Rory Miller's Blog, page 16
December 3, 2013
Knowing Full Well
This may be the longest stretch of not writing on the blog since it started. Mea culpa. That doesn't mean I haven't been writing. Eleven lessons and counting on a class that starts today (one more day to sign up) on Real Villains for a writer's group.
The class will be a challenge. Like in a lot of fringe areas of life, the 'common wisdom' is ridiculously wrong; what most people 'know' are politically-driven platitudes; and these incredibly un- or ill-informed beliefs are passionately defended. There's some information that would rock their world that I can't directly share because of confidentiality issues and NDAs... but they will get a close look. Hope they're ready.
The basic distinction between infatuation and love is that with infatuation, you have to explain that every pimple is really a beauty mark and in love, you can see the blemishes without your feelings changing. Those infatuated must actively stay blind, because they fear what they will feel if they see the truth.
You see this in martial arts, of course. I've seen an instructor with a scripted knife defense that would have cut his own throat with a real blade...and their students blindly repeating the technique. Seen an instructor explain that falling over by flinching was inevitable and physics, though he could only make it work on his own students. Seen people who were toyed with convincing themselves they won. Watched countless martial artists deny their personal experience and accept a ridiculous truth... "Attacks always come from two long steps away" "No one can hit hard enough to hurt you at close range" "Anyone who uses a knife will become tool dependent and forget that they can use their other hand and feet so it's okay to tie up all your weapons on one of his"...and so on.
My circle of friends are probably not the people you'd invite over for tea and crumpets. Some are what R calls, "Our kind of broken." I like them, that's why they're my friends. But I like them knowing full well who and what they are. Not all are bad asses, and not all the ones who think they are really are. Some have knowledge that far outpaces their understanding or skill. All are trustworthy, if you know their parameters.
And some of them don't like each other. "How can you put up with...?"
It's easy. None of my friends are perfect, and so I can love them anyway, flaws and all.
But I hit a wall on this, sometimes, in training. What do you do with good skills that come from horseshit? Most of the time it's not a problem-- generally, if you find an art with 2000 years of history that was invented from pure imagination in the last half century, the art tends to not be all that useful anyway. It's easy to walk away.
But what about effective arts taught by frauds? Or what if it is the second or third generation away from the fraud who conned them and the present generation of instructors don't even know it's a fraud?
And (ran into this recently and am still puzzling over it) a group breaks away from their founder because of integrity issues but continues to teach not just the effective technique but also the bullshit philosophy of the founder?
Example-- most of the "Zen" I have seen written about in the US isn't just about the heretical offshoot of the heretical offshoot of Buddhism, but the misinformed, 1970's hippy idealized imaginings of what zen was supposed to be. If someone wrapped effective stuff in this imaginary trappings...
The INTJ part of me doesn't care. As long as the parts I need work, the fairy tales people tell themselves don't matter to me. But part of me cares, for two reasons. One is that too many people swallow the fantasy with the substance. Two- if someone can study X for a lifetime and somehow avoid noticing that everything around it is based on historical lies, how can I trust them on the base issues either?
Knowing full well who and what they are, I can usually take the useful and leave the useless. But it bothers me.
November 11, 2013
Learning, Responsibility, and Power
I want to run with Pax's comment from the last post:
"From my place at the front of the room I have complete responsibility to speak clearly and with fearless honesty. I accept full responsibility for communicating with my students and for seeing to it that the message does get through.
But that 100% responsibility on my shoulders does not lighten the student's responsibility at all.
The student has a responsibility to actively participate in the learning process, which can include making the instructor explain unclear ideas, or challenging questionable concepts, or asking how to integrate apparent contradictions. No matter how dedicated the instructor, in the long run, self-education is the only kind of education there is..."
Yes.
Here's the way I see it. I will assume 100% responsibility. If I am the teacher it is 100% my responsibility to be understood. And if I am the student, it is 100% my responsibility to understand. These percentages and the concepts of teaching and learning, the relationship of teacher to student are not exact realities. A huge amount of every interaction you have with other people is being created in your head. Humans don't deal, almost ever, with objective reality. We ascribe meanings from our own histories, and interpretations from our own internal connections to everything we hear and everything we see.
You can and do control this process. A fairly large amount of it you can control mindfully, consciously. And some you can only influence. Can I learn anything perfectly, 100%? Of course not. And are there teachers that can affect how much I learn? Absolutely. So is shouldering 100% responsibility even possible?
But here's the thing. If I delegate responsibility, if I say I'll meet the teacher halfway, I now become dependent. If the teacher only gives 25% I will fail. I will be waiting at the halfway point and he will be waiting at the quarter point and we will never meet. If I commit to making the journey all the way, with or without the teacher, I will get there. I will get there very fast with a good teacher and slow with a shitty teacher, but I will get there.
And there is both what Kai would call 'agency' in this and power. Agency is your autonomy. As described above, anything you delegate, any responsibility you shirk creates a dependency. It removes choices from your hands. If you don't procure your own food, you don't get to decide what to eat. If you can't procure your own food, you have given up 100% of your agency and other people get to decide whether you eat.
It's a mental trick, assuming 100% responsibility, but there is power in it. Agency is control is power is choices. Like the concept of "100% responsibility" there is no absolute power. You cannot prevent bad things from happening and most aspects of your life are influenced profoundly by other people you cannot control... but that makes it more, not less important to assume control. The less power you have the more you need to use it wisely, the more foolish and dangerous it is to give some away.
One last note, for the self-defense world. I occasionally hear that "Women should not be taught to be cautious, men should be taught not to rape." I agree with the last part. But the entire thing is phrased as a false sort, as if there are only two options. Moreover, the first part of the statement... for someone to not be taught anything is to assume you have the right to remove or deny someone power. Never let anyone take your power, no matter how well-meaning they might be.
"From my place at the front of the room I have complete responsibility to speak clearly and with fearless honesty. I accept full responsibility for communicating with my students and for seeing to it that the message does get through.
But that 100% responsibility on my shoulders does not lighten the student's responsibility at all.
The student has a responsibility to actively participate in the learning process, which can include making the instructor explain unclear ideas, or challenging questionable concepts, or asking how to integrate apparent contradictions. No matter how dedicated the instructor, in the long run, self-education is the only kind of education there is..."
Yes.
Here's the way I see it. I will assume 100% responsibility. If I am the teacher it is 100% my responsibility to be understood. And if I am the student, it is 100% my responsibility to understand. These percentages and the concepts of teaching and learning, the relationship of teacher to student are not exact realities. A huge amount of every interaction you have with other people is being created in your head. Humans don't deal, almost ever, with objective reality. We ascribe meanings from our own histories, and interpretations from our own internal connections to everything we hear and everything we see.
You can and do control this process. A fairly large amount of it you can control mindfully, consciously. And some you can only influence. Can I learn anything perfectly, 100%? Of course not. And are there teachers that can affect how much I learn? Absolutely. So is shouldering 100% responsibility even possible?
But here's the thing. If I delegate responsibility, if I say I'll meet the teacher halfway, I now become dependent. If the teacher only gives 25% I will fail. I will be waiting at the halfway point and he will be waiting at the quarter point and we will never meet. If I commit to making the journey all the way, with or without the teacher, I will get there. I will get there very fast with a good teacher and slow with a shitty teacher, but I will get there.
And there is both what Kai would call 'agency' in this and power. Agency is your autonomy. As described above, anything you delegate, any responsibility you shirk creates a dependency. It removes choices from your hands. If you don't procure your own food, you don't get to decide what to eat. If you can't procure your own food, you have given up 100% of your agency and other people get to decide whether you eat.
It's a mental trick, assuming 100% responsibility, but there is power in it. Agency is control is power is choices. Like the concept of "100% responsibility" there is no absolute power. You cannot prevent bad things from happening and most aspects of your life are influenced profoundly by other people you cannot control... but that makes it more, not less important to assume control. The less power you have the more you need to use it wisely, the more foolish and dangerous it is to give some away.
