I Was Wrong...

Looks like there's more than 24 hours worth of stuff.

I am enjoying the hell out of working with a tight group of experienced, talented people for three+ days. We've covered most (but not all) of the building blocks; the basic drills; sensitivity; counter-assault; force law; efficient movement; self-teaching; and touched on CQ combat shooting, the emotional elements of blade work and psychological first aid. Tomorrow: recap, environmental fighting; That Which Works When Things Are Hopeless; the initiative drill and just general banging and rolling for fun.

Good conversation as well, and good food (calazone thick with pepperoni; Lebanese chicken soup; BBQ). It's a happy time. Finally met LawDog Jon, and that was an honor. Sometimes New York's Finest isn't a cliche. Sometimes it's merely a description.

The Conflict Communication course has been approved by Minnesota POST (Police Officer Standards and Training) for continuing education credit. That's a huge step.

All in all, things are going very nicely...

Feeding Frenzy

Chris and Travis are having a little discussion on the last post and maybe I should post some background.

Beginners in a lot of Eastern striking arts are taught to deal with an incoming strike by blocking and then counterstriking. (Not just Eastern, fencing has the right-of-way rule, but it has it for a damn good reason.)

After they have practiced this, many (but not all, unfortunately) instructors show that the block and strike don't have to be sequential. They can be delivered at the same time. Gosh! Wow!

It seems like an amazing insight. Even fewer take the next logical step that the defense and attack should be inherent in the same move.

That progression isn't what I was hammering on. The problem is more insidious. The issue isn't about the response at all, but the original 'attack' because it wasn't an attack at all. It was a feed.

A feed is when you give your uke/partner/student something that looks like an attack but is designed so that they get practice working the technique. It is an attack designed to be defeated, to give practice at block and then strike or simultaneous block-and-strike.

But it is not an attack. It is a feed. It just occurred to me that it might not be obvious to everyone else. Training in this way, even sparring starts to be composed of feeds. Not good feeds, the person doesn't want to lose, after all, but not attacks either. Attacks are designed to hurt and damage and overwhelm. Offensive moves in sparring, as often as not, are designed to deceive, disconcert or 'score'... which are very different things.

An attack designed to injure, hurt and subdue you mentally and physically is completely different than a feed. It is delivered at a different range with a different intent, often at different targets. It is not a game, with the halfhearted commitment that makes for such great contests of skill and timing.

When it is an assault, you add the element of surprise and it becomes a flurry of damage with no thought of defense. As different from an attack as an attack is from a feed.

A feed, you can block and then strike. Simultaneous also requires a feed. If it was not a feed, the threat would be doing two or three things just like you.

More background: You can cover and strike against an attack. But covering is shielding and in some sense, a good sense, blind. You don't have to see the attack, choose an option and then cover. By being blind, the cover becomes part of your attack and protects against the most common counter-attacks.

If you try to make it respond separately to each attack (the concept of simultaneous block and strike) you will fail. No one is fast enough to deal three separate blocks and three separate counterstrikes as a response to a three-punch boxer's combination. Even if there was no thought time on the defensive end (and there is damn near none on the offensive end, that's why you drill combos so hard). To do so you would have to be physically (nerve and muscle) at least twice as fast as your opponent. Since you are reacting, you would have to be even faster.

So people practice on feeds. But some forget or maybe they never knew, that feeds are not attacks.

Duality of Truth

Thinking about dichotomies, things that are true and untrue.

For my son's school project we have shot a little video- core defense, one of the big questions from the SF seminar, and power generation.

In the segment on Power Generation I make the statement that the essence of combatives is to transmit kinetic energy into the other persons body.

It's undeniably true. The whole point of hitting is to transfer enough energy to damage. At the same time, I know perfectly well that almost all fights are lost mentally, not physically. That people give up, they are rarely 'beaten'.

There is a point that comes up in most of the seminars very early-- I give instruction for the students to respond with one motion. It takes awhile for some to get it, but most see the value very quickly, the idea becomes for each move to be efficient on multiple levels rather than have three moves to defend, attack and position. As I said, most get it. The math is obvious.

But a few don't. They insist that they have been trained 'simultaneous block and strike' so effectively that they will always do it to each incoming attack. It's a bullshit dueling artifact.

To demo, I bring someone up from the audience. Preferably someone with some skill who knows how to move on the mat. It's better if the subject doesn't panic and hurt himself. As we reach to shake hands, I attack. A flurry of strikes, usually three standing, a take down and another 2-4 strikes on the ground. The elapsed time is under two seconds.

