and cons of each, and allow the student to experience them in real time/real speed via training to formulate what is best for them.

How do you do that in a large and varied group consisting of young teens, seasoned fighters, elderly folk and everything in between? Always cater to the weakest link in the chain.  The mechanics for a lead palm strike are the same as that of a boxing jab. The mechanics of a horizontal elbow strike are the same as that of a hook punch, etc. The tool itself is incidental and preferential.  

Here is where the argument heats up however.  Once on close quarter/grappling/wrestling range; striking becomes obsolete for the most part as striking requires 3 integral elements to make it functional: 1. Distance 2. Grounding, and 3. Torque. Remove even 1 of these elements and you’re left with at best 70% capacity of whatever chosen strike.  

Now, perhaps the athletic female and golden gloves champion could end the confrontation before it got extreme close quarter with a precise strike, but the average 70 year old or early teen? Generally, not so much.  

The lack of expertise, power, training, timing, precision and clarity in the moment once the initial strike didn’t end the fight, but instead escalated it by bringing it closer quarters would make their punch at best; a distraction. Relying on any kind of striking at this point (or grappling submission for that matter) wouldn’t be functional simply because boxing and grappling require regular training and practice to upkeep the functionality of it.

Not to mention, we’re talking about self defense here…. most people who come for self defense training do so because they feel an immediate threat, only a miniscule percentage of the population train self defense out of pure fun and passion or a possible/potential or imagined what if?  

Those that don’t are there for more pressing reasons and need strategies, tactics and tools that they could manifest fucking tonight if it was necessary. The arm bar taught and learned in one day to an average 70 year old woman won’t give her the ability to perform it under stress were she to get attacked the week after she learned it…. A primal scream coupled by a barrage of gross motor rip/tear/gouge/bite/strikes paired with her already driven adrenal state however most definitely can. and has on more than enough occasions to make it scientifically proven (for those deemed as victims, not necessarily just the 70 year old woman case).

And here’s why in a mixed group, the teaching of the strategies/tactics and tools aimed at those who are unfortunately perceived as the weaker/victims of our species, are paramount simply because if an average 70 year old woman could wreak havoc on a much larger and more violent assailant with these tools and tactics, imagine what the seasoned golden gloves champ could do with them?

One set of tools & tactics works for both individuals while the other set of tools (not necessarily tactics here) works for only the strong/athletic/attributed/attitude individuals. In many instances, it’s the ego of the strong and athletic that won’t allow them to acknowledge, perhaps, the tools and strategies aimed at the perceived victims, for in their mind, it places them in that category.  

Whatever the case, it doesn’t change the fact that they work and work well and are even more devastating in their hands as they also possess an athletic and sport oriented delivery system to back it.  

It’s all in the timing of it as well. Is it a 5 to 10 hour workshop? Is the individual in question taking regular and weekly ongoing private or group classes? How pressed are they to learn self defense?  What are their physical limitations if any? Answering these questions allows the instructor to formulate the class(es) to fit their audience.  

But to simply reject a strategy, tool or tactic, no matter what it is, even a spinning back kick for that matter, is ridiculous… prioritizing them as per the student, the level of immediate threat they are facing as well as taking into consideration their natural abilities, previous training and potential limitations (pointless to teach a spinning back kick to someone in a wheelchair for example) as well as the amount of training time they have should be how one constructs their daily curriculums and not on one’s own personal abilities and beliefs of what works and/or not.   That’s up to the individual in question.

What works for you may not work for all but what works for all will definitely work for you, at that point, it becomes matter of preference hopefully based on logic and sense as after all, this is self defense we are talking about, in the end, it’s your life on the line; choose wisely.

In my opinion anyway.  

Is There a Place for Humour In Self Defense? – Chris Roberts

 

Immediately one might think there is no room for humour in self defense.  Self defense is meant to address violence that may result in harm; physically, emotionally, and psychologically.  How can humour be part of that you might ask?  Well, you’d be correct in thinking there is nothing funny or entertaining about violence. However, in order to teach people how to address potential violence, one should consider the methodology. Enlightening people that humour has a part to play may be one of the missing links, in my opinion.  Fear is an often-used strategy to show and motivate people to address violence, but it is not the only strategy.  There are so many variables in any self defense scenario, with so many variables in the personalities of the people we teach.  

