In Search of Clarity

I'm working on the manual for talking down EDPs (Emotionally Disturbed Persons) and I pretty much have to do a section on what to do when it goes bad. This will be an e-book, since it is far too short for print publishing. Since it's an e-book I want to avoid pictures. They really mess up the formatting.

Is this description of a figure-four leg lock and seal position handcuffing clear?

The figure-four leg lock is also useful. Any technique used on the knee joint, especially if it relies on pain, will have a risk of injury. To apply the technique you place the threat’s left ankle directly in the hollow of his right knee (if I have to tell you the directions can be reversed, you probably aren’t bright enough to be literate anyway). The right knee is then flexed (bent) which both traps the left ankle and puts pressure on the knee such that it can be snapped.

The farther towards the toes you apply pressure, the better leverage you have. Many threat will be able to simply kick you off if you don’t apply good leverage. Almost all will be able to kick you off if you try to cross the legs at the ankles instead of putting the ankle directly in the knee joint.

You do not need to control this hold with your hands. In the example above (right knee locked, left ankle trapped) I kneel with my left knee outside of the threat’s butt, the threats right foot in the crease of my thigh and my right ankle hooked behind the threat’s trapped left ankle.

I learned the hook trick because the only person I’ve ever had escape from the figure four was a very small, wiry and quite dangerous mentally ill female who had a thing for stabbing people. She just did what looked like a military low crawl and pulled herself out of the lock.

This is an excellent unhandcuffing technique and a very good hands-free control hold. If the threat will not give up the hands for cuffing, if they ‘turtle,’ you can reach under their face (fingers flat to prevent biting, just like feeding a horse) and use the pressure point under the nose at the base of the bone to extend the spine. They will put their hands on the ground to support their own weight and you can simply yank one of the support hands back for cuffing.

After experiencing this, most NTs will voluntarily give up the remaining hand. You may have to do it twice for EDPs.

'NT' in the above paragraph means 'neurotypical' short hand for not an EDP. It's explained elsewhere in the handbook.

Clear enough to do?

Never Seen Florida

I've been here for two days and I still haven't seen any of. It's easy to joke with K: "Been to some of the coolest cities in the world but they all look like sweaty gyms."

Red-eye flight. Meet Rick Brumby, who is a thoroughly cool guy. Check into the hotel. Explore the grounds. Shower. Try to nap. Get up, go to the local police academy to teach Conflict Communications. Nargilah and late dinner with Dan G. Back to the hotel. Try to sleep. Up too early. Go to the business center to make copies. Meet Rick in the lobby. Return to the training center. Teach an introduction to violence. Teach part two of ConCom. Dinner. Hotel.

Too tired to write, but I don't want to sleep just yet.

Anyway, been in Florida for two days, haven't seen anything yet. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe I'll find a quiet place and write and drink coffee.

Working on the "Crisis Communication with the Mentally Ill" book. It will be too short for print, so expect an e-book fairly soon (finally). This one's disjointed, more a series of tactics than a coherent strategy. That's okay, I guess. Can't see all patterns at all times for all things. But it should help a lot of people.

The hotel has over three acres under glass with an a alligator lagoon and a small schooner. There is an artificial thunderstorm playing above my head right now. They tried to make the atrium like wild Florida, but air-conditioned and without mosquitos.

Good mix of martial artists today. Most had extensive experience. Lot's of sweat. Well, a little anyway. George Mattson showed up, and I did give him grief about his pink polo shirt... but he is one of the Old Dragons and it is an honor just to be in his presence. I also got to meet Phil Peplinski, who founded the original "Come Get You Some" website. He also really doesn't mind tangling it up and going for eyes. I'm not really sure what a cockle is, but it warmed the cockles of my heart.

The class ran long and just blended it in with the 'Violence' module of ConCom, and that worked pretty well. The information is pretty seamless. That feels good, it means that there is a skeleton underlying the words. It also means that there is a curriculum in here somewhere.

Have been getting pressure to set up a curriculum and create an instructor's class for this. Looking at a two-year date. I have quibbles and hesitations. The essence is teaching to think for yourself. The second that becomes dogmatic you have failed catastrophically. It is also teaching people to stand up, alone, in fear... something I feel is countert-intuitive to a world of Instructors and Senior Instructors and certifications...

But you know, being afraid of failure is one crappy excuse. It's also about facing fears, so that's something I just have to do. More later.

Pockets

I expect this post will come off as esoteric and unfocused and confused-- but that's okay. I'm looking for answers to messy situations so I'd be a fool to expect clean answers.

"Pocket structure" has been coming up a lot. A little preamble:

1) You only get to use your killer self-defense skills when you are losing. If you are winning at the outset, you're probably the bad guy.

2) 'Losing' generally means that you are already hurt or injured, your structure is likely compromised, you may not be able to see, and the threat is in a position of his choice.

3) Threats aren't stupid (at least about this.) If he had any inkling that you might turn things around, he would have picked someone else. So expect him to be bigger and stronger. And it probably won't be his first rodeo.

4) None of the above applies to Monkey Dancing.

It's obvious that you need to work this scenario. You need to learn to hit hard from compromised structure and to deliver power to things that would normally be dead zones. Last post mentioned in passing a way to throw a good elbow to your rear flank.

Part of this is pocket structure. I think most martial artists have an idea of what structure is. It is the bone-to-bone connection between target and the ground. It doesn't generate power, but the better the structure, the less power is lost. Almost anyone can hit hard enough to do damage, but when you see the 240 pound power lifter who can't hit as hard as the 160 pound woman who has a little boxing training, structure is at least part of the reason.

Pocket structure practice is just putting yourself in bad structural position, like bent over with the threat pressing your head down and one side against a wall, and finding where you can align joints to still deliver power. This is one of the esoteric parts, hard to put into words: you find the arches instead of the lines that most people rely on with good range and you also tendon-hook to the back of the joints (that's what it feels like to me) instead of lining up the bones. That's pocket structure.

There are also pockets for power generation. You can use the Dempsey hip-twitch while lying flat on your back, mounted, and get almost your full power into a hook punch. It's just a matter of lifting your off hip an inch or two and then snapping it into the ground with your punch. It's creating a pocket of space so that you can generate power.

Pockets for mobility as well. I'm not nearly as flexible as I used to be, so it sucks when I try to demonstrate this, but Dave Sumner, my jujutsu sensei, had a full power high kick that he could use from the clinch without losing eye contact. It was a lead leg rear kick, so it hit like a mule. The key was clearing the off hip back and away to leave room for the chamber. A mobility pocket.

This, of course, got me thinking about pockets of time. One of the huge keys to defeating bigger and stronger people is to use time and information better than they do. Information first, since it doesn't directly (as far as I see right now) relate to pockets:

If you are outmatched physically, you must be significantly better at reading the situation than the other guy. If you are being blitzed, one of your few chances is to be able to read exactly what is really happening and how to use it. Someone grabs you from behind to slam your face into the pipe above the urinal you must be able to read where every bone in his body is and his current momentum and any shift in center of gravity that presages momentum change. You must be able to do this instantly. You have to know where every corner and hard object and reflective surface and slippery place you can use is located. All instantly.

You see why I consider blindfolded fighting to be a fundamental skill.

Back to pockets. You also need to be able to find or create pockets of time that you can use. Threat smashes your head into the pipe and pulls back to do it again... that instant, from contact through pull-back to centering to forward slam, is a tiny pocket of time where you are not taking damage and if you have the nerve and the skill, you can use it all.

Maybe. And this hits the essence of the teaching problem. I know this is possible. This is how I've done it and others have done it. When the math looks bad (Ralph jumped by an ambush artist, 20 years younger, stronger, faster) the ability to create and exploit time, to know what is really happening is the difference between walking away and not.

But can it be trained? I can show all the pieces. Let people play with and see how it works. Develop the skills and attributes. But when the shit hits the fan, it seems some people act and some don't. Most act with experience, but is that learning or just natural selection of a sort? Those that don't act either get injured or find another line of work.

If you are smarter, cooler, more aware and more efficient it makes up for a lot of size and strength. Those are the attributes you need to utilize most of the pocket concepts. But how many people can stay cool under assault? Or can you train it such that it is just a natural and obvious way to think and move?

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Leaving for Florida tomorrow. Hope to meet some of you in person there.

http://chirontraining.com/Site/OCT-Florida.html

Drop-Step

Since you asked...

Read this first, if you haven't already. It's the basics of how I teach power generation. The drop-step falls under the category of power stealing. It is very simple. It is also counter-intuitive and violates a lot of what martial artists are taught from day one.

The drop-step is as simple as falling. Ernie described it pretty well in the comments of the last post, but I glitched on some of the words, so here's my take.

Stand with your feet a little over shoulder-width apart. Lift one of your feet. You will fall. You will fall quick and hard with absolutely no telegraph. Most of you, especially trained martial artists, won't be able to do it.

