#81 Target Focus Training With Tim Larkin
Episode Stats
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Summary
Tim Larkin is a self-defense instructor who has been teaching a self defense program called Target-Focused Training for the past 20 years. In this episode, we talk about the difference between antisocial and asocial violence, and how to deal with it in everyday life situations.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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So if you were confronted with a really bad guy, a person who was threatening your life
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or the life of your loved ones, and they had the capacity to do it, would you know what
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Well, our guest today has been training individuals on this very matter, what to do in these life
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His name is Tim Larkin, and for the past 20 years, he has been teaching a self-defense
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program called Target-Focused Training to military special forces around the world, along with
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law enforcement officers, as well as high-profile clientele, collegiate actors and business executives.
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And Target-Focused Training, as we'll find out, is all about using violence to kill someone,
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to disable them so you can come out and survive.
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So in this podcast, we're going to talk about what Target-Focused Training involves and how
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it's different from sport combat, you know, like MMA and things like that.
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We're going to talk about the mind of a criminal.
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We're going to talk about the difference between antisocial and asocial violence and how sometimes
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the best response in some of those, you know, everyday confrontations is just to walk away
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and then how do you know when you need to escalate your response in order to protect yourself or your
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And we also talk about why studying criminals, people who use violence on a regular basis,
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is the best way to learn how to use violence to protect yourself.
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So it's a really fascinating podcast, very interesting.
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And yes, I'm aware that not too long ago, just two episodes ago, we did a podcast on violence and
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Please don't read any, you know, too much into the scheduling of the podcast.
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It's just the way the schedule shook out with guest availability and whatnot.
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We're not turning into the art of how to kill people podcast.
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So don't worry that we're going in some weird direction.
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So if this isn't your thing, check back next week because we'll have a great show as well
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With that said, I had to say that caveat because I know I'd get emails and tweets complaining
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So can you give a little bit of background on yourself for those who aren't familiar with
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Yeah, I'm actually in my 26th year of being a professional instructor doing this, which
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My grandfather was a South Boston trained boxer and got me into boxing early on as a young
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So I moved all around and got into the Korean martial arts because that's really all that
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And it wasn't until I got into the Navy that I got introduced to, you know, the nexus of
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this approach to violence that has become target focused training.
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Um, it was an ex Vietnam vet that I ran into and, uh, it was, it's completely, you know,
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it was one of those things where, you know, I went into, I was going into the SEAL teams
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Like we won hell week, you know, I was first in everything.
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And then two weeks before I was going to graduate, um, got into a diving accident, blew my ears,
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And it just literally just changed my whole life because, uh, I no longer was going to
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I wasn't going to go to the team that I was going to go to, which was the hottest SEAL team
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Um, my whole plans had been turned upside down.
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I just, I just thought my life was, as I knew it at, you know, a 22 year old kid, it was
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over, you know, and actually it was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me
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Um, I worked, went and worked for the Admiral of, uh, the SEAL teams at the time.
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They kept me in the community because they liked me, but it's the only reason they kept
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And they had made me a special operations intelligence officer.
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And they put me in a position because we were in expansion road in the SEAL teams at that
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So they put me in a very senior position, even though I was a very junior officer, it was
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mainly because I was broken, you know, cause I couldn't dive.
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So they figured why put a healthy SEAL in this position?
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We can just use this kid who kind of knows what's, you know, what we're all about and
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And so here I was, I was hanging out with these legends of the SEAL teams and they started
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looking at a problem in the late, you know, uh, late eighties, early nineties of the fact
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that the world was changing and that we were going to have to start putting hands on people.
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They basically predicted what we're dealing with today, warfare wise.
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And they realized that the current military in the late eighties hadn't really trained to
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kick doors in, put hands on people, deal with close combat.
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And so they started looking at that again and, um, you know, I was in this little group
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that was exposed to all the different martial arts systems and, um, trainers that were available.
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And by chance I ended up finding the guy, you know, here's the guy with the least experience.
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I had no, you know, no deployment experience at all.
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And I ended up finding the guy right around the corner.
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We were flying these guys to Coronado from all over the world.
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And the guy we ended up using with for the pilot program literally lived in Pacific beach
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about, you know, less than a half a mile away from my apartment.
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And the only reason I found out about the guy was because a DEA agent called me up, a
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buddy of mine and said, Hey, are you guys still doing that punchy, kicky stuff?
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Cause he, everybody back then thought martial arts, you know, was stupid.
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He goes, Hey, well, there's this guy that has a real rep in Pacific beach.
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He goes, you get along with personalities like that.
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And I went in and basically was just blown away.
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But what I saw, I walked into what looked like a slow motion prison riot.
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And even though I was really well trained back then, I saw things going on.
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I saw one guy, you know, just coming in and basically he kicked the guy, he kicked the
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And then all of a sudden knife came out of nowhere and he was simulating, stabbing the
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And all I could think of was, this is exactly what, you know, I've seen on the street, you
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know, in the streets of Boston, I saw a guy get stabbed.
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I've seen a couple of guys, you know, real violence has happened before, but I've never
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seen anybody training for something that looked like real violence.
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And, you know, long story short, bought, you know, we brought him in and this guy was a
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And that, that unit got a lot of, a lot of coverage back then, a lot of combat coverage.
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And this guy was in the tunnels and all that stuff.
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He intimately understood how to integrate, you know, the combat soldier with his tools so
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that everything works together, meaning you start them out completely stripped down to
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your, basically you're just boxers and your t-shirt.
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And once you can take care of yourself with your own human machine, when I start giving
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you back tools, you're even that more effective.
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And that was just a really, really cool concept.
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And it completely changed the way I looked at, you know, how, how to deal with, you know,
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Interesting. So it all started with this mad, the mad master.
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Yeah, it wasn't mad. You know what it is? It's anytime somebody really understands lethal
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application, oftentimes they're seen as a little bit off because nobody likes to talk about the
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subject of violence. And, you know, like some of the top snipers that I've talked to, you
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know, got, you know, friends of mine, oftentimes people just say how intense these guys are,
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how, you know, how, how they come off. And it's not bad. It's just a familiarity with
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the subject. They're very comfortable with the subject that most people are extremely
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Yeah. Okay. So, uh, you, you, you started, you found this guy, so you brought him into
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the training and then from there, uh, you've developed what you call target focus training.
