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The Illusion of Fighting

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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

Being the Better Monster

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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

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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

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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)

As Hard as You Can

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Intent is what makes people scary.  It’s what you instinctively fear in the criminal.  It’s what society breeds out of domesticated humans.  But what is it, really?  It’s far too slippery to hold in the mind’s eye, an amorphous, ever-shifting gem shrouded in a halo of mystical mist…  And what good is that to anyone?  If you’ll bear with me, I’ll try to get it to hold still for a moment, throw some sunshine on the cloudy facets and get them to sparkle for you.  I’ll do what I can to stabilize the whole thing—gaze into it, into yourself, and get what you can out of it:

Intent is single-minded, goal-oriented focus.

Intent is being focused on injury to the exclusion of all else.  From the moment you perceive a threat to the moment that threat is gone, all you care about is causing injury.  From the moment someone pulls up their shirt to show you a gun or from the moment you hit the ground face-first, you are on target acquisition and destruction.  You will find your targets and smash them, never stopping, never hesitating until you get what you want:  an injury.  And once you get that first one, you’ll pile them on until the other person physiologically buckles under the mass of trauma and you make them capitulate, pass out, or die as you see fit.  Intent is about what you are going to force the other person to do.  Intent is making violence once-sided as quickly as possible and keeping it that way.

It’s not an emotional state—you’re not enraged or Hulked-out or seeing red; it’s just that out of all the myriad possible things you could do you are going to pick one (injury) and you’re going to get it done to the exclusion of all else, over and over again.  One target, one injury.  Repeat until it doesn’t make sense to continue.

Intent is how hard you swing the bat.

Intent is a self-realizing prophecy that cuts both ways—if you think you can do it, you will; if you think you can’t, you won’t.  If I ask you to kick a soccer ball, how hard you kick it will depend on what you expect to happen.  If you believe that the ball is filled with lead shot, then you’ll expect it to hurt and won’t kick it as hard as you can.  In fact, you’ll be very reluctant to kick it at all, and your performance will be a reflection of that reluctance.  In a word, it’ll suck.

If I tell you that if you don’t kick it over the fence I’m going to shoot you in the head, your performance will suffer even more.  Your preoccupation with a negative outcome will sabotage your efforts.  Your mind will not be focused on the task at hand.  You’ll be worried about living and dying while simultaneously trying to succeed.

Focus on reality as it stands, not on all possible outcomes.  Focusing on things that may or may not be true, or are demonstrable falsehoods, is the “feeding the phantoms” that we discussed previously.  Thinking that there’s nothing you can do, or that you cannot injure the other person, or that you’re going to die are all outright lies until proven true.  Why put your efforts into your own defeat?  It does nothing to aid you in shaping the reality you want.  In violence, the reality you want is the one where the other person is injured.  Everything you do must get you there by the shortest possible route.  To consider failure is to aid in your own destruction.

Intent is how much of yourself you’ll put into getting it done.

Here’s a nifty fact:  the one thing that all survivors have in common is that they believed they could survive.  The circumstances are immaterial, whether it’s a crash, drowning, fire, wilderness, or violence.  Survivors report time and time again that when they reached the lethal decision point—am I going to live or die?—they all unequivocally, steadfastly chose to live.  They believed they could.  I’ve never heard a survivor say, “and then I quit and waited to die.”  (Okay, to be fair, I have heard that—but this was from the ones who were saved by others who refused to give it up.)  Survivors believe they can alter the outcome.

So, back to the soccer ball.  If I hand it to you so you can feel how light and eminently kickable it is, and then tell you that our goal for this training session is to see how far you can kick it, then you are free to work on the mechanics of running up and kicking it with your whole being.

This is what we are attempting to do with our training, only instead of kicking soccer balls we’re kicking people in the groin.  If you show up with false assumptions, believing that even though you felt the ball, and it was indeed light and bouncy, it will still hurt when you kick it, or that you are incapable of kicking a ball very far, then anything I do to train you is for naught.  You sabotaged yourself before you even set foot on the pitch.  Negative expectations lead to diminished results.

Believing you can do it, expecting to get it done, gets you what you want.  Intent comes down to wanting to cause an injury more than anything in the world.  Focus your mind in that direction, onto that single vulnerable target, and your body will follow suit.  You will plow your entire mass through that throat and crush it.  All because of the simple belief that you can do it.

