Overcoming Fear Part V

“Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.”

                                                                -Carl von Clausewitz 

Okay, this is going to be long so you might want to get some coffee for this one. In this installment I’m going to jump right in because I’m going to cover this from the perspective of how you as an instructor can train this in your students. Plus, some of you guys keep bugging me about it so I got to make good on it. This is the kind of stuff that I get asked quite frequently by other instructors but even if you’re not an instructor you can benefit from it if for nothing else but to gain insights into how to train on your own.  

I’m going to guide you through my thought process of how I view training people to overcome their fear. It’s actually less about Overcoming Fear and more about being honest with them, training them to become confident in their capabilities that they can "bring it" if they have to touch swords.

These are my thoughts so if you disagree that's fine I offer this without apology. These are observations gleamed from teaching hundreds if not nearly a thousand students in classes, in the military and privately over the years. I’m going to focus on what I know that works from what my Masters have taught me, my experiences and moreover from the results I’ve produced in people over the years because it is the only objective measure that matters. So if you missed the previous installments on Overcoming Fear you can access them here: https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/overcoming-fear-part-1

here: https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/overcoming-fear-part-ii

here: https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/overcoming-fear-part-iii

and here: https://protectyourself.mykajabi.com/blog/overcoming-fear-part-iv

2D Marine Division, HQ, Camp LeJeune, NC 2002

“If you were the Commanding General and you were getting ready to send Marines forward. Knowing that some of them no matter how well trained are not coming back and you had to make that decision, what would you want to know about the enemy? Remember, no matter how victorious we’re going to be, because we’re going to fucking win! He, as will their families, are going to live with the death of every Marine and Sailor. That’s what you guys as Intelligence Officers owe the General and owe those Marines. You’re Marines, do your duty, do your jobs, no excuses…”

                                                               --Col Peter Martino, USMC (ret)

I’ll never forget that speech, this was right after my reserve unit was mobilized and he had a chance to speak at a meeting we were attending to the Intelligence Officers in the Division. He was one of the Regimental Operations Officers and took no shit, moreover I think he sensed the mood in the room wasn’t where it needed to be and we needed to get our minds right.  Col Martino was dead on!

When it is your job to provide the essential information that could mean the difference between life and death. You owe it to those people that entrust you, that empower you with that responsibility your best effort at all times. As Sun Tzu would say, "Wars are serious affairs". Well you know what? Whether it's two nations going to war, two rival gangs or you and some other dude who means you harm. A "real fight" is war! To think otherwise is to deceive you own soul.

I don't care what you teach if you call yourself a self-protection expert, specialist, instructor, martial artist, "whatever", your mind needs to be right on this and if it's not you had better get there because the people you train expect it moreover they deserve it. 

Once Upon a Time

“We of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war.”

                                                          -Alexander the Great

I remember being in Afghanistan and walking some of the same areas that were once occupied the Alexander the Great's Macedonian Army. It was amazing walking that terrain, crossing those rivers, traversing parts of the Hindu Kush and to think they did that with a logistical train that in and of itself was a small city as it followed the army.

To think about having to fight on that terrain at close quarters with sword and shield. When you're in that environment, the extreme heat, the bone chilling cold, the floods, crossing the rivers, the canals, the poppy fields, "the cobras", traversing those ridges. Where each step, where the ground felt "unnaturally soft" brought your heart closer to your throat as you prayed you weren't stepping on a pressure plate IED connected to 40 lbs of ammonium nitrate, and then all of the restrictive terrain. It gave me a new appreciation for having a rifle in my hand. 

In the same vain as above, imagine if you were a Macedonian Warrior, Roman Centurion, Masai Warrior on the field of battle and you knew that any wound, any severe cut that you received could be fatal. That each battle you were but a kiss away from death, a whisper, a pat on the shoulder from the Angel of Death. How good would you want to be?

Even though more people were killed in wars during the 20^th Century. Think of the fear those guys had to overcome? The closeness of battle, the carnage, the smell of people’s innards being exposed, blood, piss, vomit it’s all there. Think of how exhausting it would be to wield sword and shield over and over? How frenzied and awkward people must have felt? Slipping, tripping, dodging? No fancy fencing moves here.

Sweat, blood and grit burn your eyes. Saliva dripping from your mouth because you can’t keep your mouth closed while you’re gasping for air, your lungs feel as if they are on fire, like you were drowning, throat so parched you can’t even swallow. You feel blood, but you don’t have time to worry if it’s yours. Your shoulder aches from the pounding against your shield, you feel the joint giving way. Your knees buckle from your own weight, your legs virtually immobile from trying to stabilize your balance amongst the carnage, "the limbs". Your arms numb with exhaustion yet your sword seems to move on its own though barely.

