The Art of Manliness - #81 Target Focus Training With Tim Larkin

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:19.660 So if you were confronted with a really bad guy, a person who was threatening your life

00:00:24.840 or the life of your loved ones, and they had the capacity to do it, would you know what

00:00:29.300 to do to protect yourself or your loved ones?

00:00:32.040 Well, our guest today has been training individuals on this very matter, what to do in these life

00:00:38.320 or death situations.

00:00:39.580 His name is Tim Larkin, and for the past 20 years, he has been teaching a self-defense

00:00:43.780 program called Target-Focused Training to military special forces around the world, along with

00:00:50.460 law enforcement officers, as well as high-profile clientele, collegiate actors and business executives.

00:00:57.720 And Target-Focused Training, as we'll find out, is all about using violence to kill someone,

00:01:03.440 to disable them so you can come out and survive.

00:01:06.580 So in this podcast, we're going to talk about what Target-Focused Training involves and how

00:01:10.560 it's different from sport combat, you know, like MMA and things like that.

00:01:15.800 We're going to talk about the mind of a criminal.

00:01:18.180 We're going to talk about the difference between antisocial and asocial violence and how sometimes

00:01:24.040 the best response in some of those, you know, everyday confrontations is just to walk away

00:01:29.320 and then how do you know when you need to escalate your response in order to protect yourself or your

00:01:35.300 family.

00:01:36.740 And we also talk about why studying criminals, people who use violence on a regular basis,

00:01:42.500 is the best way to learn how to use violence to protect yourself.

00:01:45.260 So it's a really fascinating podcast, very interesting.

00:01:48.760 And yes, I'm aware that not too long ago, just two episodes ago, we did a podcast on violence and

00:01:53.720 killing with Dave Grossman.

00:01:55.320 Please don't read any, you know, too much into the scheduling of the podcast.

00:01:59.960 It's just the way the schedule shook out with guest availability and whatnot.

00:02:04.420 We're not turning into the art of how to kill people podcast.

00:02:08.240 So don't worry that we're going in some weird direction.

00:02:11.240 We're not.

00:02:11.600 It's just the way things happen.

00:02:13.480 So if this isn't your thing, check back next week because we'll have a great show as well

00:02:18.260 for there.

00:02:19.020 All right.

00:02:19.280 With that said, I had to say that caveat because I know I'd get emails and tweets complaining

00:02:24.060 about it.

00:02:25.120 Let's get to the show.

00:02:29.640 All right.

00:02:30.160 Tim Larkin, welcome to the show.

00:02:31.640 Hey, thanks for having me, Brett.

00:02:32.680 All right, Tim.

00:02:33.180 So can you give a little bit of background on yourself for those who aren't familiar with

00:02:37.640 you or your work?

00:02:38.880 How did you get to where you are today?

00:02:40.120 Yeah, I'm actually in my 26th year of being a professional instructor doing this, which

00:02:47.200 is crazy.

00:02:48.100 But I got started years ago.

00:02:52.040 I was always an avid martial artist.

00:02:53.660 My grandfather was a South Boston trained boxer and got me into boxing early on as a young

00:03:00.820 kid.

00:03:01.220 And, you know, I always had I was a Navy brat.

00:03:05.880 So I moved all around and got into the Korean martial arts because that's really all that

00:03:09.640 was available back then.

00:03:11.720 And it wasn't until I got into the Navy that I got introduced to, you know, the nexus of

00:03:21.220 this approach to violence that has become target focused training.

00:03:26.880 Um, it was an ex Vietnam vet that I ran into and, uh, it was, it's completely, you know,

00:03:32.560 it was one of those things where, you know, I went into, I was going into the SEAL teams

00:03:36.640 and I was the number one guy in my class.

00:03:40.140 I was an officer.

00:03:41.220 I had been training since I was 13 years old.

00:03:43.820 I literally lived across from the SEAL base.

00:03:46.840 Um, and so I made friends with all the guys.

00:03:50.060 I knew everything about SEAL training.

00:03:51.700 I knew how to do it.

00:03:52.320 Like we won hell week, you know, I was first in everything.

00:03:55.560 And then two weeks before I was going to graduate, um, got into a diving accident, blew my ears,

00:04:02.440 uh, uh, in a diving accident.

00:04:04.460 And it just literally just changed my whole life because, uh, I no longer was going to

00:04:10.240 be able to be a SEAL officer.

