The Art of Manliness - A Guide to Protecting Yourself Against Unexpected Violence

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

00:00:11.780 When Sam Rosenberg was 20 years old and working as a bouncer in a bar, a disgruntled patron 0.97

00:00:16.900 pointed a gun directly at his chest and told him, now I'm going to kill you.

00:00:21.720 Sam survived the incident, but it caused him to question what he thought he knew about

00:00:25.280 self-defense and sent him on a decades-long quest to figure out how people can best protect

00:00:29.720 themselves and others.

00:00:31.860 Today on the show, I talked to Sam, an expert in personal protection and the author of Live

00:00:35.880 Ready, a guide to protecting yourself in an uncertain world, about his self-defense philosophy

00:00:40.340 and how you can use it in your life to stay safe from violent threats.

00:00:43.960 Sam makes the case that understanding how the mind works under life or death stress is

00:00:47.580 the foundation of protecting yourself.

00:00:49.660 We unpacked that idea, as well as the phases of the timeline of violence, the phase you

00:00:53.880 can exercise the most control in to deter a violent encounter and how to know when you're

00:00:57.400 in that phase, how to convey you're a hard target that predators don't want to mess with

00:01:00.920 and much more.

00:01:02.260 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash live ready.

00:01:16.120 All right, Sam Rosenberg, welcome to the show.

00:01:19.180 Thank you very much, Brett.

00:01:20.380 Happy to be here.

00:01:21.200 So you've made a career of protecting people and organizations.

00:01:24.360 You also teach other people how to protect themselves and then how to protect other people.

00:01:28.920 You run a company called Live Ready, which provides training and personal protection.

00:01:33.420 Tell us about your background.

00:01:34.580 How did you end up doing what you're doing?

00:01:37.220 So the short version is 1996, I got out of the Marine Corps.

00:01:41.880 I was a Marine officer and I kind of landed in the close protection world, which I always

00:01:46.440 say is a fancy pants way of saying bodyguarding.

00:01:49.600 Started protecting some high profile individuals, everyone from executives to dignitaries, celebrities,

00:01:56.600 probably the highest profile people I protected at the time were high ranking members of the

00:02:00.580 Israeli government, including Benjamin Netanyahu when he was the former prime minister and protected

00:02:05.840 a variety of other folks from Tom Cruise to Warren Buffett and a variety of other people in

00:02:10.160 between.

00:02:11.180 But in 2003, I had a philosophical shift that to me, it's good to have a lifeguard, but

00:02:17.640 ultimately you should know how to swim.

00:02:19.620 So I decided to pivot my career.

00:02:22.280 And instead of just protecting people and organizations, really shift gears towards teaching them how

00:02:28.660 to protect themselves with the same skills and tools that we use to protect public figures.

00:02:34.080 And it's been about a 20 year journey.

00:02:36.080 Currently, we do both.

00:02:37.840 You know, we still do protection services, threat assessment, investigative services, things

00:02:42.780 like that.

00:02:43.480 But my main focus is in really empowering people with these skills and tools so they can protect

00:02:49.600 themselves, their families, their organizations.

00:02:51.560 And in your recent book, Live Ready, A Guide to Protecting Yourself in an Uncertain World,

00:02:56.480 you walk readers through a easy to read guide on the principles that direct your protective

00:03:02.620 service philosophy and also provide very actionable, concrete things that people can do.

00:03:07.340 And in the book, you also take readers on a tour of how your philosophy towards self-defense

00:03:13.540 has changed since you got started in the game.

00:03:15.940 And you tell a story about how getting a gun pointed at your chest when you were a bouncer

00:03:22.020 in college, it caused you to question everything you knew about self-defense.

00:03:26.340 Tell us about that story.

00:03:27.420 And what did it what shifted that cause in your mindset towards self-defense?

00:03:31.800 Yeah, it was an interesting moment.

00:03:33.280 I mean, this is like back in the early 90s, right?

00:03:36.420 I was on the wrestling team at the University of Pittsburgh and I'd done martial arts.

00:03:41.240 I'd been in a few street fights, thought of myself as a tough guy.

00:03:43.920 And it was kind of funny.

00:03:45.460 One of my friends, you know, comes up to me one day and he says, hey, Sam, do you want

00:03:49.420 a job where you can meet lots of girls but get paid next to nothing? 1.00

00:03:53.580 And I said, you know, of course.

00:03:55.660 So next thing I know, I'm 20 years old.

00:03:58.360 I'm not even old enough to drink in the bar.

00:04:00.360 And I find myself here as a bouncer, you know, in a college bar.

00:04:04.840 And the sum total of the crisis response training that I received at this bar was a short conversation

00:04:11.720 with the manager that amounted to, you know, when there's trouble in the bar, we're going

00:04:16.080 to flash the lights in the vestibule where the bouncers hang out and you guys come in

00:04:20.180 and figure it out.

00:04:21.620 And, you know, what happened was I'm on my second shift, literally, and it's a Friday

00:04:26.140 night.

00:04:26.520 The place is jammed and the lights flash.

00:04:29.660 So me being the gung-ho guy that I am, I got to be the first one through the door.

00:04:34.800 I come pushing my way through this kind of shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at the disturbance

00:04:39.320 at this fight that was going on.

00:04:41.520 And, you know, I pushed the guy who was getting the better of this college kid off of him.

00:04:46.340 It was kind of like in my 20-year-old brain, it looked like an older guy.

00:04:49.660 He was probably like 40, okay, which is not old nowadays.

00:04:52.680 But the idea was that he didn't really fit in the context of this college bar.

00:04:56.720 And, you know, when I push him off, I pin the college kid to the bar because I didn't

00:05:00.520 want him to come back swinging.

00:05:01.900 And my assumption was that my fellow bouncer would grab this guy, and he didn't.

00:05:08.020 And the older guy kind of bounced off the crowd, whips a gun out of his waistband, sticks 0.99

00:05:12.480 it in my face, and says, no, I'm going to kill you. 0.98

00:05:15.180 And it was an interesting moment because you know how they say, Brett, your life flashes 0.99

00:05:20.300 before your eyes?

00:05:21.540 Right.

00:05:22.540 I can tell you that my life has never flashed before my eyes.

00:05:26.140 It didn't do it in this time, and it didn't in any other situation that I've been in that

00:05:30.480 I think would easily warrant, you know, the idea of life and death situation.

00:05:34.780 But I can tell you what did happen was really instrumental, not only to my career path, but

00:05:41.020 also to this moment.

00:05:42.680 And what happened was my brain jumped back, you know, to this flashback memory of my dad

00:05:50.000 and I having a conversation when I was like maybe 12.

00:05:52.940 And I was doing karate or something at the time.

00:05:56.080 And, you know, I said, hey, dad, what do I do if a guy's got a gun?

00:06:00.160 And I remember him telling me in this very well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful way,

00:06:05.240 you know, he says, do whatever the guy with the gun tells you.

00:06:07.820 So the problem is I flashback to this moment, right?

00:06:11.900 This little memory took a millisecond.

00:06:14.760 And the problem is the bad guy's not telling me to do anything.

00:06:17.800 You know, he had threatened me, but there was no information to follow.

00:06:21.680 So my brain literally just froze.

00:06:25.380 And it was like the computer, you know, had an hourglass come up on it.

