w.i.D.t.h.6. Chapter 3: D...

Damage “It’s not how hard you hit, it’s where you hit.” Tim Larkin calls damage “Injury,” and he defines it as putting damage to either bodily structures or systems (senses or organs), without which a person cannot function when they're trying to hurt you. Damage is NOT pain, that is the most important thing to remember. People have different pain tolerances and pain effects people differently. Damage, however, works on everybody because everybody’s bodily systems and structures work the same way, regardless of a person’s strength or pain tolerance. Where to hit varies by the type of tool you are using, whether it is your own body or an extension to your body will determine what you should aim for. Remember from the first chapter, your brain is the Weapon, the tool in your hand or your bare hands are simply extensions of that Weapon. Put simply, with your bare hands, you should target the head, spine, and especially the eyes. With your bare hands the best way to shut down an opponent is not to kick him in the groin, despite what legend says and despite the fact that it actually does hurt most men, but again that’s pain not Damage, and pain tolerance varies by person. There are some men who can just get kicked in the groin over and over again, and does nothing to stop them when adrenaline is pumping. Groin strikes are not causing significant injury to a structure or system of the body. Most martial arts train people to kick people in the testicles, but to effectively attack the groin, what you're actually trying to do is kick somebody in the pelvis and break their pelvis and if you happen to crush their testicles in between your foot and their pelvis that's just added bonus. This is harder than the simple groin strikes most martial arts schools teach; instead of attacking the groin in an unarmed fight, which may or may not work, instead attack the eyeballs, which always causes Damage. Getting a finger in your eyeballs is every bit as painful as getting your testicles crushed. And, it also does significantly more functional Damage because it is taking a way a sensory system from the bad guy. It is also propelling the head backwards, which is giving you control of it, and thus their body (one of the last principles of W.I.D.T.H.6.). There are other targets you can attack unarmed, but few will give you the same result as putting your thumbs into somebody's eye. If you've never been jabbed in the eye with a stick or an inadvertent finger during a sparring match, I can only say it ends a fight very quickly. If you want evidence of that look at any UFC match where somebody accidentally jabs the other guy in the eye; they are instantly on their knees and they have to stop the fight for several minutes while the fighter composes himself and gets his eyes to stop watering so he can see. That is only after incidental contact with the eyeball. If you deliberately shove a digit into an eyeball, especially with your full body weight, you are going to end that fight immediately and you will have taken the Initiative away from the bad guy, even if only temporarily incapacitating him, which gives you the opportunity to deploy a Weapon, or stomp his head in and render him non-functional. With a knife, you should target the throat, as it will give you the most bang for your slice. With a handgun, you should target the high-center chest, meaning the rib cage. With a rifle, under twenty-five yards, or with a scope, also target the high-center chest. If you are armed with an iron-sighted rifle beyond twenty-five yards, you should aim for the “center of mass” of the target, basically the diaphragm muscle, as it gives you the greatest likelihood of hitting the torso, even if your marksmanship fundamentals are off. Exception is if you are in a hostage situation or certain “defense of others” situations, then you may want to take head shots with rifles, remembering your own limitations. Missing a hostage taker and hitting a hostage in the head with a rifle round is no different to the hostage than if the terrorist killed them. By the way, if you're rescuing hostages for a living, you are reading the wrong blog, but that is one of two times I would advocate for taking a headshot. The other is if the bad guy is on his back or butt, but still presenting a threat, still shooting or still trying to aim a gun, then take the headshot as the earth is your backstop. Knives: aiming for the throat for two reasons: One, it’s a softer target than the ribcage or skull, and it can do as much Damage as puncturing the ribcage or skull. The second reason is that typical carry knives are not effectively utilized on the torso. First, most legal carry knives, even if they do penetrate between ribs, are not long enough to do massive damage to internal organs like a hollow-point bullet. Further, stabbing/slashing the abdomen, while readily possible for the average carry blade, is not effective at causing the type of Damage needed to end a self-defense encounter. In other words you can stab somebody in the stomach or in the intestines many times and they're not necessarily going to be out of the fight as quickly as if you stabbed them in the Carotid artery or the jugular vein. Caveat: If you are armed with a knife and can get behind a person, or turn a person around using the next principle we will discuss (“Torque”), then you have numerous targets with a knife that the opponent cannot effectively defend against. Neck, brain-stem, spine, kidneys, back of the knee, Achilles. If you can get to somebody’s back with a knife, they are in a very, very bad situation and you have won that engagement if you have any understanding of biology, targeting and Damage. When it comes to Firearms or even knives you have to treat them just like getting into an unarmed combat fight, meaning you cannot rely on the one hit knockout. One bullet from a handgun is not going to stop a dedicated attacker trying to rape you, main you or kill you. One stab to the side of the neck is not going to immediately stop a dedicated attacker trying to rape you, main you or kill you, either. You have to keep going until they are out of the fight, that doesn't necessarily mean dead, but it means you have put them into a non-functional state, so they are no longer capable of hurting you. The best way to do that is quickly is to cause significant Damage to their sensory systems, their bodily functions or their bodily structures (bones, tendons and ligaments). Damage + Forward Movement secures the Initiative, and remember: the winner of a fight is the person who has the Initiative at the END. “It's not how hard you hit it's where you hit!” Like and Share! Soule Easy6Training.com

w.I.d.t.h.6. Chapter 2: I...