 

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

 

PS. Intent makes people scary because it trumps technique.  Intent, coupled with a very basic understanding of targeting, will always beat superior technique alone.  This is why we always say that techniques are worthless, and that the criminal sociopath, for all their lack of formal training, is a formidable human wrecking machine.  These two facts reside on either side of the same coin.  If we fuse the two, if we take superior technique and drive it mercilessly with laser-like intent, we end up with the scariest human being possible.

And that would be you.

The Final Word in Context: Murder

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There is a baseline level of confusion about what exactly it is we do; confusion that I am, quite frankly, tired of hashing and rehashing.  There are deep-seated biological, psychological, and societal reasons for this confusion—and so it is perfectly natural for it to persist—but as an instructor it frustrates me because treading back and forth across this well-worn rut doesn’t make you any better at doing violence.

The only thing that makes you better is getting the mechanics down pat—where and how to cause injury, and how to best take advantage of the results.  Everything else is just mental masturbation that feels important because it tastes like philosophy with a little bit of work mixed in.  You think you’re working—while avoiding doing any of the real work that will make you better at violence, namely getting a reaction partner and hitting the mats regularly.

And so I am going to flog a dead horse again today, but my goal is to flay it to the bone (or finally sell it off if you take the original meaning); I want to take it to its absurd, logical conclusion beyond which there is no more jaw-flapping:

What we teach is violence, which is what you need to do when someone wants to murder you.

So where’s the confusion?  That seems pretty clear-cut.  And that’s what I think, too.  But then the questions start:

Why would I ever need to know how to kill someone?

Won’t I get in trouble if I use this in a bar fight?

But what if he’s got X and/or Y and he’s coming at me like so?

How do I do it to someone who knows what you know?

What if he does it first?

Or one of the other infinite facets of the question that tells me you don’t really believe that bigger-faster-stronger doesn’t matter.  You want to believe, but you don’t.

Where does all this confusion come from?  It arises because you think you know what you’re seeing, but you’re looking at it through the wrong mental porthole.  When fists and feet are flying, you see monkey politics.  You see competition.  It’s all great apes working out dominance and submission.  Don’t feel bad—you’re hardwired to recognize and respond to this.  It’s only natural.  Which is why I want to start the violence conversation off with one person shooting another person to death.

Watching one person kill another with a firearm won’t ping your monkey brain.  It’ll go far deeper, down into the lizard-level, the primeval predator level.  You’ll see it for what it is:  killing.  If we look at the underlying mechanics, we have:

kinetic energy delivered through anatomy, wrecking it

And now we have the perfect model to work backwards from.  Keep the killing context, keep the wrecked anatomy in mind, and now look at other ways of causing that outcome.  A fist, a boot, a pipe, a shin, etc., etc.—it doesn’t matter what as long as it’s doing the work that a bullet does, if only in a generic sense.  So now if we line up a series of killings and look at them side-by-side—a shooting, a stabbing, a bludgeoning, getting hit by a car—we should be able to see the clear, underlying principles that govern all of these equally and immutably.  Learning how to wield these principles is “getting the mechanics down pat” I mentioned earlier.

All clear, right?  No—back to the confusion:  you get the gun and the car, but you feel iffy about the pipe and the knife, and downright scoff at the fist, boot, or shin.

Why?

Because you read it with your monkey politics filter and think there’s something you can do about it.  “I can’t dodge bullets, but I can block a punch.”  This is the ultimate in hubris and sends you down a negative feedback spiral:  If you can “handle” a punch, then of course they can “handle” it when you’re trying to do it to them.  You’re pissing in your confidence reservoir and your training will look hesitant and spotty.  And that’s exactly where your skill will go.  You’re thinking that you’re fighting when we really want you doing something completely else.

We are trying to teach you how to kill murderers.  Everything that fits that narrow model benefits you.  Anything that sounds out of place or silly in that context is useless.

That’s why “murder” is the final word in context.  Almost no one knows what to do when that’s what’s up.  “Fighting” and “defense” are worthless in that arena—remember that defense wounds are found on corpses and tell the coroner that the person “fought for their life.”  You’re not going to fight anyone for your life.  You’re going to kill a murderer.

Armed with this new context, let’s look at the common questions:

Why would I ever need to know how to kill someone?

If that someone is a murderer, then ipso facto.  It’s like asking, “If drowning can kill me, why train to swim in water?”

Won’t I get in trouble if I use this in a bar fight?

Yes.  Yes, you will.

But what if he’s got X and/or Y and he’s coming at me like so?

Would you ask the same question with a gun or a steering wheel in your hand?  Of course you laugh, but a crushed throat and a gouged eye don’t care if it was bullets, hood ornaments, or boots that did it.  So why should you?

