Rory Miller's Blog, page 39

Science, Knives and Rambling

My heart is warmed.Jake Steinmann over on his blog has a cadre of volunteers to go bang my contention that "controlling the weapon arm" as a first defense priority is... well, he'll see and then he'll pass on the data. I hope everyone understands how critical it is that people go see, and then pass on the data.
Most of the science of self-defense is crap. Someone comes up with a contention or a marketing strategy and then medical and psychological journals are combed looking for something that might support it. But there are problems with that. Most of the people combing the literature aren't scientists, they're martial artists. And sometimes I'm convinced that they never read past the abstracts... and so we have cardiac stress tests (treadmill running) used to substantiate the effects of hormonal stress. Stuff like that.
Dr. Bill Lewinski over at Force Science News seems to have the best grasp of experimental methodology... but most of the rest of the stuff in the field is crap. From voluntary questionnaires aimed at mass murderers, (Oh, he may haver killed six people without any motive but he doesn't have a reason to lie... sigh) To people getting in a pissing match because research and marketing may not match
Or people who quote in little circles: Dr. A says, "Mr. B contends that X+X=Z" and then Mr. B says, "In a paper published last year, Dr. A said X+X=Z" which is technically true, but still a form of intellectual incest.
I'm an INTJ. I pretty much only give a crap about whether something works. That outweighs whether it was handed down in a pure form for 200 years or if elite commandos train it. I'm also not super-interested in whether it works in class. If you explain to a group of people that hitting three points on the lung meridian in succession will knock them out, it will work on a surprising number of people... but if you go randomly smacking three points on strangers without the explanation, none pass out and they tend to get mad. Hmmmm.
So when someone tells everyone in a class how to defend against a knife and it works in class, that's not enough for me.
The live knife thing. We banged it. Mac came up with the best answer (though he has since said it was my idea, he is old and his memory is incorrect)... but just think it through: if there was something that worked reliably against a knife, people would quit carrying knives.
I'm rambling now (hotel after about twenty hours driving). The late Carl Cestari wrote something interesting about knives and knife users. His widow gave me permission to use it in "Violence: A Writer's Guide"... but not here.
I think Jake is on the right track. Question. Test to destruction. Report. That is the Scholar's courage, and it completely trumps the Warrior's.------------------I have been remiss in keeping you up to date.
Seminar in Lakewood, CO SaturdayBunch of stuff in New England in August (I'm not running any of it, but if someone wants to get together on the off times, let me know.)A two-part interview with Kris Wilder and Lawrence Kane (I seem incapable of sticking to a time limit):http://www.martial-secrets.com/2011/05/31/martial-secrets-12-part-1-of-2/http://www.martial-secrets.com/2011/06/06/martial-secrets-12-–-part-2-of-2/

I think that's about it.

"Getting the Stupid Out"

Andrew Middleton teaches Systema in Montral.  He has a cool way of describing certain drills that I will shamelessly steal.  He called it "Getting the stupid out."
The VPPG does a similar thing, we call it 'banging' as in, "Let's go bang it" which translates to "Let's see if that works."  Similar, but not the same.  In the VPPG, it is an experiment.  We present a problem (e.g. what do you do for face-down weapon retention?) then we come up with some ideas and then we test them to failure.
Getting the stupid out is an experience.  He presents a standard self-defense platitude, like "In a knife fight, control the weapon arm*" and lets the students try it.  But not against a compliant partner, against someone using a knife the way the knife was meant to be used.  The fail is spectacular and memorable. It gets the stupid out.
One of the things to watch for, in our training and when we teach, is where the stupid has crept in.  When we train against unrealistic attacks, or count on artifacts of the dueling or sport paradigms (equivalent weapons and size and numbers; advance notice; uncluttered environment...) we have let some stupid in.
So bang it out.  It will never be perfect, and keep an ear out for anyone who has been in the field who  finds a flaw... but if it fails in live training it has little hope to work when you are scared and surprised.
And especially if you have students who cling to myths, bang it.  Let them get the stupid out.


*This is one of the classics and one of the big issues in training.  "Control the weapon arm just makes so much sense...  The issues is that I have never seen anyone actually make it work, not in real life or even in free training, not for more than a second or two.  The fact that it makes sense doesn't, somehow, prevent it from being a messy and suicidal tactic.  I may get flack on this, which is fine... but before you tell me how wrong I am, go out and bang it, with someone given absolute freedom to play 'live' and tell me how it works.

