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Being the Better Monster

September 10, 2024/0 Comments/in Rabbit v. Wolf/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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

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

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

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

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

1) He is going to do things to you.

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

2) You can’t stop what he is doing.

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

3) Injury will make you helpless.

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

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

1) You are going to do things to him.

2) He can’t stop what you’ve already done.

3) Injury will make him helpless.

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

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

People seek training because what they really want is immunity from violence. It’s not the idea of doing it they find appealing, but the idea of preventing it. I know this was true for me. But then we give them an ugly, unpopular truth: Nothing can make you immune and you’re on your own. You’re either going to injure him, put him down and savage him on the ground or he’s going to do it to you. You’re not going to have superior, “no can defend” technique or superhuman abilities. It’s just going to be you and your willingness to tear another human being apart. You’re very probably going to take a beating in the process, and you can, whether through inaction, miscalculation, or just plain dumb luck end up on the receiving end of the tool of violence. No matter how hard and long you train, you can be murdered.

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

So why bother? Well, prior to training you were rolling dice. We show you how to play the game with loaded dice—you end up with an edge. That edge is only going to mean anything if you accept the inborn frailty of your body as you harden your mind to the task at hand: you, crippling another person for life. There is nothing you can do to make your body immune to injury; the only thing you can change is the intent in your head.

It’s going to work for him because he wants to cause injury and throws everything he has into making that idea a reality. He has intent. It’s going to work for him because he is acting on the realities of violence as they stand—he is going to use what works and get it done first because he knows no one is immune… he is acting on the fact that he can be taken. This is why he hits first, why he wades in and goes for broke. He knows if he breaks you first, he is far less likely to have any of it done to him. He knows if he waits he’s done for.

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

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

Be what you fear.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Building a Better Monster

September 3, 2024/0 Comments/in Rabbit v. Wolf/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 around a single overarching fear… And that fear is—

Not to be revealed until the end.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at some specifics:

When people look at a larger, stronger man what they’re really registering is his potential ability to generate power. He could pick you up and throw you across the room, right? Heck, he could probably kill you with a refrigerator if you tried to run away. What they ignore is that though he may have more human tissue than you, he’s still made of meat. And meat can be butchered.

Fast and skilled fall into the same category—the desire for a duel. This typically comes from people who are worried about “getting in”. This is particularly funny as I’ve never seen a prison murder where the participants had any difficulty getting in on each other; I’m sure this idea would make serial killers shrug as well. In short, professionals who use violence in their day-to-day are conspicuously unconcerned with getting in. And so should you be.

But what if he’s armed? Well, if I have a knife and he has a knife, I stab the knife, right? Of course not. So why the hell does this make a difference if he has a tool and I’m using fists and boots? It just means you’ll beat him to nonfunctional instead of shooting or stabbing him to nonfunctional.

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

“I’m afraid he has the intent to do what I won’t.”

Everyone builds a better monster around the idea of superior intent. The bigger-faster-stronger smokescreen is just worry that he’s turned up willing to deliver a serious beating that ends in a brutal curbing while you’re just there to look hard or have a manly slap-fight. You know, the kind where no one really gets hurt.

The tool, though, now that’s different. When he pulls out a labor-saving device whose sole purpose is to rend meat and break bones, well now he’s showing superior intent—intent you’re worried you can’t match. If you’re just there to posture and look the part—if you’re just there for a duel to teach someone a lesson, then what the hell is he up to with that man-mangler? We all know the answer to that. Everyone recognizes, on a visceral level, that the armed man is displaying intent they themselves lack.

That’s what everyone’s afraid of. Superior intent. All the sideways questions, all the building of better monsters is just dancing around this issue—what if he’s here to kill me? I mean, really this time? The recognition that this just might be so, and you can’t or won’t match it, intent-wise, is the core fear that everyone harbors.

The dull toll of fear echoing in the intent gap is what I hear whenever anyone asks one of these questions. They’re not even consciously aware of it. They’ll deny it when pressed.

