Tag: Guest Article

The Dangers of Killer Instinct, Part I – Rodney King

The vast consumption of reality based self defence programs are not by military, law enforcement, or occupations that deal with interpersonal violence on a regular basis — but rather civilians. Civilians by their very nature, and at least in the relative safety of the Western world have very little experience with interpersonal violence, outside of Hollywoods depiction of it. Added to this, there is an uneasy truth that is often not spoken openly about in the world of ‘self-defence marketing’  — that very few of these civilians will ever have to deal with an interpersonal violent confrontation in their lifetime, at least not one that would be considered life or death.

Yet with the onslaught of media that seem to focus exclusively on a world that is seen as wholly unsafe, it is no wonder then that civilians — especially those who live in the cushy, relative safety of upper class suburbia — feel it necessary to seek out methods to secure their safety. The way the media portrays it, no matter where you live in the world, there is a bad guy around every street corner (who knows even your butler might be out to get you).

The methods of teaching often employed in many of these reality based self defence schools seek to unlock the killer instinct within an audience which as suggested earlier are not acquainted with acts of violence on a daily basis. Bringing out the animal nature in civilians is proposed as the type of traits necessary for them to defend against a violent, deranged, attacker. This approach in my view, far from being productive, and of course constructive in giving someone the necessary fortitude to take on a violent assailant, is to a large degree setting them up for failure. Before I suggest why this may be the case, I want to set the grounding for what I term self preservation, as opposed to self defence and an ego fight.

Getting Clear on Self Preservation

At least from my perspective, self defence has always held a reactionary meaning. For example, one finds oneself in a bad situation, you are attacked and you deploy your self defence skills (often, as pointed out earlier with intensity and ferocity, i.e., with that killer instinct).

Self preservation on the other hand, at least as I am defining it, is preemptive in nature. From this perspective self preservation doesn’t begin when someone attacks you, but starts that morning, a day, a month, and even a year earlier. The reality is that statistically a person living in the suburbs is more likely to be seriously injured, even killed in a motor vehicle accident — especially when not wearing a safety belt — than being mugged. Statistically speaking a person is more likely to have a heart attack and die because of bad nutritional choices in the Western world, than being attacked by another human being. If we are then seriously talking self-preservation, which is the preservation of the self (i.e., to live), it then implies that ‘safety’ of oneself is not just when someone attacks you, but rather ensuring self preservation in the things that WILL happen, and are more likely to kill you on an average day. For instance if you really valued your life, then you should make sure you put your safety belt on when you get into your motor vehicle or not eating cholesterol rich food that will clog up your arteries and cause you to have a heart attack.

When one then takes this further self preservation implies being astute and aware of ones surroundings (take note, I said aware not paranoid). Why go down to that nightclub when you know it’s a hot spot for violence? If you do find yourself in a nightclub, and a bunch of guys are giving you the evil eye, and you sense that it may escalate, leave the club and go home. If you are out at night and you have to park your car on the curb, then choose a spot that is well lit, and frequented by many people, and not the one around the corner near that alleyway with no visible lighting. If you bump into someone in a bar, and he spills your drink, your default setting shouldn’t be to turn around in a rage — which then changes a situation that could have been deescalated to now one that could result in potential personal harm. This more importantly is not self preservation, it’s ego defence. If you walking in a bar, and you bump someone and he spills his drink all over you, your first reaction shouldn’t be to throw profanities at that person, but rather to apologise, see it as an accident (which it more than likely was) and use verbal jiu jitsu tactics to politely ask if you can buy them another drink. This is self preservation, more over it is being a mature, sensible human being.

Often times, what is passed off in the world of reality based self defence is akin more to ego defence, than true self preservation. If we are honestly talking self preservation, then it is about avoiding violence where ever possible, It is about being aware of potential threats and removing oneself before a potential problem arises. If faced with a threat, then the first choice should always be to talk that person down using verbal jiu-jitsu, and if no other choice is available and it requires that you need to go hands on — then you do just enough to neutralise the threat — and then immediately find the nearest exit. This is what it means to preserve the self.

I would argue that many people, especially those teaching reality based self defence would have a hard time with this definition. One only has to look to YouTube to see a myriad of ‘self defence’ videos, where the defender fends off an attack, only then to go ballistic on the opponent, stomping his head into the ground, even though and crucially (albeit it being a demonstration) the fight was actually won ten moves earlier. Lets not even talk here about the appropriate use of force applied to the situation at hand. I am surprised that not more of these instructors or their students are dealing with assault charges.

Additionally tons of ‘self defence’ videos can be found on YouTube that show situations where if someone gets in your face then you neutralise him with a barrage of vicious attacks. But when one looks closer at many of these situations, especially contextually — how these situations are dealt with, even set up, are more often than not about the ego, not self preservation.

The reality is, if you truly talking or teaching self preservation then the number one thing you want to teach someone is to avoid conflict at all costs (of course the ego doesn’t like this approach, but that should be a ‘self defence’ lesson too). This understanding seems to be a no brainer for wild animals, who would much rather posture than fight. They know all to well that even if they fought  and one of them won, whilst the other died — the injuries sustained by the victor could mean that they both die in the end — albeit a week or so later.  

Revisiting Killer Instinct

Coming back to the notion of teaching civilians killer instinct. There is several glaring problems with this approach. Firstly, it is wholly out of context to how people typically live. Most people, unless they find themselves in a profession that encounter interpersonal violence on a regular basis, the most they have to deal with is an occasional road rage incident on the way to drop the kids off at school. In most incidents that the average person may have to deal with, in which it could potentially become interpersonal aggression — the use of awareness, verbal jiu-jitsu skills, and a sensible, mature attitude to a given situation — is more often than not the best form of ‘self defence’.

When civilians are taught to focus on killer instinct as the master strategy, and they do find themselves having to deal with a potential physical threat, it sets the stage for the hammer and the nail syndrome. If all you ever have is a hammer (killer instinct)  then that is what you will likely default to using for all potential aggressive encounters (the nails). As they say, you rise to the level of your training. People trained to deal with potential violent encounters with killer instinct will default to this as their master strategy, because they would have never been taught that a battle is not always won, or needs to be won with fists. Coming back to my examples previously that implied what I meant by self preservation, if we are seriously talking about the defence of self (not an ego fight), then using verbal jiu jitsu to talk ones way out of a situation is far more prudent a strategy than risking ones safety by being physically injured. Lets be honest too, no one really wins in a fight, even if you win, you may still walk away from that with injuries that you may never recover from (physical, psychological or otherwise).   

Secondly, invoking killer instinct especially in those who are not exposed to violence on a regular basis will likely result in a hyped up berserk state that would create a lack of awareness on the part of the user. Training it in the confines of the gym, is not the same as using it on the street. The latter will be tied to a massive overdose of survival hormones that will alter both emotional and cognitive functions. The result then is a tendency in the midst of that berserk state, fuelled on by adrenaline etc al., to then centralise ones focus, thus losing touch with what else is happening around oneself. In other words you simply no longer have situational awareness. The result, you may not see that multiple assailants have surrounded you, or if  an opportunity for escape presents itself, you may miss it completely.

