The window to my world

As a NRA certified handgun safety instructor I’m always on the lookout for material to present to students that goes beyond the text. While mainly focused on safety I do cover some defensive use of handguns. The most recent book I read to expand my knowledge is Combat Focus Shooting: Intuitive Shooting Fundamentals by Rob Pincus. In his book Pincus covers areas that many other authors have also covered but two things stood out for me in reading his book.

In going through his book the first thing that struck me was Pincus’s writing style. A good writer, especially on a technical subject, needs to break down the information so that it can be absorbed by the reader that may not have as much technical knowledge as the author. Pincus fulfilled this requirement quite well. Many times during the book I could instantly visualize the point Pincus was making. Pincus also kept things short and to do the point. I’ve seen some authors go through pages upon pages explaining shooting stances where Pincus covers it in a few pages, including explaining why you want to use this stance

The other area that stood out for me is the intuitive part of the book. Pincus has examined what your body wants to do in a stressful situation and using that as a starting point for his system. Those familiar with Tony Blauer’s S.P.E.A.R. System will recognize this approach. I’ve been through training classes before where the instructor has drilled us on what to do, but not explaining always why we want to do this. Examining what your mind and body want to do and building your system around is a big selling point to me. Those that rather fight what your body wants to do may not agree with me on this point.

Overall I came away with some good information to share in my classes and will suggest Pincus’s book to those in my class. If you have an interested in self-defense usage of a handgun and looking to learn more then Pincus’s book should be on your reading list.

I was fortunate enough to attend Tony Blauer’s SPEAR System and PDR 2009 Summer Camp which was held on August 14th through the 16th. Three days of fun, sweat, and a few minor bruises. I would like to say I was well rested when I hit the camp on Friday but a combination of an early flight and issues on checking into my motel meant I was a little tired. Thankfully this didn’t impact me on Friday.

Camp opened on Friday with a registration and a chance to mingle and check out the pro shop. I managed to say hi to a few people I’ve met before and also had a chance to meet some FaceBook friends face to face finally. Friday’s session officially started with a presentation from CrossFit founder Greg Glassman. I first heard of CrossFit through Coach Blauer speaking about it and had done some research into it so I looked forward to hearing Coach Glassman speak. The audience was given an overview of CrossFit’s philosophy and what hey see as their goals in the in the world of fitness. The geeks in the crowd also got an X-Y plot of power against duration with the area under this curve being your total fitness. Coach Glassman brought forth some very interesting concepts, especially in how the CrossFit philosophy ties in the philosophy of Coach Blauer in the area of self-defense. After hsi presentation a Q&A session was held and that wrapped things up for the night.

Saturday started where Friday left off, with CrossFit. Only this time we weren’t listening we were doing. After a warm-up our ten minute CrossFit began with a 400 meter run, not jog, run. After that we moved to the barbells where you did seven reps of thrusters followed by 7 burpees. You then repeated the thrusters/burpess till the ten minutes were up. I still think the stop clock was running slow.

After people picked themselves off the floor Coach Blauer gave a presentation on Personal Defense Readiness (PDR) and the SPEAR System. This a good overview and of the concepts and Coach Blauer’s philosophy when it comes to personal protection. The crowd had some good questions and we had a chance to do some quick exercises to show us how the SPEAR system works. I was working with Steve, an EMT from Colorado and more then once I heard a phrase such as “f’ing amazing”  (edited in case by son reads this)when the exercise we were during re-enforced what Coach Blauer had spoken about. We even saw how a small lady could support the full weight of Coach Blauer using the SPEAR concepts. This induced what Coach Blauer refers to as a “holy f&*$” moment. A a side note, if you are offended by strong language don’t attend a presentation by Coach Blauer. After these brief drills we had a chance to break off into three groups based on if you were in the military, a PDR coach, etc. This gave us a chance to work on more SPEAR drills with a partner. For these drills I hooked up with Robert from North Carolina and we actually ended up partnering up for the rest of the exercises throughout the course.

After these drills we broke for lunch then came back for Coach Blauer’s presentation of weapon protection (defending against a firearm or knife). We were actually the first class where Coach Blauer had taught this information with civilians present as this is a topic he usually only covers with the military and law enforcement personal. A course on weapons could cover days so we got only a brief insight into what Coach Blauer knows about this topic, but more then enough information to make my brain swim. Coach Blauer covered firearms in this session and we then had a chance to do drills to practice what he was preaching.