We've all been taught from our first class to never, ever lose our balance. And so before we 'fall' we subtly shift our weight to one side before lifting the foot on the other side. That creates a telegraph and, because the Center of Gravity is now just barely out of the base, changes a violent fall to a slow topple.

If you can just lift the foot, nothing else, trusting to get it back under you before you land on your face, you will move with great speed, power, and no telegraph. That's freaking useful.

My training trick (because I'd been taught to always keep balance too) was to try to touch my left knee with my right foot as quick as I could. Or reverse the left/right. All same.

It's not a step. It's not a leap or a lunge. The effect you want is of a table that suddenly has two legs removed. Just fall.

You can add lunge dynamics to it, and that is one of the reason that fencers are so freaking fast. But the lunging leg adds after the fall. Other than the natural bend in the knees, you don't load the lunging leg. That's the telegraph and it slows you down. That lunging leg can also steer you a little.

Steering might be important because the natural direction of the drop-step is along your strong line, the line you get if you draw a line between your feet. You want that strong line pointing in a useful direction (towards the threat for impact damage, obliquely towards the threat for damage + position.)

You can also, for the record, go straight down by lifting both of your legs. There are times where that is very useful. The stupid-looking move of drawing fists to hips and dropping into horse stance is one of the few motions that can generate a lot of power (concentrated on an elbow thrust) to the rear flank dead zone.

All of your normal power generation, hip action or hip twitch, whip action, dead hand, ballistic, structured ballistic... whatever you do, can usually be stacked with a drop step for a big increase in power. When you hit, though (and this is another thing that contradicts some training) you want your attacking weapon to hit the bad guy just before your foot catches you. If the foot hits first or at the same time, that's a certain amount of kinetic energy going into the floor instead of the bad guy. In efficient. I think the emphasis on simultaneous impact of foot and hand is a side-effect of the influence of fencing. Pointy swords require very little kinetic energy to do damage.

Ernie's drill is good and I use it as well. Take a stance perpendicular (hips, feet and shoulders square) to a training partner. Have him throw linear strikes at your face. Fall out of the way. Gradually speed up. Once you are consistently falling out of the way, change the angle so that you are falling 45 degrees towards the threat, but still getting off line before the punch lands. Add a mirror block for insurance but do not rely on the block.

And if your training partner starts tracking your fall, have him target and shut his eyes before he punches.

Values in Sparring

This is a preview/think-out-loud for the print edition of "Drills" that should be out in 2012. The publisher wants added material, so that it can compete with the e-book version. That's fine. I'm going to add a section on sparring. Different types, different purposes.

The thing that hits me again and again about lots of drills is that what we are learning (or simply ingraining, creating a habit without any awareness) is rarely what we think we are learning. That's huge for instructors, too-- You may not be teaching what you think you are. There's a video out of some instructors 'woofing,' screaming horrible, rude things in student's (largely women) faces. The instructors are certain they are conditioning women to the emotional context of an attack. But the women are practicing, rep after rep, letting a threatening individual invade their space, take a position of physical and psychological dominance, and the women practice doing nothing.

Sparring, at any level, is a special case. Humans mistake intensity for truth. Things that trigger bigger reactions- fear or anger or exultation- simply feel more real than than the drudgery of day to day. In almost any given martial art, sparring is the most intense training methodology and feels 'more real' than any other exercise. Humans rarely question such a natural feeling. Most have never had their roulette table moment.

That means that any bad habits learned by sparring are learned deeply. And there must be bad habits. The essence of martial arts is the manufacture of cripples and corpses. If you have never crippled or killed anyone in training either what you do doesn't work or, more likely, you have also learned flaws with every drill. Those flaws are critical in any live training. Never forget that you are practicing at least as many reps of not hurting people as you are of hurting people.

Sparring is not a fight simulation. Maybe most types of sparring are intended that way and certainly people believe that they are, but the math doesn't work. At some point two oiled-up guys in speedos of the same weight getting together face to face without weapons at an appointed place (without obstacles) and time to work under an agreed set of restrictions somehow became 'reality fighting.' It's not, and if you feel a need to defend it as "as real as it gets" take a deep breath and think for a second.

So lets start there. MMA contact sparring/competition. It covers a lot of skills and it is pretty damn effective at what it does-- which is prepare you for MMA competition. I don't think that's it's real purpose, though. The real purpose is deeper than that. There has been a long evolution of coming up with the best venue for testing ourselves. Boxing and wrestling always tested the essence of manhood-- strength and speed and endurance and toughness and smarts. By making it broader, MMA added an incredibly valuable level of mental flexibility. MMA deepened how far you can go with strategy. At higher levels all contact sports are strategy sports. MMA took that to a new level. If you want to find out who you really are, MMA is the way.

There is lots in there that applies to self-defense. Same with any of the contact martial sports. People who get hit regularly have a huge advantage over people that don't (until the concussions start to add up.) People who actually hit moving targets are way ahead of people who hit air. The fact that it hurts... damn, people, fighting hurts. It shouldn't be a revelation to anyone. And pain is a great motivator to train harder.

It's good training, but it predicates on bad strategy-- equal people, weapons, techniques, location, no surprise. All that jazz. If this is your gig, be sure to spend some time working solutions when you give the opponent 50 pounds of weight advantage and your back. It can be done, it has been done. But if (again) you have this urge to come up with excuses about why it is impossible, you've confused the game (MMA) with the solution.

Similar stuff goes for all the heavy contact stuff. Boxers are formidable fighters because they are used to taking and giving hits. There is something fundamentally fucked up in martial arts if being 'used to taking and giving hits' is special. That's the natural environment of a fight, people. That said, there is also something fundamentally screwed up about a fighting style that has its own fracture. When boxers do use their skills in real life far too often their hands are shattered. Outside of the safety equipment (tape and gloves) the essential weapon of boxing is more likely to hospitalize or cripple the guy using it than the guy it is used on. That's a whoops. What does boxing develop? Courage, and that is huge.

Moving and controlling a body is one of the core skills of fighting. You will learn this in a grappling art (especially one with throws) better than anywhere else. It is huge and important. It makes everything else easier ("Position before submission!") Good grapplers/throwers will also teach you much of what you need to know to handle bigger and stronger people, especially if they are old-school enough to practice without weight classes. Definitely spend some time here... but it is not fighting. In a fight, moving and controlling a body is intended for another purpose, like escape or disabling. In order to get really good at grappling, people often forget the context-- bad guys and weapons and obstacles and "Why am I here?"

As a general rule, if your grappling changes a lot when the other guy has a knife, you were probably a little too caught up in the game side. Or, to phrase it another way: If you grapple differently when the threat has a knife you were probably doing it wrong when he didn't.

And then straight non- or controlled-contact kumite. This was the big epiphany in Minnesota, at least as regards sparring. Marc has a drill he calls the 3-2-1. I will probably misrepresent it here. For the pure version, work with him. But my understanding (or misunderstanding) is damn useful, so here it is:

There are ranges and positions where someone can stand and hit you without any telegraph. The threat has to be in range (drop-step exception) and have their limbs in certain positions. This is a code red thing, or what Marc calls "1". The bad guy can hit you in one motion.

For the most part that's not true. Even in range, most positions require you to shift your center of gravity (CoG) before delivering power (again, there is an exception for the drop step. I love the drop step). Marc calls this a "two". It will take two motions, a precursor and the attack itself, to do you any harm.

"Three" means the threat has to change his foot position (and the drop step, in certain positions turns all three to a one... very cool) as well as shift CoG.

I spent a lot of time in close proximity to very bad people. More than a few commented on how relaxed I was. It's powerful. Relaxation can be disconcerting, it makes the criminal think that you know something he doesn't. This was why I could do that. Not only could I tell if the bad guy could reach me, I knew, in advance, exactly what he would have to do or where he would have to shift his center in order to attack. I knew when I was safe and I knew exactly what to watch for should the threat try to move.

These are critical skills in point sparring. Minor, maybe, and nothing like what I though I was learning (timing and strategy and ...) But killer skills in the real world.

It Was Sort of Awesome

Just got back from the Secret Giant Violence-Prone Play Group. Very cool.

First, the concept behind the VPPG:

KJ and I started ours a year or two ago. The original notice is here:

http://chirontraining.com/Site/VPPG.html

I've had a few people ask about joining who aren't from around here, which won't work really well. Here's the deal, and the format. Nothing is written in stone, so if you decide to form one, do it your way.

There comes a point in everyone's life/career where they should start running out of instructors, or at least start running into questions that the available people can't answer. It happens in every science, and that is how science keeps growing. Everyone, if you've been doing martial arts for a while, should have a 'mystery': "What are the principles behind X?" "What are my options if..." "Does technique Y or drill Q really help? What is it really teaching/ingraining?" "How do I teach ____?"