Thanks, Paul

Paul Kirchner is the author of "Bowie Knife Fights, Fighters and Fighting Techniques" and "Jim Cirillo's Tales of the Stakeout Squad" and some other books that will probably creep onto my "to read" stack. He sent an e-mail after reading "Meditations on Violence" and "Facing Violence." He wondered why Col. Jeff Cooper wasn't in the bibliography.
The short answer was that I've never read his stuff.
I read. A lot. But there is a huge amount of information out there. There are experts I haven't read. Many of them. People I've never studied with. Months ago, I did a post on possibly working up a course for extreme CQ gun, specifically deploying under attack... and a lot of people gave me leads on work already going on. That was a relief. The late Jim Cirrillo or Southnarc or Mercop are the people who have had to do it and someone in the middle of the problem will tend to understand it far better than someone who has only brushed at the edges.
The list is long, and I make it longer by reading sometimes skeptically. If an author intrigues me, I tend to dig into his bibliography, and sometimes an author's sources do not say what he claims. I like reading on the edge of the field. I know what it feels like to be in certain kinds of problems, have developed a comfort level. I actually learn less from people with similar experiences than I do from researchers or sometimes reporters. If you know human pack behavior, sometimes books about dogs or apes will give a new piece of the puzzle.
Anyway, Paul very graciously sent a copy of "Principles of Personal Defense." It was a short book, I read it while waiting for the coffee to brew. But it was concise, accurate and wonderful. The reading list grows.

Re-Cap and Thoughts

I feel obligated to recap the last three weeks and I'm not sure I can. Partially because parts are a blur, partially because I don't think I could write about all the great people equally and I don't want to hurt feelings to no purpose.
We did do both Plastic Mind and Scenarios in Halifax. Much of that was because Jim Maloney's crew had most of the physical skills down cold. Those guys were solid, physically and combatively. It was nice.
There were some oddities in the scenarios, a phenomenon that I'd read about in Amanda Ripley's "The Unthinkable" that I'd never seen in a scenario before. Can't describe it here because I don't want to give scenarios away- but it was interesting and disconcerting both. Saw some good tactics and hesitancy to commit and all the usual things, which is good. Most people who have trained are to some degree in denial. Scenarios help them get a taste of how much they will change when there is stress and things are moving fast. Just a taste.
Over the last three weeks I've played with at least sixty people and the most ferocious were the ones from the most traditional of the systems, and that got me thinking. It's not about system. I'm not even sure it's really about the individual. If the teacher is a real fighter, like Jimmy, someone who has thoroughly gathered perspective both in competition and countless real encounters, he gets the core.
Traditional or non-traditional, whatever we studied came from somewhere and was adapted for something by someone. If they sucked at what they were designed for, they quietly disappeared. (Now, what they were designed for my not be related in any way to their marketing or what their students or even their senior leadership believes they were designed for.) They all fill a need. Maybe the need is only cameraderie or testing yourself safely. And that's cool.
And a lot of the needs have changed over time. 350 years ago almost anyplace was violent beyond what most modern Americans can really grasp. Might did make right and there was no recourse or justice beyond what your tribe or family would and could provide (until a guy named Sam Colt made it possible for the small and weak and poor to make predation dangerous... my opinion, of course).
So 350 or even just 100 years ago when some of the traditions arose, people trying to kill you and take your stuff were baselines of the environment. As that need faded and the traditions continued, other things became important: hierarchies and ritual. precision becomes more important than effectiveness. All that stuff.
When a real fighter comes up in that system (or comes to the system or someone gets exposed to violence later after learning in a system) they see it entirely differently. If they have the courage to start teaching it for effect (as opposed to not rocking the boat and just making the hierarchy happy) it becomes an entirely different thing. The bones come alive and sometimes the bones are very strong.
Just some thoughts, sitting in the Halifax airport.

Last Leg

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. It will be a different crowd, and that's always a test.There will be a few people with no training, some martial artists... but the core will be the students of Jim Maloney. Jim is a fighter and he makes fighters and it will be a blast and a challenge to present the material so that his crew get the maximum out of it without leaving anyone else behind.OTOH, some of the stuff I usually need to emphasize will be familiar to the students of this Old Dragon.