After the SPEAR training for the day we had a chance to listen to a presentation by Brian MacKenzie of CrossFit Endurance. Coach MacKenzie spoke on the topic of endurance athletes, those crazy people that do the Iron Man competition or 100 mile foot races, and how CrossFit can make them better in their sport. He provided some examples of how CrossFit training has helped him and others actually get better at endurance events while actually doing less traditional endurance training. For example Coach MacKenzie told us that while training for a 100 mile foot race the most he ever ran at one times was about 13 miles.  A collective “what?” went up from the crowd when he mentioned that. I would like the chance to learn more about his running techniques, not that I’m going to go run 100 miles, but I know my current technique is bad and hard on my body. Always something to improve. This ended the day for us and I welcomed a nice cold beer with dinner before hitting the bed, sire and tired.

Sunday started off with a presentation by Kyle Maynard of No Excuses Athletics. I have seen videos of Kyle speaking before so knew a little of his background, but hearing him in person was a great experience. Kyle is a good speaker and he comes across as humble in his nature and with a good sense of humor. Hearing Kyle speak reminded me of a line from a book I read a long time ago: “Argue for your limitations and they are yours”. If you ever get a chance to hear Kyle speak in person, don’t pass it up.

After Kyle’s presentation Coach Blauer reviewed the concepts we covered yesterday and went into defense against the knife, As I mentioned I again teamed up with Robert and we spent the morning going over the drills and seeing how much pain we could induce without causing serious damage. This may not be everyone’s idea of a fun time but I really enjoyed it.

We then got together for final lecture by Coach Blauer and him and his team fielding questions from the group. After this a drawing was held for door prizes, which it seems many people lost their tickets or had left early. Which worked out great for me as I ended up winning the grand prize, a High Gear “ground and pound” kit. I’m looking forward to some chances to use it in training.

To wrap up the day the PDR coaches put on a High Gear demonstration. They covered some of the same scenarios as we did in our training but with the gear on they could go faster and harder. This was fun to watch and showed why the High Gear is great training equipment.

After this camp wrapped up for the day. Said good-byes to old and new friends, and most of us headed for home. A few were staying behind for the PDR Coaches Certification course that was starting the next day. I have this course as a goal for next week, just have to wait and see. The camp was a outstanding experience and I’m really glad I had the chance to attend. Coach Blauer and his staff were all helpful in whatever questions we had or issues we needed resolved. I would recommend this camp to anyone looking to learn more about personal protection.

S.P.E.A.R. System and PDR Summer Training Camp that is. I’m looking forward for the chance to working with Tony Blauer and his team. Personal defense / self-defense is one of the areas of martial arts where I really want to improve myself.

Little more on what will be covered:

The 2009 edition of the Camp will focus on the following themes:
•    Coach Glassman On CrossFit, Survival And Functional Fitness
•    Intro & Review of S.P.E.A.R. System Essentials For Personal Defense
•    The 3 Cs of An Armed Confrontation (Clear, Control & Counter)
•    Fundamentals Of Weapon Disarms
•    S.P.E.A.R. vs. Haymaker/Tackle Combo
•    Heavy Bag Conditioning Drills For Street Defense
•    HIGH GEAR Clinic
•    HIGH GEAR Demo

Jake Steinmann over on the Honest Philosophy Blog made a post with his thoughts to a post by Rory Miller. Three being the magic number I decided to add where I think I am.

The posting consider the stages of a martial artists and how they may evolve as a martial artist. Miller describes people in the martial arts as going through three possible stages, novice, collector, and stripper. The novice is the one where all martial artists start, we learn the moves,we learn the katas, and earn rank. After this some people will continue to the collector stage. Here the person is learning new techniques, going to seminars, expanding their toolkit, etc. Then after this fewer will go to the stripper stage. These are the collectors that have discovered, often through a bad scenario, they know too much stuff to grab at any one time so they start to strip their tool bag down. This is a brief overview of Miller’s post and I suggest you read his entire post to get a better idea of what he is talking about.

For me, I started in Taekwon-Do a little over 20 years ago while living in California. I went to classes, and even a few seminars. I was in the beginning of a collector stage. Then I ended up moving to Maine and searched around for a TKD school, in a style I wanted to do, and couldn’t find one. I did find one school, tried it, didn’t care for the direction the school took compared to my old one. Thus ended my martial arts career in TKD with the rank of blue belt.

Several years down the road my son started karate at Pelletier’s Karate. I took him to classes, watched what was happening, thought about joining, but had no real desire to just do katas. Then the head instructor (and my current sensei) Rich Pelletier announced that they were going to start some sparring and grappling classes for adults. For some reason this caught my attention. Not because I wanted to be the next MMA star but because I could see a real practical use now, fighting especially fighting to protect myself. So I enrolled.

Needless to say sparring and grappling was not for everyone and soon it would just be one or two of us for those classes and they ended up being canceled. However I had started to learn about Tony Blauer and his S.P.E.A.R. system from my instructor (he is a certified S.P.E.A.R. instructor) and this started my in the collection of the teachings of Tony Blauer.

