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The Illusion of Fighting

January 8, 2025/0 Comments/in Rabbit v. Wolf/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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. As an operational construct this kind of thinking makes it difficult to reach out into the fog beyond the borders of your own personal space and make the switch to you doing things to him. Think of the focus of effort as imaginary arrows—when you’re worried about what’s going to happen to you, some of the arrows point back at yourself, and retard the flow of focus outward (the arrows pointing at him, for things like actually hurting him). This gums up the whole process and has you working at cross-purposes. When both people are doing this, it looks like a classic “fight”.

The lucky thing for all of us—in terms of living a relatively peaceful life—is that very few people have experience with real, effective violence. This means that the vast majority take their cues for how violence works from sport and movies. In sport, the goal is to have a competition, to determine a winner through a process of rules—not to resort to the state of nature and put someone in the hospital or morgue. The perfect match would have both competitors able to compete again, and soon. In movies, real violence is too quick to build any kind of dramatic tension, and would be over before you looked back up from your popcorn. It is necessary, then, to have the engagement go on long enough to catch your attention, ratchet up the stakes, and build the drama toward a satisfying catharsis (the hero wins—or loses if we’re in the second act).

Effective violence is “nasty, brutish, and short”. It’s over before it really gets started, and ends up being shockingly anticlimactic. It only goes in one direction, driven by the person causing harm. (All arrows pointing in the same direction through him.) This is why the motto of violence is the opposite of the Hippocratic Oath: primum nocere (“first do harm”). Initial contact needs to be pathological, and then we stay close to do it again… and again… and again… We shove him down the stairs and then stay right on top of him to make sure he interacts with every step. We are the shove, we are the steps, we are gravity. We never part—we only meet, over and over again, until we are done.

We can see this in videos of effective violence—contact, overrun, stomping—which is exactly what we want our mat time to look and feel like.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr

Gandhi with a Nuclear Weapon

September 17, 2024/0 Comments/in Kinder than Necessary/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 “How could this happen?” and “But I didn’t want to kill him!” ring out. In the end it gets labeled as an unfortunate accident.

But these “accidents” happen often enough that when a new one pops up, I can still recall the last one I read about. Primates have a territorial dispute, and begin vocalizing at each other to communicate their displeasure, then aggression in a sideways request that the other capitulate. When neither one backs down, it goes to blows, again to run the interloper off. Usually, this works out fine, as nature intended. But when it’s bodyweight + brain + concrete, one can end up running their rival not just off their territory, but off this mortal coil entire.

These things happen often enough that I would suspect you’re more likely, on balance, to be involved in this sort of situation than purely asocial violence. In other words, you’re much more likely to get slapped at than outright murdered. Misery comes from confusing the two.

If you train to kill and think that means you’re physically trained to handle the antisocial, it’s the same as carrying a gun in case you get into an argument.

If you train to kill and think that means you get to ignore the antisocial, you’re setting yourself up to be ready for the most unlikely event while ignoring the most likely. Chances are, you’re going to get caught wanting.

Because we train to use our bodies to cause injury, it’s easy for people to get the wrong idea—on the surface, martial arts and combat sports look similar to what we do. And since martial arts and combat sports do a great job of preparing folks to navigate that antisocial fog-zone, they then tend to think we’re training for the same thing, only in a “super effective” way. That’s like pulling a gun in a bar fight and “shooting to subdue”. There’s no such thing.

Still, people get all eager to lock horns. It’s funny to me (funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha) seeing as how we can still end up with unintended fatalities. If you ask a civilian gun owner, “How many gunfights do you want to be in?” the sane ones will all tell you, “None.” The sane ones understand what goes on in a gunfight, and would never choose to be there if they didn’t have to. If they should find themselves there, they will shoot to kill. But sane civilians don’t walk around looking for gunfights.

Again, this is painfully obvious when we talk about guns. But for some reason it’s less obvious with empty hands. Why? It comes down to expectations. We expect someone to die if a gun is involved—that’s what the modern handgun is for, killing people at close range. We don’t expect someone to die from a standard, everyday session of monkey politics. And yet death is one of the possible outcomes.

Me, I expect someone to die every time violence is used, and then breathe a sigh of relief when everyone survives. I have absolutely no interest in going physical with monkey politics. I don’t leave the house looking for opportunities to use my skills.

My aversion to violence runs so strong that it makes me something of a walking contradiction to my friends—I will do whatever I can to avoid physical, antisocial confrontation and yet won’t hesitate to stomp someone into the morgue in the asocial realm. I’m like Gandhi with a nuclear weapon.