You look to catch your breath, you pray to your god but for a few seconds of respite, five maybe 10 seconds that’s all your asking, yet comes another and another and another after that. Then there are “the screams”, as if the look of oblivion on men’s faces wasn’t enough, always the screams…  You try to create space to free your blade and you feel a searing pain in your calf… “a fucking arrow”. Not deep, just enough to take some of the wind out of your sails.

You turn to your brother to tell him to raise his shield only to see an arrow through the throat has sent him to the afterlife first. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, because you know it’s going to get worse, here comes the mounted counter attack of the elite shock troops. Well-fed and fresh from a night’s sleep looking for scalps. It’s going to be a long day.

This is war…

While what I’ve described above may seem extreme at one time in history this is how business got done!

Me personally? I’m all about dusting off and nuking the site from orbit. Only way to be sure…

How Good Would you Want to Be

Now, how well would you want to be able to wield your shield? How good would you want to be with that spear? How good would you want to be with your sword? Your war club? How fast would you want to be able to move? Whatever the answer you know you’d want to be as near perfect as possible because your life depended on it.

People take up a martial art or go to self-defense schools, programs etc. They arrive with all sorts of reasons for wanting to learn.  They not only want to learn how to protect themselves or their families, but also to learn how to overcome their fears. Fear of pain, fear of injury, fear of death.

For some, it’s just enough to know what to do if someone attacks them when traveling from home to work or the mall. For others, whose occupations place them in harm’s way they’re there to learn skills necessary to protect themselves or others. The bottom line is everyone wants their “edge”.

So whatever the reason we all arrive at the same place because we all have the same fear that when faced with our moment of truth without such skills we won’t have a positive outcome. When your life or that of your loved ones is on the line failure is not an option.

Along the lines of what I described above, when I train people one thing I ask from time-to-time is, “Knowing what you know now, if you had to fight for your life, how hard would you want to be able to strike? How fast would you want your body to move? How elusive would you want to be? How balanced? How coordinated? How deceptive? How ruthless? This is where your mind needs to be.”

When you train in this fashion, with this “Mindset” fear takes a back seat to what is the art of the possible.  This is the philosophy I teach from this is the perspective or mental prism from which all information whether receiving it or imparting it flows through my mind and out of my mouth. In a real fight there are only two things your sword and their sword and nothing else. With that said, as an instructor there are only two things I need to worry about, 1) that I can bring it if I have to protect my family, my life and that of others etc. and; 2) that my students can bring it if they have to protect their lives or their family.

People often ask me how do you deal with the stress of being in combat? What is the Mindset you need to have? I think the thing people need to understand is first of all we go through incredible amounts of training these days before anyone sets foot in a combat zone. So we have a mental edge that the average person doesn't have because they don't know many of the things we know.

The truth is when you're in "the shit" as we like to say because it sounds like something cool you'd hear in a movie. You quickly realize that if you spend all your time worrying about death you make yourself combat ineffective, you begin to lose sleep, your mind starts imaging all sorts of things that are just not there. You become tentative, hesitant, irrationally fearful. I've seen this in men of all different ranks. Whether you're a General or a Private, fear is no respecter of persons. 

The key and this is important, because it applies to protecting yourself in general is that there is always an acceptable level of risk you have to come to terms with and come to an understanding that "if it's your time it's your time". You have to make peace with your own mortality and focus on doing your duty or what you need to do and as ancient warriors once did, you have to leave "fate" to the gods. The sooner you come to terms with this the better off you're going to be, believe me. 

The Only thing that Matters

^“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

                                                -Matthew 7:16-20 King James Version (KJV)

While Jesus was railing against false spiritual teachers the same applies here. There is some truth to the expression “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. The worst thing you can do as an instructor is to reinforce a person’s fears by teaching through the spirit of fear. Meaning, you’ve got to get your own fear in check before you remove the speck of dust from their eye. Otherwise you have no business teaching others.  

“A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit”. Well, an irrationally fearful instructor bringeth forth irrationally fearful students. Not good! They don’t need you for that they already have their fair share of fear, that’s why they came to you in the first place. To find ways to manage it. I’m sorry but there’s no way around it.

“Day by day, what you do is who you become.”

                                      -Heraclitus

For my students it’s all about can I give them what they need, which is not always the same as what they want. That’s why they’re paying me, to help figure some of that out. For my students what they do and what I train them to do, is who I want them to become. 

"Now character is like a tree, and reputation its shadow. Now the shadow is what we think of it but the tree is the real thing."