The only possible way to 'simultaneous block and strike' against a flurry is to be both twice as fast as the other human and able to process information and make decisions faster than your brain works. As I said, a bullshit dueling artifact. When the focus shifts to assault survival, the things that work change.

For the seminar students, it is a reminder: We are not talking about fighting or martial arts or survival. We are talking about violence. The class is not about how to flurry, that is easy, but how to prevail against that flurry.

That's not germane to this post really. The next part is.

One cool detail is that the initial flurry makes the subject freeze, even though every strike is pulled and I never touch him.

That's the dichotomy. Fighting bodies, you need to get kinetic energy into the threat. Fighting minds, you just need to overwhelm the thinking process. Either works. Both together? That's what I train for...

The essence of striking is to get kinetic energy into the threat's body. A true statement, undeniably... and yet... not just in demos, a couple of times in real life I have achieved full effects without any kinetic transfer at all.

Undeniably true... except when you do something completely different that also works....

-------------------

Upcoming stuff:

Rochester NY Tuesday May 25th (Facebook)

Seattle Two course... Sunday june 27

Conflict Communications Minnesota June 18-19 (Facebook)

Boston August 8th

Tentatively two classes in SanFrancisco September 11-12

Montreal in late September

A Scattering

This will be scattered, like lots of life. Still, busy and fun.

The last two days I was asked to guest lecture at a private college here in town. The course was Critical Thinking as part of a criminal justice program. The instructor had wanted something basically from Meditations on Violence about social conflict.

I got permission to wing it a little and worked on premises from "7" and MoV with a healthy dose of the new Conflict Communications paradigm and filtered through the pilot class on violence prevention...

New connections, a real synergy in the material... but the thing that really hit hard was that the people with the most need to understand it-- the former soldier, the two former gang members and the domestic abuse survivors were blown away. Not only did their experiences validate almost every piece of the talk, but the talk gave them perspective and tools and left them with a way to understand and change things. It rocked.

The official unveiling of the course will be in Minnesota on June 18th, followed by a hands-on class the next day. All will be team taught with Marc MacYoung and, if the past predicts the future, we'll have plans for three more courses and two more books if we talk to each other for an hour.

Plans are running along for a second-level seminar in Seattle (officially over half-full, 48 hours after the announcement) and a seminar in Boston August 8th. Probable shows in Montreal and a repeat and/or second level in San Francisco in September.

Flying out Sunday for the Rochester NY area-- one evening workshop, three days of private lessons and then tagging along with a survival class. Definitely need to put a new handle on the tomahawk. I'm excited about this one. Three days of training and it should cover the basics from anthropology to shooting. The crew seems really enthusiastic and talented. This isn't just a hobby.

Rats. I have, at last, eradicated all the rats from the house. Except one died a little hard and dragged his little rat body and the trap deep, deep into the walls between the upstairs and downstairs bathroom. I'm trying to come up with some way to secure the maggoty corpse without tearing out yet another ceiling. Gag.

The rats outside the house are doing fine. They have discovered that the cats stay out of the dog yard, there's always some dogfood to be had and our beautiful Great Pyrenees crosses think it is beneath their dignity to chase rodents. I've killed one and injured one so far. Five to go that we can positively identify. A little archery practice, maybe.

All with the usual-- writing, getting a tiller running, BBQ when the weather is nice...

And the VPPG. Last one went to two-on-one blindfolded groundfighting. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

The Stack

Writing has been insane lately-- I just missed doing 10000 words in one day over the weekend and have been pushing at about half that all week.  Which means some other stuff is being neglected.

The books that I have almost finished, trying to buy time to kill the last few pages or chapters include:

"On the Wealth of Nations" by P.J. O'Rourke- I usually really enjoy P.J.  This one reads like he was writing for the paycheck and didn't really understand the material ( Smith's "The Wealth of Nations") or why he was writing it.

"The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout, PhD.  Good stories and occasional brilliant insights, but in a goo of non-standard definitions and what seem to be an idea to reject any definition of conscience that doesn't fall back on a divine spark.

"Guards, Guards" by Terry Pratchett.  This is the one book that I have been told (ad nauseam) will get me to enjoy fiction again.  So far, I appreciate Pratchett's way with words (though it is wearing thin now that I've read several others) and there are two concepts I think he has explained as well as anyone.  But as far as fiction telling deeper truths... not seeing it.

"Leadership and Training for the Fight" by MSG Paul R. Howe (ret).  Someone really needed to write this book as an antidote for all the books written by managers on the subject of leadership that don't know there's a difference.  It is raw, written for himself and those who want to follow in the Master Sergeant's footsteps.  There are almost as many lessons in how it is organized as there are in the stories or specific points.

