Guest Article – Page 19 – Conflict Manager

Training for life – Dave Aiton

Throughout all of my years in training, whether in martial arts, reality based conflict training or throughout my time in the military I’ve experienced a wide range of various types of instruction, some good, some bad and a few excellent but all in some way or another have given me something that has lasted…. the ability to determine what works and what doesn’t.

After watching and learning hundreds or even thousands of different techniques as well as a multitude of combinations and variations I have become aware that keeping things simple enhances the chance of a successful outcome. This has been a principal I have applied throughout every aspect of my military career.
When I first started training (before I joined the Army) I would more often than not defer to what my instructors taught me without question. I had the general impression that given their experience and subject matter knowledge they met all of the prerequisite criteria to teach, even in the subject of self defence.

Sadly and much to my misfortune I discovered that although my instructors at the time taught skills for competition that encouraged a sports mentality they did not take the time to teach how to adapt sport techniques into skills that can be used on the street. That discovery came many moons ago when I was walking back home after a night out in Glasgow. I found myself on the receiving end of a serious assault by three guys which left me with 3 broken ribs, a broken nose, black eyes and a concussion which left me hospitalised for a couple of days.

The problem I had during the assault was the sudden realisation that for all of the training I had under my belt it did not prepare me for the reality of the violence that I was on the receiving end of. I couldn’t react to what was happening and none of my training at that time gave me the skills I needed to deal with real violence. Everything I had learnt in the Dojo failed me when I needed it most.

After my recovery I returned to training more determined than I had ever been in my life to make sure that what happened to me would never be repeated. I began to look further into the techniques that my instructors taught as self defence applications and realised that the experience I previously presumed they had was based purely on practice against compliant training partners and had absolutely no bearing on the reality of a violent assault.

My instructors at that time failed to understand that in real-life violent confrontation, defending ourselves is not a sport. There are no rules, no referee’s, no rounds and no bells. An attacker doesn’t think or act like your training partner or a competitor.

This Dojo mindset had no real concept of the fact that an attacker wants to cause you serious hurt or even kill you. The training I received did not provide any education on the combat indications that help to raise awareness during pre confrontation or any tactical options that help us to focus more during conflict. The wider picture just wasn’t understood by many martial arts instructors at the time and as a consequence more attention was paid towards obtaining status and grading rather than the importance of student self-preservation.

In the years that followed that unfortunate evening I have taken the opportunity to train with many excellent reality based self defence instructors within the civilian sector and a great many Military instructors with shared experiences during my 29 years of service with HMF Army.

The resounding principles that I have adopted as a result of my experience as a student and soldier is that in order to give ourselves a fighting chance of surviving an attack we need to cultivate a pre-emptive sense of situational awareness and a tactical mindset to prepare for that worst case scenario. It doesn’t matter, how we are built, or how experienced in martial arts we are. Physical strength or acrobatic skills, age, gender or condition are not deciding factors.

The outcome of my years of training has led to the development of Effective Self Protection training (ESP) which originates and has evolved from various self defence systems used by Military and Police Forces in the UK and throughout the rest of the world. ESP was developed to provide both an education and physical skills that were until recently only taught to Military and Police organisations.
Its effectiveness lies in its simplicity of use and its common sense application. It involves education and training in the psychological factors of confrontation, physical awareness and the appropriate reaction techniques that can be employed in times of necessity. Through continued training in ESP students grow and attain awareness and an understanding of the information that enhances their ability to deal with violent confrontation and greatly improves the chances of surviving dangerous and potentially life threatening situations.

The application of ESP provides the necessary skills to recognise the early signs of confrontation and the mental and physical skills required to respond and react to violent and aggressive behaviour whilst developing situational awareness, assertive confidence and common sense techniques. ESP creates a tactical mindset that promotes an individual’s confidence and ability in confrontational situations.

ESP is broken down into five components:

1. The Legislation of Common and Statute Law and the use of force.
2. Situational and threat awareness.
3. Conflict Resolution and response options.
4. Tactical Communications.
5. Technique Training.

Training is a straight forward process that is easy to learn and effective in both its content and practice. Through common sense application ESP is an easy way to learn and develop threat awareness and the response options necessary to resolve or conclude confrontational situations in any environment.

The ability to defend ourselves in real violence is not found within a Dojo. The benefits of martial arts training should never be confused with the expectation that they will help you survive real violence.

Keep in mind that getting home safe to your family and becoming tomorrows newspaper headline comes down to how well prepared you are to protect yourself in a confrontational situation. A fight is always between you and an attacker; Self Defence training is neither a sport nor a game. It must be realistic enough to protect your life!

Real Self-Defence – Geoff Thompson

Punch ups, muggings and even fatalities are frighteningly common in a society that is bulging at the waist with unsolicited assaults. Due to astonishing growth-rate of violent crime in Britain, skills in self-defense are almost a pre-requisite if you want to get from the pub to the Indian and home again in one piece.

In an attack situation, options – from avoiding a confrontation with guile right through to swapping some leather – are useful; the choices are varied and subjective but when your adrenaline is racing and your legs are doing an involuntary bossanova the choice (as they say) will be entirely yours.

I’m sure you have already seen – and are tired of – the wristlocks and shoulder throws that garnish just about every article and video on self-defence. They only work in Bruce Lee films and on police self-defence courses so I’ll spare you the embarrassment of a photo-shoot-re-run. If you don’t mind I’ll stick to the stuff that works when the pavement is your arena, and there are no referees with whistles and bells to stop a point scoring match turning into a blood and snot debacle.

My premise is basic but empirical, and at some point it might prove life saving.

Whilst some situations actually start at a physical response (in which case you either fight like a demon or you get battered), most are preceded by some kind of pre-fight ritual and introductory dialogue; even if it is only the uninspiring ‘are you looking at my missus?’ The Real art of self-defence is not in bringing the affray to a messy conclusion with a practised right cross, rather it is in spotting the attack ritual in its early stages so that a physical encounter can be avoided.

Hard Target
As a man with a varied and brutal background I can tell you with sincerity and emphasis that violence is not the answer. Reflecting this my opening advice is to avoid violence whenever and where ever possible. Make yourself a hard target by giving volatile environments a wide birth. James Coburn was succinct when he advised us to ‘avoid arseholes and big egos, avoid places where arseholes and big egos hang out’. He could have added ‘don’t be an arsehole and don’t have a big ego yourself’. It helps. The inevitable consequences of toe-to-toe encounters are rarely favourable to either party so around-the-table negotiation should always be exhausted before sending in the troops.