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Uh, can you, I mean, briefly describe, uh, what target focus training is and how it differs
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Yeah, there's, there's probably two focuses with us. First, we focus on, um, you know,
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I got to educate the client first. And the first thing that I do, if you come through the doors
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is we quickly identify the difference between antisocial aggression and asocial violence.
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Antisocial aggression is really what a lot of people go to martial arts training for. And,
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uh, you know, and, and, and, you know, fighting and, and MMA training. It's, it's really basically,
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you know, I got picked on in school or the bully, he said something to me at the bar and I want to
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Yeah. And, uh, that stuff really, like I just lump all that stuff in antisocial aggression,
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which is completely avoidable. Meaning you have to choose to participate in that.
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Somebody insults you or drops a drink on you or calls you, uh, or, or, you know,
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says something offensive to you and you choose to participate when you have an exit.
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That's a choice to use violence. And it's just, it's, it's just never worth it. You know,
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I know oftentimes everybody thinks it's great, but I can just give you a horror stories of people
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on both ends of the equation. Guys that did that ended up inadvertently killing the individual
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or vice versa. You know, they ended up getting seriously grievous bodily harm over something that
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doesn't pass what I call the three-day test. Meaning three days from now, is this incident going to
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matter to you? And, and very few things do. Now, the other side of the equation that we talk about,
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which we're kind of more known for, because that's what gets us the press is, is anti or
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asocial violence. And that's where it's imminent. Violence is imminent. There's no escape.
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You have to take action. If you don't take action, you're essentially participating in your
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own murder because you're going to be facing grievous bodily harm. And this is the area that makes
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everybody kind of uncomfortable. You know, it's the unthinkable that's happening. And how do you deal
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with imminent violence? How do you deal with another human being or human beings coming at you?
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And, you know, the assumption always has to be the person's going to be, the threat's going to be
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bigger, faster, and stronger. We assume they're going to carry weapons and we assume that there's
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going to be more than one because that's just the real world. And if any of those things aren't true,
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then, Hey, that's a, that's a Christmas gift to you. That's fantastic. You know,
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but if we go off of that premise, we say, okay, what type of, what type of methods and principles
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work in that environment? And you really come back to the idea of the vulnerability of the human body,
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which gets exposed in sports injury. If you look at sports injury data, you find all the areas of the
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human body that can't take trauma. I was intimately familiar with this as a young, you know, sealed
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candidate going through. I was, like I said, I was the number one guy in my class. I was going to be
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the, um, the anchor man. I was getting the award, which is the number one guy in each class that
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graduates. I was unstoppable. And yet I was stopped dead in my tracks by an injury, something that I
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couldn't will, I couldn't work through. We just got it out. It was a physiological breaking of a
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sensory system of my body that just couldn't be fixed. Um, and that's really what you want to look
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at when you're facing a bigger, faster, stronger threat, you're going to have to put an injury on
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them that takes their brain, their will, everything out of the equation. Um, and that's really kind of
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the whole focus on how we look at the subject matter. That's why it's called target focus
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training. You target specific areas in the body. Yeah. Well, all we do is where do you put the effort
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basically? You know, if I'm going to do something where somebody will sit there and they'll show
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something that looks aggressive, a lot of people like to show aggressive type stuff. And when I look at
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that, it's just mindless, I look at it as mindless aggression, the same slam that you just did to
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the guy's chest. You know, if you just moved it up three inches, you'd crush his throat, you know,
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and it's a completely different response to something like that. If your life's on the line,
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um, one could just potentially annoy the person. The other one will absolutely incapacitate them so
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that you can put another injury on them and save your life. So here's a question that I have when you
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were talking about, um, anti-social aggression and asocial violence. I mean, how do you develop
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the ability to distinguish between the two? Because some people might take anti-social
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aggression as, you know, asocial violence. Uh, I mean, what, I mean, are there signs in human
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behavior when you know that this is turning into, it's, you know, shifting from aggression to violence?
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Yeah. It, it, it essentially, it's very, it's actually very straightforward. It just comes down
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to choice. Meaning if you have to ask yourself, is this the time to use violence? It's not. There
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won't be a question in your mind when it happens. Let me give you a quick example. Um, I train all
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over the world and when I was in London, uh, I go there, I used to go there all the time. Um, and
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in 2000, I believe it was 2005, an incident rocked London. A young lawyer got stabbed to death in a park.
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He came home at night. Um, he actually lived in a good part of London and went through a park that
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was not a dangerous park. This wasn't a dodgy area at all, but that night he was followed by two
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Eastern European gangsters who saw him as a, just an opportunity. You know, he's a nicely dressed kid
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and, uh, you know, he was the first one in his family to even get beyond basic education. He took
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it all the way to university, became a lawyer, was extremely successful. It was a great story as a
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person. You know, the achievement this kid had as he's walking through the park, these guys come up
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behind him, draw knives, pin them up against a tree and demand all his stuff, you know, and this kid
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does everything right. He gives them the watch, the wallet. Um, he gives them, uh, you know, the,
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the briefcase they wanted and they left and everybody loves that part of the story. The second time they
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came back, their knives, their knives were drawn, their heads were down. They rushed him and stabbed
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him 47 times. And as he was being stabbed, the, the people said, as they were hearing him scream,
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he was screaming, I gave you everything. I gave you everything. My goal for any client is to understand
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the difference between those two situations. And in the first situation, you have an opportunity to
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engage somebody socially and possibly use your social skills to talk your way out of the situation.
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In the second situation, the only tool that's going to get you out of that is violence and you
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have to know how to use it because it's imminent. Yeah. And so that, uh, in that case you would
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go for, I mean, I guess, I guess the thing is like you, you were talking about, you would punch a,
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punch a throat, um, groin attacks, I guess would be something. Would eye gouges be involved in this?
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All of that's, all of that's available to you. Basically you're looking at the, the, the,
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when you're, when you're putting an injury in the human body, you're either destroying a structure
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of the human body or you're destroying a sensory system of the human body. And, and, and you're
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doing it in a way that the pain part of it's irrelevant, meaning because everybody has a
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different blood threshold of pain, it's functionality that you're destroying. You want to make sure that
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when you, uh, you know, if you're going to slam a guy and you're going to, you're going to go after
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his ankle that you're ripping the connective tissue to the point to where, you know, any,
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any radiologist looking at the film would just sit there and say, Hey, I don't care whether this guy
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feels it or not. He's not going to be able to walk on that. And that's really what you're looking at.
