MUST READ) NICE IDEAS THAT GET YOU KILLED

www.targetfocustraining.com/ebook.html

GRAPHIC EG.

Firearms vs. Monkey Politics -- The Graphic Example

Here's an unfortunate video that underscores two of the cornerstones of TFT:

1) Understanding the difference between antisocial posturing (monkey politics) and asocial violence (killing), and

2) Making sure that if you're going to lay hands on someone you know how to put them down so they can't get back up.

www.youtube.com/watch

Of course, it also illustrates the fact that firearms come pre-packaged with all the requirements for striking -- a good whallop of kinetic energy and complete follow-through, just add vital target.

It's just another horrible, preventable example of what can happen when one person reads the situation as antisocial, a contest for pecking order, while the other is willing to cross all those lines and go straight for the kill.

This is why we spend so much time on those two topics -- how to effect that kill with your bare hands and understanding when it's appropriate vs. the 99.9% of the times it flat-out isn't.

In either case -- walking away or putting the other man down -- the life you save just might be your own.

Being the Better Monster

Being the Better Monster

In Building a Better Monster, I talked about how people build up insanely powerful adversaries (bigger, faster, stronger) and place them in impossible scenarios (it was a dark and stormy night, he has night-vision goggles and a chainsaw) and then ask, "How do I deal with that?" My advice was, essentially, to build him up and then be him.

Everyone gets the building up part--we're all experts in that even before we walk through the door to train. The question is, of course, how to best get it done?

The short answer is: Figure out why you've decided it's going to work for him.

And the even shorter answer to that is: INJURY. But you already knew that.

The long answer is: When you build the better monster you've already decided that he's going to do something to you that you're worried you cannot prevent and will have a poor outcome for you.

We can pick that apart to find the salient points, the places where you have recognized (consciously or not) several truths about violence:

1) He is going to do things to you.

This has two important components--the recognition that he has intent and resides in the cause state.

2) You can't stop what he is doing.

This is recognition that blocking is a sucker's game, that being in the effect state is not nearly as effective as being in the cause state.

3) Injury will make you helpless.

This is the 'poor outcome' you fear--you get injured, go down and get more injured in a downward spiral that can only really bottom out with death.

The real trick to make this self-defeating process worth your while is to flip it inside out--you've built your monster, you've figured out why it's going to work for him--now all you have to do is put yourself in the position of this impossible person. Think like the predator you are and resolve yourself to making the realities of violence work for you instead of against you:

1) You are going to do things to him.
2) He can't stop what you've already done.
3) Injury will make him helpless.

Now you see how the two of you are interchangeable--the driver's seat of violence is up for grabs and belongs to the first person to buckle in and romp on the gas. The other guy gets run over and leaves a star on the windshield.

Which leads us, through the clumsiest of segues, to the fact that no one is immune to violence, and what that reality does for him. And can do for you...

People seek training because what they really want is immunity from violence. It's not the idea of doing it they find appealing, but the idea of preventing it. I know this was true for me.

But then we give them an ugly, unpopular truth--nothing can make you immune & you're on your own.

You're either going to injure him, put him down and savage him on the ground or he's going to do it to you. You're not going to have superior, 'no can defend' technique or superhuman abilities. It's just going to be you and your willingness to tear another human being apart. You're very probably going to take a beating in the process, and you can, whether through inaction, miscalculation, or just plain dumb luck end up on the receiving end of the tool of violence.

No matter how hard and long you train, you can be murdered.

This is the bitterest pill to swallow. It leads to all sorts of 'well, what's the point then?' questions. If I can end up just as dead with or without training, why bother? This disconnect is the same one that often occurs for people with firearms--they believe that somehow the gun will 'defend' them, not realizing that they are going to have to shoot the other guy to death to make it work... and it's even worse with knives. It's going to be messy and noisy and scary well beyond what you can imagine. But the end result is, after a fashion, 'defense' in that dead people can't hurt you.

So why bother? Well, prior to training you were rolling dice. We show you how to 'play the game' with loaded dice. So you end up with an edge.

That edge is only going to mean anything if you accept the inborn frailty of your body as you harden your mind to the task at hand--you, crippling another man for life. There is nothing you can do to make your body immune to injury; the only thing you can change is the amount of intent in your head.

It's going to work for him because he wants to cause injury and throws everything he has into making that idea a reality. He has intent.

It's going to work for him because he is acting on the realities of violence as they stand--he is going to use what works and get it done first because he knows no one is immune... he is acting on the fact that he can be taken. This is why he hits first, why he wades in and goes for broke. He knows if he breaks you first, he is far less likely to have any of it done to him. He knows if he waits he's done for.

This is why you fear him. It is also the key to unlocking the power that causes that fear, the key to harnessing it and making his super-scary power your own.

Turn it inside out and wear it instead of having it wear on you.

Be what you fear.

Building a Better Monster

Building a Better Monster

Invariably, we get questions along the lines of...


"Okay, I get all that violence stuff--but what if he's bigger/faster/stronger/(your favorite celebrity masher here)/has a knife/stick/gun/three guns?"
That's a great question.

Or it would be if that's what they really meant. More often than not people build a monster in their head around a single overarching fear...

And before I reveal what that fear is, let's take a look at some specifics:

When people look at a larger, stronger man what they're really registering is his potential ability to generate power. He could pick you up and throw you across the room, right? Heck, he could probably pick up and throw a Volkswagen.

What they ignore is that though he may have more human tissue than you, he's still made of meat. And meat can be butchered.

Fast and skilled fall into the same category -- the desire for a "duel."

This typically comes from people who are worried about "getting in."

This is particularly funny as I've never seen a prison murder where the participants had any difficulty "getting in" on each other; I'm sure this idea would make serial killers shrug as well.

In short, professionals who use violence in their day-to-day are conspicuously unconcerned with "getting in." And so should you be.

But what if he's armed?

