Tony Blauer has spent his life, his career studying and teaching about self defense. He is the developer of the SPEAR System, which is a self defense methodology that focuses on developing situational awareness and dealing with threatening situations so we don't even have to use violence. In this episode, we discuss how to develop your situational awareness, how to diffuse threatening situations, and what to do when you actually have to roll up your sleeves and get dirty.
00:02:42.980I was drawn and fascinated to the Wild Wild West and Bruce Lee and the original Green Hornet, you know, black and white back in the days, just stuff changing the color.
00:15:43.400And so it was purely studying real violence, not sparring for self-defense or martial arts for self-defense.
00:15:51.340And that's one of our big, big, big goals in 2016 is to re-educate the general public to understand that there are three categories of what looks like self-defense.
00:16:05.020There's martial arts, which – and I've been a martial artist for over three decades, four decades now.
00:16:37.920But it's still physical moves that may or may not be applicable in a self-defense situation.
00:16:42.020Like, for example, pulling guard and trying to get somebody in a triangle choke, amazing move, isn't a good move to do if it's a multiple assailant and you're the one, right?
00:16:52.300And so people misunderstand that and people are subjective listeners so they look at that and they fixate and then, you know, I'll get a whole bunch of hate mail people saying Tony said jiu-jitsu is not good.
00:17:05.740You might get really good at the wrong thing for that scenario.
00:17:08.920There's only one type of self-defense and that's real-world self-defense.
00:17:13.240And so if you look at the three categories, if you say I want to learn how to protect myself, you need to carefully go, wait a minute, there's martial arts and there's a thousand of them.
00:17:22.660There's combat sports and there's maybe 10 legitimate combat sports.
00:17:53.240You know, but it's like I could teach you in four hours how to do CPR and first aid and the Heimlich maneuver and you can actually save somebody's life, right?
00:18:08.460And so that's the big epiphany, light bulb moment I need people to get is that, wait a minute, I don't need to be a doctor to save somebody's life.
00:18:16.880I need to be a doctor to do brain surgery or a heart transplant.
00:18:20.180And so you don't need to be a black belt to protect yourself.
00:18:23.020You just need to understand situational awareness, how to manage fear, and then a couple of simple gross motor movements.
00:18:50.840If danger is imminent, you do everything you can to choose safety.
00:18:55.540And so one of the things we talk about is that don't let ego or pride dictate your next strategy.
00:19:02.960If your training model doesn't include walking and running away from a confrontation, I remember doing scenarios, you know, we started doing these force-on-force scenarios back in the 80s.
00:19:15.520And I would say to the group, okay, confrontation is going to happen over here.
00:19:19.280And then you see that doorway, you know, near the bathroom in the exit of my school.
00:19:25.040If you can break contact and get to there, that's the police.
00:20:14.120Almost three decades ago, we created Detect, Defuse, Defend, the three Ds.
00:20:18.240Detect and avoid, defuse and deescalate, and a push comes to shove, defend yourself, be your own bodyguard.
00:20:24.280And that's what, you know, when you say, hey, what's a good self-defense program look like?
00:20:28.520It's one that is professional and mature and takes into account the moral, ethical, and legal considerations and medical considerations of just not being, you know, having like this brashness or bravado.
00:20:42.580I mean, I just, there's so much stuff out there that when you watch, I just watched a video of some guy teaching his system where, like, on this video online and on his YouTube channel, he actually says kind of very cavalier, not even cavalier, just, he goes, if somebody kills somebody using my system, then they probably deserved it and I'll be happy.
00:21:03.060And I'm like, whoa, dude, we live in the most litigious time of our world.
00:21:07.900Like, what a stupid, immature, unprofessional thing to say.
00:21:11.120You know, just the way it came across, it's that macho, martial that gives us in the community like a bad rap with the general public.
00:21:19.400But our definition is super, super simple, and I don't think there's ever been a definition for self-defense.
00:21:26.840It's dangerous, imminent, you do everything you can to choose safety.
00:21:48.980And it gives me this move away from the danger to move towards the danger.
00:21:52.980But what it's actually asking my brain to do is to actually look at the stimulus, look at the scenario, and then choose the response that best supports safety.
00:25:34.920Once you store that and the reticular cortex is actually part of developing situational awareness.
00:25:39.780So if you read a little bit and study a little bit about, you know, some of the habits or some of the setups and you think about that, you visualize it, you put it in your brain.
00:25:47.260So, for example, let's say you decide to buy a new car or you decide you're going to move and rent a house or get a new apartment.
00:25:53.400And think about a time you did that in your life, probably the next day when you said, that's it, I'm moving.
00:26:18.400But they were there the same, you know, yesterday.
00:26:20.640You just didn't notice them because it wasn't important.