The interview
Pre-fight management is vital if you want to survive an altercation intact; the winner is usually the one who controls the seconds before an affray. Most situations start at conversation range and with some kind of dialogue. If this is mismanaged the situation normally – and quickly – degenerates into a scuffle and then a scrap on the floor amidst chip wrappers and dog-ends. The current crop of defence innovators recommends the floor as the place to be when a fight goes live. In the No-Holds-Barred (NHB) one-on-one sports arena they’d probably be right, but outside the chippy where the terrain is less predictable and the enemy nearly always has allies in tow, taking the fight to the cobbles is suicidal. It leaves you open to (often fatal) secondary attacks, especially if you’re facing more than one opponent.

The fence
If you are approached and the dialogue starts (this is known as the interview), take up a small inconspicuous 45° stance and put up your fence : place your lead hand in that all-important space between you and your antagonist to maintain a safe gap. The fence gives you a degree of control without your aggressor knowing. Placed correctly, your lead hand and reverse hand will block the thoroughfare (without touching) of the attacker’s right and left hand. If he moves forward to butt/kick/punch, be prepared to shove him back and/or attack. Try not to touch the assailant with your fence unless you are forced to, as it can trigger aggression and possibly a physical attack.

If you want to keep your face in place, don’t let a potential attacker touch you at any time, even if he appears to be friendly. An experienced fighter will feign friendliness, even submission, to make an opening for his attack (pic). Another common ploy is for an attacker to offer a handshake and then head-butt/knife you as soon as the grip is taken (pic). If you fall prey to the verbal opener you will quickly become work experience for a student nurse at the ER, so use your fence to maintain a safe gap until the threat has gone.

Fear
Expect to be scared because, no matter how experienced you are, you will be. Fear is the natural precursor to confrontation. I’ve worked with some premier league players and privately they all tell the same story; at the point of contact they’d rather be any where in the world than where they are. So don’t let self-doubt enter the equation if you feel like crapping your Calvin’s because you’re not on your own, we all feel fear even if some of us pretend that we don’t. Shaking legs, trembling voice and feelings of cowardice are all natural by-products of the adrenal release.

Verbal dissuasion
If you find your self facing pro-magnum man and he starts to growl, try and talk the situation down. Again, the battle will be more with your own ego than it will be with your antagonist. Don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t want trouble and beat a hasty retreat. Better to follow the Judo adage and walk away with confidence than to end up in an affray that might change the course of your life for the worst.

Posturing
If talking fails to make the grade (and you think it might work) you could try posturing (pic). I made it work for me as an 11 stone novice doorman so you don’t have to be big to be effective. Posturing entails making like a woolly mammoth in an attempt to psyche out your antagonist. Create a gap between you and your aggressor by shoving him hard on the chest. Once the gap has been secured go crazy; shout, salivate, spread your arms, bulge your eyes and drop into single syllables. This triggers the opponent’s flight response and often scares him into capitulation. As soon as he backs off beat a hasty retreat.

If escape, dissuasion and posturing crack at the spine and if you have honest belief that you are about to be attacked you are left with two choices; hit or be hit. As a self-defence adviser my duty is not to tell you which to choose, only to offer you the options, and allow you to select for your self.

The pre-emptive strike
If your choice is a physical response, my advice is to be pre-emptive and strike first – very hard – preferably on the jaw (it’s a direct link to the brain). The concept of defence at the point of contact is not only unsound it is dangerous and extremely naive. Waiting for someone to attack you is strategic madness because blocks don’t work! The Kwai-Chang-Cain theory of block and counter-attack is even more absurd, especially if you are facing more than one opponent. There is no finesse about fighting multiple opponents, they do not line up and attack you one at a time they strike like a swarm of bees and luck is the only thing that’ll keep a beat in your heart.

If you honestly believe that you are about to become target practice for the hard of thinking, hit them before they can hit you. Once you have landed the first strike, run. Many defence gurus advocate a second strike, a finisher. I advise not. Your first strike buys you vital getaway time. If you’re dealing with a determined attacker (many are very experienced in the art of maim) and you don’t leg it after the first strike, chances are he’ll grab you and snap you like a twiglette.

Self-defence is about doing the minimum a situation will allow to ensure your own survival. It’s not about defending a corpulent ego or misguided honour.
Having been involved in thousands of live encounters the pre-emptive attack was the only consistently effective technique I could find.

My advice is to hit as hard as you can, using your fists (or your head). These are (usually) the closest naturally available weapons to the target (your opponents jaw), and offer the safest and most direct route. At this point it would be a great advantage to have a background in a punching art – preferably western boxing. Most people think they can throw a good punch. From my experience – and certainly under pressure – few can. A great way to learn is to go to a boxing club or do a little focus pad work with a friend to develop the skills (pic).

If you do employ the pre-emptive attack make sure you know your legal rights (a little more on this later) or you might be in for a double jeopardy when you have to defend them against the second enemy – the law.

You dictate reasonable force; although you may have to defend your interpretation of reasonable in a court of law. If you are so frightened by an assailant that you have to hit him with everything but the girl on your arm, then that is reasonable force. If, however, you knock someone to the ground and then do the fifty-six-move kata on their head, you might well be stretching your luck.
I can’t guarantee that you won’t end up in the dock, but I feel that it’s better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

Armed assailants.
Forget the films where the good guy – using empty hands – prevails over the knife-wielding psychopath without ruffling his own hair or popping a shirt button, because on celluloid is the only place it’s going to happen. Someone once asked me at a self-defence seminar ‘what could you do against a knife?’

‘About 50 miles an hour’, I replied.

I’ve faced a few blades and I’ve been stabbed some in my time (but enough about my ex-wife!) and on every occasion I filled my nappy. If your antagonist is carrying, take the advice of Forrest Gump and run like the wind blows. Even with 40 years of martial arts training under my belt, it was providence and not skill that kept me off the cold slab.

If you are facing a knife, the best-case scenario is that you don’t die. If a knife is pulled and running away is not on the option list, throw anything that isn’t nailed to the floor at the attacker, and then run. If projection range is lost your only other option is to blitz the attacker with head strikes until he is unable to continue his attack.

The rule of thumb here is that stabbers don’t usually show the blade, they just sneak up and insert it when you’re not aware. If they do show you the knife they are usually just posturing. Always check the hands of your antagonist – if you can’t see the palms, or a hand is concealed, you have to presume they are carrying (pic).

If the attacker does have a weapon and doesn’t respond to your verbal dissuasion, your options are two-fold: give them what they ask for (and just hope it’s not oral sex) or be prepared to get cut in the affray.

Self-defence and the law.
As important as the law may be, contemplating the legal implications of defending your self in the face of ensuing attack would be unwise. It can cause indecision, which usually leads to defeat.

