Rory Miller's Blog, page 50

Blast from the Past

David mentioned this in a recent comment. This is my first-ever online article, written at the request of Fabien Senna of Cyberkwoon. A lot of the thinking seems primitive and incomplete at this later date. Baby steps.

THE RULES

Are there really "no rules in a street fight"?

I think that this attitude is somewhat naïve. Of course there are rules of physics and biology that affect what is possible and effective. Any training that ignores that fact is clearly dangerous. But there are...

LawDawg Talks

Talked to the LawDawg the other night. It was brief. It sounded like he was between domestic assignments, but the essence...
Pros and amateurs deal with things differently. They think about things differently. Most of what amateurs default to, in interpersonal violence, are mistakes from the pro's point of view. If the threat is expecting you to do something (your natural default) doing that expected something is just ...stoopid.
So LD pointed out that when Monkey Dance violence starts to ...

Like a Criminal

Updated the website to include information on Boston and Billings, Montana. With Seattle, that will be three seminars in October.
BostonBillingsSeattle
Still working on getting NYC or NJ going, which would be a fourth October gig. Crazy busy, but cool. San Francisco/Oakland next weekend. Enough with the crass commercial announcements.------I'm toying with an idea that is either too obvious or too dumb, and I'm not sure which. At the Crossing the Pond event in Seattle, I noticed that...

Busy Boy

Hmmm. Looks like the blog broke 100 followers. That's cool.
Working to get two October seminars set up on the East Coast. It's actually short notice, but I think/hope it can work. I really want to do a bar brawl with some of the Boston crew. That will be a blast for everybody. Also trying to set one up near NYC, probably on the Jersey shore.
San Francisco (Oakland, technically) is coming up in two weeks. The venue looks very cool. It will be a chance to see Maija and Mariusz again as...

VPPG Thoughts

Good VPPG yesterday. I have tiny finger-nail cuts on the inside of my ear and am pleasantly sore throughout my core. Skin scraped off one hand and both forearms. Good day. The brawling was good. The thinking was better.
The VPPG itself, the Violence Prone Play Group, is for good people (defined as people I like who have skill and who volunteer) to get together and play. Partially just to bang with people that have a similar idea of what good play-brawling is, but more important is that w...

Last Night's Thoughts

One of my earliest memories is wishing, desperately, that I would live to be six. I had two siblings much (seven and eight years) older, and this thing called 'school' where I would learn everything sounded very cool.

I'm not sure why I was so obsessed with my own survival or so pessimistic about it. It seemed that living to six would be a rare and precious thing. Something unlikely. Barely to be hoped for. Maybe it was the annual visit to the twin's graves. They had only lived for a...

Training and Application

In response to the last post, Chris wrote:
"What do you think is the problem that push hands is trying to solve, and that is mostly solved with a stinging slap too?"
It's a good question, especially the way that Chris couched it, because very little in the world is about what is and much is about what we think stuff is.
So here goes, Chris. Both push hands and sticky hands, IMO, are sensitivity drills. They are designed so that if you get good you can touch your opponent (not just in...

Feelings

There's a vocabulary to close combat that a lot of people lack. You need to be able to understand and identify touches, and that's hard. Infighting is hard to learn verbally or visually anyway. The eyes and neocortex are too slow and you need to work a deeper part of your brain. That part works really well with touches.
If I tell a striker to grab my head and pull it to his hip, he will tug down, actually setting my bones more strongly against his direction of pull. If I tell a grappler, ...

The Will

I'm cribbing from an unknown author today. Somebody wrote something and I penciled it on a post-it note and it now hangs on the bathroom mirror. I didn't write down who said it, and it deserves a lot of credit.
Everyone has the will to win. When two people show up at a contest, both want to win. Both have their spirits set on prevailing. In the nasty world of predators and victims, the will to win is even more pronounced. The coyote is hungry. The rabbit wants to live.
Everyone has the w...

Stuff to Do, Stuff to Do...

Marc and Dianna are delivered to the airport. Things are quiet, but in my head the list of things to do and ponder buzz.
It's been a big week. A new combative concept from Kris. Meeting Iain Abernethy and Al Peasland. A very productive VPPG. Called Tim Larkin of TFT (FaceBook is cool for connections) and got some advice. Even better, heard him articulate beliefs that resonated with my personal mission. Talk and gin and narghila with Edwin and Irene and Marc and Dianna. Good sometimes j...