00:26:23.140So part of developing situational awareness, you know, for people who maybe aren't going to get to a course and just think about this, is when if there's a trend like when the knockout game was going around or if there's, you know, things that the police or the news or a good article says, this is how this pickpocket or this mugging or this carjacking is going to get set up.
00:26:45.260As scary as it is to think about it, think about it, visualize it, and then let your brain go, okay, that would be important for me if I saw those pre-contact cues.
00:26:54.780But the real pre-contact cue is the bad feeling.
00:26:57.900And the bad feeling is we tell people, listen, if you get a bad feeling about something, spend those extra five minutes and address it.
00:27:03.860If it was a false alarm because you're just maybe paranoid or overthinking something, guess what?
00:27:17.240Should I ignore it or should I pull into this gas station here and see if they pull into or should I drive to the police station or should I, you know, speed up and if they follow me, I'll drive home and then they'll know where I live.
00:27:28.320You know what I'm saying is like, so you can do little things where you find out, oh, you know, that person isn't following me and I just misread that.
00:28:05.160If you trust your instincts and you trust your intuition, whatever you do will be intelligent.
00:28:09.740You know, bad guys only want one of three things, property, body or life.
00:28:14.000So the third way to develop great situational awareness is actually to spend an hour or a day or a weekend kind of observing yourself and your routine and going, when would I attack Brett?
00:29:14.100Or, you know, what, you know, how am I handling myself, you know, in, in this, you know, in this bar?
00:29:20.120I just bumped into a guy and, you know, he was, he was a real asshole and I apologized and I went over and ignored him.
00:29:30.620I didn't watch to see if he was drinking and looking at his buddies and pointing.
00:29:33.860I mean, there's simple things that you do where you go, if, if this wanted, if this person wanted to escalate this, I'm not even thinking about that.
00:29:44.360Cause I think a lot of guys who are listening to this and I think a lot of men have a problem with this aspect is like, they want to like, they see a threat and they want to do something about it.
00:29:52.740But you are, you should, your next step should be diffuse or fighting fire with water.
00:30:18.780So, so, so detect and avoid all works almost all the time.
00:30:23.620If it doesn't, it's usually because you have a situation like in an office, in an elevator, you're in a confined space, or it's a situation where, um, part of your routine means that you're always going to see that person.
00:30:35.400So you need to be able to verbally, uh, defuse and deescalate.
00:30:39.600So in that, in that process, what we're talking about is, is understanding, uh, a concept we call choice speech.
00:30:45.620And in choice speech is understanding language that's going to create count, conscience and accountability.
00:30:51.440That's going to make the person reflect on things.
00:30:54.140It's also using language that doesn't, um, you know, fan the flames of the confrontation.
00:30:59.820Someone says, Hey, what are you looking at?
00:31:01.520And you look at them and go, you know, I'm looking at you.
00:31:10.920Clearly, you know, it's going to, uh, it's going to create more of an adrenaline dump.
00:31:14.540It's going to create more of an adrenaline dump in the bad guy.
00:31:17.340So, um, the, the, it's, it's really each scenario is different, but it's thinking of, again, that language that's going to be congruent with avoidance.
00:31:31.120And so it's, you know, you know, and, and at times you, you might, you might yell at the person, get away from me, man.
00:31:39.340Like, you know, like, like, just go, go with what you feel like the scenario will always influence and dictate.
00:31:46.460Um, but in general, the, the verbal defuse, and it's interesting, you know, that might seem confusing to someone listening going, Hey, how do you like, how do you aggressively assert yourself and consider that a verbal defuse?
00:31:58.620If the, if the outcome was the person left, you know, so you might have to hear somebody, uh, um, jiggling at your door and, and you scream to, uh, uh, your roommate who isn't there, you know, Bob, get the shotgun right now.
00:32:22.980But you're like alone freaking out and you like, you, you know, there's two guys outside your door trying to, you know, they might hear that.
00:32:28.620And, you know, whereas if you said like, um, Hey guys, you know, I'm home alone right now.
00:32:33.120I really don't know anything about self-defense.
00:32:34.660I think, you know, you, you're breaking the law and you should feel bad about that.
00:32:37.620And, you know, uh, like, like defusing it like that, you're probably going to get the door kicked in.
00:33:05.680You know, we, we sell ideas every single day.
00:33:09.140You know, a guy trying to pick up a girl is a great salesman.
00:33:12.040Here's why you should go on a date with me.
00:33:14.060Um, uh, you know, you know, if you're a salesman, you're, you're great at it.
00:33:17.680And so what we're doing is we're selling the idea of, we don't want to fight.
00:33:22.300And I had a confrontation once, um, and it was very funny.
