Training Smarts – Page 2 – Conflict Manager

Knives, Accepted Wisdom, and Dueling – Terry Trahan

One of the greatest things about the internet and social media is the ability to see commonalities in thought, different peoples opinions, and where certain people and communities are coming from. Conversely, one of the worst things about the internet and social media is the same.

If you spend any amount of time cruising the “knife” pages on social media, you start to see a lot of assumptions, conclusions, and statements that are echoed without a lot of thought. This is not just confined to the knife world, martial arts, politics, and arts and crafts seem to suffer from the same thing, but since I’m a ‘knife guy’, I particularly see it in that area.

One of the assumptions and statements that seems to get repeated ad nauseam is the uselessness, or non-existence, of dueling in real world fights and knife encounters. We have even developed scientific sounding names for it. Symmetrical vs. Asymmetrical Engagement. Symmetrical is when both parties in the conflict are armed, usually equally, say with two butcher knives, but can also mean simply that both parties are armed, period. For example, I have witnessed or participated in fights where it was knife vs. hammer, shop rag vs. knife, chair vs. gun, baseball bat vs. knife, and several others in that vein.

Now, obviously, if our goal is to survive, we would like every fight to be asymmetrical in our favor. But, the great British sage Sir Mick of Jagger said it best, you can’t always get what you want. We have to deal with violence and reality as it is, not what we wish it to be. And this is where training in “useless” dueling can be very beneficial.

First, if you still don’t believe it is necessary, or that dueling really does not happen in real life, let me share a very unpleasant experience I had that shows reality is what it is, and doesn’t care if you believe it or not.

So, there I am sitting around the table in the bar, with the General Manager and two DJ’s, I was the Bouncer. Things had been tense, and getting worse, and this little meeting was called to try to air things out, and see if it could be calmed down. Some details. I never worked in fern bars or meet markets. I usually worked at topless bars, biker bars, or topless bars that were owned and run by bikers (1%ers, not RUBS) such as this bar. Meaning, some times negotiation really was at the pointy end. Violence was always considered a fair bargaining tactic, and it was getting very close to that in these discussions. So, as I said, the four of us were sitting there, and it is going past tense, to threatening. All the sudden, someone made a comment about the other ones Mom’s choice of species for a sexual partner. Not wise for negotiating, but prime Monkey Dance scripting. In response, before thinking could occur, we were all up, chairs knocked over, table shoved aside, and all four of us had our knives out, and taking sides. Sure sounds like a symmetrical, equal arms fight to me, how about you?

And if you’re curious, calmer heads prevailed, and nobody got hurt. Unfortunately, at the time, the calmer head wasn’t mine, wisdom would come much later.

Now, on the other side, it is very unusual in a criminal encounter (stick up, mugging, attempted kidnapping) to be able to draw your weapon in time, and this is where working and fighting to the draw, awareness, and all the rest comes into play.

But the point is, in a real fight, weird shit happens, and we need to, if we’re smart, plan for and train as much as we can, to address the variables that can occur.

Another aspect of training in a dueling capacity. In reality, what you are doing is training timing, perceptual speed, positioning, movement, and avoidance. You are also training to take a symmetrical engagement and flip it to an asymmetrical engagement in your favor. It is all in the way you categorize and conceptualize the training you are doing in your own head. If you don’t see the tools you are developing, you won’t know how or where to use them.

Violence is bigger than all of us, and it comes in a variety of flavors. Address as many aspects as you can in training, so you will be able to improvise in real life if you ever have to be in that situation. Don’t limit yourself to any one persons interpretation of violence. He has a piece of it, and so does she. As well, I have my own piece, as does that other guy. Try to learn from as many of them as possible, while making it your own, and researching the problem to be as realistic as possible.

One of the worst things about this line of thinking, especially considering we are dealing with life and death, and the possible death of you, is to use this kind of arguing and back and forth as a marketing tool. I’m sure you’ve seen it…”We only train in what works, there is no need to go out and train that other non-realistic crap, we have all the answers”… In a word, bullshit, you only have the answers to the questions you know. Nobody knows everything, and nobody can know everything. Don’t believe it. You can train in totally different things, you don’t have to limit yourself to one Poobahs way of doing things. In fact, I would advise against it. There is no place in life and death subject matter for cultish behavior or hero worship of a teacher. By doing that, you short change yourself, and are not learning a full picture.

The thing to watch for is how the training is presented and conducted. Skills must be taught in an isolated manner in order to learn them, but then that isolated skill needs to be integrated into a whole. And then that whole needs to be trained in a free range manner, and then pressure tested. All of these steps are necessary in order to make it fight worthy. If the training you are looking at does not have this progression, that is the problem, not the material.

So, like always, train for the reality you know, seek out others that can teach the reality you don’t know, but don’t accept advertising slogans or biases as the ultimate truth. Be broad based in your search, and be your own final authority.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

Curriculum Matters – Garry Smith

Many years ago, it seems like several lifetimes ago, I worked in further and higher education. I taught sociology, plus a few other subjects as diverse as map reading and orientation (theory and practice), psephology, statistics to name a few, and I managed a programme responsible for half of the college’s total recruitment. It was overall an interesting period in my life bearing in mind less than 10 years earlier I had walked into that same college as a student with no qualifications at all.

The programme that I ran started with 300 enrolments a year onto part time courses typically lasting 2 to 3 days, within 2 years I had absorbed another programme area into mine and expanded it. We then recruited around 3000 students a year. A lot of students attended a series of courses and some continued onto full time study and eventually to university. I learned a lot from the experiences and together with my experiences managing a number of companies, creating a few companies, and being a director of a few, has helped me in setting up and running my own company for the last 9 years.