While sharing and providing some of the realities of violence to people may create an atmosphere of fear, which can motivate to some extent, I believe that fear has its limits and must be part of the formula, but not be the only strategy.  For me, the use of humour has not only been an integral part of our teaching methodology, but a cornerstone of all SAFE self defense courses.  

I began SAFE International in 1994 and right from the start I utilized humour in my teaching.  Did I do it on purpose, knowing it would be so important and instrumental in reaching our clients?  Not at all, it was more just who I was, how I liked to be taught, and the way I liked to instruct.  Immediately it seemed to work with the teenage girls we were teaching.  There is no tougher crowd in my opinion than young teenage girls, they will tune you out in a second if they become bored!  In fact, many of the girls on our “Talk Day” (an awareness component whereby everyone shares their personal experiences, no hands-on physical techniques) would ask if we had to talk, wanting instead to start hitting someone rather than being stuck in a classroom talking about safety scenarios.  What I found instantly is, through humour, we kept their attention and although they were laughing, we were still discussing some very important topics in regards to their personal safety.  

But even with this approach appearing to be the right one, I still had doubts making the topic fun when teaching about sexual assault, abuse, and violence.  Then one day I received the confirmation I needed.  I was instructing a group of grade 9 girls, who would be about 14-15 years of age, and the teacher asked me if I would mind a woman sitting in to listen, and I happily obliged.  Turned out, she was the director of a sexual assault centre for women in the community.  The talk went as well as I had become accustomed to, and after the session the woman asked me if she could speak to me.  Quite honestly, I was prepared for her to say that my approach was not suitable, in her opinion, for such a serious topic. Well, in fact, it was just the opposite.  She asked if I could come speak to the women at her centre.  I questioned how the humour would go over with them, and she said the use of humour was exactly why she wanted me to speak to them.  I will never forget what she said, which was, “You aren’t making fun of the topic. You are making the topic comfortable to talk about because of the fun atmosphere you create.”   That was about 17 years ago and was all the confirmation I needed to carry forward the methodology we use in teaching.

Sadly, many of the women I have taught over the last 20 years have shared some very horrific stories of violence with me. Without exception however, they have told me they felt comfortable sharing many of those horrific details because they felt at ease in doing so due to the safe environment created, with the main reason being the use of humour.  Now, I do not want people to think that the discussions are all shits and giggles.  Often there are many tears shared, but the humour is what gets us to those special moments.  I like to teach like a roller coaster, moving up and down between seriousness and humour at the proper times.  Sandwiching in the important points between the laughter is very effective.

Another area where humour has proven to be very effective is in getting people to remember what we have taught them.  I believe people are much more likely to remember what they have learned if they are engaged in the conversation in a way that is pleasant and fun.  Yes, again fear can motivate, but which would you rather experience if you could still reach the same goals? I like to try and find a balance using whatever methodology people seem to benefit most from.  

Perhaps one of the most dramatic examples I can share, regarding humour being an effective way to recall information, took place many years ago.   I received a call from a teacher who told me that I had taught her daughter and her daughter’s friend when they were in Grade 9.  They were now out of high school, it was approximately 5 years later.  Both girls were at a mall in Ottawa, Ontario.  It was roughly 3pm and the girls proceeded to their vehicle which was in the mall parking lot.  The daughter of this teacher got into the driver’s side of the car while her friend was getting in the passenger side.  As the friend opened the door, a man appeared out of nowhere seemingly with a knife to her throat, standing behind her.  He demanded she get in the van or he would harm her.  The girl on the driver’s side immediately began honking the car horn and screaming.  The attacker instantly fled the scene and both girls were fortunately okay.  They found out the next day after reporting it to the police that the man had left them and gone to another mall nearby within the hour.  He saw a woman putting her child in the back seat of her car.  He began to force them in the back, threatening the mother with the same knife.  In the meantime, a few men had noticed what was happening and took chase.  The attacker fled when he saw them approaching.  They eventually caught the man and restrained him until the police arrived.  The earlier two young women who also escaped had called the police.  The police interviewed the women separately and got very similar descriptions.   The police informed the women, after they both identified him from pictures, that he had previously spent time in jail for sexual assault and was just recently released.  The police also told them that they had handled the scenario very well.  