I call the law the second enemy: this is not meant disparagingly, but, having been on the wrong side of it a few times I feel duty bound to highlight the inherent dangers of dealing with – what can be – a sticky judicial system, post-assault.
Many people are convicted for what they say and not what they do. This means you could legally defend yourself and yet still be convicted and sent to jail (do not pass go…) if you don’t claim self-defence (correctly) when giving a statement to the police. Many of my friends ended up in prison because they didn’t understand the law. Paradoxically many known criminals have avoided prison because they (or certainly their solicitors) did. So, if self-defence is your aim, then an appreciation of this judicial grey area has to be an imperative.

Post-assault, you’ll probably be suffering from what is known as adrenal-induced Tachypsychia. This can cause time distortion, time loss, memory distortion and memory loss. You may also feel the innate urge to talk, if only to justify your actions (Logorrhoea). All of the latter affect your ability to make an objective statement if the police become involved. When/if you do make a statement it is hardly likely to be accurate considering these facts. Six months down the line when you end up in court to defend your right to self-defence, everything will hang on your statement. So make sure you’re clear about your rights. If you’re not clear, insist on waiting until the next day before making a statement or ask to see a duty solicitor (or your own). It’s your right. Don’t put pen to paper otherwise. A police cell can be a very lonely place when you’re not used to it, and the police can often be guilty of rushing, even pressuring you for a quick statement. This pressure can be subtle but effective; being left alone for long periods of time, being told that you might be sent to prison, even the good cop-bad cop routine (yes, honestly). Many a tough guy has turned from hard to lard after a few hours surrounded by those four grey walls. Under these circumstances it’s very easy to say things you really don’t want to say, just so that you can go home.

If you have to defend your self and you damage your assailant my advice is not to hang around after the dirty deed has been done. This minimises the risk of legal (or other) repercussions. Attack victims (especially those who successfully defended them selves) often feel compelled to stay at the scene of crime post assault. Do your self a favour; make like Houdini and vanish? Your life and your liberty might be at stake. Better still don’t be there in the first place, that way you won’t have to worry about long months waiting for the court case and the possibility of suffering from a sever loss of liberty.

In conclusion
Self-defence has been sold and sold to death. There are a million how-to books on the subject and experts are coming out of the martial woodwork. They all mean well but good advice is rare and bad advice can be get you killed. I can save you a lot of reading and a lot of pain by giving you my tried-and-tested learned-in-the-field system for physical self-defence. It’s only five words long (and one of them is an expletive) – Learn to hit f****** hard.

From the streets to the Ivory Towers and back – the other side of conflict research, Part 2 – James Hall

Last month, the first part of this article offered an introduction to the research into conflict and violence undertaken by Universities and other institutions. This month, we will look at how this extensive body of institutional research can be accessed.

The main channel by which academic and other institutional research is exposed to the rest of the world is academic journals. Tens of thousands of different journal titles are published worldwide, containing articles written by researchers and reviewed by peers, i.e. other researchers in the same field as the author. Journals may be published in print, electronic or both forms. Unfortunately for the lay reader, academic journals are nowhere near as accessible, and often nowhere near as readable, as the books and blogs and websites which many of us are more used to. Most academic journals provide access on a subscription basis only, which for individuals can be expensive – over £100 / US$150 per journal per year in some cases. Some ‘open access’ journals can be accessed free of charge, usually online, but the journals with the strongest reputations for high quality research often charge the highest subscription fees, and vice-versa. Identifying relevant journals from the vast number of published titles can also be challenging, particularly in an inter-disciplinary field such as conflict and violence. Some journals exist which are specific to the field, and relevant research is also published in journals specific to each of the many disciplines which conduct research into the various dimensions of conflict and violence.

Lastly, research in academic journals is presented in a format and style which is intended for an academic audience, not the lay reader. Academic readers will be interested in not only the outcome of the research and its implications, but also in its design, the quality of its statistical analysis, and so on. Sections of some academic articles will be meaningless to any reader who doesn’t have at least some education in statistics beyond High School level. All of these challenges can, however, be overcome, with a little effort.

The most accessible starting point when exploring academic research is Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com). Entering search terms (e.g. ‘teen dating violence’) into Google Scholar will return a list of academic resources matching the search terms. Often, only a summary of each article will be available, but in some cases the full article may be accessible as a PDF or via a web link. However, this is a comparatively unstructured approach which may not be the best if you are looking for high-quality research on a specific topic, in which case your nearest University is probably the best resource.

Most Universities have institutional subscriptions to numerous journals, which are made available for students, faculty and staff via their Library service. Some Universities also offer access to members of the public, although practice varies widely. For example, in the UK: Bristol University offers no public access at all; Oxford University’s Bodleian Library provides public access to its printed and electronic resources for £38 (c. US$60) per year; Birmingham University offers access free of charge to its printed resources for up to ten visits per year, or unlimited access to printed resources and limited access to electronic resources at a cost of £50 (c. US$80) per year; and Nottingham University provides unlimited public access to printed resources and its pubic e-resource suite completely free of charge. In all cases though, resources can only be accessed at the physical location of each University’s library – printed resources cannot be borrowed, and electronic resources cannot be accessed remotely. A good starting point would be to contact the Library service at your nearest University and ask about their public access policy.

Identifying relevant and credible journals is just as much of a challenge for students as for members of the public. Consequently all University libraries have expert staff who will be happy to offer help in this regard. Demand for this service from students tends to be greatest as deadlines approach, which tend to be towards the end of terms / semesters, so the Librarian service (or equivalent) may be more available in the middle of term / semester when student demand is lower.

Examples of relevant journals include:

Subscription-based:

Psychology of Violence (http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/vio/)
Journal of Interpersonal Violence (http://jiv.sagepub.com/)
Violence and Victims (http://www.springerpub.com/violence-and-victims.html)

Open access:

Journal of Aggression and Violent Behaviour (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/aggression-and-violent-behavior/open-access-articles/)
Journal of Injury and Violence Research (http://jivresearch.org/jivr/index.php/jivr/index)

Some subscription-based journals offer open access to selected articles, e.g. the International Journal of Conflict and Violence (http://www.ijcv.org/)

The credibility of journals and individual articles can often be gauged by the number of times a specific article, or articles published in a specific journal, are referenced by other researchers. The databases to which University libraries often provide this information, and again the Librarian service should be able to show you how to access this information. This is only one indicator, however – newer research will obviously have been referenced by other researchers less frequently than older research.