For those of you feeling eager, or emboldened by your training, some advice:

You’re all set for the asocial. If someone wants to murder you, you’re well-prepared—knowledgeable, practiced, resolute. But don’t forget to make sure you’re prepared for the antisocial—sharpen those social skills, actively think about how you want to be in those situations. Will you join in and play along? Throw fuel on the fire? Push until they either back down or go after you? Or will you go completely sideways on them, defusing the situation, seeking to reduce their fear and channel their anger elsewhere?

Know where your buttons are and put lots of padding between them and the outside world. Work to recognize when you’re being pushed into a corner. And remember that simply walking away could save your life—or keep you out of prison.

As with the asocial, so with the antisocial: be prepared.

Chances are you’ll go your entire life without anyone trying to kill you. I wouldn’t make the same bet about some jerk calling you out.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2008)

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)

Hitter or Quitter?

August 19, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 it’s a combination of all these things at once; the question gets asked often enough, with each blow, “Why don’t you just quit?”, until they hit that personal threshold and just can’t take it anymore.

Any technique that isn’t about career-ending, crippling injury is about compliance, about making the person submit—trying to convince them to quit. This is fine when the outcome isn’t critical, when what happens next is nice and social. It’s great for competition and the dojo. In fact, without this, sport becomes impossible, filled with sickening “accidents” and truncated careers; the dojo runs out of students as they succumb, one by one, to the brutal endpoint of their training.

Relying on your ability to make people quit, to have a higher pain tolerance, better conditioning, and an indomitable will—to outlast your foe while working them to the point where they cave—will get you killed in the place where those things don’t matter. If your would-be murderer is a quitter at heart, chances are you’ll be fine. But if they aren’t… if they don’t care about pain, or how tired they are, or if they lack that little voice that the sane call caution, well, then they’re not going to quit. Unless you know how to remove choice from the equation, they’re going to kill you. Even if it takes them a little bit of work to get you there.

If they’re a killer, they know it’s not about making you quit. They know it’s not about technique, or speed, or strength. It’s about results. They won’t waste their time engaging or setting you up. They’ll go straight for those results, breaking you, shutting you down to the point where there’s nothing you can do—not even quit—they’ll remove choice from the equation and treat you like meat to be butchered.

Your only hope is to know how to get those results, too—to know why those results happen so you can make them happen every single time, and get it done first. Toughness, bravado, ego, superior technique—these things mean nothing in violence. Going against a killer when the prize is your life is no time to hope for the best with a suitcase full of techniques you don’t fully understand—techniques that you hope will work but can’t articulate why they do. If you don’t know, with surety, the result you’re gunning for, and why that result occurs, you’re out of your league when it comes to violence.

And in violence there are only two kinds of people: those who know what they’re doing—precisely—and the dead.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2008)

Time to Stop Lying to Yourself

July 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Mindset/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 by obsessing violently over every human being who brushes up against you.

This is what I was getting at in “Scenario-Based Training vs. The Hard Knot”. You simply cultivate the skill, and the will to use it, and then sit back and relax into the rest of your life. Should the need arise, you pull out the knot and brain people with it. Then you tuck it back where it belongs and get on with living. (I should note that I’m not talking about a ball of twine here—in my mind it’s an infinitely folded tessellation of agony, a world-heavy, fist-sized sphere from which no light can escape.) You don’t walk around brandishing it high over your head, mad-dogging all comers with a halo of purple lightning dancing about your enraged features. You tuck it behind a smile.

Without intent, without the implacable will to wield the knot, it’s not much better than yoga. Physically challenging, yes. A survival skill, no. (As an aside, it’s critically important to note that the criminal sociopath has very little training—a deficit they more than make up for with vast, raging reservoirs of intent.) So why do people have such a hard time with intent? And most importantly, what can you do about it?

People have a hard time with intent for a number of reasons: They suffer from a natural disinclination toward violence, they worry about what the other person will do, and they think violence is mechanically difficult.

The natural disinclination toward violence

Not wanting to physically hurt people is healthy and sane—but ultimately an impediment to survival when someone poses the question to which violence is the answer.

You need to get over the idea that anything we’re up to here is social in nature. This is why it’s so critically important that your mat time is as asocial as possible—no talking, no nervous laughter, no checking your partner’s face for feedback. The only time you should be looking at a face is if you’re taking an eye out of it.