Well, if I have a knife and he has a knife, I stab the knife, right? Of course not.

So why the hell does this make a difference if he has a tool and I'm using fists and boots? It just means you'll beat him to nonfunctional instead of shooting or stabbing him to nonfunctional.

Ah, but now we're getting to the super-secret fear that is hidden at the core of all these questions--these questions that are all saying:


"I'm afraid he has intent to do what I won't."
Everyone builds a better monster around the idea of superior intent. The bigger/faster/stronger smokescreen is just worry that he's turned up willing to deliver a serious beating that ends in a brutal curbing while you're just there to look the "hard boy" or have a manly slap-fight. You know, the kind where no one really gets hurt.

The tool, though, now that's different.

When he pulls out a labor-saving device whose sole purpose is to rend meat and break bones, well now he's showing superior intent--intent you're worried you can't match.

If you're just there to posture and look the part--if you're just there to duel and teach someone a lesson--then what the hell is he up to with that man-mangler? We all know the answer to that.

Everyone recognizes, on a visceral level, that the armed man is displaying intent they don't have.

And that's what everyone's afraid of. Superior intent!

All the sideways questions, all the building of better monsters is just dancing around this issue--"What if he's really here to kill me?"

I mean, really, this time?

The recognition that this just might be so, and you can't or won't match it, intent-wise, is the core fear that everyone harbors.

The dull toll of fear echoing in the "intent gap" is what I hear whenever anyone asks one of these questions.

They're not even consciously aware of it. They'll deny it when pressed.

My advice is to build your better monster--bigger, faster, stronger, meaner, armed in a dark alley. Add in a dash of rainy, moonless night. Pile it on.

And then... you need to become him.

-Chris Ranck-Buhr

Doing Surgery With a Chainsaw: The Limited Decision Set of Violence

Doing Surgery With a Chainsaw: The Limited Decision Set of Violence

Violence is binary--either you are doing it, or you are not. There is no middle ground, no levels of severity. You can't tear out someone's knee or stab them in the heart 'just a little bit.' It's all or nothing.

Attempting to put degrees on violence by going easy on the man or pulling punches only creates opportunities for him to get to you first. Remember that only serious, debilitating injury triggers a spinal reflex. A 'boo-boo' (like a minor laceration or contusion) won't even slow down a dedicated person, much less stop them cold. (Here's the quick and dirty way to look at it--if it wouldn't stop you, what makes you think it'll stop him?)

Simply put, trying to apply violence by degrees of severity will get you killed.

So what real choices do you have in violence? The short list says two. The long list says three. Either way, that's not many. That's why we always say that violence is a narrow tool, only good for one thing--shutting off a human being. It's also why we say that while violence isn't always the answer, when it is the answer it's the only answer.

The short list is the binary one--on or off. You're either plowing into him 100% dedicated to tearing his head off, dropping him, and stomping him into non-functionality, or you're not.

Everyone has a pretty good grasp on the 'on' part. The 'off' part, strangely enough, is the one that causes the most unease. That's because it's all about the ego. It's the walking away from a verbally abusive badass, it's letting the jerk have 'your' parking space, it's shrugging off a heated shove. In our darkest fantasies we would all love to give the above miscreants their just deserts--a good, solid beating to 'teach him a lesson.' It sounds good, it feels right, and it can get you killed. A good, solid beating to teach a lesson is not the same as tearing a man's eye out of his skull and wrecking his body to the point where he could end up with serious brain damage--if he survives. Lesson-teaching is a social interaction. It's about status. Communication. And that means it has nothing to do with violence.

The 'off' part is also about choosing when to stop using violence--when you recognize that he's non-functional. We'll get into that in more detail in just a moment.

The long list has three choices: on or off, and what targets to wreck. The third choice is the one that gives you a little bit of latitude in the outcome, but not a lot. Driving your fist into his solar plexus is very different from driving it into his throat--with the solar plexus his chances of dying as a result are small; with the throat you would expect him to die without medical intervention.

Target choice gives you a little bit of latitude, but violence is still violent. You're always going to hit him as hard as you can, every time. And while the difference between a broken jaw and a broken neck is obvious, the broken jaw can still kill him if he's got a bad heart, or if he goes down and strikes his head on the curb.

This is why violence is like doing surgery with a chainsaw.

If you're going to do surgery with a chainsaw, you really only have three choices:

1) When to start in on him,

2) What part(s) to lop off, and

3) When to stop.

'Starting in on him' is when you touch him with the chainsaw. I think we can all appreciate that once you start, you're committed. You can't ever undo what you just did, e.g., you can't 'unbreak' a knee.

You can decide what parts to lop off: taking his head off with the chainsaw will have an obvious effect, but even if you opt for the leg, he can still bleed to death. It's a chainsaw, after all. It isn't going to be nice and clean like a proper surgical kit.

The only other choice you have is when to stop. This is when you stop touching him with the chainsaw and turn it off. You'll do this at the point where you recognize, to your satisfaction, non-functionality. Much in the same way that true injury is obvious and unambiguous, when someone goes non-functional, you'll typically register it as you prepare the coup de grace. This is why, under optimal conditions, you'll never accidentally kill someone with this stuff. That doesn't mean it isn't possible--it is. But unintentional death becomes less likely when you know which injuries are life-threatening and which are typically not.

Violence is a very narrow tool--it's only good for a single job, and you only ever have (at most) three decision points when using it: when to start, what to wreck, and when to stop. That's it. Superuncomplicated. When applied in this way, when applied like chainsaw surgery, you maximize your chances of being the one to walk away. Fiddling with it, adding extra levels or 'what ifs, buts and maybes,' pulling punches or otherwise trying to use it to do things it can't do can get you killed.

Remember, when doing surgery with a chainsaw everything's screaming, messy amputations. The most delicate procedures become gore-fests. And if the problem can't be solved by on, off, or how bad, it isn't a problem that can be solved with violence.

