Honey, what do you for money?...How do you get your kicks?

The name of this blog is the title of an AC/DC song I was listening to while I was writing it.  It will make sense as you read on, trust me.

Summer (especially in Minnesota) is always difficult for Dojo attendance.  Everyone has somewhere to go or wants to spend as much time at the lake as they can before we get buried in snow again.

That’s fine I understand, and that created some unique learning opportunities.  Lise is very dedicated and has been at every class this summer.  Many times class turned into private instruction.  Because of that Lise has shown dramatic improvement over the last few weeks.  Lise has always been very skilled but recently she has thrown, hit, locked, and strangled me on a consistent basis, in a manner that made me realize holy shit she could fucking kill me.

Awesome, great for her!  So how do I get other 5’ nothing one hundred and nothing pound 50 something grandmothers to be able to kill me (a dead sexy man ape)?

Able to kill me – sparked an idea, so bear with me.

Last blog I promised to pick up with reps for mastery and cross over skills.  But, this how to kill me idea is stuck in my head and I have to get it on paper.  So this blog will largely be stream of consciousness thought process on predatory violence (killing me) to help me answer my own question.

I hope it may also help you

Asocial Violence

Humans are social creatures and have subconscious rules for social violence.  We are also hunters and capable of killing prey.  We are fairly unique in that we can use the tools and tactics that we developed to hunt prey to kill other humans

Asocial violence does not see the victim as a person but rather a resource (a different species to be hunted).  By the time you face a predator attack you must understand that the predator has decided what ever you have (or the attack itself) is more important than you.  Who you are carries no more emotional weight than the wrapper a hamburger came in.

A predator will use tactics he has developed to get what he wants from you in the safest surest manor.  This is in no way a “fair fight”.  The predator will take every advantage using speed, surprise and ferocity to prevent you from responding in any way that could be effective in stopping him. 

Predator Types

Process

For the process predator, the act of violence is the reason itself.  The Crime is the goal

Requires time and privacy to “enjoy” the process / act of violence

Will attempt to isolate victim

Home Invasion (comes to you)

Secondary Crime scene (takes you someplace somewhere else)

Resource

A resource predator wants something you have and will use violence to take it from you

A resource predator situation can be resolved by giving up what you have Car , Purse Wallet

(Are they worth dying for?)

A resource predator uses violence to make money

For all intents and purposes I am a resource predator.

I provide for my family by using violence.

I am a professional, because I am a professional I understand that if I am injured, killed, or incarcerated I can no longer provide for my family.

Therefore, I have become very skilled at violence, and very knowledgeable about the laws pertaining to the use of violence.

More importantly I have become very skilled at accomplishing the requisites of my job without using violence whenever possible

See, I told you I would tie it in, that’s what I do for money honey that’s how I get my kicks

Because of that, my operational method has to be predatory by nature.  I have to end the encounter quickly, the most efficient way possible. (Over in 3)

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not suggesting anyone should be unjust.  Even when there are “no rules” there are state and federal laws, departmental policies, personal morals and ethics, and societal rules.

I’m suggesting that you need to know all of those well, and when force ( violence) is just use the most efficient means to end the confrontation as quickly as possible

You and your partners go home safe

Bad guy goes to jail (uninjured if possible) or the hospital then jail, or the morgue (if not)

No one gets sued….successfully

If my operational method is predatory by nature, then what I teach others is logically predatory as well.

There may be similar techniques in sport or traditional arts but the tactics used and the way they are taught are vastly different

Sport arts by their very nature have to give the opponent a “sporting chance”

To help make my point let’s look at a predatory sport – pheasant hunting

The end goal is to kill pheasants, It is a sport because the hunters make it hard work.   There are much more efficient means to kill pheasants.  Setting traps, Poison, Pheasant farms – domestic slaughter, Automatic Shotguns

However, hunters make it a sport by purposefully using less efficient methods.  Just you, and a couple of buddies with shotguns, and maybe a maybe a dog have to walk through acres and acres of thick wetlands to find the bird.  When the pheasant flushes they are very fast.  You have to be a skilled shooter to hit one.  Also when the bird flushes (often right under our feet) you can’t just blast it.  There wouldn’t be much pheasant left to eat.  You have to let it get out a ways.  You have to give the bird a sporting chance.  That is how you demonstrate skill.

The same analogy can be made for sport arts.

It is a sport because it is hard work.  You have to give the opponent a sorting chance.  Weight classes, separate brackets for the different genders, different age categories etc, all to make things as fair as possible.

Skill is demonstrated by gaining dominance over someone in the same “class” using ineffective methods.

Very social violence oriented

 Look at this video featuring martial athletes at the peak of their sport the Olympic Games:

As good as these athletes are Lise could literally kill them.  Not beat them at their own game, but efficiently end their lives with her bare hands

I’m not hating on sport arts.  A lot of very important things can only be learned safely by “stepping in the ring”

So how does asocial violence / predatory tactics allow Lise to Kill me?