Those are the books in progress.

The next one's from the library, so has to be read next:

"America's Secret War" by George Friedman.  Up close, the situation in Iraq looked completely different to me than it did from a distance.  More coherent, more positive.  It was also clear that our last president knew Arabic culture far more intimately than our current one (Arabic culture, not Muslim.  Know the difference.)  It's also abundantly clear that people with definite opinions are basing them on even less information than I have.  So Stratfor's take on it should be at least interesting and well-documented.  We'll see.

Then, and the point of this post, I received some very thoughtful gifts in San Francisco from Maija and Dale.  Almost everything above was my excuse that I won't be able to get to them for awhile:

"Values for a New Millennium" by Robert L. Humphrey, J.D.  Dale tells me this is the ethical underpinning of what he teaches his Bujinkan students.  People I respect speak highly of the late Mr. Humphrey, so I'm eager to get to it.

"Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matthew B. Crawford.  I like things (people, stuff and skills) that are useful.  This one should be cool.  And I just now noticed the card.  Thanks, Maija

"Dirt" by William Bryant Logan, subtitled "The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth"  I suspect that dirt, like walking and breathing is one of those basic things that most people don't look at very closely.

"Oak The Frame of Civilization" also by William Bryant Logan intrigues me, much like the books Cod and Salt-- little things of immense impact in history.

On top of writing.  Editing "7". Lectures at a private college tonight and tomorrow.  Prepping for the private lessons and seminar in NY next week.  Conflict Communications in Minnesota and a second-level seminar in Seattle in June...

Busy, but the kind of busy that I like.

Professor Emeritus

I wanted to title this with the name, which I remember as Dr. Frohlander, but it was before the internet age and when I went to check the spelling (or maybe I had the name wrong-- Frohlings?) I couldn't get the confirmation.

In 1981 or 82, I took an introductory Oceanography class. It was taught by a Professor Emeritus who came out of retirement once each year just to teach this particular undergrad class. What follows is from memory, and I'm sure over the decades it has altered, but I remember his first lecture starting like this:

"The sun rises in the East. It sets in the West. Warm air rises. Cold air falls. Your assignment for tomorrow is to use that information to draw a weather map of the world."

The class started to murmur in protest and several hands went up. Dr. Frohlander slammed his hand down, silencing the room.

"The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Warm air rises, cold air falls. THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO DRAW A BASIC WEATHER MAP.

"Some of you think you are here to be spoonfed facts. Anyone can do that. You are here to learn to think. Part of that is taking what you already know and learning what it means and how to use it."

Most of us got the basic maps right. Might not have been perfect on the latitude where the easterlies ended and the westerlies began... but the concept was close enough.

In my time at college, Dr. Frohlander was the only one who demanded that I think for myself. Some requested it or suggested it. (Some of those then punished the free thought if they disagreed with the conclusions.) But only Dr. Frohlander, an elderly, retired hard scientist demanded it.

I can never thank him enough,.

For Life

When I asked my jujutsu sensei, Dave Sumner about spiritual traditions associated with Sosuishitsu-ryu he told me not to read too much into practice. 'Dead people can't go to church.'

It was profound, and pointed out a deep difference in how different people see their practice. At the time, I studied MA because I wanted to be a "complete human being" without even realizing that we are, all of us, already complete. It was just words and an ideal. Nothing, really.

Everything has primary and secondary gains. The same thing can have different primary and secondary gains. And we can lie to ourselves about which we value.

Some people want a black belt. Some want to be champions. Some want to be 'masters'. None of those words mean anything. The blackbelt is a symbol. The primary gain behind the desire can be to amass skills or to gain prestige, to get entry into a world of competition or to understand yourself...and some of those, particularly understanding yourself, are nebulous ideas and maybe traps, but that's a thought for another time.

So someone can believe they want to be a champion, and the real primary gain is to win matches... but they can convince themselves this is the same thing as dropping an opponent. If that were true, ambushes in the locker room or parking lot would be an acceptable part of the entire tournament process. Getting the skill to drop people, or to escape are different gains.

So some martial artists proudly do their thing as a 'way of life'. It is part of their identity. It is who they are. It is a primary gain to be a martial artist.

My point of view is radically different. Unarmed arts are part of a subset of skills that may be necessary so that I can get back to my family and friends, so that I can look at sunrises and have a good burger. That is life. Anything I do in training is to serve that. Martial arts or combatives or whatever can never be a way of life for me, only a tool to ensure that I have a life to enjoy my way in.