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And it's a very different approach because a lot of times people talk about pain and they talk about,
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you know, rushing somebody and doing things that are just, they look aggressive, but they're highly
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ineffective. Hmm. So you're, we're, we're going for like maiming, right? So this is, well, you're
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going, you're going for a result. Yeah. And again, you know, it sounds like it's overly aggressive.
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It sounds like, you know, you're, you're, you're just teaching people to automatically go into kill
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mode. And that's not the case at all. What we found is the more people are trained, you know,
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when we were originally training just military and law enforcement, when we, the higher up they were
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in the skillset of justified lethal force, the less likely they were to have reports of excessive force
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on the job or, you know, any type of incidents outside of the job, as far as getting into fights
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or anything like that. Because once you understand how the human body responds to trauma, it's not one
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of those things that you want to try out. You know, it's, it's, it's akin to, you know, going out in the
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range, shooting a 45 and then, you know, asking yourself, well, gee, I don't really know if this
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would work. Maybe I'll just blow a hole in the guy next to me to see if it's, you know, going to work.
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It's, it's that ridiculous. Meaning once you understand how the body responds to trauma and
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you see this, and then we have numerous videos of, you know, sports injuries and also real violence
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showing just how quickly the body shuts down when it's truly injured. That's the skillset you want
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to build when your life's on the line. Interesting. Okay. So, uh, I mean, is this
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something you can train at home by yourselves or do you need to have a, a, you know, go to a gym or
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I don't know what you call it, a dojo. I don't know what you call it. Um, and because like research
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has shown like on, for tactical training to be like really, really effective, uh, you need to make it
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as real as possible. So it's, you know, military and LEOs, they'll sometimes use simunition and have
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like a 3d arena. Right. Um, how do you do that with target focus training without killing your
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partner? Well, you know, it's funny people, uh, when they, when they approach this type of, of idea,
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this training, you know, I guess what's really funny to me when I look at like, you know, combat
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sports and MMA in general, everybody wants to go ballistic right out of the gate. Hey, you gotta be
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real. You gotta be real. You gotta stress you out right away. It's just like, there's no training,
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no lethal training that's ever done that way. Only jack off training is done that way. Meaning
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you would not go to a range and I, you know, I don't take you down to my kill house basically,
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you know, load you up, load you up, you know, your first time loads you up, go, Hey, yeah,
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you point the gun this way, throw you in the kill house and have people start shooting at you.
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Yeah. Which is essentially the way most people try to train combat sports,
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which is ridiculous. Um, the good guys learn that you have to be slow, deliberate at first to lock
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in all the correct movement. And then, so you do the correct, you know, it's a special operations.
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You basically do the crawl, the walk and the run. And so if I was shooting, I would first make sure
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that I've locked in everything so that I can actually hit my target statically as many times
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as possible with no stress, just doing that. Then I'll probably start to dynamically move a little
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bit. I'll start moving and shooting a little bit. Okay. I get comfortable doing that.
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Now the target's going to start moving. And then the last thing we're going to do is we'll,
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we'll do the semination, uh, semination training, but you would not step into that process until
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you really built a really good foundation. And it doesn't take a long time to do that,
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you know, uh, you know, learning that, but we start out, you know, with people slowly and
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deliberately learning how to engage body weight into each one of these areas. And all, the only thing
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we pull out at the beginning is just the velocity, meaning going full speed. If you look at a lot of,
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you know, quote unquote reality, self-defense, it just, it looks, it looks, it looks, sorry about
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that. Yeah. It just looks ridiculous. These guys are doing these, these static movements
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and they're making real aggressive sounds and ha ha ha ha ha. And then just slap on a video of a
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prison yard takedown and see how those guys go. And they don't go like that. They don't fight like
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that. They don't kill like that. They kill slow and deliberate. I got a great video of the black
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gorilla family members, two of them, and they're sitting there simulating, stabbing to the human body
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and they're doing it slow and deliberate. And they're doing it in kind of not the most obvious
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parts of the human body. Uh, and when the corrections officer, who's a really good friend of mine was
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showing me this, he goes, Hey, what are they doing? I said, well, they're obviously teaching themselves
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how to stab. And he goes, yeah. He goes, but why are they stabbing where they're stabbing? And I said, uh,
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I don't know. Is, is there something, something changed? He goes, yeah, something changed. He goes,
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we just got new body armor. He said, we just got new body armor. And we had a call out yesterday that we
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thought was kind of suspicious. And he said, all they wanted to do was see our new equipment.
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And he goes, now they saw where the gaps are in the body armor. And they're practicing that if
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they ever have to go up against us, they know where to stab. And it wasn't ballistic. It wasn't,
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it was slow, methodical, make sure you get it in there because what most people understand they have
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to use this stuff to protect themselves is you have to get it right. You have to tell your brain
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exactly what you want it to do and lock that movement in first. The brain doesn't care
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about speed. The brain just says, what do you want me to make the body do? And so once you lock
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that in the last dynamic, you add into anything is the velocity, you know, and you can do it, but,
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but why sacrifice the accuracy up front for this spastic, good feel, gee, I feel aggressive.
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Yeah. That's scary about the, the gang calling out the police just to take a look at the body armor.
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Oh yeah. Listen, the best information comes from the worst people. I I'm currently putting together a
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book where I'm interviewing a lot of these guys. And what's really funny is, is when not funny,
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well, funny to me, but I've interviewed a lot of the top combat sport guys in the world. I'm
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interviewing a lot of the top law enforcement, military trainers. They're friends of mine. I
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have a lot of circles, you know, friends, but what's most interesting is when you get into the
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prison and you talk to the gang guys, the guys that are killing the guys that have to kill
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violence is a commodity to them. It's, it's, it's currency. It's their power.
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They are very specific. They train anatomy. They go in these areas because they don't have time.