Sports make things harder in order to demonstrate skill by doing those difficult things, against an actively resisting opponent, in a fair competition with specific rules.

When you remove the sportsmanship and use the most efficient methods things become much easier

Allowing small statured people to control those outside their weight class

To further illustrate my point, let’s imagine a UFC style match pitting Rhonda Rousey vs. Brock Lesner

Both athletes are incredibly skilled and have a long list of impressive championships to their names.

I would even go so far as to say that Rhonda is vastly more skilled than Brock in MMA, but in a sport match, a fair fight she wouldn’t stand a chance.

So where am I going with this blog?  How do I get other 5’ nothing one hundred and nothing pound 50 something grandmothers to be able to kill me (a dead sexy man ape)?

Fuck fair fights, fuck sportsmanship - get that out of their head. 

A saw a great t-shirt from a tactical shooting school that helps sell this point.  The back of the shirt read “Cheat often – Always WIN!”

Cheat for the purposes of this blog meaning not getting sucked into a fair fight mindset.

Being free of that mentality is far more valuable than any physical technique

If you are paid to use violence you too are a resource predator.  There is no room for fair fights you have to end the confrontation as efficiently as possible.

Social violence in which sport arts and sport mentalities work well is the easiest to avoid and besides being illegal is really just kind of silly

If you are attacked by a predator, the kind of violence a 5’ nothing one hundred and nothing pound woman is more likely to face than a dead sexy man ape, then you have to cheat, win, and end the confrontation as efficiently as possible.

I bet every hardass Military, Cop, Martial Arts Man reading this would have a hard time if ambushed by surprise by Brock Lesner.  Yet that discrepancy in size, strength, and ferocity is what every woman faces with every man they encounter.

What physical skills can you teach that can overcome that discrepancy?

Very few if any, that is just the thing – the answer lies somewhere else.

Physical skills have to be a last resort, and they have to be on the deep end of the use of force continuum

So if physical skills are the last resort what is first?

Knowledge, mental and psychological aspects have to come first.

A thorough knowledge of state and federal use of force laws must come first.  Knowing when force is justified.  Knowledge of yourself, knowing how much force you are willing to use when justified, and giving yourself permission to use it – free of any fair fight sporting chance bullshit.

 Knowing violence dynamics- the difference between social and asocial violence, and how to best deal with each.

 Avoidance, escape and evade, de-escalation and lastly solid proven predatory tactics (physical skills).

A case in point, a success story from the news – look at Lise’s latest blog.

http://womenselfprotection.blogspot.com/2012/08/fighting-back-right-way.html

That woman didn’t use any (or if any very little and untrained) physical skills.

Knowledge, mental and psychological aspects saved the day.  “Cheat often – Always WIN!”

Don’t get me wrong women still need physical skills, but don’t waste their (or your) time with stuff that only works in their weight class against women of a similar age.

 Fuck fair fights, fuck sportsmanship - get that out of their head. 

Don’t “empower’” them to believe they are Buffy or Wonder Woman

I am big fans of both, but as cool as they are they are fiction.  Murphy’s 1^st law of combat “you are not Superman”.  Empowering women to believe they are “super” will get them killed.

Spend much more time on Knowledge, mental and psychological aspects.  Then help them learn to see “bad guys” as a collection of anatomical weaknesses to be exploited (predatory / Operator mindset).

Not on could I take him, but what is the best way to end him.

Work on physical skills that exploit these weaknesses, very high end use of force skills to end the attacker / the confrontation quickly.  Including the use of close quarters weapons, edged weapons, fire arms ect.

They will never be able to out muscle a predatory attacker so they will need to throughly understand “The Building codes” or what makes physical skills work:

·         Structure

·         Range

·         Subtle power generation

·         Anatomy

They will need to gain competence, confidence and belief in their skills.

Which brings us back to last blog, how is this accomplished?  How many reps until mastery?  How do you achieve cross over skill integration

Stay tuned I promise I will get to those topics soon.

OK, I hope you enjoyed going through my thought process on how to create more Lises and maybe you even learned something.

I’m very proud of Lise.  Now my challenge as a teacher is to take what I’ve learned from training Lise and provide it to others so they too can kill me.  This blog has been an attempt to figure out how to do that in a more efficient manner than I did with Lise.

I’m lucky I have Lise to help me with them as she can lead by example.

Train hard, Train smart, Be safe - “Cheat often – Always WIN!”

P.S. there will be no training this Saturday because I will be at the lake, totally not because my neck hurts like hell on account of Lise choking the shit out of me.

See, I told you an ambush by Brock Lesner is hard to deal with