Stuff like that, and even more. If you don't have questions you might be in your comfort zone. Or brainwashed. Or maybe dead. If all of your questions can be answered by your available resources, you need to get out more. That's my opinion.

So the idea behind the original VPPG was to get together people we respect from the widest variety of backgrounds possible. Not a lot of people-- any group that is willing to play at that level will be pretty small. We get together when schedule allows (rarely, right now, since two of the other key members have regular jobs and I'm traveling most weekends).

The format goes like this, "Kevin, what are you working on?"

"Well, I've been trying to figure out how to..."

Then we all brainstorm it.

Then we go bang. Pressure test. Scenario. What-if. Levels of contact matter because there are some things that can only be evaluated at certain levels of contact... so it has to be a group that we trust for everything from judgment to contact to first-aid skills.

When we are all good and sweaty, and maybe have some insights or (gasp!) answers, we go back to the circle and the next person kicks out a question.

Question, brainstorm, bang. That simple.

R&M (we never really discussed how secret the secret VPPG last weekend would be, so I won't use names) asked me months ago if I could set up a perfect VPPG, who would I want?

Two very different reality instructors. Two top eclectic practitioners. Two weapons guys. Two super-traditional.*

M offered a venue, R pressured me to set a date...and with about two months lead time, I sent out invitations. The group of eight I envisioned was a group of five. Which isn't bad for the phenomenally busy people that were invited.

Two days and nights in a remote piece of northern California. Hikes, shooting, brawling and brainstorming. It was sort of awesome. I got to play a little and talk extensively with someone I've admired for a long time. Got to look at the thought process behind his teaching (for almost everyone, how and why they teach is far more valuable to me than what they teach.)

Played flow. Brainstormed operator problems, and having operators and martial artists there made for an interesting synergy because each worked really hard to make sure the other side understood the underlying problems. Got called on some of my own bullshit, "You say it's a bad habit to practice moving straight back and yet you love fencing. Isn't that pretty linear?" Touche.

I think everyone left with pages of notes, plans, new ideas. Some got answers and I think everyone found a blindspot or two.

So my legs are sore, face sunburned, and a new scratch is scabbing nicely. Very nice.

*Which is another blindspot. I have access to some pretty extraordinary sport MAs and it never occurred to me to add two of them. Hmmmmm.

Obsolete Technique

Used to be, back in the day, (imagine a reedy, old-man voice) we sometimes had to go in on combative inmates without weapons or armor.

For whatever reason, you had to pull a guy out of his cell. Used to be for any disciplinary reason: he was tearing things up or making so much noise the other inmates couldn't sleep. Nowadays, we would just let them vent. In order to be a Threat, a person must have Intent, Means and Opportunity to hurt you. Going into the cell would give Opportunity, the third element. We would be responsible for making him a danger. So only self-harm (for which there is always Opportunity) really justifies entering.

So the tactical problem, back in the day, was that you would have to go into a concrete cell through a standard (except for the steel reinforcing-- standard sized) doorway. On an inmate who can see you clearly, is completely prepared for you, may have weapons, sometimes made armor out of blankets and occasionally soaped the floor. Commonly in a boxing stance just inside the door.

Even in Corrections, at least in our system, this is an obsolete problem. But before the Team and pinning shields, when no one was allowed to carry OC (pepper spray) or Tasers, it both common and dangerous. An unarmed or semi-unarmed classic 'funnel of death' problem. Only one person could go through the door at a time...

It's obsolete even for Corrections. Enforcement always had force options available, so this never was an issue. For citizens, there is no intelligent reason to close the distance on someone who is prepared to fight you. That makes it a remarkably useless technique, but technique isn't the point. It's all the nuances that made it work that apply to everything.

What follows is the first actual technique I came up with as a DT instructor. Sgt. Gatzke presented the problem.

It's simple, really. Hands up, non-threatening, you approach while talking. As you get to the Critical Distance Line you drop-step hard and fast, forward and very slightly off-line to his lead side, pass/parry the lead hand and voila, you are at his flank or behind him, out of the danger zone and with a plethora of options.

Approaching, hands up and non-threatening. Hands are in some version of the Fence (as described by Al Peasland who learned it from Geoff Thompson). Lots of people screw this up. If you look angry or tense, like you are ready to fight, not only will the threat have a better chance of clocking you when you make your move, the tension will slow you down. You must carry yourself like you believe talking will defuse the situation.

The second killer little detail is that you must walk unnaturally. Humans are direct-register animals, like cats. When the left foot goes forward, the right hand goes forward. In this instance, your right side moves together. Done fluidly enough, I've never had a threat notice.

As you get to the critical distance line. You must be able to read exactly when the Threat can reach you. Most of the ones I've used this on seemed to have boxing backgrounds and I needed to know exactly when I was coming in range for the jab. You had to be able to read when any shift in feet or center of gravity altered the critical distance line or loaded a different limb.

You must time it so that you will cross the Critical Distance Line with the mirror side. If the Threat is in a left lead, you must cross the CDL with your right hand and foot. That makes the distance for your drop-step and parry as short as possible. Short distance makes for better speed.

And you must be smooth. If you try to adjust your footing on the way in, the walk will be unnatural and the Threat will know something is up. You can't stutter-step or skip to get to the CDL with the right foot forward.

While talking. Sort of. You also want to judge the distance and speed of approach such that when you cross the CDL, the Threat is talking. Not critical, I've made this work on a number of Threats who were stone silent and watchful. But if you can get him talking there will be an additional delay, just a fraction of a second, before he figures out what is going on. For that matter, look at everything going on in this technique and see how much of it is about shaving fractions of seconds. Talking guys have slower reflexes.

Drop-step. A good drop-step is an incredible power and speed multiplier. Unless you can throw yourself to your feet from a push-up one handed, you fall harder than your arms can hit. Because gravity is always on, there is no delay and no natural telegraph. Unless you screw it up with hesitation movements or weird breathing or something, you will be moving before the threat sees, and probably finished moving before he can react.

The drop step is slightly off line. You don't want to fall into him or into his punch. You fall (and can add a fencer's lunge for more distance but DO NOT sacrifice the drop step and surprise by loading the lunge) to just outside his lead foot. The angle takes you off line of jabs and crosses. The drop tends to protect you from high hooks and roundhouse punches. Low hook you would have seen coming from his hand position at the start.

The drop step has to be practiced, by the way, and I've seen some very odd things called drop steps.

Pass/parry his lead hand. I learned it as the mirror block decades ago. Hard to describe in print. Basically, both open hands make part of a circle. The lead (right hand for this example) has the palm to the left and comes from belly button to ear, ending with the back of the hand right near the left ear. The left hand, palm facing right, follows from the other rim of the circular action.

You don't block. Ideally, your drop-step was just enough out of line that the punch, if it happens, missed with no contact. The mirror block is just a form of insurance, with the added benefit that that the left hand will come in contact with the leverage point at the distal end of the humerus. Especially if you have practiced forearm rolls, you will have the leverage and power to completely turn even a much larger man.

Oh, and trained karate guys tend to screw this up because they point their fingers up like a shuto block, which costs them four inches compared to the far more comfortable technique known as a handshake.

This all puts you in his dead zone, that special place on the rear flank where it is very difficult for him to apply power. You have force options ranging from a simple off-balancing push (or an ear-splitting scream I guess, if you want a very low force option) through spine controls, joint locks, damaging and crippling strikes all the way up to lethal force.

Again, don't nut up on the technique. It's obsolete anyway. Just as in breaking two fighters apart there is a lot more to think about than just the technique. How people walk naturally and how to exploit that. The need to train your eye for reading range and balance shifts. Application of gravity for speed. How communication affects reaction time. Lots of stuff.

Minnesota Mini-Debrief

First of all, it was a great week. Eight days of training, 10-12 hour days except for one (that was just eight). Except for ConCom, this was the first time Kasey, Marc and I have watched each other teach our material.

Even ConCom we split and did solo. Marc and I have done a few ConCom classes each over the last year and we usually talk afterwards. It's become really apparent that we get different questions from our students. Questions coming up are a sign that something is being missed. If one instructor is getting the questions, there is something in the presentation that is less clear... so it was a good chance to watch each other talk and see what and why.

Couple of things deserve whole posts:

True value in sparring (found it!) More convinced than ever that a lot of training paradigms are crappy for what we think they are and really, really good at developing abilities we aren't even aware of.

Pre- and post-internet language and instruction. Touched on this before, but a few things have to come together to get useful insight in certain areas. Not a lot of people in any given area have a complete package. Even fewer, before the internet, wrote anything down. That's created a network of private languages and theories for similar observation. Interestingly, it's also created an etiquette that feels natural to the people raised with it.

The ConCom issues are big, even and maybe especially in teaching. Saw excellent examples of that.

Symbiotic adversaries. Take two longevity-oriented groups who have their identities based on being enemies. Neither side can ever 'win' without losing. Neither can let the other win. Even when they agree, they must highlight the differences...

