KM Smackdown

I love slapping people. 

It's fairly rare that the opportunity

 to do so presents itself.

I have a strict policy of no men being present in the room during the ladies-only class, but Miss Smurf has been after me for some time to put a guy in the fight suit and bring him in to let them practice striking a live human.  So last weekend we finally did it. 

Big J (not the same guy as Big Daddy J) put on the suit and choked our females then took his beating like a champ.  However, one lady didn't feel comfortable striking him, so I offered to let her hit me instead.  The price of admission, however, was that I was gonna slap the crap out of her.  Now it might appear that I was just trying to slap somebody, which was probably not the case.  Once one lady decided she was game, several others followed. 

The truth of the matter is that after a lifetime of being told to play nice, hitting another person, even when being attacked, can be extremely difficult for female students.  Learning how to hit an actual person instead of a pad is an important part of one's self defense education.  It just so happens, however, if you slap a woman in the face & drag her around by her hair she tends to override her hesitation to strike pretty quickly.  We weren't doing hair grabs that day, so I just made them close their eyes, gave them a good hard slap in the face & grabbed them by the throat.  You should have seen them come after me!  I was so proud.  My right shin is all swollen and black and blue because they all kept kicking me there for some reason.  That got old pretty quickly but, let's face it, I was not exactly in a position to complain.

Also, I'm happy to say that on a personal level it was an accomplishment to be the padded attacker.  I ended up taking the role on so suddenly that all I had time to put on was head protection & a mouthpiece (hence the bruises) but I felt great anyway.  I remember the first time I ever saw one of the padded suits in the first self defense seminar I ever attended.  "That guy is crazy!"  I thought.  "I'd never do that!"  Later I'd occasionally see instructors don them during training and even though I never expected to be that guy, I started to envy them a little for being willing to take some battering to help their students learn.  Even through the suit you still get banged up.  This year I decided I wanted to be that guy.  The only rules I gave them were don't punch me in the throat and don't strike me in the back of the skull  at the base (i.e., please don't kill me).  And they didn't! So last weekend made me really happy both for my students and for myself.

2 THINGS I AM NOT LYING ABOUT:

1 - If you have an emotional meltdown in class and start crying, I don't mind.  Neither does anybody else.  I've done it.  Loads of people have done it.  Lizard brains are strong and they do what they want, when they want.  In fact, watching people work through a post traumatic stress episode, come out of it, and then have the courage to come back to class to face the same situation again in an effort to master their fear is one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen.  It makes me proud to work with them and pushes me to work to be a better instructor to be worthy of training with them.

2 - I respect people who refuse to participate in class when they feel unsafe or overwhelmed by what we're doing on the mat.  Think about it: everyone else in the room is doing the technique, rooting each other on, etc.  And one person stands there and says "Nope.  I'm not doing that."  It takes a certain amount of backbone to be the only one who won't go along, and I like people with a backbone. 

Dominate! Yes!

Sometimes teaching is so much fun and the best part is often watching the students figure stuff out as they're doing it.  Remembering the times I've done that myself and looking forward to doing it again - its watching people give themselves over to learning that makes me excited to go to class.

A couple of fun things happened the other night.  First I'll say that we don't get much direct hands-on contact in level 1 against a strongly resisting opponent.  Our focus is more on teaching basic techniques, getting people up to a fitness level that will allow them to perform, and instilling a fighting spirit.  We strike pads & choke each other, but we don't get down & get funky too much. 

So sometimes just for fun I'll very quickly show people some basic ground positions (usually mount, guard, half guard, and side guard if I remember that one).  Then I'll set them up on their knees with their partner & say "GO".  I tell them not to try to finish anyone off, the goal is just to "dominate your opponent". Once you've accomplished that just reset & go again.  The real goal, of course, is to get them used to putting hands on someone who is actively trying to make them submit.  I stole this from Matt, btw. 