Thirdly killer instinct mismanaged, which it likely will be considering the civilian nature of the user, will result in an over reliance on the reptilian brain in that moment (the fight/flight/freeze response), thus shutting down the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher cognitive functions like planning, distinguishing right from wrong, determining what is socially appropriate behaviour, decision-making, and producing insights. The truth is, anyone who has worked with interpersonal violence will tell you, being hyped up and aggressive is often a poor performance state to be in. You want to instead be cool, calm and collected. This allows you to make decisive, focused choices leading to keeping yourself and those you love safe.

For example, during my military service I served in VIP Protection. As a body guarding unit we were tasked to protect various important members of the armed forces. We were taught early on, that when faced with a potential threat, say for example from another human being moving towards us, that we needed to have an open focus (situational awareness), breath and keep calm. Remembering always that to get hyped up, or aggressive on one target would lead to a centralisation of focus on that one threat, thus loosing track of potentially other threats — not to mention forgetting about our primary mission — which was to keep our Principle safe.

End Part I.

 

About the Author

Rodney King M.A., RSME is the creator of Crazy Monkey Defense, and its sister self-preservation program Combat Intelligent Athlete. He has taught army special forces and law enforcement teams how to survive a life and death encounter when all they have is their body to defend themselves with.  You can find out more about Rodney and his work at www.coachrodneyking.com or www.crazymonkeydefense.com

Social Conditioning: Women & Violence, Part I – Tammy Yard-McCracken, Pys.D.

An opening disclaimer is important: research, hard science, is difficult to find on this topic. Ethics as they are on human research prevents us from setting up attacks on a randomized sampling pool of unsuspecting, uninformed women. The ethical guidelines on human research are there for a reason. The result? What follows is based on anecdotal evidence, personal reports, my experiences and campfire stories passed along by people I respect. There will be bias in these words.

Setting the Context

A few years ago the news reported an 18-year-old woman fatally shooting a male intruder. She was at home with her infant when the home invasion began. She barricaded the door, called 911 and 20 minutes later, two assailants finally made entry. Just before they broke through her barricade, she asked the 911 Operator if it was okay if she shot them if they came through the door. Dispatch couldn’t “advise”, but when they made it inside her home, she fired and killed one. The other one took off (Gast, 2012).

Side Note: the dispatcher was not new on the job. She crafted her words carefully to avoid giving advice while telling the frightened woman to do what was necessary to protect “that baby”. Good on her.

A few weeks later a mom in her late thirties hid in a closet with her 9-year-old twins after calling her husband to say she thought someone was trying to break into the house. The intruder made entry, rummaged through personal belongings, and eventually opened the closet door. She fired. 5 times (Reese, 2013). As the events unfold the husband is calling 911 while he keeps his frightened spouse on the phone. He is recorded by the 911 Operator saying:

“She shot him. She’s shooting him, she’s shooting him…again.”

“I heard him pleading…He was screaming.”

These are examples of armed responses to violent action and imminent threat. Look past the use of a firearm and look at the behavior of these women. Retreat. Hide. Call for help. Wait. Ask for permission to act.

There is a decent correlation between the rate of adrenalization and gender. Women adrenalize more slowly than men as a whole, giving women time to plan before the higher level thinking skills go off line. Tobi Beck (Beck, 1992) gives credence to it in the book, The Armored Rose, and those anecdotal and personal experiences I was talking about back her up. If the correlation has a biological underpinning, it may partially explain the WHY both women delayed in using lethal force. It does not adequately explain the WHAT in their tactical choices. These women were armed and they chose to:

  • Barricade/buy time
  • Call someone for direction
  • Ask for permission to act
  • Retreat
  • Hide
  • Wait

Here are a few more.

Mother of two walking to her car. Sunday afternoon, sunny day, “good neighborhood”. Two men are in the area of her vehicle. One smiles, is this your car? Can I ask you a question about it? She smiles back, even though she doesn’t feel friendly and says she’s in a hurry but “what’s your question?”

Gun drawn, kidnapped and carjacked. Twelve hours later in a sudden stroke of something resembling a conscience one of them let’s her escape.

18-year-old woman trying to untangle herself with polite smiles and excuses about being poor dating material gets pulled down on his knee. Unnecessarily strong grip holds her there. Sit here, be my good luck charm in the poker game, baby. Forcing a smile, she complies and then leaves as soon as she can do it without making a scene. Quietly tries to slip out of the party and gets to her car. He’s there too, asks for a ride home. She knows something isn’t right but he’s stranded, his buddy is passed out drunk and he’s gotta’ get up early for work.

Gives her directions to a remote neighborhood and rapes her.

One more (although there are thousands of these to be had). Pumping gas in her personal vehicle mid-morning after her run as an elementary school bus driver, a distressed woman approaches. The woman has a black eye and looks a little frantic. I’m so sorry, I know I look horrible. I’m running. My boyfriend beat me and I’m trying to get away. I have a bus ticket but can’t get to the station – I almost have enough for the cab. I need, like 5 bucks…can you help?

Suspicious, but doesn’t want to be one of those people who looks away. A sister needs help. Nods and reaches into the car for her purse. Something hard slams into the side of her face and knocks her to the ground. The forlorn female in distress grabs the purse and takes off.

How and Why It Matters

These three incidents share commonalities and together with the two home invasions, the five cases help to highlight social scripts and cultural rules that drive female behavior in most post-modern societies.

  • Defer
  • Wait
  • Be polite
  • Smile (when she doesn’t feel like it)
  • Appear cooperative
  • Be helpful and compassionate
  • Subjugate personal need and intuition to someone else when the two conflict

Bullet list #1 + Bullet list # 2 =

  • Physical/Violent Action requires permission from an outside authority
  • Deflect, defer, wait, buy time, retreat
  • Be polite even when it isn’t warranted
  • Smile (you’re so much prettier that way, anyway)
  • Be helpful
  • Be cooperative
  • Be compassionate
  • Be quiet (and hide)
  • Everyone else’s needs/expectations are more important

Welcome to the Cliff Notes review of How To Be Female in Western Society, 101.

Martially trained women, if you are reading this, a part of you may look at the above list and argue. “No, not me. I know better.” Intellectual awareness and physical training will not override a couple decades of social programming if you refuse to acknowledge it lives in your thinking. If you won’t consider it, if you are certain none of the bullet points could possibly apply to you, it is a dangerous blind spot.

Force professionals, you may be tempted look at these examples with an eye toward identifying all the places each of these women screwed up.  You are ticking off the behaviors that made her the perfect mark and the voice in your head may say, “she should have known better”.

And that’s the point. The behaviors and underlying beliefs that make a female an easy target are created by the social rules and expectations she has been marinating in from moment of her birth. This isn’t news and people like Gavin DeBecker have been writing about it for years (DeBecker, 1997).  

End Part I.

Reference:

Beck, T. (1992). The armored rose, the physiology and psychology of women fighting in the SCA.  Beckenham Publications, Avon IN.

Brizendine, L. (2006) The female brain.  Morgan Publishing,

DeBecker, G. (1997). The gift of fear. Dell Publishing, NY, New York.

Gast, P. (2012) Oklahoma mom-calling 911 asks if shooting an intruder is allowed. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/04/justice/oklahoma-intruder-shooting/.

Reese. R. (2013). Georgia mom shoots home invader, hiding with her children. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-mom-hiding-kids-shoots-intruder/story?id=18164812.

Wong, Q. (2013). Gender and emotion in everyday event memory. Memory. 2013;21(4):503-11. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.743568. Epub 2012 Nov 28.

