usmaa.htm and the event flyer with your instructors and students!

Camp Details
This is a great opportunity to train with martial artists from various backgrounds and styles. There will be three full days (Thursday, July 9th through Saturday, July 11th) of unmatched martial arts training. All martial artists are welcome at any level, and Black Belt testing by a board of examiners will be available as well. Do not miss this exceptional experience!

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to attend the USMAA training camp events in the past you will be pleasantly surprised! There are no egos allowed, everyone comes to train and to make new friends in the martial arts community. The classes are very informal, you can come and go as you please, and you can switch between the martial arts and law enforcement classes throughout the training camp.

Please email us atstlouistkd@prodigy.net if you have any questions.

Full 3 Day Camp: $150 per person
1 Day Camp: $75 per day per person

Please complete the Registration Form and Waiver for each participant (with a check payable to Gary Jameson) and send your total payment to:
Gary Jameson
2901 S. Brentwood Blvd
Brentwood, MO 63144
314-961-4235

Schedule (tentative schedule, subject to change)
Thursday, July 9
8 - Tae Kwon Do (Kurt Valdez)
9 - Kinetic Dragon (Frank Soto)
10 - Aikido (Kasey Keckeisen)
11 - Empty Hand Techniques (Cosmo Zimik)
12 - Lunch
1:30 - Judo (Michael Makoid)
2:30 - Kempo Jujitsu (Todd Labrie)
3:30 - Karate (Ron Treem)
4:30 - Muay Thai (Tim Kuth)

Friday, July 10
8 - Kenpo (Greg Lawton)
9 - Judo (Gary Rudenick)
10 - Empty Hand Techniques (Cosmo Zimik)
11 - Jiu Jitsu (Omar Ahmad)
12 - Lunch
1:30 - Sei Shin Kai Aikido (Michael Abels)
2:30 - Jeet Kune Do (Richard Bustillo)
3:30 - Jeet Kune Do (Richard Bustillo)
4:30 - Testing (Board)

Saturday, July 11
8 - Krav Maga (Gary Jameson)
9 - Aikido (Kasey Keckeisen)
10 - Escrima (Richard Bustillo)
11 - Escrima (Richard Bustillo)
12 - Lunch
1:30 - Violence Dynamics (Randy King)
2:30 - MMA (Omar Ahmad)
3:30 - Kinetic Dragon (Frank Soto)
4:30 - Karate (Loren Copp)

Event Location
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel & Conference Center St. Louis
16625 Swingley Ridge Road
Chesterfield, MO 63017
1-636-532-5000

The town of Chesterfield is only 20 minutes from Lambert St. Louis International Airport. Catch a taxi to the host hotel, or you can rent a car (the event hotel offers free parking). There are other options for hotels in the area, many are within a mile of the host hotel. A few restaurants are within walking distance, and many others are accessible with just a 5 minute taxi ride.

Law Enforcement Training
The cost for Law Enforcement Training is the same as the martial arts training camp and is open to all adult participants. This hands-on seminar will be taught by Steven Jimerfield (Alaska State Trooper, Ret). One-On-One Control Tactics is a Defensive Tactics System developed by Mr. Jimerfield. The theory behind this is that movement defeats strength. Mr. Jimerfield has been in the Law Enforcement field for the past 30+ years. Twenty-two of those years spent as an Alaska State Trooper with the last seven years as an instructor at the Public Safety Training Academy. Central topics include; Six points of movement to defeat an opponents strength, Reverse Palm techniques and take downs that smoothly move a control subject to the ground, Thigh Lock, Cuffing techniques and standing subjects up, Turning over uncooperative subjects.

As you can see I am listed on the schedule to teach Aikido. I thought to myself cool, I can fully embrace the martial arts nerd side of myself and enjoy a weekend of training just for the fun of martial arts in and of themselves.

I even came up with a cool lesson plan working the relation between empty hand motions and Kenjutsu (something I enjoy but haven't played with for awhile).

I stared working the logistics asking Omar Ahmad if there were enough bokken for everybody or should I bring some down.

His response (and clearly I'm paraphrasing) went something like...

"That is adorable dumb dumb, but we already have like five weapons sessions. I want you to focus on violence dynamics and real world violence. Especially because Randy wrecked his leg doing parkour"

Then I put on my big boy pants and started figuring out what I wanted to teach that fits - violence dynamics and real world violence. (Which I also really enjoy teaching).

There will be people at the training camp from differing styles, but everybody will have a martial arts background.

So instead of teaching these folks something new, I figured I would focus on practical application of their existing skill sets.

I have two, 1 hour sessions. I should figure on 10 minute breaks so more likely two 50 minute sessions.

I started working on what I think would be most important / most useful for attendees of the training camp.