Gathering the important information from journal articles is largely a matter of understanding how they are written. Articles presenting different types of research will be presented in different formats, but most will follow a structure resembling the following:

Abstract: All articles will begin with an abstract, which is a short summary (usually no more than 200 words) of the article. A well-written abstract will state why the research was done, how it was done, the main outcome of the research and the main implications, in a style which is easy to read. The purpose of the abstract is to enable the reader to decide whether to invest time in reading the full article, which is important for the academic audience, but for the lay reader the abstract will often provide enough information by itself. Subscription-based journals which are published online often make the abstracts of their articles available free of charge, charging only for access to the full article.

Introduction: The main body of the article will normally start with an Introduction, which sets out the background to the specific piece of research and why it was done. It should clearly state the ‘research question’, i.e. the specific question which the research aims to answer. This section usually contains references to earlier relevant research, so it is always worth reading the Introduction as it can point you in the direction of other articles which may be of interest.

Method: The next section normally describes the method by which the research was carried out, which could be anything from an online questionnaire to a complex lab experiment to a thirty-year longitudinal study. This section is vitally important for the academic audience, as it enables other academics to attempt to replicate the research in order to confirm or challenge its findings. Where the article is based on studies of real people (as opposed to published statistics or analysis of other research), for example psychology experiments, this section should include a description of the Participants, i.e. who took part in the study. This description should consist of the number of participants, the range and average of their ages and the proportion of males and females. In some cases, particularly in large or long-term studies, researchers will select their participants very carefully in order to try and make their sample as representative as possible of the population in general. In other cases, researchers will use ‘opportunistic sampling’, i.e. whoever is available. Understanding the profile of the participants is important in deciding the extent to which the findings of the research apply to the population as a whole. If the sample is strongly weighted in favour of one gender, or drawn from only a narrow range of ages etc., the less generally applicable the findings may be.

Results: In a well-written article, the Results section should set out the results of the research in plain English (or whatever the language of publication happens to be) and provide the statistics to back it up. The plain English part should suffice for those of us not expert in statistical analysis.

Discussion: The Discussion section usually links the findings of the study back to the earlier research identified in the Introduction – e.g. whether the study supports or contradicts earlier findings. It should also set out the implications of the research, for example whether it challenges the accepted understanding of a phenomenon or current social policy. In a well-written article it should also identify areas for further research and the authors’ reflections upon their own research, e.g. with hindsight, whether the method could have been improved.

In summary, while the language in which academic articles are written may not always be easy for the non-expert reader to follow completely, by understanding the typical structure of an article it is possible to find and absorb the most important pieces of information.

Following the work of specific researchers is another way to keep up with developments in relevant research areas. All journal articles will give the name of their author(s) and their institution(s). Institutions normally provide a ‘People search’ and/or ‘Contact search’ function on their website, which will enable you to find the web pages and contact details of the author. Many researchers are happy to be contacted by people interested in their research, and of course some will be active bloggers and users of social media.

Currently, it seems that there is little crossover between the worlds of experience-based and academic research into conflict and violence. I hope that this article will be a starting point in developing links between these two worlds, and that you will start to explore the immense body of institutional research into conflict and violence for yourself. I personally am about to return to study with the intention of getting into research into the psychological aspects of conflict and violence. It’ll take a while to get there, but along the way I hope to develop more and stronger links between the worlds of practical self protection and institutional conflict and violence research. If you would like to stay in touch with my progress, or discuss any matter covered by this article, please find me on Facebook (/james.hall.902819) or e-mail me at hall.jp@gmail.com.

How to get your ass kicked in any conflict situation… – Schalk Holloway

I was lucky enough to finish school with a full academic bursary. I could basically pick any tertiary institution in our country and enroll for any graduate course that my final marks allowed for. Long story short I proceeded to enroll in Tswhane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa. It was part of their first year student culture – especially if you stayed in one of the University’s hostels – to undergo a lengthy hazing process. This included not being able to leave the hostel for any social reason until a bit later in the year.

This anecdote plays off on the very first night I was allowed off campus with my senior hostel members. I was 18 years old. Comfortable with getting in trouble, but still very naive about violence and especially predators as I grew up in quite a small and relaxed town on our country’s north coast.

As we left one of the clubs I saw a group of guys approaching one of our seniors. One of that group’s members initiated a dumbass argument with him and subsequently it turned into a fight. My senior was quite a big boy and I thought him able to handle himself in most situations.

As the two of them were going at it (now on the floor) one of the other group’s guys moved to jump in on my senior. I judge he was about 15 – 20 years older than me, smaller but with a lean and capable look to him. Still, I was confident in myself. I put my hand out against his chest and told him to leave the two of them to sort it out. He looked at me with a huge smile on his face, gave me a playful tap on the shoulder and said something like, “yeah buddy, you know what, you’re right, let’s leave them.”

As I turned back to the two guys on the floor that dirty old bastard hit me as hard as he could behind the head. I immediately retaliated but I effectively had my ass handed to me for the following five minutes.

So what can we learn about conflict management from this episode? Quite a bit actually but let’s try and glean three important insights. Let’s break it down into where I went wrong, or, to link back to the article title, let’s look at how to get your ass kicked in any conflict situation:

1. Assuming your opponent is playing by your rules.
I got into a lot of fights and trouble growing up in my hometown. However, most of these were cases of me getting into trouble individually. Even in terms of physical fights it was almost always a one on one situation. I can remember ONLY ONE occasion in my first 18 years which was a serious group effort, but that’s it. So basically I was molded into this idea of guys sorting each other out one on one. Then I took that assumption into the big city and projected it onto my opponent. Ha ha ha, as you saw, big mistake! (But good lesson.)

This dynamic can only be solved with one of two tactics. First, is to try and understand who you’re dealing with. What type of animal are you in the cage or about to get into the cage with. As seen above however these lessons mostly come through experience. However, regardless of what type of conflict situation you’re in – whether relational argument, marriage issue, business deal, legal matter or physical fight – understanding what makes the other party tick gives you an immense advantage in successfully resolving or prevailing in the conflict. The second tactic, and this is especially relevant when there is no time, basis or need for a proper character evaluation, is to just go at your opponent as if they are the worst, dirtiest and hardest opponent you’ll ever face. Get in, get the job done, get out. All business.

The sneaky old street fighter immediately made an accurate judgement on me based on my request to let them sort it out one on one. He then used this accurate judgment against me by playing into my naivety and disarming me with his big smile, friendly tap on the shoulder and agreeing words. Clever guy. 😉

2. Giving away initiative.
I saw the dirty old streetfighter go in long before he saw me. He had initiative on my senior but I had initiative on him. I essentially gave this superior position away by using the wrong tactics ie. I should have just climbed into him. However, this was not possible due to the wrong assumptions I held about him.