 

Why I Stopped Teaching Women’s Self-Defense – Amanda Kruse

In my mind, self-defense should be of interest to anyone and everyone, as it concerns the safety and preservation of our selves and those we love. It makes sense, then, that everyone would want to have some knowledge on the subject, right?

My experience starting a self-defense business providing self-defense workshops has shown that people do not put self-defense as a top priority, at least not until they feel they “need” it (i.e. creepy neighbor, daughter heading off to college, traveling overseas, murderer on the news).

The idea for the business began after I was on a field trip with a group of 4th graders. We were on a city bus when a man approached a group of girls and asked to take pictures of the girls. Thankfully I noticed this interaction and stepped in to stop it. All ended well and the girls were fine, but I could not get the situation out of my head. I knew that these girls were trying to be polite to this guy, despite their obvious discomfort, when what they needed to do is say “no”, get away, and get help.

In my mind, a logical way to deal with the experience was to provide the girls with some basic self-defense and safety information to help them better deal with similar situations they may encounter. With the help of my tae kwon do instructor, I put together a 4 week class for these girls at their school.  We focused on prevention, deterrence, and general safety, along with some simple physical techniques. This class was a huge success. The class filled to beyond capacity, plus the girls and their parents wanted more!

This motivated me to start a business teaching safety/self-defense classes to teens and adults. With the results I had at this first class, I didn’t hesitate to pursue additional training and research and continue to move forward with the business idea. My idea for workshops were different than most self-defense classes, as I included a good deal of information/discussion on prevention, education, deterrence and boundary setting, which I hoped would help set me apart and provide a more well-rounded education.

Securing contracts with local community education agencies to put my classes in their catalogs was easy. At the time, I considered this another success. My first community education workshop came and went with mediocre attendance and I  had gotten a few private groups set up. As scheduled classes came and went, with attendance of anywhere between 2 and 6 participants, I realized that this may not be as easy as I thought. I attributed this to being new and people just not knowing about the unique workshops I offered.

As I was losing hope in the Fall of 2014, I had some media exposure that I was certain would change things. I was interviewed for a front page article of the major local newspaper, complete with an online video with the interview and demonstration. This exposure was followed by an television appearance on the local morning show. I was swamped with emails soon after, but only booked two private classes out of all of the publicity.

So, why not take a self-defense workshop? I have several theories, but the following quickly come to mind:

“It will never happen to me”. Bad stuff only happens to other people, right?

“The thought of having to use physical self-defense techniques is scary”. In many of my workshops, several participants have said, “I don’t know if I could do that”. First, just the thought of an attack makes them uncomfortable. Second, and this is particularly true of females, it is difficult to consider causing injury to another person, even in self-defense

“I would be uncomfortable practicing any physical techniques in front of others”. An understandable reason, particularly classes that may involve complex techniques and a high level of physical fitness. Self-defense classes should educate on all of the ways we can prevent violent situations and give the confidence that simply putting up a fight and aiming for vital targets may be enough to escape.

“I don’t have time to attend a self-defense workshop”. People’s lives are packed full, from work, kids, home and activities. Self-defense just isn’t a high priority until there is a perceived threat.

“I live in a very safe neighborhood where crime rates are low”. Living in a small city in the Midwest where people tend to leave their doors unlocked overnight, I hear this on a regular basis. Safety is an illusion. There is always risk, whether it is violent crime, street harassment, rape, domestic violence, or bullying.

For a time, I tried to address some of these theories in an attempt to get more business. I made workshop times and locations convenient. Workshops were marketed as educational, with a focus on prevention, targeted at all levels of fitness. But I always refused to “sell” self-defense workshops by using scare tactics and play on people’s fear.

When the danger of violence seems near or is more visible (i.e. the news, college sexual assaults) is the time when people think of self-defense as a priority. Parents of female high school seniors heading off to college is a great example, in my experience. In July and August, I had parents calling me with fear and a bit of panic in their voices as they wanted to book last minute workshops for their daughters prior to their departure to campus. Prevention doesn’t seem to be on people’s minds otherwise.

The amount of time I have put into my self-defense venture never did pay when you run the numbers, but I had a strong desire to get the information in my workshops out there to those who wanted it. I thoroughly enjoyed the process and interaction and, in many cases, walked away feeling as if I had made a difference in participants’ lives. On the other hand, in classes that only had a small number of non-participatory attendees, they sucked the life out of me, leaving me exhausted, frustrated and continually questioning how badly I really wanted to continue.

This is the second writing of this article. The first was put together prior to deciding to end the business. That first article ended with “I will just keep on teaching, hoping that word of mouth continues to spread”, blah, blah, blah. The first writing made me think long and hard about what I was doing and if I really wanted to continue. A sense of bitterness came through that made me question everything. When I finally made the decision to walk away, a huge weight was lifted and I knew it was the right decision.

Although the business is coming to an end, I have no regrets. The people I met throughout the process were supportive and provided me with resources that have been invaluable, not only for the self-defense workshops, but also for me personally.  My plan is to continue to volunteer on a limited basis, providing information and education on safety and self-defense to larger numbers of people, such as schools and community groups. I still believe self-defense education is essential.

 

Violence is so much bigger than all of us – Darren Norton

Unfortunately, we will never completely understand the human race, as we also never really understand a subject as twisted and complex as what violence is. If, you have not been exposed too much violence throughout life, then your training will be subjective. When talking to most people their belief of violence is mainly based off their own understanding of what they learn in the dojo, see in Sporting events such as Boxing or MMA, or even what they watch in a film.  Sometimes it might come from personal experience’s working in such industries like the Police or the Prison Service or even working in the Security Industry as front line security. But how many people have to deal with or have dealt with violent offenders on a daily basis.

A lot of Instructors teaching Martial Arts nowadays tend to have little or no experience with real world, brutal violence and yet advertise that they teach Self Defence. There are very few who carefully look at what they are actually teaching or indeed what they have been taught. Now, because some people lack real world experience they will tell themselves a story about how they think it is rather than how it actually is in reality. As human beings we assume way too much. Unfortunately in the realm of Martial Arts and I’m in no way putting down Traditional Martial Arts as it is still a great love of mine but SEXY sells and we see this day to day in advertisements.

A lot of practitioners are seldom able to separate reality from the things they see in the films. Now this is a problem if they are teaching other people the same. People often use assumptions, reason, tradition, and recreation as a way of training for violence in the real world. Violence is ultimately about conflict and can come in many forms for instance: a group of people fighting in the local pub. Two Boxers fighting in the ring. A Nurse trying to help an aggressive, emotionally disturbed person in Accident and Emergency. A police officer attempting to handcuff a non compliant offender. A Door Supervisor escorting an intoxicated individual from the premises, someone who is being held up at an ATM at knifepoint. Armed robbers invading a jewellery store. A sexual predator following a young female home from a night out. Bullies who are bullying other children in the playground or even be a violent drunken spouse abusing their partner. 

These are all different situations and all require different psychological, tactical, and physical skills, but they are all in the subject of violence and Self Defence. In fact, the only real experts are the criminals who commit violence onto others on a regular basis without any conscience of what they have done.
The million pound question is how do we train for something that is so hard to define?

Some Martial artists try to do it all. They offer self discovery and enlightenment, physical fitness, street fighting, fighting in the ring, and Self Defence. They try to be all things to all people. They may even throw in military and combat training for good measure to make it more macho. Whilst all these aspects can all be connected in some way, they are not compatible. 

