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Had a fifteen minute conversation with Edwin.  Which always leaves me 1) wishing I had taken notes and 2) fairly certain that I didn't understand most of it.
I'm entirely cool with having a wide circle of friends who are much smarter than I am.  It makes me work harder and it's comforting in a weird way.  Sometimes I have an over-developed sense of responsibility and it is good to know that there are better people taking the load.

It was the kind of conversation that started with affordances (which I still don't feel I grasp the nuances of-- it's not exactly the same as the gifts I tell people to exploit in a fight) and touched on Aristotle's "Metaphysics" and the orient aspect of Boyd's OODA loop and Mac's contention that observation affects physical reality and...

I like a human sized world with human-sized problems.  But I know the universe is both very large and very tiny and that my human perceptions and needs and desires are completely unimportant.  The universe is what it is, not what I want it to be and there is no rule that says the universe needs to make sense-- and certainly no rule that gives me the right to define what sense is.  But it does make sense, so far, and it's actually kind of odd (and maybe a little suspicious) how consistent the universe is.  But that's a long talk for narghila and scotch.

In the conversation with Edwin-- you can look at things at the human sized level and see stuff.  Good stuff and important stuff.  Then you get the metaphorical microscope out and you see entirely different things.  And here's the weird part: Not everything you see is microscope size.  Some of it opens up back to human sized applications.

Affordances: Do you learn to see them?  Or do you learn to NOT see alternatives?  Does a child learn that a chair is for sitting in?  Or does the child unlearn all the other cool things that can be done with a chair?  Is seeing possibility a passive or an active function?  Can it be both?  Is that why I find rolling relaxing instead of exhausting?

Do you see more when you let stuff in or when you actively look?  And does seeing more inhibit interpreting? And is interpreting an act of seeing possibilities or an act of discounting potential so that only a limited number of possibilities are clarified?

Can you train both possibilities?  Is it possible that I am trying to train people for passive observation but active interpretation and exploitation?  And unknown to me, the students may be reversing the active and inactive parts?  None of which make either of us wrong, mind you.  Or right, either.

It's a big rabbit hole, and there isn't a bottom.

So a thanks to the people who can get me thinking like this-- Edwin, Marc, Kai, Mac, Maija, Erik.
Thanks, damn you.

TO TOUCH IS TO HEAL, 
TO HURT IS TO STEALA CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE CHI KIND

"It works when done across a room or across the planet. 
I stopped trying to analyze how a long time ago. 
It just works." 

Quote from a Reiki 'expert' as to how Reiki works

"Now you know it's a meaningless question
To ask if those stories are right,
'Cause what matters most is the feeling
You get when you're hypnotized"
Fleetwood Mac, Hypnotized


Bob Balaban, who played cartographer/interpreter David Laughlin in the Spielberg classic, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," had a strange experience one night during that movie's production:

      "In his production diary...Balaban wrote that on the night of July 22, 1976, on the Alabama location shoot, some people thought they saw a UFO over the hangar. By the time everyone ran outside to look, the lights were gone. Spielberg later recalled that, at the time, he believed he had seen his first UFO and became depressed when he found out it was only an Echo satellite." (1)

If I was a betting man I'd place a wager that we've probably all witnessed something that we couldn't immediately explain, that we thought at first just might be a supernatural experience.   

It definitely happened to me:  It was a pleasant, partly cloudy springtime afternoon in 1988. I had been reading in the living room when I heard, or more accurately sensed, a sudden, sharp change in the atmosphere outside my back door. There was a crispness in the air, a vague metallic smell, and a faint taste of copper.  All of the dogs in the neighborhood began to bark and howl at the same time.  When I dashed outside to see what was going on there was a roiling dark cloud hanging so low that I could almost touch it, and my ears popped as if I had suddenly gained altitude.  The laundry hanging on the line was stretched taut and popping loudly in a powerful gust of wind.  A loud whooshing sound rushed past, and as quickly as it had appeared, the thick, black cloud began to dissipate.

I cannot explain what I experienced that day.  An unusual weather event perhaps?  A vortex?  To be honest, and I know that it sounds silly and naive, but my first gut reaction was that this was a close encounter.  

After all, I had seen Spielberg's movie years before, so naturally my mind grasped on to this memory before reason and a rational explanation finally settled in.  

I loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  I really thought Spielberg did a great job helping us feel Roy Neary's frustration in trying to come to grips with a startling experience.   

Dreyfus' character Neary is an Indiana power line technician, a man accustomed, we suppose, to routinely tracking down and systematically trouble-shooting problems.  One night he has a life-changing event, one that falls outside the normalcy of his day to day Midwestern existence. He sees flashing lights and floating orbs, and he feels sudden gusts of wind along with bright, burning heat.  He has difficulty convincing others, and his efforts to gather evidence or get others to believe him fail time and again.  His neighbors, and ultimately his own family, distance themselves from this man they know and love as he tragically succumbs to what they believe to be a mental breakdown.  

I liked the way the director has us see the shared vision of those touched by the experience, the way we discover the truth of what they saw, and the validation and ultimate manifestation of that truth.  We and the scientists who are present for that event at the movie's climax finally have the evidence we've known all along.  

Evidence was required.  Hard evidence.  Third tier evidence.

Evidence of Encounters

The very title of Spielberg's movie comes from UFOlogy and speaks to the kind of evidence one would expect from a bona fide UFO encounter.  Here's how the film's trailer describes it:

• Close encounters of the first kind:  Sighting of an unidentified flying object

• Close encounters of the second kind:  Physical evidence of a UFO

• Close encounters of the third kind:  Actual contact.

As Carl Sagan told us, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Thus the burden of proof is on the claimant.
How would we treat someone who made such a claim?  Imagine a hypothetical neighbor, let's call him Frank, who makes the following statement:  "A UFO touched down in my backyard last night, and I made contact with the beings inside it."  

When all of us say, "Really?  Seriously?  Okay, show me." Frank can't just say, "It was here, but it's gone now.  You'll just have to believe me."  Frank can't very well respond to our doubts by saying, "I saw what I saw, and I know what I know! Why don't you just prove that a UFO didn't land!"  

Unless and until Frank provides overwhelming evidence, all of us neighbors will remain skeptical.  

Now if Frank is a man of good standing in the community, is known for his honesty and integrity, perhaps has a career in which his powers of observation are key--let's say for the sake of our hypothetical argument that he's a law enforcement officer--then the neighbors might want to work with Frank a little bit, give him the benefit of the doubt. They'll come over, snap some pictures of the area, maybe scoop up some dirt and send it off to the local university for analysis. 

Maybe one of them will suggest a metal detector, or perhaps a Geiger counter...surely the ground will be different where the craft landed.  The grass and plants nearby will be burned to a crisp, or the earth itself or the vegetation may be bare or indented.  Somebody might suggest that we contact the authorities or the nearby Air Force base to see if anything was sighted and reported, maybe see if the FAA has any news.

But if they do all of this and still there's no evidence, then what's Frank to do?  He KNOWS what he saw.  He was THERE.  He EXPERIENCED it first hand.  Everybody else was at home sleeping.  

Frank will need to determine if what he saw was real. Perhaps it was all just a dream.  

In the well-known Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge thinks that indigestion is what's causing him to see the ghosts.  So maybe it was the greasy dinner Frank had before he went to bed.  Or maybe he took one of his wife's sleeping pills, and he just imagined the whole thing.

At any rate, the neighbors will have difficulty siding with poor old Frank until he can come up with something a little more solid than his personal experience.

Another Type of Encounter

This brings us to another hypothetical neighbor, whom we'll call Larry. Larry has been diagnosed with hypertension. Larry went to see his doctor, took the prescribed medication, tried diet and exercise, but he was still having problems.  In desperation Larry tried a healer.  He found a certified 'energy worker,' a practitioner who, after accepting a donation or fee, helps Larry to rebalance his chi/qi.  Within a few sessions Larry not only feels better, he is amazed to discover that his problem has gone away.  

So excited is he that he decides to become a 'certified healer' himself.  He attends courses, meets the requirements and receives his certification.  He now provides this service to a select group of patients.  He even trains others who are interested in becoming 'healers' themselves.

This is not that uncommon.  There are numerous such 'treatments' offered, and many allow participants to obtain certification so they themselves can become 'healers.'

Reiki

Be it cancer, diabetes, arthritis, muscle injuries, or a whole host of diseases, Reiki offers a similar solution.  A Reiki master, it is claimed, can help the individual heal him/herself.

"Really?  Seriously?  Okay, show me!" would be my response.

Reiki, according to scientific analysis, falls in the realm of faith healing and is no more effective than a placebo. People feel relaxed after a session and may even claim a sense of relief of minor symptoms, as would be expected. After all, if I feel bad, and if I have a friendly care giver who takes the time to try to help me feel better, I am sure that I would find comfort in their efforts.  A cool rag on the forehead, gentle reassuring words from someone confident in his or her skills, human kindness, a nice cup of warm tea...these things would definitely help me feel better, less stressed.  If that is all Reiki claimed, I would have no issue.

But that is not what claimants state.  Reiki, it is often claimed, is a form of healing that can manipulate an unseen life force that is within and which surrounds us all.   Health occurs, they believe, when this life force is balanced, in harmony, and flows correctly; and, conversely, discomfort and disease occur when that flow is blocked, becomes imbalanced, or improperly channeled or restricted.  

Let's remember our lessons from Logic 101:  Inductive and deductive reasoning, or what some people refer to as 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' reasoning.  

      "...the difference between inductive and deductive arguments involves the strength of evidence which the author believes the premises to provide for the conclusion, inductive and deductive arguments differ with regard to the standards of evaluation that are applicable to them...at its core, the distinction between deductive and inductive  has to do with the strength of the justification that the author or expositor of the argument intends that the premises provide for the conclusion. If the argument is logically fallacious, it may be that the premises actually do not provide justification of that strength, or even any justification at all. Consider, the following argument:

    All odd numbers are integers.
    All even numbers are integers.
    Therefore, all odd numbers are even numbers.

This argument is logically fallacious because it is invalid. In actuality, the premises provide no support whatever for the conclusion." (2)

So, Reiki starts with the premise or proposition that chi/qi exists.  If one disagrees with this proposition, then it is difficult to proceed with the argument and almost impossible to agree with the conclusion.  

The claimant at this point may then use psuedo-scientific language, claiming that chi/qi is 'bioelectrical energy' within us all, detectable with some standard scientific instruments. Chi/qi is the spark of life, they'll say, or chi/qi is energy vibration at the molecular level, in keeping with quantum theory.  It is the air we breath, the wind that blows around us, the life energy in the plants we eat.  It is real they tell us, but it is also unseen, difficult to measure, and tough to pin down.

Here's how it is described in /reikihealinginstitute.org:  "What is reiki? It is intangible, invisible, formless, not of the senses, a subtle field of energy, the essence of life, universal life energy.  In Reiki healing, you do nothing and achieve everything." (3)


Intangible.  Invisible.  Formless.  But it exists?
As Carl Sagan reminded us, "...what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.” (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark).

Sagan adds, “One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition."
The Origin of Reiki

So where did the concept of Reiki come from?  Well, in it is claimed that in 1922 Mikao Usui went on a 21-day retreat where he meditated, fasted, and prayed on a mountaintop in Japan for several weeks and “received” the revelation of reiki, the "keys to healing."  He referred to it as a spiritual awakening in which a mysterious, powerful light entered the top of his head.  He felt that his universal awareness was clicked on, and he believed that a great power now emanated from him.  Somehow he knew that this great power could be used to help and heal others.



How Does Reiki Work?


Let's let a practitioner explain it:

     "We are alive because life force is flowing through us. Life force flows within the physical body though pathways called chakras, meridians and nadis. It also flows around us in a field of energy called the aura. Life force nourishes the organs and cells of the body, supporting them in their vital functions. When this flow of life force is disrupted, it causes diminished function in one or more of the organs and tissues of the physical body.
 
     "The life force is responsive to thoughts and feelings. It becomes disrupted when we accept, either consciously or unconsciously, negative thoughts or feelings about ourselves. These negative thoughts and feelings attach themselves to the energy field and cause a disruption in the flow of life force. This diminishes the vital function of the organs and cells of the physical body.
 
     "Reiki heals by flowing through the affected parts of the energy field and charging them with positive energy. It raises the vibratory level of the energy field in and around the physical body where the negative thoughts and feelings are attached. This causes the negative energy to break apart and fall away. In so doing, Reiki clears, straightens and heals the energy pathways, thus allowing the life force to flow in a healthy and natural way. 

     "A treatment feels like a wonderful glowing radiance that flows through and around you. Reiki treats the whole person including body, emotions, mind and spirit creating many beneficial effects that include relaxation and feelings of peace, security and wellbeing. Many have reported miraculous results.

     "Reiki is a simple, natural and safe method of spiritual healing and self-improvement that everyone can use. It has been effective in helping virtually every known illness and malady and always creates a beneficial effect. It also works in conjunction with all other medical or therapeutic techniques to relieve side effects and promote recovery. (4)

One Reiki practitioner described his experience like this:

     "...negative energy (was) transmuted into white light and travelled down to the centre of the earth then returned up my spinal column and carried on into outer space to the centre of the universe and then returned back to me through the crown chakra and down the front of my body through the throat centre then the heart centre and the solar plexus, on to the genitals and in to the perineum, through to the centre of the earth and returned back up my spine and so began this new orbit of energy."(5)

Problems with Reiki

1.  Reiki cannot be explained as a natural phenomenon.  Unlike practitioners of legitimate, scientific medicine, a Reiki 'healer' cannot explain in scientific language what occurs at the molecular level during supposed treatment.  

When challenged, Reiki experts will tell you that science doesn't know everything, and that the nature of Reiki and 'energy work' is outside standard science models and not conducive to empirical research.  

Because a client/patient lies down in a dimly lit room with gentle, relaxing music as a calm, peaceful practitioner uses soothing words and a reassuring bedside manner, a Reiki practitioner will tell you that studies have shown that Reiki is 'effective.'  At healing?  No.  At feeling more relaxed?  Sure.  

Reiki is simply a new name for the concept of 'vitalism.'  As Steven Novella describes it:  "The concept of a human energy field is really just a new name to a several thousand year old concept. Most ancient cultures believed that there was some vital force, an animus which made living things alive, and distinguished them from non-living things. In ancient China this mysterious force was called Chi, in India it was chakra, in Greece animus, and in Rome spiritus. Today the concept still survives in traditional Chinese medicine and Indian ayurveda. Many modern alternative medicine disciplines have also adopted a vitalistic philosophy."

2.  Reiki cannot be shown to be any more valid than placebo.

3.  No evidence has been found for the existence of 'energy flows,' and thus there is no evidence that one can manipulate this invisible, unmeasurable, non-existent energy.  Novellas says that "Today the depth of knowledge of physiology and biochemistry is vast. At no point in any biology laboratory has anyone detected a mysterious force which is responsible for any aspect of life. Nor is there any deep and pervasive mystery about how living organisms function that requires the hypothesis of a life force to keep things going. The concept of a life force is completely without empirical evidence or theoretical need for its existence, and is therefore best viewed as an ancient pre-scientific superstition."

When put to the test, practitioners of Therapeutic Touch, a treatment similar to Reiki, performed no better than would be expected by chance.  In 1998 Emily Rosa, at that time 9 years old, was able to show that even those practitioners with many years of experience could not detect the presence of the HEF or "human energy field."

4.  Reiki is one of many so-called CAM (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine) treatments such as homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy, Ayurveda.  Most of these do not require medical degrees or thorough knowledge of human anatomy, biology, or chemistry.  When questioned, Reiki practitioners switch gears whenever it's convenient.  Tell Reiki practitioners that they have to be licensed by the State in order to provide massage, and they'll tell you that they do not actually come in contact with the patient during treatment.  Tell them that they need to be licensed if they claim to be healers, and they'll tell you that Reiki is merely a spiritual practice and should be exempt.  Or they'll tell you that they themselves do not heal, but instead the patient him/herself does the healing.

5.  Although no evidence has been provided, and no tests have validated the claims, Reiki practitioners claim that it can be used as part of a 'holistic treatment' for cancer.  Some believe that this is both unethical and exploitative.  Here's a great point from Brian Hughes:  "when obtaining informed consent (an ethical requirement for any therapeutic intervention), do Reiki practitioners really inform their patients about Reiki? For example, do they inform patients that the cumulative research literature shows no treatment efficacy for Reiki with regard to any medical condition? Do they inform patients that the claim that vital energy can be redirected through a person’s body in a way that promotes well-being (or that such energy even exists) is made without any foundation whatsoever? If Reiki practitioners fail to mention such points then it is very questionable whether ‘informed’ consent can be said to have been obtained at all. Failing to obtain informed consent prior to treatment is simply unethical."