00:33:26.120I'm, uh, you know, originally when I conceptualized this whole D2 concept, it was all about, you know, being peaceful about it and trying to resolve this without any violence.
00:33:37.640And, uh, I had these two guys at my school, uh, who came in and, and they were, you know, they turned out to be jerks and, and, and, uh, and, uh, you know, I spent like 15 minutes talking to them.
00:33:49.280And, and then, you know, they said on the way out, you know, I said, Hey man, why don't you guys come in and try a class?
00:34:15.820Uh, you could have just said, Hey, what's different about this?
00:34:18.020We just would have talked about stuff.
00:34:19.220And, you know, you still could have come in and try to class, but you didn't have to pretend you were, you know, and they kind of like looked at me.
00:34:25.700And then one of them said, uh, you know, uh, you guys do any multiple sailing drills?
00:34:30.120And I'm like, you mean like if you two like attacked me and like, they just kind of like looked at me like dicks.
00:34:37.400And I said, here's what's going to happen, man.
00:34:48.280And I looked over at his buddy and I, then you're going to freak out and you're going to run because you're a chicken and you're going to leave him here.
00:35:59.960And it was, it was an interesting paradigm shift for me because, you know, I was kind of like, you know, had this myopic view that it had to be, you know, so the balance there is again, what I said earlier is that you want to, whether you go soft or whether you go hard with the verbal,
00:36:16.080the goal should be based on the definition, am I doing what I need to do to choose safety here?
00:36:41.660So, so one of the things that we do in our, in our one and two day courses is we show video interviews and some footage and talk about people who've had absolutely no training,
00:36:52.580but have fought off like home invasion or carjackers, attempted murder, attempted rapist, right?
00:36:58.280Like, like it's not, we're not like going, see this guy doing a double leg here.
00:37:23.400What I'm saying here is that your personal defense and combat sports are different things.
00:37:29.660You can't do a weekend seminar with us and then jump in a cage and fight a trained fighter or even an amateur boxer, because when you agree to their rules, they're going to tear you up.
00:37:42.080But what we're doing is, is by thinking that that's what the fight will look like, or that's how it'll go.
00:37:50.160What we're doing is we're subordinating ourself to that event.
00:37:55.420And we're visualizing what people who are skilled in that are going to do to us.
00:38:00.360And that's not at all what self-defense is like.
00:38:02.860And so when I think, you know, if I ask somebody, what do you describe some self-defense moves, they'll say things like elbow, knee, punch, headbutt.
00:38:14.620I say, okay, and so describe a scenario.
00:38:17.080Somebody's grabbed me like this, and I do that.
00:38:19.980In other words, they've already seen themselves getting attacked, and then they're thinking about a physical move, almost like a Houdini situation.
00:38:28.480You know, look at most self-defense is like Houdini self-defense.
00:38:31.580And so what I mean by that is he's agreed to have somebody tie his hands behind his back, put chains around his feet, put them in a box, and then submerge them in water, right?
00:38:41.380In other words, you know, you need to be really skilled to get out of that, and then everyone goes, holy, right?
00:38:48.240And so when we see, you know, the choreography in the John Wick movie, if you saw that, great choreography, and when we see, you know, demos of the best jujitsu guys, the best Thai boxers and all that,
00:39:00.980we go, man, wow, and it is truly amazing.
00:39:04.660But if those guys were in a sudden street attack, they would be just explosive, you know, with one or two moves, and the bad guy would be dropped or down.
00:39:13.120They wouldn't get into the highly technical, and some of the stuff that took them years to cultivate would never even be called upon in that sudden self-defense situation.
00:39:24.680So what we want is really a simple gross motor, primal gross motor movement, core to extremity movements.
00:39:33.620And so if you can do a push-up, you can do a palm strike.
00:39:35.860If you can do a press, you can do a palm strike.
00:39:38.180If you can do any movement where you're, you know, that movement where your hands, so if somebody was in your face with a knife, with a gun, grabbed your throat, grabbed your shirt, was threatening you,
00:39:47.960your start of flinch would immediately lock and load your hands.
00:46:18.840So what are some big myths about those situations where you actually have to defend yourself that a lot of,
00:46:25.060you see a lot of people have about self-defense?
00:46:28.060Like, you know, what role does, do weapons play in self-defense?
00:46:32.940Are most encounters that we're going to have, are they going to be close encounters where we're actually not going to be able to get to a weapon?
00:46:39.000And what are some of the big myths out there about self-defense?
00:46:41.080I think one of the really, really big ones is, like, concealed carry and weapons.
00:46:52.140And, you know, if you're in an active shooter situation, if you're in an active shooter situation and you have concealed carry,
00:47:04.000that's a great tool to have if you're not, like, in the kill zone when something's happening.