Currently I see myself as a collector, although a specialized one. I look for seminars to attend but all focused around self-defense/reality based combat. In class when items are being explained I examine them with an eye towards self-defense. Some people may consider this being a stripper, but I don’t think I’ve learned enough to actually examine my own tool kit and start tossing things out. Just because a move is presented as being for self-defense doesn’t mean it is a good move. I’ll continue stadying and learning and perhaps one day I’ll make it to the stripper stage.

S.P.E.A.R. System: For Women & Self Defense Coaches; Rape Safe is a two volume set available from Tony Blauer and his company Blauer Tactical Systems. Combined these two DVD’s weigh in at over 3 hours in length and focuses on a wide variety of topics aimed at the main topic: self defense for women in a rape situation.

In a nutshell, this series covers what Blauer refers to as the 3 D’s: Detect, Defuse, and Defend. While too often many self-defense system focus on only the Defend part, Blauer spends lots of time talking about the other two parts. If one thinks of self defense as being layers between you and a predator, the outer layer is Detect, the middle Defuse, and the inner layer Defend. Blauer points out the importance of these three layers and how our goal should be to stop the threat at the outermost layer that we can. Blauer provides various tools and techniques to be used at each layer along with examples of using them in different scenarios. These range from situational awareness, non-violent postures, and his Closest Weapon Closest Target (CWCT) concepts. In all Blauer provides very useful information in all three of these areas.

This set also offers a good overview of many of what I’ll call Blauer’s philosophies. Blauer talks about his S.P.E.A.R. System, or Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response, which I consider the heart of his teachings. Blauer breaks this down and explains how our natural flinch response can be used not only to defend out also as a launching point for an attack. Also presented is a Powerpoint slide explaining his “Cycle of Behavior”, which is a probably most simply described as explaining how we behave. Myself I found this presentation very interesting and really ties together the concepts presented in this series. I actually watched this section a couple of times to wrap my mind around the concepts presented here. Trying to explain all of this is beyond the scope of this review but in the end all good information.

Is there a downside to this series? In the information presented, no. But as the disclaimer says at the beginning this is DVD presentation of analog videos that in some cases were filmed over twenty years ago. The video and sound quality is not the best. If that is the biggest knock I have against this, which it is, then that is something I can live with.

Does the DVD meet its goal as stated in the title? I would say yes. One just needs to remember you don’t learn self-defense from a video, or a book. You need to take the concepts and practice them, and practice it like you mean it. When you are learning to drive you just don’t watch a video then get a license, you practice the skills. Same thing here. Any woman getting this video to learn self-defense needs to also practice the techniques presented. A self-defense coach could learn much too and it could help them determine “am I teaching my students the right things?” Outside of the target audince I would add that anyone looking to learn more about self-defense, both the physical and psychological aspects, would benefit from this series.

Today in karate class we focused mainly on boxing techniques, grappling, and some basic escape techniques from a grappler. Being an early morning Saturday class there was only 3 students in the class. One of the students was a teenager and he has pretty good karate skills, he even is part of demo team. During this session he was struggling quite a bit as these were not your typical karate type of techniques. At the end of the class he commented on how we struggled and was frustrated as he usually picks up things easily. Our instructor’s response? “Hey, I don’t want any paper tiger black belts.”

What he meant by this is that he wants his students to be well rounded. Not just in karate but also as a fighter. He wants to make sure that if the worse thing happens on the street that we are able to protect yourself. That should be the point of any martial arts school. If your students, especially at the black belt, lack the skills to adequatly protect themsleves on the street then how good is your martial arts?

Jake Steinmann is offering a free Personal Defense Readiness seminar on June 6th, at the Redline Fight Sports in Cambridge, MA. If you live in the area and interested in self-defense then I highly suggest checking this out.

In his book “Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence” Sgt. Rory Miller offers his perspective on dealing with violence from his experience as a corrections officer and martial artist. The main concept of Miller’s book is examining the gap that exists in many martial arts training programs and what happens in a violent attack.

Miller starts off by driving the point that violence is complicated. The how, when, and why of a violent attacks are many and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out all the different scenarios. He also makes the point that the “violence” you see in entertainment or even in your martial arts class is nothing like you see in real life. Miller also points out that the violent situation and how you would respond to them can vary widely. It should be noted that the violent situations that Miller talks about vary from a self-defense situation, to a sporting invite, to actual combat in war.
After giving an overview of what is violence and how responses can be different according to the type of violence, Miller tackles the topic of assumptions of violence and how we think of violence. In this section Miller does a good job of pointing out where many assumptions about violence are wrong. People will tend to discount their own experience or give too much credit to how they think things should work. To address these issues Miller suggests different types of training, both physical and mental. People that have done studying into the mental aspects will recognize items such as the OODA loop and Hick’s Law. Offering my own insight Hick’s Law is probably the one I see violated most often in the martial arts dojo. For those not familiar with Hick’s Law it states that the more options we have the longer it takes to choose one.