It changes many thing. My primary gain in an altercation is to get out of the altercation with minimum problems later. My primary gain is going home. There is no internal desire to be a monk or a master or a samurai or a knight or any of the icons that people strive to emulate. The longer I can keep breathing, the longer I can be Rory, (which has rocked so far.)

The training still shapes me (or you, if you envision it like this). It has become a basic part of my movement. It colors how I see the world and how I plan. It has taught me that many things are not problems that may seem troubling at first.

But one of the big differences is that when we look at what works, I have to be more specific about what it works for. If you train martial arts as a way of life, as long as you are engaged and alive in training it is working and your primary gains are satisfied. Whether it works for anything else or in any other context is, at most, a secondary gain.

When you train for life, whether it works and what it works for are primary. Training spent for the sake of training alone is time spent away from that life.

Two Little Things

Long talks with Kris, Edwin and Maija about teaching methodology. Good, focused stuff. Kris talked about attaching the new information to the vehicle. You put on your gi, you get in front of the class, everyone bows in.

That's an icon or an archetype. There are a million little assumed things that go with it. You don't have to say what you are teaching. It's martial arts. As if the words defined anything. Kris rides the archetype, breaking little things down, changing patterns, bringing in information that rarely finds its way into a dojo. But never so much or so fast that the students lose touch with the pattern, the expectation.

He sneaks in the important lessons, and the students learn it without ever feeling they are on alien ground.

Maija quoted her late instructor: "No drills, no style. I am teaching you to see." It warmed my heart.

Edwin, with his expertise in system design ,asked the right questions, I think.

A student is/has three things.

1) Attributes. People differ in size and strength and speed. But they also differ mentally and emotionally. Aggressiveness and fear, tolerance for uncertainty, ability or inability to see things as they are. Many ways to be different.

2) Training. At some level everyone has been taught things. Even if they have no formal training, each student has an idea of what fighting is.

Ideally, the training would be based on the student's attributes. Knife fighting is a bad choice for a gentle soul who can't abide messiness and liquid spills.

3) Experience. Maybe a lot, maybe a little... and many take training as experience. It's not the same. Training falsely interpreted as experience can be a deadly trap.

In the end, I'm only trying to offer two things:

1) An analysis of the problem. This gets broad very quickly. Violence dynamics, how bad things really happen, is crucial. Knowing "how to defend yourself" if you have no idea what you are defending yourself from doesn't make any sense at all.

But there's more. Often, maybe usually, the battle isn't lost physically but mentally. The glitches and freezes and fears and the emotional and social context are just as important to making yourself act as what the threat does. The physical part is often simple. Making yourself do the simple thing in a frozen fog of doubt... that's less simple.

2) A way to evaluate yourself. Does this work? Is it set up to be applied to the real problem? Can it be more efficient? What about myself? What makes me hesitate? What could I not live with? Will this send me to prison? Am I okay with that? Under what circumstances? What is the price of admission on this ride?

So I have nothing to replace a martial system. Most systems work just fine if they are trained with respect to the real problem and the attributes of the students anyway. The body mechanics usually work better than the explanations some instructors come up with. There are some styles that work way better with real assaults than they will ever work with sparring, which shouldn't surprise anybody, since that's where they came from.

The physical skills are easy, and the principles are quickly and simply understood. Practicing and applying them takes considerably longer, but I'm not convinced that the constant presence of an instructor is really useful. At some point, if the sensei is there every day and the absolute authority on what is good or bad... it's basically a teat for the brain. No reason to learn to feed yourself.

That's addictive and counter-productive. Not something I want for my students or, for that matter, anybody.

Getting together every so often so that you can show me what you've discovered and I can show you what I see? We both grow then.

Some People Don't Care About Science!

You would think that my wife would understand the value of the scientific method. Especially when the need is so great, but no.

The theory struck me late at night: since 1) laughter is the best medicine and; 2) extremely low temperatures have kept people alive when they would normally die (particularly drowning children) it is entirely logical that tickling someone using icy cold fingers might be the ultimate therapeutic touch. It might cure a myriad of diseases.

Despite the unassailable logic, she resists letting me perform the necessary experiments in cold-finger tickling.

It's a damn shame.

24 Hours

Really re-thinking the seminars. Especially thanks to a lot of help and advice when I asked for it earlier. You guys rock.

Thinking out loud:

The physical stuff is the most entertaining but (except for the counter-ambush training) it is the least important. The things that make violence difficult to deal with are emotional and cognitive. Those are the things I try to hit hardest in a seminar. Instead of teaching a bunch of things to deal with violence, I try to give a glimpse of the violence they might have to deal with. In the end, that doesn't change or replace any previous training. All it does is put the training in perspective.