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They're not doing it because they want to learn the human body. They want to know where do I put
00:23:02.160
the effort in? You know, if I've, if I've set up this kill, if it's, you know, taking me six months
00:23:07.440
to set this up and I'm going to get one shot at this guy, I want to make sure that he's dead before
00:23:12.260
the response team is there. How do I do that? And so they look at things, they study anatomy,
00:23:17.160
you know, and they, they know, you know, if I have a, if I have a shank, I want to know where to put
00:23:21.380
it. If I'm going to break something on him, where am I going to go? And they just, they do it with
00:23:27.580
a complete intent. This is where you get really the roadmap. You know, if you really understand it,
00:23:32.300
you know, violence, I tell people all the time, the worst way to, to figure out what kind of training
00:23:38.300
works is to watch training videos because everybody's going to make themselves look good or
00:23:42.520
canned, or they're going to make it look impressive. What you need to do is you need to
00:23:46.920
watch video as distasteful as it is of real violence, of people doing real violence and
00:23:52.640
what really works. How do people really stab each other? How do they break each other? How do they
00:23:56.200
beat each other down? And does your training replicate that? I mean, if you're facing a threat
00:24:02.300
like that, because let's be honest, that's the threat we're really training for. We're not training
00:24:05.860
for a competition threat. If that's the threat we're training for, do my principles and methods
00:24:11.740
handle a situation like that. And very few people do, you know, a lot of it is just,
00:24:17.200
especially in reality, self-defense world, it's all about, you know, basically chest lumping and,
00:24:21.600
you know, questionable methods. Combat sports is fantastic, you know, but combat sports to,
00:24:29.060
in order to be combat sports, I mean, the UFC has 31 rules, I believe right now, at least last time I
00:24:33.580
there's 31, 27 of those rules took out injury to the human body, you know, and that says a lot
00:24:40.800
because you can't gamify violence if you have injury in it, you know, because it would just be
00:24:45.840
over. I mean, the reality of violence is very boring. It's very straightforward. It's, it's,
00:24:50.040
it's horrific. But it's absolutely essential if your life's on the line. You know, my grandfather
00:24:56.620
was this South Boston boxer and he's a young kid. I mean, I was like four years old when he started
00:25:01.160
telling me this, he would always say to us, boys, this is what you do in the ring. And he loved
00:25:05.380
boxing. And he'd say, this is what you do in the ring, but out here. And he'd point to the street.
00:25:10.640
He says, if anybody tries to get you out here, this is what you do. And what he essentially
00:25:15.720
started showing us was injury to the human body, you know, and, and that's it. Now the challenge is,
00:25:21.620
how do we put this into context that makes you sane and social? You know, I mean, for a sane social
00:25:25.940
individual, how do you, how do you engage them in this subject without them thinking that you're
00:25:32.160
turning them into a sociopath? And that's the challenge. And, and the idea is you got to show
00:25:38.760
it in the absolute right context. You know, if I sat there and said, okay, guy came up, he poured a drink
00:25:47.380
on me and, you know, called my mom a whore. So I reached up, grabbed his head, gouged his eye out.
00:25:58.500
You know, you'd sit there and go, oh shit, you know? And then if I said, Hey, I was coming in,
00:26:04.020
I was waiting five minutes for this parking, parking space. This guy came out, he just jammed
00:26:09.100
in right away, stole my parking space. I got out of the car, ripped him out of the car, gouged his eye
00:26:13.080
out. You'd sit there and go, okay, you know, but if I say, Hey, I'm at Sandy Hook, the guy,
00:26:22.840
the shooters just dropped down for a reload. I saw my opportunity. He'd already shot five kids. I
00:26:29.800
saw my opportunity. I was able to close distance, get on him. And the first thing I saw was his eye
00:26:34.860
and I was able to gouge it out. And that's what incapacitated him. And I was able to get him under
00:26:38.760
control. All of a sudden, nobody's laughing. Nobody's, nobody's thinking, Oh my God, they're
00:26:44.400
thinking, Oh, Hey, that's exactly what you need to do in a time like that. And you need to know when
00:26:50.340
to deploy something like that. Unfortunately, there's a lot of good information out there
00:26:56.920
shown in the wrong context. They show it in the context of a bar fight. They show it in the context
00:27:02.140
of all that's avoidable stuff that will absolutely get you arrested. If you're lucky enough to be
00:27:07.680
arrested at that point. And that's, and therefore what happens is general society looks at that
00:27:13.200
information and says, Oh, okay. I don't want to, I don't want to go to jail. So I'm going to dismiss
00:27:17.640
that because, you know, that is thug behavior. You know, with the challenges you have to put it in
00:27:24.080
the right context. And when it's in the right context, it becomes abundantly clear that this
00:27:28.820
is a skillset that's absolutely necessary. So training for this sort of thing, it's just slow
00:27:33.820
and deliberate. Like you're doing that slow motion fighting that you talked about, like play. I mean,
00:27:38.700
it looks like a slow motion movie fight. Basically that's what you're kind of, you're doing.
00:27:41.900
Yeah. And yeah. And no, that is, that is how you, that's how you set. That's how you begin.
00:27:46.260
Okay. So, so basically I go back to that firearms example because firearms is, is, is, is perfect.
00:27:51.840
Firearms training at first is extremely slow and deliberate because you got to get the feedback
00:27:56.640
before you can do all the cool combat shooting before you can do all of that stuff. You got to lock
00:28:01.960
everything in all your muscle movement and you got to make sure that you can consistently have
00:28:07.040
groupings that are, are consistent before you add in any dynamics. Okay. You know, you don't,
00:28:12.920
you don't add in moving and shooting at the same time. If you, you know, if you haven't mastered
00:28:17.300
static shooting yet, um, you can't have somebody engaging you back. You can't have force on force
00:28:22.380
like you were talking about until you know how to move and shoot and then move and shoot against
00:28:26.660
moving targets and you engage that. So you stair step somebody for success first and give them the
00:28:32.620
skill sets and then you can absolutely ramp it up and you can absolutely pressure. You know,
00:28:37.560
I hate to talk pressure test because I see what these idiots do for pressure testing in my industry
00:28:42.240
and it cracks me up. You know, it's like, Oh, I'm sitting at the bar and, and it comes at me.
00:28:47.240
So I glass them in the eye and I do, it's like, dude, just go to jail. You idiot. You know,
00:28:52.480
and people will dismiss that and it makes you feel good. It makes you feel like a tough guy. And
00:28:56.380
most of these guys would basically piss their pants if they ever were in a situation like that.
00:29:01.520
You know, their, their training is just ridiculous. It's not real. It's not, there's nothing realistic
00:29:06.220
about that because when you look at real violence, people don't operate that way. They don't go,
00:29:11.480
Hey you, well, and do all this. It's like a bunch of, it's like a bunch of sheep running around,
00:29:18.100
you know, yelling at each other, trying to pretend to be wolves. And then you see the wolf just kind of
00:29:21.880
standing in the background, you know, quietly slipping the knife out as he's just picking
00:29:26.840
who he wants. You know, that's the guy to worry about, not the loud mouth that's, that's running
00:29:31.960
around. The guy to worry about is that quiet little dude that just, you would never think
00:29:35.760
anything of, and he will easily slip out, you know, some sort of a device and just has no problem
00:29:41.380
putting it into you right away. You know, and, and that's the idea. When you understand how real
00:29:46.520
violence works, it's not about being bigger, faster, and stronger. You know, those things help.