Training in a Martial Art is not necessarily training for Self Defence. Training to fight in the ring or on the mat is not training for Self Defence neither is training for combat unless you walk around with an automatic weapon in tactical gear on the street day to day.

Whilst all of these areas most certainly have practical applications that can be useful in Self Defence training, they are not, in essence, Self Defence training. Yet when someone rings up a martial arts school and asks, “Do you teach Self Defence?” the answer is always yes, Clearly money has become more important than integrity and our moral and social responsibilities. Let’s take a look at the roots of most traditional Martial Arts and how they still train, it has very little to do with dealing with modern day violence and assaults. If we take a traditional Martial Art like ninjitsu and look at its origins we will see its reason for practice was primarily for assassination by stealth! So then I think we can safely say many people are going to question its modern day Self Defence applications.

As I said earlier, I love traditional Martial Arts. I mean that’s how I got started in all this in the first place. I don’t think one style or system is better than another. But I think the problem lies in practitioners being delusional about what it is they are training for. While carrying a ninjato, climbing trees, and disappearing into puffs of smoke might humorously be considered useful strategies to avoid conflict, they probably don’t have practical application for modern day Self Defence.

Many systems often show techniques like this: Attacker assaults defender. Defender does technique (A), the technique is successful and so it finishes. This badly attempts to replicate real world violence. When you think about effective Self Defence training, does waiting for ideal circumstances to perform technique (A) seem like a great strategy?

In a lot of real situations, unless people are assaulted by a surprise attack there is both a pre confrontation and pre fight stage as some call it (The Interview). So why is it that individual’s are not being taught how to deal with the situation earlier in order to avoid the physical assault taking place? Many responsible Self Defence systems teach this before even getting to the physical aspects of Self Defence. It is very foolish to believe that the chance of you ever being attacked under ideal circumstances will happen. Attacks don’t happen in spacious areas with soft matting and good lighting with minimal contact.

Sound, solid training needs to address how to recover from the fear through fear management, pain, and shock of an assault as quickly as possible in order to survive. Stress inoculation through use of emotional invocation must happen in training otherwise we risk sending people out into the real world with false confidence. 

There is a great chance you may be injured and in pain before you’re even aware of the conflict and what is going on around you in a real life situation. You must break free of the shock and surprise in order to beat your own fear and instantly change your mindset from victim to predator. This needs to happen in just a few seconds in order to survive the attack. Understandably, this is no easy feat. But it needs to be trained if people are to be successfully prepared for the reality of a violent encounter.

Self Defence training also needs to address how one can avoid violence and how to avoid not be assaulted in the first place, either through hard luck or plain stupidity. Training needs to be preventative and in order to accomplish this more time must be spent on learning prevention techniques. We should be looking to escape or avoid, de escalate or negotiate; adjust and respond or comply depending on the context. When everything else fails and it has to become physical, then we must train to do so on our terms as much as possible.

The idea of waiting for a person to bring violence to you before you execute your technique isn’t a great strategy. We really need to outwit, not just outfight. Non reality based training sets you up to become a victim rather than learning to take the upper hand with initiative. There needs to be a change in mindset from one of reluctant victim to wary predator in order to shift the odds of surviving violence in your favour.

Training beginners – Wim Demeere

I am often contacted by clients who want to learn self-defense , but have no prior training or experience. They are total beginners, blanks slates. The question for me as an instructor is then: what is the best way to teach them? Throughout the years, I’ve developed my personal approach to answer that question and it has resulted in a basic self-defense system. It isn’t anything new, nor is it revolutionary, but it seems to work well enough, which is why I want to share a part of it with you here.
First some background.

There are many different aspects to self-defense training and there are probably just as many different ways to teach this subject. As a result, it can be difficult to get started on imparting students the skills they need to survive a violent encounter. One approach to do so is to look at common denominators: which aspects keep coming back in a majority of situations a student might encounter? Once you establish those, you have a place to start. Each individual person has his own specific context to take adapt your training to, but working from those common denominators allows you to cover a lot of ground quickly.

One of those common denominators is the timing of the attack in relation to the individual’s awareness of it. I work from three basic scenarios:

– Ambush. You only know you are under attack when the first blow lands. There is no advance warning or awareness of danger.

– He goes first. Your attacker throws the first punch, not you. You have some advance warning though, anything form a few seconds up to a few minutes if it takes the guy that long to work himself up to taking a swing. You are aware of the danger, but for whatever reason you don’t act first and he does.

– You go first. You spot the danger, try to de-escalate and escape, but this fails. You decide to use a pre-emptive strike.

Regardless of the context, these three scenarios seem to come up more often than not. Take some time watching Youtube videos of street violence in all its forms and you will recognize them easily.

Now that we know where to begin we have some choices to make: which techniques do you teach a beginner? I favor versatile techniques and constructive laziness: each technique must serve multiple functions so the student doesn’t need to learn many of them. This helps speed up both the ingraining process and the skill development. I teach a binary system that offers a hard and a soft response: techniques that disable (elbows, knee strikes, some other close-quarters techniques) and techniques that control (head and spine manipulations along with a basic elbow lock.)

The next step is deciding where to start. I choose to begin with the ambush situation because it is often what students fear the most.

Ambush

When an aggressor lands his first attack, you are already behind the curve and things are unlikely to improve for you as time goes by. Your first goal is then to avoid taking additional damage and hold on to whatever capabilities you have left. To that end, I teach a modified flinch guard that covers both the head and vital organs. From there, the student learns to open up with a sweeping arm technique to help orient him on the attacker and then follow through aggressively with elbows and knee strikes. The counter-attack needs to be fast and brutal.

This rarely looks pretty, even in training, but that doesn’t matter. The goal is to fight through the pain and disorientation and turn the tables on the attacker before he can take you out. At that point, you have nothing to lose as you are already taking damage, so this becomes a full-on counter-assault.

Most students struggle with this at first, so I build up the intensity gradually depending on their tolerance to adrenal stress. Once they have some training, the difficulty levels go up and we incorporate drills and scenario training to mimic real-life situations. I have found that this helps give them the confidence to handle the next two scenarios.  

He goes first

In an encounter where an attacker uses a form of interview or other set-up, the student has some time to assess the situation. In a perfect world, he would de-escalate and leave but that doesn’t always work out. Neither is it always possible to get the first shot in, so it helps to have experience handling things when your attacker throws the first punch.

I teach students to cover up with the modified flinch guard or use the sweeping motion to block what comes at them. They learned both techniques already and have ingrained them thoroughly by that point, so it isn’t too difficult for them to use them in a slightly different context. Their feedback is often that it is easier to handle an incoming attack because they already went through the stress of surprise attacks and scenario training in which I ambush them. As a result, they are both less intimidated by that attack and defend better against it. Flowing into the counter-attack is old hat as well by then and they typically do so with enthusiasm.

You goes first

Tactically speaking, it is often better to strike first when you know that violence is inevitable. However, simply knowing this doesn’t mean you can do it effectively. If you haven’t done it before, it can be mentally and emotionally challenging to “push the button” and launch that first strike, because this time, you are the one starting the dance. Remember that we are talking about students with no experience with violence; they often have reservations about using it.

My approach is to use the sweeping arm motion again and adapt it slightly to attack the eyes and other vulnerable targets with it. Once again, the student has already practiced this movement so much, it isn’t difficult for him to use it in this way. The same goes for the potential follow-up techniques.