00:06:29.360 It was processing, but there was no information to follow.

00:06:32.340 And, you know, this cascade of all the negative effects of adrenaline occurred, tunnel vision,

00:06:37.540 you know, everything getting quiet, everything seeming to go in slow motion and just taking

00:06:41.480 forever to process.

00:06:42.420 All that stuff happened.

00:06:44.720 But what was interesting about it was, you know, I came to a conclusion, literally, it

00:06:49.960 was like, this is unproductive.

00:06:51.660 I have to do something.

00:06:52.620 And I looked at the guy's face and, you know, his body language indicated to me that he probably

00:06:57.700 wasn't going to shoot me in the face.

00:06:58.880 So I was able to grab the gun and we kind of negotiated our way out of the situation.

00:07:03.880 And what was interesting about this moment to me was not, if you will, how it was resolved

00:07:09.680 because there was no fancy moves or anything.

00:07:11.920 We all just got lucky.

00:07:13.080 Nobody got shot.

00:07:13.980 Nobody got hurt.

00:07:15.040 But the interesting outcome of this was a little while later, I'm back in the vestibule

00:07:20.600 of the barn.

00:07:21.240 We're trying to act real cool and go back to business.

00:07:24.120 And, you know, my fellow bouncer turns to me and he says, you know, Sam, they're paying

00:07:29.320 us like 35 bucks a night before taxes for this job.

00:07:32.920 He goes, this isn't worth it.

00:07:34.800 And that was the end of that for him.

00:07:36.600 And I thought that was perfectly reasonable.

00:07:39.080 But my brain got stuck on this question, Brett, which was, you know, what the hell just happened

00:07:45.240 here?

00:07:45.840 You know, why is it that everything that I thought I knew about violence and its management

00:07:50.460 was demonstrated instantly to be false?

00:07:54.140 You know, that I'd had martial arts training.

00:07:56.720 I was a wrestler as division one wrestler.

00:07:59.400 I felt like I had a certain level of competence and grasp on the subject of how to protect

00:08:05.660 myself.

00:08:06.740 But what the hard reality was, the first realization was that it was not my body that had failed

00:08:13.560 me.

00:08:13.960 It was my mind, you know, my ability to think and make decisions and that all of the physicality

00:08:21.140 was irrelevant.

00:08:21.980 You know, I was bigger, stronger, faster, younger than the guy that I was dealing with.

00:08:25.580 I was in great shape, all that stuff.

00:08:27.760 None of it mattered because my brain did not have the ability to process that information.

00:08:34.080 And this left me very uncomfortable.

00:08:36.520 And it led me down a path where I literally wanted to figure this subject out.

00:08:42.420 You know, I'd heard of people who could think and make good decisions under pressure.

00:08:46.920 And I wondered, are those skills that can be learned?

00:08:50.260 And if it could be learned, is it something that could be taught?

00:08:53.280 So I pivoted my college career.

00:08:55.020 I was going to become a school teacher and that was the direction I was headed.

00:08:58.740 And I decided instead I was going to figure this out and go where I thought the toughest

00:09:02.940 people on the planet were.

00:09:04.260 So I went through the OCS program and joined the Marine Corps, yada, yada, here we are today.

00:09:09.760 So, you know, had a really important and sort of instrumental impact on me in terms of how

00:09:14.600 I think about the realities of what it takes to manage violence versus what we are all sort

00:09:22.060 of led to believe by, in some cases, well-meaning people, martial arts instructors, self-defense

00:09:28.540 teachers, parents, whatever.

00:09:31.240 And the most important junction of that is that it's really not about being a ninja.

00:09:36.780 It's really about being able to think and make decisions under pressure.

00:09:40.420 Well, speaking to that idea of misconceptions that people have when it comes to violence,

00:09:45.200 another misconception people have, and your dad probably had this misconception when he

00:09:49.080 told you, you know, if you ever get a gun pointed at you, you just do whatever the guy

00:09:52.480 says with the gun.

00:09:53.620 I mean, something else you talk about you learned in that moment when that guy pointed a gun at

00:09:56.940 you is that even if you have a gun, it might not be an advantage in a violent situation because

00:10:03.980 even an attacker has got stuff going on in his head that might cause him to not be able

00:10:09.180 to do what he wants to do.

00:10:11.580 Exactly.

00:10:12.600 And, you know, this is why at the core of everything, when we start to look at how the brain actually

00:10:17.660 operates under stress and what are the forces in place that make it very difficult to think

00:10:24.360 and make good decisions when we are under stress.

00:10:27.440 And at the end of the day, what it really comes down to, Brett, is experience.

00:10:31.980 You know, the fact that I had been in a few fights and had some martial arts skills, all

00:10:36.280 that stuff was irrelevant because I had no real experience with the gun and with this particular

00:10:42.040 stimuli.

00:10:43.500 And the same thing applies if you imagine if we reverse the logic.

00:10:48.120 If I execute a gun disarm, for example, in a most extreme situation, if I execute a gun

00:10:54.140 disarm against an aggressor or, you know, some kind of an opponent, that bad guy thinks

00:10:59.500 they're in control.

00:11:00.580 In fact, most people would assume that the guy with the gun is in control of the situation.

00:11:05.640 But the reality is, if I execute something like a gun disarm and the bad guy has no experience

00:11:10.960 with me turning the tables on him, then it really doesn't matter how big, how strong, how 0.96

00:11:16.980 crazy he is. 0.69

00:11:18.040 It doesn't matter the fact that he has a gun or, you know, if we were to say it's a hundred 1.00

00:11:22.140 pound woman defending herself against a 300 pound guy, if his brain shuts down in that 1.00

00:11:27.960 same type of paralysis, then that means you have control over the next few moments.

00:11:33.140 And very often that's all you need to get control over the next few moments after that

00:11:37.320 and so on.

00:11:38.480 And this is really the critical junction of understanding the difference between what we

00:11:43.900 are all led to believe about violence and what is real.

00:11:47.240 We're all led to believe that, you know, we see the movies and we see Jason Bourne or John

00:11:51.200 Wick and we say, oh, you got to really be a skilled, you know, martial artist to be able

00:11:55.040 to defend yourself.

00:11:56.320 But the reality is that's just the gateway.

00:11:58.920 The real dynamic is being able to think and make decisions, which means you don't allow

00:12:03.900 your brain or you've overridden this process that causes paralysis or panic in a situation.

00:12:11.700 If we panic or go into paralysis, we've lost control.

00:12:14.860 And our objective is to turn the tables on the bad guy and actually create that same

00:12:20.080 cycle of paralysis or panic in him.

00:12:23.240 No.

00:12:23.760 And so you dig deep in this.

00:12:24.860 I think it's really important people understand what goes on in the brain in a decision-making

00:12:29.720 cycle and any violent confrontation.

00:12:32.220 And we've talked about the OODA loop here on the podcast before.

00:12:35.900 We've written about it on the website.

00:12:37.620 And you highlight a different model of decision-making that's similar to OODA, but you think it's

00:12:42.600 better.

00:12:43.480 It's called SAFE.

00:12:45.100 It's an acronym.

00:12:46.140 Can you walk us through this decision-making model and how understanding it can help people

00:12:50.960 feel empowered in a violent confrontation?

00:12:54.400 Absolutely.