The next few sections Miller cover more about violence, the types of violence, the groups that violent people can be classified into, and giving an insight to these people, especially predators. Miller does a good job of classifying types of violence and how many of them can be defused without resorting to physical actions. Also pointed out that if a violent assault does happen it will probably happen much closer, faster, suddenly, and powerful then what many think. Miller covers lots of information in these sections which someone interested in learning more about violent behavior and the people that perform these types of behavior will find useful. While covering these areas Miller does recommend the book “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin DeBecker, a recommendation I would second.

Now Miller moves on to discussing training, especially in the martial arts, to handle violence. Most likely this would fall into the self-defense training that many martial arts classes will cover. Here Miller covers what he sees as many of the flaws of training. The obvious one is how do you practice a technique to break an arm without actually breaking the arm? If you practice always pulling your punches, or making light contact, what will you do in a real situation? These and others are items Miller points out that we need to be aware of and attempt to find ways to deal with them in our training. Here is where many students of martial arts that have only studied some type of set self defense in the class will go “I never considered that.” Miller does offer his advice on how to improve your training, which people who have studied the teaching ideas of Tony Blauer and the SPEAR system will recognize. Miller breaks down his training idea into six phases, which in my opinion provide a good general guideline when thinking about real world self-defense training. Miller also covers the stages of defending yourself from an assault. These cover what many martial artist do practice such as “blocking the motion” (think an upward block to deflect a punch) and “blocking the opportunity” (awareness of your target areas and your attacker’s weapons), but also the topics of “blocking the intent” (the pre-emptive strike), “altering the relationship” (defusing the situation without using physical force), and the “use of terrain” (awareness of your physical surroundings and what it means). Miller closes up this section with talking about the “Go” button and your actions once a violent assault starts. One important point that Miller makes is giving yourself permission to defend yourself, to use physical force. This part may make people go “huh”, but too often people don’t give themselves permission to protect their life. “They are bigger than me” , “they have a weapon” , or “he said he wouldn’t hurt me if I did what he said” are all reasons people give for not protecting themselves.

Miller then closes up his book with dealing with the “after”, what happens after a violent attack? Here are suggestions on handling the mental aspects that occur after a violent event. This can be a very complicated area and Miller offers some of his general thoughts on that matter.

Overall I found Miller’s book a good read with some good advice and insight. Anyone that studies martial arts with one of the goals if studying to be able to protect themselves should pick up a copy of the book.

That is a good motto to remember. Glad to see Ted Mazetier follows this motto too.

If I ever have car trouble I would hope there is a Mr. Mazetier around to offer a hand.  Too bad we have scum in society that attempt to pry on people. Mr. Mazetier also showed that many predators want an easy victim, not one that will fight back. A safer approach would have been to use a cell phone to call for help for the people with “car troubles”.

The world could use more people like Mr. Mazetier and fewer of the scum that tried to carjack him.

I’ve done instruction for handgun safety and personal proection, part of a concealed firearms permit in the state where I live. A misconception that some people would have in the class, and one I still see nowadays is that carrying a firearm somehow makes them safer. I want to try and burst that bubble.

Carrying a firearm can be useful tool in defending yourself IF you can bring it into action. Too many people walk around with their heads up their ass and don’t pay attention to the surroundings and thus missing the cues that their could be trouble. Recognizing these cues and help you either avoid or defuse the situation. Predators tend to want an easy target. If you don’t look like an easy target chances are they will avoid. Learn to recognize the cues that they give you. Study the thinking patterns of these type of people and you’ll lots in this area. If that fails know how to attempt to defuse the situation via your posture and language. Hand in hand with this is fear management techniques.

Now those fail and an attack is launched against you, what are you going to do? Many say “draw my firearm and shoot them” which shows a lack of knowledge in what is going to happen in a fight. Action beats reaction, the attacker is acting and you are reacting, unless you were aware enough to get in a first strike such as an eye poke or a palm to their face. The only way you’ll know how to strike first or to defend yourself to give you a chance to draw a firearm is through hand to hand combat training.

Drawing a firearm from concealment is a complex motor skill which is difficult to do under stress unless you really really practice it a lot. Go with the gross motor skills such as palm and elbow strikes to allow yourself to get clear of the attack in order to either get away or then draw a firearm. Just my thoughts on the matter.