One of the best advantages of having and maintaining initiative is that it creates different types of stress for your opponent. One of these types of stress that I personally have a lot of love for is disorientation. As your opponent has to constantly deal with new incoming stimulus (whether verbal judo, physical attack or even revealing new information) it becomes a struggle for him to orient and compose himself to the situation. Still dealing with stimulus A and then suddenly being hit by stimulus B becomes highly taxing on his resources – and eventually he starts to fall behind.

The moment that guy started climbing into me he just kept going. Doesn’t matter what I did or how I did it, he just kept going. He was always one step ahead of me and I really never caught up.

3. Losing heart.
A couple of minutes into the fight he spear tackled me onto a car’s bonnet. I was quite desperate by this stage and still playing catchup. I lifted myself up, went into a controlled fall and drove my elbow down as hard as I could aiming for the back of his neck. I really put a lot of effort into that strike. I missed though. Immediately after this effort he straightened out and stood up. I gave him quite a solid right cross in the face. Then he chuckled at me and said “you’re hitting me but I’m not feeling anything.”

I have to be honest but at this stage I stopped fighting and started retreating. Missing that critical strike (remember I was playing catchup and desperately needed something to regain initiative) and hearing those words completely broke my will. I lost confidence started to seriously doubt whether I was going to survive this encounter without serious injury. I started playing a defensive game and he just kept on coming at me. Suffice it to say, to this day I have never had a worse beating than on that night.

After this beating I learned a lot about causing others to lose heart. I have used the tactic to gain the upper hand in many conflict situations. But here’s a secret – sometimes I was the one about to lose heart and then I used the tactic as a last ditch effort to gain or keep my advantage in the conflict. Ie, just before I felt I’m going to throw in the towel I made an effective last play at intimidation, power projection etc. and it worked.

Which begs the question: What is the chance that ol’ streetfighter was about to quit himself? The possibility is there (ha ha ha, however I don’t think it was with him) but in reality I’ll never know. What if I didn’t give up and kept on fighting? Was I possibly one step away from regaining the upper hand and then I gave up? I’ll never know.

But on the other hand, maybe I did keep on going and I got killed. And I guess that’s the problem with conflict. We need to be sure why we’re getting involved in the first place. It’s only when we understand the stakes that we can decide on our commitment.

From Your Heart! Passion is a must. – Robert Frankovich

When students perform their techniques, whether in drills or patterns, it is very easy to tell if they are actually trying or merely dancing around. This is one of the tricky parts within training…or any education.

I had a student tell me that the way to fix that is to make them work harder. How does that get accomplished? Make the drills longer? Count louder? Stand over them the whole time? Nope. Never going to make their training better that way. If their passion hasn’t developed yet, no external factor will change the behavior.

Does training actually fit their goals? Are they looking for physical improvement? Maybe they just want the socialization in a subject matter that interests them. The only way that a student will improve and develop skill is when they choose to. This is a deceiving point, too, though. I’ve asked students to adjust technique to make them more effective and have gotten “That’s what I’m doing!” as a response. (We won’t discuss the respect issue now) But since it makes no sense that I would waste my time asking for things to be adjusted/corrected for no reason, they still haven’t chosen to learn the technique past what they “think” it is.

Now, I’ll give credit to those putting in effort and working but poor technique can only be helped so much by strength and commitment. There is some passion there, although needing direction. I came across a saying the other day which is very accurate. It stated “If you can’t do it slow, you can’t do it right.” which fits the piece above. The idea of being able to go slow would mean that your mind is in the work as well and that will show in your hands (and legs).

I would wager that, if you are able to put your mind into the focus of the work, your heart is involved also. This changes the fear and anxiety and nervousness into enjoyment. Those feelings and emotions fade as the passion grows. The development of your passion is seen in the performance of your techniques. You start to see deeper and understand more. The desire to see others succeed rises and helps create the desire in you to work harder and learn more. It brings students together as a community…family…who supports each other off the floor as well as on. You are now building your passion.

The activities that are physical can easily illustrate how passion grows the skills and knowledge. You can find many YouTube videos of a 13 year old playing an awesome guitar piece. Another can be seen with the number of 16 and 17 year olds performing on “The Voice” talent show.

Physical talents are not all, though. Recently, our high school junior son had a classmate over. The discussion turned to the plant on the kitchen window ledge. Once he saw it, his eyes lit up and he started commenting about the leaves and their size. That lead him to the 20 plants that he has and their growth cycle including blooms and developing offshoots. This was not knowledge repeated from a book. It was the knowledge born from his passion for plants. It kind of makes sense, then, that he’s focusing on chemistry and biology among his AP & Honors classes. He stated that it would probably be his best route to get into a career field that will let him work toward a botany position.

These factors to improve your training are the same as those you need to develop your career, regardless of the field. If you don’t have a passion for what you are doing, how can people believe that you are knowledgeable and competent? Make sure your heart is in your training.

Understanding how to direct passions into jobs that pay the bills is an important point. If you can spend your time earning money while learning and developing your passion, then you have success and will enjoy more of your life.

MISTAKING MODELS FOR THE REAL THING – Mark Hatmaker

We’re going to take a weird sojourn through 17th-century French theater, an eyewitness account (names withheld) of an embarrassing demonstration, 10-day weather forecasts, and end (hopefully) with a point about taking drills too seriously.

First, a trip to the theater with an excerpt from Moliere’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, the premise of which is that a shopkeeper newly come into money decides that to be one of the upper-crust he needs to take great pains to “become cultured.” He engages numerous “culture instructors” who gladly take his money and leave him none the wiser or better cultured.

One of these “culture instructors” is a fencing master who teaches him a few basics in the form of a call-and-response pattern (sounding familiar?) Later, within the play, our cultured dupe decides to display what he know about fencing with an un-cultured person who knows nothing about fencing.

Mr. Jour: Goodness me! The fencing master seems to set your teeth on edge. Come here, and I will show you at once your senseless impertinence. (He asks for two foils, and gives one to Nicole.) Here, reason demonstrative the line of the body. When you thrust in quart, you have only to do so; and when you thrust in tierce, only to do so! That is the way never to be killed; and is it not a fine thing to be quite safe when one fights against anybody? There, thrust at me a little to try.

Nicole: Well, what? (Nicole gives him several thrusts)

Mr. Jour: Gently! Hold! Oh! Softly. Deuce take the wench!

Nicole: You tell me to thrust at you.

Mr. Jour: Yes; but you thrust in tierce before thrusting at me in quart, and you haven’t the patience to wait till I parry.

Familiar scenario, huh?