                                                                                     -Abraham Lincoln

As I like to tell students from time-to-time but not just for them but as a reminder to myself,

“What we do in class doesn’t matter and what I mean is the fight is not here in the class this is training the fight is out there on the street or wherever that's where your focus needs to be. All those people looking to win in class are wasting their time. You know, when I use to play football in college we use to call them "practice hero’s", they were great in practice but lousy where it counted, in the games.  When we're training I can only approximate a real fight sort of like teaching you how to swim in a pool or the calm serf so that when you’re in the ocean you at least have a chance. The only thing that matters is when you walk out of here and your moment of truth arrives. Can you do what you need to do? Can you bring it? My point is, don’t be a practice hero… be the real thing! Remember in a real fight we’re all on our own. Delta Force isn’t coming to rescue you, SEAL Team 6, FBI HRT, MARSOC, they’re all busy.  The Cops can’t help you because most criminals aren’t stupid enough to assault you in front of a police officer. You can’t hope for these things and if you’re hoping someone will come to your aid I have bad news for you, hope is not a plan! So you have to figure something else out. This is why we train the way we train this is why we do what we do the way we do it. We’re not playing games here or training for a duel, we’re training to fight for our lives, everything else is bullshit.”

Again, a big part of this is helping them sort through and learn to manage their fear. Everything else is irrelevant, everything else is a needless distraction, everything else is useless nonsense to be pitched into the outer darkness, everything else is all vanity, anything else is all bullshit.

You see to me the true measure of my ability or the validity of the art I teach, does not solely lie within what I can do, but what my students can do. After all, it could be that I just have enough natural physical talent (as I’ve been accused of) to “muscle through” and make things work in spite of how improbable they may be for others to realistically accomplish. 

It’s one thing to teach the gifted, but when you can teach the average person to reach outside of themselves to go beyond their perceived or actual limitations. To me that’s the real magic of the art of GUIDED CHAOS that’s why I believe without apology that GUIDED CHAOS is the greatest reality based fighting system ever created. We do this all of the time, training people beyond their perceived or actual limitations by making people into peerless fighters, or better with the body they already possess. From the clay we are formed and to the clay we shall return, what we do between the bookends is on us. What we become is a matter of choice because, who we were born does not ultimately determine who we can become.

As a side note, because it just needs to be said. There is a trap you see with many people who want to train in a sportive martial art for self-protection, where people think if they study "this sport" or "that sportive style" that they’re going to be able to accomplish what the most gifted practitioners of those arts are capable of. Giving no credence to the notion that maybe it’s because these people are so gifted, along with the thousands of hours of consistent practice, that it’s the reason they are able to make it work for them. Listen many people take Boxing classes and over the years I’ve had the pleasure of training some former Pro Boxers in GUIDED CHAOS. 

So let me help you, trust me that stuff you do in your cardio boxing class or cardio kick boxing class is nothing like a real boxing match and it’s definitely not self-protection. Don’t even play yourself… There’s a reason people will pay a guy, millions of dollars to Box professionally.  It’s because there’s only a hand full of people in the world with that level of physical talent and toughness that can do it. I don't pretend that I can either by the way.

Nothing wrong with reaching for the stars but if you weren’t born with what they have you’re probably not going to get there. Doesn't make you a bad guy it's just the way it is. Like one of my old football coaches use to say, “you can’t coach size”. I’m sorry but if you’re 6’ft, 200 lbs you’re probably not going to play Offensive Tackle at Penn State. I don’t care how much “heart” you have. Sorry life’s not fair.

Anyway, I can control what I do but once a student walks out the door they’re in God’s hands and if I am not confident I’ve trained them to the best if my abilities while the fault is mine, the false sense of security could get them killed. As students here me say over and over, “If my name goes on your certificate you better be who the Hell we say you are”. If not? Shame on us! My point is as an instructor my student’s development is a matter I take personally and if you teach so should you. They deserve nothing less than my best effort. I'm always thinking in the back of my mind, if they had to fight for their lives tomorrow what would I want them to know? Helping them get over their fear through proper training and sincere effort is part of the package. You get my point.

Four Immutable Stages of Learning

“Without Knowledge, Skill cannot be focused. Without Skill, Strength cannot be brought to bear and without Strength, Knowledge may not be applied.”

                                                                             -Alexander the Great

Wow! Over 2,300 years ago and what was true then is still true today. Alexander the Great lead more warriors, trained more warriors, "knew more" about training warriors, and had an empire larger than the Roman Empire before his 30th birthday.  I think it's fair to say he knew exactly what the Hell he was talking about!