00:29:50.960
Don't get me wrong. You know, I, I'm not saying that, but we have to assume that if we are facing,
00:29:56.120
if we personally are facing bigger, faster, and stronger, the person or persons coming against us,
00:30:01.380
that doesn't matter to them. They don't see that as a threat. So therefore, you know, you have to
00:30:07.440
be able to, you know, respond in a manner that bypasses, you know, having to be bigger, faster,
00:30:13.120
and stronger. You do that through injury and we've all experienced it. You know, I've got twin
00:30:17.840
daughters right now. They're one year, we're old and I have a three and a half year old boy
00:30:21.340
and they're just bundles of uncontrolled energy, you know, and you'll hold them and they'll throw
00:30:28.880
their heads back. They'll poke you in the eye. They'll do something that as a fully grown adult
00:30:33.860
will actually injure you at times, you know, temporarily. Yeah. But I mean, and it's not
00:30:39.100
intentional at all. Yeah. But you know, if we, if I sat there and I mean, the ridiculous scenario of
00:30:44.480
putting me in the ring with seeing my one-year-old daughter and, you know, a ref saying go, I think
00:30:49.960
we all know how that would turn out. But if I give that little girl the opportunity to poke me in the
00:30:57.680
eye, you know, because I don't feel a threat towards her. So I put something vulnerable close
00:31:02.860
to her and she can exploit it. She can easily injure me. You know, probably one of the things that grabbed
00:31:09.380
me when I was a kid, uh, was I used to read boxing books all the time. I, anything I could get on
00:31:14.400
boxing and Jack Dempsey has a great book that you can get on the internet for free. It's called
00:31:18.940
championship fighting. And one of the, one of the, the, um, graphics in it is literally a trucker,
00:31:25.760
you know, an old style trucker guy, you know, he says about a 200 pound trucker and it's this guy
00:31:30.360
kind of with a flat cap walking along, looks like an, you know, like a, like a trucker that you'd see
00:31:34.620
like in a three stooges comedy or something. And then there's this baby just falling on top of
00:31:39.720
his head. It's this picture of a baby falling on top of his head. And Dempsey's point was,
00:31:44.240
he said, even a 10 pound baby that falls out a two story window can easily take out a 200 pound
00:31:50.160
burly trucker, you know, coming out. And he was trying to show that, Hey, body weight into a part
00:31:56.120
of the body that can't take that is gonna, it's going to get you a huge result every time. And it does
00:32:02.220
not matter necessarily that the person is bigger, faster, and stronger because that part of their
00:32:08.400
body cannot take the trauma and they're going to have to physiologically react to that. And it's
00:32:13.460
going to take their brain out of the equation during that reaction to the trauma. We see it all
00:32:19.280
the times in sports, seeing combat sports all the time, guys will be going, you know, eight rounds of
00:32:23.940
hard boxing. And then somebody lands a liver punch. And here's this guy who's taken all this
00:32:29.040
non-specific trauma for eight rounds gets one shot to the liver and he just drops to his knees.
00:32:34.140
He's completely immobilized. You know, um, you see it all the time in MMA, you'll see a guy roll up
00:32:40.380
and snap a guy's ankle by accident. Um, and it's over at that point, you know, yet before that you
00:32:47.040
had guys viciously going after each other, really trying to compete. But as soon as injury enters the
00:32:52.080
game, the bigger, faster, stronger goes right out the window. So you've, uh, sort of alluded to this
00:32:57.420
throughout our conversation. Um, but how do you prepare psychologically or mentally for violent
00:33:04.520
attacks? Because it's like something that most people like won't experience in their life.
00:33:09.500
Right. You know, it's, it's a, I mean, we like the news makes it sound like the world is like a
00:33:14.640
really, really big, scary place, but generally you're not going to happen, but it's, it could
00:33:18.700
happen. Right. So you want to be prepared. How do you prepare for that? Right. Whenever you don't
00:33:24.440
face it on a daily or regular basis. Yeah. You basically, uh, like when my clients,
00:33:29.700
what I have them do is, uh, you know, uh, you there's, there's a couple of drills that you can
00:33:33.940
do. Um, one is when you watch an act of violence, be it movie, TV, internet, there's nothing to be
00:33:47.060
learned from the victim's point of view. So the idea of what most people do is they see a vicious
00:33:52.580
attack and they'll sit there and say, well, geez, you know, maybe if he had done this,
00:33:59.120
he could have avoided that strike, or maybe he could have done this. It's really interesting
00:34:03.460
when you went into the prison systems and we started interviewing some of the guys and
00:34:06.840
you show them an act of violence, they never see themselves on the receiving end ever.
00:34:14.920
They will only see themselves as the one successfully using the tool of violence.
00:34:21.280
And the only thing they will say is they'll either say, yeah, that's how I would have done it. Or
00:34:25.940
yeah, he's not as good. I would have done it this way. And so they see themselves making improvements
00:34:31.000
on the use of the tool in the situation. And there's a lot to be learned from that very uncomfortable
00:34:36.440
piece of knowledge. Meaning in your brain, you don't ever want to associate with a losing side of
00:34:41.740
violence. That's really what makes predators dangerous is they don't go into it with a defensive
00:34:46.140
mindset. They don't go into it with an idea that it could be done to them. Because again, that's not
00:34:51.840
a good survival mode. You want to go in with the idea, this is what I'm going to do to you. So you have
00:34:56.720
to focus on what you do to the other person versus that. Now it's a very good mental drill that you can
00:35:01.680
get involved in right away. It'll be extremely uncomfortable to most people at first, because it sounds
00:35:06.540
like you're validating the attack that's going on. And that's not the case at all. You're training your
00:35:11.400
mind to only look at violence from the successful side of it. How is it successfully used and what
00:35:16.840
can I learn from that? And it starts to inoculate you. From a training aspect, I've had tons of
00:35:24.100
people that have gone through that have never had an act of violence in their life, literally never
00:35:28.200
had a thought in their life. But because of the way this information was out, when the unthinkable
00:35:33.640
happened, they were able to go right into an injury, just one injury. And that led to another
00:35:38.180
injury that led to them saving their own life. It's the methodology of what you expose is, you know,
00:35:44.020
it's how you do it. You notice that when I was talking about the black gorilla family, they didn't
00:35:47.980
start out stabbing really hard and fast. They made sure they knew exactly where they wanted to go. They
00:35:53.640
wanted to know, okay, here's the vulnerable areas. Here's where we can get the best entry. Here's how we
00:35:57.880
can go. It wasn't until they had that well underway, that they started to employ dynamic movement into
00:36:04.180
it. And that's all I'm saying. I don't have a problem with people going hard in, you know,
00:36:09.980
quote unquote, pressure testing. But doing that prior to setting the skill set in is just, it's
00:36:15.780
just masturbation. You know, it doesn't do anything other than it makes you feel like, wow, I had a
00:36:20.560
rush. I went crazy. I went ballistic. I hit the Roby robot looking guy 50,000 times and, and all my
00:36:27.020
friends high five me, you know, I mean, it's, it's just, it's bullshit training. Yeah. That's all
00:36:32.760
there is because it doesn't replicate real violence. And, and you as a citizen, you don't have to live
00:36:38.300
it to be prepared for it. You just have to understand how the tool operates, you know, and
00:36:44.680
that's the most important thing. And then it starts to inoculate you towards it, you know?