Nightmare

Logic of Violence does it better, because it is sneaky within the format, but for the quick down and dirty, we can be totally up front. You won't own it the same way, but the information is still valid.
At the Montreal seminar I asked, "Who is your nightmare opponent?" If you are a martial artist, take a few minutes and think about it.
One of the answers: "He'd be about 50% more than I weigh, much stronger with more skill and experience."
Yeah, that would suck, huh? Then add that he gets the first move at the time and place of his choosing. And he may be counting on a previous relationship with you to keep you from acting.
Gentlemen, our worst nightmare is where the average woman starts her day. We've been roughhousing, pushing and hitting each other since childhood and, largely, we've been encouraged. Sometimes overt, often subtle, girls have been punished when they wanted to play like that. So the average man reaches adulthood (even with no formal training) better trained and far more conditioned and experienced than almost any woman.
And men are stronger. We rarely get into contests of direct strength with women without holding back a lot, but when we do the difference is stark. (With the exception of KG and RM, two of my favorite cover officers.)
On top of it all, most women have only learned social strategies to deal with conflict...and social strategies not only fail but backfire when attempted on a predator.
Like I said, in LoV you come to this realization slowly and own it. Here it is quick and dirty. If you are teaching self-defense what you can do within your weight class doesn't mean anything. You need to teach people what works outmatched in strength, skill, experience and ferocity. How to deal when the assault is on before they are aware. And help them work out and overcome much of their social programming.
It can be done. It has been done. But not by staying in your comfort zone perspective.

Responsibility and Blame

I refuse to get into the particulars. Too much Monkey Dancing. Scott's written about it. Some other people I know have written and some are getting sucked into little vicious flame wars where nobody is really listening to anybody else.
I don't like seeing people get hurt. It makes me feel bad. That's probably petty and childish on some level, but for me it trumps politics or dreams or justice or wishful thinking. Maybe I should amend that to good people getting hurt, but you know what? Even when it was absolutely necessary, there's no joy in hurting others. There's a weird and intense kind of joy in taking the risk on being hurt, but that's for another time.
I don't like seeing people get hurt. No mi gusto.
Should, as the platitude goes, a woman be able to walk naked into a biker bar (no idea why everyone picks on bikers for this) and be safe? Sure. That would be cool. And it will happen when a wounded seal pup can swim through a school of sharks and not get eaten. It would require a change in the nature of sharks.
Rape is a pretty nasty crime. Whether it arises from nature or nurture, by the time someone can commit that crime, they've already gotten past the issues of the victim's rights and humanity and justice and the way the world should be.
All protests, all consciousness-raising aimed at violent criminals centers on the message, "This is wrong."
The criminals already know it's wrong. The issue is that they don't care. You can't fix caring through reason. It's a deeper part of the brain.
I don't want people to get hurt. So I place the responsibility to stay safe on the potential victim. NOT because it is just or because I want the world to be this way. I place it there because, faced with a violent bad guy, the victim is likely the only one there who gives a rat's ass about her safety. The rapist doesn't. If the bad guy knows what he is doing, there won't be any indignant bystanders (and god help the victim if it is a Group Monkey Dance situation) to care and get involved. Even if they would get involved, which might be doubtful.
There are some things that society has, can, and will slowly change over time. Our ethics have advanced so far that we quibble now over hurting feelings when 150 years ago it might not even be a crime to kill someone of a different color. That's good. But on this very day, if something bad were to happen, society can't do anything specific and the bad guy has already decided to be bad. That puts the victim in the role of the only one who will act on her own behalf. Absolute responsibility by default.
And this is totally separate from blame. If a criminal attacks, it is his bad act, his choice. Whether the potential victim took precautions which the threat overcame or took no precautions at all, the blame and punishment should fall entirely on the perpetrator. That's justice.
But even in a world of perfect justice I would still prefer that no one got hurt in the first place. It's a pipe dream and childish, just as much a platitude as walking naked into a biker bar...
But it's still where I'm going to focus my time.