This covers only a part of the technical aspects of what I teach them, but the other parts are beyond the scope of this article. My goal was to offer a framework you might find useful for your own training. As I wrote in the beginning, this isn’t the best method out there, nor is it cutting-edge stuff, but it works and is a good way to start the training. I’ve experimented with and fine-tuned this system for the last twenty years and found that the combination of versatile movement and the methodology of teaching the three basic scenarios in this specific order yields results quickly and ingrains lasting skills with beginner students. I hope you can apply some of this information in your own training.

Social Conditioning: Women & Violence, Part II – Tammy Yard-McCracken, Pys.D.

Rabbit Trail

I suspect there is an intellectual drift in our thinking as professionals in the world of violence. Whether it is as force professionals, martial art instructors, self-defense instructors, or etc., human nature is to normalize what we learn from experience and training. Once normalized, there is an unconscious judgment that wants to wiggle into our thinking. If we know it, then it must be common knowledge.

Really? Why? Remember how it is that you do, in fact, know better.

The social rules, the subconscious expectations many women follow unconsciously every day, have some obvious and significant implications when women face a violent encounter. These same rules will show up on the mat and on the range if she decides to train for personal protection. (How and what that looks like is better left to a different dialogue.)

These five case examples can be easily used to highlight how social rules set her up as a perfect target. If we stop there, the implication is pretty damning. Up side? There are a couple of hidden superpowers tucked inside what looks like a perpetual-victim default.

Here’s one, and it comes with a hell of a lot of gravitas. Once she slips the leash, she is all in.

I have a theory on this.

She grows up on social rules that can make her a pretty good mark. The flip side? She does NOT grow up with the social rules defining how a fight is supposed to go. She doesn’t spend her days wrestling and playing King of the Hill. She doesn’t get socialized on the football field and she doesn’t learn what a tap-out means on the wrestling mat. She is chided severely if she attempts to solve conflict the way 10 year old boys do by throwing a couple of wild punches and rolling on the ground. She doesn’t play with green army men who blow each other up with mud bombs.

If she does, it may be because she grew up in a neighborhood like mine where most of the kids my age were boys. If I wanted to play, I had to play the games that were running. Even here, she will hear comments about ‘letting the girl play’ and it will be the exception, not the rule.

She does not know the rules to male conflict and violence because she doesn’t grow up playing the games teaching the rules. If she played those games, she will understand it was by special permission and it really isn’t her game. She is only a guest. Consequence? She won’t generalize the rules of war to her own belief system.

These rules are not built in to her internal infrastructure. When she goes physical – she is in uncharted territory and she will do whatever has even the slightest chance of keeping her alive– there are no rules to follow because she was not socialized to the rules. There is a better than average chance her Threat expects her to follow the social rules of being female: acquiesce, be polite, hesitate, ask for permission. There is an equally decent chance the Threat does not expect to encounter a rabid chipmunk, or as one of my students recently said “an unleashed crazy-bitch”.

If she is armed? Like the first two case studies, she is far more likely to fire until the magazine is empty than she is to get off a couple of rounds and stop to see if she hit her target.

Unarmed? If there isn’t anyone nearby to pull her off, she may blow right by the boundary of when a “reasonable” person would disengage. Particularly if her children have been threatened. She will risk her own life without a moment’s hesitation to save her tiny humans.

Earlier, I mentioned a correlation between adrenaline rates and gender. We need to revisit it again. Rory Miller posits a theory for the gender-based adrenalizination delay; it resonates (R. Miller, personal communication, 2015). If his hypothesis bears any credence, combining the two theories has a doubly deleterious impact on women when a physical solution becomes necessary.

Here’s my summary of Rory’s theory on why women experience the adrenaline delay. When we were hunter-gatherer tribes the able-bodied men would be gone for weeks at a time following herds for enough kill to feed the tribe into the future. Left behind are the aged men, the children, and the women. Turn this into the able-bodied men leaving the village for war, in both circumstances if a Threat gets to the tribe, the women are the last line of defense.

It is on her to ensure the next generation lives to a reproductive age. Knowing this, she will go physical with an unfettered, vicious ferocity.

One theory is rooted social psychology; the other is rooted in evolutionary need. In both, once she goes physical she is all in.

I have seen a full sized dog high-tale it in the opposite direction when attacked by a 10-pound cat that thought her kittens were in danger.  One good bite and the cat would be done, but the dog was uninterested in the risk it would cost to try. Superpower number one in action.

Superpower number two. She is smart. Not that men aren’t, this is not a comparative dynamic so if you are itching to argue – take a breath. The center of the brain that processes fine details and retains them with attachment to meaning has more neuronal connections than the average male brain (Brizendine, 2006). A Cornell study (Wong, 2013) is a little less definitive as to the why women have this capacity but the science in the Cornell study may be a tad more sound than Brizendine’s suppositions.

Wong and Brizendine agree with an important bottom line: women attend to, retain, and recall details at a remarkable level of accuracy. As a natural process, this ability is far more dominate in women than in men.

A possible explanation for this reality ties into Rory’s suggestion about evolutionary need. Village and tribal life puts her on her own for long periods of time with others to provide for, to feed and nurture. Considering sociological anthropology as a perspective, there are probably a few men in the group and hances are, they are elderly or otherwise unable to physically endure the rigors of a hunt. If they couldn’t hunt, they are not going to be much help to her if violence shows up on the village’s metaphoric doorstep.

If she’s trekking out to the berry patch she may have tiny humans in tow and one strapped to her back. Running and fighting in the event of a stalking predator (animal or human) is automatically compromised by her circumstances. Her chances of survival, and the survival of her offspring goes way up if she notices the tiny nuances of the well-worn path that are different than they were on her last pass. A new print in the dirt, blades of grass bent the wrong direction, absence of prey animals, birds fall quiet or take to wing behind her…a soft sound that wasn’t in her hearing a moment ago…

For this information to matter she must have three things available. She must have a context for what the information means (prior learning), she must notice the fine details, and she must do the math (match memory to the context).

Dial this forward to lifestyles that are more common to us in 2015, how many of you can relate to this?

Him: What? You never told me your mother was coming in this weekend! It’s your mother (or whatever the situation is), I guarantee if you had told me that I would have remembered.

Her: Really? Seriously? How can you NOT remember this conversation! You were standing with your hand on the fridge door looking for something to eat in that blue shirt I bought you for your birthday two years ago. You looked at me and rolled your eyes and then you said ______________. Then you shrugged your shoulders and went out to the garage to work on the lawn mower.

Him: Silence – thinking…what the hell? What blue shirt?

Or, try this one.

Him: Hey, do you know where the charger to my old mp3 player is?

Her: When did you last have it?

Him: I don’t know, I can’t remember. You know, the old one.

Her: Silence, thinking. Look in the drawer in the hallway or on the shelves in the corner of the your closet. If it’s not there, it’s probably in your…..

And she is usually right, isn’t she?

She remembers the details, stores them and assigns meaning to them. She does this with people and behavior too. If you have read DeBecker’s work, or you work in an industry like mine where you get to hear story after story of victim events, you know this:

Her intuition told her something was wrong.

This intuition is not magical. It is biological. It is this powerful capacity to manage details, remember them and use them instantaneously, unconsciously. She cannot always articulate how or why she knows what she knows, but she knows. This makes her capable of a marked degree of tactical intelligence.