Do some things need to be taught? Or is just playing with the ideas better?

And maybe a technique post, an obsolete thing that I teach because of everything that goes into making it work.

There was more. Kasey could apply the body mechanics of sword to take-downs in a tactical entry because body mechanics don't change. We used different words but all three of us talked about structure and motion and core, smooth versus staccato or explosive, damage versus pushing or unbalancing. 'Gifts' became common shorthand. My esoteric sounding 'big wave' body mechanics are exactly the same as Marc's "It's just exactly like puking, bro." Make the connections.

DTs taught in coordination with force law and local policies. Knives the way bad guys learn them. Brainstorming each class of violence from the point of view of the perpetrator. We even got some range time. Five inch pattern at seven yards. I am way out of practice.

East Coast Good News

Jeff Burger ("All it takes is all you got"), after years of teaching in other people's schools, has finally opened his own. It's in Peabody, MA (which is pronounced sort of like pibedy there).

This makes me happy and this is the big news I've been sitting on since I was in Boston, patiently (ha!) waiting for the official announcement.

Jeff is part of my ECBT (East Coast Brain Trust), one of a handful of people I go to for reality checks, advice and ego control. It's a pleasure to drink coffee with someone with such deep experience. Jeff stories: Once upon a time, a young karate kid decided to try kungfu, but it was right at the beginning of the kungfu craze and he was observant enough to notice that all the new kungfu schools were just new signs on old karate schools. "Hmmmm, what to do?" he thought. It seemed logical that he must go to China.

So he learned some Cantonese (completely wrong dialect for where he was going) and went. His first exposure was one of the tourist trap, state-run schools. It struck him as suspiciously easy. So he picked the best instructors and asked where they had trained...and he wound up in a far more dingy, far less comfortable training center with very few tourists and tons of hard work. He loved it.

Then he got curious and did the same thing in Thailand to learn Muay Thai. Again, not at one of the resorts pretending to be a school. At the place where the poor kids hoping to break out of poverty and into a little fortune and fame trained to give and take a beating.

So, in Jeff, you've got a guy who can and has taught pro MMA fighters how to improve their strikes and clinch work...and he can also teach stuff like rope dart and iron fan. And tai chi, but I hear he's looking for a yoga instructor to rent some time in his building. Evidently he can't teach that. Yet. If he decides to, he'll probably feel compelled to go to India.

Two other things. He's a former bad guy. Not super bad, but he's spent enough time in that strata that much of the bullshit in self-defense training won't get past his filters. When he teaches SD he is teaching how to deal with someone the way he used to be, how to deal with predators that he knows very well.

Last thing- unlike yours truly, Jeff teaches kids, and he (and Jess) are good with them. He's run a non-profit for years to get MA classes to kids who can't afford them (or, I guess, technically, to get the kids to the classes, but you know what I mean.)

He credits martial arts with giving him a reason not to become a criminal. He uses the K.I.C.K. program to pay that forward.

"Hi" From Minnesota

At some point I have every intention of getting some sleep.

Swords with Kasey yesterday, a nice class showing the physics of sword and how that applies to takedowns (primarily) and other aspects of force. It was a blast, and I always like playing in the gray areas between my training and someone else's-- especially someone who is good that I absolutely respect. Got to bang with western sword as well, a little.

Today, taught ConCom to a group of (primarily) LEOs. Seemed to go well. Actually it seemed to go very well and cops tend to be a tough audience, but I never think my teaching is good enough. Hopefully that will be incentive to always improve.

Tomorrow I get to watch Marc teach his "Martial Mechanics" class for the first time. Later in the week, high- and low-level defensive tactics (Me); edged weapons (Marc); Environmental fighting (Me)... some other little classes as well as a day on the range with the local SWAT. Lots of stuff. Not so much sleep.

And good talks, too. Kasey is one of the (despite his age, he's relatively young) old-school tactical operators. Work hard, laugh much, keep the world safe. Have a cigar and some nice scotch when you can look around and your part of the world is safe... Surrounds himself with good people as well.

Still some class times available:

http://chirontraining.com/Site/Home.html

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Lots of comments on the last post. Too tired and rushed to review them all, but I want to make sure that the point is not lost: Size (strength, speed, ferocity...anything you can name) does matter. But it's not a binary thing and never has been. 'Matter' does not mean the same as "If you have more X than I do, life is hopeless." And it's not just harder or easier. It changes more than that, sideways things.

It changes the value of evasion.

It changes the relative value of the principle of conservation of momentum.

It changes the importance of environmental fighting.

It reorganizes the relative values of the MPDS paradigm from Meditations.

Lots of stuff. You can't fight big guys the way you fight small guys. It's a different problem. In friendly matches with friends I think the most weight I've ever given up and won was about 240 pounds. Only around 100 with real criminals. Ergo, I have some confidence that it can be done... but I also know damn well that I would have failed in those matches or fights if I'd tried to go toe to toe. I've also been surprised by a very, very good MMA kid who used a technique on me that a bigger man could not physically have done (If you're reading this, Joey L. that was awesome).

If you are studying with someone who gets his feedback from sport with weight classes, not only might you not learn the techniques, mindset or principles that have to be emphasized when fighting, defending from or attacking a bigger person, you won't even be exposed to the concepts. And if you aren't careful, you might wind up in a weird state of denial.

Big and Bad

This is one of the things that is so obvious I sometimes don't mention it at all. It only comes up when someone says something about fighting different sizes and the only way to get to that conclusion is to miss this point...and that's weird, because I don't think you can miss this point. I believe that you must choose to be willfully and actively blind to miss it.

You don't fight very large people and very small people the same. It's an entire galaxy of reasons, from differing legal justifications (very unlikely that the force you need to stop an angry 100 kilo guy is the same force you need to stop an angry 40 kilo guy) to different angles (a foot difference in shoulder hight is a foot difference in the origin of all the hand strike attack angles) to different dead zone sizes and different access to the dead zones. The threat's lever arms are different lengths and the mass you need to control with those lever arms can vary widely.

It's not just that you take the skills in your weight class and take on someone three weight classes up and do your stuff harder or better or more. The things that work are qualitatively different.

Take the elbow leverage point, (what Al Arsenault calls, "the magic place"). At around my weight class I can reliably control the threat's entire upper body. Someone smaller, unless they have extraordinary rooting, I can get absolute control with one hand. But on an immensely strong or big threat, it takes all my structure to turn or to prevent him from turning and the wonderful control technique buys me time to get to someplace else and do something else.

And that's not all. If I have the edge in size and strength, I can work the elbow point with unidirectional power-- just push where I need the threat's shoulder (and then spine and pelvis) to go. With the super strong, I tend to shock-stop it and wait for the recovery power I know is coming and use that.

We all know this. If you have any exposure to judo at all you know that some throws are very difficult to make work against some body types, and some may be difficult depending on your own body type. Full-entry hip throws work great short-and-stocky versus tall-and-lanky but are hard to work the other way. The momentum throws tend to work great against strong, aggressive people in a fight, but not very well in matches at all.

Simple and obvious things-- whether you go over the humerus or under it to turn a body at close range is a matter of comparative height. So is the efficiency of working the back of the neck versus the chin. Head hunting on someone a foot or more taller is completely different (and loses a lot of efficiency).

There's more going on than just size or strength, or even just the threat's size and strength for that matter... but it's still one of those things so obvious that it might be missed.

Crabs in a Pot

The bad thing with any major life change is that circumstances conspire to prevent you from changing. That's how it seems, anyway. One of the reasons so few people really change, even when they are living a life with a definite expiration date, is that they stay in the same environment with the same people.

You decide to change profoundly and give up crime and drugs... how do you think your druggy criminal friends will respond to that? We all know it's harder to give up any bad habit, like smoking, when we spend time with people that smoke.

One friend uses the analogy of crabs in a crabpot. If one did figure out how to climb free, the others would pull him back. Changing your life affects the homeostasis of all those around you. Maybe they don't want to live with the constant reminder that if you can change so could they. Maybe it's darker and they want you to fail so that the part of the brain that's afraid of all change can point to you as an example and keep from trying at all. Maybe...

But there are other crabs in your own mind, things that pull you back. I'm watching two people right now that have made huge gains and it looks to me like they are about to lose it all. That's what has me thinking. But in small ways, we all self-sabotage to prevent change, including success. Some write and don't publish. Everyone has great ideas that they don't try to produce (why have I never got around to substituting the peanuts in a Snickers bar for coffee beans and sold them on college campuses?)

Everyone, with just a few minutes thinking can come up with a plan to make life better. Profoundly better. Almost none will ever write down the plan or execute the steps. Those that do have found a pair of super-powers, planning and execution. But most won't. Crabs in the head hold them back. "That's for special people, not you." "You'd just fail anyway, it would be better not to try."