One last note, for the self-defense world. I occasionally hear that "Women should not be taught to be cautious, men should be taught not to rape." I agree with the last part. But the entire thing is phrased as a false sort, as if there are only two options. Moreover, the first part of the statement... for someone to not be taught anything is to assume you have the right to remove or deny someone power. Never let anyone take your power, no matter how well-meaning they might be.
November 6, 2013
Articulation III
Teaching.
It is not the student's responsibility to understand you. It is your responsibility to make yourself understood. It is rare in martial arts or self-defense that junior instructors are given any training in how to teach. You earn your black belt (sometimes not even that) and you step into a teaching role.
(Part of this is an artifact of the dan/kyu ranking system. As I understand it, Kano had instructors wear black belts and students, white. Later instructor-candidates wore the brown. That's an aside, maybe.)
So we have people often simply teaching the way they were taught, or teaching things that they may know but they do not understand.
Teaching the way they were taught. In many of the so-called traditional arts, the first people to bring the art to the west had been members of an occupying army, being taught by former enemies, often through poor translators, and taught to large groups. None of this was the same way that the same instructors taught their friends or families. But because it was the only way they had seen it taught, it became the way to teach.
Knowing but not understanding. This is huge. There are many things that I was technically proficient at that I did not understand until the rubber met the road. The jujutsu etiquette of the two-man kata seemed like an anachronism until I realized that the way you hand a wakizashi to uke were mirrors of the "action open, safety on" protocol of handing a firearm over. Etiquette between dangerous, armed people is almost universal.
Without understanding, you can pass on a certain technical proficiency which might fail or be incomplete in the real world.
Whatever you teach must make sense and it must be true. Stories about ancient monks and platitudes and statements of certainty will resonate with many students. They will attract a certain following and they will appeal to the koolaid drinkers, the ones looking to feel safe, not to be safer. People love stories. Many students will willfully suspend their critical faculties because you wear a black belt. That is no excuse. In martial arts and especially if you claim to teach self-defense, the price of error is blood. The luxury of an instructor is that it will not be your blood. That makes bullshit more reprehensible, not less. It adds an element of cowardice to it.
This third and last installment of the Articulation series might seem incomplete. Fewer examples, less advice on right and wrong. Know this: Teaching, like any form of communication is a skill. If you have taken up the responsibility to teach, you have also taken the responsibility to teach well. If that means breaking out of the box of tradition, so be it. If that means going deeper, so be it.
It is not the student's responsibility to understand you. It is your responsibility to make yourself understood. It is rare in martial arts or self-defense that junior instructors are given any training in how to teach. You earn your black belt (sometimes not even that) and you step into a teaching role.
(Part of this is an artifact of the dan/kyu ranking system. As I understand it, Kano had instructors wear black belts and students, white. Later instructor-candidates wore the brown. That's an aside, maybe.)
So we have people often simply teaching the way they were taught, or teaching things that they may know but they do not understand.
Teaching the way they were taught. In many of the so-called traditional arts, the first people to bring the art to the west had been members of an occupying army, being taught by former enemies, often through poor translators, and taught to large groups. None of this was the same way that the same instructors taught their friends or families. But because it was the only way they had seen it taught, it became the way to teach.
Knowing but not understanding. This is huge. There are many things that I was technically proficient at that I did not understand until the rubber met the road. The jujutsu etiquette of the two-man kata seemed like an anachronism until I realized that the way you hand a wakizashi to uke were mirrors of the "action open, safety on" protocol of handing a firearm over. Etiquette between dangerous, armed people is almost universal.
Without understanding, you can pass on a certain technical proficiency which might fail or be incomplete in the real world.
Whatever you teach must make sense and it must be true. Stories about ancient monks and platitudes and statements of certainty will resonate with many students. They will attract a certain following and they will appeal to the koolaid drinkers, the ones looking to feel safe, not to be safer. People love stories. Many students will willfully suspend their critical faculties because you wear a black belt. That is no excuse. In martial arts and especially if you claim to teach self-defense, the price of error is blood. The luxury of an instructor is that it will not be your blood. That makes bullshit more reprehensible, not less. It adds an element of cowardice to it.
This third and last installment of the Articulation series might seem incomplete. Fewer examples, less advice on right and wrong. Know this: Teaching, like any form of communication is a skill. If you have taken up the responsibility to teach, you have also taken the responsibility to teach well. If that means breaking out of the box of tradition, so be it. If that means going deeper, so be it.
November 4, 2013
Articulation Part II
How you tell a thing is at least as important as what you tell.
http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2011/06/tried-by-twelve.html
Preface-- I am not an attorney. I am a Use of Force instructor. Don't construe this as legal advice.
It might surprise you, but I don't teach SD legalities as a decision making course. Truth is, things are likely to happen very fast, in a fog of adrenaline, and with limited visibility and information. That said, almost everyone makes good, legal decisions. For the most part, self-defense laws (like any laws) are simply a codification of standard morality. You were raised in this culture. If you aren't a pathological asshole, your instincts will be in line with the law.
I only see three places (overzealous prosecutors aside) where normal people get in trouble with claiming self-defence:
A monkey dance, where two usually stupid and drunk young men insist a mutual fight was self defense because the other guy started it. (one stared, so he started it, the other said something so he started it, one pushed so he started it, the other swung so he started it...)The incident is over, the threat either down or fleeing, and you want to teach him a lesson.You have been trained to do something, like cut the throat on a downed threat, as part of the technique. You could be on the hook criminally and civilly, your instructor might be facing civil liability.You don't want to hurt anybody unless you have to, right? You don't want to hurt them more than you need to, right? You don't want to kill anybody unless it is the only way to save an innocent life, right? If you answered yes to all three, congratulations. Your instincts are in line with the law.
But here's the problem-- you can do the right thing and tell the story badly.Imagine a cliche victim of spousal abuse. Tiny, terrorized. He's threatened to kill her and recently put his handgun against her head and laughed. He's big, strong and unpredictably violent. Over dinner, he played a round of russian roulette with her head and when she asked about the children he said if she lost the game he'd just kill the children, too, and leave town...So that night, while he is in a drunken stupor, she shoots him.As SD, this is beyond iffy. Why didn't she leave? Why didn't she get the authorities involved?If she said, "I couldn't run. I've tried before and he always found me. I was in the hospital for four days last time. And he said if I ever called the cops, he'd just post bail and take it out on one of the kids. He was bigger and stronger and I was terrified but it was the only chance I had, the only chance the kids had."However if she said, "I wasn't going to put up with his shit anymore. So I crept up on him while the fat pig was snoring and put one in his brain. Bastard had it coming." What reaction would the jury have?
Get this: Both of these accounts fit the (imaginary) facts of the case. They are 'true' in that sense. A bigger, stronger, violent man with resources to get out of jail and no qualms about hurting children is a bastard who has it coming.
One of the things you must understand is that criminals practice lying to cops. Have you ever, in your life, practiced telling the truth to the cops? If not, what are the odds you will be good at it? Too often a skillful lie will trump a clumsy truth. That's one of the reasons you want an attorney. Their job is to present the story properly.
Aside-- Don't take story to mean fiction. Never lie. For both moral and practical reasons, lying doesn't serve you. When I say story, I mean that people are wired to understand things in narrative form, and they get nuance of meaning from word choice. The Jack Webb "just the facts. ma'am" is great for investigation, but if you're describing the most terrifying minute of your life in cold and robotic terms, you sound non-human. And people, whether they be cops, investigators, prosecutors or a jury are never just evaluating your actions. Consciously or not, they are evaluating you.
There are elements of a self-defense claim. You have to explain the source of your fear, why you couldn't leave, why a lesser force would have failed. Most importantly, how every bad decision that led to the moment was made by the bad guy. Again, instinctively you will have done almost all of this. But, especially under the wash of adrenaline, you might not have been aware of it or remember it now. The part of your brain that thinks in words is a very tiny part of your thinking power, but the whole brain is very good at what it does. Trust your own brain.