00:04:11.400 I wasn't going to go to the team that I was going to go to, which was the hottest SEAL team

00:04:15.280 at the time.

00:04:15.860 Um, my whole plans had been turned upside down.

00:04:18.560 I just, I just thought my life was, as I knew it at, you know, a 22 year old kid, it was

00:04:23.340 over, you know, and actually it was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me

00:04:27.240 because it led me down this path.

00:04:28.780 And I got to meet these people.

00:04:30.500 Um, I worked, went and worked for the Admiral of, uh, the SEAL teams at the time.

00:04:35.820 They kept me in the community because they liked me, but it's the only reason they kept

00:04:38.820 me in.

00:04:39.780 And they had made me a special operations intelligence officer.

00:04:43.600 And they put me in a position because we were in expansion road in the SEAL teams at that

00:04:48.640 time.

00:04:48.800 So they put me in a very senior position, even though I was a very junior officer, it was

00:04:52.940 mainly because I was broken, you know, cause I couldn't dive.

00:04:55.880 So they figured why put a healthy SEAL in this position?

00:04:58.680 We can just use this kid who kind of knows what's, you know, what we're all about and

00:05:02.120 he can do the work.

00:05:02.920 And so here I was, I was hanging out with these legends of the SEAL teams and they started

00:05:08.040 looking at a problem in the late, you know, uh, late eighties, early nineties of the fact

00:05:13.660 that the world was changing and that we were going to have to start putting hands on people.

00:05:18.120 They basically predicted what we're dealing with today, warfare wise.

00:05:20.980 And they realized that the current military in the late eighties hadn't really trained to

00:05:27.140 kick doors in, put hands on people, deal with close combat.

00:05:30.320 And so they started looking at that again and, um, you know, I was in this little group

00:05:35.000 that was exposed to all the different martial arts systems and, um, trainers that were available.

00:05:41.160 It was incredible.

00:05:42.480 And by chance I ended up finding the guy, you know, here's the guy with the least experience.

00:05:48.980 I had no combat experience.

00:05:50.180 I had no, you know, no deployment experience at all.

00:05:52.660 I was just kind of an Intel geek.

00:05:54.600 And I ended up finding the guy right around the corner.

00:05:58.460 We were flying these guys to Coronado from all over the world.

00:06:02.740 And the guy we ended up using with for the pilot program literally lived in Pacific beach

00:06:06.560 about, you know, less than a half a mile away from my apartment.

00:06:10.100 And the only reason I found out about the guy was because a DEA agent called me up, a

00:06:15.000 buddy of mine and said, Hey, are you guys still doing that punchy, kicky stuff? 0.99

00:06:18.480 Cause he, everybody back then thought martial arts, you know, was stupid. 1.00

00:06:21.540 You just shoot people. 1.00

00:06:22.340 Why would you, why would you use martial arts? 0.91

00:06:24.120 And I said, yeah, yeah, we are.

00:06:26.180 He goes, Hey, well, there's this guy that has a real rep in Pacific beach.

00:06:30.320 He's a former army guy from Vietnam. 0.99

00:06:33.280 He's just crazy. 0.99

00:06:34.400 Everybody calls him the mad master. 0.99

00:06:35.920 He goes, he goes, but you like him.

00:06:37.600 He goes, you get along with personalities like that.

00:06:39.440 You might, you might like this guy.

00:06:40.660 And I went in and basically was just blown away.

00:06:44.780 But what I saw, I walked into what looked like a slow motion prison riot.

00:06:49.440 And even though I was really well trained back then, I saw things going on.

00:06:54.880 I saw one guy, you know, just coming in and basically he kicked the guy, he kicked the

00:07:00.140 guy to the groin, grabbed his head.

00:07:01.900 And then all of a sudden knife came out of nowhere and he was simulating, stabbing the 0.75

00:07:05.000 guy in the neck.

00:07:05.740 And then he just threw the body down.

00:07:08.260 And all I could think of was, this is exactly what, you know, I've seen on the street, you

00:07:15.860 know, in the streets of Boston, I saw a guy get stabbed.

00:07:18.040 I've seen a couple of guys, you know, real violence has happened before, but I've never

00:07:22.160 seen anybody training for something that looked like real violence.

00:07:26.220 And so it immediately intrigued me.

00:07:27.740 And, you know, long story short, bought, you know, we brought him in and this guy was a

00:07:34.980 former 173rd Charlie guy from Vietnam.

00:07:37.820 And that, that unit got a lot of, a lot of coverage back then, a lot of combat coverage.