Alexander the Great was such a bad ass, it is said that when Julius Caesar took his Legion to the ends of Spain and saw what looked at first like a small outcropping, only to discover that it was a bust in honor of Alexander the Great. That he fell to his knees and cursed himself for in his words, "accomplishing nothing" (The Plutarch's don't offer much on this event but it definitely makes for a better story). He would then turn the Legion on Rome itself cross the Rubicon and we know how that turned out. 

"To send an untrained people to war is to throw them away."

                                                                           -Sun Tzu

Without training you cannot learn nor teach others to overcome fear. There are basically four stages we all go through when training or learning however you want to define it. I don’t care what it is or what you are trying to learn or what method is used to learn or teach someone.

No task, or skill, no matter how subtle can bypass this process. They all basically have to follow this process because this is the way the universe works if you want to learn anything. So until we develop the ability to download knowledge from “The Matrix” loading platform, this is the way it’s done.

Even if you learn what you know through astute observation, or intuitive learning, experience or whatever.  It doesn’t happen any other way to include learning how to process and Overcome Fear.

As Alexander the Great states above, it is a process that starts between your ears with “knowledge, focusing “skill”, reinforced by your body which helps focus “strength”, which reinforces what you perceive between your ears and so on. As I’ve said in previous Blogs it is a process of constant feedback and reinforcement. It doesn’t happen any other way.

 "All I know is that I know nothing"

                                                       -Socrates

Unconscious Incompetence – While paradoxical I get where Socrates is coming from. Let's face it we're all ignorant on some level we can't possibly know everything. You don’t know what you don’t know. In other words, at this level you don’t understand or know how to do something and you may not necessarily recognize the deficit. You may even deny the usefulness of a certain skill. But as students hear me say all of the time until you recognize the problem and acknowledge it you’re not fixing it. So you must recognize “your own incompetence”, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. Not easy…

“Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.”

                                                                      -Socrates

Conscious Incompetence - You know what you don’t know. In other word’s you understand you don’t know how to do something, and recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. This is where making mistakes is integral to the learning process. This also takes much humility because you are now realizing that you don’t know as much as you think you do. You also don't know "until you know it". If your ego is the size of “Jupiter” you’re probably not getting past this stage until you get over yourself. It’s been my observation that at this stage is where most of the wheat is separated from the chaff. People are too quick to place things in the too hard to do category thus cutting off their learning just when they're on the verge of a breakthrough. The answer? Persevere...

“With the right attitude, self-imposed limitations vanish.”

                                                  -Alexander the Great

Conscious Competence -You’ve now even on a rudimentary level know or understand how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill. This is just part of the normal learning curve which can’t be accomplished without focused practice.

Okay so here’s where I get into philosophical debates with folks so let me be clear, your brain, you and I, that thing between our ears consuming an inordinate amount of our energy, cannot “not think” on some level. Even if that process is purely on an unconscious level there is some level of thought. As soon as you think of “not thinking”, well? You’re “thinking”! There’s no way around it.

The key here is you don’t want to “over think” the problem otherwise you “get in your own way” just “Zen out” with what you’re doing, “…approach life like a child playing a game”. You cannot practice something if you are not focusing on the thing you need to practice. In other word’s you have to think about doing the thing you want to do in order to do the thing you want to do. My point is your brain is always doing something. It is through this process of trial and error that you learn how to find the balance, the refinement, between thinking just enough and not over thinking. As I tell students when they're overthinking something, "just give a shit less".  As Einstein would say, “simplify and make no simpler”. Easy to say hard to do but not impossible.

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. “

                                                                           -Sun Tzu

Unconscious Competence – Here’s what you’re looking for. If you want to be victorious and overcome the fear of not knowing what to do when you have to do it, you have to build it in up front. You have to “win first and then go to war”. This is the place where you’ve had so much practice developing a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily or as we like to say “without thought”. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing other tasks. This is where you will find the space between fear and courage known as “confidence”. Where “you just know”.

The perfect example of this is how we drive a car in the beginning you’re thinking about driving the car because you are afraid of getting into an accident etc. As you learn that fear goes away and before you know it you’re just driving. There is no conscious thought to driving a car you just “do it”! That’s why we do all sorts of things in our cars we probably shouldn’t be doing when we drive like texting and messing with the radio etc. It’s because driving a car is an Unconscious Competence.

 "Where does the swordsman strike? Nowhere..."

                                                                   -Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind

Ancient warriors called this skill “Mushin” in sports we call this “Being in the Zone” or “Savvy”. This is that “je ne sais quoi” quality that people at the highest levels of whatever they do, seem to possess. That “thing” if you will. They learned to place their mind elsewhere and off they went. 