There are exercises to work on consciously explaining and understanding subconscious decisions. I've written about it before, and this is getting long.
That's what you say. There are two more elements (at least) to a good self-defense claim. When do you say it? Who says it?
When? Any good attorney will give you advice to not talk to the police at all. Good advice but very hard to pull off without looking very guilty, and the officers will play on that appearance of guilt to get you to talk. Especially hard because people tend to babble under stress and you will be under stress. And babbling implies what you think it does. Much of what you say will not be accurate.
There are four basic times when you will be asked for your story:
Cops at the scene will ask what happened. There are different options. Say nothing. Or point out witnesses, evidence and no more. Or say that you aren't calming down and want to see a doctor. Or say that one of your friends is a lawyer and he told you to call him if police were involved in anything and that's what you should do or... Mine? I'll say, "Gentleman, you're doing your job and I want to help but I've heard horror stories about what can happen in civil cases. I'll cooperate fully as soon as my attorney gets here."If the incident resulted in death or serious injury, detectives will want to question you. Demand an attorney. Make no statements until he or she arrives.The meeting with your attorney. Get a good attorney. Tell the attorney everything.This doesn't count as one of the four, but there may be depositions and motion hearings and all the things you pay your attorney to guide. The trial
Who tells the story? When possible, I prefer the witnesses or the video to tell the story. Adrenaline can distort your memory and probably did distort your perception, and anything you missed might be characterized as a lie to challenge your credibility. Within this story you, with the help of your attorney, you can add commentary ("That was when I realized he'd cut off my only escape.")
When that's not an option (a skilled predator will do his best to make sure there are no witnesses or video) it's up to you. With your attorney's guidance. In a jury trial, whether to take the stand yourself is a tactical decision. If you don't present well, if you get flustered, if you come across as too cold or are easy to provoke, it's probably best NOT to take the stand.
Again, you can be 100% right, have all the facts on your side, and torpedo yourself with a poor articulation. Articulation is a learnable, trainable skill.
http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2011/06/tried-by-twelve.html
Preface-- I am not an attorney. I am a Use of Force instructor. Don't construe this as legal advice.
It might surprise you, but I don't teach SD legalities as a decision making course. Truth is, things are likely to happen very fast, in a fog of adrenaline, and with limited visibility and information. That said, almost everyone makes good, legal decisions. For the most part, self-defense laws (like any laws) are simply a codification of standard morality. You were raised in this culture. If you aren't a pathological asshole, your instincts will be in line with the law.
I only see three places (overzealous prosecutors aside) where normal people get in trouble with claiming self-defence:
A monkey dance, where two usually stupid and drunk young men insist a mutual fight was self defense because the other guy started it. (one stared, so he started it, the other said something so he started it, one pushed so he started it, the other swung so he started it...)The incident is over, the threat either down or fleeing, and you want to teach him a lesson.You have been trained to do something, like cut the throat on a downed threat, as part of the technique. You could be on the hook criminally and civilly, your instructor might be facing civil liability.You don't want to hurt anybody unless you have to, right? You don't want to hurt them more than you need to, right? You don't want to kill anybody unless it is the only way to save an innocent life, right? If you answered yes to all three, congratulations. Your instincts are in line with the law.
But here's the problem-- you can do the right thing and tell the story badly.Imagine a cliche victim of spousal abuse. Tiny, terrorized. He's threatened to kill her and recently put his handgun against her head and laughed. He's big, strong and unpredictably violent. Over dinner, he played a round of russian roulette with her head and when she asked about the children he said if she lost the game he'd just kill the children, too, and leave town...So that night, while he is in a drunken stupor, she shoots him.As SD, this is beyond iffy. Why didn't she leave? Why didn't she get the authorities involved?If she said, "I couldn't run. I've tried before and he always found me. I was in the hospital for four days last time. And he said if I ever called the cops, he'd just post bail and take it out on one of the kids. He was bigger and stronger and I was terrified but it was the only chance I had, the only chance the kids had."However if she said, "I wasn't going to put up with his shit anymore. So I crept up on him while the fat pig was snoring and put one in his brain. Bastard had it coming." What reaction would the jury have?
Get this: Both of these accounts fit the (imaginary) facts of the case. They are 'true' in that sense. A bigger, stronger, violent man with resources to get out of jail and no qualms about hurting children is a bastard who has it coming.
One of the things you must understand is that criminals practice lying to cops. Have you ever, in your life, practiced telling the truth to the cops? If not, what are the odds you will be good at it? Too often a skillful lie will trump a clumsy truth. That's one of the reasons you want an attorney. Their job is to present the story properly.
Aside-- Don't take story to mean fiction. Never lie. For both moral and practical reasons, lying doesn't serve you. When I say story, I mean that people are wired to understand things in narrative form, and they get nuance of meaning from word choice. The Jack Webb "just the facts. ma'am" is great for investigation, but if you're describing the most terrifying minute of your life in cold and robotic terms, you sound non-human. And people, whether they be cops, investigators, prosecutors or a jury are never just evaluating your actions. Consciously or not, they are evaluating you.
There are elements of a self-defense claim. You have to explain the source of your fear, why you couldn't leave, why a lesser force would have failed. Most importantly, how every bad decision that led to the moment was made by the bad guy. Again, instinctively you will have done almost all of this. But, especially under the wash of adrenaline, you might not have been aware of it or remember it now. The part of your brain that thinks in words is a very tiny part of your thinking power, but the whole brain is very good at what it does. Trust your own brain.
There are exercises to work on consciously explaining and understanding subconscious decisions. I've written about it before, and this is getting long.
That's what you say. There are two more elements (at least) to a good self-defense claim. When do you say it? Who says it?
When? Any good attorney will give you advice to not talk to the police at all. Good advice but very hard to pull off without looking very guilty, and the officers will play on that appearance of guilt to get you to talk. Especially hard because people tend to babble under stress and you will be under stress. And babbling implies what you think it does. Much of what you say will not be accurate.
There are four basic times when you will be asked for your story:
Cops at the scene will ask what happened. There are different options. Say nothing. Or point out witnesses, evidence and no more. Or say that you aren't calming down and want to see a doctor. Or say that one of your friends is a lawyer and he told you to call him if police were involved in anything and that's what you should do or... Mine? I'll say, "Gentleman, you're doing your job and I want to help but I've heard horror stories about what can happen in civil cases. I'll cooperate fully as soon as my attorney gets here."If the incident resulted in death or serious injury, detectives will want to question you. Demand an attorney. Make no statements until he or she arrives.The meeting with your attorney. Get a good attorney. Tell the attorney everything.This doesn't count as one of the four, but there may be depositions and motion hearings and all the things you pay your attorney to guide. The trial
Who tells the story? When possible, I prefer the witnesses or the video to tell the story. Adrenaline can distort your memory and probably did distort your perception, and anything you missed might be characterized as a lie to challenge your credibility. Within this story you, with the help of your attorney, you can add commentary ("That was when I realized he'd cut off my only escape.")
When that's not an option (a skilled predator will do his best to make sure there are no witnesses or video) it's up to you. With your attorney's guidance. In a jury trial, whether to take the stand yourself is a tactical decision. If you don't present well, if you get flustered, if you come across as too cold or are easy to provoke, it's probably best NOT to take the stand.
Again, you can be 100% right, have all the facts on your side, and torpedo yourself with a poor articulation. Articulation is a learnable, trainable skill.
November 3, 2013
Articulation Part I
How you tell a thing is at least as important as what you tell. You can be 100% right, and tell the story in such a way that it alienates the jury, or the media, or your prospective customers.
Case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCj0If...
A group I am a member of put out this video for comment. Most of the comments, as you would expect from a group of brawlers, were negative. Simple fact is that even the best sport or martial application you have seen doesn't rise to the level of complexity and ferocity of real violence.