The crabs in our head hold us back with whispers, not claws.

Simple Brutality, Brutal Simplicity

The title is a quote from Kris Wilder.

Another thought from the week of insane business:

Fighting is complicated and hard and can take quite some time to learn.

Hurting, damaging, injuring, killing (whatever level of harm you wish to invoke) is relatively easy, and often the matter of a simple decision.

If you and I were standing in arms reach you could take me out.  Orientation wouldn't matter-- standing side by side on the deck or walking past each other or sitting on the bus.  If size and strength were too disparate, you simply employ a tool.  All provided you could simply decide and act.

Most can't.  Physically, most people have a host of precursor motions and telegraphs and intention signals.  Mentally, it's not enough to simply have a good reason.  Most people need a justification as well (killing someone to protect yourself or your children is a reason.  "Because he was a bad guy" or "He was a piece of shit" are justifications.)  Killing animals 'for food' is reason enough.  We don't need to be angry, don't need to convince ourselves that the animal is bad. Socially, most people must go through steps as the conflict escalates, must seek hooks so that they can blame their own violence on the victim.

And so we have a tendency to kill animals, but to fight humans.  And everything about fighting is inefficient.  Bullshit dominance games played out physically.

And so, for self-defense, you don't 'fight off' an attacker.  You hurt him.  You make him pay.  If necessary, you kill him.  But you don't fight.  He's a human too, and may have needed both a reason and a justification and all that jazz... which meant he wouldn't have picked you if he had any concerns about winning the fight.  Work on conditioning and skill.  They will never harm you.  They will take you off the target list for many predators.

But if you, or your students, are on that list, the skills needed are qualitatively different than simply being a good fighter.  You need to know how to break a human being (the easy part) and you need to be able to make the simple decision to do so.  Not fantasize about the decision, not imagine your heroics.  Simply decide and act.

1234

"1234" was our code word for mentally ill or emotionally disturbed. Crazy. "I've got a twelve thirty-four..." We used to joke that their should be a "Two-four-six-eight" for the ones that were twice as crazy as usual.

Sometimes, teaching a Conflict Communications course, one of the students will be in a Mental Health field and will ask about dealing with the mentally ill, or a cop will ask about dealing with someone in extreme emotional crisis.  THat was my job for a long time.  There are techniques and stuff to know and ways to talk... but most of what I learned came from an attitude.

I admired these guys.  Understand that I was working with severely mentally ill people in a jail.  Mental illness is one thing.  Some (but not all) were also pure criminals.  Most, outside of the jail, were homeless.  How many people do you know, including yourself, that could handle being homeless?  Could figure out where to get food and shelter and clothes and the occasional shower?

Add to that that you can't even trust your own mind.  Not all of the things you see and hear are real.  You are sometimes compelled to do things you don't want to do or can't force yourself to do things you need to do...

"I know Sarge, I do better on meds and I'm happier when I'm on meds, but I can't make myself want to take them..."

And these guys (and gals) survived.  They didn't thrive, not by any stretch of the definition, but they survived.  Would I?  Dumpster diving and hustling would be hard enough, coming from my old-school pioneer stoic background (Stoics suck at panhandling) but not knowing if the person I was begging from was even real?

Every time I looked at the inmates in the Mental Health units, every time I was tempted to look down on them or feel superior, all I had to do was look at the other officers or counselors or nurses or myself and wonder if we would even have survived.

Same with criminals, and this is a weirder line to cross.  There are many, many violent criminals, some extremely depraved, that I got along well with.  To put it another way, there were a few that I would play chess with and listen to their problems and even counsel that I would shoot without hesitation if I saw them near my children.  As people, I got along with them. As predators, my job was to stop them cold.  It wasn't an either/or thing.  Both.  At all times.

Most, at least most of the ones I knew, were raised to be criminals.  Daddy a drug dealer and pimp, mommy a drug addict and whore.  Extended family and many friends and some of the neighborhood similar.  Sometimes you wanted to bang your head.  What was the rite of passage in your family/group to be a 'real man'?  First deer?  First time getting laid?

For one family I knew from jail, it was prison.  Not jail, jail didn't count. "Hard time" a violent felony and more than a year sentence were prerequisites to being a man.  They couldn't wait until they were eighteen and it became a possibility...

Raised in this environment, some profoundly antisocial things made sense.  Lying was constant, since giving up information in that environment was unsafe.  Trust is stupid.  Intimidation is fine but showing anger? When you felt anger you showed a smiley face and got a weapon.

Like a lot of officers, I don't believe in rehabilitation.  We simply haven't seen it work.  You raise a violent criminal's self-esteem he gets more, not less, violent.  I have enough background in psychology to be able to tell how individual studies were fudged.

But sometimes I think we made a difference.  When someone who had been raised to lie and con as the only effective ways, short of violence, to get what he wanted would start the long story and we'd say, "Eddy, you don't need to hustle me.  Tell me what you want and if it's within the rules, no problem.  You don't have to work so hard."

I don't know how many, if any, really changed.  But showing someone raised in the criminal subculture that there was sometimes a better way, that sometimes they could get what they want without lying, without pissing people off, that there was an effective solution that was safer...

They had never learned, growing up, that sometimes it was safe and effective just to ask.  That away from their family and friends and subculture people being out to screw you was the exception instead of the norm.

So, I don't think I ever rehabilitated anyone.  But teaching a few that there were less damaging ways that were safe and effective may have been small steps to habilitating a few.

"You can't rehabilitate someone who was never habilitated in the first place."-- Don't remember who said it, one of my instructors two decades ago.

Packed

A lot of writing to catch up on, especially here, but I need a little debrief and decompress first.

Sitting in Logan Airport with a coffee and some precious free moments.

Two days of filming. Part done in Club 58, Jamie's place, where we played scenarios last year, part at the YMAA kwoon in Jamaica Plain. Some really nice people and excellent martial artists showed up to help, and Nick stopped by to say 'Hi.'

It was hectic and the days were way more exhausting than they should have been. Not sure why, it was basically teaching, but I was pretty drained every night. It might have been exhaustion from the night-flight out (no real good sleep this week, that always seemed secondary to spending time with friends I don't see enough). It might have been the choppiness, as things were paused so the cameras could be fed and cared for. It might simply be because shooting order is different than the logical progression of teaching. You need to shoot all the scenes you can without moving lights or cameras, then move them and shoot all you can with the new orientation...

Or a combination. David Silver was great to work with and from everything I hear, he is a genius with editing and production. That's outstanding, since I am completely ignorant. One of the martial artists who showed up to assist, Teja Van Wicklen, has training and experience in video production and she seemed impressed. Frankly, I wouldn't know good if it bit me on the ass.

The videos will be released by YMAA and the working titles are "Facing Violence" and "The Logic of Violence." I'll keep you posted.

Two days of that then an evening/night drive to NYC. With a GPS that decided to send us in circles on the bridges between NY and NJ.

Followed by one long but fantastic day brawling on a rooftop with a small group of mostly strangers. It was a blast. Since the group was so small and familiar with the books, I did it private lesson format: "What do you want to work on? Dealer's choice."

Groups, fighting the mind, weapons, coaching the one-step and a really quick run-through of Conflict Communications.

That evening, Afghani food followed by scotch and conversation on a deck in Weehawken, NJ in a very light rain. The deck looked over NYC with an incredible view and was attached to a beautifully restored 3-bedroom apartment that happens to be for rent...

Then up in the morning and a train back to Boston. On the train, we met the rudest, funniest person. When we asked to sit in the only paired unoccupied seats opposite her she actually sniffed (not the snooty sniff, but inhaling, like a dog seeing if we smelled clean enough to be in her world) and turned away.

It got worse from there and it was so hard not to laugh. I did giggle a little.

Mike and Tia and two of their friends invited me to Oktoberfest, so it was arrive in Boston, dump things off at J&J's apartment (and if you wonder why they aren't in the story so far I was almost never with them, but they do have some great news that I can't divulge until they do. No, it's not that.) Then to the meeting place. Got there a little early so had a snack, then the big meet-up for the Sam Adam's Okoberfest. OMG. Crowds. Beer. Polka music. It was like hell but with a worse dress code.

I came of age in the microbrew capital of the world. Sam Adams is good beer compared to... PBR and Bud and Coors and that's about it. Even given that, I don't like beer that much. Four free pints of not very good beer came with admission. Yay. And crowds. Drunk crowds. And dumb little trivia games- for weird little fake felt hats. And pretzel tossing. And polka music. Oh. dear. god. polka music. It must take a gene to appreciate that. Or more beer than I was willing to drink. It was also deafening loud and I think no more than six songs played over and over again.

I really want to know this-- who plays the accordian? I can see some little kid forced to play against his will, but when he grows up and moves away and his parents die... he still plays? In public?

It sounds horrible, but hanging with this group, horrible can be fun. The best part was talking about dark thoughts with... a certain person who will go nameless. But thanks, M, you made the night.