I’m not talking about getting fired up and hating your partner. I’m talking about dispassion. Lose the emotional triggers—you’re not here to communicate, and raging at your partner (or their targets) is still communication. If you’re working with your “war face” you’ve kicked the social but are busy reinforcing the antisocial. What you really need is to get off the any-social, and get to its absence. That voidspace is the psychic storage shed for the knot.

Worried about what the other person will do

Let’s be blunt: Injured people are helpless. Ask anyone who’s done it. The first injury converts a functional person into a gagging meat-sack. Every injury after that is like busting apart a side of beef with your boot heels. This is why experienced instructors are so damned relaxed (and courteous, for that matter). This is also why they won’t hesitate to be the first one doing it. (It’s the ugly truth that no one wants to talk about—how people really respond to serious injury, about how when you cause one, you’ll know it because what you see next will stick to the inside of your eyelids for the rest of your life.)

What is the other person going to do? They’re going to break and behave like an injured person. They’re going to go to the worst place they’ve ever been. And you’re going to put them there.

The question you have to ask yourself is, will you worry about what they’re going to do, or will you make them worry about what you’re going to do? (Hint: pick the one where you’re in charge.)

On this same topic, you need to get off the whole “attacker/defender” merry-go-round. In any violent conflict there’s going to be, by definition, at least one person doing it to another. Be that one person. Decide it’s you, now, and every time after now. Out there it’s always your turn. If you must think in terms of there being an attacker, then it’s you.

Choosing to put yourself in second place is not the best strategy for a win, no matter how much we may venerate the underdog. In a “fair fight” or a contest, the underdog is the hero. In violence, they’re dead.

Quit empathizing with the dead person. You’re doing it because you’re nice, you’re doing it because you’re sane. In a social context, it makes perfect sense. In violent conflict your social skills and mores do nothing but prevent you from surviving. Empathizing with the dead person at the funeral is sane and normal. Empathizing with them while we’re all trying to decide who the dead person is going to be means you’re it.

Bottom line: decide who has the problem—is it you, or is it them?

Believing violence is mechanically difficult

Outside of the psychosocial issues, violence is really, really easy. We’re all predators, we’re all physically built for killing. Violence is as easy as going from where you are to where the other person is and breaking something important inside of them. The rest is academic.

How easy is it? General consensus says easier than free practice. You get to strike as hard as you can, follow all the way through on everything, you don’t have to take care of them, and it’s over so fast you won’t even have time to break a sweat or even breathe hard. The only hard part is giving yourself the permission to be inhumanly brutal, giving yourself the permission to survive. (I recommend you vote for you every time.)

Thinking that violence is mechanically difficult (and thereby trying to give yourself an out so you don’t have to face your own intent problems) is akin to thinking that swimming in the deep end is any different from swimming in the shallow end. Mechanically, it’s the same—swimming is swimming—the difference is all in your perception. In the shallow end, you can touch bottom and can save yourself from drowning by standing up. In the deep end you’re on your own—it’s sink or swim. So everyone thinks free practice is the shallow end; there’s no risk, you can always “stand up” when you get into trouble. That would make the street the deep end—no backup, no safety net, just swim or die. I’ll grant all of that as true. Just remember, always, that no matter where you’re swimming, mechanically it’s all the same. The idea that there’s a difference is an illusion that takes effort on your part to make a reality. Stop feeding the phantoms and just swim.

Intent—your will to cause injury, your drive to get it done—is completely up to you. You need to start thinking about it now, personally letting go of the things you’ve kept between the “you” you love because they’re a lovable, good person, and the “you” that can stomp the throats of screaming men.

We can only show you how to mechanically take someone apart—pulling the trigger on it is up to you, and you alone.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Knowing the Stakes and Acting Accordingly…

July 2, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

…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 coming back to it is because a lot of the time you don’t treat it as equivalent; add a firearm, for example, and you think the stakes are different, and you suddenly want your performance to reflect “how serious” you believe the situation has become. Sometimes you think it’s just social status at stake, or mere wounding. But when the knife or the gun comes out, then it’s different, right? Now you’re playing for keeps, and so you have to get serious. Now you know the stakes and want to act accordingly.

I call bullshit.

Let me put it this way: you really don’t want to know the stakes. You never want to find out if it was life or death, because you know how you’ll know? When they’re killing you, that’s how. That’s a stupid, behind-the-curve way to find out. It’ll be the last thing you ever know. At that point the information will do you no good.