Now, the eyewitness account (my own). In the distant past I observed a renowned instructor in the midst of a seminar-based video shoot ready to show a “fool-proof” top-saddle/mount escape. He hits his back, asks someone to mount him. The volunteer is simply a “Nicole,” by that I mean, he had no special training, just a good sort doing what he was asked to do by the man in charge.

Our “Nicole” takes the top position and our “instructor” does his thing which appeared to be a boisterous wiggle to which “Nicole” posts his hands on the mat and remains stubbornly on top. Our instructor tells “Nicole,” and I quote “You wouldn’t do that.” I and a few others present exchange looks with cocked eyebrows that say “Well, obviously he would.”

Instructor bucks again, Nicole does what he would not do yet again, and again is chastised. The third time is the charm as Nicole “behaves” properly and the fool-proof escape and scene from Moliere is now complete.

I’m sure we’ve all seen countless demonstrations of “if you do this, I’d do this to you.” Uh-huh, sure you would.

Yes, drills have their place to teach us a vocabulary, but often the rookie (and unfortunately some beyond that stage) behave as Mr. Jour and believes that the drill is the real thing- the map is not the territory.

The best drills make no predictions further than 2-3 tactical responses in, and even these are “best guesses.” Long-form drills, even if front-loaded with wise choices, become less wise as they continue.

Let’s look to meteorology for a lesson in why that might be the case.

Despite the horrible reputation and abundant bad jokes about weather prediction, in the short term meteorological predictions are quite accurate. Predictions in all other arenas (politics, war outcomes, fashion trends, the next “big thing”) these fail left and right. The weather predictions seeming more wrong than they are simply the result of the fact that they predict every day and when they do get it wrong we are reminded of it by the extraordinariness of the wrongness-the rained out picnic, for example. No one is taken to task for saying Johnny Depp’s next movie will be a big hit, as a theatrical bomb does not rain on our plans.

To see just how extraordinarily right weather predictions can be, keep screen shots of 2-3 day forecasts over the next two weeks and at the end of that period you’ll find that if you go back and compare the 2-3 day out predictions with what did occur you just may gain some new respect for the profession.

But in that same two weeks of keeping screen shots do the same thing for the 10-day forecast and see how often the 9th and 10th days were on target. Not so much, as a matter of fact a careful look at the screenshots will reveal that the extended forecast is constantly changing as new data comes in (and wisely so). In essence, the 10-day is eye-candy, where the real science is in the 2-3 day forecast being re-calibrated each and every day.

In short, the shorter the term the more accurate the prediction, and the longer the term the more entropy in the system. (Make of that what you will with 20, 50, and 100 year term climate forecasts).

We would be far wiser if we constructed drills as meteorologists do, that is looking at all the real world data, making our best scientific guesses from there, and assume that we only might be right, not definitely right, and that’s only in maybe the first move, two, to three after if we’re lucky, and then re-calibrate and start the next short forecast.

We all become a bit un-cultured when like Mr. Jour we assume the drill is reality.

What If….? – Andrea Harkins

What If….?

What if you are attacked?

What if someone sticks a knife in your back?

What if you don’t know how to defend yourself?

“What ifs” are terrible. They are projections of situations and scenarios that may never happen. They increase fear and make you anxious and leave you feeling uneasy all the time. There are many ways to teach self-defense and many angles from which you can draw information and conclusions, but none include the elusive “what ifs.”

I’ve been a “what if” person for a long time. It just comes naturally. “What if my car breaks down? What if I can’t afford to pay that bill? What if I get sick? What if I get lost?”

Finally, one day, I realized that I was projecting a great amount of fear and negativity into my life by thinking about events that were just in my mind. In some cases, I think I even subconsciously jinxed myself in order to achieve my relentless, contrived negative prophesies and predictions. Negativity can work that way. It starts to impose on your life and builds up so much momentum that before you know it, you know no other way. Your guard is down.

Another way that “what ifs” work against you are examined in the questions I posed in the beginning of this article. These are self-projections that are not set in fact or fiction, but in fear. When you struggle with fear, you automatically lower your defenses and expose your vulnerabilities. People do not realize that “what ifs” create undue fearful emotions that hinder real self-defense. These “what if’s” strategically replace awareness and self-confidence with worry and anxiety. I can tell you right now that neither worry, nor anxiety, has ever saved a person’s life in an attack situation.

Think about how you feel when you are scared; or, even more importantly, how you look. Your face contorts almost unknowingly. In the eyes of a perpetrator, you become the perfect victim. You’re “what ifs” that you thought were preparing you, were actually bathing you in fear and working against you. A perpetrator can use this to his advantage because fear is noticeable, and he will immediately target you as a potential, easy victim.

Those self-absorbed with fear have difficulty standing their ground when the time comes. Emotions and thoughtless reactions work in unison to welcome defeat; the better equipped individual is the one who takes action to eliminate unnecessary fear, and strengthen his awareness. Instead of injecting fear or playing out scenarios that may never happen, it is best to take control of vulnerabilities by doing something that makes sense.

Take action.

The actions that can take place, that will better prepare someone for defense than “what ifs,” are many. If you are an instructor, or someone who just cares about solid safety values and a strong mindset, here’s exactly what you should share with all who have not thought through how to be prepared through “actions” and not “what if’s.”

Take a Self-Defense class. Self-defense is inherently different from martial arts, although some martial art techniques may filter through. The difficulty with self-defense classes is that women are afraid of them! Yes, they are fearful of not knowing what to expect, so if the class can be entertaining, refreshing, and right on point about true defense, a woman is more likely to attend. These generally attract non-martial artists, so fitness levels, interests, and reasons for attending vary. This is number one on the list. Fear can be decreased through the actions involved in learning a viable self-defense system.

2. Try a martial art. Yes, they are different than self-defense courses, but they do offer some valuable tools and techniques. I’ve been a martial artist for twenty-six years and also teach some components of martial arts that include grabs and escapes. I can kick high, if I want, but true defense only needs a good kick to the knee or groin. Discerning where and how to kick, if that is part of your defense strategy, has nothing to do with height or speed, but more to do with accuracy. Wrist locks, head locks, grabs, and other offensive holds all have escapes that can be learned. Plus, martial arts training helps with self-confidence factors and resilience, both of which mean a great deal in defense situations.

3. Utilize Resources. Direct your friends, students, and families to resources that you trust. There may be websites, books, or on-line materials that you’ve read and with which you agree. There is a plethora of social media outlets these days where questions from simple to complex can be asked and answered. Everyone has an opinion so no need to accept everything as fact, but something might just make sense for exactly what you need. Don’t hoard. Give up your great tools and resources to others who can really use them.