00:12:55.180 So just to be clear, I don't think that one is better than the other.

00:12:59.500 I think that they're both valuable.

00:13:01.000 The problem with the OODA loop, and when I was in the Marines, I was first introduced

00:13:05.520 to the idea of OODA, which is observe, orient, decide, act.

00:13:10.120 And it was originally coined by a fighter pilot named, was it John Boyd?

00:13:16.160 John Boyd, yeah.

00:13:17.040 Yeah, John Boyd.

00:13:18.300 And the idea was to allow you to have a process by which you make decisions.

00:13:23.220 So the essence of OODA was you observe the problem, you orient yourself to it, you decide

00:13:28.260 on your course of action, and then you take action.

00:13:31.000 The challenge with OODA is that it presumes that you have the ability to make decisions.

00:13:38.580 Okay?

00:13:39.100 And what SAFE does is it fills that void.

00:13:43.280 What SAFE stands for is stimulus analysis formation execution.

00:13:48.740 And what SAFE talks about is the exact linear process that our cerebral cortex goes through

00:13:56.560 in the process of responding to any stimuli.

00:14:00.640 So for example, you receive a stimuli, guy pointing a gun in your face, deer jumping in

00:14:05.380 front of your car.

00:14:06.380 It doesn't matter what the stimuli is.

00:14:08.200 What happens is our brain immediately analyzes that stimulus based on experience.

00:14:14.280 If we have experience, then we have the ability to form plans.

00:14:19.020 And at the end of the day, if we have the ability to form plans, we can make a decision

00:14:23.020 of whether or not we want to execute the plan.

00:14:25.600 So the problem that we have is if we hit the analysis phase and we don't have any experience

00:14:32.080 with that particular stimuli, or if our only experience has been negative, let's say traumatic

00:14:38.040 experience, then what happens is we literally get stuck on the analysis phase.

00:14:43.520 And this is what causes the panic or the paralysis.

00:14:47.140 And this is what causes very often the overreaction of adrenaline, which compounds the problem and

00:14:53.760 makes it much, much more difficult to access our cognitive faculties and make decisions.

00:14:59.260 So the concept of understanding SAFE is understanding the physiological process by which our brain can

00:15:07.120 actually take in inbound stimuli and process it and come up with a solution.

00:15:12.200 So in order to even execute an OODA loop, you have to have that ability to make decisions.

00:15:19.540 And SAFE does not assume that we already have that decision-making capacity.

00:15:24.900 What is required, once again, is experience, systematically programming our minds so that

00:15:30.920 if we receive some kind of stimuli, if we receive some kind of issue that we have to process

00:15:35.800 swiftly and make decisions, that we can.

00:15:38.240 Yeah, I think an important point to point out is this SAFE decision process is going through

00:15:44.240 not only your head, but the opponent's head.

00:15:46.760 And similar to OODA loop, like John Boyd talked about, is that you need to speed up your

00:15:51.040 OODA loop to win.

00:15:52.020 Whoever completes their OODA loop first is usually the one that wins.

00:15:55.720 But then you can do things to slow down the SAFE decision process of the other person or your

00:16:01.540 opponent.

00:16:02.220 And you talk about different ways you can do that.

00:16:04.100 One is disrupting them, doing something they weren't expecting, because a bad guy usually

00:16:08.560 goes in with a plan thinking, well, I'm going to throw this punch.

00:16:12.120 People aren't going to fight back.

00:16:13.680 But if you do fight back, that's going to throw them for a loop and slow things down, which

00:16:17.540 gives you more time to get away.

00:16:20.060 Exactly.

00:16:20.880 When you sort of mentally turn the tables on the bad guy, which is typically done by some

00:16:25.520 kind of physical reaction that causes them to have to hesitate and to make decisions,

00:16:31.020 then that's what sort of gets ahead of their OODA loop.

00:16:34.620 And that's what gets ahead of this whole process.

00:16:36.960 At the end of the day, if we can cause our opponent to go into some level of panic or

00:16:41.720 paralysis response, then we have control.

00:16:45.600 And that's really the most important factor, at least on the initial moments of an engagement,

00:16:51.160 towards gaining the upper hand and having an advantage.

00:16:54.980 And this is why I always tell people, you really don't have to be bigger, stronger,

00:16:58.700 faster than your opponent.

00:16:59.680 You just have to be able to make sure that you don't lose the ability to think.

00:17:03.780 And if possible, to turn the tables in such a way that the opponent is now in this dynamic

00:17:09.520 of stuck in this loop, stuck in this process of analysis paralysis.

00:17:14.400 Okay.

00:17:14.640 And if you don't mind, Brett, let me just address one small thing, because there's probably

00:17:18.440 some listeners that would hear this and they're experienced martial artists, MMA fighters,

00:17:23.640 jujitsu guys or whatever.

00:17:24.600 And they may say, you know what, but when I'm sparring with people, you know, I don't

00:17:28.600 really see that paralysis that often.

00:17:30.640 And there's a huge difference between competitive training or training for competitive type martial

00:17:37.820 arts versus street fighting.

00:17:40.160 In the real world, you can exploit this dynamic tremendously.

00:17:43.980 The difference really is in what I call the controls and expectations.

00:17:48.360 You know, I, I am a huge fan of MMA and, and all of the various combative arts and, you

00:17:54.740 know, but they have to have their place.

00:17:56.600 And the concept is if you and I get into an MMA environment, you know, no matter how stressful

00:18:02.240 that is, I know you're not pulling a knife or a gun out, or I know your buddy's not going

00:18:07.060 to jump me from behind.

00:18:08.080 And I recognize that, you know, Hey, if things get too bad, I can tap out or the ref's there 1.00

00:18:13.620 to save me.

00:18:14.660 And so no matter how stressful it is, the part of our brain that really controls a lot of

00:18:19.960 our stress reaction and our survival mechanisms, the limbic part of our brain, it simply doesn't

00:18:25.560 address, it doesn't evaluate that event as the same kind of survival stress as a real

00:18:32.120 world dynamic.

00:18:33.220 And the reason is because if you're walking down the street and someone approaches you

00:18:38.300 and it becomes dangerous, ultimately there are no controls or expectations in place.

00:18:44.540 And we don't know where this is going to go, how it's going to go, you know, what's going

00:18:47.880 to be involved and neither does the bad guy.

00:18:50.360 So the concept is if we're competing and we have those controls and expectations in place,

00:18:55.940 it's very easy to kind of manage this on a more competitive level.

00:18:59.600 And the stress we feel is more what I consider to be performance anxiety.

00:19:04.140 You know, what will people think of me if I fail, if I get humiliated or something like

00:19:07.920 that?

00:19:08.620 When we're talking about survival stress, that's where understanding how to program

00:19:13.660 that SAFE process is so vital.

00:19:16.760 Because if you don't program in it, we are more likely to go into a paralytic state than

00:19:22.660 we are to perform well.

00:19:24.720 And that has even demonstrated itself with people that I've trained who are in fact professional

00:19:29.180 MMA fighters, you know, when they get into a real world situation, things change really

00:19:34.020 fast.

00:19:34.720 And we have to have a different way of looking at it and training our mind and body to address

00:19:39.160 it.

00:19:39.780 Okay.

00:19:40.320 So we talk about the decision-making process that we go through in a violent confrontation.