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

And then become him.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

The Terror of Competition, the Pleasure of Predation

August 27, 2024/0 Comments/in Competition/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 give you the million.”

“B-but,” you stammer, “I don’t want to wrestle him!”

The man sniffs. “Doesn’t matter—he wants the million. Here he comes—best of luck!”

How does it feel to suddenly have this contest thrust upon you? To have to worry about your performance, and how it will stack up to his experience level? For all you know, he could be very good at wrestling—and even if you, yourself, are no slouch in the ring, he’s clearly way outside your weight class. And much, much stronger. As he begins to sprint toward you, you notice he’s a lot faster, too.

How’s it feel now?

Let’s try a different tack: Same setup, except the man says, “All you have to do is touch him, and I’ll give you the million instead.”

Feel any different?

How about if we qualify that touch a bit: “All you have to do is break something inside of him.” And you’ll get the million.

In the first case, the contest is sprung upon you, you’re not prepared, you’re being asked to compete with the man’s physical size and athletic ability. You’re being asked to perform at a level most of us can’t reach. You’re being asked to compete in such a way that is clearly unfair, and puts you at a disadvantage.

We could just as easily set up a scenario where you are suddenly tasked with debating international monetary policy, before an audience, with someone who may or may not be a Nobel laureate in economics. We’ve all got the basic tools, the components to compete in such a contest—we can speak out loud, we have experience with finances and money in general—and yet, the idea makes me sweat. Most of us can expect to get hammered and humiliated, everything we say twisted back on us with a sneer and derisive laughter from the audience.

In the second case where “all you have to do is touch him,” there is no performance pressure—we can all reach out and touch the guy, even if he wants to wrestle us. In fact, there’s really no way you can lose—how can he wrestle you down and choke you out without you touching him at some point? It’s so simple it’s ridiculous.

And sure, that “touch” can easily be used to break something inside of him, as in the slightly more difficult scenario. We all know he can’t successfully wrestle you without you crushing his groin or gouging an eye at some point. Everything he would want to do just pulls you in nice and close to those delicate anatomical features. Another easy win.

All of the above highlights another distinct difference between competition and violence—that impending competition brings with it performance anxiety as you realize you will be required to pit your skill against unknown thresholds: What if he’s the better wrestler, or speaker? It’s the worry that your meager skills will be outclassed.

When we remove the competition and go instead to a win condition that is not dependent on unknown thresholds (i.e., nothing about the man factors into the equation) there is no dread or anxiety.

Now, I know what you’re thinking—what about performance anxiety around getting violence done? Well, how anxious did you feel about merely touching the guy, really? Outside of counting coup, did your anxiety increase when it was qualified as causing an injury? If the answer is yes, then

YOU’RE STILL LOOKING AT VIOLENCE AS COMPETITION.

Violence, as the absence of competition, has no performance anxiety component. It really is just touching, if we mean it in the same way that we would smash a soda can flat, or slam a car door, or break a stick on the curb. The physics and biomechanics involved are all the same. Any considerations beyond that are imaginary. Hang ups, if you will.

As with pretty much everything in this work, the solution is mat time. It’s the second-best place to learn that competition has nothing to do with anything in violence, that size, speed, and strength have no bearing on who wins and who dies. Those who still view violence as a form of competition, a high-stakes one, act hesitantly on the mats; they keep their distance (even when they think they’re penetrating), flinch, hide and otherwise give poor reactions, and rarely employ body weight. They behave as if they are fundamentally frightened of what’s going on. Which they are.

Those who have figured it out by physically burning the idea out of their heads with hours of mat time throw themselves into the work with great relish, applying themselves bodily to every problem presented to them. The physical realization that violence is about a failure to compete, an end-run around competition, is liberating. Gone is the worry about being big enough, fast enough, or strong enough. The other person’s skill counts for absolutely nothing. It’s all about you, and only you. The other person is prey to be taken, meat to be butchered. The pressure’s off and you’re free to do as you will.