00:36:48.600
So I guess a summary, like never see yourself as the defender, always see yourself as an attacker.
00:36:52.800
I don't, I don't even look at it as it's attacker and defender. Uh, you know, it's those terms that,
00:36:58.140
that look at people, uh, in violence as good guy, bad guy, you know, the attacker is always a bad
00:37:03.920
guy. Defender is always a good guy. That's bullshit. In violence, there's winners and losers and that's
00:37:09.140
it. And you always want to be identified on the winning side of violence. And that doesn't mean
00:37:14.280
you're condoning it. And it's, and like I said, let me emphasize this again, the best information
00:37:20.280
that you're going to find on how to use a tool of violence comes from the worst parts of society
00:37:24.980
because it's currency for them. So should you watch like footage of like gang fights or jail
00:37:32.660
fights? I mean, is that something that would be useful? It's extremely useful in the fact that you
00:37:37.200
can see, first of all, it blows through a lot of myths. Um, you can watch like a guy, uh, you can watch
00:37:44.180
some clips of guys instructing knife fighting, you know, like, uh, you know, just martial artists
00:37:50.040
or combat sport guys out there showing you how to use a knife and all the knife things.
00:37:53.880
And then you sit there and you watch an MS 13 member go in and shank some guy just hard and fast
00:38:01.100
and have them bleed out really fast. And you go, Oh my God, that looks nothing like what those idiots
00:38:05.500
were just showing me. And I will put the best quote unquote knife fighter in the world up against
00:38:11.560
an Aryan brother with a shank. And I know who I'm going to bet on. I know one guy knows how to kill.
00:38:17.940
I know another guy knows how to dance around and do things. And I'm not denigrating a lot of that.
00:38:23.060
Uh, it's just not realistic. That's okay to learn something for the art of what you're learning.
00:38:28.940
That's all right. I have no problem with that. There's a lot of great things you can learn.
00:38:33.040
Um, you know, learning how to use a, a sword using how to use different tools and weapons and,
00:38:38.680
and learning the history behind the art that you're learning. But to sit there and say,
00:38:43.480
that's how you would use it to save your life is just a fallacy.
00:38:47.380
All right. So here's a question I have for you. Whenever we write about combatives on the site,
00:38:51.640
uh, be it Krav Maga or something else like that. And, and you're using it to defend your life or the
00:38:57.580
life of a loved one. We always get a bunch of comments from dudes who will say something like,
00:39:03.200
I'll just shoot them with my gun. Right. Why learn a martial art, like target focus training
00:39:09.580
when, if you are carrying a gun, right, you're, you're concealed carry. Can't you just shoot the
00:39:13.780
guy? Okay. So I got a concealed carry. I got it in the maximum amount of States available. I'm
00:39:18.940
big on firearms. I have a, another firearms business here in Vegas, you know, a big, uh,
00:39:24.780
you know, machine gun Vegas, uh, that we have that you can shoot any kind of machine gun in the
00:39:29.320
world. I have guys that can build me anything legally that I want in the world. And let me just
00:39:34.460
tell you, and I also travel around the world and my concealed carry is pretty useless to me in most
00:39:39.700
parts of the world. Um, and I'm saying even the United States, because it's either not convenient
00:39:44.200
all the time. Even when I do carry, there's lots of good and free zones that you have to deal with.
00:39:48.120
And the reason we have to deal with that is because we are law abiding citizens.
00:39:52.900
And you just have to, you just have to realize that now, if I could drive it around in an M1 tank,
00:39:58.960
fully loaded every day, I'd do it. It would be fantastic, but that's, you know, just not realistic.
00:40:04.100
So I don't want people to think I'm anti firearms. I'm not at all. I'm very pro firearms.
00:40:08.980
What training in, uh, you know, something like target focus training does for you is every skill
00:40:14.700
set that you learn, at least with us translates directly to make you that much better with a
00:40:19.380
firearm. So the targeting that you get learning your brain, how, you know, how to use your brain to
00:40:25.660
identify the targets and then using the tools of your body to affect the injury on there gets you
00:40:31.580
into that idea of targeting, you know, the idea of constant targeting of effective areas of the human
00:40:35.980
body. And that just makes you that much better when you have something that can then project that
00:40:40.780
through distance with a firearm. Um, also there's lots of situations where if your first move is to
00:40:48.940
try to dig out your firearm, you're already done. They've already, they've already taken you out at
00:40:54.220
that point. Um, whereas it's very effective to know close in how to injure somebody first,
00:41:00.260
get them busy. And then it's very easy for you to deploy your firearm after that. Um, the problem
00:41:06.380
is most of the training where people show, you know, to get their gun, they show pushing or they show
00:41:12.000
really ineffective strikes, uh, that are not going to work if somebody is determined to get after you
00:41:18.240
at that point. Um, we did a huge thing, uh, with, uh, I have a bunch of friends in the Australian SAS
00:41:24.160
and they have a really good program on close in shooting. And it was amazing how synergistic
00:41:29.440
the TFT program and their close in shooting program was for the idea that as you close distance,
00:41:36.320
um, if the gun is not in your hand, it's not your first order of defense. Your first order is always
00:41:42.560
your body and getting out there. And so here are these guys that are at the highest level of tactical
00:41:47.920
training and they all feel that it's absolutely essential that you train your body first. You
00:41:53.280
train your mind first, coordinate your body, and then you can put tools into your body at that point.