00:19:44.920 But I think knowing that can be empowering that you actually have some control over this.

00:19:48.860 You can actually flip the tables on a bad guy.

00:19:51.560 You also talk about another thing that people need to do in order to prepare to defend themselves

00:19:55.320 is to understand there's different kinds of bad guys out there.

00:19:58.760 And you say there's three different kinds.

00:20:00.620 What are those three kinds of bad guys?

00:20:03.040 Yeah.

00:20:03.220 So in my personal model, I mean, we've got three kinds of bad guys.

00:20:06.280 I call them the three Ps.

00:20:07.560 You have at the top of the food chain, professional bad guys.

00:20:10.660 Then you have predators.

00:20:11.360 And you have then at the bottom of the food chain, what I call potential bad guys.

00:20:15.620 Professional bad guys are a category.

00:20:17.920 Okay.

00:20:18.280 And the category would include, for example, any mass killer.

00:20:21.940 So school shooters, workplace shooters, international terrorists, you know, to me, they're all functionally

00:20:29.120 the same. 0.95

00:20:29.720 They're all terrorists. 0.88

00:20:30.660 They all have the same MO, the same objectives.

00:20:33.460 And ultimately, the only real differentiator is ideology.

00:20:38.060 You know, one may be politically motivated while another one's personally motivated.

00:20:41.900 But they're all the same manifestation of violence.

00:20:44.580 In that same professional category, we have people like serial killers, child molesters,

00:20:50.120 you know, serial rapists, things like that.

00:20:52.140 And I don't denote them as professional by virtue of ability.

00:20:56.380 Some are better than others at what they do and how they do it.

00:20:59.480 Most of the time, I'm really defining it by virtue of this idea that they all share a

00:21:04.700 very specific kind of mission orientation, meaning that they choose their targets under

00:21:09.960 specific circumstances and specific moments for specific reasons.

00:21:14.500 At the bottom of the food chain, we have the potential bad guy.

00:21:17.220 And a potential bad guy is, I jokingly say, anybody on a bad day.

00:21:22.720 So you have someone who's not necessarily like predisposed to violence the way a professional

00:21:27.460 bad guy is.

00:21:28.460 But you have someone who perhaps is affected by situational factors.

00:21:33.340 So they're drunk, they're high, you know, their girlfriend just dumped them, their wife's

00:21:37.440 cheating on them, whatever it is.

00:21:39.440 You may not even be aware of what's affecting them.

00:21:42.200 But the dynamic is that if you mismanage an interaction with them, you could have the

00:21:47.460 potential for violence.

00:21:49.360 And then in the middle, what we have are what I call predatory bad guys.

00:21:54.120 Predators are what we typically think of in terms of self-defense.

00:21:57.700 Someone looking to do rape, robbery, murder, assault, some combination thereof, they could

00:22:03.240 be hunting for a target right now or, you know, just sort of going about their life and

00:22:07.340 a target just strolls across their path and they snap into that predatory mode.

00:22:11.940 Sometimes predators are, they use force to get what they want and sometimes they use charm

00:22:16.620 and persuasion.

00:22:17.820 But at the end of the day, what we're talking about there is a hybrid where they clearly have

00:22:22.700 a mission.

00:22:23.140 They have something that they want to accomplish, but they absolutely must have the right situational

00:22:28.640 factors to pull it off.

00:22:30.840 So understanding the types of bad guys gives us an optic, if you will, into understanding

00:22:37.220 how bad guys choose their targets, why they do so, and really how do we defeat them?

00:22:43.440 How do we outwit them?

00:22:45.220 And there are specific commonalities to all three that we break down in the book.

00:22:50.060 In Live Ready, we talk about, you know, what are the universal characteristics here?

00:22:55.180 What do they all universally want in a target?

00:22:57.840 And what are they all universally afraid of?

00:23:00.180 So that we can get the upper hand in terms of how do we manage the situation if we find

00:23:04.580 ourselves being targeted by one of them.

00:23:07.380 And you talk about whether a bad guy is a predatory, professional, or potential bad guy.

00:23:13.000 They all go through a decision process on whether to do something bad, whether to attack somebody.

00:23:19.240 This process can be long.

00:23:21.020 It can be months, maybe years in the making, or it can just happen in a few seconds, right?

00:23:25.520 That potential bad guy, he's in that situation.

00:23:28.380 He's just angry.

00:23:29.580 He's drunk.

00:23:30.340 And you're just there at the wrong time.

00:23:32.200 You can make this decision.

00:23:33.540 You call this process an acronym.

00:23:35.400 I love acronyms.

00:23:36.180 Time, T-I-M-E. 1.00

00:23:37.780 What's this process that bad guys go through?

00:23:39.860 So time stands for kind of generally what I call the timeline of violence, okay?

00:23:45.180 And time stands for target selection, interview or intelligence gathering, method of attack,

00:23:52.000 and then escape exploitation.

00:23:54.240 And it is literally, Brett, as you described, it is this specific four-phase process that

00:24:00.480 all bad guys go through in the commission of an attack.

00:24:04.040 And the best analogy I can use is to the simplest one is something that we're all familiar with.

00:24:09.600 Let's talk about 9-11 as an example, all right?

00:24:12.960 So prior to the attack, let's imagine one of the bad guys comes to the group and says,

00:24:17.420 hey, guys, got a great idea.

00:24:19.060 Let's target the World Trade Center. 0.96

00:24:21.420 So we now have a proposed target.

00:24:24.060 We have target selection.

00:24:25.700 Another one says, I got a great idea.

00:24:27.740 Let's fly an airplane into the building.

00:24:29.940 So now what we have is a proposed method of attack.

00:24:33.160 Well, why don't they just go for it?

00:24:35.300 Well, they don't go for it immediately because, obviously, there's an inherently high degree

00:24:40.620 of potential of failure in that mission simply because they haven't vetted the plan.

00:24:45.920 So they enter into what I call the eye of time.

00:24:49.460 And in the eye of time is where all this intelligence gathering is happening.

00:24:53.580 So all the pre-operational planning, the surveillance and the assessment of the target,

00:25:00.800 the gathering of manpower and weapons, the testing and probing, maybe even rehearsals.

00:25:06.560 Can we fly on the airplanes with our box cutters?

00:25:09.520 And if they get to the point where they're satisfied that their method of attack has merit,

00:25:15.260 then when they launch the attack, the M of time turns into what I generally call the moment of commitment.

00:25:21.300 It is the moment of the attack when the attackers make their intentions known.

00:25:26.740 And this is a problem because when we are on that M of the timeline of violence,

00:25:31.260 then the bad guys have a lot of control.

00:25:34.820 Now, if the bad guys win, then perhaps they have an escape plan.

00:25:39.160 Or if it's like, say, a large-scale terrorist attack or a suicide mission, an active shooter or whatever,

00:25:45.200 then there's usually what we would call an exploitation plan,

00:25:48.420 which is the school shooter's manifesto being found in the locker room or Al-Qaeda taking credit and saying,

00:25:54.700 be afraid, we could do this again.

00:25:56.840 So the concept of this is that it is an observable and relatively predictable process that we can see it

00:26:04.700 and we can actually plug in just about any attack into this timeline of violence.

00:26:08.900 And we can see the stages as they unfold.