What I find fascinating, and I know this is controversial to say this, but I believe the thing which eludes folks even though it's right in front of us is, in order to get to this level, you have to practice going into Mushin by "letting go".  “Yes” even in developing Mushin, you have to focus on I believe just "learning to let go". Why? Because even learning to let go "is a learned thing". When you "try" you're implying on some level that there is something standing in the way, some form of resistance and you'd be right, it's you! As Yoda would say, "Do or do not, there is no try".

"You" are standing in the way, "you" are holding you back, because "you" fear falling more than the sense of victory by getting back up. Learning to let go is a part of the process of learning anything to the "Unconscious Competence" level.

“Reality is created by the mind we can change our reality by changing our mind.”

                                                                                       -Plato

For those who have little children or in my case a Granddaughter you see this played out over-and-over. Now while we generally don't train kids however, I have a few clients whose kids I train whenever I do privates with them. I can tell you that kids are more naturally attune to this than we'll ever be. Wise yet naive, they know things without knowing what they know. They think and it becomes.

While I always make it fun, for me it's work, for them it's all play but I can tell you I probably learn more from them than they learn from me. When I work with them I have to keep reminding myself who's really in charge. They are too funny! As you can imagine I especially like fighting with my Granddaughter, it reminds me so much of the fun I use to have playing with my Son. Every now and then she'll say something that makes me laugh and when she asks, why it was so funny? I tell her, "Your father use to say the same thing".  Comic gold!

The freedom they move with, the lack of fear to just do things. Who wouldn't want some of that?

Understand, the last time any of us were probably in a natural state of “Mushin” was when we were little children where we barley even had any awareness of our own existence. We didn't know enough to know and we didn't care. We did or did not, there was no try.

If you attend our classes one thing that people hear instructors say all of the time is “trust your abilities”. Why? Because without trusting in your abilities you never reach the state of being able to "let go". You never reach the state of confidence in your ability to bring it! Fear will weigh on you like an anchor and in your hesitation may cost you everything.  You have to "create the reality" by developing the ability to let go by changing your mind, and resist the temptation to hold on to something that's only an obstacle in your mind. To fight against it is to fight against nature. 

A Few Caveats 

“The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become...”

                                                                          -Heraclitus

I’ve over the years I’ve been asked by a number of instructors how I know what to teach, when to teach it, or how to go about teaching certain things. I usually tell them from an instructional standpoint I use the same "basic method" that I learned in the military, these methods are thousands of years old and haven't changed, from teaching people how to use a spear, or sword to military formations it is not what you teach specifically but the method, for the method is just that "a method". For example, you can actually teach the "wrong thing" and still succeed in teaching them, they'll just do the wrong thing, "well". You see this in many self-protection programs, it looks good, it's bullshit, but it looks good.  

Anyway, after I get their bodies generally moving in a unitized manner. I focus on what I call "points or areas of resistance" applying the method that I'll get into later, and I try to help them remove any resistance that inhibits their "Freedom of Action" or ability to "adapt". Focusing on the most critical areas first and then building in the other skills and attributes. 

A lot of this by the way is fear based either because they're afraid to get hit or the movement makes them feel uncomfortable. I get it been there done that... In any event I've found that 99% of this is purely mental, which to me is a good thing because if I can show you a better way to move within your body I can change your mind, and if I can change your mind I can make you less fearful because, you now have a way of dealing with whatever threatens you. Which isn't that kind of the point?

For example, a common thing for people do in the beginning is they try to keep people at arms length or control their hands with force, or they try to box peoples movement in by pushing on their arms. The reason is they don't want to get hit. Totally understandable. The problem is in your attempt to keep people out you actually "create a vulnerability" because the only way to deal with someone up close and personal is to train fight at "uncomfortable man distance". So if you train in this fashion if the attacker gets past your hands you're going to have a problem. This by the way is just as much a mental as physical and I believe totally fear based.

In other words what they think is protecting them actually makes them vulnerable and what they think would make them vulnerable is what more often than not protects them. Go figure. Now if you've already trained and know how to fight at extremely close range then this is not an issue but you have to develop it first.

So for a person like that the first thing I would do is place them right up against my body and do the Contact Flow exercise with them to not only free up their movement at close range but to help them overcome the fear of being in that close. People don't like being in there especially when they are getting hit.

Granted the grappling arts are always in close but, having wrestled in high school I can tell you it's a different thing because your not worried about being struck with intention. 