If your mat time is focusing on the idea that your workout partner is “empty-handed” and so the stakes are a mere beating, you’re probably being sloppy with distance and penetration—letting them have too much of the former and not doing enough of the latter. Then, when you add a firearm into the mix, now it’s on, right? Everything changes, you have to tighten up, “get serious”, etc. You know what you’re really doing? You’re training to get yourself killed.

Every time you go physical it’s for keeps. Every time you yank out the fail-safes and go off on someone it’s serious. Every. Single. Time. You need to take every turn you get in training as the “real deal.” Treat your partner as if they were armed with a firearm, or a knife—because they just might be armed with something worse. They might be carrying what I carry:

A bear trap and a pack of wolves.

I never leave home without them. In fact, they’re with me constantly. Now, you might think I’m being funny or losing my mind and to that I would ask that you review any video you have of instructors free practicing. Notice that once it starts, there is no escape. The reaction partner doesn’t get the opportunity to do much of anything other than react, fall, and get torn apart.

This is what I think of when someone asks me if I’m a sheep, a wolf, or a sheepdog. (Actually, the first thing I think of is that I’m Homo sapiens, a human being, something much, much worse than any of the above. But then, we’re all human and probably far too close to it to see just how incredibly powerful an animal we are. Hands-down the apex predator of the entire planet. But I digress.)

So, if I have to pick a different animal, I’ll pick the way it feels when I free practice—like a bear trap and a pack of wolves. The trap set, powerful springs straining beneath a hasty cover of leaves and forest detritus, and a pack of lean, tawny wolves circling in the shadows. Once the trap is sprung, there is no escape—after the steel jaws of the initial strike splinter bone and sunder flesh, the wolves are free to tear the crippled person to pieces.

Why does instructor free practice look like this? Because the instructor knows the stakes ahead of time. It’s all or nothing, every time. And once that trap is sprung, there is no escape. Starting right now, here are three things you can do to get there:

– Throw out the idea that the stakes are variable.

Treat every turn on the mats as if your partner has a knife, or a firearm, or, worst-case-scenario, a bear trap and a pack of wolves.

– Be the bear trap and the pack of wolves.

Once you start, it’s all about you. They get to do nothing but react, fall, and get torn to pieces. They don’t get to stagger back. They don’t get to roll away. Get inside and stay there, right on top of them—the maximum distance between the two of you should never be greater than one step/strike. Ideally, you’ll be pretty much torso-to-torso the entire time. Make “there is no escape” your personal violence motto—and then make it a reality.

– Work on making universality a reality for you.

Violence is not a bunch of disparate things all duct-taped together into an unwieldy Frankenmass. It’s a singularity. It’s just one thing. It has a single use. You can’t dial it up and down, “go easy” or be nice. You do not inflict it upon the “unarmed” man any differently than you would an armed one. (Think about how dangerous you are, naked, with nothing but your bare hands and intent. As dangerous as a steel bear trap and a pack of hungry wolves, perhaps?)

You need to walk into every mat session with these three things in mind because you need to act identically in every violent situation—spring the trap and maul at will. Every free practice should feel the same—guns, knives, batons or not. If it feels different with the gun, if it feels stressful or “more real”, you’re missing the point when it’s not there—it means you’re not taking any of the rest of it as seriously as you should. The obvious, projected intent of the firearm is taking you where you should be all the time in your free practice. Buckle down, focus, and free practice to make the tool in the hand truly immaterial—get the job done so that it really doesn’t matter what they have, even if it’s a bear trap and a pack of wolves.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

It’s Not About Naughty or Nice

June 25, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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, but teaching them a lesson. If they’re a little more serious, then so are you—and if they want to kill you, well, that’s the only time you’re going to use certain serious techniques and targets like eyes, throat, and so on.

This idea illustrates a fantasy disconnect between fighting and violence, one that deserves a fantasy name: I like to refer to it as “dialing in your Spidey-power.” (With apologies to Stan Lee & Steve Ditko.) It’s the idea that you can choose to hit someone with, say, 60% of what you’ve got—and that you’ll only ever hit someone with 100% when your life depends on it. It’s being able to look at an impending “fight” and say, “Well, they’re not really serious, so I’ll dial my Spidey-power down to 50%,” and then sock them hard, but not too hard, because, after all, you don’t want to kill them, right?

Here’s the problem: holding back can get you killed. There are many ways to hold back:

1) You can wait and see to try and suss out what their intentions are,

2) You can make certain targets off limits because wrecking them is awful (you’ll never hear me say otherwise)—like the eyes or breaking a knee, both permanent, crippling disabilities, and/or

3) You can “go easy” on them by not striking as hard as you can.