Re-Thinking the Seminars

Lots to write about, lots to think about. One thing at a time.
I'm rethinking the whole seminar format. Some time ago, a friend said I was trying to do too much. I understood, but I had two defenses:1) It all ties together. If I leave one of the big pieces out, the picture becomes incomplete.2) It's all intuitive. There's a lot of material but there is almost nothing to remember. Just stuff to feel, things put in different places in your brain.
For those who haven't been to one, a typical one-day seminar flows like this:Safety Briefing and teaching philosophyIntro to the One-Step drillThere are a bunch of things that come out in even a short application of the One-Step, but the ideal is for the students to notice them and bring them to light. It usually works.Violence Demo, if necessarySpecific One-Step LessonsFirst Long Talk: The Context of ViolenceBlindfolded InfightingLeverage and Leverage Points(Sometimes an extra building block class, if requested)Second Long Talk: Self-Defense LawPower GenerationCounter-AmbushLast Long Talk: Violence DynamicsDebriefThat's a lot, but it all integrates and the physical stuff is experiential, not technique driven. The Counter-Ambush is the only thing that comes close to being a technique and it's really about designing your own technique and the training method, straight Operant Conditioning.
The second day in a two day is the one I'm thinking about redoing. I'm thinking about dropping scenarios. Scenarios are a blast and they are important. Judgement and physical skills have to be trained and tested together. Good decisions have to be backed up by good articulation. Scenarios are the place for that.
But doing scenarios well and safely is time consuming and takes a lot of detail work. I'm reluctant to be both the primary threat and the safety officer. I'm equally reluctant to use untrained, inexperienced people in either of those roles. And, self-serving sniveler that I am, I don't heal like I used to. I can take care of myself and the armor is good, but being a bad guy for twenty scenarios in an afternoon (even if most of them are targeted at judgement and don't go to force) is still a lot of kinetic energy to absorb.
In addition, I'm adding new material. The Plastic Mind exercises are cited a lot in the AADs as very useful and the violence dynamics section keeps expanding.
The old Second Day used to go:Safety Briefing, Safety checkOne-Step refamiliarizationGround Movement seriesEthics and Application of PainDynamic FightingWall FightingEnvironmental FightingMass BrawlDetailed, specific scenario safety briefingScenario BriefingArea Check and Pat DownScenarios (each debriefed on the spot)Class DebriefingClean upJust adding Plastic Mind and removing all of the scenario stuff still nicely fills two eight-hour days. We can even take a short lunch break. (I usually forget to eat and just have any hungry students eat during the lecture parts of Day One and while setting up for scenarios on Day Two.)
So this is what I'm thinking. Four Programs:Basics- The Day One by itself or both days above, but without the scenarios and with Plastic Mind.Conflict CommunicationsLogic of ViolenceScenarios, basically just offer them as a special training to specific individuals.Just thinking out loud, here. Any thoughts?

Deep Definitions

A few weeks ago I did a talk for the Iraqi Society of Oregon. One of the men had almost gotten in trouble over words that flared to a fist fight. They asked me to talk about force and self-defense and the cultural differences on conflict between Iraqis and Americans.
It was a good talk, fun, but the need for it was based on cultural differences. Deep ones. And not overt ones, like THEY are okay with violence and WE aren't. It was deeper than that, more basic. Too deep to question. The initial problem that sparked the whole thing centered on what it is to be a man.
In some cultures, maybe, manhood is a clear thing. I don't believe that it is ever clear for the young. You may have a ritual that declares you are in fact a man and yet still live with your parents and act and be treated as a dependent. If manhood was clear, in any culture, there wouldn't be all these weird ways to prove or maintain it.
And so, we have a man from one culture where he is taught and believes that if someone insults you, if you are a man, you must fight or at least be willing to fight. That is what a man does. That is who a man is.
And he is living in a cultural (the Atticus Finch-influenced part of America) where it is common sense and practically written into law that a real man would never lower himself to fighting over mere words.
Not a value judgment here, just had a few things pop up lately where my definitions of deep behaviors may not match those around me.
The second is polite rudeness. I don't want to hit this with cultural identifiers because I don't want people to try to throw a label on my thinking process ("That bastard is anti-anglo!") and quit listening... but it's going to come up.
I was raised to respect lines. "Cutting lines" or even allowing lines to be cut was a big social no-no in grade school. We stand in lines, we wait. The very thought of cutting lines implied not just that you were special but that you thought you were better and more deserving than people who had made the effort to get there first. It was a personal and calculated insult to everyone else in line.
My friends from the old Soviet bloc don't respect lines. When they were kids, it wasn't a good idea. If you waited your turn, there was a good chance that there would be nothing at the end of your wait. We can wait in line because, though we may not like it, we are generally sure that it will pay off. Remove that assurance and our politeness, which just seems common sense, becomes a failing strategy.
I've seen some "polite rudeness" in the last few days. It comes from a very particular social set. In my social caste asking to cut lines is nearly as unthinkable as just doing it. I've sat on planes with people terrified of missing a connection who refused to ask for a little consideration in getting off the plane early. But in the last few days: "Excuse me, may I go ahead? I have this bag of oranges, you see."
The man he was asking had an entire cart... but he was raised very much as I was and had a hard time saying 'No.' Work a couple of years in a jail and you get over that quick.
Thinking about it, I don't think the person was being rude, just as I don't think the Iraqi was or was not being manly. He was following the rules as he saw them.
In the other gentleman's world, maybe politeness is in the form. Asking nicely enough, even if you were asking something far more terrible than just cutting line, doesn't involve any violation of social rules. Ripe territory for villains, if they can do evil with Captain Hooks 'good form'.