You’re exercising your legacy as a predator—and by all accounts, predation is pleasurable.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2008)

Kill the Unknown

August 13, 2024/0 Comments/in Training/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

“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 on them. We’re the kin of the ones who literally “went ape” and flipped out with either a rooster tail of dust to the horizon or by picking up a stick and getting busy. But just because fear is a biological fact doesn’t mean that we have to give into it; we don’t have to feed the fear, allow it to grow fat on the shadows of our nightmares. We can recognize (and be grateful for) the ass-saving properties of biological fear without bloating it out into the grotesquerie of all-consuming emotional panic.

We do this by killing the unknown.

Most people have no idea what goes on in violence outside of agony, mayhem, and death. It is a Great Unknown; a bottomless, black abyss wherein we are free to paint our own personal pictures of horror with unthinkable outcomes. When you replace that unknown with knowledge, with understanding, governing principles, and expected outcomes you take away the power of the unknown, starve it back down to a manageable size. Fear of violence and the unthinking, blind panic it induces becomes simple biological fear. Flight means you get the hell out of there. Fight means you stomp and tear and wreak horror upon the other person.

There are two ways to make sure you’re filling in the blank spots on the violence map, changing “here be dragons” to “boot to the groin”: the first (and most important) is asocial mat time, the other is simple visualization.

Each session of asocial mat time is an expedition into that Dark Continent, to lay bare its secrets, to find out that, indeed, there is no such thing as a one-eyed ogre with three arms that hungers for human flesh. Every single turn of asocial mat time is you answering the question “What the hell goes on in here?” Turn by turn you answer that question, completely and with certitude: I crush his groin, I tear out his eye, I break his neck. That’s what goes on in here. Mystery solved.

Of course, we’ve all had the “zombie” dream—the one where you’re tearing into someone, breaking their leg, stomping their throat and they keep getting back up. So you do it again. You do more. And still they rise and come at you… Along these same lines we’ve all seen people that gave us pause, for one reason or another—he wasn’t just big, he was enormous; he had a swastika tattooed on his face and looked like he was at the end of his rope made out of a last straw; or, without knowing why, he was just… scary. This is you remembering the tales of those one-eyed ogres that used to keep you up at night, and you’re wondering if maybe there was something to the myth, and that something’s right here in front of you.

You know he’s human. He bleeds. And if he bleeds, you can kill him. You just have to remind yourself of this fact by taking a moment, whether right then and there or later (I recommend later… so you don’t set anyone off through body language), and imagine yourself breaking that person. One injury after another, putting him down and then ruining a perfectly good pair of shoes on him until he’s a twist of flesh in the middle of a stain. Imagine it in slo-mo, one broken thing at a time, or speed it up, watch your favorite parts over and over. This is you, replacing a lie with two truths: you know how to do violence, and no one is immune. This is you, taking the time to remind yourself that there is no such thing as a one-eyed ogre.

When violence is thoroughly mapped out, option after option experienced in real time on a real person, you know what to expect. There is no more “unknown” to swallow you up in blind panic. As we replace that unknown with knowledge, we starve fear down to its biologic roots and inhibit its ability to grow unchecked through your mind. Instead of giving in to it, feeding it, helping it, you’ll use it for what it’s for—and put your boot in the other person’s groin. After that the rest is academic.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

Everyone’s a Badass

March 28, 2024/0 Comments/in Rabbit v. Wolf/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

(Note: Much of this revolves around intermale aggression, male power fantasies, and the paleolithic kabuki of male dominance rituals—but the message at the end is good for everyone, I promise.)

Human societies are fascinated with strength and power, especially obvious personal power: height, musculature, and a hair-trigger willingness to do violence are eternally impressive to us. We all desire what those attributes grant the possessor—to be respected, to inspire awe, and, perhaps, fear. When we are intimidated, we feel all those things acutely, most of all the gut-snarling fear. We feel it, and we want to make others feel those things, too. We feel it and realize we don’t want to confront the intimidating person… and wouldn’t that feeling be a very useful thing to project? Only if you want to take it to the physical, to have to use violence to back up your newfound badass attitude more often than you’d like. Intimidation is like juggling 13 double-edged swords and playing with fire simultaneously.