But the video was not wrong. It was dead on. But the explanations, the articulations, were substandard.
To hammer the main point: You can be completely right, and if you explain poorly, it won't matter. The jury will find you guilty or the BTDT crowd will find a reason to dismiss you.
So in the first segment, Mr. Kesting talks about RBSD and the advice to 1) never go to the ground in a street fight; 2) what if the bad guy has friends; and 3) what about weapons?
He sidesteps these, but these are critically important. More important, they don't distract from his main point.
Multiple opponents? Standing or on the ground, multiple opponents suck. I'll tell you right now that my plan in a big riot was always to find the biggest bad guy I could and cross choke him out and hide under his body. That's a grappling application in a worst-case multiple attacker scenario. Context is critical.
Weapons suck, too. Grappling against a blade sucks on unbelievable levels... but so does stand-up against a knife.
Never go to the ground? If you get to pick, you're the bad guy. In self-defense, victims don't have choices. If there was one thing I could re-write in the script to this video, this would be the key because Mr. Kesting is exactly right-- but without the experience of street violence his explanation is off. You need to be able to fight on the ground because you will not have the choice. Any dick who tells you 'we train not to the go to the ground' is indulging in his fantasy, not your reality.
His second reason involves clinching. I'm an infighter. Most people do it shitty, but this is my range. This is the way I like to fight. He points out that clinching is what boxers do to not get hit. The way I would articulate it is this: Grappling, whether standing or on the ground, allows you to control time. It is the slowest possible way of fighting (that's not a bad thing). Time without damage buys time to think, and plan, and manipulate the fight into something you might win. Properly executed, a good clinch controls space, controls arms, controls the entire skeleton. If you're good, it allows you to control the pace of the fight. No down side to doing it well.
Kesting's third reason is for control. To hold someone until authorities arrive. A valid reason, but it can be incredibly complex and fucked up. Legally, there is a fine line between controlling a perp and committing "unlawful detention." For enforcement officers (and this is my experience) most tournament grappling systems fail because sport submissions don't tend to put the threat into handcuffing position. That leaves with a guy who says he's done fighting who may be lying. The bridge, FWIW, between submission systems and handcuffing tends to fall into fingerlocks, and no one teaches that like Small Circle Jujitsu.
The fourth reason is beautiful, but poorly phrased. If the guy is bigger and stronger and there is no opportunity to retreat...
Here's the deal. The guy will be bigger and stronger than you. IF IT IS SELF-DEFENSE. He will have size, strength, surprise, weapons, and/or be crazy. This is self-defense, not Thanksgiving Dinner at Grandma's. As a general rule. If someone is better at 'A' you fight him with 'B'. Kesting's fourth reason applies if and only if you are a better grappler. Voluntary grappling is almost always a bad idea for SD-- when the goal is to escape, sacrificing mobility has a huge cost. But we don't train for when things are going well. You have to be good at striking, clinch and grappling (and small arms and small unit tactics and...) and you have to have the capacity to turn the fight into the kind you are good at...especially if the bad guys is better than you at another range.
The physics of fighting to escape are different from the physics of fighting to win, and this is worth practicing as well.
Kesting's fifth reason is also exactly right, but not. There are a handful of things that work with the really big problems, with the mentals and the enraged and EDPs and PCP freaks and EDs. Breaking every long bone in their body works. A very severe concussion usually works. Suffocation. Bleeding out. And cutting off blood to the brain.
I could do a post on things that should work but don't, but the list of things that actually work is very short and Kesting points out the number one unarmed technique: the rear naked strangle. Or LVNR or hadakajime. Whatever you want to call it, it works.
That said, it is hard as hell to justify as self-defense. Why? Because in order to use it you must be behind the threat and in control. You are likely the bad guy. It is an extraordinary technique for defense of a third party. Defending yourself it is roughly equivalent to justifying shooting someone in the back. Especially in jurisdictions that have ruled any neck restraint to be deadly force. Long ago my county attorney said, "I'd rather you shot someone on the back than used a chokehold. There's a lot more case law for shooting." Which, by the way, is one of the reasons to get good at cross-strangles.
Once again, Kesting is exactly right, but misses the context of the real world. Familiarity with those concepts make his points stronger, not weaker. He is, like a lot of martial artists, more right than he knows.
You need to be able to articulate why the right answer was the right answer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note-- I contacted Stephan Kesting and let him see the first draft of this post. His response was:
Go for it! This is a valuable discussion to have, and by putting videos on YouTube I'm pretty much putting myself into the spotlight; at that point having people disagree with what I'm saying, or pointing out incomplete aspects of my arguments, comes with the territory.
That's the sign of a good thinker, teacher and perpetual learner. All the signs of a good man.
http://www.grapplearts.com
Case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCj0If...
A group I am a member of put out this video for comment. Most of the comments, as you would expect from a group of brawlers, were negative. Simple fact is that even the best sport or martial application you have seen doesn't rise to the level of complexity and ferocity of real violence.
But the video was not wrong. It was dead on. But the explanations, the articulations, were substandard.
To hammer the main point: You can be completely right, and if you explain poorly, it won't matter. The jury will find you guilty or the BTDT crowd will find a reason to dismiss you.
So in the first segment, Mr. Kesting talks about RBSD and the advice to 1) never go to the ground in a street fight; 2) what if the bad guy has friends; and 3) what about weapons?
He sidesteps these, but these are critically important. More important, they don't distract from his main point.
Multiple opponents? Standing or on the ground, multiple opponents suck. I'll tell you right now that my plan in a big riot was always to find the biggest bad guy I could and cross choke him out and hide under his body. That's a grappling application in a worst-case multiple attacker scenario. Context is critical.
Weapons suck, too. Grappling against a blade sucks on unbelievable levels... but so does stand-up against a knife.
Never go to the ground? If you get to pick, you're the bad guy. In self-defense, victims don't have choices. If there was one thing I could re-write in the script to this video, this would be the key because Mr. Kesting is exactly right-- but without the experience of street violence his explanation is off. You need to be able to fight on the ground because you will not have the choice. Any dick who tells you 'we train not to the go to the ground' is indulging in his fantasy, not your reality.
His second reason involves clinching. I'm an infighter. Most people do it shitty, but this is my range. This is the way I like to fight. He points out that clinching is what boxers do to not get hit. The way I would articulate it is this: Grappling, whether standing or on the ground, allows you to control time. It is the slowest possible way of fighting (that's not a bad thing). Time without damage buys time to think, and plan, and manipulate the fight into something you might win. Properly executed, a good clinch controls space, controls arms, controls the entire skeleton. If you're good, it allows you to control the pace of the fight. No down side to doing it well.
Kesting's third reason is for control. To hold someone until authorities arrive. A valid reason, but it can be incredibly complex and fucked up. Legally, there is a fine line between controlling a perp and committing "unlawful detention." For enforcement officers (and this is my experience) most tournament grappling systems fail because sport submissions don't tend to put the threat into handcuffing position. That leaves with a guy who says he's done fighting who may be lying. The bridge, FWIW, between submission systems and handcuffing tends to fall into fingerlocks, and no one teaches that like Small Circle Jujitsu.
The fourth reason is beautiful, but poorly phrased. If the guy is bigger and stronger and there is no opportunity to retreat...
Here's the deal. The guy will be bigger and stronger than you. IF IT IS SELF-DEFENSE. He will have size, strength, surprise, weapons, and/or be crazy. This is self-defense, not Thanksgiving Dinner at Grandma's. As a general rule. If someone is better at 'A' you fight him with 'B'. Kesting's fourth reason applies if and only if you are a better grappler. Voluntary grappling is almost always a bad idea for SD-- when the goal is to escape, sacrificing mobility has a huge cost. But we don't train for when things are going well. You have to be good at striking, clinch and grappling (and small arms and small unit tactics and...) and you have to have the capacity to turn the fight into the kind you are good at...especially if the bad guys is better than you at another range.