00:26:10.980 But as you said, if we look at street criminals or potential bad guys, they do the exact same thing.

00:26:18.140 It just happens in a very, very compressed time frame.

00:26:22.340 So you could be walking down the street and there could be a thousand people there at a concert

00:26:27.540 and not even aware that someone in that crowd is a predatory bad guy looking at people going,

00:26:34.480 no, no, no, yeah, that one looks like a good target for whatever reason.

00:26:38.820 Well, they don't just go for the attack, whatever their mission or their method of attack is in mind,

00:26:45.800 because there's still that inherent degree of risk.

00:26:49.700 So what they do is they usually test and probe the target ahead of time.

00:26:54.520 Again, with the eye of time, it just takes the form of what we would call an interview.

00:26:59.640 And interview processes very often take the form of an approach,

00:27:03.680 you know, someone coming up to you and saying,

00:27:04.960 hey, can I talk to you for a second or some kind of interaction?

00:27:08.820 Sometimes it's just someone following you.

00:27:11.140 But the idea here is it's still occurring along the same timeline of violence.

00:27:17.100 And what it really means to us is that we got to get good at recognizing the warning indicators of the eye of time,

00:27:24.960 because what it means when we are being interviewed is that we have already been targeted.

00:27:31.040 And that eye of time is there to validate whether or not we're a good, soft target or whether we're going to make a difficult target.

00:27:39.660 It's the bad guy's validation step.

00:27:42.640 So, you know, I always tell people, you know, I ask the question in classes, I say,

00:27:47.500 do you think you can avoid being targeted in the first place?

00:27:51.000 And the answer that most people say is, yeah, I think we can avoid it entirely.

00:27:55.620 But the reality is you can't, because it's the bad guy who controls that.

00:28:00.900 And as a very simplistic example, you know, if you own a business or you're a leader in a business,

00:28:07.320 chances are at some point in time in your career, you're going to hear something along the lines of,

00:28:12.360 when you fired me, you destroyed my life, no matter how good a job you did,

00:28:16.800 no matter how much you tried to preserve that person's dignity, set them on a positive trajectory and do things correctly.

00:28:23.480 Ultimately, you can do everything right and still find yourself on the receiving end of a pretty extreme level threat.

00:28:30.640 So we got to get really good at recognizing the eye of time and managing the eye of time so that does not escalate into the M in the moment of commitment.

00:28:40.260 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:28:48.340 And now back to the show.

00:28:50.240 Okay, so time, it's target selection, intelligence, or interview, M, method of attack, E, escape and exploitation.

00:28:57.300 And you're saying the argument you make is that we have control in that eye period.

00:29:01.720 Yeah.

00:29:02.100 Because, yeah, you don't have a choice whether a bad guy is going to target you.

00:29:04.740 You don't get to decide how the bad guy is going to attack you.

00:29:08.360 You don't have a decision how they're going to escape or exploit.

00:29:11.400 But you do have influence on whether or not they, in this intelligence gathering process, whether you're a good target or not.

00:29:19.380 Yeah.

00:29:20.160 And I would actually say that, you know, we can influence and affect a degree of control over everything in that we can avoid trouble, you know,

00:29:29.180 and, of course, have good situational awareness and treat people with dignity and all those things that are positive to avoid being targeted or avoid conflicts.

00:29:36.960 So, you know, we're never helpless even if someone attacks us.

00:29:41.740 If we find ourselves at the moment of commitment and we have to actually fight back, you know, that's where defensive skills come in.

00:29:47.720 But at the end of the day, we can definitively exercise the greatest control over this continuum of conflict, if you will, this timeline of violence by recognizing the early warning indicators of the eye of time and taking the appropriate measures to diffuse that situation or deter it from escalating.

00:30:07.300 And it's not just about paying attention because, you know, good situational awareness is a very, very positive thing, but paying attention is just the prerequisite.

00:30:17.660 You've got to know what to look for.

00:30:19.240 You have to be able to recognize the warning signs that you're being targeted, even if those warning signs are very subtle or being conducted, if you will, by someone who is a master of camouflage and is taking a longer approach towards manipulating you into a position where they can victimize you.

00:30:37.520 So what are some of those signs that someone's in the eye of time in relation to you?

00:30:42.260 So if we're talking about the easy stuff, right, you know, if you're walking down the street and you see someone and you instantly get a bad vibe, right, you know, this is kind of the Gavin DeBecker approach of the intuition type of dynamic is intuitively we have the ability to read a lot of information and we will very often get a gut reaction of fear.

00:31:06.600 You know, the hair will stand up on the back of your neck, you'll get this sort of alarming statement in your mind saying this guy looks like a rapist or a murderer or whatever it is.

00:31:16.060 And those initial warning alarms, as I call them, are your most powerful indicator that you may be in the presence of danger.

00:31:24.500 The absolute indicator that you are now in an interview and must address it appropriately is when someone actually approaches you and starts to compress that distance, right?

00:31:37.800 You know, it's proximity based.

00:31:40.040 So when someone approaches you and they make you uncomfortable, it's time to deal with that as an interview.

00:31:46.060 And you don't want to override it by saying things like, well, it's probably nothing or dismissing or minimizing your intuition or your radar, as I like to call it.

00:31:56.800 And you also don't want to fall into that sort of social contract, you know, what I call the social veil, where we say things like, but I don't want to judge a book by its cover.

00:32:06.840 You know, what you really want to do is deal with the facts at hand, which is someone's making you uncomfortable and they're potentially too close to you.

00:32:15.520 Those are dynamics that you now must address as an interview, because if you mismanage it at that point, you may seem like a good target.

00:32:22.960 And that doesn't mean that you're going to be attacked immediately.

00:32:25.900 It means that someone could see you as a target, you know, on one day and choose to attack you or victimize you on another day or hours or weeks later.

00:32:35.380 So we have to be very careful how we manage that.

00:32:38.880 So what are some things, let's say you talk about this target selection, someone's engaging in this interview or intelligence gathering process on you, whether to figure out you're a hard target or a soft target.

00:32:49.820 Hard target means that you're just harder to deal with.

00:32:52.120 They don't want to deal with that.

00:32:53.100 Criminals are criminals of opportunity.

00:32:54.740 They're going to go for the easiest thing.

00:32:57.140 So what can you do during this process to let people know that you're a hard target?

00:33:02.200 If someone messes with you, they're going to have a not good time.

00:33:05.960 Well, that's a great question.

00:33:07.600 The best answer to that, Brett, is to say you actually have to be a hard target.

00:33:12.820 So in other words, you know, you don't have to fake it if you actually know how to protect yourself.

00:33:18.800 And if you're willing and able to protect yourself, so willingness being a state of mind, ability being a statement of fact, you know, that if you actually have the ability to protect yourself, you exude that level of confidence and competence in such a way that you're kind of a dangerous person yourself.

00:33:38.500 And bad guys will simply not evaluate you the same as someone who is not capable.

00:33:44.500 But, you know, for the vast majority of the people out there who say, well, I just don't have the time or I'm not big enough, strong enough to get involved in self-defense.

00:33:51.800 And I would say, you know, everyone should make the time and there is no limit there.

00:33:55.960 But nonetheless, you can fake it till you make it.

00:34:00.080 And the best way to fake it is to understand that at the exact same time you are reading them and you are evaluating them and getting a sort of an assessment of fear that this potentially is a problem, that this person could indicate danger.