Any one of these leads directly to reduced effectiveness, poor results, and in the worst case, can get you killed.

The idea that you can suss out their intentions is a fantastical delusion. If you don’t have psychic powers (and my guess is… wait for it… you don’t) or know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men like the Shadow does, then you’re screwed. You’ll know they want to kill you because, well, they’re busy doing it. That is not the time to find out. In fact, it’s never a good time to find out, right?

Making targets off limits ahead of time (“I’ll never go after the eyes,”) will give you a hesitating hiccup if your next—and only—opportunity is that target. You will stop. And try to get restarted. If you’re lucky, it means nothing. If you’re unlucky, the opportunity is gone and you just got stabbed/shot/whatever (perhaps again) and you just better hope they got it wrong, too.

You always want to strike as hard as you can. Always—as hard as you can. “Holding back” reduces the chance of injury. Now we’re into the realm of slapping each other around, pissing people off, and delivering nonspecific, superficial trauma that is neither a persistent disability nor spinal reflex-inducing. It’s wasted motion that lets them know it’s on.

The author did believe, however, that in a real worst-case scenario a magical transformation would occur—that even though you’d been neutering and watering down your training by waiting, making targets off limits and slapping at them, you could suddenly rise to the occasion of your impending murder by crushing the throat or tearing out an eye with full force and effort.

That’s a neat idea, but it flies in the face of “you do what you train.”

So, to that point, how does the way we train serve you? It would seem, on the surface, that we onlytrain for the worst-case scenario, that to use what you know in any other situation would be like using dynamite to open your car door.

Let’s put it this way: the “worst-case scenario” encompasses and includes all other possible scenarios; going in purely to cause serious injury, put the person down and then pile it on (e.g., start kicking a “helpless” person on the ground) covers, handles, and takes care of anything and everything they may have wanted to do to you.

But the real beauty is that you can stop at any time. You’ll typically do this the moment you recognize that they’re nonfunctional. Let’s say you start out by breaking their jaw at the TMJ. You get the minimum expected reaction—they turn slightly, somehow keeping their feet. You come back with a shot to the groin and get a HUGE reaction, they go down face-first and try to curl up into a fetal position. You break their ribs and then strike to the side of their neck, knocking them unconscious. At this point you recognize that they are nonfunctional (to your satisfaction) and stop.

(Notice that I didn’t mention any techniques or tools—that’s because they don’t matter. Results matter.)

This sequence could have been different at each node of injury—you break their jaw and they spin around three times and lie down, out cold; you stop when they go fetal after the groin strike; you stop after breaking the ribs because as far as you’re concerned, your read on them is “done.” You also know how to carry it to a more final conclusion with a stomp to the neck or throat. But always as an informed choice—not out of desperation, and not after having been trained that it is “wrong” or morally less-than.

You also know how to start right off with the eyes, throat, or a broken neck—but again, as a conscious choice. If killing is what will see you through, you will kill them. If killing is not appropriate, you can still operate because you know where the line is. This is because you are trained in the totality of violence, understanding it for what it is—a single-use tool that does not have an intensity dial on it. You can’t make guns shoot “nice.” And what a bullet does is the purest expression of everything we’re ever talking about. All violence is the same.

So, what does this mean for you?

First and foremost, it means you understand that violence is not a plaything—you won’t goof off with it any more than you would with a loaded firearm. This is healthy. It means you won’t get sucked into stupid (antisocial) shenanigans thinking you can use what you know without any negative repercussions. It means you’re going to be smarter about when to pull it out and use it. This is going to save you tons of wear and tear, not to mention legal troubles.

It means that when you do use it, you’re going to use it the only way you can be sure it works—with no artificial social governors restricting what you can and can’t do. You’ll strike them as hard as you can to cause injury. And you’ll take full advantage of that injury, replicating it into nonfunctionality.

If we view this through a social lens it is savage, brutal, dirty, unfair, and very probably illegal somewhere. This was the essential thesis of the self-defense author. But the question you have to ask yourself is are you going to bet your life the other person is playing by the rules? If they are, well, then you’re a jerk, aren’t you? If they aren’t, you’re dead.

The moral of the story? Screw around with hand-to-hand violence the same way you’d screw around with a firearm—don’t.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Roadblocks, Plateaus, & Epiphanies

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

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 simplified and streamlined, so did the way I trained.