For our purposes we’re going to define “intimidation” as the antisocial process of going out of your way to make someone afraid of you. Most people take this a step further, not stopping at mere fear but going headlong into humiliation. Once they realize they’ve made someone afraid, they will typically push it and rub it in to humiliate the affected person.

(As an interesting aside, it’s a common truth that people who use intimidation as a social tool tend to do the things that intimidate them—they will project the behaviors that they, themselves, fear most.)

Why is intimidation so dangerous? Because it can get you killed, whether you fail or succeed. If you fail to intimidate the man, you have just escalated the situation—by saying, in effect, “Do you want me to hurt you?”—and now, unimpressed, he’s calling your bluff. If he’s the kind of guy who responds to threats with physical action, then it’s on. You just called it down upon yourself because you wanted to be a badass.

Usually, it’s not going to be a problem—if it went physical all the time very few people would do it, right? The problem is the people who get set off by this are the worst kind… and I hope I don’t have to tell you that choosing to escalate a screaming match to a life-or-death situation is asinine.

Let’s say you succeed in intimidating him. Mission accomplished, right? You put him in his place, you showed him (and everyone in earshot) who’s boss, you made him feel afraid. How could that possibly go wrong?

Yeah, I know—it’s a rhetorical question.

Let’s flip it around: He succeeded in intimidating you, he made you feel afraid. Maybe even made you feel afraid for your life. How do you respond? You know how to handle the physical side; you can take it there in a blink of an eye and shut him off. Maybe you just feel socially embarrassed and walk away. Or maybe you knock him down, knee him in the face and stomp on his head until he’s nonfunctional. Who can say? It’s going to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

What if you make him feel afraid? Most people will back down and disengage, usually while making even more noise than before. But there are some, the worst out there, who will take it as a threat and work to destroy that threat. They may go off instantaneously, or they may simmer for hours, days, months. In the long-term case, you probably won’t have the luxury of seeing it coming. And if you truly terrified them, they’re going to want to do things to even the odds—bringing accomplices and firearms, say. So, succeed or fail, intimidation can get you killed. It’s a sucker’s game.

“But Chris,” you say, “If I’m not intimidating then I’m prey!”

Let’s make a quick clarification here: the opposite of being intimidating is not the same as appearing meek, weak, or helpless—it’s simply not registering as prey. Looking like you know what you’re doing, that you are aware, yet comfortably unconcerned, is more akin to being socially remote. That is, you’ve got the NO SOLICITING sign out without being a jerk about it. Appearing unimpressed and unafraid is not the same as trying to be intimidating. You can project the confidence that you can handle yourself without threatening anyone.

A high order social skill? Probably one of the highest. And for many people, elusive. But it’s a lot less harrowing than running around being intimidating, which is exhausting and scary at the same time. I think of it like this: “Go out of your way to get to the rest of your day.” When in the social arena, be social, use your social skills, and treat everyone like people. In the asocial arena treat everyone like meat. Don’t confuse the two.

It doesn’t mean you have to be everyone’s friend, a pushover, or smile at daily human ugliness. It can be as simple as biting your tongue instead of spitting fuel on the fire. Of course, the hard part is if you’re successful, you’ll never know it. You’ll never even be aware of the trouble you’ve dodged—you can only know the trouble you’ve caused.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

Filthy Lies

February 28, 2024/0 Comments/in Training/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Every now and again something gets stuck in my craw, jammed in there so tight that the only things that are going to get it out are a tire iron and a liberal dose of bile. Here’s some of both for three things that got stuck in there recently—lies I hear people tell themselves, and each other, about training for violence:

⁂ Intellectual understanding of the material is key.