The physics of fighting to escape are different from the physics of fighting to win, and this is worth practicing as well.
Kesting's fifth reason is also exactly right, but not. There are a handful of things that work with the really big problems, with the mentals and the enraged and EDPs and PCP freaks and EDs. Breaking every long bone in their body works. A very severe concussion usually works. Suffocation. Bleeding out. And cutting off blood to the brain.
I could do a post on things that should work but don't, but the list of things that actually work is very short and Kesting points out the number one unarmed technique: the rear naked strangle. Or LVNR or hadakajime. Whatever you want to call it, it works.
That said, it is hard as hell to justify as self-defense. Why? Because in order to use it you must be behind the threat and in control. You are likely the bad guy. It is an extraordinary technique for defense of a third party. Defending yourself it is roughly equivalent to justifying shooting someone in the back. Especially in jurisdictions that have ruled any neck restraint to be deadly force. Long ago my county attorney said, "I'd rather you shot someone on the back than used a chokehold. There's a lot more case law for shooting." Which, by the way, is one of the reasons to get good at cross-strangles.
Once again, Kesting is exactly right, but misses the context of the real world. Familiarity with those concepts make his points stronger, not weaker. He is, like a lot of martial artists, more right than he knows.
You need to be able to articulate why the right answer was the right answer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note-- I contacted Stephan Kesting and let him see the first draft of this post. His response was:
Go for it! This is a valuable discussion to have, and by putting videos on YouTube I'm pretty much putting myself into the spotlight; at that point having people disagree with what I'm saying, or pointing out incomplete aspects of my arguments, comes with the territory.
That's the sign of a good thinker, teacher and perpetual learner. All the signs of a good man.
http://www.grapplearts.com
October 31, 2013
Intel, Influence, Control
Not sure where I'm going with this. Bear with me.
You can look at almost any human interaction as one of these three things. From conversation to a fight, I am either trying to learn about you, influence you, or control you. There's some overlap, primarily in that gathering intelligence should be an ongoing and instinctive process, present in all instances of control and influence.
Verbally, even small talk. You do gather information from small talk. Rarely the subject matter, and that may be the point. You gather information about how comfortable the person is socially and what level of connection they feel towards you. My high-functioning friends on the spectrum can be very smooth with small talk, as long as the script doesn't deviate. And subject matter-- small talk may be a natural counter-intelligence technique to avoid giving up important data.
Lots of talking, maybe most of all communication, is about influence. We are constantly trying to modify the behaviors of those around us. Consciously or not, you dress to either get a reaction or to avoid reactions. Even dressing to blend in is influencing others. Arguing, debate, persuasion, or the subtle manipulation of letting someone discover a thing... all are influence. All communication is manipulation.
Influence works by providing intel. The intel may or may not be true. May or may not be logical. Emotion works even better than facts in most cases to change behavior.
Control is the removal of choices. Giving orders. Making ultimatums. Writing laws. It must be backed up with the power to enforce it OR applied to someone who has been thoroughly conditioned to obey. You herd sheep. You don't bother to negotiate with them.
Unless you are dealing with a population conditioned to obedience, control may have quick responses, but it has long term costs. The relationship of equals becomes impossible. There must either be a power struggle or the power disparity grows until one of the populations is purely a victim, a slave. And when a controller tries to influence, tries to pretend that there is mutually equality, you will see the sick dynamic of victim grooming. They can only keep up the pretense of equality until the victim presumes upon it...
And all of this applies to battle at any scale. Every sensitivity drill in martial arts is about gathering information. The typical beat-degage-beat as an opening move in fencing will usually tell you if your opponent is strong or weak, quick or slow, aggressive or a counter-striker, sensitive or dull, brave or timid. A little training in chi sao and you should be able to touch your opponent's forearm and now where his entire skeleton is located, where his weight and balance are, and where he is about to move.
You look to aim. We have to consciously program and practice the 360 scan. It goes all the way up to satellite imagery and analysis of open source news.
The pain-compliance levels of defensive tactics or going for a submission in sport or the shock-and-awe strategy are all influence. The bad guy could always ignore the pain and keep fighting. A submission can always go to a dislocation, if you have the will (and, aside, one of the purposes of having a ref to call it is so that people can avoid finding out if they have the will). But I've seen people fight with broken bones and dislocations. I've had sport fights, one consim training and one real force incident where my shoulder dislocated and I kept going.
And shock and awe. Looking too powerful to even fight. Making it look like submission is the only survivable option. Influence by adding information. The entire idea behind maneuver warfare, for that matter.
And control. No choices. Pulling the trigger (not always immediate, but the goal in shooting someone is to make it impossible for them to continue, not just change their attitude). Strangling someone out. The war of attrition.
Control is not always this grim. Handcuffs on the cop side. Pins (osaekomi waza) on the judo side-- the point is you can't escape.
So, how to use this paradigm?
Intelligence gathering should just become a habit. Every interaction with every person, whether watching someone walk on the sidewalk, a conversation with a friend or a stranger, a sparring match or a fire fight is an exercise in observing and learning. Don't nut up on this. If you think in an ugly fight you'll have better things to do than pay attention, it will probably end badly. You have to deal with what is happening, ergo you must know what is happening. Otherwise you are rolling the dice.
Be clear when you are intending to influence or control. You do it all the time anyway, try to do it consciously. The most dangerous mistake is to attempt to blend influence and control when control is required. If you are setting a boundary, it is not a conversation. (see Scaling Force for more on Boundary Setting and verbal responses to threats in general.)
Experiment in your training with manipulation. Maija does this with sword, I like doing it with unarmed-- if you give a target too juicy to pass up, your opponent will exploit it in a predictable way. It's how you set up an armbar, for instance.
Lastly, take a look at the communications aimed at you, at what goes on in the world around you. Who is trying to influence you? For what purpose? Who is trying to control you, taking away your choices?This goes deep, and you will see people presenting their controls as mere influence or even kindness and their enemy's arguments (influence) as life-threatening (control).
You can look at almost any human interaction as one of these three things. From conversation to a fight, I am either trying to learn about you, influence you, or control you. There's some overlap, primarily in that gathering intelligence should be an ongoing and instinctive process, present in all instances of control and influence.
Verbally, even small talk. You do gather information from small talk. Rarely the subject matter, and that may be the point. You gather information about how comfortable the person is socially and what level of connection they feel towards you. My high-functioning friends on the spectrum can be very smooth with small talk, as long as the script doesn't deviate. And subject matter-- small talk may be a natural counter-intelligence technique to avoid giving up important data.
Lots of talking, maybe most of all communication, is about influence. We are constantly trying to modify the behaviors of those around us. Consciously or not, you dress to either get a reaction or to avoid reactions. Even dressing to blend in is influencing others. Arguing, debate, persuasion, or the subtle manipulation of letting someone discover a thing... all are influence. All communication is manipulation.
Influence works by providing intel. The intel may or may not be true. May or may not be logical. Emotion works even better than facts in most cases to change behavior.
Control is the removal of choices. Giving orders. Making ultimatums. Writing laws. It must be backed up with the power to enforce it OR applied to someone who has been thoroughly conditioned to obey. You herd sheep. You don't bother to negotiate with them.
Unless you are dealing with a population conditioned to obedience, control may have quick responses, but it has long term costs. The relationship of equals becomes impossible. There must either be a power struggle or the power disparity grows until one of the populations is purely a victim, a slave. And when a controller tries to influence, tries to pretend that there is mutually equality, you will see the sick dynamic of victim grooming. They can only keep up the pretense of equality until the victim presumes upon it...
And all of this applies to battle at any scale. Every sensitivity drill in martial arts is about gathering information. The typical beat-degage-beat as an opening move in fencing will usually tell you if your opponent is strong or weak, quick or slow, aggressive or a counter-striker, sensitive or dull, brave or timid. A little training in chi sao and you should be able to touch your opponent's forearm and now where his entire skeleton is located, where his weight and balance are, and where he is about to move.