Then too short sleep with enough bad beer on board to keep one farting all night and off to the seminar. Which was held in a venue that googlemaps indicated was at the bottom of a lake. Half-hour late to my own gig, which wasn't too bad because everyone else was too.

It went well, a good, sweaty day. Intelligent questions, hard players. We skipped counter-assault in favor of Plastic Mind. Not sure if it was a good call, but some people really made progress with some of the plastic mind exercises.

Dinner with M&T and some fantastic people watching. We were competing to try to guess details and back up our observations on couples: first date? Long-term relationship? Hook up? Stresses? What are those two complaining about?

Then to T's to wash clothes and sleep (done far too late to go back to J&J's)

Slept in until seven, the longest sleep all week, and then up and deliver the Conflict Communications talk. I think it blew some people away. I also saw some people get very uncomfortable on certain parts... which is good. Emotions are signs the limbic system is stepping and you may want to see where that is coming from.

Then, for the last night in town, dinner at a Brazilian BBQ (which I love, but we passed a place that had Iraqi kebabs and I had a sudden stab of what can only be called homesickness) and narghilah at Habibi's Hookah Lounge.

Home in less than twelve hours.

The week has been packed.

Time to Breathe

Just for a few days, of course.

The last (hopefully) revision is done on "A Citizen's Guide to Police Use of Force" which will be released under the title "Force Decisions" early next year.  The scene list for the videos is written, submitted, and approved.

Filming starts Tuesday in Boston.  A one-day small class in NYC Thursday, then an Intro class and ConCom in the Boston area the weekend of the 10th and 11th and then back home.  Nothing pressing, nothing on deadline...

Except for the Minnesota week-long gig at the end of the month with Marc and Kasey.

But aside from that, a little time to think.  To work on some projects that have slipped to the B-list.  Do some long-overdue house and land maintenance.  Put a dent into the two-foot tall "to read" file.

On the B-List projects-

The e-book for talking down EDPs

Editing Tim's manuscript, which will involve a long talk with his widow, I think

Proof-reading my wife's latest opus

Write the last of a series of articles for Concealed Carry Magazine

Shooting and gathering pictures for several projects

Working on the expanded print version of "Drills"

Taking a stab at putting "Logic of Violence" down on paper

Magically, some of these will move to the a-list.

I might even find some time to blog.

Edge of the Blade

On one level, there are few things as obsolete as medieval sidearms. Whether kobudo or iai or fencing, sword attacks, much less sword fights have become pretty damn rare. Which might make it seem a pretty silly thing to study. Combined with my general attitude about dueling training being applied to self-defense, you might expect an automatic rejection.

Can't do it. There are some things you can learn from the edge of the blade that get sloppy and take too long any other way. Also, especially in Western weapons, there are centuries of people working out very carefully efficient ways to kill and not be killed.

Maija (and Jake and Mac) got me thinking about this. What follows is a mix-- big things and little things. Don't waste time looking for a theme. And a caveat: I've trained and played with swords and other weapons extensively. I've even slaughtered livestock with swords... but I've never been in a sword fight. Take everything that follows with the appropriate amount of salt.

Margin of error:

Dealing with a sword, there really isn't a margin of error. Unarmed you can afford to make far more mistakes, give yourself more time. You take a glancing blow to the head or someone tags your upper arm with a fist and it's not a big deal. Bladed weapons force you to think in a more demanding way.

Weapons teach distancing faster and better than unarmed:

You need to be able, at a glance to tell from build, grip, foot position and weapon if the threat can reach you. Exactly how his range changes with shifts of footing, grip or center of gravity. You can predict the 'tells' you need to watch for when and if the threat decides to develop range. It's a critical skill with weapons and the cool thing is that it translates. After getting ranging with weapons down, unarmed range assessment is even easier.

You learn not to waste time or motion:

Related to 'no margin of error.' A sword fight is won or lost in fractions of seconds and fractions of inches. If the person is going to miss you by the tiniest of margins, you don't waste effort or time in motion. You never parry even an inch more than you absolutely have to. Unarmed fighting allows for a lot more slop.

It requires (and thus develops) commitment:

There's no way you can hit someone without being close enough to be hit back. Or maybe hit first. But we've all been hit enough to know it really isn't a big deal. With a blade? Any decisive action means you are close enough to be killed or maimed. Every time you engage you are betting your life on your skill, your speed and your ability to read what is truly happening.

Strategy:

This is specialized, maybe, but by truly limiting the weapon, strategy comes to the fore. Unarmed we can get by forever on tricks. Given just hand strikes, foot strikes, take-downs, locks, gouges, strangles, head-butts and slamming I can keep shifting between the options and force you to play catch-up, or find the one that you haven't experienced before. Limit it to just one class of tool (hand strikes in boxing, for instance) and it forces the skill to go up another level. t changes from tricks to tactics and then, maybe even strategy. Dealing with just a point (foil or epee) and limiting offense and defense to the same tool in the same hand pushed a deeper understanding of all the elements of strategy: timing and distancing and psychology and...

All of these things, and there are more, inform and improve your unarmed skill. They change the way you see and think.

Things Change

Talking with the Doc last night. About a lot of things, training and the past and connections and places been and things done. He observed, (or maybe it was me, doesn't matter) that when we were young, we were shaped by 'perfect days' which usually included adventure and often danger. The big learning, the cool things, the events that shaped us were defined by discomfort and risk, challenge and the unknown.

That's still there, that will always be there. You find out stuff on the edges, find out who you can be. In comfort, 'you' becomes sort of a compromise. Not sure I can find the right word.

As we get older some of the best memories are of quiet times with good people. Talk or silence. Sharing with or without words. Sometimes with a great view and a fine meal. Sometimes in a dingy office in Baghdad eating strawberry jam and processed cheese spread on flat bread.

The August Babies party was the same. Good food and a plethora of fine scotch... but I was looking forward all day to listening to stories around the fire. Old stories and new. The things the old timers thought were important and the things that excited the kids. Brand new stories and stories many of us knew by heart. Competing versions of the same stories or commentary by the others who shared a particular cave trip or mountain slide or fire or electrocution. (Not kidding on that list. Explosions, too.)

If ever my confidence starts to slip, I just have to look at my friends. They are extraordinary and, somehow, they seem to think I am worthy to be in their company. No higher compliment exists.

Proto-Zombie Alert!!!

Disclaimer: I hope no one reading this is really stupid, but just in case: What follows is a joke. Please do not act on it. Or, if you do, man up and take personal responsibility.

It is common knowledge in certain circles that George Romero's early zombie movies were financed by the US government. The DIA and NSA having found compelling evidence that the Soviets had perfected a weaponized rabies virus, the government decided that moving zombies into the mainstream might help survivors of a bio-war overcome the emotional challenge of killing a friend or relative who had become a murderous, bloodthirsty and highly contagious monster.

The situation is worse than we feared. The weaponized rabies has been released into the population of the United States. We don't know who released the virus: terrorists working with Soviet cold-war scientists? The Yucatan Socialist Worker's Party (YAZIs)? Some lost cell of the long-defunct KGB?

We only know that the virus is here and it is subtle and more dangerous than our initial intelligence estimates.

The first generation of weaponized rabies works slowly. It can take as long as five years to build up in the system and create "zombies". As it does, the virus slowly eats away at parts of the brain that control independent thinking and compassion. When, and it is when, gentleman, not if, the first of the infected turn, it will be hell on earth. Their bites will turn others almost instantly. And they will be fast-mover zombies, not the shamblers we hoped and prayed for.

What follows is a list of signs and symptoms that indicate the virus is building up:

1. The subject is a shitty driver. It may be a loss in reflexes from the virus eating at the nerves or rudeness and aggression or both.
2. The subject sometimes just stops his or her cart in the middle of big box stores and just stares around with a blank expression.
3. The subject demands to do whatever he or she wants while simultaneously declaring membership in a special group. A sign of the essentially sociopathic lack of compassion of a zombie combined with mindless herd instincts.
4. Constant texting and social media. Appeals to the zombies attraction to shiny objects and the herd instinct.
5. Ignoring children, especially leaving them to be raised by television.
6. Constant complaining. As their brains are eaten away, the proto-zombie experiences mysterious pain and becomes stupider, which gives them a lot to complain about.
7. Inability to solve problems for themselves. A side effect of stupidity, but with low cunning, the proto-zombie often combines this defect with #6 and demands that others-- friends, family or the government-- solve the proto-zombie's problems.
8. Working to make a world safer for zombies and other monsters. Probably not a conscious decision, but working to disarm future meals is the proto-zombie's way of ensuring the safety of the zombie it will be.
9. Doing nothing in large groups of similar people. Whether common loitering or the feeding frenzy at the free samples in the big box stores, watch for the zombie tendency to hang out in groups and just mill around.
10. Loud and rude in public. The higher brain functions, such as those controlling civility, are among the first to go.