So this morning I was chatting with my wife Karen over tea/coffee in the conservatory, I was running some ideas past her, again, she is a very patient woman having put up with me for 28 years. It is true that she knows me better than I do myself. The ideas I was running past her were ones I have also discussed a lot with my CRGI colleague and friend Jayne. I am also influenced by some of the things I have read recently and our steadily growing student numbers.

To date our curriculum offer has had 3 strands, Ju Jitsu, self defence and self defence and fitness, each with its own separate and differentiated content, aims and objectives. I am comfortable with this and yes it is proving successful, we incorporated the Ju Jitsu into our offer in September 2014 and created a management triad of myself, Bill and Jayne and we have around 8 other senior black belts who we consult with when making any significant changes to the Ju Jitsu. The self defence is run solely by me although both Bill and Jayne teach this too.

The decision we have taken is to expand our number of classes and the curriculum offer. There are a lot of very small factors influencing our decision and a few bigger ones. Going for growth presents many challenges but I have realised I am currently sat snugly in my comfort zone. It is an easy thing to do like boiling a frog; I have sat here with the water slowly warming around me so to speak. Luckily for me, I hope, I have an inquiring mind and am open to the opinions and ideas of others. Insular thinking is the cause of stagnation and the enemy of progress. So message received, thank you Karen, thank you Jayne, it is time to begin the process of putting ideas into action.

There will be no sudden change, there is much yet to discuss, but it is now a time to commit to action. I am currently reading Smarter Faster Better; the Secrets of Being Productive and it is very interesting, Duhigg uses great analogies and storytelling to put across some fascinating ideas and concepts, it is consolidating and building on my prior experiences and learning. It has given me the encouragement I needed to make my decision to expand the business.

Instead of thinking about all the crap that is out there, see previous articles on McDojo’s, Warriors etc, it is time to build on what we have created so far and take it to the next level, we have good product delivered well by competent, well informed people who I trust. So I am listening to the voices of those I trust, preparing the ground with the start of a business plan, bringing in those who can help make this happen and visualising the journey ahead. The old maxim that “the only thing constant is change”, Heraclitus, is true.

So it is time to build the team and develop a more expansive, or at least expanding curriculum offer. This is not simply a lets bolt on whatever we can method of building, grabbing random martial arts to fill the timetable so we appear to offer everything to everybody. I have seen that happen and I have seen it fail. Firstly I have made a formal business offer to Jayne and am pleased she has accepted, there is a lot to do and we need to build an academy with a coherent curriculum.

When the terms curriculum or curricula are used in educational contexts without qualification, specific examples, or additional explanation, it may be difficult to determine precisely what the terms are referring to—mainly because they could be applied to either all or only some of the component parts of an organisations academic program or courses.

Having a background in academia I am keen to avoid misusing the terms curriculum or curricula. I personally think it is central to building a lasting and coherent educational organisation. For me, and I would like to think us, the term curriculum refers to the lessons and academic content taught in a school or in a specific course or program.

In many cases curriculum is often defined as the courses offered by an organisation, school or college depending on how broadly those using it define or employ the term.

For ourselves curriculum typically refers to the knowledge and skills our students are expected to learn, which includes the learning standards and learning objectives they are expected to meet; the units and lessons that are taught as well as any books, materials, videos, presentations, and readings used in a course; and the methods of assessment, (grading/tests), we use to measure student achievement and learning. This will involve learning facilitated at the Academy and supported by digital learning packages developed via CRGI.

So we have our emergent plan based on experience, observation and discussion, we have our ambition to build a growing thriving learning organisation and we have the intention of basing it on a sound academic foundation. We have some support from Sheffield Hallam University and we will seek to accredit our learning in appropriate ways where that will improve our offer.

If this does not work out, and it is clearly a work in progress, then we may just be forced to return to the back of an envelope.

So what is the moral of this tale, well we run a Dojo, but it is an aspirational Dojo. The professionalization of what we do is important to us, it is what differentiates us from our competitors, and it is our USP,(unique selling point). As we progress this will be key to our ability to market what we do as gold standard and as such allow us to develop a commercially viable business. We have seen a number of full time Dojo’s come and go as they launch on a well meant wing and a prayer.

Anyone who has built a house, or even an extension, will know that you cannot do so on dodgy foundations. Carefully defining what will be our curriculum offer is the foundation of our expansion; it is worth taking a little time deciding what it will be and how it will facilitate the kind of high quality learning experience we want it to provide where both the learners and the organisation itself operate with a growth mindset and culture as opposed to a fixed one.

We are sure we will learn valuable lessons along the way but if you have already done this and wish to offer us some advice, we are all ears, thank you.

Gaining Experience by Proxy Part III – Marc Macyoung

Cont’d.

Another place where experience does tend to matter is when it comes to ‘off the curriculum’ questions. These are the kinds of questions that every teacher is going to run into. I’m not talking about ‘what if monkeys’ (the guys who ask what do you do when you’re walking through a dark alley and you’re attacked by 27 ninja with uzis), I’m talking about legitimate questions about stuff that is not on the syllabus, but is related to the topic. The reason this gets a .75 as well is this. On one hand a person with experience can reach back into their own history and answer the question with what he or she did, experienced and felt. (Often these questions have to do with overcoming internal issues.) Furthermore, an experienced person can often take in the information in the question, assess it and come up with a functioning answer. So for on the spot responses, experience can be a powerful tool.