SURVIVING VIOLENCE

!Surviving Violence:
The Missing Ingredient
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
An Interview with Target-Focus Training Master Instructor, Chris Ranck-Buhr
Page 2
Q Chris, you have trained a lot of people over a number of years in dealing with violence, really dealing with criminal violence. If you look back over that whole time, is there a single focal point, really a single thing that people have a tendency to either miss or have trouble with more than anything else?
A. Yes, I think the essential problem is just that everyone thinks they know what violence is and the reality for most sane, socialized people is that we don’t. We have no concept of what violence is. Even those of us that have been unfortunate enough to be involved in actual criminal violence and survived it, the experience is so chaotic there is really nothing that we can take away from it or learn from it other than that violence is scary and it’s chaotic.
Most people come to this topic believing that they know what it takes to get the job done and to handle a situation involving criminal violence. Our biggest problem is being unwilling to do the work of a killer, to use the tools of a killer, to behave like a killer.
People drag their social norms into that arena. They think that the things they hold dear, the moral codes they have, and the “rules of engagement” are going to work for them in the realms of actual violence. They don’t.
When we impose our social norms on top of training for violence we end up with things like martial arts or competitive sports involving martial arts. We also end up with self-defense. Even the idea of self-defense training misses the entire point of what has to happen in a real life violent confrontation.
What you have to ask yourself is, does a killer really worry that someone is going to use self-defense on him? That’s the last thing that the killer -- the serial killer or murder, the robber or rapist, all the guys you REALLY need to worry about as opposed to the trained boxers or martial arts fighters everyone thinks they need to concern themselves with -- anyway, it’s the last thing the true asocial criminal is concerned about. He’s not worried that someone is going to use self-defense on him. He’s not worried that someone is going to wrestle him.
We as sane, socialized people spend all of our time thinking about this event -- if a killer comes to murder you -- we think about this event as an engagement with rules, procedures, counters (trying to counter what the other guy is doing) instead of what needs to be done. The work that needs to be done is exactly the same work that the killer wants to do to you -- violence.
The killer knows, whether he knows it instinctually or whether he’s had experience doing it or he’s just crazy enough to not have any of those sane, social and moral codes that we have, he knows what makes violence work and what’s going to work is for him is to shut you off. That’s what he knows and he’s going to go about his work immediately. He’s not going to attempt to engage you, he’s not going to attempt to set you up or he’s not going to get into a fighting stance. He’s not going to try to “defend himself” on you to death. That makes no sense whatsoever.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
That’s why I said before the very idea of, “Oh, I’m going to do self-defense training to prevent someone from killing me” is really silly because self-defense says nothing about the other guy. In point of fact what you have to do is you have to do terrible, horrible things to the other guy to shut him off -- before he does exactly that to you.
Page 3
We have to adopt the tools of a killer, we have to adopt the techniques of a killer because what the killer uses is violence. He doesn’t use self-defense; he doesn’t use martial arts; he doesn’t view it as a contest. He knows that there are things that he can do to you to shut you off and he is going to do those things first.
Now, if the word killer is to strong for you, then think criminal, think gun-toting robber, whatever you like. All asocial thugs think exactly this way. And the problem is you don’t.
The only thing that a killer may be worried about is someone using violence on him and so from his point of view that’s why he’s going to do his best to get it done first. He knows that if he gives you an opportunity to get it done on him that it could very well be the end of him.
So the essential problem is that people believe they know what violence is yet the tools that they put together to try to counter that threat don’t work. All they do is make us feel better about trying to get that work done; they don’t actually get it done. They just let us feel morally superior and they let us live with ourselves.
What most people believe is that if we do the work of a killer, if we take on the tools of a killer, and if we use violence, then somehow that makes us evil, that it somehow makes us morally bankrupt just like the killer. In point of fact, violence just doesn’t belong to murderers; it’s simply a survival tool.
There are harsh realities about violence that are very, very different from the ideals inside of martial arts and combat sports and even inside of self-defense. So much of self-defense has to do with attempting to counter the threat instead of being a greater threat to this man than he is to you. It’s the law of the jungle and at the end of the day the person that is doing the violence and survives it wins and gets to go home.
The person getting the violence done to them doesn’t fair so well. At that point you just have to be lucky and hope that you survive your injuries and survive the experience but that’s not enough.
The Virginia Tech Example
To give you a good case in point, if we look at the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, there was only one person there that understood how to use the tools of violence and that was the shooter. He was the only one. No one else there knew how to use the tool of violence.
There may have been people in that room and among the people that were unfortunately killed that had trained in self-defense or martial arts, or had experience in combat sports. We don’t know.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
But what I can tell you for sure is that there was only one person there who knew how to use the tool of violence and he was using it on other people. He was even able to take his time and reload and get the job done without having to worry about anyone even attempting to do anything about it other than once again, defensive tactics, defensive things, attempting to defend themselves.
Page 4
Right there we get a very stark and awful reminder of the realities of violence and how self-defense is really insufficient in the face of cold, calculated killing. And in my mind that’s our essential problem.
People come to our Target-Focus Training sessions believing that they know what is going on. When I hear the comments that people make when they first see our training, I always know who has experience with real violence and who doesn’t. The people who have real experience with violence: they don’t talk about it, they don’t boast about it and typically I’ll never even know until the training is over and they will come to me quietly and they will share their story with me.
Whether they killed in war or whether they experienced it personally as a law enforcement officer or they experienced it as a civilian, and even if they survived and won, it’s not something that they boast about. And it’s not something they swagger around with. They just come up quietly at the very end.
The people at the beginning of the course who have scoffed the most and sit there watching me talk with their arms crossed and a sneer on their face, the ones who are reluctant to even participate in the training in a meaningful way to help their training partner out, I know for a fact that those people don’t have any experience with actual violence.
They may have a vast amount of experience with other forms of socialized violence that we think are effective because we they it on the mat, they do it in the dojo’s and they do it in the ring. It appears to work. We’ve been told that it works because the people who are doing it to expect it to work or because we’re doing it on people who aren’t dedicated to killing us. So it’s going to work in those scenarios. Self-defense is going to work in the self-defense class. But it is far less likely that it will be effective against the criminal sociopath.