How do I do it to someone who knows what you know?

Injured is injured, dead is dead, regardless of talent or training.

What if he does it first?

Then you have nothing to worry about.

Bigger-faster-stronger?

The murderer doesn’t care—in fact, that’s one reason why he’s successful.  And that should inform your thinking on the subject.

Here’s the bottom line:  check yourself and stick with what matters.  Is your question, your doubt, your worry rooted in the mechanics of injury or is it stuck in monkey politics, in “fighting”?  Be honest with yourself.  If it’s the mechanics, we can work on that, show you what to do and how to do it.  After that it’s on you to hit the mats with a partner and take ownership of it.  If it’s competition, monkey politics, or has anything to do with communication or changing behavior, then it’s immaterial and meaningless in the context of killing a murderer.

Because you don’t talk to, try to best, or even fight with murderers.  You kill them.

 

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Training to Wait & See

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A frequent question we get is, “Okay, I get this whole violence thing, but what if—” and then it’s usually followed by something the other person is thinking of doing, trying to do, or just plain in the middle of doing.  This is code for “I don’t want to get hurt.”  Well, nobody does.  If not getting hurt were something that you could reliably choose, it would be a central part of our training.  But it isn’t.

The truth about violence is that you’re going to get punched, kicked, stabbed, whacked, and shot—whether you’re the “winner” or not.  Any other outcome, e.g., you walked through it and put your person (or people) down and kept them there without getting a scratch on you, is pure luck.  What you can realistically expect as the survivor is to limp out of there alive.

Accepting the reality of the situation ahead of time will save your life.  It’ll keep you from quitting right at the point where things are at their worst.  Let’s say you are trained in “knife defense”.  And then you get stabbed.  Your first thought will be omigod I screwed up which will lead to the result of screwing up—death.  You’ll be thinking about the result of your mistake—I’m going to die!—instead of what you need to be thinking to survive, primarily take the eye.

Look at the difference there.  We have an abstraction versus a concrete action.  Which one do you want coming out of you when your life depends on it?  It’s also important to note that the people who are best at violence completely ignore the “What’s he up to?” side of the equation; they simply put all their efforts into making violence one-sided, and keep it that way.  They wade in and get it done, to the exclusion of all else.  And so should you.

Success is our benchmark.  We are going to do our best to model the efforts and behaviors of those who are successful at violence—in short, we’re going to act like the survivors.  We are obviously not going to act like the dead (that goes without saying), nor are we going to model behaviors and action that we wish were present.  Rather than accessing violence the way we wish it worked, we’ll look to reality for our training cues.  This is a huge leap into uncomfortable spaces.

It would be really nice if we could impose our collective will upon violent conflict—if waving your hands a certain way meant you couldn’t be stabbed or shot.  In a lot of ways, this is the definition of magic, and in many places such training is elevated to the status of superstitious tradition.  You’d be best served to never forget that the intersection of magic and reality is often tragedy.

Instead of training the way we wish it were, we’re going to train the way it is.  We’re going to start at the point of injury, and let the other person worry about waiting and seeing.  They can wait and see what you’re up to while you do it to them.

Reality is a smog-belching bulldozer with the elves and fairy folk of nice ideas all broken and snarled in its iron treads.  If you have a choice—and you do—then put yourself in the driver’s seat, and the other person beneath the blade.

 

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Roadblocks, Plateaus, & Epiphanies

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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.

The Hardest Lesson

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There is an issue in violence that everything we do in training points to, but very few people, if anyone, ever gets.  We have paid lip service to it, talked around it, and indirectly hinted at it.  Today is the day it gets dragged out into the open.

You’ve heard us say that the one doing the violence prevails, and you’ve probably seen this adage in action (hopefully only on video).  You buy the logic of it, see the truth of it stitched across the entire swath of human history.  But have you ever really thought about what that means for you?

In poker they say that if you sit down at the table and don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you.  If you find yourself there, as the sucker, it’s best to get out before the first card hits the table.  In violence, if you’re not the most dangerous person in the room, you’re the victim.

So really, the end-goal of all training, all the time on the mats, every last millisecond of leg dynamics—even reading this post—is to become the most dangerous person in the room.  Period.  Wherever you go, no matter who you’re surrounded by, you need to be the most dangerous person there.  The One person who, if you were to be caught on video doing violence, would stand out for directness, ferocity, and brutality.  The One obvious person in the frame who is in control, making everyone else want to get away from them—and breaking people at will.  The One who would make even a casual observer blanch and crap their pants.  You want to be the center of the storm.