And the question that wants to be asked next is this: if she is naturally, tactically intelligent, why doesn’t she use it? Why did she get raped, stalked, why did she ask permission to fire?

Both superpowers can get tangled in the sticky web of social conditioning; sometimes to the degree she may not be able to access them at all. This doesn’t mean her superpowers disappeared. Slowly, over a lifetime of experiences, they have been lulled into a deep sleep.

That’s the good news. If those superpowers are still there and they are only sleeping, we can wake them up again.

The Dangers of the Killer Instinct, Part II – Rodney King

The Misunderstanding Of Applied Martial Technique

If you agree with my line of enquiry, then the question is why is this hyped-up aggressive approach to dealing with interpersonal violence so widely taught, and not just that, often as the primary go to strategy?

Most reality based self defence instructors often start teaching from the moment of the attack itself. Little or not time as I have seen is spent on anything other than dealing with the actual attack. Most everything else is cursory at best. Of course there are times when attacks happen without warning, but I would argue, and based on the students mostly being taught (i.e., civilians) there is a strong likelihood that what they will more than likely encounter in their lifetime (probably more than on one occasion) is someone bumping into them in a bar. As noted earlier in that situation, awareness, verbal jiu-jitsu skills, and a sensible, mature attitude are far more practical self preservation skills for the average Joe to have, than how to eye gouge someone.

Secondly, many reality based self defence instructors have never actually been in interpersonal violence themselves. This sets up an unrealistic mental framework of the reality of violence, which is, as I have been notting not something anyone who really cares deeply about their safety would want to be engaged in. However avoidance, verbal jiu jitsu etc, seems never to be adequately if at all taught in reality based self defence systems. For all the practicality expowsed by these reality based experts, much of what they teach isn’t reality at all. How could it be, they have no real experience themselves to begin with. If they did, they wouldn’t then glorify the violence as they do. It also wouldn’t be their default strategy to use violence to solve violence.

Thirdly, when these reality based instructors do train under someone who has real world experience in interpersonal violence they often choose ex-military personnel, preferably someone from a special force unit (it just looks cooler on a resume too). I am the first to admit, that someone who has gone to war and survived has a lot to teach the average person about managing fear, explaining the reality of real violence, and the psychological dynamics that underpin it. However fighting on a battlefield is not the same as defending oneself on civvy street. The mandate for a soldier (relevant to their role of course), and the level of violence that a solider is allowed to apply, not to mention the context — is very different to that of a civilian. Civilians not only have to protect themselves, but they also have to seriously consider the legal ramifications of the force they use.

Finally and my greatest concern, which harks back to the notion of a killer instinctive mindset to deal with interpersonal violence. Using my favourite resource on the topic of reality based self defence training YouTube — clip after clip one watches an attacker who attacks, a defender who defends, who then goes on to obliterate the attacker with a barrage of fast, dynamic, aggressive striking. While the attacker stops hitting after the first blow, proceeds to cower, folds under the pressure and then falls to the floor. Anyone else see a glaring problem with this?

There is an unconscious assumption in these demonstrations that the person you are fighting doesn’t know how to fight. I don’t know about you, but seldom did I find working as the head doorman outside some of Johannesburg’s roughest nightclubs for several years, where a person would only strike me once then allow me to do what ever I liked to him. People actually fight back. What is equally not taught is what happens when your super fast, vicious, merciless, counter offence doesn’t work?

Lets say you teach a person to preempt a potential violent encounter with another person, or lets say you teach to aggressively, and mercilessly mount a barrage of counter offensive moves when a punch is thrown at a person (all of course with the killer instinct that is required). But lets just say reality steps in, as it always does, and the permeative strike, or that barrage of vicious counter offence doesn’t work? Lets say the other person now not only fights back, but fights back even harder because they now want to survive at all costs (imagine that?) Now all of a sudden, not only didn’t the physical technique work, but neither did that bezerker killer instinct.

Now what?

The defender may now find himself going from winning to losing. He may have started off pumped up, and hyped up on aggression, but now finds himself in a situation with all his physical resources depleted. Added to this his confidence has now taken a major battering, which may result at worst that he freezes or turns his back on the threat. When killer instinct doesn’t work, there is only one way to go, and that’s down into a negative spiral that most people who are not used to surviving violence will likely never recover from.

The Body Is Already Primed To Survive

The reality is, when faced with any kind of danger (real or unreal) the body is already primed for danger. For a long time the general consensus when talking about fear was that it was activated through a cognitive appraisal of a threat, which then invoked a fear response. That feeling of fear then drives the expression of behavioural defence responses. In other words we run from a bear because we see it, recognise it as a bear, and are afraid of it. More and more though, researches like Joseph Le Doux have argued that the amygdala circuit detects threats non-consciously, and in turn controls the subsequent behavioural and psychological aspects of the fear response. It is the cognitive systems secondary role to interpret the feeling of fear.

What does this mean? It means, that for the most part the body primes itself for a potential threat in absence of conscious awareness and control. It is in other words automatic. The ingredients for survival then are automatically set into play the second a threat is detected (often as noted unconsciously). Using an approach then that seeks to heighten that survival response though cognitively arousing the mental state and bodily attitude even further by getting a person into a more killer instinct frame of mind — at least from my experience — interferes with the bodies natural ability to attend to a fearful situation as it has been designed too.

Not to state the obvious, but our ancestors adequately survived much harsher survival situations than we would likely encounter as civilians today, and they did this before a martial art school ever existed. More over, the overlaying of more cognitive demands on the system, can have unintended consequences, often negative as I have outlined in this article.

This is why, I teach my clients to be completely trusting in their training, done through progressive stress inoculation, to the point that as best as we can, everything has been given over to unconscious motor skills, which then allow for space within the mind to decide how one would want to attend to the situation one finds himself in (i.e using the prefrontal cortex, instead of being ruled by the reptilian brain). In this respect, my approach is to teach my clients how to stay calm, centred and mindful in a survival situation, not to make them more hyped up. The body is already primed unconsciously to deal with the threat, you don’t need to now either hype it up more, or force it to work for you. All you need to do is apply a grounded strategy and subsequent tactical system to neutralise the threat you face. As the saying goes a clear mind, is a determined and focused mind.

The Samurai, born and breed for battle knew this all to well. Togo Shigekata, a Samurai, proclaimed: “One finds life through conquering the fear of death within one’s mind. Empty the mind of all forms of attachment, make a go-for-broke charge and conquer the opponent with one decisive slash.” In other words, true performance in a life and death battle requires a mind that is clear, focused, expansive and aware — not one clouded by aggression!

About the Author
Rodney King M.A., RSME is the creator of Crazy Monkey Defense, and its sister self-preservation program Combat Intelligent Athlete. He has taught army special forces and law enforcement teams how to survive a life and death encounter when all they have is their body to defend themselves with. You can find out more about Rodney and his work at www.coachrodneyking.com or www.crazymonkeydefense.com

The Confusion Between Conflict Resolution & De-escalation, Part II – Gershon Ben Keren

In last month’s article, I looked at the times when deescalating aggressive situations is an appropriate solution i.e. when the aggressor you are facing is involved in a “spontaneous” act of violence – one that they haven’t planned or orchestrated; but have become aggressive and potentially violent due to your actions or behaviors, whether real or perceived e.g. you have, or they believe you have, spilt a drink over them, jumped ahead of them in a queue, taken a parking space they were waiting for, etc. This is contrary to premeditated assaults, such as muggings and sexual assaults, where an aggressor has planned the incident and knows what they want to achieve/get out of it – they have a defined goal. Because in spontaneous situations there is no defined goal or specified outcome (the person you have spilt a drink over doesn’t know what will make the situation right for them), you may have the chance and opportunity to get them to consider non-violent alternatives that might resolve the conflict/dispute. However in order to do this, you must first take some of the emotion out of the situation so that they are able to consider these alternatives – this is the purpose of the de-escalation process.