I remember an investigative news magazine piece on TV that I saw a number of years back. They went and interviewed a self-defense instructor and they filmed self-defense courses happening. Then they went to death row and showed the videos to the prisoners who were there because they had murdered people and asked for their assessment. The criminals sat there and laughed their way through these videos. They were extremely amused and at the end they said, “Well, that’s not what we do, that’s not what works. It’s a neat idea, but that’s all it is. Nothing that they’re showing in there is going to stop me from doing what I want to do.”
That’s sobering. That says you better take a look at what you’re thinking is preparation.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
Q. So what you’re really saying is that even though there is a lot of talk and a lot of what seems like information on how to help yourself and what to do and everything, the really big thing is that you have to go back and point to is that when the chips are really down, people don’t know what to do or how to do it in a way that’s really going to save their lives. They are either not thinking about it or if they are, they think that some sort of training they’ve had in some shape or form is going to do it for them. But what you’re saying is that it isn’t. And along with that, how then do you go about training people? If they can’t do it with their training now, how do you get them to where they actually can do it then?
Page 5
A. Well, this is the thing, it’s never a problem of pulling the trigger and what I mean by that is having someone want to murder you is very motivating and I think someone in that situation is more than willing to do anything to survive that situation.
Where the failure comes is that although they have the motivation and may want to do whatever they can to survive, they have no tools that are applicable in that environment. When people suddenly find themselves in a violent situation, none of the things that they have learned are actually going to work for them in that scenario.
Even Those Who Think They’re trained in Using Violence, Probably Aren’t.
We have the story about the top-level Jujitsu competitor who had two guys attack him in a parking lot. He took the first guy out. Then the second guy came at him with a knife. He got the knife attacker in an arm bar but when the guy “tapped out” he let go of the knife hand and the guy stabbed him several times with the knife.
This is a perfect example of what we’re talking about. Here was a guy who was highly skilled, highly trained, and he executed flawlessly. In fact he did everything that he had been taught to do in his training. Unfortunately none of his training had taught about shutting people off using violence.
Technically the way violence is done and the way we talk about violence, he did not use violence because nothing he did was about destroying the other guy.
To give you a really base example of what he COULD have done, instead of putting the guy in a painful arm bar, he needed to break the elbow.
So the problem is that people train but they’re not training for the realities of violence, for what really happens inside of there. And so when they get put in those situations, they find that the tools that they’ve been given are insufficient to get the job done.
To be quite frank about it, when someone wants to kill you, you need to be able to dig their eyeball right out of their skull. You need to be able to crush their throat. You need to know how to break their neck. You need to break their legs and you need to tear them apart even though they have hit a point where they no longer want you doing that to them.
Because if you can’t and you haven’t practiced doing this and this guy is committed to doing it to you, then you’re basically screwed.
Again, it’s doing the work of the killer; using the tool of violence. It means doing these things to another person who intends to otherwise do them to you.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
Now, I’m not saying you end up having to do all that. You may get lucky and your first strike totally disables the guy to the point where you feel safe just walking away. If that happens, great. But just like the Jujitsu guy, you’re much better safe than sorry. Remember, we’re not talking here about social violence. Where this guy has the same morals as you and might beat you up a bit but then decide to just move on.
Page 6
This is worst case. And that’s why I said if you can back it off, great. But that’s easy. What isn’t easy, in fact it’s nearly impossibly, is thinking you can escalate your skills to the deal with a killer when you’ve never practiced for that at all.
If you need to break the guy’s leg and then you need to kick him in the head when he’s on the ground and then you need to stomp on his throat so that he can’t breathe and he starts asphyxiating and he is going to die from that and then you need to do whatever else that you need to do in order to make sure that he doesn’t get back up.
This is not a pretty picture and the problem is that people look at it as so way beyond any kind of training they’ve had because it essentially comes down to “curbing” people. This is the kind of stuff that when we look at it, we have a visceral reaction to it and we say that’s awful and terrible and I’m not a bad person so I don’t do things like that.
Unfortunately, until people figure out that the reason that criminals are successful -- the reason that terrorists are successful -- is because they already know how to use the tool of violence and they’re willing to do so. They are ready to curb you. They’re willing to put the bullet in your brain. They’re willing to bury the knife in your neck and if you’re not willing to do those things to another person, then there’s not much that I can do for you.
As I said, most people can be pushed to a point where they would be willing to do those things to survive only to find out that they don’t actually know how to do those things.
Q. So that’s where we get back to the real missing key which for most people is even if they understand all of this -- what I need to do to survive, when push comes to shove and my life is on the line right now -- if I haven’t trained for this, then I’m probably not going to be able to go do it, even if I want to?
A. That’s correct. You’re only going to be able to do what you’ve been trained. If you’ve trained for a set pattern or a set scenario, I can almost guarantee that’s it’s not going to happen according to that exact set-up that you’ve practiced for, time and time again. If you think that it’s going to go down like a competition, where you’re going to get someone in a submissive hold and they’re going to tap out and quit and then it’s going to be over then you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.
In a ring, people tap out. In a social party situation or in a bar situation, people tap out. When someone wants to kill you, they don’t tap out. So if you haven’t actually trained to do violence to people then even if you’re willing to do the violence, you’re not going to be able to get the job done because you have no tools. You have nothing at that point. You had everything that you needed in the ring, you had everything that you needed in the dojo, but all of a sudden when it’s time to shut another human being off, you have no idea where those buttons are. You don’t know how to shut a human being off. You don’t know how to get it done so that you know whether or not you got it done correctly and you don’t know to get it done so that the guy doesn’t get back up off the ground.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
Q. You hear stories about rape cases where the woman dies, but they catch the rapist and he has scratches all over his face and right around his eyes but his eyes are intact and you hear
Page 7
that and think, ah, the eyes are right there, she could obviously have reached them but didn’t. Is that the kind of thing that you’re talking about?
A. Yeah, because she probably had never been trained mechanically how to dig an eyeball out of somebody’s skull and that’s the difference. You know scratching someone’s face, that’s almost instinct, and it’s headed in the right direction because it’s a feature found on murderers who’ve killed somebody.
The paraorbital scratching, just like defense wounds are found on corpses. What it speaks to is the fact that mechanically that person had probably never been trained on how to dig an eyeball out of someone’s skull so they are stuck with what they have instinctually at that point. They have no information for how to do violence and get the job done, how to effect that change, and how to get the results that are going to change the situation in their favor.