On the other hand, one person’s experience does not the whole subject make. What’s more, just because the instructor could do it, doesn’t mean the student can. There are a lot of variables that went into the experienced person’s success in those particular circumstances — and this includes mental and physical capabilities. So just because it worked for him, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everyone. More over, different people who have been there came up with different answers. Answers that also worked. Keep this last in mind because it’s important.

It’s important because there can also be a downside to experience. That is, when you’ve had someone try and kill you, you can get extremely conservative about ‘what works.’ Some people take it past that and get into ‘MY WAY IS THE ONLY WAY!” This is especially true if they develop the curriculum and didn’t have it vetted by others who have also been there. So yes, the instructor can fall back on his experience, but his experience isn’t the only way to handle the problem.

The reason ‘off the syllabus’ questions and experience is a .75 issue is both someone who has been there and someone who hasn’t need to use the same strategy for dealing with them. That is referencing the views of other people who have been there.

The thing to consider is that often these kinds of questions are generally predictable. As an instructor you will be asked these kinds of questions. That means you can prepare for them. For example, someone who hasn’t been there can still answer these kinds of questions with “About that, Marc MacYoung says (this). Rory Miller says (this). Peyton Quinn says (this).” A person who has been there can also use the same tactic. “I say (this). Marc MacYoung says (this). Rory Miller says (this).” In both cases, this allows the student to consider different points of view and assessment of what he/she is asking about.

Why is this important?

Let me put it to you in these terms: I’ve spent nearly five decades fighting, engaging in violence, dealing with its repercussions, training, preparing, studying, researching, writing, teaching and lecturing about violence. I am a court-recognized expert witness. I have taught police and military in nine different countries and have over 22 titles published about violence, crime avoidance, personal safety and professional use of force.

I tell you this to put something into perspective. Every morning I get up and am nearly overwhelmed by what I don’t know about the subject of violence.

So you ask can someone who has ‘not been there teach?’ Well, the bottom line is nobody has been everywhere. Everyone has holes in his or her experience and can only rely on both getting and providing quality information regarding the subject.

I recently had a discussion about what to do with an ambush attack from point blank range; an attack meant to kill you. That’s a situation I have been in multiple times. The guy I was talking to, however, had a specific circumstance I’d never dealt with before. That was what to do when the guy grabs your carbine with one hand, jerks the barrel off line and swings a machete at you with the other hand.

Now this is the kind of problem a civilian isn’t likely to have. It is a problem likely to pop up with SWAT officers and people in his line of work. The point is, the response we were discussing had been vetted in actual situations where one of the participants was going to die. The response works to keep the person with the carbine alive. How do we know this? Because the guy with the carbine wasn’t decapitated, and the other guy was dead.

In contrast, I see a lot of people who charge a lot of money for these super cool techniques they come up with. They claim these moves will work, and people get all giggly and excited by practicing them in high-priced seminars. When I look at them, I see techniques that at the very best will result in double kills. At worst, they’ll fail miserably because of the actual physics of such circumstances. Not imagined, but actual physics. The person who came up with these groovy, cool, studly responses had never been in those circumstances or checked the feasibility of those moves with someone who had.

I consider this critical because as a ‘teacher,’ you are putting your students’ lives on the line with the quality of the information you provide. Not just their lives, but large chunks of it if they go to prison for what you didn’t teach them about violence and self-defense.

Like the IED/Humvee training, it doesn’t matter that much if you’ve been there or not. What matters is the quality of the information you provide (and whether it’s been checked and vetted by people who know that topic). As an instructor, whether you’re experienced or not, don’t ever give into the temptation to think you know it all. Keep on researching and trying to learn. As a student, don’t believe anyone who gives critical topics about violence a ‘hand wave.’ (“Oh we teach that, too” before they drop the subject and then get on with the cool macho shit and ass kicking.) Be an informed consumer because you’re staking your life on the quality of the information you’re paying for.

Problems with the Training Establishment – Raymond Dettinger

The same old problems exist in both the martial arts and firearms training. I always called it the “Training Establishment” setting up the rules and training lesson plans. These rules and lesson plan writers have their own methods of creating experts being certified with paper certificates. The qualified experts teach others the same ole stuff passed down for a hundred years. Or, somebody just sets themselves up as an expert just for fun or whatever.

Let us take a look at how most firearms training is done. You shoot behind a barricade at 25, 15 and then 7 yards from your motionless paper target. If you get half your shots on paper, you are now “qualified” to protect yourself from a person behind you and going to hit you over the head with a brick.

Now, let’s talk about how real gunfights go down. Low light conditions, so there goes sight alignment. Firing distance is about a couple of 7 feet. One hand is usually used to fire with. An average of 3 shots are fired. Missing the target is common because of the adrenal stress problem. So, what does barricade training do for us when it does not match with street reality?

This is why modern pistol craft has to be multidisciplinary like the martial arts. No one shoe size fits all. Also, all of the upfront awareness and risk assessment skills should be taught before anybody picks up a gun. Also, legal, adrenal, aftermath should be taught before touching a gun. Guys, shooting is easy. People can accurately shoot targets blindfolded from 7 yards out if properly trained. Just think what they can do with their eyes open. We all know that we must understand how violence gets started in order to avoid it or prepare to shoot it out. The biggest point to firearms training is learning EMPTY HAND skills to avoid the first blow so you don’t get knocked out, disabled or killed right off. So a gun without empty hand skills is can be hazardous to your health.

When I started out learning all this in law enforcement, I wanted to learn only effective stuff. I could not find it. I went to local Karate Schools and the instructors all bragged about making their students to 50 knuckle pushups. I needed to know immediately how to handle people trying to kill me with a knife. I had to go the the old WWII manuals to learn. I am sorry that the martial arts could not have helped me at all during that time. Reality is the best filter for BS methods.