To understand how this process works, we must first gain an appreciation for the way that people think, and interpret your actions and behaviors when emotive and aggressive. As you are reading this article, you are using your brain’s reasoning capacity, however if you were to become angry, this would start to shut off and you would start to process information using your limbic system brain. Your limbic system brain doesn’t understand reason and rationale, it is used to understanding disputes and conflicts at the social level, as a dog or a wolf would. Dogs and wolves are social creatures (bereft of reason) who resolve disputes through posture and submission e.g. one growls, snarls and makes themselves look big, whilst the other roles over and exposes it’s neck in a display of submission (conflict resolved).

When a person becomes emotional and aggressive, they start using brain functions and paths which are more animalistic – dog-like. They stop using their reasoning brain to process information, and start to see conflicts in a more dog-like way, with the person they are dealing with either posturing to them, or acting submissively. If you have ever told an angry person to calm down, you have probably been met with the response, “I AM CALM!” Instead of interpreting what you said in the spirit it was meant, they can only see and hear things from the perspective of them being either an act of posturing or submission; when you tell somebody to calm down, stop shouting etc., you are telling them what to do, and so they posture back to you – this escalates rather than de-escalates the conflict.

If they are extremely emotional, they may be using their reptilian brain, rather than their limbic system/mammalian brain. Their reptilian brain will interpret everything as being either fight or flight – reptiles are not social creatures in the way that dogs are and so their interpretations of threats, conflicts and disputes are much more basic; they either disengage or they attack (they can give warning signs, but these are different to acts of posturing, as only disengagement – flight – rather than acting submissively will avert and attack).
The goal of any de-escalation process should be to get an individual to stop working with their limbic system or reptilian brain(s), and start to use their reasoning brain again. If you can get an aggressor to start using and applying reason and rationale to a situation, rather than emotion, they will be able to consider alternatives to violence.

One way to get an aggressive individual to start using their rational/reasoning brain, is to recognize and inform them of their emotional state. Saying something like, “You seem really angry”, can be one way of doing this. Feelings and emotions, are not the same thing. Our emotional state is the physical state we are in, such as being adrenalized, our feelings are the conscious interpretation of that state, such as feeling angry or scared, etc. When we are highly emotional, and our reasoning brain shuts off, we are not able to “feel” our emotional state, we are just in it. By pointing out how an aggressor is “feeling”, such as being angry, will often cause them to register their emotional state; something that they have to use their reasoning brain for. A common response to this statement is, “Of course I’m angry, you spilt a drink over me!” This is a good starting point, as the emotional individual is now starting to process what has happened to them, and the reasoning brain has been engaged, even if it is not in full control of that person’s actions and behaviors.

To keep the person processing the situation from a rational perspective, you can follow up with the question, “what can I do to sort this out?” This question forces an aggressor to start using their reasoning brain to consider different alternatives, which would potentially satisfy them in the situation. The emotional limbic and reptilian brains, are unable to weigh up the pros and cons of different outcomes, and so have to hand over this decision making process to the reasoning brain. It may be that the individual responds that you can buy them another drink and pay for their dry cleaning. The fact that it is the aggressor who has determined the solution to the situation is important, as it allows them to posture in a controlled and directed manner, which means by accepting their solution, you are acting in the submissive role – in the animal kingdom – or when people are processing information – this submissive response will end the conflict.

If you were to make the suggestion that you should buy this individual another drink and pay for their dry-cleaning, it is likely that your idea would have been interpreted as you posturing to them, i.e. telling them how the conflict will be resolved – you setting the terms. There may of course be individuals who make preposterous and ridiculous demands e.g. you can buy drinks for them and their friends for the rest of the night, etc. In such cases, you can still keep the person engaging with their reasoning mind by saying something along the lines of, “I’m sorry but I’m not able to do that, can you think of anything else that might resolve this situation?” As long as they can keep on track, coming up with alternatives, their reasoning brain is engaged.

In some cases, usually when a person is working with their reptilian brain, they may be so emotional that de-escalation isn’t an option. The clearest signal that somebody is about to assault you, in a spontaneous act of violence, is when they lose verbal control and reasoning. When a person meets your statements or questions with silence, garbles and jumbles their words (“you drink my spilt!”) and/or simply keeps repeating the injustice over and over again, faster and faster e.g. “you spilt my drink!”, “You Spilt My Drink!”, “YOU SPILT MY DRINK!” these are clear warning signs that they are unable to understand or process what you are saying and they are in fight or flight mode; more likely fight. This is the time when you need to ditch your de-escalation process and prepare to respond physically either by creating distance for yourself, or by attacking pre-emptively; the time for talking is over. I have heard many people in the security and self-defense industry talk about other warning signs, such as changes in a person’s complexion, etc., and whilst these do occur, they can be hard to notice and identify, especially if lighting is low-level, such as a in a nightclub or bar, or if the person has been consuming alcohol. Checking a person’s ability to reason verbally is a much better indication of their emotional state.
Whenever you attempt to de-escalate a situation, you should do so in a non-threatening stance, with your hands out in a placating fashion, so that your body language and posture reflects what you are saying (see photo). With your hands out in front of you, in the international language for both “stop”, and “I don’t want any trouble”, you will be both confirming your desire to de-escalate and resolve the conflict as well as putting yourself in a good position to both defend yourself and attack pre-emptively; in any crisis negotiation you should be prepared to respond physically if necessary, even if this isn’t your primary goal.

A Conversation With Violence – Andrew Holland

My personal experience of self defence has come from my work as a UK Police Officer. and today I will give you a huge tip from my experience.

So what did 17 years as a cop in the UK teach me? What insight did all those years of going hands on with people provide me? The answer is simple, words matter as much, if not more, than the physical.

In this article, I will be looking at the art of speaking in conflict situations.

I was at the Presidents Cup International Russian Sambo tournament a few weeks ago, and I bumped into Tony Preston. Tony is a Krav Maga expert, grappler and instructor under Geoff  Thompson, both contributors to this magazine too. However, he also worked on the doors. Needless to say, he knows his stuff. So while watching some great action, we got talking about self-defence and Tony was discussing how he has avoided more conflict than he has been in and he used his verbal skills to get out of violent situations.

I couldn’t agree more with Tony, and this is the mark of a true expert. I never worry about the man who brags that he has 300 fights. Usually, this is so often made up. I worry about the man who says “I’ve avoided more than I have been in”, this for me is the mark of a true expert.

As a young police officer, I was fascinated with violence, almost all police work involves violent crime. From threats to assaults, violence is the common theme that runs throughout it all. Just as Tony stated, I too have found that it was my mouth that became my greatest asset and not my physical prowess.