If you see a person exhibiting seven or more of these ten symptoms, they are on the verge of total metamorphosis. Do the right thing.

Reno

This is my first time in Reno in 25 years. I used to joke to my wife, "I can't go back until a few more people have died." Yet here we are.

I don't tell the Reno stories. In a lot of ways, this is where I came of age, crossed a barrier, whatever. I came here to find out who I was. I found out, and in the process changed.

My eyes feel tight. Watchful. K said, "You're different since we got into town. All teeth." She didn't mean smily teeth.

I didn't really noticed until I casually, habitually, laid my sunglasses on the table upside down. It's a better angle for seeing anything behind me in the reflection. I haven't done that in years and here it just happened without a thought.

Have to get up early or tonight would be a night for prowling. See if the hobo "jungle" is still there on the railroad tracks west of town. See if the storm sewers are still open on the Truckee. Night action at the CalNeva. Maybe a midnight run to Pyramid Lake and the Needles. See how many of the hidden service doors I can still remember or find in the strip casinos.

Just stuff. Memories.

Teasers and Pitches

Trying to hit things from the other side.  I have real trouble, sometimes, putting a label on what 'this' all is, on what I do and teach.  Sometimes the best way to explain to yourself is to explain to other people.  I'm also crappy at the whole business side of this, so consider this marketing practice as well.

The 'elevator pitch' is something I learned about from writers.  You happen to step onto an elevator and there is the editor of your dreams.  How do you sell him or her on your project? Teasers are things I've been playing with, so:

Conflict Communications

Elevator Pitch:  Marc and I seem to have stumbled on the principles underlying all human conflict.

Teaser: In every long term relationship, there is at least one argument that the couple have word for word periodically.  There were some clues in that:  It's scripted.  You say the same words without ever deciding to.  It's also hard to just walk away without bringing it to closure, finishing the script.  It's subconscious, you are sometimes minutes into the script before you realize that you know exactly what everyone is going to say.  You don't choose it.  It doesn't resolve and at first that was the puzzle... but once we figured out who it served, lots of things came together.

Logic of Violence  

Elevator Pitch: Just simply using the methodology of disaster planning and applying it to self-defense.

Teaser: Take a guy who teaches self defense.  He's well trained and from his work as a bouncer has over a hundred real fights.  How applicable is that?  He's also six foot two, in great shape, and has dragons and tigers tattooed on his arms.  He has had hundreds of real fights, but all with drunk college kids saying, "You don't look that tough to me."  What in the hell does that have to do with an elderly lady mugged for her pension check or a 110 pound drunk girl being singled out for an abduction rape?  Is the approach similar?  The type of attack? The force parity.  You know damn well it's not.  For generations, martial arts has been about fighters teaching fighters how to fight other fighters.  Almost nothing about how to teach victims to survive attackers.

Introduction to Violence sometimes called Ambushes and Thugs

Elevator pitch: It's an introduction to the context of violence.  Most martial artists know how to fight, but they don't know when and they don't know exactly what they will be fighting against.

Teaser/Elevator pitch:  You've been studying martial arts for twenty years?  Twenty years of training in what to do if you were ever attacked by a bad guy.  Cool.  Tell me, in those twenty years have you spent one day studying how real bad guys attack?  Doesn't that strike you as odd?

More a straight pitch:  There are seven areas of vulnerability for your students and if any of those areas are left out of training your students can fight like demons and still lose.  If you are teaching self-defense you have a responsibility to make sure that they understand the legal and ethical ramifications of force; how bad guys really attack; that they practice avoidance, escape and de-escalation; that they have some tools to deal with the ambush and suckerpunch; that they are prepared to break out of a freeze; that there skills for fighting adapt to the real world and; what to do and what they have to deal with after a force incident.

Dream Team

Elevator pitch: Really want an inside view on high-end criminal violence?  It's expensive, but if you think you're up for it I know the guys.

Teaser: You get a former high-end criminal or three; one of the best and most experienced bouncers in the business; a role-playing and safety expert (for obvious reasons) and me.  If you want to know not just how violence breaks down, but how violent people think, plan and react to violence this is a weekend that should rock your world.

Recap

I want to do the last two weeks justice and really can't.

I love this world. It's messy and chaotic and maybe things are breaking down, but it is full of wonderful people who are deeply passionate and caring. In the last two weeks I've spent time with people who have spent fifty years with an art that they loved (and probably dozens who have loved their arts for forty or thirty years). Spent time with extraordinary individuals who walked away from everything out of a passion to learn. Spent time with people who are experts to the point of being savants and some who are just as good but also complete and functional.

Martial arts attracts some very broken people. People who have always felt awkward can learn to move with grace. People who feared and avoided the primate aspects of high school locker rooms can feel like jocks. People who don't have the social skills to get a date can be called "master."

It can be incredibly empowering or heady or toxic. Or all three. I got to spend time with people who saw it clearly and still forged ahead, subtly pushing students towards the empowering and away from the toxic.

There is a special group coming of age in the field of self-defense right now. Men and women with the insight to see how much crap is taught, with the passion to do better and with the humility to wonder, "I've never done this. Who am I to teach it? How will I know if I start teaching crap without that frame of reference?" It's a good internal debate, it keeps them honest and skeptical and learning.

If mastery means anything in this culture (and I hate the word, the connotations in America are too dark, it becomes reminiscent of slavery rather than guilds and implies control more than ability), but if mastery means anything in this culture, George Mattson's annual camp is a collection of Masters. Brilliant researchers and thugs and historians (yes, thugs can be brilliant). people who care about a system and each other and their students above all. Awesome.

I got to meet with my East Coast brain trust, and I absolutely owe them a dinner. We got sooooo busy talking we forgot to eat. Jake, Erik and Bill are brilliant and insightful (Jeff couldn't make it). They helped with presentation and got a taste of the Logic of Violence material in return. I got the best end of that deal. Erik is also a consumate business man (huge compliment in my world) and may have come up with a way to present LoV not as a book, but as a self-study (group study, actually) program. that will probably be my November writing project.

Jeff and Jessica and (for a day) Lisa were awesome hosts. Hospitality is one thing, but learning something every day (side kicks without hip replacement surgery; a refresher on how to suture wounds) is very special.

The seminar at YMAA was new material to a new audience. Nick Yang is one of my favorite martial artists. At the Crossing the Pond seminar in Seattle there was Al Peasland (thug); Marc MacYoung (thug); Iain Abernethy (Really nice thug-- imagine what Santa Clause was like in college); me; and Nick Yang (serious martial artist, super nice guy and definitely not a thug.)

So we were talking about brawls and dismemberment and stuff like that and Nick was talking about White Crane...and we all liked him. With absolutely no idea how to express that without scaring him. Thing is, Nick wouldn't have been scared.

Anyway, Nick hosted a session on recovering from overwhelming force. It's stuff the regular readers are familiar with, but the big gain for me is how natural the concepts were for this group. It shouldn't have been a big insight-- the stuff these guys studied dated from eras when people were trying to kill each other. It wasn't a contest and there were no weight classes. Why should I be surprised that the things I learned were important in jail ambushes were part of systems that dated from this world?

Wes Tasker worked on my back and the difference is incredible. Still pain and numbness, but much less. Much happier...and Wes is one of the people I find intimidatingly intelligent. Cool. Also got to stick spar with Mike M... tee hee hee.

Raffi Derderian is a damn fine man, a great martial artist and an extraordinary teacher. It was very good to spend a day with the people that he admires. I also got to hang with Chris, who is one of the coolest people in the world and meet some new people: Stephe, a bulky, carnivorous, Tai Chi guy who admonishes people to, "keep the F.U. in kung fu." Yet another Erik with a "k" who was that rarest of martial artists: a kenjutsu instructor who isn't anal-retentive. That was awesome. A recluse who hits like a freight train... Good times with good people and a chance to put out some new material (gender differences in violence) and get my material critiqued by new eyes.

All in all, an extraordinary time. But I am missing Kami and eager to be home. Next week: Reno.

Lisa asked at one point what I am most proud of. It's my friends. That I am allowed to spend time with people of this quality blows me away every day.

Too Simple

Teaching new material tonight. That always feels weird going in. Not so much worrying about whether people will like it or not, or the usual bullshit stagefright thing. It's mostly when people ask for something or I see an obvious hole, the program always feels too simple to teach.

"Facing Violence" is doing pretty well and getting good reviews... but did anybody NOT know that self-defense has ethical and legal dimensions? That avoidance was a skill that needs to be practiced? That bad guys attack differently than training partners? Seriously?

In almost every class I'm almost embarrassed to point out that it is easier to beat people up from behind. There are giggles, but always several who have not really practiced it, who don't even realize how their learned strategy is derived from dominance displays (which kind of require fighting eye-to-eye.)