00:47:11.440And even then, you know, it's still a great weapon to have.
00:47:14.360But most confrontations, most confrontations are, at least the ones that you can actually influence the outcome, happen at extreme close quarters, right?
00:47:24.520And so you need to have this startle-flinch convert.
00:47:28.940You need to have, like, when that holy moment happens, I call it the jack-in-the-box moment, right?
00:47:33.800We had, at a couple of seminars, an old jack-in-the-box.
00:47:37.960And I said, here's what I want you to do.
00:48:23.860What people don't realize is when you say that I've done all this training to get out of this headlock is that you've always done one more rep letting yourself get in a headlock.
00:48:35.140You've always done one more rep letting somebody stick a gun in your face so that you can do all those reps defending against the gun, right?
00:48:43.540And it's a big, big, you know, when people have this realization during the course, they're like, holy.
00:48:47.840Now, don't, again, don't jump on this and go, Tony said that stuff, you know, you shouldn't do that.
00:49:41.320One of the things that I like people to think about is just cognitive dissonance.
00:49:44.820That's like our brain trying to pretend things are right, like correct things that we know aren't right and going, no, they wouldn't do that to me or that can't be happening.
00:49:54.200And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, the biggest thing, and I know this is like a, like just a short kind of like, you know, compressed talk about 30 years of research.
00:50:05.320But there's so much information that we try to pack in, it doesn't manifest itself either, you know, on game day or when we go to execute because of performance anxiety and we can't get out of our head.
00:50:17.160We, you know, and that's to me the biggest secret that, you know, or the area to look at, you know, for, for all your listeners is in anything in life is, you know, what is going to hold you back is going to be part of your belief system and part of your understanding of, of the psychology of fear.
00:50:35.160You will notice the biology of fear and the physiology of fear first, those butterflies, that, that nervous sensation, you know, the avoidance to do something and, you know, and you get that fear spike in your body.
00:50:47.800But that's the sign of, am I going to use this as a trigger and as fuel to move towards what I'm perceiving as danger or am I going to, you know, shrink from this and it's going to throttle what I have to do in, you know, for me, obviously my bias is self-defense, but there's something transcendent that happens, you know, when, you know, you do, you do a course where the focus is your, your safety and the safety of a loved one.
00:51:16.440And you get to the end of that and you go, you know what, my self-defense IQ has changed drastically and, uh, I will protect myself or a loved one.
00:51:28.180And then if you look at that and you kind of use that as a, as, as a barometer against any other challenge in life, what could be more scary than a violent confrontation?
00:51:38.980Like asking somebody out on a date, opening a business, uh, uh, you know, uh, asking somebody to, uh, lower their voice or talk to you with a little bit more respect.
00:51:49.360Like all of that pales in comparison to, you know, being in a D3 situation.
00:51:55.980So it's, it sounds like, yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're trying to do more besides teaching people how to defend themselves.
00:52:01.940Like, it sounds like one of the goals of your, what you're doing too, is like to, yeah, like you said, transcend that as well and improve other aspects of their life.
00:52:10.260I mean, that's a serendipitous aspect of, of the course.
00:52:13.720Like, I'm not like, you know, I'm not going to have a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, a business card that says life coach.
00:52:20.840Life coach, Tony Blower, life coach, you know, human weapon.
00:52:23.560But yeah, but, uh, but, but, you know, my focus is, and has been for three decades plus teaching self-defense.
00:52:31.880What we've noticed is, you know, I'll get a letter from a mom who does the course goes, Hey, you know, uh, um, uh, I taught my son who's been terrified of swimming, how to swim using some of your fear management principles.
00:52:44.740Uh, email from a dad, Hey, I got my teenage daughter off of antidepressants using your psycho behavior and just sticking with her.
00:52:52.160And I'm like reading that going, Holy, like, like, like, like, I don't know how they did it, but there was something in the program that connected with them that gave them some sort of strength, some sort of roadmap to do that.
00:53:05.840Uh, we had, uh, um, uh, you know, a, uh, a CrossFit coach listened to one of our stuff and, you know, went out and, and, uh, PR'd something that he'd been working on for 18 months and realized that he had been doing that
00:53:22.040lift in the fear loop with visualizing fear and failure and, and, uh, just seeing the map we do, you know, we do this, this block called the, uh, cycle behavior, which is the neural circuitry of fear.
00:53:33.620Just what happens when your brain gets this fear spike.
00:53:36.440And, uh, so people see it and, you know, suddenly it's like the, it clicks in their head and they go, I got to try that thinking this.
00:54:00.920You know, so, you know, if you're mountain, if you're on a mountain bike and you're going down a trail and, and, you know, you, you're looking for rocks or you're looking for openings.