The use of verbal skills has been essential for me in me returning home after every shift for 17 years. It was something that wasn’t taught; you picked up on it through experience. I recall in my early years on the job arriving at fights and very often being given small tasks by vastly more experienced officers. Looking back I was just learning my trade and I got to see masters at work. These older cops rarely went hands on because they controlled situations with their voice, their stature and body language. They were experts in the art of non-verbal communication, and these officers had no intention of letting an 18-year-old testosterone fuelled rookie cause them to fight and possibly injure themselves.

Over the years, I became the experienced officer and those with me were often rookies themselves and guess what, I gave them the simple tasks such as getting witness details. The main reason for this is simple; I wanted to be in charge of what was going on if I was going to have to fight it would be on my terms!

When I  sat down and broke this subject and skill base down, I called it my Verbal Control System or VCS. The VCS allowed me to control every situation, and if I were going to go hands on I would have every tactical advantage possible.

The first step on the VCS is realising that the  80/20 rule applies to conflict too.

80% of people don’t want to fight,  and the 20% that do have probably lost 80% of the encounters they have had. This is another reason they are so keen to fight; they are stuck in the perpetual ‘need to prove themselves zone’. You can almost be certain that men being arrested at domestic incidents would fight, push their chests out or be rude as they want to prove something to their partner who was usually beaten up in the corner.

Once you are pre-armed with the knowledge that most potential aggressors don’t want to fight, then, you can use this to your advantage and start giving people ways out of the situation. The managed exit as I like to call it is a way that you construct a pathway for the individual to exit safely. An example could be a drunk guy in the pub that bumps into  you and spills his drink. He starts to get angry, as such you could say:”Sorry about that, let’s get you another drink.” Yes, spending £3.50 possible stopped you from having to knock this guy out and end up at the police station all night and day. Money well spent.

My favourite exit was always when I had to put the handcuffs on someone and they were saying “You aren’t putting them on me, I’ll  kick off”. For these situations, I used to say “Those cuffs are to protect us from you, you are clearly a handy lad, I want to go home in one piece so I have to put them on.” This appeals to their ego and worked like a charm for years. I learned that from a very experienced officer, and I am guessing he learned it the same way.

Other exit strategies are simple as well, in a robbery just give them your wallet or anything else they ask for (assuming it is just money, etc.). Your verbal skills are simple here “yes I’ll give you the money.” Not rocket science. Once you stop thinking about self-defence as a physical thing and more of a chess match, then you can take your ego out of the occasion.

For me, I  used to think about victory in terms of injuries. Having no injuries when I got home was a clear victory because that was what so many people wanted to do to me, cause me harm. My advice is simple, practise your  verbal skills often and learn how to give the opponent every chance to avoid the situation

Andrew is a former police officer in the UK, Judo black belt and boxer. He also runs  www.theselfdefenceexpert.com

End Violence Against Everyone – Erin Pizzey

Our family were captured by the Japanese in Shanghai in 1942 so I was born into international conflict and my parents were in conflict with each other.

I was a very violent and disturbed child but when I was nine years old my parents (my father was a diplomat), were posted to Tien Sien (now called Tianjin) and were arrested by the Communists for three years.  For all that time I was in the care of Miss Williams who ran a holiday home and became my mentor.  She took care of some 40 children whose parents were abroad and came from boarding schools across England.

Miss William was a colossus, she was six foot seven and probably weighed around eighteen stone.  She drove ambulances during the war and was a golf champion as well as being a magistrate in the local town.  She ran St. Mary’s, our holiday home, as a benevolent dictator.  My usual violent and disruptive behaviour was met with a calm indifference and a gentle request, would I join the women serving in the kitchen where I would help with peeling to potatoes, or another quiet request that I help them wash up after forty children had eaten.  I very quickly realised that my strategies for survival had to change and gradually I came to trust this woman and to want to please her.

When I was faced by our little community centre changing almost overnight, by a badly bruised woman asking for help, I had no experience at all of how we could be of any use except to take her in. Then as if a tsunami was suddenly loosed overnight a wave of women came to the door bringing their children.  Of the first hundred women coming through the door sixty two were as violent as or more violent than the partners they left. Most of the women volunteering in the little house left unable to deal with the behaviour of some of the women and also because we were breaking the law as we had no permission to house people.  My initial mothers along with myself very quickly created a simulation of a rumbustious family and we cared deeply for and about each other and our children.

Initially social workers often turned up on our doorstep with a mother and children in tow and said loudly ‘I have had enough this is the third time I have tried to rescue this woman and she keeps going back. ‘All that was available in 1971 and very rarely offered was a room in a homeless family hostel.  I knew the terror of knowing that my violent mother  might  be outside my bedroom door bent on revenging some slight she perceived and I watched as the mothers bedded down for the night with their children.  They slept with their backs against the walls and their heads on their knees if there was no room on the mattresses laid on the floor.  For almost all of them they said it was the best sleep they had for years.  They felt safe and secure surrounded by other women.  They washed in the basin in the kitchen and used the outdoor lavatory.  Bathing the children took place in a tin tub on the floor or in the tiny patio if the weather was warm.  We were all busy all day long and the mothers went in pairs to get there welfare benefits, attended appointments with their solicitors and doctors or dentists.  

We collected food left over at night from Marks & Spencer and we were given vegetables from the local green grocer and fish from the fishmongers.  Very soon united in our absolute conviction that refuges must be provided for all victims, we fought a running battle with the local council who soon took out warrants for my arrest for overcrowding.  There was no attempt at any time to put out a helping hand to mothers and children many of whom had lived in conflict as I had and need time and a therapeutic approach to help them learn other patterns of survival.

I used the same techniques as Miss William did in her care of the children in her holiday home. I knew from my own experiences that violent family life is lived in emotional and sometimes physical chaos.  I knew very quickly that children born into intergenerational family violence were likely to adopt violence as their strategy to survive.  There were other strategies for survival and one of them was to implode the anger and damage themselves.  

From my growing experiences I created what I called therapeutic chaos.  I believed that women and their children coming from violent families brought their internal chaotic life styles with them and what I needed to do (with a rapidly growing volunteer force of men and women) was to create an equally chaotic loving busy family. One where relationships were no longer a matter of survival but of learning to trust and finally to change the internal chaos into a peaceful acceptance of a world that was now safe. One of the biggest lessons was to teach violent people, who all their lives, automatically escalated from pain to rage how to learn to express sorrow and ask for comfort where comfort had always been denied.

My therapeutic community grew rapidly and I realised that for many of my families years of violence and abuse meant that they need years not months to heal.  We started our second stage communities where some five mothers and children chose to live for several years until they were rehoused.  The work we needed to do was to help all victims (I was aware that men were equally assaulted as women) to transcend their generational violence.  

I was deeply disturbed and still am that when children born into violent families grow up, through no fault of their own, to be abused children and then because they exhibit their wounds as anti-social children and later adults society turns on them banning them from schools, warehousing them in prisons and mental hospitals.  Alas my vision of the purpose of refuges fell afoul of prevailing feminist ideologies and my therapeutic communities were closed down. I have been silenced for many years but I feel some glimmering of hope that more and more agencies are beginning to see the failure of our punitive Western societies and I hope that we learn that we all have to ‘love the unlovable’ because how can you be expected to be a healthy happy member of society if you have never been loved or accepted?

www.whiteribbon.org is my web site and I have complete control of it.   Because so much research into domestic violence is fraudulent for purposes of raising money my web site is a safe place for everyone to learn the truth and see properly evidence based research that they can trust.