What putting it in perspective can do is ratchet up the efficiency by orders of magnitude. Not by showing new stuff, just by showing where the old stuff fits.

The talk-talk part is important. Visuals and demos are good, but long ago kids learned about hunting by hearing stories and getting advice. That hasn't changed. "The deer go to higher pasture in summer" is easy to get in words, hard to learn by trial and error. More so when part of the world, specifically the law, exists in words.

The physical stuff is important as well, but most of the people who show up already have good physical skills, and I extend the trust that they can improve themselves with just a little guidance. that said, beyond the basic safety drill and counter-assault, every seminar is different because I see different holes.

If I notice that some or most hit too light or won't hit at all, we have to cover power generation. If some or most act in discrete units (strike-pause-other strike-pause-kick) they need something to encourage them to flow into total initiative. Blindfolded infighting works great for that. Plus it is fun and gets people to use their senses in a way that is faster than sight. If people never consider weapons or running, never give a thought to why they are pretending to fight with strangers in a gym... then we have to talk about fighting to the goal and bring in the baby drill or breakout.

There is a subset of students I was told recently, that want completely non-physical self-defense. On one level, that's a pipe dream. If you are targeted at certain levels the only thing that will get your ass out is overwhelming force or, at minimum, the credible threat of overwhelming force.

But... that's at the very rare extreme. There are a handful of decisions that that can drop your danger almost to zero. There are a few habits that will prevent most of what slips through the cracks. There are some interpersonal skills that can clean up many things... but beyond that, there is a Hellstorm. If you train non-physical only you can't be prepared for that... and too many of the people that teach to these odds just quietly pretend that the Hellstorm doesn't really exist.

That said, I've been asked to put together a non-physical program. It would do a lot of good. But it's not complete.

So there is the talk-talk: about context and legalities and types of fights and what will happen to you physically, emotionally, internally. What to do right after an event and what you should do long before.

And there are the physical skills, broad and deep, but very, very simple if taught properly.

Basic skills, like striking, locking, entries and takedowns. Fundamentals like speed and power. Thee real stuff, like seeing opportunities and adapting. Stacking basic skills. Stacking fundamentals.

Experiential stuff, like finding your own glitches and creating your own strategies. Finding where your tactics fit.

Which goes into which seminar? What do I do with a three hour block? With four hours... or four days?

Someone asked yesterday if I taught a regular class. I said I didn't and made noises about that not being where my head is right now. That wasn't true, but what I really believe would seem like an insult to most martial arts instructors:

There's only about 24 hours of stuff-- mental, physical and spiritual-- that actually works. Everything beyond that, you will learn on your own. I might be able to show you, but it can't be taught. I would feel, if I had a regular class, two hours a night, two nights a week, that anything after six weeks would be spinning wheels. Cheating the students, feeding my own ego, trapping them in a worldview that isn't their own.

Romance! Adventure!

I'm not sure how it happened, but a chapter of the Romance Writers of America somehow heard about me, tracked me down, and asked if I'd do an on-line short course on violence for writers. The course will run a month, be handled on a BBS...

Should be fun. Or at least very strange. Part of me keeps saying, "Don't scare the customers" but isn't that really what it's all about?

The first two "lectures" are written and I'm thinking nine:

Base Line; Context; Bad Guys and Violence; Good Guys and Violence; Unarmed; Blades; Gunfighting; Less Lethal; Aftermath.

The class announcement is here.

Should be interesting.

BTW, anyone going to be in San Francisco May 8 and 9?

The Striking Deficit

I'm trying to brainstorm my way around a training artifact.

Proper striking can be effective. I've put people down and broken bones with techniques ranging from hook punches to slaps. On the other hand, they're really idiosyncratic. If anyone tells you that a specific strike will always have a specific effect, the person is lying. Or misinformed. In my personal experience, I've taken a crowbar to the back of the head with no injury whatsoever, and a slap to the back of the head that left me dizzy and puking for three days. I've been lifted in the air from a solid kick straight to the crotch and didn't feel it for well over a minute... and I've been flicked in the crotch and gone down.

Strikes are dangerous. Even if you don't notice that you have broken bones until after the fight, they are still broken and can take a long time to heal. That solid shot to the head might not hamper you at all, until a few hours later when the tissue swells and you pass out. Maybe die. Hours after you 'won.'

Because of all this, strikes require special safety restrictions in training. Maybe you put big pillows on your fist. Maybe you pull the strikes and practice missing. But something is done to make sure that the strikes in training don't do what strikes do...