6.  Reiki is essentially a cult-like pyramid scheme.  Like the treatment?  Then learn to be a Reiki expert.  Want to share it with others?  Once trainess have payed to receive credentials, they may then go on to teach other trainees.

7.  Reiki is not, as philosopher Karl Popper demanded, falsifiable.  Instead it is a faith-based practice.  "One of the tenets behind science," says Martyn Shuttleworth, "is that any scientific hypothesis and resultant experimental design must be inherently falsifiable. Although falsifiability is not universally accepted, it is still the foundation of the majority of scientific experiments."  Popper stated that a scientific claim must be able to withstand the rigors of testing; it must be disprovable. (6)
I do not in any way suggest that therapeutic massage is not valid.  Nor am I suggesting that relaxation is not beneficial during the healing process.  But I do suggest that unethical, exploitative, costly, unproven, unscientific/psuedo-scientific treatments should not be considered as an option for anyone who needs valid medical treatment, either as a replacement for bona fide medical care nor as an augmentation of such care.  Scientific medicine knows so much more than primitive tribal healers and shamans.  It has unlocked the human genetic code, developed medicines and treatments to save lives, treat diseases, and promote longer and healthier lives.

Some people fear medicine or have a distrust of modern medicine.  They read the statistics about malpractice and severe health risks and even deaths which occur in hospitals as a result of negligence or as a result of a patient receiving the wrong medicine or incorrect dosages.  As a result of this fear and/or mistrust, or because many simply cannot afford the rising cost of medical services, CAM is often considered as a valid alternative.  I disagree.  I certainly contend that the current state of medicine is flawed and needs major reform.  But the science behind modern medicine is not the issue.  Most of the problems are a result of procedure, technology, inadequate training, and human error.

CAM treatments, such as Reiki, have no place in modern medicine.  









http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx
http://www.reiki.org/reikinews/sciencemeasures.htm
http://rehab.ucla.edu/workfiles/Urban%20Zen/Research%20Articles/Reiki_Really_Works-A_Groundbreaking_Scientific_Study.pdf
http://thesciencebit.net/2011/03/18/reiki-cancer-and-the-problem-of-informed-consent/ 
http://www.theness.com/index.php/therapeutic-touch/ 
http://explorable.com/falsifiability

This could be CofV 12.4, but it is really it's own thing and critical to everything.  Not just self-defense, but every last damn thing.  One internet warrior years ago said, quite pretentiously, "When one can control space and time, one is unbeatable."  Or words to that effect.

Well, duh.

Distance is not the same as space.  Understanding distance is just one dimension of three dimensional space.  Understanding space makes most physical skills into a type of geometry study, and usually the geometry of a physical problem is easy.

Aside-- Solutions are easy.  Injuring a person is easy.  Moving, if you are reasonably athletic, is easy.  Reading and manipulating the dynamics of two moving bodies is not so easy, but it is almost exactly what all creatures were evolved to do, so it isn't exactly hard, either.  The physical part has never been the hard part of self-defense.  Knowing when to act, trusting your judgment, giving yourself permission to do what needs to be done and doing all this from a position of physical and mental disadvantage while surprised-- that's the hard part.  And the part most teachers shy away from because (I believe) they don't know what to say.

The only thing easier than the physical part is the intellectual understanding of the physical part.  And that is sometimes a trap.  Knowing the words is not the same as knowing the music.  Knowing something with your head alone is almost useless when it comes time to apply those skills with your body under stress.  But people often believe that knowing is the same as understanding, and that the ability to talk about things or answer questions is in some way correlated with the ability to do those things.  It is not.  -- Aside ends.

There is a lot here, I've got pages on it in an unpublished manuscript.  But looking strictly at it from a threat assessment point of view:

Distance is time.  The farther away a threat is, the more time it will take to reach you.

The critical distance is inside reach.  The person can hit you solidly without any weight shift at that range.  Unless the threat telegraphs badly, the strike will land before you can react.  You will get hit.

Two corollaries: 1) Bad guys become skilled at getting to this distance without putting you on alert.  The more aware you are of unnatural distancing and the more you show your preparation, the less likely you are to be targeted. A little boundary setting doesn't hurt. 2) If the threat attacks with a flurry, the information (each strike is a data point) will come in too fast for you to close your OODA loop and you will freeze.  The solution is to bypass the OODA loop through operant conditioning.  You spike the attack instead of responding.

Just outside the critical distance, the threat has to shift weight to reach you.  This creates an unavoidable telegraph that can give you time if you are quick and ready.

Note-- both critical distance and outside critical distance can be altered by weight shift.  If the weight is balanced or on the back leg, the lead hand/lead foot have the longest range.  However if the weight is on the front foot, the rear leg has a much longer range.  There are some people quick enough with kicks  to get surprise with them.  Also, weight shifts can be disguised by movements or gestures.  The pretending to turn away to coil a strike is one obvious example.

The next level of distance requires a step to make contact.

Just be aware that a skilled drop step can hit without telegraphing from roughly six inches beyond single step distance.  Drop step is a good tool.

All changes with weapons and barriers of course,  but reading distance is a skill you can develop.  Actually, if you have any striking sparring experience at all, you should have this down cold.  The test is whether you ignore completely strikes that are out of range anyway.  If you still block things that were never going to reach you, go back to basics.

So when is a threat a threat?  When he can reach you.  You have the big drunk guy in full monkey dance screaming threats, you are in no danger.  Until he gets to the critical distance line.  Then you will have to make a decision.  You have the PCP freak sweating, spitting blood and hyperventilating?  If you can appear calm and keep from triggering more adrenaline in him, there is a chance he will run out of steam, and your ability to stay calm involves trusting your reading of distance.  And if a stranger in a lonely place is trying to get inside your critical range?  Yeah.

A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL MAN Interview with Personal Protection Coach Jamie Clubb
"I was born into a travelling circus family around street fighters and wild animal trainers."   A great opening line to a bestselling mystery suspense novel?  Nope.  A description of an action movie character?  Uh uh.  No, in this case, it's not a novel, and it's not a movie.  It's all true, and it refers to a unique individual.  Like the Chimera, the mythical composite creature that forms the logo of his martial arts program, he is a man of many dimensions--prolific writer, talented martial artist, and exceptional teacher--Jamie Clubb.

Don't just take my word for it.  Listen to what some of the world's top instructors have to say about Jamie:

"The intellectual dimension in reality training, putting brains behind the brawn."  Mo Teague

"...one of the most insightful martial artists it's ever been my pleasure to meet.  His direct methods and practical approach cut right to the heart of functional self protection."  Iain Abernathy

"...a great teacher and an amazing man of martial knowledge, I recommend him highly."  Geoff Thompson

I have been reading Jamie's articles for several years...detailed notes about his most recent classes, movie and novel reviews, insightful glimpses into history, and well-researched articles about modern, cutting-edge personal protection, training methods and nutrition.  

I was excited when Jamie agreed to an interview, and I think my readers will be taken with Jamie's passion, vision, and critical thinking approach.

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 Ron Goin:  YOU COME TO THE MARTIAL ARTS WITH AN INTERESTING PEDIGREE; I.E., YOUR CIRCUS/ENTERTAINMENT BACKGROUND.  WHAT UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES DOES THAT PROVIDE YOU?

Jamie Clubb:  Where do you start! Circus provides you with a fantastic microcosm of life. 
Firstly, British/European traditional circus, which is what I was born into, is multicultural. That provides you with a well-rounded insight into society. My family, on my mother’s side, has an alleged three century unbroken lineage of performers (when I did my martial arts act I became part of the eighth generation of performers). Our earliest ancestor was supposedly descended from the Huguenots who travelled over the Pyrenees and then made it into England to escape persecution. In 1984 a set of postal stamps were commissioned to commemorate the first recorded person bearing our family name who performed at the frost fair in 1684 when the river Thames in London froze over. 

So, when traditional, classical and quasi-traditional martial artists try to talk to me about my lack of insight into culture and tradition it brings a smile to my face. These martial artists often do this because of my rather modern approach to training and my often irreverence to what I see to be dogmatic, archaic and fundamentally flawed in martial arts practice. I understand and respect tradition, but I am not bound by its artificial trappings and perceived rules. 

Circus brings together people from all walks of life. Like many things in life and particularly the world of martial arts, it is a mass of paradoxes and contradictions. It has a long history of being patronized by royalty and the circus has more than its fair share of hierarchies and nepotism. However, many people gained middle-class status through pioneering circuses. Still more people came from working class and even poverty-stricken backgrounds to gain success. Circus was one of the first businesses to employ ex-slaves and people with perceived disabilities. Likewise there was little in the way of gender lines when it came to work. Women worked wild animal acts long before they got the vote, and one British woman was even the director of a circus before women received equal age voting in the UK. The circus way was if you can work, if you can take the hardship and prove yourself, you can be whatever you like in the business. My grandfather often showed off the fact that millionaire circus directors would make sure their children drove stakes into the ground and that they worked harder than the people they employed. My dad came from a wealthy family and was employed by a circus in a bid, by his father, to put him off his chosen career path (to become a wild animal trainer). 


So, I met all sorts of people and had a very wide range of experiences as I grew up. Many of the soft skills I now teach people in self-protection come from my upbringing on circus and being around circus people. My mother, like any circus mother was vigilant about making sure I was switched on and understood certain dangers. My grandfather used to throw things at my dad when he least expected it to sharpen his reactions. 

As for actual combat, most circus people have experience in fighting. Far more recently than many would like to admit, circus and fairgrounds (you call them carnivals) were indistinguishable. My family has both circus and fairground branches. Up until the 1950s many circuses travelled with fairs. Boxing and wrestling have a lot of history in circuses and fairs. During the turn of the 20th century boxing was often a part of a circus. The light heavyweight champion, Freddie Mills, fought on my grandparents’ circus in the boxing booths. Most of the males in my family learnt how to box. Due to often being the stranger in a new town and vulnerable to all sorts of enemy, circus people learnt how to “cor” through experience. 

Circus people have also been forced to be creative and resourceful with their physical training. Not having access to gyms they improvise all the time and the wide variety of different artists living on a show provides something of a melting pool of information once trust is won. Their basic work is hard honest labour – building up tents and big tops, swinging sledgehammers, carrying bales of hay and straw, putting up seating (what you would call bleachers) and sweeping up. That is before you get the actual performing, which requires human beings to be able to go far beyond what the average amateur athlete does in their chosen sport or physical activity. Circus people are also very used to training in all sorts of conditions. 

It is interesting to see the renewed enthusiasm for “functional fitness”. Much of the work, from the routines involving carrying unbalanced weights to the more sophisticated bar and street gym stuff, can be found on a circus. I am looking to bring in professional circus artists to provide more information; knowledge and experience to this area of training in order for martial arts athletes to greater explore these attributes. 

Finally circus has given me skepticism. Because our ancestors were largely involved in tricking audiences in one form or another, whether it was fortune telling or magic, I have learnt not to drink the proverbial Kool Aid. Critical thinking is a vital area missing from martial arts coaching. 

RG:  PRO WRESTLING…THE BANE OF MANY SPORTS FANS OR THE RAGE AMONG OTHERS…WHAT ARE THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THAT FIELD AND MA?

JC:  There is something very hypocritical about the way many martial artists look down on professional wrestling. If wu shu, stage fighting, musical forms/patterns and demonstrations are to be considered part of martial arts, then so is professional wrestling. Professional wrestlers are martial artists. They perform a combat art. I am not, nor have I ever been a professional wrestler. I ran a promotion and played a manager character that came from a martial arts act I performed in our show. However, I have nothing but the deepest respect for those who work in the pro wrestling business. 

If they are trained correctly, the professional wrestler or “worker” learns the catch-as-catch-can style first as part of their basics. They learn how to grapple with resisting opponents, understanding holds, positioning, throws, takedowns and submissions. Old school catch wrestling is much like submission grappling, but includes neck cranks. Stuntman and ex-professional wrestler “Judo” Gene LeBelle had his basic instruction in wrestling. He called one aspect of his training “grappling”, which he described as what I guess some martial arts marketing guru might call “dirty wrestling”. It included all the face-bars, finger-locks and illegal grappling moves. Few people realize that Ken Shamrock was a pro-wrestler first and a mixed martial arts fighter second in his career. The careers of Brock Lesner and Kurt Angle should also be taken into consideration. 

The “worked” nature of professional wrestling probably goes back further than many people would like to admit. It seems very likely that many of the old school catch wrestlers fought in matches with pre-determined endings and against “stooges”. They would have to in order to have a career where they might be fighting every night against anyone who decided they wanted to have a go. I would say that this included some of late 19th century music hall ju jutsu fighters and many of the circus/fairground boxers. The alternative makes a heroic story, but would be career suicide given the nature of non-worked fights of the time. This does not mean that these grapplers were not genuinely tough people who fought in legitimate bouts, but the same can be said about a lot of professional wrestlers today. 

RG:  I KNOW THAT THERE ARE ‘WORKED’, PRE-DETERMINED EVENTS, BUT CAN PRO WRESTLING TECHNIQUES BE MODIFIED TO WORK IN MA/ON THE STREET?

JC:  All the basic professional wrestling moves are legitimate combat techniques. Much of their positioning contains essential grappling tactics. The orthodox clothesline is a legitimate combat technique in many forms of fighting. Waist-locks, supplexes, ankle picks, headlocks, the top wrist-lock (comparable to the Americana or figure-of-four armlock) and fireman’s carry are all functional fighting moves. There are also grovettes (similar to the guillotine), various limb-locks, eye-rakes and “dirty” tactics. 

They might have “spots” with their over-the-top power moves, drop-kicks and high flying, but I ask you to then consider any high level aikido, traditional ju jutsu, hapkido, taekwondo or wu shu demonstration. On the more flashy side of things their short-clothesline is comparable to an aikido irimi/tenkan movement and the scissors takedown can be found in any number of viet vo dao displays. 




RG:  YOU SEEM TO APPROACH MOST OF YOU WORK WITH A REAL SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS.  WHERE DID THIS APPROACH COME FROM?  WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU?

JC:  I think initially my “scientific” analysis comes from a type of informally learned skepticism. See my circus education for the beginnings of that. Also I received a children’s book called “The Hamlyn Book of Facts and Fallacies” on my tenth birthday. I had always loved mythology and folklore, so this book opened me up to looking at the real facts behind them. It taught me formal critical thinking in a fun way. Being an avid historian I became meticulous about fact-finding and distilling them from legends. 

I don’t think I have what would normally be classed a scientific brain. I was terrible at maths and science at school; my mind was more drawn towards English, history and cultural studies. However, as I got more heavily involved in debunking misinformation and disinformation through my martial arts coaching and other pursuits, I kept finding that the scientific method was the best tool available to get plausible answers. I couldn’t deny it, so I became what Penn Jillette described as “A cheerleader for science”. 

Science, unlike any other method, is constantly progressing. Rather than pursuing the removal of error and comfort of certainty, science constantly seeks to disprove facts and embraces uncertainty. Such an approach, which has proven to give us all our advances in technology and discoveries about the world around us, seems perfect to better improve skills we might need to save our life.  

RG:  DO YOU FEEL THAT SCIENTIFIC/SKEPTICAL INQUIRY/DEBUNKING HAS MADE AN IMPACT ON MA?  DOES FRAUD CONTINUE TO EXIST/GROW, OR IS IT ON THE DOWNSWING?

JC:  Martial arts are comparable to any other subculture and we can see an ever-present struggle of science and reason against superstition, pseudoscience and dogmatism. Science has been embraced by martial artists at a relatively early stage. 18th century western boxing was referred to as a science. Martial arts used in a military context were often trained using scientific principles that go back centuries. We know warfare often progressed with science and therefore it follows so did the martial methods. In 20th century, traditional systems like karate have undergone scientific changes in their training methodology, such as those brought in my Shigeru Kimura in the shukokai school. General Choi Hong Hi of taekwondo fame was often researching sports science and included it in his literature. Similarly I recently looked over an old book - “The Complete Master’s Kick” - I got way back at the beginning of my martial arts studies, written by Hee Il Cho, that has an amazing amount of scientific information on the development of kicking techniques. It not only correctly identifies the muscle groups involved and the role they play, but also provides various exercises to help condition these specific muscles. Many instructors in American Kempo can provide you with intricate descriptions of the physics involved in their techniques, and the taekwondo offshoot, choi kwan do, is seemingly obsessed with body mechanics. 