There are the other problems of just what type of training do you need in self-defense with a gun? There are many styles of sport combat shooting like IPSC, PPC, Cowboy Action Shooting and a hundred more. These are sport combat competitions. The participants in them are good. However, they have $5,000 specially built handguns with special ammo usually given to them for free by gun companies. The problem is that these sport combat people sometimes think that their skill sets are also self-defense based on their firearms marksmanship skill which based on the process of shooting: Sight Alignment, Sight Picture, Trigger Squeeze, Breath Control and follow through.

These things may be hard to do in a dark alley when suddenly attacked by a gang out to hurt you. Believe me, you will not have the time or the rational to do them. Some schools sell the sexy military house clearing methods. These are ex-military guys trying to make some money by selling the sexy stuff in the name of self-defense. Clueless people flock to the previously mentioned instructors because they are “experts”. Indeed, they are experts in what they do, and they are darn good at it. Good for them. But when they claim their methods are transferrable to street and home defense, things can get screwed up. Buyer beware as they say.

People must do their research to find good instruction but, like many things nowadays, it is hard to find professionals in any endeavor. Bullshit Artistry seems to be the thing now days.

Gaining Experience by Proxy Part II – Marc MacYoung

Unfortunately, all too many people who ‘haven’t been there’ are guessing what it’s like — based on their training. (How do I apply what I know to what I don’t know about violence?) As such, they often come up with fantasy solutions to fantasy problems. (Or as Peyton Quinn sums it up: “They come up with ingenious solutions to non-existent problems.”) This technique works reliably in the street … right? Well no, but by gawd, the next time you get attacked by a midget riding a Shetland pony, you’ll be ready with that flying side kick.

But that’s not going to stop a lot of folks from teaching that tournament-winning-move and claiming it is not only self-defense, but a battlefield tested technique from their traditional martial art.

Or they take limited personal experience and extrapolate it to cover every kind of violence. I’ve seen entirely too much training by ‘studs,’ who are teaching you to win your next high school fight. Incidentally, this stuff *will* work to win a fight. Unfortunately, it will get your ass killed in other kinds of violence where the goals and rules are different than that of a ‘fight.’

I say ‘unfortunately’ because not using the definition of self-defense found in the dojo/gym but using instead a more legal one, actual self-defense is more likely to involve you facing those other kinds of violence. Self-defense is not about fighting, so training someone to ‘fight’ and calling it self-defense is going the wrong way. Training to fight doesn’t prepare you to handle the kind of stuff you’ll be facing in the other kinds of violence.

Oh yeah, it’ll also get your ass arrested, prosecuted and convicted because ‘fighting’ is illegal. And — if you’re being taught a weapons system — you might as well buy a dildo and practice sucking it and sitting on it because you’re going to end up in the prison showers. That’s both with what they’re teaching you and what they’re not (like Use of Lethal Force laws and consequences).

This is why I say there are only two problems with most training. One is when it doesn’t work. The other is when it does.

It helps to think of the subject of ‘self-defense’ as a multi-circle Venn diagram. (Those diagrams with overlapping circles. Each circle is a different issue, topic or factor by itself — but where they overlap something else, they mutate into something that is neither one nor the other.) Self-defense is in the middle of all those circles. There are lots of overlapping factors. Things that can spell the difference between you being safe, alive and free or, going to the hospital or prison.

When you ask can someone who hasn’t been there, be good at teaching ‘self-defense,’ the real answer is a question. Is the person teaching these multiple factors?

If yes, then yes. If no, then no.

Oh and BTW, it doesn’t matter if the person *has* been there. If he or she is not teaching these factors, then she or he sucks at teaching you ‘self-defense.’ He may be doing a smash-up job teaching you how to fight or get convicted for murder, but that ain’t self-defense. (I’ll add a caveat to this in a bit — where it really does matter having been there — but for the moment let’s just stick with the quality of the information being provided.)

One of the *best* introductory books about ‘what is missing’ from most training is “Facing Violence” by Rory Miller.

Having said that, I will also tell you: It is *not* the final word on the subject. I tell you that so you don’t read it and think, “Okay I know that, so now I can teach it.” It’s an important introduction to what you don’t know you don’t know. You’ll have multiple boatloads of subject matter you need to research after reading it. But now you have seven specific topics you know you need to research in order to provide quality training.

For example, do you teach your students how to make a statement to the police after an incident? Do you teach your students how to articulate their use of force decisions? Do you teach them how to recognize and assess developing danger? Do you teach them conflict de-escalation and how to assess options? Do you teach them how their own behaviour is going to either add to their claim of self-defense or convict them when they admit to a crime by claiming ‘self-defense?’

Oh while we’re at it, you should know that threat assessment and articulation aren’t just legal issues. It’s critical personal safety strategy that can safely extract you from a potentially dangerous situation or — if things get ugly — it is a critical component of overcoming the freeze response. Again, this information isn’t just ‘legal,’ it’s a critical step in being able to act.

The Model of Competence Based Performance Part II – Varg Freeborn

Smooth is Fast

We have talked about training the fundamentals until they are “automatic”. We need to repetitively train the fundamentals until we can perform them, repeatedly, without having to think about them at a conscious level.