Which has two bad effects. One is obvious, in that all the training to miss (whether you call it pulling or just use contact to a safe area like simulating hitting the groin by hitting the thigh) will influence you to miss in real life. Trust me-- you'll have other things to think about than trying to remember what you simulated in practice and substituting the 'reality' variation.

The other bad effect is that it increases the value of grappling techniques in sparring.

That's not in and of itself a bad thing. The ability to move, control, lock and strangle a human body are some of the most effective and reliable base skills. But when you are practicing, whether sparring or scenarios, and the strikes have to be controlled and the submissions can go to submission, you wind up with scenarios that always end with a lock or strangle.

Unless you stay alert, it can seem like locks and strangles work and strikes don't. The thing is that real strangles work far better than pretend strikes.

I haven't found a good solution for this. If you insist that people respond as if the strike was real... what the hell does that mean anyway? Not everyone folds when punched in the torso. To be truthful, not everyone even notices when they are punched in the gut. Headshots are notoriously idiosyncratic.

One of the cardinal rules is that you never train people to fail. Giving up should not be part of the drill. If you teach people that if they get hit in the head (or stabbed or shot or blinded) they are out of the fight, they tend to simply quit when the condition is reached. That's unacceptable.

At the same time, if you have trained to tactical advantage, you discard techniques that don't work. Consciously or subconsciously, students will tend to reject the strikes and focus on the submissions in an environment where only submissions seem to work. That creates a weakness as well.

Yet another problem is that because of the safety artifacts, a grappler will usually have a huge edge in applying techniques in a free-for-all. Many strikers, except with gloves, have never practiced getting kinetic energy into another moving, dodging, resisting body. Getting peak force in a strike requires control of motion and distance and those are things learned best hands on. The strikers who use gloves are almost required to use hand conformations that put their metacarpals at risk, so they can play harder, but what they play at often injures the striker more than the strikee once it ceases to be play.

This one's a poser.

VPPG

The Violence Prone Play Group was an idea that came from sitting too long in a CHU (Containerized Housing Unit) in Kurdistan. I like teaching, but it misses the exploration aspect that I love about learning. Guiding others is very different than learning for yourself. You also don't get nearly the workout.

So the idea was to get a small group, no more than six, together. I wanted high-end instructors. Not because the rank means anything but because I wanted people who had moved into territory where they were on their own. It was never intended to be a group that would get together and show off what they knew. I wanted a group that would get together and share what they were working on. If you have been doing martial arts or combatives or fighting for even a year, there should be a mystery that you are working on. How to get the power from the ground or how to use the energy of a rush, something basic like that.

Too many don't. They wait to be spoonfed what their instructor wants them to know on a schedule chosen and imposed by the instructor. I wanted people who had been in long enough that they had gotten to the questions the instructor didn't have answers for: How do you prioritize options when you are outnumbered? Defense or offense when your mobility is compromised? Why are the mechanically identical blocks and strikes processed differently? How fast can you read tells?

I wanted people who had got to that level and kept going.

I envisioned a small group, maybe drinking coffee, "What you working on?" And someone could spill out some weird thing about spine control for damage resistance and someone else would have experience in something similar and two others would wonder if you could apply it moving and fighting and the fifth would recognize that "if" wasn't the real question, but "how" was...

The group would brainstorm and then they would bang. When everyone was tired and had a headful of new data, they'd debrief. And then someone would ask another question and the group would brainstorm and then brawl...

The inaugural group was small. Just three of us. All skilled, all liking to play. There was a little blood and there were far more questions than answers... but it was great. A truly wonderful time.

Shoveling Peace

Yes. Ahem. I'm the world famous author and lecturer, Rory Miller. Yes. (Insert snotty noise and read this in a fake, wannabe New England/Princeton accent).

So guess what I did yesterday?

Shoveled shit. Thirty or so wheel-barrel loads of goat shit and straw. It's called "mucking out the barn." It was fun, in a "This is hard work and it really stinks and I will have to burn these shoes" sort of way. Only some of it in the rain.

My lovely wife was right there the whole time. Digging, mucking, pulling down the old hay feeder and building a new one. She is ecstatic about the high-quality fertilizer.

That's life now. Writing. Designing classes and teaching. Spending time with the kids. The occasional forays into flooding laundry rooms and rat nests in the walls and goat barns. Constant warfare with our acres of blackberries.

It is the most peaceful time that I can remember in my entire life.

New Business

"May I speak to Sharon Tring, please?"

I didn't recognize the voice on the phone. "I think you have the wrong number, " I said.

"Did you just start a business? You're doing business as Sharon Tring?" Sharon Tring? Chiron Training? Swift.

"Yes. Chiron Training. How can I help you?"