The criminal sociopath knows only one thing about violence—that the person doing it wins. And even that statement is too wordy. That’s not to say the average criminal is stupid, it’s just that they tend not to introspect on the topic much beyond a gut/operational level of what’s required. When asked to articulate what works in violence they’ll tend to speak to injuries, e.g., “Knee ‘em in the groin/stab ‘em in the neck/shoot ‘em in the head” sorts of answers.

Intellectual discourse on the subject is an exercise for instruction, not for doing.

Your best bet for getting good at violence is to practice doing it—not sitting around talking about it. You should really only be sitting down and talking about it because you’re wiped out from practicing so damn much.

⁂ The technique will take care of everything.

No, it won’t. Either you’re going to take care of it, or nothing’s going to happen. “Doing a move” is like throwing a hood ornament at someone—when what you really want to do is hit them with a truck that just happens to have a hood ornament bolted on the front end.

Knowing how to set up a specific joint break is not the same thing as breaking a joint. Likewise, knowing the precise “hand wave” to “claw the eyes” is not the same as causing a serious eye injury. A subtle distinction? It has to do with how far into/through the other person you’re thinking. A typical technique stops at the outer boundary of your skin—it’s a subjective, personal exercise that has very little to do with the other person or even realistic results. You know what it’s supposed to do, but because technique focuses primarily on hand waving and foot placement there’s really no way to be sure of the outcome.

Breaking out beyond technique means looking through an anatomical feature inside them and converting it into an unrecognizable mess. It’s starting with the result you need—injury—and working backwards from there to figure out how to get that result. Or, to put it another way, technique is like obsessively polishing an empty gun. What you want to do instead is study gunshot wounds and figure out how best to make those.

⁂ I can’t be expected to do it because I’m not ready.

You’re half right. You won’t be able to do it until you give yourself permission to. The only gatekeeper holding you back here is you. So why not take the time, like, right now, and decide that you CAN for a change?

Everyone reading these words has the potential ability to blind someone, make them vomit their own gonads, bust their leg and stomp on their neck to end them. The only thing missing is your full force and effort, the physical symptom of a little something we call intent, and that’s just you giving yourself permission to do what your inner predator wants to do anyway.

“I’m not ready” is kung-fu theater bullshit. It’s a responsibility dodge. What you’re really saying is, “I don’t want to be responsible for screwing up. I want to be able to blame the training.” You gotta wake up and own it. You gotta take responsibility for what you know and what that makes you. To do otherwise is to let yourself down—it’s participating in your own murder.

To be honest, nobody’s ready; nobody wants to go there. But the last thing you want when you do end up there is to be dragging a big, heavy sack of self-doubt along for the ride.

Can you kill someone with your bare hands? Yes, you can. Everything outside that mechanical fact is illusory.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

All the Reasons Why You Can’t

February 22, 2024/0 Comments/in Training/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

No sane person wants to be involved in violence. If you did, all you’d have to do is run outside and punch the first person you saw in the neck as hard as you could. Getting involved in a violent act is easy—the fact that you don’t go looking for it is a testament to your civility, sociability, and sanity. Everyone’s willing to cop to this. Other than baseline humanity, the primary thing that keeps you away from violence is fear. This, no one wants to admit—so they come up with layers of excuses to cover the fact that they’re simply afraid. All the reasons why you can’t are really just facets of a single reason: you’re afraid.

There’s nothing wrong with being afraid—a little fear is healthy—and to paraphrase Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s top fighter ace in World War I, there is no courage without fear.

What’s wrong is lying to yourself about it, making up ego-salving excuses why you can’t do it.

Finally, collected in a single place (other than the inside of your skull), here are all the reasons why you can’t:

Physical

Not Enough Training

“I don’t have enough days/months/years/belts/levels, etc., to be able to hurt someone.” If only you had more time in, you’d be ready. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. The sad part is you typically don’t get to pick when it happens, so, ergo, you’re as ready as you’re ever gonna be. And the fact that most people who successfully use violence—professional criminals—have little or no training whatsoever blows this one out of the water.