Right now you’re nodding in agreement.  You got it, this is nothing new.  That’s you to a T.  It’s where you live, it’s how you roll, because you’re dedicated to living an embarrassingly long life and dying in bed surrounded by your geriatric great-grandchildren with your third baboon heart beating in your chest.

Here comes the hard part, the hardest lesson, because violence has nothing to do with being dedicated to living—it has everything to do with being dedicated to hurting, crippling, and killing people.  With being The One person there who wants to do those things more than anyone else in the room.

Who do we know of who pulled off this trick recently?  That’s right—the most recent mass shooter.*  His use of the tool of violence was stunning in its base utility—it was textbook.  So much so it is now your required reading.  He was everything I laid out above, the one you were nodding enthusiastically to just a moment ago.  Feels different now, doesn’t it?

If you really got it, if you really understood what we’re up to and up against here, it wouldn’t feel different at all.  You would nod, just not enthusiastically.  You’d do it with a grim determination.  See, it’s kind of cool to whisper to yourself, “I’m the most dangerous person in the room.”  It puffs you up, makes you feel like the protagonist in a spy thriller.

The reality of that statement ain’t so nice—or socially acceptable.  Because what you’re really saying is “I’m like the most recent mass shooter.”  The center of the storm, with unflinching intent, making everyone want to get away from you rather than go after you, delivering multiple injuries per person, dropping them and then making sure they don’t get up.  If you had read the preceding sentence before I mentioned mass shootings, you’d think it was pretty cool.  You’d think, “That’s me.”  But not now.  Now you’re wrestling with it.  Sickened by the idea.  That’s why it’s the hardest lesson.

It’s not only hard to learn—most people don’t want to learn it.  If you’re having trouble with it, then that’s your biggest problem with training for violence—not how good or bad your cross step is, or where exactly the spleen is or not knowing enough base leverages.  Because if you walk into the room and you don’t know who’s the most dangerous person, it sure as hell isn’t you.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

*Virginia Tech shooting, April 16, 2007—32 dead, 17 wounded, with nothing but two pistols.

Kill It Simple, Stupid

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Violence is simple.

How simple is it?  We can answer that with two more questions:

1)  How is it that untrained people prevail? and

2)  How is it that untrained people prevail over trained people?

Because for all their blissful naïveté, the victorious untrained have a firm grip on the tool of violence.  This fact stands because violence is much simpler than people would have you believe; it’s much simpler than you want to believe.  The idea that violence is difficult and requires years of training—and that years of training will protect you from the untrained—are comfortable, comforting thoughts.  I read somewhere once that the little lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis, the small untruths that shape our subjective realities, are what keep us happy.  That the people who see the world and themselves as it “really is” are the clinically depressed.  Accepting the simplicity of violence is an unpalatable dose of hard reality.  To learn that you are never immune and that someone who is completely and conspicuously untrained can murder you is acutely unsettling.  Even depressing.

If, that is, you’re a blood-bucket-is-half-empty kind of person.

I like to look at it from the other side—the blood bucket is half full, and I’m going to use him to fill it the rest of the way up.  If violence is so simple that even the untrained can use it and prevail, then even a little bit of training is going to make you really, really good at it.  And if you’re reading this, you’ve already had a lotta bit of training.  You’re way better than you think, if only you’d let yourself be.  (To wit:  You know far more about wrecking people than a serial killer does.  The only thing that could possibly hold you back is a lack of intent; what the serial killer lacks in technique he more than makes up for with a monomaniacal will to get the job done at all costs.  But you already knew that.)

Violence is much simpler, even, than we present it to be.  We have spent a lot of time teasing out the common elements and finding ways to communicate them to you.  It comes across as a ton of material that people mistakenly believe they must master before they can be effective.  For all that, we’re only ever really talking about the rock to the head… and what is the rock to the head but a big hunk of kinetic energy driven through a vulnerable target?

Everything else is just detail work, an exploration of all possible combinations and configurations for using your body as a human wrecking machine, with and without snap-on tools.  Violence seems complicated if you think this detail work is required to be effective, if you think you need a black belt before you can seriously injure someone.

Forget everything you think you know about how it should go down:  violence is you injuring people.  It’s throwing yourself at them to break things inside of them—you are the bull in their anatomical china shop.  Violence is you violating every tenet of polite society and destroying the only thing that any of us ever really own.

It’s simpler than you think because it has nothing to do with thinking.

Violence is all in the doing.

 

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

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