You look to aim. We have to consciously program and practice the 360 scan. It goes all the way up to satellite imagery and analysis of open source news.
The pain-compliance levels of defensive tactics or going for a submission in sport or the shock-and-awe strategy are all influence. The bad guy could always ignore the pain and keep fighting. A submission can always go to a dislocation, if you have the will (and, aside, one of the purposes of having a ref to call it is so that people can avoid finding out if they have the will). But I've seen people fight with broken bones and dislocations. I've had sport fights, one consim training and one real force incident where my shoulder dislocated and I kept going.
And shock and awe. Looking too powerful to even fight. Making it look like submission is the only survivable option. Influence by adding information. The entire idea behind maneuver warfare, for that matter.
And control. No choices. Pulling the trigger (not always immediate, but the goal in shooting someone is to make it impossible for them to continue, not just change their attitude). Strangling someone out. The war of attrition.
Control is not always this grim. Handcuffs on the cop side. Pins (osaekomi waza) on the judo side-- the point is you can't escape.
So, how to use this paradigm?
Intelligence gathering should just become a habit. Every interaction with every person, whether watching someone walk on the sidewalk, a conversation with a friend or a stranger, a sparring match or a fire fight is an exercise in observing and learning. Don't nut up on this. If you think in an ugly fight you'll have better things to do than pay attention, it will probably end badly. You have to deal with what is happening, ergo you must know what is happening. Otherwise you are rolling the dice.
Be clear when you are intending to influence or control. You do it all the time anyway, try to do it consciously. The most dangerous mistake is to attempt to blend influence and control when control is required. If you are setting a boundary, it is not a conversation. (see Scaling Force for more on Boundary Setting and verbal responses to threats in general.)
Experiment in your training with manipulation. Maija does this with sword, I like doing it with unarmed-- if you give a target too juicy to pass up, your opponent will exploit it in a predictable way. It's how you set up an armbar, for instance.
Lastly, take a look at the communications aimed at you, at what goes on in the world around you. Who is trying to influence you? For what purpose? Who is trying to control you, taking away your choices?This goes deep, and you will see people presenting their controls as mere influence or even kindness and their enemy's arguments (influence) as life-threatening (control).
October 29, 2013
Seven Strategies
There are three natural strategies for dealing with predators: Hide, run and fight.
There are two more for dealing with your own species: Posture and Submit. Both occasionally work cross species.
The three natural strategies mimic the Freeze-Flight-Fight. Freezing is natural. We evolved in a world where predators key on motion. It is a form of hiding when it is too late to hide. If something else is moving and you aren't, the eyes of the predator will be drawn to the something else. And it works sometimes in social violence. Often, when someone wants to escalate to physical violence, he or she needs a 'hook' a reason to blame you. Frequently, freezing denies the hook.
Hiding can be an effective strategy. Many wild birds hide their nests. Helpless things like eggs and fawns are camouflaged. There is a definite trainable skill in it. When it works, the cost is low. However when it fails, it fails catastrophically. For that reason I'm uncomfortable with lockdown as the sole response to school shootings. They call it shooting fish in a barrel for a reason.
Running works too. It's very hard to be injured if you're not there. It works for herd animals, as long as something else is slower. Predators are lazy. Or efficient, depending what spin you want to put on it. Turtles are easier to run down than gazelles. And that's the rub. No matter how much you pretty it up, running works as a strategy because you are willing to sacrifice one of your own. When you can't run, or aren't willing to run because of who the target will become, you get stuck with freeze or fight.
Fighting-- probably 50% of the blog is about that. It's an unfortunate word. People tend to think of the dominance struggle within a group, and that's more a part of posturing. It's not what a caribou should do to a wolf, no more than you should try to box or grapple a tiger. As a targeted prey, an animal knows that the predator has the advantage-- bigger, stronger, with more weapons, probably all of the above. The fight strategy is an attempt to make you too expensive to be a meal. It is not something rabbits do because they believe they can beat a coyote
It's especially an unfortunate choice of words when people attempt to use Monkey Dance defaults in predatory situations. Again, something I've written and talked about until I'm tired of it.
Posturing is generally playing the alpha male or Monkey Dance game. Trying to look impressive. Threats. Sometimes it does work on predators-- being loud and making big arm motions sometimes discourages cougars and bears. And sometimes it doesn't. Again, one of the things that when it fails tends to fail catastrophically. Predators don't play in the same league or for the same stakes as intra-species rivalry. When bluffing fails on a creature that has claws and fangs...
Submission, showing the signs of surrender works within species. It can go very badly when you have been trained that all people are essentially the same and you are trying to surrender to a society that believes anyone not like them is subhuman. So maybe I should say that it usually works within cultural groups. Unless you are dealing with someone who wants a reputation for breaking social rules.
Sometimes it works with predators. There are a few documented instances of playing dead working with bears. With certain human predators giving them what they want keeps them from using force. With others, of course, submission gives them a clear signal that it is safe to use force, and they will.
All except fighting tend to work, but fail catastrophically when they fail.
Hide-> Fish in a barrel.
If you try to run and aren't fast enough, you've given up your back.
If your bluff gets called posturing, it will be bad against a predator, even money in social violence.
And submission postures are submission postures because they are difficult to fight from.
You can also get destroyed fighting, but that comes with the territory and if that's the strategy you picked you should feel somewhat prepared. The thing with fighting is that when successful it has a higher price than any other successful strategy. Fewer catastrophic losses, but the only strategy that risks catastrophic wins.
There are two more, one natural and one uniquely human.
Hunting. Maximizing your advantages to eliminate the target as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible. With human technology, size, strength and ferocity of the target have little bearing. Bad guys use this strategy. It is hard for a good guy to use the strategy, though it is the central tenet of Llap Goch. But good guys can use the mindset, and there is a lot of power in that.
The last strategy may be exclusively human (maybe not) and can be done in conjunction with any of the others: Gather intel. If you pay attention you can learn much about your enemies, even while you are hiding (that's what scouts do, essentially); or running; or fighting (Maija is working on a book on reading and deceiving an opponent in a duel); or submitting (assassin's favorite?); or posturing.
There are two more for dealing with your own species: Posture and Submit. Both occasionally work cross species.
The three natural strategies mimic the Freeze-Flight-Fight. Freezing is natural. We evolved in a world where predators key on motion. It is a form of hiding when it is too late to hide. If something else is moving and you aren't, the eyes of the predator will be drawn to the something else. And it works sometimes in social violence. Often, when someone wants to escalate to physical violence, he or she needs a 'hook' a reason to blame you. Frequently, freezing denies the hook.
Hiding can be an effective strategy. Many wild birds hide their nests. Helpless things like eggs and fawns are camouflaged. There is a definite trainable skill in it. When it works, the cost is low. However when it fails, it fails catastrophically. For that reason I'm uncomfortable with lockdown as the sole response to school shootings. They call it shooting fish in a barrel for a reason.
Running works too. It's very hard to be injured if you're not there. It works for herd animals, as long as something else is slower. Predators are lazy. Or efficient, depending what spin you want to put on it. Turtles are easier to run down than gazelles. And that's the rub. No matter how much you pretty it up, running works as a strategy because you are willing to sacrifice one of your own. When you can't run, or aren't willing to run because of who the target will become, you get stuck with freeze or fight.
Fighting-- probably 50% of the blog is about that. It's an unfortunate word. People tend to think of the dominance struggle within a group, and that's more a part of posturing. It's not what a caribou should do to a wolf, no more than you should try to box or grapple a tiger. As a targeted prey, an animal knows that the predator has the advantage-- bigger, stronger, with more weapons, probably all of the above. The fight strategy is an attempt to make you too expensive to be a meal. It is not something rabbits do because they believe they can beat a coyote
It's especially an unfortunate choice of words when people attempt to use Monkey Dance defaults in predatory situations. Again, something I've written and talked about until I'm tired of it.