This is not accomplished by going as fast as you can. To use driving and braking as an example again, have you ever taken a day and just went out specifically to practice slamming on your brakes in your car? Probably not. However, when the moment comes at 50mph and something goes bad in front of you, you will slam on your brakes with extreme unconscious competence and stop the vehicle (providing your situational awareness is in-tact and you’re not texting or reading this article: observe). The reason you can achieve the brake pedal movement flawlessly is NOT because you have practiced slamming the pedal at speed. It is because every week you have performed literally thousands of slow, correct repetitions of going from the gas pedal to the brake pedal. If you train your fighting skills in the same slow, correct and deliberate manner, you will find that when speed is needed, it will be there. Speed is a product of smooth and correct repetition.

Improving the efficiency of your processor requires basic skills being ingrained enough to not have to use processor resources on them. Which allows you to then process information more quickly and thoroughly. This is the path to rapid and correct decision making in a fight. When you are not worrying about whether you can actually perform a movement or not, you are able to delegate those movements to the unconscious mind and allow your conscious mind to be fully engaged in the observance and decision making processes.

As the skills become trustworthy, you are able to go straight to processing your environment. This is a good step, but there’s more. The concept of maximizing your processor speed by not using resources thinking about the basics, allows you to not only solve one problem at a time, but to be able to flow through many problems, one after the other. It gets so good that you are able to set up subsequent moves with the ending of each solution. That is achieved after many, many hours of practice, force on force and mental training with positive mental imagery. Like shooting pool. First learn how to make the ball go into the pocket. With practice, we can make the ball go into the pocket with the cue coming to rest in position to make another ball go into a pocket… But for now, let’s focus on practicing the isolated skill to reliable perfection.

Positive mental imagery plays a key role in keeping you on the quick end of the spectrum during practice. This is possibly the most difficult part of training: not picturing ourselves failing. We have to DENY those negative images from gaining entry. We have all stepped up to perform at some point in time and failed. Whether at the range, or in a sport, we feared failure at the critical moment before performance. When you fear failure, you will picture yourself failing. This image will bog down your processing speed and prohibit you from performing well. Denying these images of failure, and other fear based anxieties, from entering into your observance and decision making processes will allow you to perform the fundamental skills necessary to prevail. It is truly difficult sometimes to imagine yourself doing something flawlessly correct, but it MUST be worked on. The faster we try to go, the harder it is to block out the imagery of failure.

The importance of correct practice

When we talk about practice, we need to immediately and forcefully kill the myth that “practice makes perfect”. It simply is not true.

Practice makes something reliably repeatable. But understand this very important fact: it becomes repeatable in the way that you have practiced it. FACT: If you practice it wrong, you will get really good at doing it wrong. This means, if you have made it a habit to try to go too fast, and to not seek out positive feedback, you may have actually practiced doing something incorrectly. The biggest cause of this that I see is going too fast. Remember what I said about the car brake pedal and hitting the brakes quickly? Practicing fast does not make you fast. Practicing smoothly and correctly makes you fast and correct.

Think of your neural pathways like weeds in the woods. If you want to make a new path in the woods, where it is all grown up with undergrowth, you have to walk that new path several times to even make it visible. As you walk the path for months over and over, eventually it turns into a recognizable clear path. This is just like the neural pathways that tell your muscles to fire in a certain pattern. As you practice, you are myelinating the axons, which speeds up the electrical signal across the neural pathway. This means the more frequently you practice, the faster you get at doing it exactly the way you practice.

So, again image you are going to cut a new path in the woods. However, this time, you walk a slightly different way each day and never walk over the same exact pathway twice. How successful do you think you would be at efficiently trampling the undergrowth down and making a visible, clear path? You would not. If you deviate each time, even slightly, you will not develop one well worn path. Your neural pathways are very similar. When we deviate our path of movement when practicing a skill, there is no way to efficiently train ourselves to perform it the one intended way. While it is ok to work into advanced levels where we train variants of a technique or skill on purpose, it can only be done after the basic primary skill has been perfected to an automatic, non-conscious performance ability.

The most common and pretty much expected mistake that I see newer students and shooters make is to begin pursuing speed much too soon in their training. Everyone wants to be Instagram hot and perform cool shit with the timer. As you speed up, you begin to automatically cut corners, make mistakes, fumble tasks and just plain screw up. This is what you are practicing! Every practice run that you fumble is a step backward in your training toward automatic skill levels.

Resist this urge. It is much better to perform perfectly at whatever speed you can maintain perfect pathway performance at. Remember the example of the brake pedal and your skill at emergency braking, without ever really practicing emergency braking? It is simply true that the slow, repeated perfect practice of a skill will program the brain and body to perform that skill on-demand and at greater speeds than practiced.

Speed is for testing and fun, but do not make testing the majority of your time on the range. I say this because this is what I see most people do. Practice is for doing it perfectly correct. Do not forget this. Make this the cornerstone of your physical training protocol. Self-aware unconscious competence performance with clear ongoing assessment is the goal. The more capable your body is, the less you have to think about performance, the more you understand leverage and power, the more you will be able to reach this level.

The Crime Triangle and Self Defense Training – Nathan Wager

Complex ideas and situations can be simplified into manageable chunks with the aid of models, and violent crime is no different. One such model, known as the Crime Triangle, has gone through various iterations in criminology circles and filtered down in its various versions through law enforcement as well.

In a more mature form of the model, we see that crime is a positive interplay of three core components combined with a negative, or lack, of three corresponding components:

A violent crime happens when a (1) motivated offender and (2) attractive target converge within a (3) suitable location, in the absence of corresponding capable controllers.1

If any one of these components does not form part of the core structure of the Triangle, then the crime does not happen. This seems almost tautological at first, as though it doesn’t say anything that isn’t self-evident. “A bad guy and a good guy meet in a place with nobody to intervene. How revolutionary.” And yet I would argue that it is deceptively simple, and understanding these core components of the model can be very helpful in organizing your own self defense training, as well as guiding further research.