And digging that eyeball is really very, very easy. Unless you haven’t practiced for it.
If you’ve never had anyone tell you that it’s okay to do this to somebody when you’re in this situation and never actually been taught mechanically how to do it, you don’t have anything. It’s not enough to have the idea and it’s not enough to have the will. You must actually have the skill. It’s a very small and simple skill but if you are not trained for it and you haven’t been shown how to do it and you haven’t practiced doing it, it’s not going to be there for you.
Q. Everything that you’re talking about is lethal. What we’re talking about is life-or-death. What’s missing in me being able to keep myself alive, why I’m not able to do this, whatever it would take? How do you train lethal types of things like that without causing somebody else irreparable harm?
A. Well, it comes down to target practice. Really, simply put, you have to practice accessing these targets on a human body. There are no two ways about it. There is no other way we can train. We can’t do it in the air, we can’t do it conceptually, you have to actually have another human body there and you have to actually look at it and find these targets on another human body and then practice accessing them in ways that are going to get the result you want.
For any given target, anything that we do needs to destroy that target’s function so that the target doesn’t work anymore. If we’re talking about the eyes, you need to make sure that what we’re doing will mechanically overcome the natural resilience of the tissue of the eyeball, of the muscles of the orbit and end up actually lacerating or bursting or avulsing that eyeball from the socket. If we’re talking about the throat, we’ve got to make sure that what we’re doing will actually crush the throat and collapse the airway. If we’re talking about things like the groin, we need to make sure that mechanically what we’re practicing would be expected to rupture one or both testicles. If we’re talking about breaking the knee, we need to make sure that how we’re practicing and what we’re doing has the full engagement of your body weight, the full follow through and is actually going through the target in such a way that the knee is going to get snapped backwards so that the leg doesn’t function anymore.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
The only way that we can practice this is, like I said, it comes down to target practice. We have to go slow because once again, if we’re talking about the eyes, the throat, the groin, the neck,
Page 8
breaking the spine, doing these kinds of things to people, we can’t go fast because that becomes extremely dangerous.
It’s Just Like Firearms Training.
I think the easiest way to understand it is to think about target shooting and firearms. When you use a firearm, if the bullet misses the guy nothing happens. If the bullet hits the guy but doesn’t hit anything important, very little is going to happen. You actually need to put the bullet into something important -- through the heart, through the lungs, open up the aorta, through brain tissue, through the spinal cord. And the only way you are able to fire a gun and have the bullet go through the place that you want it to go is to practice.
We shoot at paper targets on the range and we do that work slowly. We take our time. I mean you just don’t pull out your gun and then blaze away at the target and then scroll the target down towards you and look at it and go, “Huh, it looks like I missed more times than I hit and I didn’t actually get any of the bullets in the black, so I guess I need more practice,” and so you run a new paper target back out, start blazing away again, haphazardly and then roll it back in only to go, “Huh, I’m still missing. Maybe I need more practice.”
That method of practice is never going to increase your ability to put a bullet where you need it. What’s going to actually help you out is by going slowly. You take the gun, you put in on the target, you aim carefully, you’re trying to do all the things if you have a shooting instructor there that they’re telling you how to do to improve your aim, and then you fire a round. Then you see where that round went and then you adjust. The next round that you fire, you relax, you take aim, you do your best to adjust to whatever error you were making in your target hitting before. And through this type of slow, deliberate practice with a firearm, you get to the point where you can put the bullet in the black and maybe even the bulls eye whenever you want which is what’s going to make you effective with a firearm.
Well, it works the exact same way whether it’s a bullet or your boot heel. It’s going to end up being the exact same process and that’s if you don’t hit your target you’re not going to have anything effective happen at all. We need to make sure that we are wrecking these anatomical features in people to shut them off. The only way that we’re going to be able to practice that is to go slowly and so you need to take your time. You have the other human body right there with you, your training partner, you look at the target you want to access, you take your time making sure that you line everything up on it, you step through and strike that target nice and slow so that your partner can react to being struck there AND you get to feel what it’s like.
www.targetfocustraining.com Copyright ©2008 The TFT Group
But if we just went full contact as fast as we could, more often than not, you would miss most of what you wanted to do because it would be so haphazard and then, of course, it becomes dangerous because the target that we’re accessing is something that is going to change people’s life. So a lot of places when they’re working in full speed, full contact, they’re also not allowing you to go for the eyes, the throat, or the groin, or you’re not allowed to stomp to the knee because if we did those things full speed, full contact, then we end up with a horrible injury that probably puts your partner in the hospital immediately and that’s not an acceptable way to learn because we’re going to run out of training partners very quickly. In essence, what’s going to happen is that no one is going to learn a damn thing.
Page 9
So it’s really important to always think about this exactly the same way as firearms training. It’s not until you’ve been using the firearm for awhile and you’ve got your accuracy up and you can actually put the bullet where you want to put it, that you can actually work on increasing your rate of fire. You can work on firing off more than one bullet at a time. That’s exactly the same way as training with our bare hands and our boots. We have to take our time, we have to get it right and make sure that, number one, we’re keeping our partner safe and then number two that we’re actually getting it done in such a way that it’s going to work. Once we have that, once we’ve built in that basic skill, we can work at a faster rate with our partner but it’s always going to come back to the safety margin and we never, ever want to exceed that safety margin.
Now, how does this translate to doing violence on the street when your life depends on it? Well, out there we’re completely unconcerned about the safety of the other man, obviously. This is why someone can come in and I can train them for a day and I would not allow them to work very fast with their training partners but if they went out into the parking lot immediately after the end of that session, it’s scientifically proven that they could do it to someone full speed, as hard as they could to get the job done because they would have the accuracy.
During that day, the hours that I worked with them, I would have purely been working on accuracy and mechanically being correct so that they will get the result that they want. So that they will rupture the things that they want to rupture, they’ll break the things that they want to break and I am completely unconcerned about them being able to do that and be effective. I’m much more concerned with them learning to go faster in the training environment and be safe because that’s actually a much harder skill than hurting people.
Q. So by doing the training like that you now have a tool in your toolbox that when you need to call on it that it’s there. The fact that you’ve done this even at a slow speed in a controlled environment, that tool, that lethal tool, is now in your toolbox and when you need it the adrenalin will kick in and give you what you need. The tool that wasn’t there before -- the missing ingredient -- is now all of a sudden at your disposal and it turns you into someone who can actually make something happen in a life-or-death confrontation!
A. Exactly.