00:07:44.720 And this guy was in the tunnels and all that stuff.

00:07:47.380 And he intimately understood violence.

00:07:49.320 He intimately understood how to integrate, you know, the combat soldier with his tools so

00:07:55.460 that everything works together, meaning you start them out completely stripped down to

00:08:00.780 your, basically you're just boxers and your t-shirt.

00:08:04.540 And once you can take care of yourself with your own human machine, when I start giving

00:08:09.140 you back tools, you're even that more effective.

00:08:11.640 And that was just a really, really cool concept.

00:08:13.880 And it completely changed the way I looked at, you know, how, how to deal with, you know,

00:08:20.520 a threat from another human.

00:08:22.380 Interesting. So it all started with this mad, the mad master. 1.00

00:08:26.680 Yeah, it wasn't mad. You know what it is? It's anytime somebody really understands lethal

00:08:31.040 application, oftentimes they're seen as a little bit off because nobody likes to talk about the

00:08:37.040 subject of violence. And, you know, like some of the top snipers that I've talked to, you

00:08:42.220 know, got, you know, friends of mine, oftentimes people just say how intense these guys are,

00:08:46.520 how, you know, how, how they come off. And it's not bad. It's just a familiarity with

00:08:50.520 the subject. They're very comfortable with the subject that most people are extremely

00:08:53.880 uncomfortable with.

00:08:55.400 Yeah. Okay. So, uh, you, you, you started, you found this guy, so you brought him into

00:08:59.560 the training and then from there, uh, you've developed what you call target focus training.

00:09:05.500 Uh, can you, I mean, briefly describe, uh, what target focus training is and how it differs

00:09:11.300 from other, uh, combatives that are out there?

00:09:13.460 Yeah, there's, there's probably two focuses with us. First, we focus on, um, you know,

00:09:18.200 I got to educate the client first. And the first thing that I do, if you come through the doors

00:09:21.800 is we quickly identify the difference between antisocial aggression and asocial violence.

00:09:28.860 Antisocial aggression is really what a lot of people go to martial arts training for. And,

00:09:34.660 uh, you know, and, and, and, you know, fighting and, and MMA training. It's, it's really basically,

00:09:40.660 you know, I got picked on in school or the bully, he said something to me at the bar and I want to

00:09:46.540 teach him a lesson.

00:09:47.660 You keep sand in your face, right?

00:09:48.920 Yeah. And how do I do it? Charles Atlas thing.

00:09:50.880 Yeah. And, uh, that stuff really, like I just lump all that stuff in antisocial aggression,

00:09:56.200 which is completely avoidable. Meaning you have to choose to participate in that.

00:09:59.940 Somebody insults you or drops a drink on you or calls you, uh, or, or, you know,

00:10:06.000 says something offensive to you and you choose to participate when you have an exit.

00:10:09.740 That's a choice to use violence. And it's just, it's, it's just never worth it. You know,

00:10:15.020 I know oftentimes everybody thinks it's great, but I can just give you a horror stories of people

00:10:19.640 on both ends of the equation. Guys that did that ended up inadvertently killing the individual

00:10:24.760 or vice versa. You know, they ended up getting seriously grievous bodily harm over something that

00:10:30.800 doesn't pass what I call the three-day test. Meaning three days from now, is this incident going to

00:10:35.200 matter to you? And, and very few things do. Now, the other side of the equation that we talk about,

00:10:40.900 which we're kind of more known for, because that's what gets us the press is, is anti or

00:10:46.440 asocial violence. And that's where it's imminent. Violence is imminent. There's no escape.

00:10:51.480 You have to take action. If you don't take action, you're essentially participating in your

00:10:55.580 own murder because you're going to be facing grievous bodily harm. And this is the area that makes

00:11:00.260 everybody kind of uncomfortable. You know, it's the unthinkable that's happening. And how do you deal

00:11:04.760 with imminent violence? How do you deal with another human being or human beings coming at you?