Posturing is generally playing the alpha male or Monkey Dance game. Trying to look impressive. Threats. Sometimes it does work on predators-- being loud and making big arm motions sometimes discourages cougars and bears. And sometimes it doesn't. Again, one of the things that when it fails tends to fail catastrophically. Predators don't play in the same league or for the same stakes as intra-species rivalry. When bluffing fails on a creature that has claws and fangs...
Submission, showing the signs of surrender works within species. It can go very badly when you have been trained that all people are essentially the same and you are trying to surrender to a society that believes anyone not like them is subhuman. So maybe I should say that it usually works within cultural groups. Unless you are dealing with someone who wants a reputation for breaking social rules.
Sometimes it works with predators. There are a few documented instances of playing dead working with bears. With certain human predators giving them what they want keeps them from using force. With others, of course, submission gives them a clear signal that it is safe to use force, and they will.
All except fighting tend to work, but fail catastrophically when they fail.
Hide-> Fish in a barrel.
If you try to run and aren't fast enough, you've given up your back.
If your bluff gets called posturing, it will be bad against a predator, even money in social violence.
And submission postures are submission postures because they are difficult to fight from.
You can also get destroyed fighting, but that comes with the territory and if that's the strategy you picked you should feel somewhat prepared. The thing with fighting is that when successful it has a higher price than any other successful strategy. Fewer catastrophic losses, but the only strategy that risks catastrophic wins.
There are two more, one natural and one uniquely human.
Hunting. Maximizing your advantages to eliminate the target as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible. With human technology, size, strength and ferocity of the target have little bearing. Bad guys use this strategy. It is hard for a good guy to use the strategy, though it is the central tenet of Llap Goch. But good guys can use the mindset, and there is a lot of power in that.
The last strategy may be exclusively human (maybe not) and can be done in conjunction with any of the others: Gather intel. If you pay attention you can learn much about your enemies, even while you are hiding (that's what scouts do, essentially); or running; or fighting (Maija is working on a book on reading and deceiving an opponent in a duel); or submitting (assassin's favorite?); or posturing.
October 25, 2013
Good Day
Life has changed. The first year I kept this blog, my definition of a good day was different. Here's one example.
Today was a good day. But very different. Nick called late last night from Chicago. It was a scotch-and-cigar kind of talk that would have gone better in person.
K has an incredibly rare string of days off. I'm committed to the tune-up tomorrow, and I'll miss her, but I had one day with the precious lady. A day of gathering materials and loading trucks and moving hay and digging holes and setting fence posts. Sunday will involve a lot of carpentry.
Kasey has an idea for a kick-ass class (would it be possible to do active shooter training for cops and citizens at the same time?) The logistics and the complexity of running such a scenario would be staggering... but with Kasey and Cabot, staggering is a minimum level of challenge.
Nick and James sent e-mails that will require some thought, as they are wont to do.
Greg sent the first draft of his foreword for the ConCom manual.
Got the tentative schedule for Spring in the UK.
Now it is time on the deck, in the mist, with a good book and a good Islay. Steaks to come.
Today was a good day. But very different. Nick called late last night from Chicago. It was a scotch-and-cigar kind of talk that would have gone better in person.
K has an incredibly rare string of days off. I'm committed to the tune-up tomorrow, and I'll miss her, but I had one day with the precious lady. A day of gathering materials and loading trucks and moving hay and digging holes and setting fence posts. Sunday will involve a lot of carpentry.
Kasey has an idea for a kick-ass class (would it be possible to do active shooter training for cops and citizens at the same time?) The logistics and the complexity of running such a scenario would be staggering... but with Kasey and Cabot, staggering is a minimum level of challenge.
Nick and James sent e-mails that will require some thought, as they are wont to do.
Greg sent the first draft of his foreword for the ConCom manual.
Got the tentative schedule for Spring in the UK.
Now it is time on the deck, in the mist, with a good book and a good Islay. Steaks to come.
October 23, 2013
Idiots, Assholes and Pros
This is aimed mostly at professionals.
There are three general kinds of people that will require force. The three types don't fight for the same reason or use the same tactics, and your skills may not work the same.
Honestly, most of the time, if you are in enforcement or corrections or especially bouncing, you are going to run into idiots. The drunk college kid who squares off and lets you know he's coming a mile away. The entitled whiner who thinks he's too special to go to jail just for driving drunk. The martial artist who's never been in a real fight but doesn't believe there's a difference.
It may just be the old man in me coming out, but it seems like idiots are on the rise. Fewer people have been exposed to violence; more people have never had their behavior controlled. That combination creates people who are both hot-house flowers incapable of taking care of themselves, but certain that anything they want is a right and anyone who disagrees is an oppressor. It seems I see more and more of this pathetically weak but shrill and bullying dynamic. For whatever my opinion is worth.
Idiots are easy. You see them coming and almost anything done decisively works. The drunk steroid freak squares off and let's you know he has a blackbelt in...
And you smile and toe kick him in the shin with your boot before he finishes the sentence and then drop him. Or beat past his arms and twist his spine. Or, probably the classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PIzc6qDnh8
Again, almost anything done decisively works.
Assholes are the second most common. They like to fight and they have varying levels of, for want of a better word, professionalism. The experienced know when they are outnumbered and tend to surrender. The experienced assholes know when they are losing and give up. Generally, even the experienced assholes don't like going hands on on a cop or other professional-- unless they sense any weakness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6z8q4lOrDU
They have varying levels of 'professionalism' in how far they are willing to go and incredibly varied skill levels. An asshole who gets the drop on you is still dangerous even if he barely knows how to hit. To a large degree, fighting assholes is somewhat like fighting martial athletes. A wide range of skill and commitment but generally, they like to fight and it will be a fight. The fatal mistake is treating an asshole like an idiot. When it comes time to bat his guard aside, the guard won't be weak and it will likely trigger a counter-attack. An idiot's lack of confidence and/or lack of understanding of how the world really works are the reasons it is so easy to bat aside even their trained fists. You won't get this with assholes.
And saying they like to fight isn't quite right either. They don't like the give and take of fighting, only the give. They enjoy causing pain and beating people down but tend not to be so big on receiving pain. So most won't engage if you act like a wary professional. They won't see the safe opening.
The pros are a different kettle of fish. For the most part, you won't get a lot of these. Highest concentration is in prison, jails, or on elite teams. Rarity makes them somewhat low risk. Their own professionalism also makes them low risk. It is very, very rare for this category to fight for ego. If you have the drop on them and maintain control they will, generally, not resist. If your handcuffing technique has a hole built into it or your approach is sloppy, they will use the Golden Rule of Combat: "Your most powerful weapon applied to your opponent's most valuable point at his time of maximum imbalance." They will hit you hard, decisively, where and how it will do the most damage, and they will strike when you are least ready.
Assume most pros are skilled. It's not always true and it's not a necessary factor, but growing into a pro mindset usually takes time and that kind of time doing those kinds of things develops skills. That said, it doesn't take a lot of skilled technique when you follow the Golden Rule. No one has to be trained to hit a man in the head with a brick from behind.
And the skill may be something unusual. In the debrief on Minnesota I mentioned that there were some high-percentage techniques that simply didn't work on Kasey, Dillon or me. Our grappling backgrounds made us instinctively structure in ways that idiots don't think to and assholes are too arrogant for, even if they had trained the skills.
Taxonomy alert : Taxonomies are naming classifications. This is a separate taxonomy from the social/asocial that I usually use. An asocial threat can fight as either an asshole or a pro (as an idiot, too, but Darwin usually takes care of that combination early). The asocial/social/maslow/triune is a better introduction for most everybody, but people who use force professionally might get something from this classification.
There are three general kinds of people that will require force. The three types don't fight for the same reason or use the same tactics, and your skills may not work the same.