00:34:17.240 The bad guy is assessing you.

00:34:19.520 And most of that assessment is being done non-verbally.

00:34:22.360 So we talk about in the book, for example, some very simple postures that display confidence and display physical authority, such as, you know, having your fingers up to the midline with your fingers steepled.

00:34:36.680 We call that the secret service stance or putting your hands out in front of you in a stop sign gesture.

00:34:42.300 You know, managing the interview from one of those postures greatly increases the capacity, not only of the bad guy seeing you as a potentially hard target because you're controlling distance and you're addressing that interview authoritatively.

00:34:58.520 But it also gives you more reaction time, you know, because it actually does control distance.

00:35:04.440 So non-verbals are really, really key.

00:35:07.880 And again, you don't have to sort of fake the non-verbals when you actually know how to protect yourself.

00:35:13.120 These become natural extensions of that.

00:35:15.400 But the tactics that I display in the book, and the book is not about a lot of physical tactics, but these are things that I do have images of and go into.

00:35:24.260 It talks about how to sort of fake it so that in a bad situation, you can still get yourself out of it.

00:35:30.060 No, I love these stances.

00:35:31.300 So the secret service stance, I'm doing it right now.

00:35:33.240 So I've just got my fingers steepled together at my midline.

00:35:37.440 And as you said, this is a very confident stance.

00:35:39.420 We've actually had a podcast guest who's an expert on charisma, and she loves that stand, the steepling the fingers together, displays power.

00:35:47.380 But another thing it does, it has your hands at the ready in case someone decides to do something.

00:35:52.360 Your hands are there to defend yourself.

00:35:54.240 Yep.

00:35:54.440 And then the other thing you can do if they keep getting closer to you, yeah, raise up your hands, like the, you know, stop.

00:36:01.900 And you said you got to do, you don't want to put them like low because that's kind of like, oh, please don't hurt me.

00:36:06.160 You want to be very assertive with it.

00:36:08.240 Yeah, and just to touch on that, it's not so much that they don't have to be low.

00:36:11.420 Like you can have your hands extended in front of you kind of at the midline or waistline, I would say, not midline, waistline.

00:36:17.880 Yeah.

00:36:18.280 And it's like low volume.

00:36:19.780 It's like, hey, man, take it easy, but I need you to back away from me.

00:36:23.240 Or they can be up at face level, and it's really an aggressive stop sign.

00:36:26.660 Like you need to back away from me right now.

00:36:28.700 What we don't want is you to bring your hands into a surrender position where they're sort of tucked into your shoulders because now it's very, very soft body language.

00:36:36.860 It's kind of saying, please don't hurt me.

00:36:38.920 So we need to demonstrate authority and willingness to respond, and that's the key to these nonverbals.

00:36:45.900 Yeah, and then another stance, you have the listener's pose.

00:36:48.180 So basically you're resting your hand on your chin, and then you have one arm just kind of covering the midline.

00:36:53.660 Yeah, and that's a very purpose-driven position.

00:36:56.720 Like if you're in a scenario where you're inherently way too close to someone and you're afraid, but at the same time, your decision-making is like, you know, if I touch this guy, he's going to go off like a firecracker.

00:37:08.900 And what I really think is he's probably not going to attack me so I can defuse it, and you're in this sort of like higher level confrontational management mode, that listener pose is fantastic because it conveys the message that your opponent is being heard.

00:37:24.800 So when someone's upset at you and they're like, you know, you don't understand and they're gesticulating and stuff like that, but you're thinking to yourself, man, I don't want to handle this in any more of an aggressive manner.

00:37:33.900 I can just defuse this.

00:37:35.600 That's a protective posture, and it's something that I found myself using quite a bit in the close protection world because it wasn't so much the distance from me to those potential opponents that I was concerned about.

00:37:46.620 It was the distance between them and my principal.

00:37:49.980 So I'd find myself in these compromised distances, and I'd use that listener's pose quite a bit.

00:37:56.380 Yeah, and this would be a great one to use if you're dealing with a disgruntled employee or disgruntled customer.

00:38:01.580 You got it.

00:38:02.120 Okay, and then the other thing you can do to let the bad guys know that you're not a soft target is just they're watching you.

00:38:09.360 You talk about just watch them, too.

00:38:10.940 They're not going to attack someone who's got their head on a swivel and paying attention.

00:38:16.320 Yeah, and we're really talking about situational awareness, and as I mentioned, just paying attention, I always say, is the prerequisite, right?

00:38:23.920 So in today's world, we have to tell people, take the earbuds out of your ears, right?

00:38:29.560 Get your head out of your phone, especially when you're in environments that could potentially pose a risk.

00:38:36.140 And, you know, understand where those environments are.

00:38:39.900 Like, you know, you have to have a decision-making process to say, where am I safe most of the time, functionally?

00:38:45.620 Where can I relax?

00:38:46.660 And where do I need to have my awareness turned on and switched on a little bit more?

00:38:51.600 Otherwise, you burn out.

00:38:53.180 But once you understand that, then you got to know what to look for, and you got to be able to look.

00:38:57.620 And one of the principles is you want to do what I call watching for the watchers, okay?

00:39:03.700 You know, a friend of mine one time summarized like this, and I think it's wonderful.

00:39:07.620 He said he used to live in New York City, and he says, you know, when friends of mine would visit me in New York, I'd tell them that there are three kinds of people in New York.

00:39:15.780 There's the people who are looking up.

00:39:17.620 Those are the tourists.

00:39:19.040 There's the people who are looking down.

00:39:20.980 Those are the New Yorkers.

00:39:22.320 And then there's the people who are looking for who's looking up and who's looking down.

00:39:26.200 And they're the ones you got to pay attention to.

00:39:28.800 And I tell people that there's a great wisdom in this very simple sort of story, and that what you really want to do is watch for the watchers.

00:39:36.620 Look for people who are observing and who are watching who's coming and going.

00:39:41.140 And the interesting thing about that is just by training yourself to watch for the watchers, you recognize danger way in advance.

00:39:48.280 But on top of that, when a bad guy sees you and recognizes you as another watcher, functionally speaking, it's like two predators at the watering hole.

00:39:58.280 There's just way easier prey around, and they don't need the challenge.

00:40:03.180 And I'm not talking about eyeballing people and, like, getting in a stare-down contest.

00:40:06.740 I'm just talking about, as you said, keeping your head on a swivel and, like, keeping your head up looking around.

00:40:12.280 And if you're looking with purpose, what you're looking for specifically are people who are observing others.

00:40:18.820 They could be just like you.

00:40:19.920 They could be normal, you know, good, decent people.

00:40:23.240 But they could be potentially bad guys.

00:40:26.640 And you want to be able to discern that.

00:40:28.600 Yeah, you're looking for people who potentially might be in that intelligence-gathering phase of the time decision process.

00:40:35.600 So, yeah, we've had – you quote – you talk about Patrick Van Horn.

00:40:38.680 We've had Patrick on the podcast talk about his book, Left of Bang.

00:40:41.880 He does a great job talking about how to develop situational awareness.

00:40:44.820 And what it all comes down to is just any situation you're in, you've got to establish what the baselines are, like what's normal, and then look for anomalies.

00:40:55.060 And every situation is going to have a different baseline.