It is not the presence of science that is the problem in martial arts. Rather it is the lack of a scientific method. Science has never been my strong point, and most martial arts instructors have better mathematical brains than me. Many others are qualified in sports science. However, I often have little difficulty finding faults in what is often being taught. This is because martial arts are institutionalized under the wrong objectives. They become comparable to cults in that they are either trying to progress an ideology or a business or both. 

Charlatanism became a part of many martial practices around the turn of the 20th century when they became more accessible to the general public. The suppression of martial arts also led to a lot of disruption in the effective training of combat systems. In order to survive against governments hostile to the idea of civilians forming militias it is understandable why in China and Japan many martial arts schools needed to change their objectives in order to survive. It is also understandable why the use of dance and ritual might be incorporated to hide certain strategies and tactics. 

Furthermore, I understand from my circus background just how jealously certain arts and skills can be protected. I have known wild animal trainers, for example, who trained animals using unusual cues so that anyone else trying to work these particular animals would not be able to get them to perform. Although I am dubious about many claims made about “secret” techniques and styles, it does follow that many families wouldn’t teach “outsiders” (in circus we used to call them “jossers”) everything. This would form part of the bad teaching practices. However, given what we know about human anatomy and physics now it begs the question just how much can really be hidden in the modern world. 

Then we have the commercialization of martial arts that occurred around this era. There is a lot of primary source material indicating the use of street entertainment stunts, including fakir tricks and acrobatics, in China that were used to promote schools to the general public. This was heavily criticized by Tang Hao. This man is an unsung martial arts hero who deserves more attention. This revolutionary –and I mean that quite literally – was preaching critical thinking in martial arts almost 100 years ago. He was openly critical of the flowery and unnecessary movements that were being taught in the more popular Chinese martial arts schools and advocated cross-training, working a lot in Japan. He was also a fan of pressure testing and his writings are comparable with any of those involved in what I called the “Reality Revolution” of 1990s martial arts.  

He wasn’t alone either. Throughout the 20th century we regularly come across martial arts rebels that challenged the current order. The same messages reoccur again and again with science often being used as the best method to get the right answers. These people do stand out, but they do so because they are a very loud minority and they are a stark contrast to the norm. Their presence is both encouraging and a reminder of the dangerous lure of ritual and certainty that appeals to most people. It also serves as a sobering response both to the quasi-traditionalists who argue that no one had any issue with certain methods until modern times. 

RG:  IS THERE A PLACE FOR TRADITIONAL MARTIAL ARTS IN THIS NEW 21ST CENTURY, REALITY-BASED WORLD?

JC:  Traditional martial arts, at their core, are no different to “reality-based” self-defence. Their original objective was to be an effective fighting system. True, some were developed in different environmental and cultural contexts, and for another era, but there are basic principles found in their roots that apply to any era.  Unfortunately their institutionalization and commercialization led to their descent into impractical training methods that no more prepare the average person for real-life violence than a dance or aerobics class. However, the same can be said for many so-called modern self-defence systems. It is not the system that is largely at fault, but rather how it is being taught. 

Your average traditional martial arts class does not teach effective self-protection. The school is teaching their personal interpretation of an art often enforced by the “party line” of the association. Whether they are being true to the intentions of that art’s founder is a matter for debate, but the objective of the class is to perfect techniques to represent the style rather than develop individuals to best find their unique way. They are trying to preserve an intangible commodity and will fall over themselves to justify their actions rather to question anything.  In this respect, I often find myself having more respect for your average battle reenactment person than the average martial artist. Both dress in uniforms from another era and both try to be as accurate as possible in their physical representation of said era. Both try to be as safe as possible in their recreation of something that was designed to kill people when it was used in this era. The difference is the reenactor is not really under any delusion. He does not pretend that his skills and practice has a direct relevance to the world that exists outside of his reenactment society. Even those reenactors who spar under pressure and fight to win know they are not equipping themselves for modern-day warfare or self-defence. 

However, I cannot be wholly dismissive of the traditional martial arts world when there are people like Iain Abernethy and Gavin Mulholland in karate, Alan Gibson, Andras Milward, Alan Orr, Dave Fenton and Mauricio Machuca  in wing chun, Stuart Anslow and Matt Sylvester in taekwondo, and several others out there teaching traditional martial arts as practical systems. The burden of proof is no longer on the shoulders of these people. Not only are they teaching very sensible methods for self-protection that are at least as good as the best modern combative programmes out there, but they have the verifiable evidence that what they are teaching is completely in line with the traditional roots of their arts. 




RG:  YOU SEEM TO BE COMMITTED TO TEACHING MA NOT JUST ‘HOW-TO’ BUT ‘WHY’…HOW IMPORTANT IS CRITICAL THINKING TO THE AVERAGE MARTIAL ARTIST?  CAN IT BE TAUGHT AS PART OF A MA CURRICULUM?

JC:  As wary as I am of the self-help movement, I put my hand up and admit that I was very impressed with Stephen R. Covey’s three components to creating effective habits: why, what and how. I start with “why” otherwise your training has no clearly defined objective. This is something I bear in mind when it comes to teaching martial artists my “Vagabond Warriors” cross-training approach. Cross-training is certainly nothing new. Just about every established combat form is the result of cross-training in some way. Coaches draw upon their personal experiences, which often includes information taken from outside the discipline they are teaching, and use it to mold their lessons. However, we live in an exciting time when information is more readily available and open than before, so students are accessing it without guidance. 

If they are going to do this, then they need to have a good mental compass installed set by the reason why they are training in another discipline. If we see their primary discipline as being a path then the cross-training experiences become diversions or slip-roads. The student goes into these diversions and with a clear and defined purpose. 

If done correctly, this tangent is an enriching journey that will greatly enhance the cross-trainer’s main skills. He will be able to take these experiences back to the main path. The judoka’s newaza will be greatly improved by his time training in Brazilian jiu jitsu. Likewise the Thai boxer’s punching will have become faster and stronger thanks to his time focusing on this range in western boxing. 

However, this process of taking tangents doesn’t come without its pitfalls. It is a perilous journey and in order to acquire attributes from another system one needs to immerse oneself in it and go through a period of detachment from the original path. The danger here is something I call “The Calypso Effect”. The cross-trainer can become so drawn into another style that he forgets his original path. Worse still, he invests so much into the new style that he starts to justify its practice as if it were the original path. 

Another problem is something I call “welding techniques”. In this instance, the martial artist thinks he can take techniques from one system and apply them verbatim to the confines of a set system. Not to mix metaphors, but you get this weird patchwork of techniques that just appears awkward and is rarely effective. This is caused by a belief in “stylism” and a complete ignorance of attribute training. It is the attributes one gains from other styles that help him improve his primary skills. For the self-defence student, western boxing will give him better familiarity, fluidity and a stronger focus on the mechanics behind striking with the hands; wrestling will help his stability, provide him with tactile awareness and positioning when being clinched and so on. However, this is still superficial in my mind. The greatest education I have acquired came from teachers irrespective of their style or system. When martial artists start thinking more in terms of people rather than arts as if they were tangible entities I think we are going to see a better development of holistic skill. 

Critical thinking is one of three missing ingredients from most martial arts lessons, the other two being clarification and individuality. So many philosophies and religions have become installed in martial ways, so why not skepticism? Learning critical thinking puts a student in charge of his education. Most martial arts are about training individuals to take control. Skepticism is the best way to get someone to take charge. It puts them in that mindset. You should always question what you are teaching and what you are learning. It is the only way to keep you moving in a productive fashion. It stops stagnation. You hear a lot about people stepping out of their comfort zones, but nothing quite does that like critical thinking. I am not talking about being blatantly argumentative. That is not really skepticism, but often pseudoscepticism masquerading as critical thinking. Questioning anything is important, but your argument must have just cause, and if you are going to pose an alternative view you should appreciate that the burden of proof falls on your shoulders. 

I think a teacher of any discipline should do their best to take their student back to the base of what they are studying. All good English literature teachers have their students act the plays of Shakespeare and have them see how they are performed. All good science teachers will take a student through the experimental procedures of an established theory. As teachers we need to best replicate the lived experience of what we are practicing. A martial arts student needs to know where their training comes from and to feel what drives that process. In the beginning there was one individual who decided his methods were best and, in many cases, this was a direct criticism of an established system. Martial arts founders were skeptics. They critically questioned and came up with the solution they felt best addressed the flaws of the art that came before them. 

When it comes to teaching someone something that might save their lives I think it is a disservice not to promote critical thinking. Critical thinking is at the heart of what keeps people safe and the only way we can seek to improve. 

RG:  IF A STUDENT NEVER FACED OR NEVER WILL FACE A REAL WORLD, VIOLENT ENCOUNTER, WOULD MA TRAINING STILL BE AN IMPORTANT INVESTMENT OF TIME?

JC:  Define “important”. I see this question as having two parts. Firstly, what is the point of martial arts practice? Secondly, what is the point of self-protection training? 

To answer the first part, it would be so easy for me to become one of those instructors who tell you what fantastic value martial arts can give to a person’s life, but the truth is that there isn’t a single quality a martial art can provide for a human being that another activity cannot deliver besides dealing with violence. The unique quality a martial art provides is its study and practice of physical violence. 

Martial arts were either developed as combat sports used for dueling and any other form of alpha male or female contest, as military skills or for civilian protection. The success of martial arts as a means to better one’s self and build character is not something that is integral to the systems, but rather down to the fact that academics helped popularize it, and the self-improvement model aided the art’s survival under oppressive regimes. 

I appreciate that is a contentious view and it hasn’t been a politically correct one in the world of martial arts since the 19th century, but I haven’t seen a plausible argument against this simple fact. I agree, wholeheartedly, that martial arts has given me so much more in life than as a means for self-defence, and I fully endorse the promotion of its many other attributes. 

There is a lot a person can get out of a good martial arts class other than learning skills for combat, but I just do not see them as unique qualities. You want physical discipline then I challenge you to join a dance company. You want philosophy or to become “spiritual” then study philosophy or join a religion; both contain far more original ideas about introspection and the way we look at life than any amount of re-readings of “The Book of Five Rings”. You want healing then study medicine or therapy. You want to lose fat then monitor your food intake and take regular exercise; there are more than enough physical exercise routines out there that do not involve punching anything. You want to learn about virtue or integrity then go work for a worthy charity. None of these areas are either unique to the martial arts. Furthermore, they are by-products. 

As for the second part of the answer, my view is that self-defence, as defined as the physical or “hard” skills of self-protection, should be limited and be specific by design. The baseline of this is civilian self-defence, which everyone should know whatever their profession. However, this should be no more than the way a good and efficient First Aid course is handled. My experience has shown me that there is no set way of handling interpersonal violence although there are certain generic constants that seem to stand fast. A good self-protection course should be taught in 10 hours with additional research material. Your average civilian who has no desire to become employed in any form of security work need only to apply the soft skills they are taught, remain in good physical health, practice the low-maintenance/high percentage success rate physical tactics and attend refresher courses to be reasonably prepared for the unlikely event of having to face a violent human aggressor within a civilian context.   

As Dennis “Samurai on the Door” Jones - perhaps one of the most honest martial artists and self-defence experts I have met - once told me, everyone still alive is an expert on self-protection. What he meant was that whatever methods a person had used in life to get where they were the very fact that they remained alive verified the self-defence decisions they had taken. Many people have actively avoided physical conflict and never really been put much in the way of interpersonal violence. Who is to say they haven’t lived? I know plenty that have travelled the world alone and through a combination of common sense, intelligence and the correct attitude they have not put themselves in unnecessarily risky situations. Likewise I know any number of people who have been involved in physical fights all their lives mainly through general recklessness, bullying, a lack of self-control, substance abuse and a desire to commit criminal acts. They would be the last people I would want teaching someone how to protect themselves. Unfortunately the latter often get far more credit than they deserve. 

There is nothing wrong in training in an art for the sake of enjoyment, so long as you are not deluding yourself. I love the preservation of history and, art. Oscar Wilde once said “All art is useless”. If that is a fair definition then where does that leave martial arts? As practitioners we acknowledge those moments that don’t have a direct relevance to a sporting or self-defence purpose, and train them accordingly. There are many people who indulge in the perfection of completely archaic crafts that have no justification other than their place as art. And there is something very poetic and beautiful in that. I appreciate that training for performance does have a purpose, and I did it myself, but it was within that context that I really appreciated the enjoyment of exploring what could be best described as abstract martial arts.  

So, I am very supportive of the positive by-products of training in a martial art and I have nothing but admiration for anyone who seeks to perfect any art that grips their passion. However, do not patronize me with some wishy washy story about the central purpose of your art having nothing to do with violence. Even systems that have completely shifted their objective away from combat, such as boxercise, taebo or the “health-only” variety of tai chi chuan, have their roots in systems designed for handling and dealing out violence. I do not disagree in using a martial art or an activity derived from a martial art as a vehicle to achieve ends other than to deal with violence, but let us never lie about the original intended purpose. 


RG:  WOULD YOU CONSIDER WHAT YOU DO PART OF THE MIXED MA WORLD?  AFTER ALL, YOU SEEM TO MIX AND MATCH AND BLEND METHODOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES FROM A WIDE SOURCE.

JC:  Let’s be clear about what we are discussing. I am an eclectic martial arts coach. I am a cross-trainer. I teach and practice the sport that is most commonly referred to as mixed martial arts. I think it is time that the title “mixed martial arts” and its acronym should be recognized as the excellent combat sport it has become. It transcended being merely a rule-set. It has become an athletic art-form. I think it has earned that title, which is a damn sight more respectable than “cage fighting” or “no holds barred” fighting. We cannot really use the term “vale tudo”, as that title never really took on and belongs to a specifically Brazilian rule-set. 

I say this because there are many who claim to be teaching and training in MMA and they are not. They might be training in a mixture of martial arts disciplines, but they are not training MMA. This is misleading marketing for prospective students and distorts the public view of the sport and art. MMA is a combat sport that teaches stand-up, clinch and ground based on a framework that largely draws upon systems that either are or closely resemble western boxing, muay Thai, freestyle wrestling and Brazilian jiu jitsu. My opinions on this are better laid in detail in my article “Mixed Martial Arts and the Quest for Integrity”.   

I am very wary about attaching myself to any world. A few of my students over the years have gone on to compete successfully in a small degree, but I don’t run a gym or have plans to build up a stable of fighters. I only have a small regular class for children. All my other training comes in the form of seminars, workshops and private training. I use MMA and other martial arts methods as a means for cross-training to enhance self-defence development or as part of combat conditioning. In effort to categorize me, you could say that I train in MMA as an art rather than as a competitive sport, but I would hate you for eternity if you did. So, I guess the short answer is I don’t know; probably not. 

RG:  CAN YOU SHARE WITH US SOME OF YOUR MORE MEMORABLE MA EXPERIENCES?  ONES THAT SHAPED YOUR THINKING/BECAME THE CATALYST FOR YOUR CURRENT APPROACH?

JC:  Fantasy and escapism got me into martial arts. Having grown up in show business and experienced many of its different forms, celebrities did not hold the awe they do for most people. My heroes were martial artists. First they came in the form of the comic book ninjas from “G.I. Joe” (we knew it as “Action Force”), Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, and then whoever appeared in “Combat” magazine. My intention was to create a martial arts act and return to the circus, but the combative nature of martial arts ensnared me. I bought into what I would later term “the by-product myth” and assumed the artistic skills I would learn automatically improved my ability to fight in real life. 

I lapped up the mythology and selectively believed the martial arts propaganda. Then I started reading articles written by a rising new star called Geoff Thompson. Thompson rocked the UK martial arts scene and, along with Peter Consterdine, really forged the way for the “reality-based” sector to stand alongside the sporting and traditional martial arts. At first I really hated what he had to say. I read everything he had to say about my beloved arts like a New Earth Creationist might read “Origin of the Species”. Then reality hit me, figuratively and literally. 

I agreed to a couple of sparring sessions with some untrained individuals. They worked for my parents’ company that, at its heart, is still very much like a circus business. I was 18 years old at the time, a black belt in sakiado and making my way to black in taekwondo. We used what protective equipment I had available – semi-contact pads – and within seconds I realized they had an entirely different approach to sparring than me. All had clocked up a lot of experience fighting outside of any area that could be considered a gym. They hit hard and fast, and had little observation of rules. Due to the sport taekwondo format I had got used to, my leg was grabbed and I was unceremoniously thrown to the ground whenever I kicked. In the end it just became milling and defaulted back to how I fought years before. I gripped one fighter’s tee-shirt and fired rapid uppercuts into him. My conditioning gave me the edge over these guys, but if the situation had been even less controlled I could have paid dearly for bad habits I had picked up. 

