Violence starts at the top of the stairs—and only goes in one direction. The back-and-forth that people seek in violence comes from two different ideas: 1) self-defense, and 2) a sport- and media-reinforced expectation of back-and-forth. “Self-defense” says nothing about the other person. There’s just the self, and then working to keep yourself from harm. […]
“Violence is the last thing I want to do, but it’s the first thing I will do.” — Master Matt Suitor Does knowing how to use the tool of violence inform your relationship with your fellow human beings? There are really two angles to come at this question from: knowing what violence entails (or “means”) […]
If a killer kills someone, no one is much surprised. Likewise, if the killer is killed by their intended victim, it’s just “job well done.” But if no one meant to kill anyone, and someone ends up dead, well, then it’s cartoon exclamation points all around. Everyone, including the newly-minted killer, is surprised. Cries of […]
In “Building a Better Monster”, I talked about how people build up insanely powerful adversaries (bigger, faster, stronger) and place them in impossible scenarios (it was a dark and stormy night, he has night-vision goggles and a gun that shoots chainsaws) and then ask, “How do I deal with that?” My advice was, essentially, build […]
Invariably, we get questions along the lines of “Okay, I get all the violence stuff—but what if he’s bigger-faster-stronger or [your favorite celebrity masher here] or has a knife-stick-gun-three guns?” That’s a great question. Or it would be if that’s what they really meant. More often than not people build a monster in their head […]
A man approaches you on the street with a proposition: “See that guy over there?” He indicates a big, strapping fellow, his six-foot-four frame enrobed in 300 pounds of muscle. “He’s coming over here to wrestle you to the ground and choke you out for a million dollars. If you can pin him instead, I’ll […]
Most of what goes on in martial arts and combat sports works because people quit. They quit because it hurts, or because they’re exhausted, or because they start to listen to the little voice that’s telling them everything will be a lot better if they’d just give up and give in. More often than not […]
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” — H. P. Lovecraft Fear is a biological fact. We are hardwired for fight or flight—remember, we’re the descendants of the ones who didn’t stop and think when the lion was bearing down […]
Intent is what makes people scary. It’s what you instinctively fear in the criminal. It’s what society breeds out of domesticated humans. But what is it, really? It’s far too slippery to hold in the mind’s eye, an amorphous, ever-shifting gem shrouded in a halo of mystical mist… And what good is that to anyone? […]
Experienced instructors are some of the most relaxed people I know. The question, of course, is why? When you have the mechanical ability to cause injury and couple it with the driving motivator of intent, everything throttles back and gets calm and easy—you’re not out spoiling for a fight or giving yourself an anxiety disorder […]
When people say “scenario-based training”, it’s code for “all the crap that comes before the actual violence”. The yelling, the approach, the grabby man-dance. Of course, once the violence starts it’s all the same old, same old: injury, injury, injury. Pedestrian, predictable, and downright boring. All the stuff that comes before, all the stuff that […]
…is a ton of crap. Let me rewind a little bit. The concept of the universality of violence is a key idea that we come back to time and time again, that is, treating all violence as equivalent, with no such thing as “dash”-fighting, e.g., ground-fighting, knife-fighting, stick-fighting, etc. The reason we have to keep […]
It’s about what works & survival. Period. I was recently reading an article on “self-defense” in which the author was speaking of violence as if you could pick and choose the level of seriousness of the interaction, e.g., if they just want to “kick your ass” you kick their ass back, not really hurting them, […]
There is a baseline level of confusion about what exactly it is we do; confusion that I am, quite frankly, tired of hashing and rehashing. There are deep-seated biological, psychological, and societal reasons for this confusion—and so it is perfectly natural for it to persist—but as an instructor it frustrates me because treading back and […]
You can’t learn anything of value from the dead guy. When we see an act of violence, we feel it in our guts. Our eyes turn to the hapless victim, desperately trying to defend themselves, and a part of us is there, suffering with them. This is what sane, socialized people experience when they see […]
A frequent question we get is, “Okay, I get this whole violence thing, but what if—” and then it’s usually followed by something the other person is thinking of doing, trying to do, or just plain in the middle of doing. This is code for “I don’t want to get hurt.” Well, nobody does. If […]
In thinking about how it felt to learn and process the tool of violence for my own use, I realized there were five distinct phases in the evolution of my thinking and, by extension, my training focus. As my understanding grew, the way I trained changed. Or, I should say, as my understanding became more […]
There is an issue in violence that everything we do in training points to, but very few people, if anyone, ever gets. We have paid lip service to it, talked around it, and indirectly hinted at it. Today is the day it gets dragged out into the open. You’ve heard us say that the one […]
Choosing the level of interaction in violent conflict. One of the key features of the sociopath is that they see everyone as essentially the same—a piece of meat to be butchered. Sociopaths look at everyone this way, regardless of personality, skill, or ability: a big strong guy with a black belt looks the same as […]
Violence is simple. How simple is it? We can answer that with two more questions: 1) How is it that untrained people prevail? and 2) How is it that untrained people prevail over trained people? Because for all their blissful naïveté, the victorious untrained have a firm grip on the tool of violence. This fact […]
Using UFC fouls as the basis for operational success in violence. Contrary to popular belief, combat sports are not about injury. In fact, they go to great lengths to make the contest as “safe” as possible so that competitors can have lucrative careers that generate profits for a good chunk of time. A rotating stable […]
It’s the only thing that means anything in violence, or at least that’s what we’re always saying… But what is injury after all? And is there a simpler way to think of it, relate to it and thereby better relate it to others? We’ll start with the dictionary definition of the word—The Shorter Oxford English […]
Violence starts where choice ends. For social and antisocial interactions, this means you get to choose whether or not to be involved, and how deep your involvement will go. On the asocial side, you won’t have that choice. This gives us a nice, clean delineator between violence and Everything Else. As you’ve heard us say […]
Disclaimer There are serious legal and moral problems with injuring someone who isn’t trying to injure you or hasn’t otherwise threatened you with serious harm or death. For the sake of this discussion on the idea of the sucker punch, or otherwise taking people out from behind or when they don’t know it’s coming, we’re […]
The use of violence can have unintended consequences. Tearing into someone physically can end up killing them, even when you didn’t mean to. And if the after-the-fact circumstances don’t allow for killing, you can be subject to serious legal (and life-changing) consequences down the road. These consequences are the reason we do not recommend using […]