I also figured, that if I don't want to spend the majority of my mat time talking I will need to get some basic information out before the training camp even begins.

Thus.....

USMAA National Training Camp - What I want you to know before you go

Discussion

Everyone here has martial arts training

It is easy to use your skills to pick on others. Think of the bad guys in every Karate Kid movie.

It is easy to use your skills in social violence situations. Think of every school yard fight or bar room brawl you have ever encountered.

This is where most people’s understanding of violence ends. If you ask most grown men when was their last fight, if they have ever been in a fight, they will usually answer somewhere between 3^rd -8^th grade in the school yard.

Although social violence between young men is the most prevalent, and what most people think of as fighting, it is also the silliest and easiest to avoid.

Skill in one area does not necessarily translate to skill in another area.

There are countless stories of martial arts experts who are immensely skilled in their art or sport who get involved in a situation that could be avoided. They take sport skills / social violence into an asocial violence situation and get maimed or murdered.

How many have practiced responses to criminal attack?

How many have studied how criminals attack? (The Logic of Violence)

That is like being a skilled surgeon that has never studied disease

Today we will be working on surviving an asocial ambush (assault)

(From Rory Miller)
Ambush -

You’ve been attacked. This is about the 1st contact of an assault. The critical ¼ second.

When a threat attacks you, he has a plan and is counting on surprise. He is expecting you to freeze, allowing him to succeed. An operant conditioned response will kick in before that adrenalin dumb. At the speed of nerve. It will give you one technique with all your speed, power and precision before your fight or flight response kicks in and robs you of your fine and complex motor skill. An operant conditioned response will mess up a threats plan, especially if it causes him damage. It will force the threat to reset his ooda loop and have his fight or flight response kicks in. It doesn’t guarantee victory but it sure helps level out the playing field.

Everyone here has martial arts training. Counter assault allows you to stay alive long enough for that martial arts training to work.

Boom, then we will go into the physical stuff.
However, having read the above, I figured I could use this blog to get further academic information out that will help make the physical stuff next week make more sense.

OODA
Conflict Strategy
Violence Dynamics
Social Violence
Asocial Violence
Logic of Violence

OODA

Observe
Orient
Decide
Act

Conflict Strategy:

It is better to avoid than run.
Better to run than to de-escalate.
Better to de-escalate than fight.

Better to fight than die.

Avoidance
Bad things happen in predictable places.
If you avoid the places you can avoid a huge percentage of the violence in the world

Bars – Parties – Anywhere people get their minds altered
Private places
Anywhere that young men gather
Where territories are in dispute
Anywhere with limited mobility or escape routes

If you have to be (or choose to be) at a place where there is a predictably higher risk of violence, you need to operate at a higher level of awareness.

Violence Dynamics:

I define violence dynamics as understanding that violence falls across a broad spectrum. Knowledge in one area of the spectrum does not necessarily directly transfer to other areas.
For example a combat hardened special forces operator has clearly experienced violence in the deep end of the pool. However, that does not make him an expert on surviving spousal abuse.

Inversely a woman who has survived spousal abuse, got herself and her children out of a bad situation and has moved on to a better life doesn't know how to clear a house full of enemy combatants.

Both have successfully dealt with close quarter interpersonal violence, but if you try what has been successful for one in the circumstances of the other neither would survive.

Violence dynamics is understanding the violence you are facing and having workable strategies for different types of violence.

Most importantly knowing the difference between social and asocial violence and being able to make that distinction instantly

Social Violence

In Maslow's hierarchy of needs social violence falls under belonging and esteem.
Humans are the apex predator on the planet. Not because we have fangs, or claws. Not because we are strong or fast. We use tools and work in groups. Being part of a group is vital to our survival.

Social violence is used to assure membership in a group (belonging) and to establish your place in that group (esteem).

Social violence includes ritualized jockeying for territory or status, acts to prove group solidarity, and violence to enforce the rules of the group.

Most all animals have ritualized combat between males of the same species to establish dominance.

It makes sense. If the males of a pack kill themselves fighting each other for dominance in the pack (choice of mates) they can't make babies. Also the pack becomes more vulnerable to different packs and predators from other species.

So some form of ritualized combat, specifically intended not to kill or maim the opponent is necessary to establish dominance within the pack.

Rams smash into each other head to head, Bears wrestle.

Human dominance game (monkey dance) will follow a few distinct steps you have all seen before:

Hard, aggressive stare
Verbal challenge – “What are you Looking at”
An approach, with signs of adrenalization - gross motor actions arms swinging, chest bobbing skin flushing
Squaring off and contact chest bump – push / shove
Big Looping over hand punch (almost always right handed haymaker)

Thousands of generations of men have been conditioned to play this game. It is very easy to get sucked into and very hard to walk away from.

This is the majority of violence most men will see. It is also the most unnecessary and the easiest to avoid.