It is at this point I would like to point out that just as intelligence is no barrier against weird thinking, experience with real violence is no defence against martial mysticism. I had grown up knowing full well what a real fight looked like, but my fantasy world of martial arts presented me with a reality I wanted to believe. As I did well against other martial arts in a competitive context and rose to the top of classes, and impressed middle-classed kids who didn’t know any better with my flashy kicks, I had ended up believing a dangerous lie. Now the writings of Geoff Thompson resonated with me. I read them all again and immediately wrote to him, purchasing some of his books. He posted back handwritten letters, addressing all my concerns and offered me advice. I asked if I could attend one of his regular classes. He agreed, but it was not to happen until 11 years later. 

RG:  YOU HAVE WRITTEN A GREAT DEAL ABOUT FITNESS AND NUTRITION…WHY ARE THOSE FIELDS IMPORTANT?  WHAT HAVE YOU DISCOVERED ABOUT THESE FIELDS THAT HAS RELEVANCE FOR MA?

JC:  Martial arts are about physical performance. If you wish to improve physical performance it makes sense that you get your base material right. I contend that physical conditioning is very important whatever your martial motivations. The stronger, faster and healthier your body, the more conditioned your mind is to cope with extreme exertions stimulated by stress hormones the better prepared you are for dealing with combat. However, fitness needs to be specific. You wouldn’t train a tennis player as you would a swimmer. So, martial arts need to be focused on their objectives and their training should be reverse engineered from these objectives.

Training programmes must all follow specific goals. The grappler has to train certain muscle groups in certain ways and likewise with the striker. The student of self-defence not only has to condition his counter-offensive physical skills so they are instinctive to him when placed under pressure, but a strong cardiovascular system will give himself an advantage when it comes to fleeing a scene.  

There is an awful lot of nonsense spouted about nutrition, and it has inevitably spilled over into the martial arts world. The connection is obvious given the way most martial arts resemble religions, and so many religions have some sort of dietary rule. Controlling food, one of most basic needs for survival, is at the core of controlling people. Martial artists clearly get wound up both in the self-control aspect and sadly the control of others. 

With a lack of critical thinking, fad diets are taken on board with fervor by the dedicated martial artist who wishes to improve his training. And just as many have irrational belief in the supremacy of their chosen style, so they will invest themselves in whatever piece of pseudoscientific diet that appeals to their ideals. 

Nutrition is an important part of athletic performance. You need to feed the muscles you have broken down in training and then grow them with sufficient sleep. It is that simple. However, very few people can sustain a diet for the rest of their lives. This is pretty much an established fact, and yet new fad diets are still big business, and gaining support from all sorts of lifestyle and sports publications. When it comes to losing weight most diets work during the initial stages. This is because we are thinking about what we put in our bodies. We become mindful of our food intake. 

This is the crux of the matter. We need to be mindful of how we train and how we eat. When thought is applied, you have a better chance of success. Mindful training makes you question the validity of an exercise and better research your routines. You can measure your results in the efficiency of your physical martial arts skills rather than just jumping on the back of a semi-body builder type regime as most people do. Being mindful eating helps prevent “mindless munching”, helps you monitor your calorie intake and will make you think twice about excessive eating of sugar, fat or salt.  

RG:  TELL US ABOUT THE PROGRAM YOU NOW TEACH…IS IT A NEW ‘STYLE’?  WHAT MAKES IT UNIQUE/DIFFERENT?

JC:  If anything it is an anti-style. My syllabus doesn’t even contain any techniques. I am a bespoke coach that puts the individual at the centre of their training. Our only guides are those presented by pressure testing and science. I create activities and experiences for an individual to express their natural combative behaviours. This is not unlike the way animal trainers teach wild animals how to perform in a set way. Everything they learn is an extension of their natural behavior. I then cultivate these responses into natural techniques. This is the complete opposite to the usual way of teaching students set techniques, putting them into drills and/or forms and then putting them into live practice. I go in the opposite direction, eventually ended up with simple suggestions for solo practice so they can retain the skills they have begun to refine. 

My training is time managed. Everything is geared towards a purpose. Because I am less technique-led I am more interested in creating exercises that will help reinforce behaviours. This includes developing neural pathways and replicating the correct force vectors. Again, I notice this is more in line with circus training. Trapeze artists, for example, learn how to perform their skills through practicing a series of exercises designed to train the muscles in a certain way.   

I have various different programmes and services that can be roughly categorized under self-protection and martial arts cross-training. It includes children’s self-protection, work-specific self-protection, combat conditioning and my Vagabond Warriors programme. I have been booked out by a variety of clients both local and international. These include corporate companies, such as the Law Society, universities, close-protection (body-guarding) centres, various martial arts clubs, young people’s clubs, schools and many individual private students. 

RG:  WHAT FEEDBACK ARE YOU RECEIVING FROM YOUR CLIENTS AFTER TRAINING WITH YOU?

JC:  What many like is the overall service I provide. Those who have worked with other instructors like the way I individualize and tailor my coaching. My clients get online support in addition to the hands-on training. This happens prior and after their actual lesson with me. They like the fact that I bring them into an online community, and they are given access to a wide range of useful resources specifically chosen for their needs. Every lesson I run is written up as a report with additional notes included for maximum retention of information. Clubs also benefit from the extra exposure my reports provide. 

RG:  WHAT TRENDS IN MA ENTERTAINMENT ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT/ENCOURAGED BY/DISCOURAGED BY? (I.E. FIGHT SCENES IN MOVIES AND TV, SPORT COMBAT)

JC:  My taste in fight choreography is very broad. I have been involved in show business all my life and also an ardent movie buff. My interest extends from the most fantastically aesthetic “wire fu” to the grittiest of brawls. I also have a particular affection for animated fight scenes be they stop-motion, CGI or standard two dimensional cartoons.  I have no personal preference so long as it is staged, directed and shot well with a strong storyline running through the sequence. Like any aspect of drama, the fight scene carries its own synopsis and you need to invest in the characters. We also need to be able to comfortably suspend disbelief. This should not be expressed through acting alone, but also the way the physicality of the scene plays out. 

My favourite fight scenes are those that are integrated well into the drama and are handled like any other scene. In this respect, the “Star Wars” franchise often produces wonderful examples of how to pace a good final duel. Irvin Krisner’s handling of “The Empire Strikes Back” is the pinnacle of this style of not only chopping between scenes, but also lengthy pauses and even separating the two duelists for lengthy periods of time to mount suspense again. However, this can go disastrously wrong as in the case of “Cradle to the Grave”. The end fight was a hugely anticipated square-off between the criminally under-rated and often badly cast Marc Dacascos and Jet Li. If you are going to cut between the action of such an artistically brilliant pairing of stage-fighters then do so with either a) a completely different type of action, b) with some decent comedy relief, or c) with comparable stage-fighters. The only juxtaposition the other two fights in that climatic scene provided was examples of bad action cinema. 

From a spectator’s point of view, I love most types of sparring-based combat sport. Even Combat 32 got me excited about point-stop fighting for a brief period and that is saying something. Like opera, watching more varied combat sports is on my constant “to do” list. I have admiration for anyone who is willing to strip back the apparent sophistication of our societal norms in order to face another person under the pressure of an audience of spectators. I am in strong agreement with my coach, Mo Teague, that competing helps a self-defence student better acclimatize themselves to the psychological pressures of combat. 

The elevated fight scene in the British film, “Sky Fall” excited me a lot. It is the best example in a long time of the harmonization of the aesthetically pleasing with the illusion of realism, and the fighting was consistent with the characters. The fight sequence was comparable to some of Connery’s greatest moments in the early James Bond films and I see it as the fruition of ideas that were put across by Brandon Lee in “The Crow”.

I loved “The Crow” for so many reasons, but only the other day I really appreciated the wonderful film’s juxtaposition between the fantasy element and grittiness. Arguably some of this minimization of fantastical fight stunts and action might have come about by Lee’s sudden death during filming, but the physical theme throughout the film remains consistent. Unlike, say Catwoman in “Batman Returns”, which came out only a few years beforehand, the newly magically empowered Eric Draven character didn’t suddenly pick up trained skills. Lee is often under-rated for the creativity he brought to fight scenes. He cited John Woo a lot as his obvious inspiration in his films, but few acknowledge the ideas Lee brought to fight scenes. 

I was really looking forward to seeing some matured stylistic choreography coming out after the success of “Ong Bak” and the even more impressive “Warrior King”. Not being the biggest fan of “The Matrix”, I never warmed much to the whole bullet-time trend that infested action movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is not to say there weren’t some good examples of this, but it was overplayed and often left cold. Therefore, it was nice to see an emergence of a backlash with fight scenes that had no or minimum wires, digital effects, ‘70s style under-cranking and John Woo-style over-cranking. I was hoping for a type of Dogme 95 for action films, at least as an experiment. 

In this vein the Japanese film, “Black Belt” showed real potential, but failed to cause a stir.  “Black Belt” more than hinted to the golden days of the great Kurosawa, and it was even made in black and white to emphasize this feel. The storyline was simplistic, but the characters contained enough depth and complexities to hold my interest beyond the action. However, the fight choreography just missed the mark. Rather delve deeper into bunkai we received rather stilted exchanges of techniques. Having said this, there was some good pausing and a good use of scenery in the final duel. 

The animated fight scene between the two bears in Disney’s “Brave” was quite good too and almost trumped the drama that was put across in “The Fox and the Hound”. On the subject of animated bear dust-ups, I have to give a nod to “The Golden Compass” and the polar bear capture motion that was taken from my parents’ trained polar bear. I thought the drama in that sequence was beautifully executed. 

The transference of sporting styles to fight scenes is not always a success, and I say this with the hit and miss appeal of MMA in fight scenes. Boxing seems to have done so well because of the great directors and cinematographers that has paved the way. This comes from the fact that the boxing is part of a strong drama and storyline. Unfortunately most other martial arts films are exploitation flicks and I think the fight scenes often suffer. We get past the point of “wow he is doing martial arts” and people want to see a continuation of the drama. Screen and stage fighting is an art unto itself. In the latter’s case, we know the great Shakespeare understood this fact in his drama, this evident in his later plays; see the stage direction for Hamlet’s fencing match against Laertes as an example. It’s not simply a case of combatants engage and one side prevails. Professional wrestlers understand this fact more than most and use what they term “psychology” to get the audience going for or against individual fighters. American kickboxing was a very poor transfer despite the huge craze that took place after Van Damme’s “Kickboxer”. You often either ended up with good screen fighters who weren’t kickboxers at one end trying to portray kickboxing, or actual kickboxing fighters executing poor fight scenes.

Grappling sports actually do transfer well, particularly if you are trying to portray grittiness. “Red Sun” was a great early example of how well this could be done. The end fight scene from “Lethal Weapon” has its own type of stylistic yet gritty Brazilian jiu jitsu aesthetic, which I saw again in Van Damme’s surprisingly good “Maximum Risk”. 

In the world of actual spectator sports, I am very disappointed at seeing both versions of wrestling dropped. Wrestling is an excellent sport that never fails to impress me. The foundation for good MMA fighting is largely based on a strong clinch game. This has allowed fighters to progress the sport, giving them strong positioning for striking and also skills to defend the takedown. From a self-defence perspective it provides excellent attribute training with its emphasis on staying on one’s feet and forward pressure. As a sport, I have yet to find one, including MMA, that was as scary to practice. Wrestling seems inherent in all cultures, and there needs to be more work done to give it a wider appeal. 

Having said this, judo seems to be transforming itself into a jacketed version of freestyle or even Greco Roman wrestling. New rules are reducing the amount of newaza and limiting the throws. Whether this is to do with safety issues, supposed improvement of aesthetics, or a desire to distinguish itself more from Brazilian jiu jitsu is a matter for debate. It is a great shame as this sport was such a comprehensive grappling style. 
  
I have had similar reservations about muay Thai, a sport I really love to watch and train. When I did my judging course back in 2004 I was very disappointed with how much had been cut out. Years on and matters appear to be getting worse. Clinch work seems to be suffering as more coaches look towards K1 as a more profitable route. Again, this is a great shame, as I enjoy watching the distinction between the two sports. There is a lot of quasi-traditional nonsense about muay boran being peddled too, but that is another issue. I think we have a lot to thank the Dutch in particular with regards to the development of better punching in the sport. Then there is the whole odd thing regarding the rules. A lot of the way fights are run in Thailand is based on the betting, and I often ponder its significance in the west. 

I have little to criticize in the MMA world. In order for it to become a mainstream sport it needed to change and, on the whole, I think the right decisions have been made. I would like to see more groundwork, but I like the pace of the bouts. Training in this sport is still really exciting, and I love the way coaches and fighters will hungrily research anything to get that edge. For those who want more vale tudo, there is always Rio Heroes and, for somewhere in-between, we have Fin Fight and other more niche promotions. 

I would love to see more events showcasing the different combat sports. It never fails to amaze or excite me when I discover yet another fighting sport. From a cross-training perspective I feel the restrictions set by different rules provide the opportunity for the development of many different attributes. 


RG:  WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE CORE NECESSITIES FOR SOMEONE WANTING QUICK TRAINING IN SELF DEFENSE?  (WHICH STYLES, TECHNIQUES)

JC:  Styles and techniques are not favourite words of mine. Both imply the opposite way I teach my core approach to self-defence and martial arts. Styles provide us with a base often taken from one person’s expression of combat based on their unique experiences, research, ideas, cultural bias and genetics. Techniques are the crystallization of certain moves found in a style. I neither want to be stylistic in my teaching or technique-led. Both ultimately lead to a teacher-pleasing mentality – a top down approach.  I put the individual at the centre of their training and work out what benefits them best under pressure. This is not to say I don’t teach styles or techniques, but I look at them later in a person’s training. I much prefer activities and concepts. 

We define self-defence as the physical or hard skills a person requires for a counter-assault. Personal security makes up the larger picture of self-protection and addresses the soft skills, such as attitude and awareness. This must be in place and underline the self-defence skills. 

The first concept a civilian needs to learn is active escape. Identifying and being able to access an exit is not only in line with the law of most countries when producing a case for self-defence, but it also makes the most sense. You should look at a violent encounter through the pessimistic eyes of a risk assessor. Engagement in violence should always be a last resort and only as a means to best attain escape. Fleeing from a scene is a skill unto itself, as the French system of Parkour demonstrates. We don’t need to go to those lengths for a basic course, but a student needs to understand tactical running and to maintain awareness when they are trying to get to safety. The only exceptions in a non-professional context is when you make a judgment call to prevent or stop a crime that isn’t directly affecting you. 
   
Next we need to address pre-emptive attacking. Here a student needs to understand when to attack first. Selecting what to use for pre-emption will be determined by the individual and the circumstances. The next concept is constant forward pressure and incidental combinations. In other words, once you begin the attack to constantly deliver an uninterrupted flow of attacks, allowing the targets to dictate your weapon choice. A student needs to be able to apply these choices from as many ranges as possible and understand how to transition. Next we need to consider recovery options, which include covering, anti-grappling and combat grappling. Other factors, such as multiple attackers and weapons can be layered in, based on these principles. 

I make no apologies for my apparent vagueness. This is how I teach. A right cross might be a wonderful selection for an adult male fighter like me who has thrown countless numbers of them in various contexts, but what relevance has it to a child facing an adult? I do have certain guidelines backed up by a general consensus of opinion and experience, but it is always open for argument. I advocate striking over grappling as a rule, I teach untrained people open hand strikes over punching, I am not in favour of any tactic that works on the assumption a target will respond to a level of pain or psychological trauma, and I teach people to get to a standing position as quickly as possible if they are not already.  

RG:  CAN YOU DESCRIBE A TYPICAL JAMIE CLUBB FITNESS WORKOUT?

JC:  No such thing! I very rarely repeat the same routine unless I am working on developing a specific skill. When it comes to general conditioning – developing strength, coordination, speed, aerobic fitness and flexibility – I find it more beneficial to keep varying my routines. 

My training regimes can be measured on a rough scale with extreme high intensity at one end, such as the tabata method, and heavy weight lifting at the other end. In-between there are various routines that are a mixture of raw strength and cardiovascular training, often leaning more one way than the other. A clear objective is always at the heart of the workout and I prioritize exercises that are more relevant to that objective. I time-manage my training and am not in favour of lengthy gym sessions unless I am learning something new or working to perfect a certain skill.