00:41:58.960
You can, anything there. But if you, if you only are reliant on a tool, a firearm,
00:42:04.960
if that thing's not available to you, what do you have? You have nothing now. And so it just,
00:42:10.080
it just, you know, really just increases your, your abilities all around. If you, if you have
00:42:16.080
this information and you know how to deploy it with your, just your human machine. Yeah. Didn't
00:42:21.200
the FBI do a study where they found that like, it's like takes like five seconds to close like a 20 yard
00:42:27.520
gap. I mean, it was something like that, right? Where someone's really close to you. You really,
00:42:31.520
you don't have time to draw your gun. Yeah. It's a 21 foot rule. It's a tool or drill.
00:42:36.880
They talk about that. And what's interesting about that is I have a clip that I share with
00:42:41.040
people all the time. The guy that invented that, that drill that you're talking about,
00:42:46.080
the only reason they picked 21 feet was because that's how far they were shooting. They were
00:42:49.760
shooting seven yards. And the question was, Hey, if a guy, could a guy close distance in 21 yards
00:42:55.280
before you get your night, your gun out and shoot them. And they did that. And they quickly found that
00:42:58.960
the guys trying to deploy the weapon, even really good shooters, uh, were getting stabbed,
00:43:03.280
you know, um, uh, distantly. And so that it, the, the length actually goes even further if you,
00:43:11.760
you know, if you have your concealed carry in such a manner that you're not used to drawing it. So
00:43:16.640
how long does it take you to actually deploy your weapon at that point? And most people don't train
00:43:20.480
that. Um, what's interesting though, is the guys that take, that can take action out of the gate
00:43:26.320
without having to go to the tool first are usually the guys that ended up, you know,
00:43:31.280
taking out the threat. And, you know, what I mean is imminent dangers coming in a guy say,
00:43:37.520
I'll give you a perfect example. There was a SWAT, uh, there, there's a SWAT, uh, warrant that was
00:43:43.840
issued and SWAT team went in and cleared the house. They missed one area of the house. As the detectives
00:43:48.800
went in to guy kind of do the followup, uh, guy opened up a, a, uh, uh, closet door and a guy
00:43:56.640
literally came at him with an ax. His first move was to his holster and the ax just came right down
00:44:03.920
and split his skull and killed him, killed him right away. Had his first move been forward at that
00:44:09.760
point, attacking, you know, some vulnerable part of the guy's body, which he easily could have done.
00:44:14.400
Um, then, you know, this, the cop probably would still be alive today at that point. But again,
00:44:20.960
you'll do what you train. And if your first thing is, Hey, my only way to defend myself is if I,
00:44:25.280
if I reach down and get to this tool in a environment where it's just too close,
00:44:30.800
you know, you, you're just not going to get the result that you want.
00:44:32.960
Yeah. So tools don't win battles. People win battles, humans.
00:44:36.720
Yeah. Yeah. It's your, it's your, it's your mind for, you know, it sounds, it sounds like you were
00:44:41.840
doing semantics, but it's absolutely true. You have to train your mind, coordinate your body
00:44:46.640
first before you put any tool on it. And you have to be able to do it with just your human body first.
00:44:53.280
And then it's, and then tools are great because tools make the work that much easier. That's why
00:44:57.360
we put tools in our hands. They do something that our bare hands can't do, but we first have to know
00:45:02.400
what can our bare hands do and under what conditions can our bare hands help us?
00:45:06.080
All right. This is very good stuff. Um, so I know you're not a lawyer, um, but I'd like to get
00:45:10.880
your insights on the legal consequences of using, you know, pretty much lethal hand-to-hand force
00:45:17.840
on an attacker. Um, is that something someone should consider, uh, or keep in mind when they
00:45:23.760
do something, you know, when they protect themselves or should you just not care at all and just like,
00:45:27.680
okay, I gotta, I'll have to pay the defense attorney or whatever.
00:45:30.560
Yeah. Well, that, that's always, it's always smart. If you have a defense attorney, you know,
00:45:36.160
I know a lot of guys, um, advocate, you know, having somebody on retainer ahead of time just
00:45:40.640
to understand the laws in your specific area, you know, across the U S the castle law is pretty,
00:45:45.840
um, pretty prominent, meaning you as a citizen, I'm not talking about a, uh, a professional like
00:45:54.000
a police officer, military, anybody like that, but, but as a citizen, uh, being attacked, you have
00:45:59.920
pretty much carte blanche to protect yourself. If you're in imminent danger, if your life is
00:46:04.560
literally on the line, you really feel that your life is on the line, then you have justified means
00:46:09.120
to protect yourself up to, you know, killing the individual. Now, what's interesting is the methods
00:46:14.560
that we teach with, with target focus, you're always going for the response, meaning, you know,
00:46:19.760
you see what you're doing. You understand when you go to these parts of the human body,
00:46:22.960
if you're successful, here's what you're doing in the human body. You're not going to do anything
00:46:27.280
that's going to go against your moral code. I mean, you're not going to just murder somebody,
00:46:30.480
you know, you may end up killing somebody, but it's a very different term. Killing is a justified,
00:46:35.280
um, uh, stance, whereas murder is never justified. Um, so you familiarize yourself with that,
00:46:44.320
but the way you keep yourself out of a lot of the problems is avoiding the avoidable. The people that
00:46:49.680
really get themselves in gray areas are these people that use violence in a situation that when
00:46:54.720
you're explaining to the judge just seems ridiculous. You know, uh, the one years ago,
00:47:00.240
I don't know if, if you heard of this one, but it was a hockey dad and like early two thousands,
00:47:05.280
um, a dad, he's a big guy was watching his hockey coach, uh, you know, coach his kid.