Worth It?

Teo asked to play this morning, to work on anything. Dealer's choice.
So I said, "How would you take me out?" From that position, that range, relative body configurations... Teo is an intelligent young man (not really young, anymore. He is a father now and all grown up but in my mind he will always be the kid from ten years ago that we tried to tease into asking a waitress out). He moved to take a better position, guarded against a counter-attack that wasn't coming and used a technique that might, might have rattled me.
I know one of his instructors and I know damn well that Teo knows how to finish a human. We talked.
"But in sparring, no one ever just lets stuff come in and if I did really get aggressive, he'd just get aggressive back."
He put a finger on one of my deep problems with sparring and I want to think it out here. First and foremost, I've always loved sparring (of almost any type, not so much into pitty-pat) but it has been bothering me for awhile.
What has been bothering me is the sheer artificiality of it. On one level, MMA sparring is "as close as you can get to real" and "the only way to pressure test techniques." I see where those arguments are coming from but still...
If anyone squares off, if any threat gives me any indication that something is coming, I can walk away. Or talk it down. Or, if that's not going to work, access a force option that turns the whole situation into something that doesn't resemble a fight in any way.
The serious bad guys don't fight. They take you out. They stack everything in their favor: surprise, position, number and weapons (depending on the goal) and finish it. The last thing they want is a fight. Serious bad guys don't fight, they take you out.
And so do successful good guys.
In order for sparring as a fight simulation to even happen, you have to behave stupidly. You choose not to leave or talk or gather resources. Then you have to allow it to become a very particular and tactically silly kind of fight, where you stick to the same options and parameters the threat has chosen. It's a stupid way. One of the basic tactical rules that not only every tactical operator but even every serious sport competitor knows is: Don't play the other guy's game. Sparring specializes there.
And there are good reasons for it. If you want to test and measure and improve the same skills as the threat, it's one of the best, fastest ways to get better... but where does getting really, really good at the tactics of a bad strategy fit?
Bad guys take you out. From surprise. First hit. With a size and strength advantage or, if they can't manage that and really, really need what you've got, with weapons and numbers. They deliberately choose people who won't or can't fight. There's no value to complicated strategy or feinting.
This is an internal discussion. Not a conclusion. I love sparring, but I do it for what it is, know what it is and I'm very, very clear on what it is NOT. Those aren't the skills I'll need if an old acquaintance from the jail decides to even a score or enhance a rep. Those skills are different, qualitatively different.
And don't go tribal on me, either. Saying sparring is artificial is NOT saying that kata is better or realer or some variant. All the training methods are what they are and no more.
Live training is vital, but training stupid tactics live is not just ingraining stupid tactics. People mistake intensity for truth. The more contact and speed, the more real it feels, the more it feels like truth. Not only does it ingrain stupid, it ingrains it hard.
We need live, hard, contact training. But smart. Working from real distance, from positions of disadvantage, outmatched in size and strength. We need to find a safe but live way to practice taking a threat out instead of fighting. We do practice those skills and I know a lot of you do as well. But every so often a good martial artist or even a good fighter is given a problem of force, survival and decisiveness and instinctively tries to turn it into a contest.
It makes me wonder if the training method does more harm than good. Still pondering.