Not Coordinated

“I can’t move like you guys do.” Neither could Frank the Lawyer, the self-proclaimed Most Uncoordinated Person in the Universe. I trained Frank for about a year, a year spent lying awake at night agonizing over his personal safety—he was the only person I ever trained who I prayed would never, ever be called upon to use it. He was literally the most uncoordinated person I’d ever met. He had two left feet—and that was just his hands. Fast forward five years later when I get a phone call from him and he tells me how he took out two muggers, one of whom had a knife. To quote him, “It was just like a movie.”

This was the guy who convinced me that if he can do it, literally anyone can. Scratch that excuse.

Not Able

The wheelchair-bound, the blind, a guy with one functional arm. What do they all have in common? Not this excuse. These are all people we trained—and they were more than capable of getting it done right. What’s your excuse? A bum knee? I got two of ‘em. You have no excuse. Even if it’s as severe as the ones above, it didn’t slow anybody I know down. It only slows you down if you want it to.

Mental

Not Cut Out for It

If you’re human, you are. You’re born to it, built for it, and the only reason you’re here is because all your ancestors did it to everything that got in their way. If we could bring back a Neanderthal, I guarantee he’d piss his hides at the mere sight of you. You might not think of yourself as particularly scary that way, but then you’ve forgotten that your kind wiped his kind out. Whether you like it or not, everyone’s cut out for the commission of violence.

“I could never do that to someone!”

This is typically code for “I had no idea people did that to each other and so I’m going to go unilateral for the peace-thing with the idea that if I don’t do it to anybody then no one will ever do it to me.”

You’d be amazed at what you can do when the social security blanket gets stripped away and it’s just the screech and sparks of your life rubbing up against the steel deck plate of reality.

A gentleman once openly scoffed at me and said, “I could never kick someone in the throat when they were down.” Really? Not even if they were down because they were picking up a crowbar to brain you with? You really are very sporting about your own murder. Closed-casket funeral notwithstanding.

What he was really saying was that he was afraid. As we all are. But he was lying to me about it, as if I wouldn’t notice, and worst of all, he was lying to himself.

If he’s lucky, it’ll never matter. And statistics are on his side. If he ain’t lucky, that ego’s gonna get him killed. And for no good reason other than he was unwilling to admit a small, universal weakness.

I have to tell you, Rickenbacker’s quote startled me. I mean, he was the top American ace in WWI. He once dove on and single-handedly fought with a formation of seven planes. Seven to one, by choice. A stone-to-the-bone killer. And he admitted to spending most of his time terrified out of his gourd. But then, as he said, courage is the act of overcoming fear.

So get over it. You have no excuse. You’re not saying you can’t, you’re saying you don’t want to. Well, none of us do.

Train hard, to the best of your abilities, and know that it’s more than enough. It’s served people who were smaller than you, weaker than you, less well-trained than you, when it counted most. And they’ve all made it back alive and well. So can you—but only if you quit with the excuses and get to work.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

It’s Different for Me: A Woman’s Perspective on Hand-to-Hand Combat Training

June 8, 2018/1 Comment/in Training/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Note: The following was sent to us by a female client who wanted to share this on our blog, but wishes to remain anonymous.

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People who don’t know me well would never imagine that I know anything about or have any interest in hand-to-hand combat training and I like it that way. It isn’t comfortable social conversation to talk about what that really means and I don’t want to defend what I know, why I know it, and what that means for me. People take a step back and wonder about you when you admit, with conviction, that yes, you would jab your thumb into someone’s eye socket or stomp their knee to render their leg useless if necessary. If it is their life or mine, I will always choose mine.

I have trained with men—big men, who far out-muscle and out-weigh me. I have been fortunate that they are some of the best trained instructors in the world and they care about my safety and well-being. They train hard and when they pin me against a wall with their hands on my throat or grab me in a bear hug and lift me off my feet, they will not release me just because I tried. They will let me go only if I hit my targets and they are forced to let me go by the laws of physics and human anatomy.