Logic of Violence is merely an exercise in examining a problem from the viewpoint that drives it. We all do this every day. There are nuances and details that people who don't spend time with criminals might miss, but humans think like humans. Apply your mental tools to the threat's problems and you will come up with some things very close to the threat's solutions.

I'm proud of ConCom, but on at least one level it is just a taxonomy, just putting labels on things that every person sees every day. We have made important connections. Just as an example, in every long-term relationship I've seen, the couple have at least one argument that they have word for word periodically. That one observation leads to some pretty cool inferences. But once the program is laid out, it's just stuff that every person does and sees every day. Once you see it, you can act with far more skill and intention... but I wonder why people don't see.

Self-defense is what happens when you are losing. Everybody knows or should know what losing feels like, should know that part of losing is not having access to the resources you rely on when you are winning or even. Anyone who has spent thirty seconds thinking about this grasps it. Anyone who has a background in any kind of movement art and gives a little effort to understanding bad guys can start coming up with some solutions. What feels to me like ten minutes of correlating known data will be two hours of class tonight.

So I keep expecting every last student to look up and say, "Well, duh."

Pain

I remember, once, laying (lying?) on my back and trying to scream. I'd taken a fall, about twelve feet is all, but flat on my back. I couldn't breathe and I wanted someone to know. It's hard to scream if you can't breathe. The pathetic squeaks that came out never carried past my own ears.

A couple of years later, frostbite. An arrogant teenager it, seemed stupid to put on gloves just to water the neighbor's rabbits. 17 degrees below zero fahrenheit with a stiff wind... when I got home, my fingers looked like they were made from candle wax and clicked strangely when I slammed them together. My mother had me slowly thaw my hands in lukewarm water. It felt like it was boiling as feeling returned. I promised myself I wouldn't scream, but I couldn't stop the little animal whimpers coming from my throat.

Learning sword and buckler, somehow-- still not sure how it happened-- the ring finger on my left hand was crushed. ICES--Ice, Compression, Elevation, Splint-- didn't cut it. Went to the doctor. He said it wouldn't hurt as he heated a straightened paper clip under a Bic lighter to melt through the fingernail to relieve the pressure. It was a lie, but he was sprayed in blood and pus for the lie so, in retrospect, it was okay.

Run on a broken fibula. Liver punches and testicle kicks. Broken ribs and broken fingers. Lacerated eye. As the man says, "Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell something."

Living is a privilege, and sometimes we pay a price to get here.

Recovering Under Overwhelming Force

Will be doing a workshop in a few days and I want to think out loud here. Nick wants me to do self defense law, and that's easy. One of the standards. He also keyed on an article I wrote for YMAA and wants a class on recovering from overwhelming force.

It's one of those things that is so inherent in my assumptions that I hadn't thought about breaking it out. I mean, physical self-defense is what happens when you are losing. Deadly force is justified because you are about to die-- so having a solid base or good structure or room to move or time to think or space and time for feints or a single opponent in your weight class are all really, really unlikely.

So, brainstorming, this is how I plan to structure it:

• Super brief Logic of Violence intro: Self-defense predicates on a threat doing something bad. The threat will be doing whatever he does for a specific goal and with definite parameters (don't get caught, don't get hurt and two more). His choice of time, place victim and specific situation derive from the goals and parameters. His choice of time, place, victim and situation also completely drives who the victim will be and what the victim must defend against.
• Quick talk that most crimes involve psychological dominance rather than injury for very logical reasons, at least in this country. Signs of psych dominance, signs it might go bad, decision points and the one thing you absolutely don't want to do.

Then the actual elements of physical dominance (speed to freeze your brain, power, compromised structure, constant movement... that kind of stuff) and what to do:

• Beating the OODA loop-induced freeze.
• Fighting emptiness: Not the direct skill needed under an assault, but a habit and way of thinking that helps with other direct skills. It sounds esoteric, but fighting emptiness is just ignoring our primate instinct with other humans to try to match force with force and instead use our force on the undefended place, or get to the flank or squeeze out of a lock or wall pin through the gap... it's a pretty universal principle.
• Which leads to exploitation of the threat's momentum.
• Pocket structure: Finding and training places where you can create structure to hit hard with only some bones in alignment.
• Trying to come up with a name for this one. "Gift-blasting?" Often, the thing the bad guy does to compromise your structure, (like whipping your jacket over your head and forcing your head down) gives you something cool, like a powerful falling shoulder slam directly into his knees if you can see it. It plays a little off the fighting emptiness concept because most people instinctively try to rise directly against the force and fail to see the gift.

If there's time we might go into the fighting the mind stuff, but it already looks fairly ambitious for the time slot.

Does that look like a good intro?

Anyway, if you're going to be in the Boston area Friday:

http://ymaa.com/seminars/boston/selfdefense

And, for that matter, Saturday in Rhode Island:

http://www.damajkd.com/camp.html

Uechi

I'm not sure if I can ever really explain how much George and the Uechi crew mean to me. Martially, I'm a bit of an outcast and an orphan (cue the violins for the sad, self-pitying music. Naw. I like running alone.)

There are a lot of people I play with, like and respect in the martial community, but as far as family... Dave retired about a year after he ranked Bo and me. Bo moved away. Don't want to hurt any feelings, but the few yudansha who continued to teach didn't come close to matching Dave's depth or intensity. It was easy to drift, looking for that level of play.

Found a few training partners, but never did, outside of the Team, find another 'home.'

So my first time at Uechi camp was like an orphan being invited to an Italian family dinner. Then just kind of accepted.

So, brawling and everything aside, the Uechi crew have a special place. I'm a little bummed the weekend is over.

Darin told stories, and so did George. Bill brought a friend, an impressive martial historian who will have his brains picked in the future like a baby at a zombie rising. Patrick and Sara and one other person of unknown name worked on my shoulder. Robb was Robb- big brawling profane and devilishly intelligent. Van and I talked, but not enough. Never enough. Someone shared things that neither of us normally talk about. Mike and Harry shared great talks, even when I was close to drifting off to sleep.

It was a good time.

Landed in Boston

Couldn't nap. Red eye flight. Didn't want to sleep during the day and mess with sleep cycle... so the answer was coffee and constant movement. Jeff and I walked for six hours yesterday (his estimate) constantly talking. About martial arts and martial artists, fights and psychology, early criminal behavior, and Boston. He talked about training in China and Thailand (and he really needs to write a book, not on the training so much as the personalities). I showed him what I meant by 'fighting the mind' and now he wants to gestalt slap somebody. He gave me some exercises for an old injury that seems to be getting worse.

Then a hookah lounge with Mike and Tia. Very nice company but the music was too loud for conversation after a certain point. Good talks as well, and Boston traffic, which makes all driving sort of funny.

Then sleep.

Teaching first class at 0900 tomorrow. May have to experiment.

Packing

Today will be a prep day.  Packing.  Laundry.  Going over lists.  Just a few.  Nothing in the next two weeks requires armor or special equipment, but I should bring the knee brace and the wraps.

Catch an all-night flight tonight, then ten days or so in Boston, Plymouth and Providence.  I love two of the groups I'll be working with.  George Mattson is one of the Grand Old Men and it is always fascinating to watch this group of people that he has created.  Strong, serious, talented and each individual very different, and George cherishes the differences.  The Summerfest is always a blast.

Raffi Derderien is good.  I've only taken a couple of classes with him and been very impressed, but a long time ago I quit watching instructors.  If I want to know about the instructor, I watch the students.  I love hanging with Raffi's students.  Smart, quick, skilled and they laugh and think and question and change.

This will be my first time at Raffi's summer camp and I'm a little excited.

Somewhere in the middle I'll meet with four of my favorite self-defense instructors in the area.  Jeff Burger is a fighter, an obsessive martial artist and hasn't always been one of the good guys.  His perspective is invaluable.  Erik Kondo is one of the most dangerous men you will ever knock out of a wheelchair. He knows the real problems of self-defense from a perspective most martial artists can't grasp.  Bill Giovannucci is a Uechi guy who thinks deep and makes me grateful for good armor.  Jake Steinmann is a PDR instructor who thinks, experiments and uses words like pedagogically.  Want to bring your game up?  Surround yourself with people smarter than you.  Works for me.

The goal is to get these few good men to look over the Logic of Violence concept, evaluate, tweak, and possibly help with one of the sticking points in presentation.

There will also be an evening workshop with YMAA.  It will be my first time at their facility, but with luck I'll see Nick Yang again, and that's always a good time.  Nick asked me to go over SD law, which is pretty a standard by now, but also recovering under overwhelming force.  I haven't considered teaching that as a separate thing before.  It's just sort of one of the background facts of SD: hard, fast, close, surprise.  It will be good to separate it out, I think.

So pack, prep, clean up the house a little.  Say goodbyes, fly.  Should arrive in Boston in time for a breakfast cannoli and a nice coffee in the North End.