Time to Stop Lying to Yourself

Time to Stop Lying to Yourself

Experienced instructors are some of the most relaxed people I know.

The question is, of course, why?

When you have the mechanical ability to cause injury and couple it with the driving motivator of intent, everything throttles back and gets calm and easy--you're not out spoiling for a fight or giving yourself an anxiety disorder by obsessing violently over every human being who brushes up against you.

This is what I was getting at in last week's post about the Hard Knot. You simply cultivate the skill, and the will to use it, and then sit back and relax into the rest of your life. Should the need arise, you pull out the knot and brain people with it. Then you tuck it back where it belongs and get on with living. (I should note that I'm not talking about a ball of twine here--in my mind it's an infinitely folded tessellation of agony, a world-heavy fist-sized sphere from which no light can escape.) You don't walk around brandishing it high over your head, mad-dogging all comers with a halo of purple lightning dancing about your enraged features.

Without intent, without the implacable will to wield the knot, it's not much better than yoga. Physically challenging, yes. A survival skill, no. (As an aside, it's critically important to note that the criminal sociopath has very little training--a deficit they more than make up for with vast, raging reservoirs of intent.)

So why do people have such a hard time with intent? And most importantly, what can you do about it?

People have a hard time with intent for a number of reasons. They 'suffer' from a natural disinclination toward violence, they worry about what the other guy will do, and they think violence is mechanically difficult.

The natural disinclination toward violence
Not wanting to physically hurt people is healthy, sane, but ultimately an impediment to survival when someone poses the question to which violence is the answer.

You need to get over the idea that anything we're up to here is social in nature. This is why it's so critically important that your free fight time is as asocial as possible--no talking, no nervous laughter, no checking your partner's face for feedback. The only time you should be looking at a face is if you're taking an eye out of it.

I'm not talking about getting fired up and 'hating' your partner. I'm talking about dispassion. Lose the emotional triggers--you're not here to communicate, and raging at your partner (or his targets) is still communication. If you're working with your 'war face' you've kicked the social but are busy reinforcing the antisocial. What you really need is to get off the any-social, and get to its absence. That voidspace is the psychic storage shed of the knot...

Worried about what other guy will do
Let's be blunt. Injured people are helpless. Ask anyone who's done it. The first injury converts a fully-functional person into a gagging meat-sack. Every injury after than is like busting apart a side of beef with your boot heels. This is why experienced instructors are so damned relaxed (and courteous, for that matter). This is also why they won't hesitate to be the first one doing it. (I get really tired of going over this one. It's the ugly truth that no one wants to talk about--about how people really respond to injury, about how when you cause one, you'll know it because what you see next will stick to the inside of your eyelids for the rest of your life.)

What's he going to do? He's going to break and behave like an injured person. He's going to go to the worst place he's ever been. And you're going to put him there.

The question you have to ask yourself is will you worry about what he's going to do or will you make him worry about what you're going to do? (Hint: pick the one where you survive.)

On this same topic, you need to get off the whole 'attacker/defender' merry-go-round. In any violent conflict there's going to be, by definition, at least one person doing it to another. Be that one person. Decide it's you, now, and every time from now. Out there it's always your turn. If you have to think in terms of there being an 'attacker' then it's you.

Choosing to put yourself in second place is not the best strategy for a win, no matter how much we may venerate the underdog. In a 'fair fight' or a contest, the underdog is the hero. In violence, he's dead.

Quit empathizing with the dead guy. You're doing it because you're nice, you're doing it because you're sane. In a social context, it makes perfect sense. In violent conflict your social skills and mores do nothing but prevent you from surviving. Empathizing with the dead guy at the funeral is sane and normal. Empathizing with him when we're all trying to decide who the dead guy's going to be means you're it.

Bottom line: decide who has the problem. Is it you, or is it him?

Believing that violence is mechanically difficult
Outside of the psycho-social issues, violence is really, really easy. We're all predators, we're all physically built for killing.

Violence is as easy as going from where you are to where he is and putting a single injury in him. The rest is academic.

How easy is it? General consensus says: easier than free fighting. You get to strike as hard as you can, you don't have to take care of him, and it's over so fast you won't even have time to break a sweat or even breathe hard. The only hard part is giving yourself the permission to be inhumanly brutal. Giving yourself the permission to survive. (Personally, I vote for me every time.)