00:40:57.160 You know, what's normal in Tijuana, Mexico might not be normal in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

00:41:03.520 And so, once you establish that baseline, if someone's doing something, it's like, yeah, you probably shouldn't be doing that in this situation.

00:41:08.980 That's when you have to think, okay, this is a potential problem.

00:41:13.160 I've got to have a plan in case something goes south.

00:41:17.120 Yeah, and exactly.

00:41:18.660 And I quote Patrick Van Horn in the book because, you know, his model of Left of Bang and Time are very, very similar.

00:41:24.420 And, you know, I've been teaching that for significantly longer, but the idea here is the same basic theory of people coming up with the same theories and the same logic.

00:41:33.360 And I'm a huge fan of their work as well.

00:41:35.660 And the idea of having this baseline is exactly as you described.

00:41:39.780 You've got to give your brain a certain amount of time to establish what is normal for the environment.

00:41:45.140 And this is kind of one of the most important rules of situational awareness is once you have baseline, you don't have to be paranoid.

00:41:53.260 You don't have to be constantly on edge thinking someone's going to attack you all the time.

00:41:57.240 You just need to be able to observe and not shunt your normal, you know, sort of the inputs, the visual, the audible inputs.

00:42:05.140 So you can take in observational cues and trust that your radar will literally alert you when something is an anomaly to that baseline.

00:42:16.940 You just got to give yourself time.

00:42:18.440 If you're traveling, for example, and you're going to Tijuana, it's going to take you 24, 48 hours on average to be able to sort of assemble internally what is normal.

00:42:28.400 And once you get that baseline, then you can trust that your radar will warn you when something's out of place.

00:42:34.860 And when it is, that's when you observe.

00:42:37.060 You do what I call a deeper scan.

00:42:39.160 So you take a closer look and you ask certain questions of what's going on here.

00:42:43.540 Is this person using the environment correctly?

00:42:45.780 Are they a watcher?

00:42:47.340 You know, is this an area of mandatory travel?

00:42:50.040 Are there all these different factors that will contribute to you being able to quickly assess what's really going on there?

00:42:57.940 And is it dangerous or is it just something out of the ordinary?

00:43:02.480 Okay.

00:43:02.560 So in this eye of time part, the goal is to deter the bad guy.

00:43:05.960 So he's potentially selected you as a target.

00:43:08.800 He's in this intelligence gathering phase.

00:43:10.760 Your goal is to figure out ways to deter him.

00:43:13.420 And you can do that through body language, putting distance between you and him, watching him, letting him know that you've got eyes on him as well.

00:43:21.160 Any other things you can do in this process to deter a bad guy from actually making that decision to attack?

00:43:26.180 Yeah, I mean, bad guys, you know, particularly predatory bad guys, right?

00:43:31.160 You know, the defining characteristic of them is this idea of opportunity.

00:43:35.040 They're like a hybrid.

00:43:36.160 You know, they have a mission, but they need the right situational factors.

00:43:39.980 And if you control the situational factors, you can limit the likelihood of you ever being targeted.

00:43:45.580 So, for example, in the most general sense, distance control is key.

00:43:51.920 So, for example, if you can control the distance that any engagement is going to happen, you know, so at the first sign of an interview, you simply leave, right?

00:44:00.540 You get the hell out of there.

00:44:01.620 You're going to limit the likelihood of that interview actually manifesting and creating the potential for an attack, okay?

00:44:11.080 And the second you realize you're in a close quarter interview trying to manage that distance using the stop sign, using some of the body language, those kinds of tactics will diffuse those quite a bit because they remove opportunity from that bad guy getting the jump on you, getting surprise.

00:44:24.660 Another example, for example, when we're talking about deterrence is not losing control of the situational factors.

00:44:33.040 So, if we're dealing with a social setting, like say a woman's on a date and she's getting a bad vibe, right?

00:44:39.540 Well, try not to put yourself in a scenario where you're behind closed doors and there's an opportunity for that person to exercise control over the environment.

00:44:48.940 So, those kinds of things, like having an acute awareness of what are the situational factors that I can control, whether it's distance, whether it's, you know, just being alone with someone and giving them that privacy, all of those factors come into play in how you navigate, you know, this kind of uncertain world and these dynamics.

00:45:10.860 But all of it really comes first with an acute understanding of when am I in danger and particularly if I think I'm being targeted and not dismissing that initial belief.

00:45:24.960 Okay, so the best way to defend yourself is just to not put yourself in a situation where you have to defend yourself.

00:45:30.340 And if you are in a situation where you have to defend yourself, your first recourse should just be get out of the situation, do things to deter violence.

00:45:37.460 But let's say you've done all this stuff and the attacker decides I'm going to make a victim of you.

00:45:43.380 You argue that your self-defense response needs to be vertical, not horizontal, which means horizontal self-defense is when you have numerous response options to a situation.

00:45:56.400 So, you could do A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and it just goes on and on.

00:46:02.760 And that can slow down your response time because there's too much decision-making going on.

00:46:07.920 Vertical self-defense is about having a more streamlined approach.

00:46:11.440 You have one, maybe two options in mind.

00:46:13.960 So, you're either going to do A or you're going to do B.

00:46:16.380 And by keeping things simple, you speed up the response time.

00:46:20.100 So, when it comes to physical responses, the things you teach the people that you train, they're not complicated maneuvers.

00:46:28.400 They're not complicated punch knee sequences.

00:46:30.060 You're not doing Americana arm locks.

00:46:33.040 It's just simple, gross motor movements.

00:46:36.840 And we've had Tony Blauer on the podcast.

00:46:39.160 And he talks about that in a self-defense situation.

00:46:42.420 Fine motor skills, they go out the window.

00:46:45.700 So, you have to keep your responses to big movements with limbs.

00:46:49.800 You can't really do small ones.

00:46:52.120 A hundred percent.

00:46:53.040 So, Tony and I are friends, and he wrote me a very kind testimonial for this book.

00:46:57.640 He was a big fan of it, and I can tell you that Tony is a hundred percent correct.

00:47:02.620 And he's one of the pioneers when it comes to physiological response to danger, really studying it and understanding it.

00:47:08.640 But that is one of the differences between competitive martial arts and what we see in ring fighting or the movies and real world is when we hit that level of stress, that survival level of stress.

00:47:20.800 It's not the sort of controlled, you know, controls and expectations driven competitive stress.

00:47:27.280 When we get into serious life and death stuff, you're left with gross motor movements.

00:47:32.720 And by virtue of that, what gross motor movements are, keeping it simple, is like running, charging, swimming movements.

00:47:39.220 So, we got to keep it simple.

00:47:41.100 And we have to keep our responses to those violent stimuli into the realm of physiologically appropriate techniques.

00:47:51.040 What works under this level of stress?

00:47:53.160 What has been pressure tested and proven to work under this extreme?

00:47:57.540 But at the exact same time, how do we train ourselves with what we want to do?

00:48:01.880 So, you've got this framework.

00:48:04.480 It says, okay, how do I, what do I need to do to handle a knife attack?

00:48:08.140 What do I need to do to handle a gun disarm or to handle an attack with a, you know, a guy throwing a punch at me?

00:48:13.540 And you have to say what techniques are appropriate, what strategies are appropriate, but how do we accomplish those within the confines of physiologically appropriate stress-induced responses?