Typical workouts will include bag-work of some sort, which are often at the very beginning to make the most out of skill development. I isolate boxing, kickboxing, takedown drills, top game transitioning and bag climbing, and also put them altogether. I am a big fan of resistance bands, which can make up the bulk of the workout or at least be used as a type of active recovery or warm-down. I also like using tyres, barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, skipping ropes, plyometric soles and a lot of asymmetrical training equipment. Bodyweight exercises are also very important to me, as I feel they provide a good body-to-mind connection and help develop what I call honest strength and fitness. 

I don’t do much lengthy roadwork anymore despite always being quite a natural long distance runner. I go for short jogs that incorporate footwork and hill-sprints. However, long runs just take up time that could be better spent developing more relevant exercises. 

RG:  HOW IMPORTANT IS RANK, CERTIFICATION, HIERARCHY TO MA?

JC:  The martial arts world has little in the way of standardization. A martial arts certificate really has no credibility outside its awarding body, and sometimes not even by its respective system or style. It shouldn’t be this way, and there are many who are doing their best to at least get their own houses in order by having their instructors qualified in various accredited disciplines outside the world of martial arts.

If martial arts are to be taken seriously then they need to have a far more transparent method for certification that can be traced back to the same bodies that govern other qualifications. Over here it is often a shambles. We have had many attempts, but few instructor qualifications get properly taken up or accredited. I am a vocational qualification assessor, but there seems to be ongoing problems with these qualifications. Interestingly NVQ seems to have had a history of attracting “cowboy” providers that is every bit as jaded as that of the in-house black belt factories. I jumped on the BTEC advanced certificate in self-defence instruction as soon as I was made aware of it being available. Otherwise I only get instructorships and qualifications in martial arts if they are at least recognized in the corporate sector or by instructors I have I hold in the highest regard. Sadly the last decade has seen the market saturated with meaningless instructor programmes that have only served to further undermine the integrity of the martial arts world. 

The system of martial arts hierarchies is part of the problem why many of them cannot really move on convincingly and often struggle with a type of cognitive dissonance. They largely resemble religions with appeals to authority, tradition and antiquity being used to prevent any type of meaningful progression coming from anywhere but the top. This is the top-down approach, and it stifles progress. Times are better in many respects now that clubs have been forced to be more open and cross-training is getting readily embraced, but there is still a very long way to go. The trouble is that a club may seem open to an idea on the surface, but I don’t see a lot of evidence of them really taking on new ideas. To be fair, it isn’t always the guys at the top that are to blame. Many traditional instructors want to change, but their students are stuck in the system and are scared to change so fast. 






RG:  WILL MMA SUPPLANT BOXING/PRO WRESTLING IN POPULARITY?

JC:  I have heard rumours that MMA is waning, but I have seen scant evidence. We have been told that it is a passing trend, but it’s been two decades now since the first Ultimate Fighting Championship. Before that it was already an institution in Brazil and was gaining momentum in Japan. There have always been pockets of No Holds Barred Fighting going on in official capacity or otherwise, so I think it addresses a basic human desire.  I think it is being managed well and is growing in mainstream consciousness all the time. The magazines are published to a high standard and written by professional journalists. MMA fighters are colourful, and the sportwear companies are influencing fashion more and more. MMA’s strength has been in it eclecticism, and this means it has easily partnered with other sports, which has helped grow its respect amongst those seriously interested in improving sports performance. Looking back over the past two decades since the UFC debuted, I see a sport that has constantly adapted and learnt from its mistakes. The marketing has improved, and it has a fantastic fan-base. 

Sadly the ascent of this sport, which is improving all the time, has coincided with the mainstream decline of boxing and professional wrestling. Both haven’t attracted my attention much in the past 10 years. The last exciting fights in boxing’s heavyweight division occurred in the early years of the 21st century and even then it felt like an epilogue to its last era of sports “superheroes”. Some of the lighter divisions started showing promise, but there just wasn’t any interesting rivalry; only the odd single individual. 

I love boxing and have studied its history for years. As a form of attribute training it should be at the top of most cross-trainer’s lists. It has so much to offer the individual, but I am not that keen on its current evolution. Boxercise was one thing, but now we are beginning to see commercialized gyms going completely against the art’s individualistic nature by training large numbers of students in rows with everyone working to a precise form. I was fortunate to have received training off some great coaches that actively encouraged flexible and adaptive boxing, taking into account the wide range of different opponents.  I really hope the sport does not continue down the road it is going, as there is so much potential out there. There isn’t a scarcity of good coaches either. In the UK I have had the privilege of knowing the likes of Red Corner’s Glenn Smith and seen the quality of fighter he produces. I also briefly trained under Tommy Thompson, a senior coach of the famous Brendon Ingles gym, and was very impressed by his forward thinking coaching methods.  

As for professional wrestling, you really have to look to the independent scene to see any hope, and even then there are some depressing trends. In the UK you often either have poor impersonators of the WWE or these bizarre gimmick-less promotions featuring rather sickly looking youths that are reminiscent of watching someone’s little brother putting on a show in their garden, but without the imagination.   

However, I don’t believe all is lost. My old co-promoter, Stu Allen, continues to run the promotion we started, EWW (Extreme World Wrestling, formerly Extreme World Warfare) with undeterred enthusiasm. His promotion, a very select few others in the UK and across Europe, a few independent promotions in America and, of course, the major promotions in Japan represent genuine innovation and creativity. They embrace all sides of the show business and provide depth along with spectacle.  However, WWE and its imitators are what mainstream society sees as professional wrestling. As an art-form, I think they started losing their grip on the proverbial ball a couple of years after the “Attitude” era and when they bought out their only real competition.   
  
RG:  CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME OF YOUR RESEARCH INTO CARNY CATCH WRESTLING/EARLY BARE KNUCKLE FIGHTING?  IS THE ADAGE ‘NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN’ STILL RELEVANT/TRUE

JC:  The days of boxing and wrestling booths were over when I grew up in the circus. However, it was an obvious fascination for me, especially when I kept encountering it during my martial arts studies. Carny or fairground catch-as-catch-can wrestling seems to have been an amalgamation of British folk wrestling styles, Greco Roman wrestling, maybe some Indian wrestling and probably a fair amount of Japanese ju jutsu/judo. Its founder is credited as J. G. Chambers in 1870, and its popularity grew out of the strongmen acts found on fairs (carnivals) and circuses. Of course, the strongman acts later evolved into the sports of bodybuilding and strongman competitions. 

Bareknuckle boxing or pugilism, the immediate predecessor to the modern sport of boxing, emerges as the unarmed component of a sport that also compromised of backsword fencing and fighting with a short-stick or cudgel. Catch wrestling and both bareknuckle and gloved boxing made their way into fairs and travelling shows in the 19th century. Up until the 1920s it was not uncommon for a circus artiste to not only perform several acts on the show’s programme, but also fight a volunteer or a member of his own family at the end of the show. Children as young as eight would be involved in such bouts. 

Politics, pride and cultural issues have made it quite difficult for us to see exactly what really happened in the careers of the wrestling greats of the late 19th and early 20th century. However, I grew up in an old circus family, so I know the nature of secrecy when it comes to show business and preserving the entertainment factor. Therefore, it was of little surprise to me when a noted British historian confessed his belief that the “worked” wrestling matches had a far older tradition than is commonly thought. 

Anyone who has attended a seminar of a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt – where it is sometimes customary for the teacher to submit every attendee in a succession of bouts - can easily buy the story that experienced catch wrestlers would be able to dispose of any number of lesser trained opponents on one day. However, there were several other pressures that we must consider. Firstly, these undeniably strong and hardened fighters would have not only been fighting several unknown opponents in a day, but virtually every day. The risk of injury back then would have been high and the consequences of which could spell financial disaster. Balance that with the increased need to make the matches more entertaining and the evolution of the pro wrestling of today is pretty easy to see. 

Sir Atholl Oakley, the first British heavyweight champion of the sport often talked disparagingly of the emergence of the “worked” scene. I am not taking anything away from Oakley’s undeniable fighting ability, but I find it hard to believe he wasn’t already a part of this scene. As time went on the matches became more flamboyant, and successive generations of professional wrestlers have often been berated by their predecessors for not being as tough as they were. Oakley was criticizing worked wrestling in the 1950s. There is an episode of the comedy radio series “Hancock’s Half Hour” called “The Grappling Game”, recorded in 1958, where it is an established fact that the sport was completely worked. 

To bring matters forward, we have “Judo” Gene Le Bell, a very successful 9th dan judoka who also worked as a professional wrestler, discussing his professional wrestling bouts as if they were legitimate contests. Le Belle was working in the 1960s. 

It is always titillating to find exact techniques in old and even ancient forms of a combat sport that also appear in their modern-day equivalent, especially if said modern sport is not a direct descendant. From my own approach to coaching I have observed that certain techniques are primal, and humans will express a version of them under pressure if the conditions are correct. Martial arts history is often heavily tainted by a confirmation bias towards nationalism or stylism. This is not surprising given the religious-like way many arts are “preserved”. Some follow a view that all arts have a single origin with a traceable line, often beginning in China or in India or in Greece. This view often uses the appeal to antiquity to argue their art as being the superior one due to its age. Others take the opposite view and argue that their particular art is pure and either came directly from the experience of its founder or is completely indigenous to its native country. 

To this day, there is a confusing argument over the origin and lineage of Brazilian jiu jitsu. The Gracies and their supporters have long maintained the argument that their art comes from Japanese jiu jitsu and not judo. Judo’s reputation as a sport does not appeal to those who wished to promote their art as an effective form of self-defence. However, the truth is more a case of semantics. Judo was interchangeably referred to as jiu jitsu when it was being imported to the west. Many Filipino martial artists like to put forward the theory that their native panantukan influenced the way western boxers carried their hands at the turn of the century. The argument goes that the high guard adopted by fighters of that era came from the weapon-influenced guard of panantukan. Borrowing the guard from panantukan and putting it into western boxing supposedly occurred during the occupation of the Philippines. It is a romantic notion, but the turn of the century was also the time gloves (Broughton’s famous “mufflers”) became compulsory in western boxing, which greatly encouraged more striking to the head and prompted fighters to raise their guards.       

I could go on forever providing instances of hyperdiffusionism in martial arts history, but I guess the best examples are the creation myths. The most elaborate one is that all martial arts come from ancient Greece. This story puts forward the unsubstantiated hypothesis that Alexander the Great’s invasion of India influenced the natives to train in Pankration and other Greek martial arts. The systems they developed then travelled with the Buddhist monk Bodhi dharma to China and became the basis for Chinese martial arts. This follows the assumption that Bodhi dharma was a martial artist and that the Shaolin temple was the hub of martial arts activity in China. There is little evidence to support either claim. Chinese martial arts certainly had an influence over Japanese and Okinawan systems. The katana’s origins can be traced back to the Chinese broadsword, and Okinawan karate is a merger of indigenous systems and Chinese styles. However, it is a big stretch to claim that the shoulder throw found in judo can be traced back through China, India and eventually to Greek grappling methods. 

Then you get systems laying claims on lineage to dead arts. “Gypsy” bareknuckle fighting, for example, which my grandfather and various other circus people took part in when they fought Gypsies or Pavees over temporary residence on a land, is not the continuation of pre-gloves boxing. It is better described as an off-shoot of gloved boxing. The fights do not follow the rules of the 19th century, which permitted grappling above the waist, and rounds were ended when one fighter hit the ground. Essentially Gypsy boxing rarely has rounds and has no grappling.  

This is closely related to the other type of hyperdiffusionism argument, which denies influence from foreign systems. After World War II taekwondo did its best to distance itself from its undeniable roots in Shotokan karate. A lot of the history was reworked, and the art’s tenuous connection with the Korean combat sport of taekyon was overemphasized.  

So, it is all a very complex issue. I would argue that similar environments and the limitations provided by the human body can mean that similar combat methods can occur independently of one another. In many ways it justifies the efficiency of certain primal techniques. However, when you start seeing certain structural stylistic qualities there is reason to investigate the influence of an older art. I don’t hold with the one source argument, but I also don’t like to deny connections if there is apparent evidence.   

RG:  WHERE DO YOU GO NEXT…WHAT OBJECTIVES/GOALS/ASPIRATIONS DO YOU HAVE.

JC:  I look forward to promoting my upcoming book, which is going through the same publisher who prints the works of the great US combatives teacher, W. Hock Hocheim. In fact, I was very honoured that Hock asked me to put together a collection of my articles. All my works have been re-edited and updated, and Geoff Thompson, another legendary combatives teacher, has written a foreword to the book. The book revolves around martial arts skepticism and covers a wide variety of topics such as my children’s self-protection methods, martial arts history, personal reflections and my approach to martial arts cross-training. It will contain completely new photographs that will reflect a more abstract feel to the work rather your usual standard martial arts manual action shots. 

In addition to the book, I have a few video projects in the pipeline that I am organizing. These will hopefully coincide with more international bookings. I have taught in several European locations and I look forward to running a series of seminars on your side of the pond in the near future. My clientele continues to grow and continues to be varied, which is what I want. I have taught large national institutions for professionals like the Law Society and small activity clubs for youngsters. Other clients have included close protection and security schools as well as martial arts clubs. My services include self-protection for children and adults and is also work or ability specific. I am also getting a lot of interest in teaching combative conditioning and mixed martial arts. However, my pet project is “Vagabond Warriors”, which provides martial arts students with a guide to cross-training. I feel my strength lies in being what martial arts actor and teacher, Rob Ho called me: “a bespoke teacher”. 
   
Every new client presents me with a new challenge and allows my approach to teaching to be tested and to progress. The last thing I want is to be teaching a crystalized system.  I don’t want perfection. Perfection is an illusion - a type of aesthetically beautiful stagnation - and it is also a potentially dangerous absolute. Progress allows for continued improvement. Show me the broken, the experienced, the sceptical, the aspirers, the dreamers and the ambitious. Don't tell me what your idea of perfection. Show me that you will endeavour to improve.  

LISTEN UP PEOPLE! 
I remember an iconic TV commercial from the 70s and 80s where there'd be this young, well-dressed professional at a dinner party or a tennis match or some event, who would casually remark that his stock broker was E.F. Hutton.  At this point all conversation and activity would come to a complete stop, and all eyes would turn to this guy.  Then the catch-phrase, "When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen."

This reminds me of Dave Aiton!

Dave Aiton has had a prestigious 22 year career with HMF Army, he retires as a Warrant Officer after a varied and distinguished career.

He is the Director of Training for Defend International Ltd and is responsible for the direction and delivery for BTEC accredited Conflict Management/ Resolution, Physical Intervention and Handcuff training courses for NHS staff, Education services and Security Industry personnel.

Dave is also a search awareness trainer and personal safety adviser who is regularly requested to provide consultation, risk assesement and training needs analysis on matters of security and staff safety for local council authorities and private businesses.

His presentation and coaching abilities are regularly in demand due to his previous experience as a coach and instructor with the military. These attributes make him a much valued asset as a trainer and adviser for organizations seeking assistance and consultation in matters of security and safety.

I recently read some of Dave's comments about one of my favorite subjects, personal protection training, and I was blown away.  I asked Dave if I could feature these comments on my blog, and he graciously accepted.


So listen up, people...Dave Aiton is speaking!  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teaching Martial Arts for Self Defence

Is it just me or is anybody else tired of hearing about the multitude of martial arts systems and organisation’s that claim to provide the “ultimate solution” to all of our self defence needs. For those of us who are a little bit more worldly wise than your run of the mill “enthusiastic novice” there is normally an air of caution when it comes to engaging with groups such as these, this might have something to do with the direct debit instruction you might be asked to complete on attending your first class, or the “10 week course” that you are obligated to sign up for in order to learn the basics before you can attend normal classes. It’s a sad but true fact that a lot of martial arts organisations see students as a source of income rather than someone with whom they can invest time and effort.

The truth is some martial arts are simply not as effective as we might think when it comes to training students to defend themselves in real combat situations and in most cases seem to create a “false economy” that’s guaranteed to be nothing more than a fast means of relieving us of our hard earned cash and more importantly has the potential to be a real eye opener for anyone who may be unfortunate enough to find themselves in a real violent confrontation, and suddenly finds out that everything they have worked hard to achieve in practise fails miserably when confronted with reality (or suddenly finding out that “it doesn’t do what it says on the tin”) .

There are some misconceptions that a lot of these so called “martial arts/self defence experts” would like us to believe are the right reasons for adopting their systems as our own. Although some of the qualities mentioned (listed below) by those organisations may sound genuine and fit for purpose, they are a byproduct of training and not the primary objective for learning a martial art for self defence.