Thinking that violence is mechanically difficult (and thereby trying to give yourself an 'out' so you don't have to face your own intent problems) is akin to thinking that swimming in the deep end is any different than swimming in the shallow end. Mechanically, it's the same--swimming is swimming--the difference is all in your perception. In the shallow end, you can touch bottom and can save yourself from drowning by standing up. In the deep end you're on your own--it's sink or swim. So everyone thinks free fighting is the shallow end; there's no risk, you can always 'stand up' when you get into trouble. That would make the street the deep end--no back-up, no safety net, just swim or die. I'll grant all of that as true. Just remember, always, that no matter where you're swimming, mechanically it's all the same. The idea that there's a difference is an illusion that takes effort on your part to make a reality. Stop feeding the phantoms and just swim.

Intent--your will to cause injury, your drive to get it done--is completely up to you. You need to start thinking about it now, personally letting go of the things you've kept between the 'you' you love because he's a lovable 'good guy' and the 'you' that can stomp the throats of screaming men.

We can only show you how to mechanically take someone apart--pulling the trigger on it is up to you, and you alone.

posted by Chris Ranck-Buhr @ Tuesday, April 15, 2008

what role does pain play in violence

All theatrics aside, the answer truly is 'none.'
(written by Chris Ranck-buhr TFT master instructor)
Everything you train to do to people--and really, pick any one thing, shattered, torn, crushed, ruptured and otherwise useless for the very important function it used to perform before you got hold of it--has got to hurt, right? The gouged eye, especially, must be a unique kind of agony, more intense and horrible than anything you'll ever (hopefully) experience. How it feels has got to count for something, right?

Maybe.

And because it's just 'maybe,' you can't bet your life on it.

The problem with pain is that it is subjective--it's experienced entirely inside the brain of the individual. Because it's a subjective experience, it can be dampened or magnified depending on the person's mood, state, and/or current circumstance.

The physical fact of pain is that it is a signal elicited by the deformation or destruction of tissue. (And cold & heat--in short, the signal is supposed to impel you to move away from things that are doing you harm.) And that's where the facts end--it's how the brain processes that signal that makes pain so 'iffy.' How many times have you received a minor injury or wound that you had no idea how it occurred, or even when? Because you were distracted, you processed the pain signal as something else, as pressure, or an itch. On the flip side, if you held still and watched yourself get cut (for example) it might end up being more painful than if it happened without your direct knowledge. Both of these situations illustrate just how subjective pain can be.

It's important to note that spinal reflex reactions are NOT in response to pain, in fact, they are usually triggered ahead of the pain signal reaching the brain. The reflex happens outside the 'feel pain, decide what to do' loop--and we should all be glad it does. That way we don't waste any time registering that the stove is hot and then deciding whether or not to pull the hand back. The hand hops off the stove on autopilot, THEN it hurts.

Can pain do anything for you in terms of violence? It can--through two effects: vasovagal syncope (fainting) and encouraging the man to capitulate. I've heard direct anecdotal evidence of both of these at work in violence (viewing a deformed limb and passing out; curling up into a ball ('going fetal') once injured and on the ground), but because both of these are situational and subjective you can't bet your life on them. If you start tearing a man apart and he faints--terrific, now it's time to take full advantage of what you got. If you break him and he quits, likewise exploit the hell out of the gift of his lack of resolve. But don't count on it.

If he is 'feeling no pain' or has iron-willed resolve or simply has a high pain tolerance, how bad it hurts will literally make no difference. This is why we don't care about whether or not it hurts--only whether or not it works. And by 'works' I mean that thing you broke doesn't work anymore. If his torn-out knee agonizes him into fainting or quitting, great--if not, it still doesn't work. He can't get up and run around. He's down and crippled and now you get to set to work on a downed, crippled man.

This is the difference between what we at TFT train and 'pressure point' or joint-locking techniques. Both of those things hurt like an expletive in all caps with three exclamation points after it when we do them on each other in a controlled environment, especially if we've been told ahead of time that they are excruciating. Get out into the real world and you'll have mixed results--those who are susceptible to pain will writhe and cry and submit; those who aren't feeling it will keep on trying to kill you. And should they get loose, they will.

This is why you want to hew to the idea of 'broken is broken' instead of 'this is gonna hurt.' Does it hurt? Maybe. Can it hurt? Sure. Do you care?

Not one whit.

Access the Meat: Choosing the Level of Interaction in Violent Conflict

Access the Meat: Choosing the Level of Interaction in Violent Conflict

One of the key features of the sociopath is that he sees everyone as essentially the same--a piece of meat to be butchered. Sociopaths look at everyone this way, regardless of personality, skill, or ability.

A big strong guy with a black belt looks the same to him as a sleeping little girl. The sociopath understands that both their skulls open the same way, their eyes yield to equal pressure, and they both die when their throats are cut.

The sociopath disregards the things that set them apart; he will not interface with their personalities, or the big strong guy's black belt-level skill, or his massive muscles. He will only concentrate on the things that they are both susceptible to.

In order to use violence successfully, in order to have an equal chance of survival, so must you. Don't get caught in the sucker's game of interfacing at higher levels, of showing respect for the person, his skills or physical power. Go straight for the meat.

The Four Levels of Interaction

As a person - social

This is trying to change behavior, mood, or motivation. This is where most people would like to keep the situation.

As a skill-set - anti-social

This is trying to out-wrestle him, or out-technique him in a 90 mph (144+ kph) chess game. This is a duel in which the most skilled practitioner will typically win. It is 'civilized violence' and seen as 'fighting fair.'

As an animal (via strength, speed, stamina) - anti-social

This is pitting your strength against his, trying to out-maneuver or outlast him, going blow for blow - this typically looks pretty brutal and ugly. A lot of struggle where the best specimen prevails. This is seen as brutish, desperate and decidedly 'uncivilized.'