00:11:10.140 And, you know, the assumption always has to be the person's going to be, the threat's going to be

00:11:13.740 bigger, faster, and stronger. We assume they're going to carry weapons and we assume that there's

00:11:18.460 going to be more than one because that's just the real world. And if any of those things aren't true,

00:11:23.280 then, Hey, that's a, that's a Christmas gift to you. That's fantastic. You know,

00:11:26.620 but if we go off of that premise, we say, okay, what type of, what type of methods and principles

00:11:32.720 work in that environment? And you really come back to the idea of the vulnerability of the human body,

00:11:40.500 which gets exposed in sports injury. If you look at sports injury data, you find all the areas of the

00:11:47.920 human body that can't take trauma. I was intimately familiar with this as a young, you know, sealed

00:11:53.960 candidate going through. I was, like I said, I was the number one guy in my class. I was going to be

00:11:57.840 the, um, the anchor man. I was getting the award, which is the number one guy in each class that

00:12:03.000 graduates. I was unstoppable. And yet I was stopped dead in my tracks by an injury, something that I

00:12:09.480 couldn't will, I couldn't work through. We just got it out. It was a physiological breaking of a

00:12:15.940 sensory system of my body that just couldn't be fixed. Um, and that's really what you want to look

00:12:21.800 at when you're facing a bigger, faster, stronger threat, you're going to have to put an injury on

00:12:26.960 them that takes their brain, their will, everything out of the equation. Um, and that's really kind of

00:12:33.700 the whole focus on how we look at the subject matter. That's why it's called target focus

00:12:38.140 training. You target specific areas in the body. Yeah. Well, all we do is where do you put the effort

00:12:43.680 basically? You know, if I'm going to do something where somebody will sit there and they'll show

00:12:47.500 something that looks aggressive, a lot of people like to show aggressive type stuff. And when I look at

00:12:51.540 that, it's just mindless, I look at it as mindless aggression, the same slam that you just did to

00:12:56.400 the guy's chest. You know, if you just moved it up three inches, you'd crush his throat, you know,

00:13:02.160 and it's a completely different response to something like that. If your life's on the line,

00:13:07.120 um, one could just potentially annoy the person. The other one will absolutely incapacitate them so

00:13:13.300 that you can put another injury on them and save your life. So here's a question that I have when you

00:13:17.860 were talking about, um, anti-social aggression and asocial violence. I mean, how do you develop

00:13:23.920 the ability to distinguish between the two? Because some people might take anti-social

00:13:28.580 aggression as, you know, asocial violence. Uh, I mean, what, I mean, are there signs in human

00:13:35.260 behavior when you know that this is turning into, it's, you know, shifting from aggression to violence?

00:13:40.880 Yeah. It, it, it essentially, it's very, it's actually very straightforward. It just comes down

00:13:44.620 to choice. Meaning if you have to ask yourself, is this the time to use violence? It's not. There

00:13:50.740 won't be a question in your mind when it happens. Let me give you a quick example. Um, I train all

00:13:56.680 over the world and when I was in London, uh, I go there, I used to go there all the time. Um, and

00:14:01.880 in 2000, I believe it was 2005, an incident rocked London. A young lawyer got stabbed to death in a park.

00:14:07.920 He came home at night. Um, he actually lived in a good part of London and went through a park that

00:14:13.360 was not a dangerous park. This wasn't a dodgy area at all, but that night he was followed by two

00:14:19.300 Eastern European gangsters who saw him as a, just an opportunity. You know, he's a nicely dressed kid

00:14:24.660 and, uh, you know, he was the first one in his family to even get beyond basic education. He took

00:14:31.080 it all the way to university, became a lawyer, was extremely successful. It was a great story as a

00:14:35.740 person. You know, the achievement this kid had as he's walking through the park, these guys come up

00:14:41.040 behind him, draw knives, pin them up against a tree and demand all his stuff, you know, and this kid

00:14:47.420 does everything right. He gives them the watch, the wallet. Um, he gives them, uh, you know, the,

00:14:53.700 the briefcase they wanted and they left and everybody loves that part of the story. The second time they

00:15:01.800 came back, their knives, their knives were drawn, their heads were down. They rushed him and stabbed

00:15:07.680 him 47 times. And as he was being stabbed, the, the people said, as they were hearing him scream,

00:15:14.200 he was screaming, I gave you everything. I gave you everything. My goal for any client is to understand

00:15:21.180 the difference between those two situations. And in the first situation, you have an opportunity to

00:15:26.900 engage somebody socially and possibly use your social skills to talk your way out of the situation.

00:15:32.200 In the second situation, the only tool that's going to get you out of that is violence and you

00:15:36.560 have to know how to use it because it's imminent. Yeah. And so that, uh, in that case you would

00:15:42.540 go for, I mean, I guess, I guess the thing is like you, you were talking about, you would punch a,

00:15:47.240 punch a throat, um, groin attacks, I guess would be something. Would eye gouges be involved in this?