The world is a complex adaptive system, as is the violence that takes place within it, and one aspect of these more chaotic systems is that small changes in initial conditions can have drastic effects later on. Jeff Goldblum’s character discussed this phenomenon in Jurassic Park, for anyone that remembers that stellar scene of nerd knowledge being dropped. Small changes in these core components of the Crime Triangle can result in radically different understandings of a violent event and how it occurs.

Simple, Not Simplistic

Originally, the Crime Triangle only referred to third parties that could intervene specifically on behalf of the victim and stop the crime as “capable guardians.” Eventually, all third parties during a violent event were referred to collectively as “controllers,” that were then subdivided based on what they controlled. The controller that can intervene on behalf of the victim, for instance, is referred to as a “guardian.” The seemingly innocuous addition of the word “capable” to the concept of controllers has very large implications on the ground.2

This is because whether a guardian is present is not enough, since a guardian may not be “capable” in the sense of being able or willing to intervene. Your loved one such as your wife or grandmother is a potential guardian, but are they capable? Any lack in presence or capability is something that must be compensated for with any number of means, whether communication methods such as a phone and a predetermined plan of action, or possibly a legally possessed weapon.

A handler, or the controller with a connection to the offender, may only be as capable as he or she is willing to stop the violence; some may actually encourage it. There is a large amount of research on how the presence of third parties connected to the attacker can affect a violent act, but how many instructors have seriously looked into it? The Triangle can help identify this deficiency.

Going further, territoriality and the sense of ownership or personal investment that a controller has in getting involved to stop the altercation can depend on whether the property is public or privately owned, the ability of the neighborhood to assert their territoriality over criminals, etc. A place manager such as a cashier in a large chain store is often less likely to risk her neck personally by intervening in an attempted assault in front of the store. The place manager in this large store has no personal investment, and this isn’t even her neighborhood, so why get involved? Why not call the cops instead? This delay can have lethal consequences for you.

The idea of a “motivated offender” was developed as opposed to a likely offender in the original triangle, since it was recognized that the mere presence of a criminal wasn’t enough for a crime to happen, even if the offender was a career criminal. One could hypothetically place a couple people next to each other and wait for the magic to happen, but that wouldn’t ensure that violence emerges.

There needed to be a triggering template involving how attractive the victim was from a vulnerability standpoint as well as other factors such as external “precipitators.” This is a list of up to 16 types of triggers ranging from arousal-stimulating sensory situations such as that found in the club with loud noises and crowding, to more personal ones in the form of a provocation or insult.3

When one considers how such a small change in the wording used by a model can have such large effects on how we look at the way violence happens, hopefully it is easier to appreciate how a precise yet simple model does not automatically mean simplistic. If your own model of examining violence can be haphazardly changed without any noticeable effect, than you haven’t identified the most fundamental elements for your model.

Applying the Model

To give a practical example of approaching your own self defense training in light of the Triangle, consider body language. Many instructors are rightfully starting to incorporate nonverbal aspects such as anxiety cues to detect potentially violent behavior prior to an attack. This fits the mantra of “awareness” that many self defense systems preach.

This is all well and good, but if we take the simple concepts of the Crime Triangle, it becomes clear that simple “awareness” is insufficient. Awareness of what? Many approaches are heavily threat-focused, and yet this misses a large chunk of the necessary components. You may find yourself in the position of recognizing a threat, and yet what if you are in a neighborhood where not only will nobody intervene, but some may actively join in the attack? Looking into the crystal ball only to see your own inevitable ass-kicking isn’t exactly going to inspire confidence in your method.

A more structured approach to nonverbal cues would look at reading the crowd through expanded eyes. Who are the controllers of a situation? Is their posture dominant or submissive? If they do get involved are they physically capable of altering the outcome or would it be better to verbally instruct them to get help? Is the potential threat’s handler actively engaged or is his body language disengaged from the offender’s attempted action toward you?

Who are the players on the chessboard, and what are their roles?

This is just one example of using the Triangle to assess your training in the area of body language, but there are many more. What I would suggest is to take this simple model, perhaps even develop one of your own, and start brainstorming and critiquing your own approach to self defense. Have you thought of all the angles? You may be surprised by what you discover.

1 Marie Tillyer and John Eck, “ Getting a handle on crime: A further extension of routine activities theory,” Security Journal 24, no. 2, (June 2010): 179–193, accessed July 2, 2017, doi: 10.1057/sj.2010.2.

2 For an in-depth discussion of how different variations in wording affected research, see Marcus Felson, “Routine Activity Approach,” in Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis, ed. Richard Wortley and Lorraine Mazerolle (Portland: Willan Publishing, 2008), 70-77.

3 Richard Wortley, “Situational Precipitators of Crime,” ibid., 48-69.

Nathan Wagar is the founder of Borderland Strategic Performance Institute. He served two combat deployments to northern Iraq with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne, as part of a task force formed for kill or capture raids of high value targets.

He currently coaches boxing and personal protection to civilians in New Mexico, as well as closed course CQB and active shooter programs to the US Secret Service assigned to the Albuquerque field department.

www.borderlandstrategic.com

You Won’t Like Who’s Ready – Mark Hatmaker

“You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you’ve planned, and you’re down to your reflexes-that means your [preparation]. That’s where your roadwork shows. If you’ve cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you’re going to find that out now, under the bright lights.”-Joe Frazier

The great champion Joe Frazier is referring both to boxing and life in general, and his lesson is mighty powerful. Perhaps more powerful than he ever realized. I’m going to drive home just how powerful his advice is with an example from some horrifically evil people, but first, let’s take a sojourn through some Paleolithic anthropology and then a 16th-century observation on warfare before we bring it back to the 21-st century.