As a piece of meat - asocial
This is regarding him as a physical object beholden to the natural laws of the universe. Paying no heed to the person, the skill, or the ability. This is seen as almost universally 'bad'--people who do this naturally are classified as 'evil' in a social setting. This is interfacing with him as a thing that can be broken down and rendered nonfunctional.

It's interesting to note that these four levels correspond to different ranges and comfort zones.

Interfacing with the person can be done from across the street, a distance from trouble where most people feel safe (they can always take off running if it gets out of hand).

Interfacing with his skill-set is almost always done at a pace away, with the contestants circling to get a feel for the other guy's skill level, feinting and parrying and otherwise dancing around. It's all about giving yourself enough room to see what he's doing and try to counter it.

Interfacing with his physical abilities is done skin-to-skin, but that's as deep as it goes.

Interfacing with the frailties of the flesh is done beneath the skin--true injury is about disregarding the sanctity of the body and simply destroying it.

What-ifs, Buts and Maybes

The kinds of questions people ask during training can tell you a lot about where their head is at and at which level they're stuck on. The important thing to note is that none of their worries have any impact on injury whatsoever.

The 'Socialist'
The person who is uncomfortable with the whole idea of conflict will ask questions that dance around the issue from across the street, like, "How can I tell if he wants to hurt me?" and such.

The Duelist
People trained in martial arts usually get hung up on interfacing with his skill. They'll ask the most what-ifs, like, "What if he throws a spinning back kick?", "What if he counters my joint lock?" and "What if he's holding the knife like this?" They are also overly concerned with blocking--both in doing it and worrying about having it done to them.

The Animal
Untrained people who can come to terms with the idea of conflict usually end up fixated on physical attributes. For smaller, less athletic people it manifests as worry about how they'll fare against bigger, stronger, faster adversaries; big, strong folks have the opposite problem--they typically believe they cannot be defeated by 'lesser' beings.

Sociopaths & Butchers
Almost no one shows up comfortable with injury as a starting point.

Another interesting thing to note is that progressing through the levels is not linear. Socialists don't usually walk through the others to arrive at injury. They go one of two ways--either they dig in their heels and cram their heads into the sand and will never, ever cross the street, or they go straight from where they are to injury (though sometimes with a short stop-over at the animal level).

Duelists are another thing entirely. It is often very difficult to wean them off of the idea that they need to respect and/or thwart his skill before they can be effective. If they do move on, it's usually with a long stop-over at the animal level. His skill bothered them before; now they've transferred that worry to his physical abilities. Those who have taken the long walk from skill to animal to injury are typically the most evangelical about the whole process. (As opposed to those who went straight from social to injury. They usually don't see the whole experience as that big a deal.)

Animals are easier to nudge into interfacing directly with the meat of the matter. They're pretty close, conceptually, and they just need to be shown how to direct their efforts away from strong points and into the weak ones. (Instead of going strength-to-strength, go strength-to-eyeball.)

If you're reading this I'm going to assume that you don't have a problem with violence in a general sense, that you're not hung up on the social aspects from across the street.

So where are your hang ups? What are you stuck on? Are you worried about what he'll do if he's skilled? Or bigger-stronger-faster? Be honest with yourself. You're letting yourself down if you lie--you're not going to get any more effective that way.

If the idea of going after a trained Goliath makes you sweat (more than the usual, healthy amount, I mean) then you need buckle down and study up on injury. Seek out photos of sports injuries (for broken joints and twisted, nonfunctioning limbs). Autopsy reports from non-firearm killings--especially where the victim was beaten to death--are illuminating. Troll the internet for videos of prison fights and violent muggings.

Essentially, look for anything where the survivor is interacting with the other person as a piece of meat.

You'll be repulsed and comforted simultaneously.

Written by Chris Ranck-buhr (TFT Master Instructor)

The Narrow Definition of Violence

The Narrow Definition of Violence

This may sound obvious, but there a lot of things violence is not. It is not a particularly rough cage-match; it is not a bar fight where everyone's sharing beers ten minutes later; it's not getting your nose bloodied.

Many people would call those things violence, and under that banner find them repugnant, negative, and to be avoided. While the avoidance part is common sense (unless you're into those things, which is fine for you), none of these are violence as we define it. That's because we prefer to have a much more narrow definition: violence is what happens when someone sustains an injury.

So what's the bloody nose? The lacerated eyebrow? The egg-sized hematoma on the shin? Much like the lay public would call the previous situations 'violence', the medical community would classify those various tissue manglings as 'injury'. But that's not good enough for us--we need a narrow definition: injury is when an important anatomical feature can no longer do its job, resulting in a decrement of normal function. Something so important gets smashed that the man literally cannot go on.

Our narrow definition give us the following picture:

Violence is when people get broken such that they don't just quit, they quit working.

or

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye."

In the end, we have to ask: why bother? Nit-picking over such narrow definitions makes us look like jerks when discussing 'violence' or 'injury'--saying that most of what happens in the UFC is not violence (save the few unfortunate career-ending injuries) and most of what people think of as injury is not really (anything you can 'walk off' is just an inconvenience).

What does hewing to such a narrow definition do for you?

Two things that go hand-in-hand to make you scary-effective:

1. You know exactly what you're gunning for

and

2. You know whether you got it or not.

With a narrow definition, there's no wiggle room, no 'I sorta got it' like you're kinda pregnant. The narrow definition keeps things tight and binary--either you got it or you didn't. It keeps you from having to worry about an entire spectrum of goals or events--you just want one. Injury.

The narrow definition keeps you from screwing around with things like making people submit, tiring them out, besting them strength-to-strength. It keeps you from confusing these things with effective violence.

Best of all it keeps you from being surprised when the guy you thought you just dropped comes back at you.

A narrow definition of violence will save you wear & tear--and maybe even your life.