00:15:54.040 All of that's, all of that's available to you. Basically you're looking at the, the, the,

00:15:57.520 when you're, when you're putting an injury in the human body, you're either destroying a structure

00:16:00.960 of the human body or you're destroying a sensory system of the human body. And, and, and you're

00:16:06.060 doing it in a way that the pain part of it's irrelevant, meaning because everybody has a

00:16:11.100 different blood threshold of pain, it's functionality that you're destroying. You want to make sure that

00:16:16.280 when you, uh, you know, if you're going to slam a guy and you're going to, you're going to go after

00:16:20.520 his ankle that you're ripping the connective tissue to the point to where, you know, any,

00:16:26.220 any radiologist looking at the film would just sit there and say, Hey, I don't care whether this guy

00:16:30.860 feels it or not. He's not going to be able to walk on that. And that's really what you're looking at.

00:16:35.340 And it's a very different approach because a lot of times people talk about pain and they talk about,

00:16:39.960 you know, rushing somebody and doing things that are just, they look aggressive, but they're highly

00:16:45.500 ineffective. Hmm. So you're, we're, we're going for like maiming, right? So this is, well, you're

00:16:51.120 going, you're going for a result. Yeah. And again, you know, it sounds like it's overly aggressive.

00:16:55.860 It sounds like, you know, you're, you're, you're just teaching people to automatically go into kill

00:17:00.300 mode. And that's not the case at all. What we found is the more people are trained, you know,

00:17:04.920 when we were originally training just military and law enforcement, when we, the higher up they were

00:17:09.480 in the skillset of justified lethal force, the less likely they were to have reports of excessive force

00:17:17.160 on the job or, you know, any type of incidents outside of the job, as far as getting into fights

00:17:23.980 or anything like that. Because once you understand how the human body responds to trauma, it's not one

00:17:29.260 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

00:17:34.800 range, shooting a 45 and then, you know, asking yourself, well, gee, I don't really know if this

00:17:40.840 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.

00:17:45.020 It's, it's that ridiculous. Meaning once you understand how the body responds to trauma and 0.98

00:17:49.780 you see this, and then we have numerous videos of, you know, sports injuries and also real violence

00:17:56.080 showing just how quickly the body shuts down when it's truly injured. That's the skillset you want

00:18:01.840 to build when your life's on the line. Interesting. Okay. So, uh, I mean, is this

00:18:06.120 something you can train at home by yourselves or do you need to have a, a, you know, go to a gym or

00:18:11.120 I don't know what you call it, a dojo. I don't know what you call it. Um, and because like research

00:18:15.240 has shown like on, for tactical training to be like really, really effective, uh, you need to make it

00:18:20.100 as real as possible. So it's, you know, military and LEOs, they'll sometimes use simunition and have

00:18:24.840 like a 3d arena. Right. Um, how do you do that with target focus training without killing your

00:18:31.840 partner? Well, you know, it's funny people, uh, when they, when they approach this type of, of idea,

00:18:40.220 this training, you know, I guess what's really funny to me when I look at like, you know, combat

00:18:46.400 sports and MMA in general, everybody wants to go ballistic right out of the gate. Hey, you gotta be

00:18:49.880 real. You gotta be real. You gotta stress you out right away. It's just like, there's no training,

00:18:55.600 no lethal training that's ever done that way. Only jack off training is done that way. Meaning

00:19:01.300 you would not go to a range and I, you know, I don't take you down to my kill house basically,

00:19:07.280 you know, load you up, load you up, you know, your first time loads you up, go, Hey, yeah,

00:19:11.920 you point the gun this way, throw you in the kill house and have people start shooting at you. 0.96

00:19:15.560 Yeah. Which is essentially the way most people try to train combat sports,

00:19:19.160 which is ridiculous. Um, the good guys learn that you have to be slow, deliberate at first to lock

00:19:25.900 in all the correct movement. And then, so you do the correct, you know, it's a special operations.

00:19:29.860 You basically do the crawl, the walk and the run. And so if I was shooting, I would first make sure

00:19:35.540 that I've locked in everything so that I can actually hit my target statically as many times

00:19:40.080 as possible with no stress, just doing that. Then I'll probably start to dynamically move a little

00:19:45.740 bit. I'll start moving and shooting a little bit. Okay. I get comfortable doing that.