Misconception 1
The purpose of martial arts should be to build discipline and improve physical fitness enhancing individual strength, flexibility, balance, and cardio-respiratory fitness. Building personal courage, self confidence.

Wrong. The primary objective of a martial art should be to improve the combat-effectiveness of the individual, specifically, to teach the individual to become comfortable with the level of conflict required in a real-life self-preservation situation.

Misconception 2
Safety must be emphasised at all costs to the point of stressing no striking or only simulated strikes to vital points such as the head, neck and groin area. If you strike at all, you should stop short (pull your punches) to these vital areas so that you maintain safety above all else. Only "light blows" should be made to other areas.

Wrong. The primary focus of a true self defence program should not be to prevent the maximum number of injuries during training but to prevent the maximum number of individual injuries during a real violent confrontation. Bumps and bruises do come with the territory when applying reality-based training, unless of course you want students to experience a false sense of security and misplaced confidence. The only confidence worth obtaining in a true martial arts/self defence program is achieved through successfully employing combat-effective movement and technique.

Misconception 3
Most fights end up on the ground so ground-fighting should be where you place most of your emphasis.

No. This way of thinking is extremely flawed. The ground is the last place you want to be in a real-life situation. We aren't training for the UFC or a grappling tournament; we train for a successful life preserving outcome. Too many variables can happen to you on the ground on the street. For self-defence, preventing the maximum number of individual injuries is the goal. Therefore, knowing how to stay on your feet should be a much greater concern.

Misconception 4
Locks and holds are the best way of incapacitating an attacker.

False. Striking is entirely more effective in a realistic environment than holding or putting someone in a lock or a hold. Your goal in a realistic situation must be to incapacitate the attacker in the quickest way possible. Striking is much quicker, a lot simpler and has the potential to be much more devastating to an attacker.

Misconception 5
Training in kickboxing and/or wrestling will make me ready for the street.

Wrong again. Approaching a self-preservation situation with a sport mentality gives the individual a false sense of confidence. Training for realistic self-defence is entirely different from training for a rules-based combat sport.

But this only my opinion folks, its up to you to decide what type of training is right for you, but try to bear in mind whatever you choose needs to be fit for purpose, if its not then look somewhere else.

All the best - Dave Aiton

 

Abraham Mazlow, A comfortable life, The orientation of the mind, Monkeys, Group Protocols, Stories, And well, tons more. Warning – you will stay up late ruminating over Rory’s words. Listen at your own risk.

There might be one more in this series, might have to write about time and distance.

What follows combines with everything before, but especially with the other elements in 12.0-12.3.
12- Identifying Danger
12.1- Adrenaline Signs
12.2- You
12.3- Terrain
In some ways this all comes close to the Intent-Means-Opportunity triangle.  An immediate threat has to have all three.  Most of the time, you are the resource, the source of intent.  the threat is his or her own means and the terrain and your behaviors supply the opportunity.  But that's kind of simplistic.

Social and asocial are done for different reasons and so they have different requirements, from the bad guy's point of view.  The primary difference is that in most cases, social violence requires an audience.  For asocial violence the audience magically turns into witnesses. Some of the types of social, like the bonding GMD, are social within the group but asocial between the group and victim.  And some, maybe most, bad guys will try to get social benefits from asocial crimes (bragging about a mugging, for instance) or vice versa (going through the other guy's pockets after winning a Monkey Dance.)

So that's the big one.  Presence of others: generally social.  Absence of witnesses: generally asocial. Presence of a bonded group and you are alone: bad day for you.
Exception: certain types of predatory acts do use the crowds as camouflage. But by their nature, they can't be extended scenarios.

Second, the behaviors are different.  Social behaviors, even if they are going to violence, are normal.  We perceive them as normal because they stay on a script that we all know.  One of the things that makes predators so effective is that:
1) We are wired to assume and expect the scripts (corollary: when someone is clearly going off script most victims don't recognize it)
2) Many, especially the socially skilled and especially sexual predators, mask their predatory tactics in the social scripts.  For instance, there is a natural progression in romance where a couple meet, enjoy each other and gradually want to spend longer times in more privacy.  Which is also exactly what a process predator wants.  Predators learn to accelerate the natural process.

For our purposes, I'll call the social behaviors (including the social violence behaviors) 'normal.'  People don't consciously recognize normal, and without that recognition, abnormal (predatory) behavior is often missed, dismissed or excused. Missed- not seen at all.  Dismissed- seen, but ignored as unimportant. Excused- acknowledged as odd but doesn't count because there is probably a perfectly good reason.  So victims either don't see or ignore the warning signs.

Aside- One of the secret deeper reasons that I teach SD law as an articulation class instead of a decision making class is that if the person can explain things to a jury, they can also explain why they need to act to themselves in the critical seconds.  That helps some people slip the leash.

So you have to know normal consciously before you can recognize abnormal.

Basics are proxemics, facing and stance, hands and structure, and group behavior.

Normal proxemics varies widely across different cultures.  In North America and most of the places in Europe that I've visited, the comfortable distance for a stranger to stand is about a half pace beyond arms reach.  You will get a creepy feeling if people stand too close and you will elicit a creepy feeling if you approach inside the bubble.  It's an easy experiment to do.  This distance changes with intimacy.  Acquaintances are slightly closer, friends closer than that and intimates very close.  And there is a very particular range+eye contact that you will see with cons who have done prison time together-- standing very close but looking past each other's shoulder.

This bubble is not round.  It's best to feel this rather than read it, but that creepy feeling isn't engendered by a stranger approaching from the side until he is much closer.  Well within striking range.  It is even closer behind.  This is why we can handle stadium seating and sitting together on buses, but tables are a certain width.

The normal approach is to stand in front of you at the edge of the bubble.  An experienced predator will, while acting friendly and social, generally approach from the flank to be in striking range. (Not addressing ambushes from the rear, only the stuff you can see coming.) So, normal is from the front, out of range.  Anything else should put you on alert.  But remember this is very different in different cultures.  If you try to insist on your bubble in Arabia or South America do not expect to make friends or be accepted.  There are profound tactical reasons for maintaining a certain distance but sometimes the strategic reasons trump the tactical.  And remember, you are looking at signs of abnormality for danger, and normal/abnormal is measured from the threat's conditioning, not yours.  Someone from a close culture who maintains distance may read as sensible to you, but he might well do it because of mental illness or excessive aggression.

Facing and stance.  The normal monkey dance fighting stance is one of the stupidest possible ways to stand for fighting.  The combatants tend to be up on their toes, bouncing, arms akimbo and with feet and hips perpendicular (side to side) to the threat. And usually tense with muscles bulging.  Slow, stupid, no base and with targets exposed.  It is an attempt to look big, like a cat puffing out its fur.  Understand that even well trained martial artists also tend to do this if they get their ego involved.  It's an emotional reaction and is the default if you respond emotionally.  It is profoundly inefficient.

Almost all normal (social) interactions will have that foot position.  Social violence will have the crappy posture and foot position but will violate the bubble from the front.

A predator will blade up.  He will have his power in line with his target (you).  One of the elements that people miss, ignore or dismiss is that he may keep his shoulders and hips square with his feet bladed.  feet are important, not the rest.  The other thing is that if the threat approaches from the flank and faces the same direction as you it feels friendly (facing the same direction mirrors your body language) and the feet are naturally positioned for the power to be in line with the target.

Inexperienced predators may not know this.  Early crimes it is common for the threat to have no more experience than you do.  (He will get mentored later, or learn by trial and error).  So you may be mugged by someone giving all the signals of social violence (up on toes, shitty stance, loud) but with a gun.  Is a gun part of normal Monkey Dance behavior?  No it is not.  Therefor this is abnormal therefor probably predatory.  And this situation is very touchy.  Resource predation plus a fragile ego and a firearm is a recipe for disaster.  If the threat feels endangered or disrespected he will erupt.

That's feet.  Next hands. If there is a weapon, that tells you two things.  First, this is a potentially very bad day and second, he wanted you to see it for a reason.  If you live in a weapon culture, you know the rules of social violence (dueling) in that culture better than I do.  In my culture, monkey dances don't involve guns or knives.  If a weapon is involved it is either a predator or someone who was recently humiliated in a Monkey Dance trying to get his manhood back.

Aside-- Do what you need to do to survive, but never humiliate any one.  It never serves any purpose other than to stroke your own ego.

If a hand is out of sight, it could be good or bad.  No one keeps a straight arm with a hand hidden behind a thigh.  No one just rests his hand on his back hip under his jacket. But a lot of people stand with their hands in their back pockets and a flat hand like that means they feel no threat.  (This is a stacking point here: unusual body positioning plus signs of adrenaline?  Big red flag.  An alert individual showing extremely relaxed body language in a clearly dangerous situation?  Big red flag.)

Precursor moves.  Most people, for whatever reason don't just hit.  They pull back first.  They think it feels more powerful.  This chambering or loading is often disguised as turning away or glancing around-- and that last sweeping glance of the area is a final witness check just before things go down.

Groups and places.  If there are only two people at a bus stop and they are strangers, they keep distance.  All guys know the urinal rules.  There is a pattern to where people stand and which direction they face as  an elevator fills.  People that know each other stand together and talk.  If they see you, go quiet and split up, that's likely bad.

So with groups you look for coordinated movement, any separation that makes you the apex of a triangle or any static positioning that makes you walk between two people.  In pack behavior you look for groups (usually young men) moving purposefully or trying to intimidate/get a reaction from others.

All of this could be expanded, but these are the basics.

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR
"Always remember, your focus determines your reality."
Qui-Gon (Star Wars:  Episode 1-The Phantom Menace)


In Space No One Can Hear You Scream
ALIEN (1979)

The universe is ancient, (estimated to be 13.7 billion years old, having formed from an ultra-hot, ultra-dense singularity), and it is freezing, (temperatures in space can dip down to 2.73 Kelvin or -270 celsius).  There is still so much that scientists do not yet understand about space.  Are there multiple universes?  Does the death of one universe lead to the birth of another?  Much of the matter in the universe is "dark matter," invisible to our eyes and to our high tech instruments, and the greatest amount of energy in the universe, an energy which pervades all of space and forces the galaxies away from each other at increasingly greater and greater speeds, is mysterious "dark energy."

So the universe is big and getting bigger, it's cold and getting colder, and it's old and getting older.  I see the universe as a lifeless, uncaring, unsympathetic, unimaginably vast and almost empty space.  

But here's what's got me confused:  Some people actually believe that if you will "throw out vibrations" into the universe, the universe will respond.  People travel the country, appear on talk shows, and write best-selling books teaching others how to get their wishes fulfilled with help from this cold, mindless universe. 
  
It's called "The Law of Attraction," and, dig this, the Universe can even help you decide what's for dinner. 

How does it work?  Well, says askingtheuniverse.net, "The Universe delivers manifestations in the form of insights, hunches and coincidences. It brings you together with just the right people at just the right time.  Your Universe is here to help! There are big things, little things and all manner of other things that affect your life. But you have the power of your Universe to help guide you through the maze. If you want clarity with a foggy issue, ask the Universe. If you need strength to carry on, ask the Universe. Even if you can't decide what to have for dinner, ask the Universe." 


Here's how Bob Proctor explains the Law of Attraction:  "This is an orderly universe. Nothing happens by accident. The images you plant in your marvelous mind instantly set up an attractive force, which governs the results in your life." 

Melody Fletcher says that "The Law of Attraction states that you manifest anything you give enough focus to. By giving your attention to a thought, you activate that thought's vibration, and the Law of Attraction will cause more vibrations like it to be drawn to it. Once enough energy is gathered, the vibration becomes physical."
 

Chris Ankele says you don't just ask...you can command the universe to give you what you want.  All you have to do, says Ankele, is "Close your eyes, live your experience, breathe it, see it, pretend it is real. Remember to be as specific as possible; do not hold any details back even ones you would be afraid to admit that you included. That will start the vibrations and you are on your way to bending the universe to your demands."

If this all seems just a little silly, consider that it may just be a matter of coping with the ugly truth of reality.  Eugene Subbotsky says that it's "much more comfortable to think that your fate is written down in a constellation of stars than that you're one of a certain group of intelligent animals who are lost in frozen space forever." 


Psychologist Carol Nemeroff thinks it's nothing but magical thinking.  She says that we all subscribe to it at different levels, "Most of me doesn't believe but some of me does."

Maybe magical thinking--mystical hunches and intuitive decisions, superstitions and fear of the unknown, the search for talismans, signs, and omens, trying to read the thoughts and intentions of man and beast, the use of ritual words and actions and the use of incantations or sacrifice to placate or seek the favor of the gods, attempts at discerning the future, and the belief that we are all powerless against fate--were all aspects of our early survival.  Care givers before the advent of modern medicine may have intuitively understood the importance of suggestion, and faith healing like other placebo treatments, may help a patient feel better and recover sooner.

"Survival requires recognizing patterns," says Matthew Hutson in Psychology Today, "night follows day, berries that color will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned. No one told Wade Boggs that eating chicken before every single game would help his batting average; he decided that on his own, and no one can argue with his success. We look for patterns because we hate surprises and because we love being in control."

Wishing and hoping seems to be the most basic form of magical thinking.  We cross our fingers as the contest winners are announced, we shout out the horses in the Kentucky Derby urging them to run faster, and we wave our hands in the air when we release a bowling ball as if our thoughts had energy and force.  We want to give ourselves what David Ropeik says is the "illusion that we have some control over what is going to happen, a reassuring sense that we can in fact steer our flimsy boat against the stormy winds and currents of fate."

Sonja Lyubomirsky has even considered an experiment to show that the supposed effects of the Law of Attraction are not that miraculous at all.  Here’s how she describes the potential study:  "Half the participants will be asked to practice faithfully the law of attraction. The other half will be asked to practice an alternate 'law of attraction' that we have randomly scrambled and reversed beyond recognition. All will be given a reasonable-sounding rationale for why their assigned exercises should work."

Her prediction?  "Both groups of participants will become happier over time and more successful in obtaining what they want – simply because they believe in what they’re doing, because they expect to succeed, because they are putting effort into the strategy, and because they are pursuing it in an engaged and committed fashion."  

In Part 2 we'll take a look at how magical thinking and aspects of the law of attraction have entered into the dojo and our martial arts training. 
 

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There are no experts here.To recap the last post and the comments on the last post- A “High level conversations” isn’t a matter of knowledge or experience, not in this field.  Knowledge and experience never hurt of course.  Not ‘never.’  If the experience is overblown or misremembered or poorly extrapolated it can go bad.  If the knowledge is of myth, folklore and received wisdom without a reality check the conversation could be very high-falutin’, but the information passed could be deadly.Here’s the deal.  Extreme violence happens at the edge of what humans were evolved to handle.  Much of it happens in contradiction to our early conditioning about reality.  And it happens in a stew of stress hormones that affect perception, cognition and memory.  My experience is that very few people experience enough serious violence that the lessons learned there replace social expectations.  Even fewer experience enough to get a handle on the sensory and perception distortion.  Only a percentage of those have the discipline, desire and/or job requirement to evaluate those distortions and compare them with the actual events (I will go on record as thankful for the hundreds of reports I had to write, though I hated them at the time).And of those few, the number that have experienced more than one very small piece of this big puzzle are vanishingly small.  Soldiers learn part of it (different parts at different intensities depending on MOS and era); cops learn a different part; bouncers another part; targets for sexual assault a much different part.  As do the night clerk at the local Stop-n-Rob or any of the actors in a domestic violence cycle.  And cross a border or change the decade and many of the rules and social conventions of violence change.So one of the students at the Oakland seminar asked if he was qualified to teach.  The sentiment was an echo of Pax in the comments on the last post.I don’t know what qualified means. The best handgun instructor I ever had has shot exactly one man.  In the back.  It wasn’t a gunfight.  It wasn’t the way wannabe’s fantasize.  A bad man needed to be shot to save the life of a third party and my instructor did it in the safest, smartest way.I can think of three (at least) of the top handgun instructors in the country who have never shot anyone.  Does that make them unqualified?  And some of their students have used the training and survived.  How much does that mean, really?My jujutsu instructor, as far as I know, never went toe-to-toe with a PCP freak.  But he gave me the confidence to do it and the skills to be successful.  But one of the things Dave said, when I hit green belt and started questioning whether this stuff would really work: “I don’t know if jujutsu will work.  But I know you.  You’re a fighter and you’re adaptable.  You’ll make it work.”And out of left field—my wife sometimes teaches belly dance and she’s used those concepts to vastly improve my understanding of body mechanics and increase my striking power.  Movement is movement and movement experts of any kind can help you.So are you qualified?  Depends. Can you make people better?One of my FB friends was assigned to do an essay on why he was a self-protection expert.  It was essentially a self-esteem building exercise, and he did a good job… but I would encourage every SD instructor to write a little private essay on why they are notexperts.  To get a start on the very long list of things that they do not know.  It’s not only humbling, but it gives you a place to start when  you need to learn.So, I don’t know qualified, but I can pick out unqualified in a heartbeat.If you are there for your ego instead of the student’s improvement, walk away.If you don’t know the basic context of modern self-defense (how attacks happen, SD law and the legal process, etc.) you aren’t ready to teach yet.  And if you haven’t, on your own, recognized the need and started researching this stuff, you aren’t responsible enough to teach yet.If you think trying to teach martial artists to fight is the same as trying to teach a victim profile not to be targeted, you aren’t teaching what you think you are teaching.If you need to be top dog, you might be teaching people to win but you are conditioning them to lose.  You are creating victims.If you think SD is primarily a physical skill, you don’t understand the basics.If you think your experience, whatever it is, qualifies you to talk authoritatively about things outside your experience, it’s a red flag.If your techniques require a martial athlete in top condition to work, they’re inappropriate for self-defense.  And probably really inefficient.
The trouble with this list, of course, for those of you wondering about your qualifications is that they are much harder to see from inside your skin.  You have to develop a group of honorable enemies.