"I'm XXXX with XXXX and I'd like to help you get your new business off the ground."

"No thanks. I won't be needing your services."

He chuckled, as if he heard that from all of his cold calls, "We're a consulting company that specializes in helping start-ups. You just started your business correct?"

"Yes, and you can't help me, but thanks."

"Now hold on there, son..."

"No, you hold on. What do I do?"

"Excuse me?"

"What do I do?"

Silence.

"If you didn't do enough basic research to find out what I do, you can't help me do it. Thanks for calling.

"Err, thanks. Have a nice day."

Evidently, the state business license is public record. Second call like that so far. This one was just funnier.

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Other stuff:

Martial University will be held June 19th at the Sumner High School in Sumner WA. Mark Hachey of YiLiQuan Kung Fu is setting it up. All proceeds will go to the families of the four Lakewood Police Officers who were murdered last November.

Seminar in Portland May 1st.

Seminar in San Francisco May 9th.

Remember the storytelling event? The recording is now available in BackFencePDX's archives.

The Expert

I got a weird question in Austin: "What's your advice on fighting in roller skates?"

The young lady wanted some advice on a serious question. She handled the security at a roller-rink. She'd been in a number of fights while wearing roller skates, usually with people much larger than herself. What she had learned in martial arts about foot work and power generation and base and other things just didn't apply when your feet were tied to wheels.

We brainstormed some stuff, but I had to say, "Why are you asking me? There's a very real possibility that you are the world's foremost authority on fighting in roller skates. I should be asking you."

It's probably a pretty small world, the roller skating security set. But she had clearly learned things that I couldn't imagine. And this is one of my peeves. Not really. It's not a peeve. It's something I see every day with a little wonder and a little sadness: The human ability to discount personal experience and seek validation. Often validation from someone with paper.

They may have more than paper, these experts. That's the idea behind certifications and stuff, if you see a five-year pin you can assume five-years of experience, but sometimes it doesn't fly so well.

Not the point of this post, the experience of others. The point is discounting your own experience. Sometimes to preserve an illusion. Often to preserve a relationship. Very often to defend identity.

Experience isn't absolute, either. In my analysis a single violent encounter almost always does more harm than several. With one, lucky illusions can be reinforced or, more commonly, things you were certain of can be destroyed. A single violent encounter shows some gaping holes, but gives nothing to fill them. You find out what was wrong, but it often takes more experience and some experimentation to figure out what is right.

You are all expert at something. At what? Where do you look for validation? Why do you look for validation?

Fifty-Seven or So...

Totally unrelated to the last two posts, Nick Guinn asked if I had a ranking sheet, a list of what I wanted students to know.

I used to, back when I thought there were more answers than I believe in now. Nick made me think, though, and the product is sitting in front of me. It fits on one page. Fifty-seven items in six categories. There should be one more-- I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of something that should be on the list but can't remember it now. It will bubble up.

Six categories:

The Seven Aspects will be a book all its own (contract out in the mail just today.)

Principles could be a book, just a list of what makes other things work. Mostly applied physics.

Awareness-Initiative-Permission, the Big Three are already treated in MoV, extensively enough for people to get a handle on them, I think. At least to get a sense of what might be missing.

The Building Blocks are how I approach technique, I guess. Targeting, power and timing. Delivering kinetic energy. How locks work and how to improvise them. Same with with getting someone off their feet or moving them on the ground. Some of those are still rough-- power generation is pretty universal in, say, long-range circular technique but hand conformation really affects both the damage delivered and whether your hand breaks.

The Four Elements (You, the Threat or Threats, the Environment and Luck) all have elements that can be taught and explored but in practice they wind up being a checklist of what is ignored: "When was the last time we did this with shitty footing and improvised weapons? Is this drill set up the way bad guys attack? Where are the points when things can get weird?"

The elements are a big piece of life and self-defense and possibly the source of all complication, but they are also simple in a way.

Miscellania are just thoughts or ways to think or things to remember. Nuances and special skills. Basics like fighting to the goal; big shifts like re-framing the situation. Little details like dead zones.

The list doesn't include drills. Those are fluid and I like the ones I use, but they are ways to get to the point, not the point itself.

There's nothing on the list that is incompatible with what anyone wants to teach. Sort of. Styles developed before modern legal systems may not wish to tack on the information or adapt methods to comply with modern law. The styles enamored of their thousands of discreet techniques might not be happy with unifying them under a handful of principles. Instructors who like their static bear-hug defense may be unhappy when reminded that someone is grabbed, generally to be moved, not immobilized and the technique might not work so well when the victim is lifted off her feet...