4. Practice. Even if you have taken a self-defense or martial art class, they can be for nothing if they are not practiced. Self-defense courses can be short, maybe even a few hours. A refresher each year is a must. A martial art takes a while to really learn. Movements and gestures only make sense after a while of application. The key to strengthening defense here, is practice.

4. Read Inspiring Tales. Nothing hits home like reading a true story about someone whose self-defense saved their life. What happened? What did they think? How did they react? What kind of confidence erupted? Learning from others, being inspired and motivated by their situations, can quickly kick-start self-defense thoughts into action.

Final words of advice to share:

Take action and remove the crazy “what ifs” from your life. Arm yourself with simple but strong self-defense concepts. By increasing self-confidence and controlling fear, you become more aware of who you are and of what you are capable.

I don’t know how you plan to proceed, but my goal is to eliminate “what ifs” from my thoughts. They are detrimental and stifling and don’t allow me to clearly see the opportunities I have to learn more about self-defense and awareness. If you are an instructor of self-defense or a martial art, you have a responsibility to give your students a fighting chance. Help them to know that real concepts, real actions, real defenses, can help them; but, “what ifs” will always hold them back from understanding awareness and self-protection, and maybe even prevent them from saving their lives. Instead, do the one thing that will really help.

Take Action.

Confessions of a Martial Arts Instructor – Jeff Burger

I hate teaching self-defense.

I love the martial arts, all of them. I spent about thirty-five years running around the world trying to learn everything that I could from anybody willing to teach.

It all started with wanting to learn to defend myself. Now, I have been teaching over twenty-five years and love it. I love the science, the mechanics, the physical and mental challenges, the artfulness, the cultures, and being a part of other people’s growth….

But I have to admit, I hate teaching self-defense.

Why?

It is just too vast of a topic.

Ambushes, sucker punches, verbal Judo/de-escalation, dealing with fear and pain, awareness, freezing, punching, kicking, escape from holds, ground work, difference in weight, size, strength, multiple opponents, weapons … and so much more, and that is not even getting into the legal stuff that changes from state to state, country to country.

Think of how much we still don’t know about our own planet. Now imagine that every martial art is its own planet. As vast as that is, the Boxing planet has a beginning and end, the Judo planet has a beginning and end, and so on, and so on.

Self-defense is a universe.

Depending on your art, you may spend decades trying to master one or more of those self-defense topics and never reach perfection.

The icing on this giant cake of endless work towards an unachievable goal, is that people will expect you to teach them how to defend themselves in any situation in a short period of training time (maybe even one seminar) by just showing them some “moves”.

However as a martial arts instructor, I feel obligated to teach self-defense.

How do I approach it? Well, I start by making people sad. I am honest and break the bad news about how much there is to learn. Even if they did learn it all (which I haven’t in thirty-five years) their safety is still not guaranteed.

If they haven’t walked out and still want to hear what I have to offer, I start by prioritizing topics. I skim the cream and grab the most essential information from the most important categories.

From there, we go forever deeper.

From the streets to the Ivory Towers and back – the other side of conflict research – James Hall

Part 1

The Conflict Research Group International describes itself on its homepage as “an alliance of individuals”. Through this publication and their own books, blogs etc., these individuals share many lifetimes’ worth of first-hand experience of all aspects of conflict and violence, usually gained the hard way. This collective individual experience is not the only mode of research in this subject area, however. Many Universities and other institutions actively conduct research which seeks to identify and reveal truths about conflict and violence not through direct experience, but through detailed social studies, experimentation and other means. The purpose of this article is to raise awareness of this academic research activity, suggest some ways in which it is relevant to the world of practical self-protection and offer guidance on how the output of this research can be accessed.

Institutional research into conflict and violence crosses the boundaries of many traditional academic disciplines, including criminology, psychology, sociology, politics, history, geography and medicine. While some research is conducted within these traditional disciplines, a number of inter-disciplinary research centres have also been formed, drawing together researchers from diverse academic backgrounds to focus specifically on the subject of conflict and violence. A very small selection of these institutions includes:

UK: Violence Research Centre, University of Cambridge

USA: Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Violence, University of Illinois at Chicago

Canada: Center for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence, University of Guelph

New Zealand: Te Awatea Violence Research Centre, University of Canterbury

Germany: Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, Bielefeld University

Some of these research units have an interesting history. For example, the Violence Research Group at the University of Cardiff (UK) originated in that University’s School of Dentistry, when a professor of reconstructive dental surgery noticed that many of his patients who had suffered dental trauma as a result of violence had very similar injuries, and set out to explore how these common patterns arose. The research interests of this group have now diversified far beyond dentistry, some examples of which will be presented later in this article.

Research by Universities and other institutions looks at conflict and violence on a number of different levels:

Interpersonal violence: As individuals with an interest in self-protection, whether as instructors, students, both or other, we are primarily interested in interpersonal violence, which as the name suggests is violence inflicted by one person upon another. This is also a highly active area of research for Universities, focussing on specific types of interpersonal violence such as intimate partner violence (a.k.a. domestic violence), violence in teen dating relationships, child abuse, bullying etc.

Inter-group conflict: How groups in conflict perceive and behave towards one another, ranging from the different ways in which group members refer to ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’ individuals to extremes such as acts of terrorism, or the Rwandan inter-tribal conflict which culminated in the genocide of 1994

Intra-state violence: For example, how oppressive regimes use violence as a means to control the population and quell opposition within their borders

Inter-state conflict: How conflict occurs between nations and how such conflict can be managed or can escalate, ranging from diplomatic strategies to the conduct and management of military operations

Some institutions or research centres specialise in one of the categories above, or in even more precise areas within those categories, e.g. in the UK, the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol focusses on gender-based violence, and the Handa Centre at the University of St. Andrews on terrorism and political violence.

The direct and indirect benefits to society resulting from this research can be roughly categorised as follows:

Raise awareness

Research has exposed ‘hidden’ forms of violence which were previously believed not to exist. For example, researchers at the University of Rhode Island published a study in 1982 which identified the problem of child-on-parent violence (CPV), or parental abuse (PA), finding that 9% of parents of adolescents had experienced violence at the hands of their children at least once in the preceding year. A summary of the article can be viewed at http://goo.gl/HD3o2s This research attracted little attention however, until Barbara Cottrell’s book ‘When Teens Abuse Their Parents’ was published in 2004 (https://goo.gl/mbCOl6). CPV is now a highly active area of research, one example being the Adolescent to Parent Violence Project at the University of Oxford (http://goo.gl/fx8LrD), a three-year Government-funded study which is the first large-scale investigation of CPV in the UK.

Elder abuse, female on male domestic violence and violence within teen dating relationships are all further examples of ‘hidden’ violence which have been exposed through research, with numerous institutions now working to understand these patterns of violence in greater depth.