00:47:11.840
And he thought the coach was just really abusive. And at one point he grabbed his son on the ice and
00:47:17.920
was yelling at him and just, he thought the dad just thought he was too violent. Well,
00:47:20.880
he jumped over onto the ice, went over there, grabbed the hockey, the, the hockey coach,
00:47:26.640
and they got into it right then and there fighting. When the hockey coach hit the guy to the face,
00:47:32.240
he, the, the, the father jumped on top of the guy and got him to the ground. And then just
00:47:37.360
repeatedly started like grabbing his shoulders and slamming the guy, you know, back and forth,
00:47:42.560
you know, kind of, uh, you know, like in almost in a schoolyard way, you know, he's on top of him,
00:47:46.480
just slamming him. What he didn't realize was every time he slammed him,
00:47:49.600
he was slamming the back of his skull against the ice. He ended up, the guy ended up going to
00:47:54.240
a coma and dying. And, you know, he, obviously that family lost their dad. The other family
00:48:00.800
lost their dad demands involuntary manslaughter, seven years in prison over a situation that yes,
00:48:06.640
is it hard for me as a father to see somebody be, you know, what I think is abusive to my son
00:48:10.800
and over the top. Yeah. But does it pass the three day test? It, it doesn't. Um, and so that incident
00:48:19.120
is, is something where, you know, inadvertent expectations, you have no idea. Once you cross
00:48:24.480
that physical plane, you put your hands on somebody, it can go anywhere and you have to
00:48:28.880
be prepared for that. And you have to sit there and say, okay, is it justified for me to take
00:48:33.680
action in this? Is this something that I don't, you know, I don't have choice here. I'm, I'm facing
00:48:37.280
grievous bodily harm. Um, in that case, again, I'm not a lawyer, but in that case, and in my
00:48:43.600
experience, you're, you're in great territory. We just had a 52 year old dentist who came through
00:48:49.360
training, never trained in martial arts or anything before came to us, went through one of our weekend
00:48:53.680
courses, got all of this done. Four weeks later, he walks in on a Sunday to his practice just because
00:49:01.120
he wanted to do some paperwork, catch up for the week, sees this guy breaking into his pharmacy,
00:49:07.520
realizes right away the guy draws a knife, charges him. And this guy goes, Oh my God,
00:49:11.840
this is it. This is exactly what they're talking about. No communication is asocial.
00:49:15.920
He was able to drop and he saw as the guy was coming in, he was able to strike him to the side of
00:49:21.760
the neck. Uh, the guy dropped the knife. And as he dropped the knife, he grabbed the guy's head.
00:49:26.240
He rammed it into the door jam and dropped them. The guy dropped down. And just when he was about to
00:49:32.640
do the next strike where he thought he was going to stomp them, uh, you know, like in the throat area,
00:49:36.880
because that's where the guy dropped. He realized, Oh, Hey, the guy's completely non-functional.
00:49:41.360
He's out cold. I don't have to do this. And he recognized it right away. Now we didn't show him
00:49:48.240
grabbing the head and ramming it into the door jam. He just understood that, Hey, that would produce a
00:49:53.680
useful injury to me at that point. He understood the principles of injury to the human body.
00:49:58.320
He also understood when it was over at that point and was able to do that. And we've had
00:50:04.000
tons of civilian clients that have had the same experience, meaning they had to take action
00:50:10.080
and they were able to stop and recognize the point where the other person was non-functional,
00:50:14.960
no longer a threat. And they were completely justified. What was interesting was in that one
00:50:18.560
I told you about when the cops showed up and they saw this guy's rap sheet, who he was,
00:50:23.200
they looked at the, they looked at this dentist and they said, you would have been absolutely
00:50:26.720
justified in killing him. He said, this guy's there. And it was, it really set the dentist back.
00:50:32.000
You know, he didn't really expect the cops to say that, but that's exactly what they told him.
00:50:35.840
Wow. That that's crazy. Um, all right, Tim. So, uh, we've been talking for a while and I know your
00:50:41.040
time is short, but so let's wrap it up before we go. Um, where can folks learn more about your work?
00:50:44.800
And do you have anything, you mentioned that you're working on a book, uh, any insights about
00:50:48.880
that? What's going to be in it? Yeah, I'm working on a book that really talks about the, the subject
00:50:52.880
of violence and really helps clarify, uh, you know, the different approaches, you know,
00:50:56.960
the different approaches from the combat sport world. I have tons of friends in the combat sport
00:51:00.160
world and they've shared their insights on how that applies to real violence. Then the military
00:51:05.200
and law enforcement community. Um, I have a lot of friends that I'm interviewing right now,
00:51:08.960
and they're sharing their methods and principles and, and challenges on how to, uh,
00:51:13.760
train their people to deal with real violence. And then I'm going right into the heart of the,
00:51:18.880
the, you know, the situation and I'm talking to, uh, the prison gangs and contacts within the prison
00:51:26.080
gangs on how they look at violence and how they use violence as a currency. And I'm comparing and
00:51:30.720
contrasting all that information. And it should be, uh, again, it, the, the goal of the book is to,
00:51:37.600
is to really just talk about the subject and get it out of this idea that it's a stigmatized subject,
00:51:42.400
meaning we've stigmatized violence so much in the last 50 years that the only people that have
00:51:48.480
access to the tools are the worst parts of society, the predators. And because we've,
00:51:53.520
we've told ourselves that it's bad to learn that this information, uh, we don't have it available to
00:51:59.760
us when we're being attacked. And again, it also take care of a lot of unnecessary violence. I truly
00:52:06.240
believe the more trained people are in this type of information, the much more peaceful society will
00:52:11.520
have. It's interesting. All right. Well, that's awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to working.
00:52:15.600
Uh, do you have, you have, you have a website, right? Where can people go?
00:52:17.840
Yeah. Yeah. You can get me. It's either, either two places, uh, timlarkin.com, just my name or
00:52:23.120
targetfocustraining.com. Either place will get you lots of free information. I would suggest anybody
00:52:29.600
just signing up for, you know, I'd love to sell you products. I'd love to sell you my book, but really,
00:52:34.240
uh, if this was interesting to you and you want more information, there's a lot of free content.
00:52:38.960
If you just sign up for our, uh, you know, our newsletter and, um, you know, take the time to
00:52:44.320
really read about this. And then, you know, if you like it and you see a product that makes sense,
00:52:48.400
there's lots of great stuff there. Awesome. Well, Tim Larkin, thank you so much for your time. It's
00:52:52.560
been a pleasure. Thank you, Brett. Our guest today was Tim Larkin. Tim is a self-defense instructor
00:52:58.160
and the creator of target focus training, as well as the author of several books on self-defense.
00:53:03.040
You can find out more information about Tim and his program at targetfocustraining.com.
00:53:11.600
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:53:16.560
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. And, uh,
00:53:21.440
also I'd love for you to check out our store stored at art of manliness.com. We got some great new
00:53:25.760
products there. Uh, we just added some really cool semper virilis tie clips look really classy.
00:53:32.000
Check them out. Your purchases there will help support the podcast as well as the content on
00:53:36.720
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