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A friend started an on-line discussion about why it was so hard to have a “high-level” discussion about self-defense and martial arts.It isn’t.  Part of the problem is that he was trying to do it on the internet, and we all know what kind of person writes stuff on the internet (you have to imagine me looking around at this page for the humor to sink in).In order to have a good conversation, you just need good people.  In order to have an intelligent conversation, you need intelligent people.  See a pattern here?One of the big problems for potential students of self-defense and martial arts is that almost all are naïve consumers.  A naïve consumer is one who can’t tell a good product from a bad product. Most people, when it comes to anything related to violence, can’t distinguish knowledge from horseshit.  They simply don’t have a frame of reference.And here’s where it gets interesting, in martial arts:  The naivety often doesn’t change.  When you get someone truly naïve, they have no truth to compare with what they learn and so whatever they learn becomes, to them, the truth.  And they can continue to learn and advance in rank and pass on knowledge and come to believe that they are very high-level practitioners with deep understanding… and their most basic facts are wrong.  They have a deep understanding of myths and many are willing to share it (or sell it).In other endeavors, where success or failure are visible and undeniable, it is hard to stay this naive.  In other places stupidity hurts.  Not so in many martial arts (and one of the many places where sports arts have the edge).And to other naïve people, they sound good.  Impressive.  To people who have experience, they sound like first graders trying to explain where babies come from.  So that’s the first hurdle.  I know my criteria for people I trust.  Possibly more importantly I have enough experience to pick out the kuchi-waza practitioners fairly quickly.  Without that experience can most people even identify a high-order discussion?

Oakland has been a kick-- fun and rewarding.  Two more days before I can do a full After-Action Report.  Got to spend some time with Toby and make nefarious plans.  Got to really appreciate how Maija moves with a blade.  Got to play and think with some extraordinary people.  Blood, sweat and tears make a perfect training day, and none of it could have happened without Peter.

Looking ahead.  I still have Missouri, Bremerton WA, and Germany coming up.  Then surgery.  The doc says a long recovery.  He says eight weeks immobile and eighteen months off the mat.  That's unlikely.  I'll definitely have to change some process and for a short while really hold back on some things that I love... but change is growth.

So one of the plans.  Physical therapy works for some things, and some things trained early enough and hard enough are far less perishable skills than we think.  But my body will be a little different after this, atrophy and the like, and building of muscles is not the same as the building of trust in the muscles.  Flow and timing will have to be established, reinforced and integrated.

So it makes sense to start a regular class in late 2013 or 2014.  Short term.  Worked around my travel schedule.  Focused on (safely) playing at high speed, all ranges and natural rules. (Natural rules are things like "we don't want to hurt each other" or "you develop bad habits if you go fast in a slow drill." Artificial rules are things like a specific winning condition or pretending that X always stops things.)

And mostly about me and building up my timing, speed, endurance and flow.  Students and fellow explorers would be along for the ride.  Somewhere IN SW Washington.

 

Rory Miller on criminals, rights, ignorant, and stupid behavior – and a contextual refinement of Hope. Stand back as Rory take you on a ride to reshape the pablum you are fed on a daily basis. Oh, and “Violence never solved anything.” – trust us this will make sense when you listen. ADULT THEMES

GREEN ACRESROUND TRIP PART 31

Green Acres is the place for me.
Outdoor training is the life for me.
Land spreading out so far and wide.
Keep your fancy gym, just give me that countryside.

So last night my son Shane and I did an outdoors workout at the park.  Sure, it was hot and muggy.  Of course there were copious squadrons of bugs.  Good source of protein, we joked, each time they flew into our mouths.  And the ground was uneven.  And we got mud all over our shoes.

Out here you get to see trees and grass, and you get to try to avoid a land-mine-like field of dog pooh.  (Come to think of it maybe that wasn't mud on our shoes after all).  


There's just something majestic about an outdoor workout.  My hay fever was acting up because EVERYTHING is in bloom, so I sneezed like 8  times in a row, my nose ran like a faucet, and my eyes were redder than the people at a Phish concert.  But, yeah, majestic.

We amp'd up our workout, adding more reps with the kettlebells and the dumbbells.  We have a long, heavy piece of iron pipe that we use to perform samurai-type sword swings.

After about 20 minutes of that we did a lot of FMA...mostly siniwali double stick work with some applications.  Stationary, then forwards, then backwards, then circling left and right.

Then some cool, fast knife work.  Some super quick reaction 'sewing machine' type stab drills, followed by some combat scenarios of knife/counter knife, then unarmed against the knife.

As tough as these were the drills at least gave us a chance to catch our breath, which was needed because then it was on to the dreaded hill sprints.

We lengthened the distance of the runs considerably, and added a dog-leg path, jogging for about 30 yards on a relatively flat trail, then cutting quickly to the left for a steep 30 yard all out sprint.

On the last rep we added a pair of dumbbells.  Soon we'll add even more weight, and maybe even bring Tito (my grappling/ground 'n pound dummy) to the park for an outing...maybe see if we can take turns carrying him up the hill!!

It was a tough workout, but just beautiful outside.  Springtime in Kentucky is amazing!

But the heat was intense, and I'm afraid the summer's gonna be brutal.  If Mr Haney shows up with some lemonade, you bet your ass I'll pay him top dollar for a cold glass.  






 

GETTING MY CAR AN ATTUNEMENTA PARABLE
We all need the human touch.Rick Springfield

I think my car needs a tune up.

It's idling kinda funny, hesitates a bit when I accelerate, can be a little sluggish out on the road sometimes, and my gas mileage is not that good.

My old mechanic, Dave, retired last year and closed up his shop so I gotta find someone else.

Looking on line I found somebody that apparently does amazing work.  He gets rave reviews, and people say that they drive away from his garage with their cars performing better than ever.

I decide to try him out, so I set up an appointment.

Dave's garage always reeked of gas, oil, cigarette smoke, and hydraulic fluid.  The floor was grimy with bits of what looked like kitty litter spread around everywhere.  The calendars always featured scantily clad women holding big shiny wrenches.  The pneumatic tools gave off high-pitched noises, and there was always somebody making off-color jokes, banging on metal, and coughing, lots of coughing.

This garage is nice though.  Subdued lighting, some candles giving off a nice aroma in the corner, gentle New Age music playing in the background.  Lots of certificates on the wall, none of them seem to be about car repair.

He's not like other mechanics I've known.  First off his hands look delicate, not used to hard work.  No dirt under the fingernails.  He wears a clean, white, billowy shirt and doesn't have one of those grease rags hanging out of any of his pockets.  He does not wear a name tag or have his name embroidered on his shirt.  He tells me his name is Timothy (not Tim for short, he corrected me).

He invites me to sit down on some pillows on the floor.  He sits cross-legged, perfect posture.  Me?  My knees won't take that kind of strain so I just sort of awkwardly recline.

We're going to start off with a brief conversation, which seems kind of odd.  My old mechanic, Dave, used to just have me start the engine and throttle it a few times.  He'd check out some fluids, use some instruments, and run some diagnostics.  He did the work while I sat in the waiting room watching Judge Judy and drinking what was either the strongest coffee I've ever tasted or some new type of experimental transmission fluid.

But Timothy?  He offers me some chamomile tea and wants to know what I hope to get out of the session.  

Timothy says he wants us to build rapport.

Session?  Rapport?

So he asks about my driving habits.  Where I like to drive.  How I handle curves, how quickly I go when the light turns green, what top speed do I travel.  Do I often go on lovely country roads, or do I pretty much stick to busy, ugly interstates.

He doesn't take notes.  He just nods now and then, speaks in a quiet, somber voice.  He explains that he's going to perform an energy scan to pick up energy disturbances in my car's energy field.  That's where most of the problems begin, he says, and this is necessary so he'll know where to direct his own energy.

I ask him if I can ask some questions.  He agrees, but lets me know his time is limited, and their are other patients to see.  Okay, I ask, have you actually studied automobile mechanics?  Ever torn an engine down, rebuilt it?  Ever changed a timing belt or installed a new trannie?

He smiled.  You know, he says, lots of people come home at night and put their dinner in the microwave and turn on their TV's with no knowledge at all of how those things work.  The universe, he says, is full of wonder and mystery, but, he says, everything is connected.  And the glue that connects us all?  Energy...the vibration of atoms.  Einstein, he says, pretty much proved all of that a long time ago.

So, now that that's settled, shall we get started, he asks.
Sure, I say.  Want me to start 'er up?  Rev the engine?
He looks at me funny.
No, he says, no need for all that.

He doesn't even need me to raise the hood.  He just needs the payment, so I give him my credit card.

He prints me out a receipt, and he starts at the front bumper.  His eyes are closed.  His hands hover about 3 or 4 inches above the surface of the car.  I start to ask what he's doing, but he opens his eyes and does one of those shushing hand gestures, vertical finger in front of his lips.

He moves around the entire car, doing both sides, and ending up at the muffler.  Everything was done on a purely energetic level, with no actual physical contact between his hands and the car.  

He's done in about 20 minutes.

What happened?  I ask.

He's not exactly sure, he says.  His goal was to help the car feel that it was wrapped in a warm, nurturing light and that this loving light was flowing throughout the car's various mechanical systems.  He is hoping that the car feels more balanced, calm and centered.

But you fixed it, right?  Gave it a tune-up, right?  I ask.

Please keep in mind, he says, that there are no guarantees. However, he senses that the car was open to his energy therapy, and he sincerely believes that the car's problems have been healed.

I'm a little confused...What if I still have problems? 

He assures me that I can come back again for another session.  The energy pathways may require persistent treatment. 

I start the car and back out of the garage.  Timothy waves goodbye and closes the garage door.

I drive away, listening to the engine, hyper alert to how it sounds, how it rides.

You know how sometimes a car just seems to ride better after you wash it?  Well, it's kinda doing that now.  Oh sure, there was a slight hesitation at that 4-way stop sign, but I'm convinced that's just a minor hiccup.

Now I'm heading out to the interstate so I can open 'er up and see what this baby can do!

Fevers can come from a lot of different things.  I was taught that sometimes it is simply the way your body kills viruses, or at least keeps them from reproducing.  The fever is part of the process of healing.  The virus is the problem, not the fever.  The fever is not just a symptom, it is also part of the healing process.  When we lower the fever, we ease the visible signs of the sickness, but we also may be prolonging the illness.  Protecting the virus.

Stress after a big event is normal.  For most people, a huge violent event completely restructures their reality map.  It can show you that everything you believe and value is context-dependent.  Or I can be harsh and more honest and say that you will come to know that almost all of your cherished beliefs about what people are were simply lies.  Pretty lies and pleasant lies and things that most of the population works very hard to make true... but lies none the less.

But because most people are good people and work hard to make some of the harsh truths less true. Might does, in fact, make right-- unless strong, good people stand up and through action and force of will make it untrue.  Violence works, and has for millennia and across all species-- until we came up with the will and the vision that we can make it not work. And that requires a capacity for violence as well. The only defense against evil violent men are good men with more skill at violence.

That's a digression. The point is that there will be a period of adjustment after a violent event.  Some will always be damaged.  Most of those I know are the ones trying to return to 'normal'.  The normal that a deep part of them now knows never really existed.  They feel that the only thing that can make them right is to go back to a state that they now know was always false.  Just like someone crushed with responsibilities wishing to be a child again.

Some will find a new normal, and that normal will largely depend on how much of what they were exposed to.  With a single aberrant event, they can rewrite a reality map pretty much like the old one.  Pretend the event was an abnormality.  With lots of exposure in different areas, the violence becomes the new normal and, at least for me, you feel a little awe over the power of will and human vision and technology that has made the natural so rare.  Peace occurs in nature about as often as suspension bridges.

A lot of the adjustment and 'healing' is a recalibration process.  One of the symptoms of PTSD is hypervigilance.  You know what?  There's some shit you don't survive without a hefty dose of hypervigilance.  It's not just a super-power, it's a necessary survival trait.  Does that make it pathological?  Are the people treating this symptom aware that they, the counselors and doctors, might have died in that environment without that 'symptom'?  Are they trying to help people be better, or help them return to normal?  In extreme environments, 'normal' is rarely better.

But it can get uncomfortable, and can be dangerous.  Just like going from dim light to bright light or vise versa, there will be, must be, an adjustment time.  That's normal.

And waking up from a nightmare.  That's part of the healing process.  Dreams are one way you work through things.  And part of the recalibration process is to snap awake in a cold sweat...and have someone you love hold you and say, "It's okay.  It's okay.  It's just a dream.  You're home now."

Don't confuse the healing process with the pathology. And it is a process.  And it is growth, not repair. You will be different afterwards.  Stronger, if you manage the process well.

That was interesting.

A new time frame-- 2x6.5 hours, with actual lunch breaks.
The youngest group I'd ever played with.  Not just age.  In most of the other classes I believe average martial experience has been over 15 years.  So this group was young in a couple of ways.  And it completely didn't matter.

One of the original issues with training cops is that there is a wide variety of skills and experience.  You will get rookies who haven't even been to the academy yet, veteran meat-eaters who really know their way around a brawl and men and women right on the edge of retirement.  You'll get gym rat tac guys and desk jockey investigators; people in great shape just out of military service and and guys who have spent most of the last ten or twenty years driving a car and eating junk food.  And outside of work, some of them have been doing martial arts as a hobby since long before they were cops, some are competitive martial athletes and some have never taken a physical class of any kind since the academy.

You have to give them all something.  And the skills have to work, despite size or strength disparity, because cops don't get to pick their bad guys and the stakes are high.  If you teach shit you will wind up visiting hospitals or attending funerals.

It has to be easy enough for beginners to grasp; have insights that experienced martial artists can play with; physical enough for the meat-eaters but safe enough for administrations; challenging for everyone.  So it's not a simple scale.  An 'easy' class helps the beginners but bores the skilled.  An 'advanced' class confuses the beginners.  But that assumes 'easy' and 'advanced' are somewhere on a linear continuum and that assumption is a mistake.

So it was a good test and extra validation for the awareness-based-training model.  Thanks, Mac. The student who said she had no training was redirecting heads into walls like everyone else by the end of the weekend.  The instructor levels were working out how to adapt and analyze the information and drills.

Some of the lessons learned:
--Doing ConCom first really allows me to speed up part of the lecture, but only if everyone has attended ConCom.  The Conflict Dynamics section of ConCom is similar but not the same as the Violence Dynamics section of Ambushes and Thugs.
--There are things I like teaching that are only important to certain audiences.
--I can cut three hours out of the program and not feel like I am withholding critical, life-saving information.  Much.  Still insecure about leaving anything out.
--The biggest issue that was left out are the little talks about how to coach some of the drills.  Never realized how important that could be.
--I talk way too much and tell too many stories when I'm sleep deprived. I think these guys got more of the funny and icky stories than any other group. (Don't worry, I didn't waste much class time. It was mostly afterwards at dinner.)

So thanks to Brandon Sieg, an excellent host, and also a sincere martial artist who really wants the best for his students.  He takes the responsibility very seriously, thinks and plans.  He's created a FAST team that is both effective and creative, and a collection of good students (look at the students to see the instructor).