Training and education

University research into violence and abuse has formed the basis of numerous education and training initiatives, from short films to graduate level courses. For example, the Institute for Applied Social Research at the University of Bedfordshire recently produced a series of short films on gang-associated sexual exploitation and violence, based on an extensive and detailed study of the issue, which have been used to raise awareness of the issue in schools and colleges as well as among professionals and policy makers (http://goo.gl/Yau2Wj). Numerous other such initiatives are in operation around the world. Masters-level courses in violence prevention, aimed primarily at professionals in the field of social work, are starting to become available, such as London Metropolitan University’s MSc in Crime, Violence and Prevention (http://goo.gl/rJuOhV)

Prediction and prevention

In the field of interpersonal violence, much research activity is devoted to predictors of violence, i.e. behavioural, emotional, environmental and other characteristics which may help to predict the risk of an individual exhibiting violent behaviour. This knowledge can then be used to design interventions aimed at reducing the risk of and individual becoming violent, or the severity of their violence when it occurs. Other research seeks to predict and prevent violence in the wider, social sense. For example, researchers at Cardiff University have developed computer software which can analyse the patterns of movements in crowds, and identify patterns which have been found to precede violent incidents. The system can be used to alert authorities to a potential incident before it occurs, enabling police and other resources to be pre-emptively deployed to maintain order rather than reactively after an incident has occurred. BBC News reported on this software in February 2015 – the report can be viewed at http://goo.gl/MjnAjC

Research has also enabled authorities and other bodies to take a more effective strategic approach to violence prevention. A further product of research by Cardiff University is the ‘Cardiff model’, a protocol for information sharing between hospitals, police and local authorities in the city of Cardiff regarding victims and patterns of violent crime. By using this information to support joined-up violence prevention strategies, authorities have been able to reduce hospitalisations resulting from violent crime by half between 2002 and 2013, saving an estimated £5 million per year in policing, medical and court costs. The Cardiff Model is now being rolled out across the whole of the UK, and to date has been adopted by two-thirds of hospital emergency units and community safety partnerships. The Cardiff Model specification can be freely downloaded at http://goo.gl/4HtjUo

Violence prevention strategies extent all the way to global level. The World Health Organisation (WHO) operates the Global Campaign for Violence Prevention, which treats violence as a public health issue. This campaign has produced ”The World Report on Violence and Health’, the first comprehensive review of violence on a global scale, which can be used as a common point of reference for any country developing its own violence prevention strategy. The full report can be freely downloaded from http://goo.gl/aAgi3U

Next month, we will look at how this extensive body of academic and other institutional research can be accessed. If you would like to discuss any of the matters covered in this article please find me on Facebook (/james.hall.902819) or e-mail me at hall.jp@gmail.com.

Pride and Self-Exploration -Tony Peston

Maybe it could be a good idea to teach the intricacies of pride as part of a self exploration module during our formative years, what I mean is helping young people to cope with peer pressure that screams fight back, or don’t allow an insult to go unpunished. Maybe then as adults we would be more equipped to deal with the overt confrontations that are waiting to explode all around us like I.E.D’s placed in our path. It is always these hidden unexpected explosions that catch me out, ignoring any cognitive resonance my logic being completely pushed to one side and any rationality over ridden, forcing me to go to my DNA blueprint for the primal response which is either run or inflict violence. Of course having such a hard wired response, the type of reaction that comes forth without consideration or care for consequences or the aftermath it’s actions leave in it’s wake is either a curse or a blessing.

The old saying it is better to be judged by 12 than carried by six comes to mind here, such thinking helping us to deal with the fact that we could be charged with serious criminal offences even though we believe that our primal instinct to strike is in actual fact self defence. In the hard light of day can we justify our actions and can we deal with the ecology of extreme violence? For most people who practice martial arts and self defence I believe that question will remain unanswered but for some my self included, they will tell you that if those violent actions came through self preservation then they can deal with what comes after and meet the aftermath head on with a righteous justification that it was him/her/ them or me. Setting the auto responder aside, the dark passenger, the one who we have little control over, especially when the brown stuff hits the fan, what of the man himself the thinker the one who is given the luxury of a considered response?

I say luxury of a considered response, but consideration invites the adrenalin rush that has to be managed correctly otherwise we can lose the considered thinking and revert back to the old blue print, striking out and asking questions later. Most combat orientated arts are trained from either a defensive stance or a combat stance, both physically and importantly psychologically, I think it is a rare thing to find a club or an instructor that addresses the issue of the aftermath, the possible life changing consequences of that single punch or that sustained violent action to neutralize the person who is your opponent. Teaching the physical is easy enough but helping people understand that taking the physical forward with total conviction will require a mental attitude that is certain and accepting, there is no room for anything else in a life or death situation. So striking someone causing a knockout or for them to become seriously injured is a life or death situation for them too. The question is was it necessary?

There are too many people serving long prison sentences that will tell you that what they did was not necessary and that they allowed themselves to be controlled by pride. As a self defence and Krav Maga instructor it is my duty to be honest in my teaching of the subject, I have to be honest and tell my students this is fact based upon my own experience and that is theory because it is a technique I have never used in a conflict situation. The truth of the matter is that there are very few things I can teach as actual fact, but when I teach them I teach with 100% certainty.

Working on the door can help people develop many basic skills, such as knocking people out and so forth and of course the door has been a breeding ground for men looking to do just that, thankfully there will always be complete gentlemen who can work the doors without the need to use violence as the backbone of their skill set. These doormen are the ones who have honed their communication skills and only use violence as a last resort. As I mentioned before I could teach 100% fact in physical terms but in honesty I could only teach as a theory the communication skills required to avoid a violent situation. Of course this is a major problem if teaching self defence because unless one has really used the art of de- escalation and distance management or can really be clear in the explanation of the fence, well I believe we are just teaching people to fight or at best fight off an attacker.

I would like to think that I am not alone in saying that I am no stranger to violence as a youth and younger man, I was using a lot of primal thinking which was flawed in many ways, of course as a result I have devoted a life time of study to my own thinking in an effort to work out why I do what I do, one of the weaknesses I had identified was the need to react with an equal or greater response to being threatened with violence. Working the door was a great opportunity to face this situation and immerse myself in it to explore the theory on a practical level. When I decided to work the doors I had a clear vision to avoid violence and use the soft skills to navigate through each night, ans by actually treating people with respect even though lots of people where abusive angry and drunk, I found that I was able to work my first year with very few incidents where violence was needed. That year was like a master class in the use of the fence. Look out for my book which is presently being edited and will be ready for release in the near future, it’s called, “1 year on God’s door”.