Initiative

Initiative is the easiest self-defense principle to understand and the hardest to achieve. In combat initiative is basically control. It is control of the pace of combat and the ability to impose your will upon the enemy. As law abiding citizens we never start a defensive engagement with the initiative. Therefore, we have to wrestle the initiative away from the bad guy. The winner of a fight is the person who has the initiative at the end. This is true in tank battles, in fist fights, in naval battles, and in self-defensive shootings. So, how do we get the initiative away from the bad guy as law abiding citizens? The easiest way to do it is to start moving forward towards them. In Professor Visitacion, founder of Vee Arnis Jitsu, came up with several "commandments of self-defense" one of which is this: "I can move faster forward than you can move backwards." That's the easiest way to seize the initiative. If you become the attacker, then you cease being the victim. The most aggressive person usually wins in a fight. I had a motto for my unit during the Battle of Sadr City: "Shoot first. Move forward." Now as civilians and law abiding citizens in a civilized country we cannot always be the ones to shoot first, however if we start moving forward and attacking the bad guy, then we successfully take away the initiative from them and we start driving them backwards. When they start retreating, they give up the initiative and they start losing. In a battle, the person that's moving forward, gaining ground, is winning by securing territory. The person or the army that is always retreating, giving up ground, is called the loser. People that train to shoot or fight by going backwards, are training themselves to lose. They are surrendering initiative to the bad guy. Law enforcement does this a lot. Law enforcement has a philosophy of "buying space for time" and that time gives them the chance to de-escalate, or to effect an arrest, or do other law enforcement things. This is incredibly dangerous because it is giving the initiative to the bad guy repeatedly with every step backwards. As self-defenders we are not required to do that. As self-defenders, if somebody attacks us and they intend to do us grave bodily harm, we have the right to defend ourselves effectively, and the quickest way we do that is to take the initiative away from them by moving forward... ....and causing Damage, wich I will cover in the next chapter in detail. Basically, Damage has to do with with accuracy and targeting and being efficient and effective in what you do while moving forward, but the most important thing is to become the most aggressive. Simply put, causing damage is more than just running at him swinging your arms like a windmill ineffectively, or spraying bullets inaccurately, so some training on targeting is necessary to effectively secure the initiative. How we target to cause Damage varies by weapon system and we'll get into that in the next chapter. The important thing is to attack and do so effectively, and that secures the Initiative. Defense doesn't win fights. Ending with the initiative wins fights, battles, wars and self-defense situations. Like and Share! Soule www.Easy6Training.com

W.i.d.t.h.6. Chapter 1: W...

Weapons. In his book Clear and Present Danger Tom Clancy once wrote that the first rule of unarmed combat was "don't get into it." This fascinated me because at that point I was about 3 years into studying martial arts and it was the central focus of my life. I was especially fascinated with the philosopies of martial arts such as Bushido and the animism associated with the various Shaolin animal styles of Kung Fu. Clancy's quote got me thinking that maybe kickboxing, of whatever style, was not the be all and end all of being a warrior. So, I started to focus more on weapons training in the martial arts. As a teenager that mainly meant ancient weapons like the bo staff and swords rather than firearms, but unlike many martial artists I did not see a moral distinction between guns and knives. Many martial artists are, bizzarely to me, vehemently opposed to firearms, believing them some sort of disgrace to their "Ancient Chinese Secrets" or something. Introducing weapons to training begs the question, though, when using them would be justifiable? I studied ten different martial arts over twenty years as I moved around the country and the world, and they all called themselves "self-defense systems." Only one of them was actually an unarmed combat system that taught useful self-defense principles, the rest were crap. Even the good one didn't fully understand what self-defense is. In his book When Violence is the Answer, Tim Larkin defines self-defense as a legal determination made by a criminal justice authority after the fact that what a person did was justifiable violence. It is not a set of skills or a system of martial arts. To meet that standard several things have to be true in a situation. One, you have to be in imminent danger of being maimed, raped or killed. Two, you have to be without other options, such as escape or utilizing social skills to de-escalate the situation. In other words, bar fights are not self-defense, but every martial art I studied was teaching me how to win bar fights, and calling that "self-defense training." It wasn't. But that brings us to the good news about Weapons. In an actual self-defense situation, where those standards are met, as opposed to a bar fight, you are perfectly justified in using whatever weapon you can get your hands on. If somebody is actually trying to maim you, rape you or kill you, there are no limits to the tools you can use to defend yourself unless you live in a criminal-loving jurisdiction run by lunatics like New York or Chicago. If you do live in one of those places, you should move. If you live in a sane place, where you are allowed to defend yourself, and somebody is trying to maim you, rape you or kill you, it's perfectly justifiable to shoot them, stab them or even run them over with your car. Which gets me back to Tom Clancy's quote: "The first rule of unarmed combat is: Don't get into it." There's no reason to get into a fist fight with a psychopath who is trying to do you or your loved ones grievous bodily harm. Find a weapon and use it. 1) Anything can be used as a weapon with a little creativity. Look at the world around you constantly and identify potential weapons. I once watched an Arnis master beat a sixth degree black belt senseless with an empty water bottle by doing knife patterns on his face so fast that he fell down backwards, so anything can be used as a weapon. Beer bottles, chairs, soup cans, cars, knives, keys or best of all a firearm; anything can be used as a weapon, because: 2) My brain is the real weapon. My body is a decent enough tool for my brain to use for self-defense, but I can extend its lethality by putting another tool in my hand, but the real weapon is the human mind. The human mind that designs aircraft carriers and bombers and their bombs, as well as samurai swords, the longbow or a sniper rifle. The brain is your weapon. It is also your adversary's weapon, which makes it your best target. I will talk more about that when we get to the "H" chapter. Thus, in conclusion, 3) "The first rule of unarmed combat is: don't get into it!" Like and Share Soule www.easy6training.com