The idea is to make them understand that as long as it's within your Sphere of Influence it's your space to use as you see fit. Why would you give up "your space"? In order to take advantage of fighting within your Sphere of Influence you have to train yourself to fight using every cubic millimeter of space. Eventually with proper training you learn to become "unavailable yet unavoidable" even while pressed up against another persons body (maybe in later blog post I'll talk about this thing the Grandmaster does that I call "The Quantum Sphere", which is way cool stuff, plus it sounds cool). 

Usually, before I present them with the methodology I offer them a few caveats. I present them below not in any particular order.

• I always check with John before I introduce a concept that he has taught me to make sure I understand what he taught me within the right context. Believe me he corrects more things in my understanding than people think the difference is I don’t forget the lesson and accept it for what it is. I mean if it’s something I know for sure then the only thing I’m concerned about is whether the method is the best and clearest method to communicate what I’m teaching;
• Always no matter what teach everything through the 5 Main Principles of the Art and do not compromise on it. Words have meaning, mean what you say and say what you mean, always seek to be clear, correct yourself if required, clarify when necessary, and above all remain consistent;
• Do not, do not, do not, create rules that don’t exist or you will burn in Hell! How you think of a thing influences how you move, how you react and how you teach. How you do these things for better or worse affects your students in how they move;
• Remember that what is intuitive to you and I as instructors is not intuitive to our students. Never assume what they know and try not to get too far ahead of them. Nothing wrong with showing them the light at the end of the tunnel as long you’re willing to go back and show them the way. Lead them to the light. Always teach from the principles and when in doubt ask the question;
• Don’t teach what you don’t know or know how to do it if you don’t know (i.e., don’t wing it, I’ve seen this too many times) remember, "I don’t know" is a perfectly acceptable answer to a "why question";
• Don’t be afraid to rip off techniques or teachings from other instructors, "other places" and even students, the only thing that matters is if it works. Just give them credit for it;
• Be yourself, try to find your sense of teaching style and don’t try to be me or John, Michael, Matt or anyone else. When you are on the stage you are in charge command the room, speak with confidence. Use words you’re comfortable with and teach as if your student’s lives depend on it because it may someday. Also your students watch and hear everything so at all times be professional;
• Don’t take yourself too serious, don’t make it about you. The only true measure is not what you can do but whether you can make them better (i.e., the fruit you yield) so get over yourself. If you making it about you you’re stealing from their learning, their existence by wasting their time and;
• While words have meaning, learn "respectful disrespect". It is not so much what "The Master" says as to what he is doing at the time he is saying it. For it is in his doing that his words are placed into context. 

There’s more I could add but life short, I think you get the idea.

 Show Them, Then Tell them, Then Make Them, Then Make Them Forget

“In the end, when it's over, all that matters is what you've done.”

                                                                      -Alexander the Great

When I teach people I generally use the following method: 1) show them what you want them to know, 2) tell them what it is and demonstrate how it’s done, 3) walk them through it and make them do it, 4) increase the level of difficulty until the can do it without thought, until they forget they're even doing it, then move to the next level of the skill.

• I show them “what it is” and let them know I can “bring it” no matter how mundane or seemingly inconsequential. This is where you want to kind of “show off” a little. Besides, why should they believe any of this stuff if I can’t actually do it? Makes sense to me.
• I then tell them what it is as best I can along with a demonstration. As an editorial comment, I’m sorry but you have to tell people what it is whenever you’re teaching something. If you don’t tell them how are they to know? If they already knew it, they wouldn’t be there training with you so tell them.

Using my driving a car analogy, think about it when you first learned to drive a car, I don’t care who you are, someone had to tell you something. You had to learn how to control the car, rules of the road etc. You didn’t just jump in and go if you did you would have met with disastrous results. But now you just jump in and go. There’s no thought you just do it. Why? Because as you went through those four stages I spoke of you very quickly arrived at the level of Unconscious Competence for knowing how to drive. In other word’s you “learned”. After that you just “let go”.

If you leave it up to their own interpretation they may perceive what is going on “the wrong way”. It will take them just as long to learn the right thing as the wrong thing so why would you lead them down the wrong Rabbit Hole? You’re better off not teaching them anything.

• Anyway, I show them how it’s done and I begin to work on that skill, attribute or whatever it is. Now this is the part where people think I talk too much, me personally I always feel I haven’t told them enough. Again, I’ve seen where people aren’t shown what things are how it retards their development because they go off on a tangent in one direction or another “down the Rabbit Hole” in the wrong direction. The key is whatever I show people it is “an idea”, “a thing”, a building block and nothing more and is part of a larger whole. Moreover, the only thing that matters is are they actually learning what they need to learn? That’s all that counts.