00:19:48.920 Now the target's going to start moving. And then the last thing we're going to do is we'll,

00:19:52.820 we'll do the semination, uh, semination training, but you would not step into that process until

00:19:57.160 you really built a really good foundation. And it doesn't take a long time to do that,

00:20:01.560 you know, uh, you know, learning that, but we start out, you know, with people slowly and

00:20:06.920 deliberately learning how to engage body weight into each one of these areas. And all, the only thing

00:20:13.880 we pull out at the beginning is just the velocity, meaning going full speed. If you look at a lot of,

00:20:20.880 you know, quote unquote reality, self-defense, it just, it looks, it looks, it looks, sorry about

00:20:27.140 that. Yeah. It just looks ridiculous. These guys are doing these, these static movements

00:20:32.620 and they're making real aggressive sounds and ha ha ha ha ha. And then just slap on a video of a

00:20:39.460 prison yard takedown and see how those guys go. And they don't go like that. They don't fight like

00:20:46.420 that. They don't kill like that. They kill slow and deliberate. I got a great video of the black 1.00

00:20:52.920 gorilla family members, two of them, and they're sitting there simulating, stabbing to the human body

00:20:58.540 and they're doing it slow and deliberate. And they're doing it in kind of not the most obvious

00:21:03.720 parts of the human body. Uh, and when the corrections officer, who's a really good friend of mine was

00:21:08.620 showing me this, he goes, Hey, what are they doing? I said, well, they're obviously teaching themselves

00:21:12.580 how to stab. And he goes, yeah. He goes, but why are they stabbing where they're stabbing? And I said, uh,

00:21:18.820 I don't know. Is, is there something, something changed? He goes, yeah, something changed. He goes,

00:21:22.960 we just got new body armor. He said, we just got new body armor. And we had a call out yesterday that we

00:21:28.400 thought was kind of suspicious. And he said, all they wanted to do was see our new equipment.

00:21:32.960 And he goes, now they saw where the gaps are in the body armor. And they're practicing that if

00:21:37.020 they ever have to go up against us, they know where to stab. And it wasn't ballistic. It wasn't,

00:21:43.000 it was slow, methodical, make sure you get it in there because what most people understand they have

00:21:49.640 to use this stuff to protect themselves is you have to get it right. You have to tell your brain

00:21:53.940 exactly what you want it to do and lock that movement in first. The brain doesn't care

00:21:58.220 about speed. The brain just says, what do you want me to make the body do? And so once you lock

00:22:04.560 that in the last dynamic, you add into anything is the velocity, you know, and you can do it, but,

00:22:10.280 but why sacrifice the accuracy up front for this spastic, good feel, gee, I feel aggressive.

00:22:16.480 Yeah. That's scary about the, the gang calling out the police just to take a look at the body armor.

00:22:21.820 Oh yeah. Listen, the best information comes from the worst people. I I'm currently putting together a

00:22:27.920 book where I'm interviewing a lot of these guys. And what's really funny is, is when not funny,

00:22:32.520 well, funny to me, but I've interviewed a lot of the top combat sport guys in the world. I'm

00:22:37.000 interviewing a lot of the top law enforcement, military trainers. They're friends of mine. I

00:22:40.700 have a lot of circles, you know, friends, but what's most interesting is when you get into the

00:22:44.020 prison and you talk to the gang guys, the guys that are killing the guys that have to kill

00:22:47.920 violence is a commodity to them. It's, it's, it's currency. It's their power.

00:22:51.780 They are very specific. They train anatomy. They go in these areas because they don't have time.

00:22:57.940 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 0.97

00:23:12.260 the response team is there. How do I do that? And so they look at things, they study anatomy, 0.94

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 0.54

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. 0.99

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, 0.99

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 1.00

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. 0.99

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, 1.00

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. 0.99

00:29:01.520 You know, their, their training is just ridiculous. It's not real. It's not, there's nothing realistic 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.81

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 0.63

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 0.99

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 1.00

00:38:05.500 were just showing me. And I will put the best quote unquote knife fighter in the world up against 1.00

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. 1.00

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 1.00

00:39:09.580 when, if you are carrying a gun, right, you're, you're concealed carry. Can't you just shoot the 0.53

00:39:13.780 guy? Okay. So I got a concealed carry. I got it in the maximum amount of States available. I'm 1.00

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 0.99

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 0.80

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, 0.97

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 0.86

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. 0.68

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 the site. So I'd really appreciate that. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:53:41.360 manly.

The Art of Manliness - September 12, 2014

#81 Target Focus Training With Tim Larkin

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