Now, the mother/teacher of the one girl who called to share this story with me informed me that when she asked her daughter why she honked the horn and attracted attention, was told she had remembered this tip from my safety talk back when she was in grade 9, five years previous.  Her mother was impressed with this memory retention and asked her daughter how she remembered this in such a scary situation.  Her daughter said all she could think of was how crazy I was when I taught her, and that thankfully, somehow she remembered my advice when she needed it most.  Now, I do not share this with you to try and take any credit for their successful escape.  Many self defense instructors believe they deserve the credit if a student is successful. I don’t, just as I am not prepared to take the blame if something did not work.  I just want to demonstrate the power of humour and how, in even the most adrenaline-driven, frightening scenarios, humour may be what allows a person to remember what they were taught.  Can I explain all the details on the human brain and how we learn and remember with the use of humour? No, I just use it as a tool and as long as I continue to receive feedback validating that it works, I will continue to have it as part of my teaching toolbox.

Keep SAFE!

Chris Roberts

Managing Director

SAFE International

www.safeinternational.biz    

 

Play Tactical Control – Ron Beer

“Sensei Why Do You Have Handcuffs on?”

It was my children’s class and I had both handcuffs on one wrist.  As children arrived for their class over and over I heard “Sensei why do you have Hand cuffs on?”

But of course the children were curious. My old friend Kevin Smith had just left after telling me about his new job as Defensive Tactics Instructor for York Regional Police services.  He was showing me a new handcuff technique when he got a call and had to leave. It was then he realized he didn’t have his keys for his handcuffs.  So I had to teach my children’s classes with both cuffs on one wrist.

Kevin and I had practiced Jujitsu back in the 70s’s and had remained friends.  He stopped by to tell me of his new job and asked me what I was up to.  I explained that I had developed a Shoot Wrestling Program he responded “coppers could really use this”.

Kevin returned several hours later with his handcuff keys.  Kevin then mentioned that he had a  new partner he couldn’t choke out.  I suggested that he and his partner stop by for a class sometime.

Kevin returned for a class with his partner Keith and a few Use of Force Instructors.  It was during a daytime class over the summer holidays so I had children and teens on the mats.   I could see the puzzled looks on the officers faces as they came in to work out.

The looks on their face quickly changed when I said let’s start with chokes.  Kevin you start with one of the children over here and I’ll start with your partner Keith.  Well, soon all the Use of Force Defensive Tactics Instructors were tapping like a bongo players on the mats.

Several days later Keith and Kevin invited me to critique the new York Region Use of Force Program. With my observations they changed their program and invited me to a National Use of Force Trainers Conference.  After attending the Conference, I was asked to put a lesson plan together and Police Services from the Greater Toronto Area came together for my first class of the Tactical Control Systems I was about to create.

Little did I know that it would lead me on a path to instruct Customs Agents, Corrections Officers, Department of Fisheries, the Senate Police Force, and Police Services from Toronto to Vancouver. Being a civilian in a Law-Enforcement world I had a lot to learn.  Disengage, create distance and go to a higher level of force was my first learning curve and perhaps I could share some of my ideas and dynamic simulations with you today.

Arm drag is a classic move in the Shoot Wrestling Canada Program. Testing the arm drag in combative games like Uproot the Tree and Sumo Wrestling are a great way to gain practical experience.

The arm drag allows you to get behind your opponent and for law-enforcement you are able to disengage, create distance and go to a higher level of force.  Or in a civilian self defence setting escape and live to tell the story.

Wrestling Games to Challenge the Arm Drag  (Also, this is a  great cardiovascular work out)

Try each game in 3 minute rounds, the average work out is 3 rounds.

  1. Up Root the Tree – A bear hug game where one person tries to get a bear hug and lift their partner off the ground.  Note: Use the Arm Drag to get behind your partner and make the lift or disengage from the training circle.

Sumo Wrestling – One person tries to push the other out of the circle.

Note: Use the Arm Drag to get behind your partner either leave the circle or push your  partner out of the circle.

For more info on Tactical Control Systems

Contact Ron Beer at:

www.shootwrestlingcanada.com or  ronbeer@ronbeer.com  

 

 

 

 

Arm Drag

The light wrestler knocks the dark wrestlers wrist in a circular motion, then reaches above the elbow on the inside of the dark wrestlers arm.  The light wrestler then ‘Pulls’ creating the Drag, enabling him to get behind the dark wrestler.