You are the weakest human being that has ever walked the planet since this species inception.

Don’t take that personally, I’m weak, too, and so is your neighbor, and your CrossFit coach down the road. The 21st century human is a pale copy of better versions of ourselves that colonized this planet up till about 10,000 years ago.

This weak estimation I have just rendered is not me talking-that’s the science.

“There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging. Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’ were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.

“Foragers mastered not only the surrounding world of animals, plants and objects, but also the internal world of their own bodies and senses. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits, beehives and bird nests. They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had the physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practicing yoga or t’ai chi.”-Yuval Noah Harari Sapien: A Brief History of Humankind.

A little depressing, huh? Before we get too down on our weaker and dumber selves let’s not forget that we win when it comes to technological luxuries. But then again…

“Don’t talk about ‘progress’ in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.”-Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Your call if you dig the idea of being a domesticated animal.

You can strive to be either more like the wolf, or more like the golden retriever. Both fine animals, but…

The next stop on our journey, the16th-century Frenchman Michel Montaigne. Rather than quote from the lengthy section I have excised this idea, I will paraphrase in prose far less elegant than his.

Montaigne, while musing on warfare of the past up to his present-day remarks that each succeeding general or army would fare well or better than preceding champions.

For example, Alexander would easily dominate opposition that preceded him by a century, whereas Caesar coming after Alexander would handle Alexander and his armies easily, and that a French militia of Montaigne’s period would handle a legion of Caesar’s handily.

Nice, huh? Puts we gradually weaker humans back in the driver’s seat.

Not so fast.

Montaigne points out that these successive victories would only be possible because each succeeding army enjoys greater technology (i.e., better forged steel for Caesar vs. Alexander, early firearms for the French dragoons vs. Caesar). He then goes on to say that if we level the playing field by making each fighting force compete mano y mano, or with the preceding generations technology then the victory goes hands down to the earlier version of ourselves. Montaigne makes this assertion by observing that each generation of man seems to do less and less, and to be capable of less and less. Keep in mind he was making this observation in the 1500’s-I wonder what he would conclude after observing today’s texters, and tweeters, and gamers.

And now back to the 21st-century. I will quote from an exercise video available online. I will not provide a source for the video, I will not offer the name of the “instructor” as, well, because the video producers and instructors are scum.

The video is an outreach for potential ISIS converts on how to stay fit for battle.

I quote from the video: “This video is dedicated to the mujahedeen in Syria, and to others who plan on coming here.”

Our quite fit “instructor” then offers tips on how to get fit and stay fit for battle with no gym equipment. And, I will say, having been in this business for some time, his advice, unfortunately, is quite sound.

This video reminds us of the fact that the scum who perpetrated the atrocities in the offices of Charlie Hebdo and what followed, also met regularly for fitness sessions.

Which brings me to the point of this journey, what are we doing right now to be

Are we content to assume that our “protectors” somewhere out there in Washington, or wherever are the only preparation we need to make?

If we make this assumption how do we resolve this with the fact that most such attacks are not battlefield attacks, they are civilized world attacks-this puts us into Montaigne’s example where we have to ask ourselves how would we do against an enemy when we lack our technology which we use to bolster our weakness?

Would we be ready if we had to be ready?

Are we preparing to any degree whatsoever as Joe Frazier suggests versus a foe that takes such advice to heart?

We either makes ourselves weak, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of time dedicated to either is the same.

What are you going to do while some villain out there is doing what needs to be done?

Garry here, now please visit Mark’s website

http://www.extremeselfprotection.com

Technical Virgins and the World of Self Defense – Clint Overland

Ok folks, I will make an admission here before all of you and God Himself. I have very little training in the Martial Arts. Matter of fact, I am an eternal white belt. Never had the time or the patience to want to spend in training in a martial arts system. But what I do possess is 27 years of experience in the violence trades. Bouncer, body guard, SOB for hire whatever paid the bills. If you had the money you didn’t need to get mad. I and my associates would get mad for you.

Simple as that. I never understood why someone would spend thousands of dollars and years of their lives training to learn how to kick ass and take names when I always found the best way to learn was by spitting blood or teeth. Lord knows I can only chew on one side of my mouth now and have difficulty breathing through my nose but I did learn some very hard lessons.

What is really getting to me lately is the complete and total disregard for the school of hard knocks. I have friends that have paid their dues in the dojo and are pure hell on wheels when it comes to the martial art of their choice. Men and women both I would never stand up face to face and want to fight. It is much safer just to ambush them with a hammer to the skull from behind than to try and prove that I am the better fighter.

This is not directed at them, but to the complete opposite of them. The twenty –four year old Grandmaster and YouTube hero with a great marketing scheme and sales pitch. I have been going through a bunch of these so called Self-defense sites and for the most part they can make someone like me doubt my skill level. I mean these guys are slick, they choose and use every little trick in the book to get you to buy their programs. The whole what if scenario of can you protect your family if this happens. What would you do if you were accosted in a dark alley at midnight by a group of thug’s hell bent on raping you and taking your wallet?

These guys have it down to a science of manipulating fear and insecurity. But here is the question I want to ask you. Please after reading the question take a moment to think about what it means to you.