00:48:26.620 And that's what I teach.

00:48:28.800 I've got a system that I've taught over many years.

00:48:31.100 It's refined over many years.

00:48:32.440 And I'll be the first to say, it went from more of the complex martial arts moves.

00:48:38.700 And over time, it was not something that became bigger.

00:48:42.040 It was something that became more refined and smaller in terms of how do I simplify, simplify, simplify to the point where someone can do a simple technical approach and establish a position of control from which you can use basic gross motor techniques to win, no matter what the scenario is.

00:49:00.320 And that's the approach I use.

00:49:02.580 On paper, it's very similar to like, you know, what a lot of other systems preach.

00:49:07.440 They talk about dealing with weapons and multiple opponents.

00:49:10.460 My physical training is really, I believe, proven in gross motor enough that it's achievable for just about anyone under even extreme stress.

00:49:20.460 So, I mean, we're talking about like knee movements.

00:49:22.820 I mean, I know you can't get specific, but generally, what would that look like?

00:49:26.220 Yeah.

00:49:26.760 We're talking simple movements, gross motor strikes, knee strikes, and controlled behaviors that are, again, postural in nature and allow you to sort of, what I've accomplished that I think is pretty interesting is what I call an initial position of control.

00:49:41.360 So, no matter what happens, guy throws a punch at you, you're penetrating through their defense, someone tries to attack you, someone slashes at you with a knife, stabs at you, whatever it is, that is a very simple vertical way to get quickly into an established position of control from which you can start to fire gross motor movements in.

00:50:00.220 Like knees to the groin, the body, the head, you know, strikes to the brainstem at the back of the neck, simple takedown maneuvers that are gross motor in nature that lock out the arm or allow you to take someone down if you have to.

00:50:13.420 But, you know, the framework is get to the position of control from which you can then do either incapacitation takedown or, in a worst-case scenario, some kind of deadly force, you know, damage.

00:50:24.960 Does that make sense?

00:50:25.880 That makes sense.

00:50:26.660 And then, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier with SAFE, that decision-making process, you have to train this stuff because the goal is to know what you're going to do right in the moment, right?

00:50:36.400 Because you've already trained for it, so you're not stuck in paralysis by analysis.

00:50:41.220 And then you're trying to disrupt the decision-making process of the other guy because they're not going to be expecting, you know, he wasn't planning on this person hitting me in the brainstem.

00:50:50.260 Yeah. And a lot of it comes back to if we actually think about what we're fighting for, right?

00:50:55.680 You know, like one of the chapters in the final, you know, component, the final sections of the book, Brett, we talk about the difference between self-defense, what I call defensive tactics, or what was colloquially called defensive tactics, and then combatives.

00:51:08.640 And, you know, it's important to differentiate because self-defense, the goal is to escape, right, to create an opportunity to escape.

00:51:18.100 And as a result, self-defense is in some ways the most complex and at the exact same time the easiest to achieve because it gives you a lot of complex scenarios and dynamics.

00:51:30.600 But if the goal is just to create an opportunity to escape, then – and if the bad guy, for example, realizes that they tangled with the wrong person who's willing and able to fight back, very often they just want to go the other direction.

00:51:43.740 They want to go one way. You want to go one way. That's an easy day.

00:51:46.560 So it doesn't take nearly as much to overcome the majority of self-defense situations.

00:51:52.200 It just takes a certain level of skills that can work under real stress.

00:51:56.800 When we get into law enforcement training, which I've done quite a bit of, and, you know, kind of close protection training and higher-level security, defensive tactics is wholly different because now if a cop, for example, is trying to apprehend someone, and that is the objective, and the person doesn't want to be apprehended,

00:52:14.020 you can have a much, much higher level of violence ensue.

00:52:17.880 So the skill sets have to be a little bit broader.

00:52:20.800 They have to be a little more complex.

00:52:22.520 They have to be able to handle a greater dimension of violence.

00:52:26.400 And then the highest level is combatives, and combatives is what we typically think of with MMA or, say, military applications or what we see in the movies.

00:52:35.840 Two guys duking it out, nobody backing down.

00:52:38.640 Someone's literally got to beat their opponent into submission, and the reality is fights almost never occur in the combative realm.

00:52:48.340 It's almost always one-sided.

00:52:50.220 It's either the bad guy seems to have a decisive advantage and is exploiting that advantage to victimize someone with impunity, or the good guy turns the tables very quickly.

00:53:01.060 The bad guy realizes that they're not going to have an easy day of this, and they just want to get the hell out of there.

00:53:07.360 You know, when you get in a combative dynamics, what you're really looking at is warfighting, and you're looking at competitive martial arts.

00:53:14.300 And if you're a warfighter, you know, if you're a Tim Kennedy, if you're a Green Beret, you know, I can understand why these guys want people to have real combative skills, because their framework of this is dealing with adversaries who they physically have to defeat, right?

00:53:31.160 Even in war, that is a relative rarity.

00:53:33.860 So, when we talk about the physical skill sets, I believe in training the whole dimension of it.

00:53:39.320 I really think everybody should have some level of combative skills if they're going to be well-rounded.

00:53:44.540 But at the end of the day, the majority of people can make do with just the basics of self-defense, so they can recognize danger, avoid being targeted in the first place, manage those interviews, and fight their way out of a bad situation such that they can create an opportunity to escape.

00:54:02.460 And the majority of people can do that with a relative amount of ease.

00:54:07.220 Yeah.

00:54:07.480 What I loved about the book when I finished it, the big takeaway I got from it was that you have more control in self-defense than you think.

00:54:14.920 I think a lot of people think, well, if some bad guy, he's got the jump on me, I can't do anything.

00:54:19.800 I think the big takeaway from your book was that, no, there's things you can do.

00:54:24.040 You can actually create situations for yourself that you can protect yourself and your family.

00:54:29.500 Well, Sam, this has been a great conversation.

00:54:30.980 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:54:34.420 Well, Brett, this has been a great conversation.

00:54:36.340 Thank you.

00:54:37.120 And what I would say is just go to my website.

00:54:40.800 The fastest way there would be livereadybook.com.

00:54:44.340 That's the most linear way to get to the website landing page for the book.

00:54:48.800 The book is available anywhere books are sold.

00:54:51.140 The audio book is on Audible.

00:54:53.320 And anybody who wants to learn more about me can find their way to my website from livereadybook.com.

00:54:59.380 Fantastic.

00:55:00.520 Well, Sam Rosenberg, thanks for your time.

00:55:01.740 It's been a pleasure.

00:55:02.900 Brett, it's been an honor.

00:55:04.300 Thank you very much.

00:55:06.660 My guest here is Sam Rosenberg.

00:55:08.080 He's the author of the book, Live Ready.

00:55:09.660 It's available on amazon.com.

00:55:11.360 You can find more information about his work at his website, liveready.co.

00:55:15.040 Also check out our show notes at awim.is slash liveready.

00:55:17.940 Where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:55:27.960 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

00:55:30.900 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives,

00:55:34.840 as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything

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00:55:39.240 And if you haven't done this already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review

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00:55:50.980 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:55:53.060 And until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not listen to AOM Podcast,

00:55:57.120 but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - January 22, 2024

A Guide to Protecting Yourself Against Unexpected Violence

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