“Those who approach life like a child playing a game, moving and pushing pieces, possess the power of kings.”

                                                                         -Heraclitus

• I make them do it and keep doing it until I feel that their body is starting to respond without much pause or delay but takes on a more “natural feel” to their movement. I’m not looking for perfection I’m looking for a rudimentary understanding that’s it! If they could do it perfectly then I’m wasting their time.
• Once I get them to this point where they’re just doing it pretty much without thought I then increase the level of difficulty whatever it is just enough above their ability to force them to do it. Once I feel they really have it then I go after them and bring it in order to force them to control and work through their fear as I go 100-mph with them or what John has called “moving at supernatural speed” (this is way cool by the way). It isn’t quite "supernatural" it just feels that way. I make them do it until they forget, until they stop having to think about it, until it becomes a part of them.

In turn this as I like to call it “fuses” it (okay I stole that term from Master Martarano), into their body so that they develop this ability to “bring it” within whatever we are working on without them having to think about it, because it triggers on a level within the body where there is no time to think about what to do. Their body just knows what to do.

As pointed out in Part IV, you have to at some point make them feel the danger, you have to bring them to the point of panic, the point of fear, the edge of death if possible so that they learn how to control those emotions, the fear, anger, focus the panic reflex. Let them feel the adrenal rush, the elevated heart rate, the frenetic movement of their bodies, the deep penetration that makes them think they're going to cough up a lung. Let them feel the wind and the grazing of your strikes against their bodies.  You have to make them pay for doing things that are not possible, for trying to block things that they couldn't stop on their best day. Let them feel the density of your strikes, the compression of their body until it is seared into their subconscious. Sort of like burning your hand on the stove after about the "eight time" you get the message, "don't do that shit." They have to understand what can kill them so they know what to do to avoid getting there in the first place. Without feeling the danger, they don’t know what they’re looking for in the body and will not, I repeat will not respect what can kill them.

Over and over, wash, rinse, repeat.There is no other way...

Final Thoughts

Last point on this. Even as you develop these skills in your students you can from time to time use scenarios to help develop this once their bodies have developed on a basic level. For me if I'm doing this as I'm working on something along with a scenario this takes like 15 minutes to put this into people’s bodies, 20 minutes if I’m drinking coffee.

A word of caution though on scenario based training if you do it, first of all make sure the scenarios are realistic.

When I use to do Red Team-Force Protection Assessments in the Marine Corps we would focus on a number of scenarios of what an enemy could do to penetrate a facility or base.  One of the things we always focused on was what the enemy could realistically do versus what we called “fairy dusting”. In other word’s the enemy used simple tactics and basic materials to develop his bombs etc. he wasn’t using “flying monkeys with nuclear tipped RPG’s”. Be realistic not ridiculous.

The same is true here. You need to use basic scenarios that focus on developing awareness skills and natural reactions and never train people out of their natural panic reflex. There’s a million things that you can do so I’m not going to get into it in too much depth I’ll just point a few things out. Remember, you’re trying to teach them to harness their instincts and natural fight or flight reflex not make it so complex that they freeze up.

When developing scenarios, you shouldn't be overly focused on the question of,  “what do they do against a gun, a knife if of what if someone attempts to grab them?” etc. while these are the most common questions people ask (because it’s some of their greatest fears). In my book you're kind of late to the game there, at that point the enemy is already in the wire. Game on!

For my money, while those are valid and obvious questions that need to be addressed, the first thing you should be asking is before you develop your scenario is, "How does that happen in the first place?" No really, how does that happen in the first place? What, someone "you don't know" just walks up on you out of the blue, with intent and pulls a gun or a knife on you? And then shows it too you? Where is your awareness? You see where I'm coming from?

Listen, if it's an assassination especially at distance that's a different thing, but if you're a law abiding citizen you're probably not on someones hit list. If it's a knife they still have to get very close. My point is, if someone is to pull a weapon or attack in a certain manner that means, there needs to be a number of variables that have to come together such as how to the present the weapon? How do they get close enough beyond a person’s awareness to pull this off? etc. You get the idea. 

In other words there are things they have to do before they do whatever it is they are going to do. Those leading indicators or as they say in Poker "tells" are what you want to focus on through developing their awareness along with your scenarios. 

From there you can develop more realistic scenarios as opposed to just making up something or regurgitating something you saw somewhere else without understanding it in context. Use you common sense. It's the skills and behaviors you want to focus on and not the specific scenario. Don't chase the shinny object. 

