Thought for the day. In the martial arts and self-defense, you hear a lot of crap about what will and won’t work in the “real world.” Everything is as real as it is, and no more. All things are what they are, and all only extrapolate so far. Written about all that before. So everything … [Read more…]
Mac says most things can be broken down in threes. Speed, surprise, violence of action. Power, speed precision. Move, shoot, communicate. Awareness, initiative, permission. It works quite often, and sometimes it doesn’t. I guess the rule is to never fall in love with a model to the extent that you try to force the world … [Read more…]
One of the things that makes communication difficult and some problems hard to solve is that very different things can be the same thing. I wrote about DV as an example of taxonomies some time ago. Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder are both different, but they get to the same place, seeing people … [Read more…]
Violence is a visceral thing and people tend to respond to it emotionally. There is always an emotional element to an act of force. Simultaneously, people assume a moral aspect to an act of force. One person is assumed to be the good guy, one assumed to be the bad guy. Combined, these make a … [Read more…]
Kasey and I were talking about teaching, and teaching teaching, and about people. In any field there are some people that just don’t get “it.” Whatever “it” is for that field. There are some people who shouldn’t be cops. Sometimes because their emotionally vulnerability makes them unable to deal with manipulators, sometimes because their lack … [Read more…]
There’s a trueism in elite teams. You don’t create extraordinary operators in training. You discover them in selection. Then you polish them in training. Want to have a stable of extraordinary fighters in any martial art? Make the training tough. Make the training so tough that 90% of your people drop out. The people who stick … [Read more…]
Coming soon! Rory’s new book on teaching. Section 1: The Unique Problem of Self-Defense Section 1.1: Rarity Section 1.2 An Open, Not a Closed System Section 1.3 Surprise, Fear and Speed Section 1.4 The Problem is Longitudinal Section 1.5 The Problem Exists in the Real World Section 1.6 You are Teaching Students, not Subject Matter … [Read more…]
Context and timing. Real attacks versus sparring artifacts. One of the common patterns of shanking works from a handshake. The bad guy shakes your hand on some pretext and then pulls you in as he stabs you about in the armpit. I don’t usually teach knife defense for a number of reasons, if you know … [Read more…]
The class was working on power generation, using the center of gravity to slam extra power up into a strike or down into a strike. Two types of wave power. One man interrupted. Through the translator, he said, “But I don’t want to hit. My reaction will be to defuse and avoid.” Wrong place, wrong … [Read more…]
The following is a selected post from Conflict Manager Magazine. Full access to this monthly magazine is available to subscribers only. Click here to subscribe. Interesting in submitting an article for publication? Email: editor@writeme.com ————————————- There are very few facts. There are very few truths. There may be one best way to do a … [Read more…]