Good times.

RUN LIKE HELLEVER-VIGILANT

 "Well, they call me the Hunter, that's my name, Call me the Hunter, that's how I got my fame."
Led Zeppelin

"Humans today may retain behaviors tied to our ancestors' likely past status as prey rather than predator."
Jennifer Viegas 

"You'd better run!"
Pink Floyd, "Run Like Hell"


In a recent HBO comedy special, Louis CK discussed the stress of modern life.  Daily living is tough for a lot of us, he says, just dealing with work, family life, and trying to make ends meet.  But he imagined that it would be a lot more stressful if we faced the same threat our ancestors faced, the threat of being attacked and eaten by wild animals.  Not only would you have to deal with over bearing bosses and  backstabbing co-workers all day, but getting off the subway and heading home, you might have to run for your life as hungry cheetahs try to run you down.

Can you imagine having to live with the fear of predation all of the time?  You'd have to remain hyper-vigilant, never relaxing completely. 

After an enormous amount of reading on the subject I am convinced that it was the fear of being attacked and eaten by wild beasts such as wild dogs, big cats, hyenas, eagles, wolves, cave bears, snakes, crocodiles, (and--get this--maybe even carnivorous kangaroos), that helped to apply specific selective pressures in shaping our species.  Although it's not entirely clear which pressures these predators placed on our early ancestors, researcher Kirsten Jenkins says that they affected "behavior, group structure, body size and ontogeny (the life cycle of a single organism)."

We are who we are, says Rob Dunn, "thanks to ancestors who only just barely got away."

Looking at one site containing "de-fleshed, chomped and gnawed bones" from an early primate ancestor of humans, Jenkins said, "I have observed multiple tooth pits and probable beak marks on these fossil primates, which are direct evidence for creodonts and raptors consuming these primates."

According to National Geographic, Agustin Fuentes and other researchers "believe that early humans were a prey species hunted by bear-size hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and many other large carnivores.  Early humans survived while other primate species died out because our ancestors cooperated to alter their surroundings, and this cooperation deflected the risk of predation onto other nearby prey species, which became more vulnerable because early humans weren't as easy to catch."

Anthropologist Robert Sussman found that "our ancestors from three or four million years ago, Australopithecus afarensis, had small teeth, lacked tools, and were about three feet (one meter) tall.  Lacking size or weapons, this early human species most likely used brains, agility, and social skills to escape from predators, the anthropologist says."

The predation rate, according to Sussman, was about 6 percent.

"Predators remain a powerful force in the lives of many of our fellow creatures," reports Olivia Judson.  "It’s not just that they kill. They also change what their potential victims get up to. In short, they create a landscape of fear."  

Much of our mental activity seems to have been impacted by these old fears:  preoccupation with remembering salient, life-threatening events from close calls with danger in the past, keeping track of the myriad rules for survival that we have been taught, and being attuned to potential threats, and imagining threats in the future.

When taking a look at one aspect of survival, foraging for food for example, predation must be factored in.  Where are the predators?  When do they like to hunt?  How many of them are there?  A high-quality foraging area with energy-rich food may also be right out in the open, far from quick escape routes.  This means that foraging may have to take place in areas where food is less plentiful or where the quality of the available food is less than ideal.

Behaviors are shaped by such considerations.  You can't easily scan the horizon looking for predators while at the same time focusing on the ground for nuts, fallen fruit, bugs and roots.  Cooperative foraging in groups, with someone always on the lookout and ready to sound the alarm, may have been an early strategy.

"Foragers," says Regan Berkley, "must make trade-offs between foraging efficiency and security from predation. The modifications they make to their behaviors have consequences that may affect their nutrition or their survival."

Will Cresswell notes that "Predators can affect individual fitness and population and community processes through lethal effects (direct consumption or ‘density’ effects), where prey is consumed, or through non-lethal effects (trait-mediated effects or interactions), where behavioural compensation to predation risk occurs, such as animals avoiding areas of high predation risk."  

The lethal effects are obvious...we get eaten.  But the non-lethal effects are a key factor as well, with some researchers concluding that, while similar, non-lethal effects were as much as 85% of all effects.  Reduction in foraging, slower growth rates, lower reproductive rates, can impact behavior and morphology, determine the overall population and impact group dynamics.   

“During any given day, an animal may fail to obtain a meal and go hungry, or it may fail to obtain matings and thus realize no reproductive success, but in the long term, the day’s shortcomings may have minimal influence on lifetime fitness. Few failures, however, are as unforgiving as the failure to avoid a predator: being killed greatly decreases future fitness."  Lima and Dill (1990)
 

I have come to the conclusion in my own reading on this subject that individual behaviors and thought processes in humans were deeply impacted, and modern man still carries within himself these behaviors, abilities and innate responses.


One such ability is imagining.  Here's how neuro-scientist V.S. Ramachandran describes it:  "The capacity to plan open-ended scenarios and try out even improbable scenarios entirely in the mind by juggling images and symbols (especially when) linked with episodic memories, enables you to see yourself as an active agent doing things in the future..." 

"In the developed world, we live in the most peaceful, healthful time in history," says Rob Dunn. "The murder and violent crime rate is dropping; we are vaccinated against the most deadly diseases of previous generations; our houses protect us from most storms; relatively few people go hungry. The average lifespan is longer than it has ever been. Then why do we walk around so anxious, so full of fear? The answer is not terrorists, TV, Republicans, or Democrats. The answer is our legacy of ancient fears, the result of having spent millions of years running from predators. Our fear response is more influenced by the ancient species we struggled to escape than any modern challenges. We live in a demon-haunted world."

"When biologists consider the effects that predators have on their prey, they shouldn’t just count the number of individuals consumed. According to University of Rhode Island ecologist Evan Preisser, they must also examine the effects of fear."  So another impact would be what Brown et al. (1999) referred to as the ‘ecology of fear’ "to describe how in mammalian systems, where behaviourally complex predators hunt behaviourally complex prey, populations may be limited by the ‘fear’ of predation..."

The ecology of fear doesn't necessarily mean the species or individual experiences fear all the time.  Instead it means that the species has an "evolved tendency to manifest adaptive trait changes when exposed to cues associated
with heightened likelihood of mortality." 


 biologists consider the effects that predators have on their prey, they shouldn’t just count the number of individuals consumed. According to a University of Rhode Island ecologist, they must also examine the effects of fear.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news138381419.html#jCp      "Predation risk is usually a composite of several interacting factors, and so it is often difficult to quantify simply. Predation risk (death rate) for an animal is a function of attack frequency and its probability of being caught when attacked. Attack frequency (attack rate) incorporates the reaction of predators to the behavior of prey, for example, a functional and numerical response. All of the behaviors that a prey can adopt to modify its risk of being targeted and caught when attacked comprise prey vulnerability. The key variable in determining predation risk is probably prey vulnerability because predators that are foraging optimally will select the prey that give the maximum energy return for energy invested in capture, that is those individuals of a prey species that are the easiest to catch." (Stephens and Krebs, 1986).  

I contend that this fear of and worry about predation has manifested itself in modern times by certain traits:

• Wariness, and enhanced and increased vigilance 
• Pattern and movement detection 
• Alertness to the signals of predation
• Cognitive complexity 
• Jumpiness and misplaced anxiety
• Fear of fear itself 
• Creation of fear-based scenarios and a systematized methodology to evoke fear
• Creation of a virtual, malleable self-concept of 'manhood' 

In part 2 we will look at how martial artists, combat coaches and defensive skills instructors use the concept of fear as intrinsic motivation and justification for the way martial arts are taught.
 

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE
(With the Sounds of Screaming)ROUND TRIP PART 30



You know what they say:  It's all fun and games until somebody coughs up a lung.

Hill sprints.  

     At my age.  

          I must be crazy.

My son Shane and I set out a little path on a nice hillside in a lovely green meadow at Louisville's Cherokee Park, a park designed in 1891 by Frederick Law Olmstead who also designed New York City's Central Park.  

The course for our sprints was only about 50 yards long, but it got pretty steep as we neared the top.

We ran up to the top, and then we jogged back to the bottom.  Over and over (and over) again.  

It went on for hours!  

Well, technically it was only about 10 or 12 minutes or so, but it FELT like hours.

We did this at the end of an already tough workout, which started out with a thorough kettlebell workout, variations on squats and lunges, a dumbbell workout, and a long series of boxing training drills.  So we were already a little tired.

I think hill sprints are fantastic for building leg strength, core strength, explosive power and endurance.  

I hate them.

But I guess that's why we need to do them.

Starting next week week we add on extra time and/or extra laps.  Soon we'll move to the notorious dog hill, a long, steep hill just perfect for wintertime sledding, but hellish for sprinting.

Once that is accomplished, we'll probably add some weighted back packs.

But, a journey of a thousand miles begins with some preliminary cussing.

So, you da@#ed hill, here we come!  If you hear blood-curdling screams, don't worry, it's just me, coughing up that lung.
   

I'll be winging this.  Terrain is, literally, a big topic and I know I can just touch on it in a blog post.
Some things that need to be in there:
Cover
Concealment
Vision, including reflections and shadows
Movement control
Resource access
Escape routes
Unconventional applications

And all under the headings of how to read the terrain, how to use the terrain and how to manipulate the terrain.

There's way more.  This is stuff I do but rarely teach.  I'm finding a direct correlation between how well I can write or speak about something and how often I teach it.

Reading Terrain--
One of the elements to be aware of is flow of resources, and since we are talking about self-protection, you are the resource.  Bad stuff happens in predictable places. A mugger could starve waiting in random dark alleys. But the mouth of the alley between, say, the convention center hotel and the nearest strip club will give you a lot of unaware, out of shape, drunk, non-local, cash carrying businessmen.  Think about the victim profiles and where you would hunt for them.

Another element are forced flows.  Places where you must pass too close to a blind spot.  Places where the threat doesn't even move but his prey comes within arm's reach. There is a reason that women despise nightclubs with long hallways to the restroom.

Blindspots and vision spots.  Places you can't see into (blind corners, pockets of shadows) and places you, or the threat, can watch easily from.  This list expands as you get better at utilizing reflections and shadows.  And that skill is manipulatable as you can position yourself to take advantage of shadows, but you can also adjust a windowed door or place your sunglasses to maximize useful reflections.

Escape routes, choke points and death funnels.  How well you must know terrain and how you use it changes by mission.  Defensive strategies use funnels of death, offensive strategies need to bypass them quickly, for instance.  The 'funnel of death' is any small area that you and your team must bypass that allows the enemy to concentrate fire.  Choke points or bottlenecks in other words.  Escape routes are cool and the bad guy will likely have planned his.  You should look for them by habit.  The trouble with hiding strategies that have only one escape route is that by definition, when you are found, the threat will be blocking your escape route.

Cover and concealment.  Cover will stop a bullet, concealment will keep someone from seeing you.  Hiding behind drywall is concealment, but drywall won't stop most bullets.  It's not cover.  That said, I'm a little disturbed with the idea with cover as a category.  Concrete blocks are not necessarily cover for .308 rifle rounds.  I've shot through those.  Anyway, think of cover as a guideline.  Better than nothing and always use it, but don't count on it.  Also, remember, that some things change with angles. A stick-built house offers practically no cover... except if you are shooting down a hallway, the threat's bullets have to engage, because of the angle, sideways drywall and all of the studs.

Everything above you need to be able to see, but you also need to be able to exploit.  How do you see around a corner before you negotiate it?  How do you angle  to get maximum visibility at safest distance.  How do you cramp an assailant's movements?  How do you use the environment instead of simply mitigating the effects? (That's what I love about day two of the A&T seminar). How do you position yourself to maximize your useful information and minimize the threat's?

And what is there in the terrain that you can change?  Already mentioned adjusting doors and placing sunglasses to maximize vision.  There's more.  One of our old deputies always sat in a way that let him flip the chair out from between his legs in a flash.  My cell extraction method got a lot of juice from the fact that there was a concrete bench at knee height and I knew precisely where it was.  Sophisticated inmates who expected the team would soap their floors...and we countered that with kitty litter.

There's a psychological element to terrain as well.  A surprising number of people, even in emergencies, will respect a "Do Not Enter" or "Employees Only" sign.  Not bad guys, of course.  If they followed rules they wouldn't be bad guys.

Enough for now.  Big subject and I need to organize thoughts a little more.

Classifications of Violence 12 is about threat assessment.  12.1 was about adrenaline signs.  Very few people can force themselves to go hands-on cold, so adrenaline is one of the reliable signs that things are about to go south.  And certain adrenaline responses indicate skill or experience with adrenaline.  Stuff you should know.

12.3 will be about distinguishing between social and asocial violence. Threat displays versus pre-assault indicators.  Maybe.  I might go into reading terrain instead.

The other element in this equation is YOU.  Violence is used for specific purposes.  As such, it has its own logic.  Incidents of violence are chaotic because you have multiple people in an adrenalized state that is unfamiliar to at least one of them.  It's not that violence doesn't have rules, it's that you likely don't know them.

Remember, here, that I am not saying 'rules' in a game context, i.e. artificial constructs designed to control a person's behavior. I mean rules in the sense that there is a cause-and-effect relationship.  These are rules for prediction, not rules of behavior.

Violence is used for specific purposes.  Each incident has specific goals.  Dollars to feed a bad drug habit in resource predation versus gaining or clarifying status in a Monkey Dance for example.  It also has specific parameters. With a few exceptions, the druggie wants to avoid withdrawals, so he doesn't want to get caught (usually-- see Fleisher's "Beggars and Thieves" for the interesting detail that most hustlers choose to go to jail for specific reasons).  He can't afford to be injured, because then others will prey on him.  In a MD, the primary parameter is to avoid humiliation at all cost.

Another factor mandating predictability is that violence is a high-risk strategy.  When you are doing something that is dangerous, and you have a strategy that works, it is really hard and really dangerous to try something new and untested.  MOs are reliable for a reason.

So now it's about you.  The goals and parameters paradigm create a subconscious risk-reward math for the bad guy.  What rewards for what kind of crimes do you offer and what is the risk you present?

MD
Are you a young man?  Who hangs out with other young men?  While drinking?  Do you go places where said young men hang out?  Then there is some potential for MD.  If you are a little older, your Monkey Dances are likely executed with words and office politics.

GMD
Remember there are three categories.
The bonding type is rare but can possibly target anybody.  Your risk increases if you spend time where territories are in dispute (whether the edge of gang territory, war zones or sports bars) and/or you are easily identified as an outsider.
Boundary Setting should only come up if you regularly intervene in stranger's problems.  LEOs, Social Workers...
Betrayal. Partner, unless you are a member of a violent group AND they have reason to believe you have betrayed them, you don't have to worry about this one.

EBD
This one will only come up if you violate the rules of a group and will only go violent if you violate either a major rule (e.g. betrayal) or break the rules of a violent group.  And how violent will depend on the group.  So, as long as you stay in your group, you know how to behave and what to expect.  Educational Beat Down shouldn't be a problem.  If, however you travel to or liaise with groups you don't know well, there is some risk.  Risk goes up exponentially with your arrogance.

SSS
Because it is intended to break the rules of social violence, everyone is slightly vulnerable.  That said, this is a pattern pretty much exclusive to violent criminal subcultures.  If you don't spend time around such people, your risk is minimal.

Resource Predator
If you look like you have money (some money, not much-- homeless people rob each other all the time) and you don't look like you'd be a problem (easy to intimidate either psychologically or physically) you're a target for muggers.  There are lots of behaviors that can raise your risk-- not paying attention, getting drunk, being alone in a high-risk locations.  That's all standard self-defense advice.

Process Predator
In some ways, this is the hardest to narrow down the victim profiles.  The process predator is idiosyncratic.  For example, someone who gets addicted to the status seeking show (SSS) may prefer to assault, humiliate and kill or cripple big, strong, men.  He has learned over time that sudden ferocity trumps skill or physicality and it is simply worth more reputation, and feels more satisfying, to beat a big man. Another may choose his victims for his own safety. An opportunistic rapist may target any vulnerable or small woman who piques his interest...and another rapist may only target women who subconsciously remind him of his mother.  Generally, though, people who don't look like they will put up a fight are the safest bet for the predator; and most want an inner weakness or emotional lability.  They want to see a victim cry, scream and beg.

Most in-shape martial athletes are, at most, on the target list for a Monkey Dance.  The safest and most avoidable.  If you teach self-defense you have to look at each of your student's with predator's eyes (all the different types of bad guys) to determine what they are likely to face.