Context is everything! Meaning don't create outlandish scenarios to deliberately set your students up to fail just to make some BS point. I've seen this too many times on YouTube. Remember it's just training so don't create scenarios where the only way a person can make it work is if they actually tried to kill someone. Save it for the bad guys.

OBLIGATORY EDITORIAL COMMENT: Along these lines and this is an editorial comment for folks who do GUIDED CHAOS, but it applies to any reality based martial art. When you do training such as "Contact Flow", which is an essential exercises in GUIDED CHAOS to hone the Five Principles in your body. While true it's not a "real fight" you're still trying to approximate the chaotic movement of a real fight to learn how to deal with another persons motion to end the fight as quickly as possible. You're literally training your body to move in this fashion so you don't have to think about what to do or how to move should your moment of truth arrive.

All too often people get caught up in "he said - she said" nonsense. It's like when my Granddaughter and her friends play tag, "I got you, no I got you first, no I got you. I know you're one but what am I..."

Pulleeeeze!

Listen, Contact Flow as far as I'm concerned "is for fighting"! There is no ambiguity in my mind about this! It's an exercise, but for fighting in the same way we do live fire and movement in the military. It's not real combat but "an approximation" to train you how to maneuver while shooting live ammo. The time to figure out how to do that is not when you're in combat, that's why we train. 

It's no different how a Samurai Warrior or Spartan would practice with a wooden sword. Do they really need to cut you with their swords for you to know that it can kill you? Do I really need to hit you in the neck for you to know "you ain't" coming back from it? Same thing here. Why that's hard for some to understand I have no idea. I really don't. I mean what part about getting punched in the face do people not get?

I remember the first time I felt Contact Flow from Grandmaster Perkins, if I recall "he hit me" like many times at will! The first time I worked out with Killeen, you what now that I think of it, she "hit me" too! You know, it's strange but the first time I worked out with Grandmaster Carron, you know a funny thing happened, I recall him "hitting me" as well! As a matter of fact I can't recall ever working out with Master Barnett where he didn't hit me. I can remember Master Harrell watching John beat the crap out of me asking stupid question like I was getting a back rub or something.  Master Martarano "hit me" in the arm one time so hard I could barley shift the gears in my old truck. I can never recall Master Watson ever holding back on the hitting either. What's the common denominator here? None of them had any ambiguity in their minds about hitting during Contact Flow. But what do they know?

However, if you feel Contact Flow is about trying to control peoples hands or just seeing how you can push people. Four things, 1) don't teach people you'll just spread the poison; 2) your mind is in the wrong place and you're going to get people killed; 3) based on what I said above if there is any doubt in your mind come see me. I'm more than happy to "hit you" if it will help change your mind and; 4) if you're not smart enough to understand the context of what I'm saying, do us all a favor go away... GUIDED CHAOS and any martial art worth its salt for that matter, is for serious minded people trying to get out in front of serious problems. 

Okay I'm done with that. 

Also, do not create absolutes with your scenarios. For example, there’s nothing wrong with teaching people to escape as long as you don’t teach it as if it’s the "only answer". Since I’m always trying to keep all of the blood on the front of me I prefer the word “escape”,  running just seems well… “unmanly”. Besides they could have figured that out for themselves. They didn't need to come to you to learn that. 

Being about having all of the blood on the front of you. How does that work if you’re in an elevator? An office or a stairwell where your exit is blocked? Guess what? If trapped or you think they're going to just outright kill you or move you to crime scene number two, you have to fight and fight with everything. Understand, I don't train to avoid fights, I train to fight if I have to. Remember, anything you do can get you killed in such a situation especially doing nothing. So fight! The point of training them is to help them make the best possible choice, do not, do not, do not absolve people from using their God given common sense. 

My point is it’s not a perfect world and there’s no one size fits all on this stuff. We teach the "Fright Reaction" because it covers about 90% percent of attacks to the head and neck area but it’s not a panacea. You still have to do something with it and about the attack.  

Along those lines please do not make up scenarios where the person has to deal with two people holding a knife on someone, with one person grabbing victim from behind while holding the knife on the throat, and another bad guy holding a knife from the front where the person does some crazy intricate move to get out of it. I actually saw a recent video like this. I honestly think people send me this stuff just to make me crazy.

Well that’s it. Hope you got something out of this installment on this subject. Remember these are just my thoughts you’re going to have to decide what works for you and if you’re an instructor for your students what works best. I leave you with another truism regarding the importance of proper training. 

“Wining is the science of total preparation.”

                                                             -George Allen

Thank you.

LtCol Al Ridenhour

Senior Master Instructor

GUIDED CHAOS

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