Phase 1: Approaching the material from a fantasy angle

I originally came from a martial arts background, and so approached the new material as merely a “super-rugged” martial art. Or all martial arts crammed into one. We all bring our own appetite to the table; an all-in-one approach is what I was seeking on my martial arts vision quest because that is what I’d been led to believe was required when someone wants to kill you.

I was also well “informed” by the mass media. I was sure that the real deal would go down like the climax of a Schwarzenegger film. I was looking to square off and trade blows until I could pull out a really cool technique and impale my foe on a protruding fuel rod from a nuclear reactor. And then coolly declaim a pithy one-liner. Really.

I wanted to train for a duel, and was acutely interested in countering whatever it was he had in store for me while being able to get inside. What exactly would happen in there I had no real idea. But I did have the fantasies.

My mat time reflected my thinking; I wanted to look cool with all kinds of whippy-spinny crap. I went fast and slapped my reaction partners around. I probably wasn’t a lot of fun to work with. (Sorry, Joe!)

Phase 2: A more realistic angle, but not quite

I realized that movies and comic books were crap when it comes to useful instruction in violence—they require violence to be dramatic and climactic for effect. Real violence, in contrast, was often ugly, brutish, and short.

All that realization did for me was to make me aware of my own insufficiencies; it made me overly troubled by what the other person was up to. I sought to prepare for all contingencies. I worked over scenario after scenario in my head, trying vainly to cover every possible “what if”.

I sought ultimate, unassailable superiority as a palliative for my anxiety. I worked hard on “advanced” techniques, e.g., ever fancier joint breaks and throws.

Phase 3: Realizing he’s not my problem, I’m his problem

It’s great to say it—it’s another thing entirely to live it. I knew it was true, but I still wasn’t comfortable owning that ideal. I had a better grip on what was up, but I was still plagued by nagging concerns over what he might be up to. It was a lot of “Okay, I got that, but what if—”

This was the first time in my training where I began to concentrate on injuring him as a priority above and beyond what he was doing or what I thought would look cool. My mat time started to get ugly in the good way. (Sorry, Joe! But not really.)

Phase 4: Arriving at the singularity of violence

This is where it all came together. This is where I realized that all the seemingly disparate elements of violence were really just aspects of the same thing—every strike, joint break, and throw, with and without tools, were all one thing: injuring the person. This is where I made the shift from “fighting” into “injuring”. And it only took me 11 years!

This change came, to a large degree, from nine years of teaching. But it also came from anxiety fatigue. I was tired of worrying. I was tired of getting all tied up in knots over every little thing that might go wrong. The possibilities for fatal screwups were infinite; in the end it was just easier to let all of that go and focus on breaking the person. I realized I was my own worst enemy and decided to chuck it all and become the thing I feared most:

A person so narrowly dedicated to destruction that only death could stop me.

While dispatching the “bad guy” with flair and uncounterable aplomb is a nice idea, it’s nowhere near as good as beating the #%&! out of him. A solid, pedestrian game-ender to the groin is worth 10,000 of the fanciest techniques.

I began to own and live the truth that all targets are equal, as are all injuries; my workouts slowed and became inexorable. I simply took what I wanted. I laughed with unrestrained pleasure when people tried to grapple me, I taunted them openly as they tried to pin me, “Are you sure you got me?” Then I grabbed them by something unexpectedly fragile and dragged them screaming into my serial injury cave. Eyes and mouth wide, fingernails splintering on the stones as they vanished into darkness.

It was all about me all the time, and I was never sorry again.

Phase 5: Approaching the material from a sociopathic angle

The moral of the story? It’s not about what the #%&! he’s got or what the #%&! he wants to do—it’s about getting over there and beating the living #%&! out of him.

So what’s this mean for you?

It took me 11 years because there was no one there to tell me any different. We tell you how it goes down right now, we give you the tools to make it work and we show you how to swing those tools. You get the benefit of every last second we spent on the mats, every last second we spent thinking about it. Instead of making you relive every second we spent, we give you the end result. We’re here to tell you different.

So instead of reinventing the wheel, all you have to do is grab a body and hit the mats.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

*I’m not sure why I chose to use grawlix instead of “fuck”—I’ve never shied away from expletives, especially such a venerable, storied, and versatile one. Maybe I just woke up soft that day.

Access the Meat

May 14, 2024/1 Comment/in Competition/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 a sleeping child. The sociopath understands that both their skulls open the same way, their eyes yield to equal pressure, and they both die when their throats are cut.