What would a virgin be able to teach you about fucking, let alone stunt fucking? I mean come on folks these guys are technical virgins. And no I don’t mean girls who take it up the ass so they can give their husbands their cherry on their wedding night. I am talking about guys who have never had sex, jacked off a lot, but never really been balls deep in the real stuff.

Sure, they may know all the right moves, but when it comes to implementation they would throw their backs out in the first 20 seconds of some serious porn star sex. The majority of these guys have never been a real bad situation or they damn sure wouldn’t be teaching the crap that looks cool, but is as useful as a broken rubber. Hell, shoving a pen into a guy’s eye or ripping his ear off is a hell of a lot quicker way to end a fight than all of the fancy pants moves you see being taught to a lot of folks as 100% effective every time.

I watch the YouTube videos and think “Boy, that sure looks good, except for the part of when they went to the ground, then bad guy’s backup is going to run over and mule stomp that poor bastards head in, while they are rolling around on the ground.”

Again please do not misunderstand what I am trying to get across to you. I have the highest regards for the Martial Arts, and for people teaching real world applicable self-defense. But there are as many shysters out there teaching fighting as there are preaching the Gospel for cash. Look at what these people are offering. Is it a one day seminar that guarantees that they will make you an invincible fighting god for the cost of a used car? Or is it someone that tells you this shit is complicated, and is going to take you some time and effort to really learn and know what can and will go wrong?

Nothing can completely guarantee your safety. Nothing is 100% effective all the time. Sorry, but it isn’t. I have shoved my thumb in a guy’s eye to the second joint and the fucker kept on trying to run a knife into my stomach, instead of trying to get off me like I wanted. I have had a drunk bust a chair across my shoulders and it didn’t turn out like he planned.

That’s the real world folks. One of the first things I teach a new bouncer is that Murphy is an optimist. Be ready with a plan C, D, and E, if the first ones don’t go right, because chances are they won’t. Look folks, I am not in any way an expert in self-defense. But, I am pretty knowledgeable in what it takes to survive in a business that eats people up in less than 10 years.

I can tell from experience that a MMA program or a sports form martial art is useful as a beginning. But, these are duels with rules and regulations. A close quarter’s combat class can be a great way to wind up in court or worse jail because you went to the extreme and killed someone because you were just doing what you were taught by a guy that never went to the limit with anyone in the real world. This shit is a balancing act and you had better be ready for it to all come crashing down around you.

My advice is take the next two years and begin studying all you don’t know about what really happens in situations. Go find a good boxing club and get hit in the face a few times. Read Marc MacYoung, Rory Miller, Lawrence Kane, and Kris Wilder. Teach yourself to stay out of bad places and use prevention to keep your ass alive.

Abduction Training – John Titchen

The sobering reality of a fake abduction

On Saturday, under my supervision, four teenage boys (aged 13-14) experienced a fake abduction. This was a single scenario in a multi faceted training day for both adults and teenagers. While this is a very rare event, it is perhaps one feared the most by parents, and so we wanted to see what we could learn from replicating an example.

Like all training, we had to make compromises for safety. The most glaringly obvious compromise was that the boys knew they were going to experience an abduction attempt. They also knew which vehicle the attacker(s) would use. What they didn’t know was how many people would be involved or how we would set them up.

That wasn’t the only compromise:

– due to a scheduling clash we had to stage our scenario outside a venue filled with young children with open doors for ventilation, so the teenagers couldn’t shout for help or bang on the vehicle,

– the vehicle wasn’t scrapped so we couldn’t kick it or hit people into its bodywork.

– for safety all shots to the head were pulled; the attackers wore headgear in case of backward uncontrolled strikes,

– the teenagers were bare-headed and we decided to proceed on the basis that the attackers would use body shots to subdue them so as to preserve their looks.

Each teenager entered the scenario ‘blind’, not having seen the ones that went before or having had opportunity to get any information from the previous participants. They were asked to walk down a particular passageway as if on their way home from school or visiting a friend. An aggressor would run up behind like a jogger, and then grab the boy to lift him into the van where a second person could assist in controlling them. A third man was behind the wheel.

This obviously represented a possible attack. More people could have been involved. We could have used a fake weapon for intimidation. The aim of the exercise was for all of us to see how difficult it was to escape once the attack had begun, and how quickly it could be done.

The results were chilling as you can see.

Of the four participants, three were taken with the van ready to drive away within 12 seconds from first contact. The longest resistance lasted 35 seconds, and had he not been pulling his shots (for safety) that young man might have escaped or caused his attackers to abandon their attempt for fear of being caught. As it was we did attract some outside attention.

One of the most obvious things to take away from the exercise is that awareness of your environment is everything. Anyone listening to music on headphones would be easy prey. Hoodies would reduce peripheral vision and reaction time. Choice of routes, walking in company, wide corners and how you react to people around you in terms of innocuous hand positions (scratching the back of your neck for example) would make a difference in reducing the odds of being a victim and in being in a better position to resist.

These abductions featured bear hugs in what is their most likely use. These particular scenarios reinforced that unless you act before it is fully on, you are not going to get out very easily, and you probably won’t have a stable ground platform to work on. I teach bear hug defences to illustrate principles of movement, and to try and ingrain the reaction to move before it is on, but I recognise that the attack is both rare (because there are very few scenarios in which someone would do it) and that once it is on then most defences I’ve seen demonstrated (including my own) are ineffective until the person starts to release you.

If you want to theorise about bracing against a van, or pushing off from a van, or a car boot… try it. Come up with ideas, but then try them until you have some high percentage solutions.

This was nothing more than a training exercise, but it has given all those participating something to think about.