During training you move slow, slower than a violent confrontation would be if this were real. I know it is to keep everyone safe and to pay attention to targets, but for me there is another reason for going slow—to connect with the fear. When a man who is taller than you by at least a foot, with biceps as big as your thighs, pins you against the wall, hands on your throat, make no mistake about it, there is fear. I must drink in that fear—I need to feel it and pay attention to it. I have known my instructor for years and I trust him, so my feelings of fear are less pronounced than they would be in a violent situation with a stranger; therefore, in training I must tap into that fear, feel it, focus on it, and pay attention to how my body and mind respond in a fear state. It is a gift to be allowed to train slow, to be able to pay attention to your physiological responses to fear, and to figure out how to stay focused on targets. I have learned what it feels like to stay focused on targets that cause injury to another human being when I am pinned against a wall with hands around my throat, my heart racing, and my mind consumed by the need to survive.

Early in my training I had not yet learned the value of paying attention to how my brain and body respond to fear. None of my instructors talked about it and I did not admit that I felt fear—we were only training after all, what was there to be afraid of? I honestly do not know if my instructors didn’t talk about paying attention to your fear response because they didn’t experience it during training or if it is one of the subtle nuances of training that you don’t realize is valuable until someone points it out to you. I still vividly remember learning this lesson. It was early in my training and I was doubting my abilities. I decided that to build my confidence I needed to put myself into a situation where I knew my fear response would be triggered, so I asked my training partner to sit on my chest and pin my hands to the ground. It was at that moment that I learned not only to pay attention to how my mind and body reacts in a fear state, but I learned an entirely new lesson—the dramatic increase in the intensity of both my fear and other emotions that are triggered when violence and intimacy intersect.

The intensity of the fear response at the intersection of violence and sexuality is an aspect of training that I believe may be unique to women or at least much more prevalent for women. It is not something my instructors ever talked to me about, and honestly I am not sure that I would have welcomed the discussion because it is deeply personal and difficult to express. Prior to training I did not engage in any co-ed contact sports that required close physical contact with men. However, during training there are times when I find myself in positions with my training partner that I had previously only experienced in non-violent, consensual, intimate relationships. It is in these moments during training that my brain will sometimes trigger the recognition of the potential for a situation to be sexual and because I am a socialized and decent person who respects her training partner, my first response is to ignore those thoughts. However, I believe for women to get the most out of their training they need to tune in to these moments when they occur and place them squarely in the context of violence. Women must seize these moments and become fully present in their thoughts, feelings, and physiological responses associated with sexual violence so that they can understand how their mind and body might respond in similar situations outside of training. I will admit tuning into these moments during training is a terrible feeling wrought with intense emotion and a feeling I would much rather avoid all together, but I know I am not taking full advantage of my training if I ignore these moments and turn away.

Our male training partners and instructors need to know how valuable these moments are for us. These situations provide us with valuable opportunities to push back on a lifetime of teaching that reminds women and girls that we are vulnerable to violent confrontations in everyday activities like jogging along a path or walking through a parking lot. To further compound this narrative, historically women in our society have not been trained to respond to violence with effective techniques using our own bodies as weapons. Instead we are reminded frequently through media and social stories that we are not capable of effective response to violence and that in order to be effective we need to use devices that someone, somewhere thought would help us feel safer such as carrying a whistle or mace. However, these tools and devices so often pitched to women promote the narrative that women are not capable of inflicting debilitating injury on attackers who are bigger and stronger than they are, but effective training changes all that. After all, a crushed windpipe from a knee drop to the throat is still a crushed windpipe no matter who delivers it.