The sociopath disregards the things that set them apart, and won’t waste time interfacing with their personalities, or the big strong guy’s black belt skill, or his massive muscles. They will only concentrate on the things that both victims are susceptible to. In order to use violence successfully, in order to have an equal chance of survival, so must you. Don’t get caught in the sucker’s game of interfacing at higher levels, of showing respect for the person, their skills, or physical power. Go straight for the meat.

The Four Levels of Interaction

As a person – social

This is trying to change behavior, mood, or motivation. This is where most people would like to keep the situation.

As a skill set – antisocial

This is trying to out-wrestle him, or out-technique him in a 90-mile-an-hour chess game. This is a duel in which the most skilled practitioner will typically win. It is “civilized violence” and seen as “fighting fair”.

As an animal (via strength, speed, stamina) – antisocial

This is pitting your strength against his, trying to out-maneuver or out-last him, going blow for blow—this typically looks pretty brutal and ugly. A lot of struggle where the best specimen prevails. This is seen as brutish, desperate, and decidedly “uncivilized”.

As a piece of meat – asocial

This is regarding him as a physical object beholden to the natural laws of the universe. Paying no heed to the person, the skill, or the ability. This is seen as almost universally “bad”—people who do this naturally are classified as “evil” in a social setting. This is interfacing with him as a thing that can be broken down and rendered nonfunctional.

It’s interesting to note that these four levels correspond to different ranges and comfort zones.

Interfacing with the person can be done from across the street, a distance from trouble where most people feel safe (they can always take off running if it gets out of hand).

Interfacing with his skill set is almost always done at a pace away, with the contestants circling to get a feel for their opponent’s skill level, feinting and parrying and otherwise dancing around. It’s all about giving yourself enough room to see what he’s doing and try to counter it.

Interfacing with his physical abilities is done skin-to-skin, but that’s as deep as it goes.

Interfacing with the frailties of the flesh is done beneath the skin—true injury is about disregarding the sanctity of the body and simply destroying it.

What-ifs, Buts and Maybes

The kinds of questions people ask during training can tell you a lot about where their head is at and at which level they’re stuck on. The important thing to note is that none of their worries have any impact on injury whatsoever.

The “Socialist”

The person who is uncomfortable with the whole idea of conflict will ask questions that dance around the issue from across the street, like, “How can I tell if he wants to hurt me?” and such.

The Duelist

People trained in martial arts usually get hung up on interfacing with his skill. They’ll ask the most what-ifs, like, “What if he throws a spinning back kick?”, “What if he counters my joint lock?” and “What if he’s holding the knife like this?” They are also overly concerned about defensive reactions like blocking and counters—both in doing it and worrying about having it done to them.

The Animal

Untrained people who can come to terms with the idea of conflict usually end up fixated on physical attributes. For smaller, less athletic people it manifests as worry about how they’ll fare against bigger, stronger, faster adversaries; big, strong folks have the opposite problem—they typically believe they cannot be defeated by “lesser” beings.

Sociopaths & Butchers

Almost no one shows up comfortable with injury as a starting point.

Another interesting thing to note is that progressing through the levels is not linear. Socialists don’t usually walk through the others to arrive at injury. They go one of two ways—either they dig in their heels and cram their heads into the sand and will never, ever cross the street, or they go straight from where they are to injury (though sometimes with a short stopover at the animal level).

Duelists are another thing entirely. It is often very difficult to wean them off of the idea that they need to respect and/or thwart his skill before they can be effective. If they do move on, it’s usually with a long stopover at the animal level. His skill bothered them before; now they’ve transferred that worry to his physical abilities. Those who have taken the long walk from skill to animal to injury are typically the most evangelical about the whole process. (As opposed to those who went straight from social to injury. They usually don’t see the whole experience as that big of a deal.)

Animals are easier to nudge into interfacing directly with the meat of the matter. They’re pretty close, conceptually, and they just need to be shown how to direct their efforts away from strong points and into the weak ones. (Instead of going strength-to-strength, go strength-to-eyeball.)

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you don’t have a problem with violence in a general sense, that you’re not hung up on the social aspects from across the street. So where are your hang-ups? What are you stuck on? Are you worried about what he’ll do if he’s skilled? Or bigger-stronger-faster? Be honest with yourself. You’re letting yourself down if you lie—you’re not going to get any more effective that way.

If the idea of going after a trained Goliath makes you sweat (more than the usual, healthy amount, I mean) then you need to buckle down and study up on injury. Seek out photos of sports injuries (for broken joints and twisted, nonfunctioning limbs). Autopsy reports from non-firearm killings—especially where the victim was beaten to death—are illuminating. Troll the internet for videos of prison fights and violent muggings. Essentially, look for anything where the survivor is interacting with the other person as a piece of meat.