Honestly, most of the time, if you are in enforcement or corrections or especially bouncing, you are going to run into idiots. The drunk college kid who squares off and lets you know he's coming a mile away. The entitled whiner who thinks he's too special to go to jail just for driving drunk. The martial artist who's never been in a real fight but doesn't believe there's a difference.
It may just be the old man in me coming out, but it seems like idiots are on the rise. Fewer people have been exposed to violence; more people have never had their behavior controlled. That combination creates people who are both hot-house flowers incapable of taking care of themselves, but certain that anything they want is a right and anyone who disagrees is an oppressor. It seems I see more and more of this pathetically weak but shrill and bullying dynamic. For whatever my opinion is worth.
Idiots are easy. You see them coming and almost anything done decisively works. The drunk steroid freak squares off and let's you know he has a blackbelt in...
And you smile and toe kick him in the shin with your boot before he finishes the sentence and then drop him. Or beat past his arms and twist his spine. Or, probably the classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PIzc6qDnh8
Again, almost anything done decisively works.
Assholes are the second most common. They like to fight and they have varying levels of, for want of a better word, professionalism. The experienced know when they are outnumbered and tend to surrender. The experienced assholes know when they are losing and give up. Generally, even the experienced assholes don't like going hands on on a cop or other professional-- unless they sense any weakness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6z8q4lOrDU
They have varying levels of 'professionalism' in how far they are willing to go and incredibly varied skill levels. An asshole who gets the drop on you is still dangerous even if he barely knows how to hit. To a large degree, fighting assholes is somewhat like fighting martial athletes. A wide range of skill and commitment but generally, they like to fight and it will be a fight. The fatal mistake is treating an asshole like an idiot. When it comes time to bat his guard aside, the guard won't be weak and it will likely trigger a counter-attack. An idiot's lack of confidence and/or lack of understanding of how the world really works are the reasons it is so easy to bat aside even their trained fists. You won't get this with assholes.
And saying they like to fight isn't quite right either. They don't like the give and take of fighting, only the give. They enjoy causing pain and beating people down but tend not to be so big on receiving pain. So most won't engage if you act like a wary professional. They won't see the safe opening.
The pros are a different kettle of fish. For the most part, you won't get a lot of these. Highest concentration is in prison, jails, or on elite teams. Rarity makes them somewhat low risk. Their own professionalism also makes them low risk. It is very, very rare for this category to fight for ego. If you have the drop on them and maintain control they will, generally, not resist. If your handcuffing technique has a hole built into it or your approach is sloppy, they will use the Golden Rule of Combat: "Your most powerful weapon applied to your opponent's most valuable point at his time of maximum imbalance." They will hit you hard, decisively, where and how it will do the most damage, and they will strike when you are least ready.
Assume most pros are skilled. It's not always true and it's not a necessary factor, but growing into a pro mindset usually takes time and that kind of time doing those kinds of things develops skills. That said, it doesn't take a lot of skilled technique when you follow the Golden Rule. No one has to be trained to hit a man in the head with a brick from behind.
And the skill may be something unusual. In the debrief on Minnesota I mentioned that there were some high-percentage techniques that simply didn't work on Kasey, Dillon or me. Our grappling backgrounds made us instinctively structure in ways that idiots don't think to and assholes are too arrogant for, even if they had trained the skills.
Taxonomy alert : Taxonomies are naming classifications. This is a separate taxonomy from the social/asocial that I usually use. An asocial threat can fight as either an asshole or a pro (as an idiot, too, but Darwin usually takes care of that combination early). The asocial/social/maslow/triune is a better introduction for most everybody, but people who use force professionally might get something from this classification.
October 22, 2013
Blood, Sweat and Tears
Two big training weekends and I want to debrief them. Not specifics, but some generalities. Important things.
I sometimes say that a perfect training day is indicated by blood, sweat and tears.
I don't get the concept of not sweating in a physical art. Doesn't matter what the art is-- martial arts or climbing or dance or horseback riding or tiddleywinks. If you don't sweat, what exactly are you doing? Feel free to disagree, but I think an absence of sweat means it's not a physical skill.
Blood. This is a game of edges. Physical edges, mental edges, emotional edges. Physically, you're a skinbag of meat and (mostly nasty) liquids. Life is a contact sport, and if you never get your skinbag moving fast and coming in contact with the things of the world, whatever your doing doesn't look or feel like living to me. And that goes ten times for anything you want to call a martial art or martial sport or combatives or self-defense. If you play so deep in your comfort zone that you never leak, you might be doing origami or tiddleywinks or low-level interpretive dance. Don't destroy yourself-- you can make your muscles stronger than your joints or create forces in a second that will ruin your physicality or your partner's forever-- but training only happens on the edge.
Lastly tears. Fighting, especially survival fighting, is a mental and emotional skill far more than a physical skill. You can live your martial fantasies and pretend it doesn't apply to you, but everyone has emotional edges. Play tough guy all you want, but until you see the baby's head roll away, or watch someone trying to hold their stomach inside their skin, or feel the barrel of a shotgun in your mouth, you can't know how you will react. Until you have been shattered and get back up, you cannot know if that is inside you, no matter what you tell yourself.
The last two weekends involved some intense stuff. Part of scenario training is judiciously pushing buttons, creating a scenario that feels real and pushes someone right to the emotional edge. Good scenario planning has a lot in common with sadism. Except it is set up to power through. To find or create the strength. So, yeah, I'm a bastard. Actually used a student's real daughter as a prop...and got to see a slender, untrained, retired lady throw a fifth degree blackbelt across the room and pull a soccer kick to his head just in time. And her tears were pouring down. And that didn't stop her. Not. One. Damn. Bit.
Two perfect training weekends. Blood sweat and tears. Some of the students did some very deep work on themselves. Everyone had fun. I think every e-mail so far has said something like, "I'm still processing..." Very, very good.
I sometimes say that a perfect training day is indicated by blood, sweat and tears.
I don't get the concept of not sweating in a physical art. Doesn't matter what the art is-- martial arts or climbing or dance or horseback riding or tiddleywinks. If you don't sweat, what exactly are you doing? Feel free to disagree, but I think an absence of sweat means it's not a physical skill.
Blood. This is a game of edges. Physical edges, mental edges, emotional edges. Physically, you're a skinbag of meat and (mostly nasty) liquids. Life is a contact sport, and if you never get your skinbag moving fast and coming in contact with the things of the world, whatever your doing doesn't look or feel like living to me. And that goes ten times for anything you want to call a martial art or martial sport or combatives or self-defense. If you play so deep in your comfort zone that you never leak, you might be doing origami or tiddleywinks or low-level interpretive dance. Don't destroy yourself-- you can make your muscles stronger than your joints or create forces in a second that will ruin your physicality or your partner's forever-- but training only happens on the edge.
Lastly tears. Fighting, especially survival fighting, is a mental and emotional skill far more than a physical skill. You can live your martial fantasies and pretend it doesn't apply to you, but everyone has emotional edges. Play tough guy all you want, but until you see the baby's head roll away, or watch someone trying to hold their stomach inside their skin, or feel the barrel of a shotgun in your mouth, you can't know how you will react. Until you have been shattered and get back up, you cannot know if that is inside you, no matter what you tell yourself.
The last two weekends involved some intense stuff. Part of scenario training is judiciously pushing buttons, creating a scenario that feels real and pushes someone right to the emotional edge. Good scenario planning has a lot in common with sadism. Except it is set up to power through. To find or create the strength. So, yeah, I'm a bastard. Actually used a student's real daughter as a prop...and got to see a slender, untrained, retired lady throw a fifth degree blackbelt across the room and pull a soccer kick to his head just in time. And her tears were pouring down. And that didn't stop her. Not. One. Damn. Bit.
Two perfect training weekends. Blood sweat and tears. Some of the students did some very deep work on themselves. Everyone had fun. I think every e-mail so far has said something like, "I'm still processing..." Very, very good.
Rory Miller's Blog
- Rory Miller's profile
- 130 followers
Rory Miller isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