But there doesn't seem to be anything here that contradicts the fundamentals of any style. In a lot of ways it is a list of reminders about context. Context can be easy to forget in a big clean room, training with people you like.

I think I'll put some more work into this, shift from merely a list to explanations. Might be another book or two in it.

Something I Fear

I fear creating a system. Anything I do or teach is just the best I can do right now. All systems start that way, just the best of the person who started it. Ideally, if it caught on, it was better than most of what was available at the time and place. Often, new systems start driven by new paradigms.

When a system becomes a system, the stuff (techniques, strategies, principles, beliefs) intended to solve problems subtly become the things you use to identify yourself. That’s the danger.

Because once that shift happens improvement, especially paradigm shifting improvement, becomes a threat to identity. If you have good stuff, really excellent stuff, but I have a paradigm shifting idea that replaces 80 of your techniques with 1 concept… a system’s tendency will be to reject it. Even if it is in line with the systems principles. Because it would negate things that are already in the system.

There are only eight ways to lock a wrist (I can double that to sixteen + two, but it’s not really necessary). There are over three hundred named wristlocks, but there are only eight ways to do it. If you introduce that concept to a system that has 300 wristlocks they will either reject it… or add it. Then they will have 308 wristlocks. Instead of playing with the concepts and trimming, things accrete.

So I fear creating a system, because living (which is another way of saying “not dying”) is a thing of growth and change. Creativity and paradigm shifts are precious. Systems, in a way, create heresies. Fighting to stay alive shouldn’t be constrained by orthodoxy. The bad guys count on that, count on victims playing by the rules.

True Believers

Most martial arts students, on some level or other, are ‘true believers’. They believe that their chosen art or instructor is ‘IT’ whatever ‘it’ means to them. It must be the best, of course… otherwise, they would be doing something else.

Sometimes it is naïve—can a six-year-old in a “Little Tigers” class really evaluate how good his training is?

The question of best can never be objective anyway. Best for what? There are world champions teaching MMA, or people with deep ties to ancient schools who are available in the west, or people who have survived extensive levels of violence. There are also people with incredible fitness training regimens or philosophies or spiritual awareness. And there are teachers who just make you feel great to be training. Which of those is ‘best’?

There is a qualitative difference I’m trying to narrow down, because it seems that there are two different groups of ‘true believers’. By True Believer, I mean people with at least a little of the fanatic in them, the ones who don’t see it as just a hobby but part of their identity. Cross that with the belief that whatever they do is the ‘best’. That’s what I mean.

Most of the time when I see this I’m not impressed. It seems tribal and close-minded. When (what I consider) dysfunctional TBs get presented with something new, something outside their experience, they close their eyes and stick fingers in their ears. They put extensive effort into explaining why they don’t need to listen to that source.

That’s a big clue there—if you ever find yourself discounting the source instead of the arguments, you are in your emotional brain. That is primate tribal thinking.

Dysfunctional TB’s get defensive.

There are some extraordinarily cool schools that also are pure True Believers. Emerald City Judo up Seattle way comes to mind. Bob Wittauer runs a good dojo. They work hard and they play hard and it feels like a big family. When you are invited in as an outsider, it is with open arms. Even if what you do is not what they do, even if what you teach contradicts things that they believe in.

The last weekend spent with Fit and Fearless Krav Maga in Austin felt the same way. They train hard. Bruises are daily, bleeding is pretty common too, and my god they sweat. (Blood, sweat and tears makes for a perfect training session, IMO). They are unabashed that what they have is the best… and they can simultaneously work, with open minds and hearts, to make it better.

F&F had the same family feel as Emerald City, or that Mark Moy and Scott Dinger bring to their training. They all produce loyal students—who are fierce.

I made a comment about “lions that leave rabbit tracks” in an earlier post. I can think of some excellent practitioners who seem to be thoughtful and intelligent teachers, but who have never produced students that excelled them. And I can think of some who only produced people who were afraid to win, more timid than when they started.

Family feeling with hard work? Instructors who are not merely competent and demanding but also loving? An expectation that the next generation will be the evolution, that they are not only expected to carry the torch but to carry it higher and farther? Is that all the difference? Is there more? What?

Update

Even more tired, but also sore and happy. There have been some developments in the last week:

A seminar in Portland, OR with KJ is coming up on May Day. Information is here.

I've been invited down to do a seminar in San Francisco May 9th. San Francisco is a fun town. The seminar is on a Sunday and I should have that Saturday free for private lessons or just wandering around.

My first web-based class for writers starts June 7th. I started writing the first lesson and it is turning into a friggin' book. Which might not be a bad idea, actually.