You’ll be repulsed and comforted simultaneously.

– Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Violence in the Antisocial Realm

April 4, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

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 violence in antisocial situations—wrong tool for the job and all that. It’s far better, in the short- and long-term, to disengage and get the hell out of there.

That’s all well and good, and in a perfect world things should be so clear-cut and easy. But we don’t live in that world, and they’re not. Those “unintended consequences” cut both ways—say the other person just want to “kick your ass” and you end up brained on the sidewalk as a result. Everyone ends up sad, and they’ll cry in court about how they didn’t mean it, it was all a terrible mistake, their life is ruined, etc. Fat lot of good that does you.

And that’s why I’ll never tell you to hold back and take a beating.

So the question is, how do you use violence in the antisocial arena?

The sad answer is, pretty much the same way you do in the asocial arena. You need to break things inside of them so they don’t work anymore.

There are a couple of important ideas you need to understand, and keep in mind, if you’re going to use that stick of dynamite to open your car door, after all:

Don’t pull any punches

You cannot “go easy” on them just because this started out as an antisocial situation. You have to strike them as hard as you can, every time, in a target, to smash it beyond functionality.

Go in 100% dedicated to tearing their head off

If your intent is anything less than full-bore, you will get less than effective results. If you don’t want to hurt them, don’t worry, you won’t. They may not be so kind to return the favor if given half the chance. You can’t afford to screw around—the only way their ribs are going to break is if you make every effort to do so.

This all-or-nothing approach will save your ass—it gets them to nonfunctional so rapidly and efficiently it’s over before you know it. This is where you have to take it, as soon as you decide it’s on; you have to finish it on your terms, immediately. You cannot afford to get drawn into any back and forth—you need to injure them, take control of the situation, and end it on your terms now.

Take one of my brother’s stories for example: the man was inviting him to participate in an antisocial interaction. Tony knew that that’s nothing to screw around with, and he was only willing to take it very seriously, by dishing out man-stopping injury. That’s where his reluctance stemmed from. But when push literally came to shove, my brother was unwilling to simply take a beating and risk injury for himself—and so he ended the situation with a single strike.

Non-lethal target selection (or tool switch-up)

You probably don’t want to start things off with a fist to the throat. Or a baton to the head. Or a knife through the solar plexus. In general, you’re going to want to stay away from targets and striking profiles you know to be lethal. Absent that, be sure to use tool configurations that change the nature of the injury (an open hand to the throat (choke punch) instead of a forearm; a forearm to the side of the neck instead of a knee drop).

But let’s be brutally honest here—don’t be fooled into thinking this changes anything, really—they could still die as a result (reference every “man killed with single punch” news story). What I’m saying is don’t do anything you know for a fact will kill them.

Understand that once you go physical, their conception of the encounter may change dramatically

Perhaps they were only thinking of “teaching you a lesson” but now they’re afraid for their life and willing to defend it with lethal force (pulling a tool or otherwise “getting serious”). If you’re going in with less than everything you’ve got, chances are you’ll screw up, lose control of them and give them an opportunity to, for argument’s sake, shoot you dead. Also, be aware that they may have allies who may come to their aid—be fully prepared to have to injure pretty much everyone in the vicinity.

Those last two issues, the fact that they could die regardless of how “careful” you are and the fact that your crossing into the physical plane can get you killed, are the chief reasons we don’t recommend using violence as a tool in antisocial interaction. More often than not, your life (losing it or changing it forever) just isn’t worth whatever it is you’re “fighting” for. Betting your life in order to win it back will always make sense—that is, in essence, what the asocial is all about.

The above issues are what you need to be aware of, in advance, should you decide to use the tool of violence in an antisocial situation. Whether because the situation has turned or spiraled out of “social tool” control or other factors lead you to act, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into and enter into that decision with full knowledge of the pitfalls and possible outcomes.

While I will never expressly recommend it, sometimes you are forced into a position where it’s either that or take a beating (or worse) that risks your own well-being.

What I will recommend is being smart about such things and hewing always to the idea of exhausting all options when given the luxury of a choice, and carving a path of destruction through the other person when you’re not.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

Tag Archive for: fighting

The Illusion of Fighting

Gandhi with a Nuclear Weapon

The Terror of Competition, the Pleasure of Predation

Roadblocks, Plateaus, & Epiphanies

Violence in the Antisocial Realm

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