It has been several years now since I first learned the value of leaning into my fears and walking along that dark edge of intimacy and violence. I think it is one of the most important aspects of training for woman. The sessions on grabs, holds and chokes can really surface these fears and emotions, and for women who are rape survivors the intensity of the response to this aspect of training is even more pronounced because of their ties to a history of sexual violence. Over the years I have also watched and listened as the instructors have learned more about this aspect of training and how it is experienced by their female students. I am impressed by the compassion the instructors show in these moments as they continue to teach, but lean into the fears and emotions of their female students and encourage them to pay attention to their emotional and physiological response while also channeling their energy and strength to continue fighting. It has truly been a gift to be trained by and to watch these instructors. They are fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands and they care for their students like family and give generously of their time to ensure that every student succeeds. In all of my training I have always felt that my instructors believed in my ability to deliver a crippling injury to an attacker and that my knowledge of effective techniques was the most important tool they could give me for my own safety. They train me with a level of intensity that communicates to me that my life depends on it because the reality is that someday it might.

— Anonymous

You Weigh the Same When You’re Scared

June 1, 2018/0 Comments/in Training/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Your skeleton is just as hard, his eye just as soft — regardless of how everyone is feeling.

In the human world — the one that only exists inside our skulls — emotion is power. As we might use a hand to grasp an object so we use emotion to grasp other people’s minds. It lets us reach out and affect behavior; we read it in others to intuit their motives. It’s absolutely necessary for effective communication — without it any message comes across as stilted, creepy, inhuman.

But when we’ve moved beyond communication and into a state of nature where the only thing that will be measured is how physics affects physiology we need a cold, impartial focus because emotions are weightless — they don’t make you heavier, they don’t make you fall any faster in the gravity field, and they don’t make his anatomy any more vulnerable.

Which is to say that a 45-pound Olympic plate dropped awkwardly onto an ankle can break it — and that means you can, too, regardless of how you feel at the moment of impact.

The reverse is also true: His emotional state does nothing to protect him. Personality is not a force field — who he his and what he knows do nothing to shield him from physics. Everyone is susceptible to injury, and those who claim to be immune believe that their ego makes a difference. If they can get you to believe it too, then they win.

While extreme emotion can drive intent to do work (you can “get mad” at a weight or kill someone in a “crime of passion”) it’s a rough, inefficient way to drive effort — like burning an explosive all at once instead of injecting refined fuel into the engine to make diamonds in the exhaust. It’s the difference between a bomb and a rocket.

Intent and intensity ultimately come down to focus, the mind driving effort through the body to wield it as a tool. But emotion can be decoupled from that — you don’t need to get angry at a stalled car to push it as hard as you can.

When thinking about how emotion can drive or hinder effort it’s important to differentiate between biological fear and psychological panic. Fear is the body preparing itself for action — fight or flight — while panic is what happens when the brain goes looking for information on what’s unfolding in front of you… and comes back empty-handed. For example, if you know how to swim and find yourself suddenly dunked into a drowning situation you will feel fear — the adrenal dump, heart racing, changes in perception — and then your brain will go looking for preprogrammed schema (“Is this similar to experiences I’ve had before, either live or in training?”) and you’ll start swimming like an adrenaline-pumped superhuman. If, on the other hand, you don’t know how to swim, your brain comes back with OMIGOD WE’RE GONNA DIE and you start drowning like an adrenaline-pumped animal.

This idea that the brain can only go where it’s gone before is why training matters — you need to practice for the outcome you want so when you find yourself there, literally scared shitless, you sidestep useless panic with actionable information. (Think about it this way: you practice “swimming”, not “drowning”, right? This is why we don’t do “self-defense”. Defense is the drowning of violence.)

Ultimately, all useful interactions in violence come down to pure physics and physiology — and while how you feel about it can alter your ability to act earlier in the chain of events, and affect how efficiently you apply your physics to his physiology, emotion doesn’t change anything at the most fundamental level: you weigh just as much, your skeleton is just as hard, his eye just as soft. Feeling the sudden jolt of biological fear — which, if you’re sane and healthy, you will — can only stop you if decide it can.

I say choose resolve, choose training, cleave into biological fear and wreck him while you’re terrified.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr

Photo: PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO DI POMPEI

Tag Archive for: fear

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It’s Different for Me: A Woman’s Perspective on Hand-to-Hand Combat Training

You Weigh the Same When You’re Scared

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