Social violence in nature is the violence used within a species.

This violence is very different from violence used against other species.

The dominance games of bears pushing and mouthing is very different from how they hunt prey.

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.

Which leads us to...

Asocial Violence:

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 are.

Who you are carries no more emotional weight than the wrapper a taco 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.

In Maslow's hierarchy of needs asocial violence falls under survival, security, and self actualization.

Base survival level. (Survival right now)

Examples of this type of violence is a drowning victim hurting the rescuer, or someone trying to fight

off an attack by a wild animal.

Panic / Primal

Drunk, Drugged, Deranged, Disturbed individuals may also respond like they are being attacked by

wild animals.

In those types of instances they may not be able to surrender or recognize that the victim has

surrendered.

Security (Survival tomorrow)

Resource Predator.

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?

Self Actualization

Process Predator

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

Resource Predators have self identified with their crime. They are no longer some one who has committed rape, but a rapist. Not someone who has killed, but a murderer

Process predation requires time and privacy to “enjoy” the process / act of violence

They will attempt to isolate victim

Home Invasion (comes to you)
Secondary Crime scene (takes you someplace somewhere else)

What is worth killing / dying for?

Your life

Not being maimed

Not being raped

Do whatever is necessary to end the situation

Never let yourself be dragged to a secondary location or be alone with them. Nothing good can come out of this. It would likely escalate into rape, torture, murder.

Violence Dynamics

Just as social violence require a crowd (can't earn status in a group if a group doesn't see you gain status), predatory violence require seclusion (no witnesses) .

Understanding those distinct characteristics will dictate how you must deal with violence.

Logic of Violence:

Most martial artists have memorized RESPONSES to violent situations

Logic of Violence is an exercise is to understand VIOLENT SITUATIONS

How and Why criminals operate

It may be hard for you to understand the bad guy or criminal.

You are good people. It is easy for me to be cynical and jaded. However, one the reasons I come back to training camp is to be around truly decent folks.

It can be hard for decent folks to understand criminal acts.

However, that understanding is necessary to effectively protect yourself from them.

So let’s use your good guy brain to help you understand the bad guy.

Imagine someone you love is dying.

There is an experimental drug that can save her.

This drug has not passed FDA testing and is illegal.

However if you can come up with $400 cash you can get one treatment.

The person you love needs one treatment every day or they will die

If you get caught you can't get her a treatment and she will die

If you get hurt you can't get her a treatment and she will die.

What would you do to save her life?

I have 3 little girls at home, if any of them needed this treatment, and I could get $400 a scalp I'd kill everyone in this room.

But as I mentioned I can be cynical

Lets say you would rob for the treatment. Who would you rob?

You need $400 today, can't get caught, can't get hurt. So you would need victims that are likely to carry enough cash that you don't have to roll too many of them to get $400. You will also need victims that are unlikely of being able to hurt you.

How would you rob them?

You will use tactics to get what he wants from you in the safest surest manor.

This is in no way a “fair fight”.

Walk up, bow, assume a fighting stance and tell them to lay on the ground?

Like the first 20 seconds of this clip?

Or something a little more like this?

You will take every advantage using speed, surprise and ferocity to prevent them from responding in any way that could be effective in stopping you.

This is much different than how you fight in the Dojo.

There is a logic to the violence that criminals use. Now that we have a better understanding of that logic we can better prepare for criminal violence.

Predatory tactics are not "evil". They are a tool

Speed, surprise and ferocity are the same elements SWAT teams(and Batman) use

They are used because they work.

If they work for the predator they can also work for you.

OK that is a lot to read, let's bring it back to the training I'll provide at camp next week.

It is better to avoid than run.
If you have to be (or choose to be) at a place where there is a predictably higher risk of violence, you need to operate at a higher level of awareness.

Better to run than to de-escalate.
It is easy to just pay this lip service.

Yes, yes you should run if you can. Now that we have that out of the way let me show you how to break a man's neck.

We will be practicing how to escape at training camp.

Better to de-escalate than fight.
We will cover how to talk your way out of social violence

Better to fight than die.

Physical skills will focus on counter ambush

The critical ¼ second.

Everyone here has martial arts training. Counter assault allows you to stay alive long enough for that martial arts training to work.

Train hard, Train smart, Be safe.

I hope to see you in St. Louis next week

Budo Blog

Thursday, July 2, 2015

USMAA National Training Camp - What I want you to know before you go

As you can see I am listed on the schedule to teach Aikido. I thought to myself cool, I can fully embrace the martial arts nerd side of myself and enjoy a weekend of training just for the fun of martial arts in and of themselves.

Then I put on my big boy pants and started figuring out what I wanted to teach that fits - violence dynamics and real world violence. (Which I also really enjoy teaching).

Discussion

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