So on to the fun things: #1 - Girls always look pissed off when they do this exercise.  Guys can usually keep a pretty passive face or even grin like a monkey the whole time, but girls generally look like they're about to pop.  This is true of myself as well, I can't keep a neutral face & perform well.  So you'd think I'd know this but the other day these 2 girls were wrassling & it was ON.  You'd think they had a vendetta.  I almost stopped them a couple of times because I was so sure they had really become really angry with each other.  Once I finally made them stop they started laughing & hugging & giving each other feedback on how to do better in the next round.

2# - Similar situation with the guys.  I'm walking around monitoring, mostly just making sure nobody kills their partner when I come upon a couple of guys.  One has the other in a fierce headlock on the ground.  He is cranking hard.  I say, "Time!  What are you doing?!"  The  guy looks at me like it's Christmas morning & I'm Santa Claus and says, "I'M DOMINATING!"  His opponent/partner, who can now breathe again laughs and agrees.  Everyone is being such a good sport, it was just awesome.

At the end of class a female who had been unable to perform a technique in spite of several tries pointed out her failure.  The Dominator said (and this is all in caps because he bellowed the whole thing), "THAT'S OKAY!  I FAIL ALL THE TIME!  I FAIL AND I FAIL AND I FAIL AND THEN I WIN!  I FAIL AND THEN I DOMINATE!  YES!"

I guess I'm really writing all this because I'm so grateful in general for my students right now and for this class in particular.  I confess I'm a little stressed out lately.  But every class I get to see people struggle and triumph or resolve to try again.  They face their fears, they help each other, they forgive readily the random accidental smack in the face.  They work hard and with a great attitude. 

So, thanks y'all for showing me for showing me the best of yourselves and making me excited to come back and do it all again.

I take It Back

I didn't think I was full of shit when I made my last post. 

When I said didn't have much feeling one way or the other about the more extreme crimes committed by some of the inmates housed in the facility in which I work, I believed it.

Then the very next night something changed my mind.  A particular inmate was convicted of doing something violent and horrible to a person who was defenseless.  I won't say what he did, because I really don't know what I'm allowed to say outside of work.  This guy was being moved to someplace he didn't want to go and told a lie to postpone it.  First he said it to another officer, then later to me. I told him he was going anyway and he just turned around and sat down, emotionless. 

When he spoke to me I had the sensation of cockroaches crawling on my skin.

I told another, more experienced officer how I'd reacted and she told me, "That's your instinct warning you.  Listen to it."

She made me think of Gavin de Becker's "Gift of Fear".  The people I used to refer to in Krav Maga class as "types" of attackers are real people now with faces and names and voices.   

New Job, Random Thoughts

I've been working on the floor of a jail for almost 4 months now, and here are a few things I've noticed:

*Apparently it's a myth that all inmates claim they're innocent.  I've worked with several hundred of them by now and only one has insisted, every time anyone would listen to her, that she didn't do it.  Her story never changed, I noticed, no matter how many times she told it. 

*What I do hear frequently is "what I did wasn't that bad, my sentence is way too harsh".  I try not to roll my eyes or have any visible reaction on that one. 

*I expected to have more animosity toward the inmates, at least the ones who have done some things I find shocking or horrible.  Strangely, I don't have much emotion about it one way or the other.  Maybe because I haven't heard anyone bragging?  They drilled it into us at the academy that I'm here to be their keeper, not their judge, and maintaining that attitude seems to make the job easier and probably keeps me behaving more ethically.

*I get lied to a lot.  A LOT.  Blatantly.  Holy cow.

*The other day within less than 2 minutes I saw a heated argument beginning between two inmates over the most ridiculous nitpicky bullshit you can imagine and 30 feet away I witnessed one inmate behaving with such kindness and generosity toward another who was struggling that I was deeply moved.  Incarceration seems to hold a magnifying glass up to the best and the worst in us.

*You can't tell by looking at someone who is here for not paying their traffic tickets and who murdered someone.  Sometimes its the most pleasant people who have done the worst stuff.  Which means when you're at the grocery store you can't tell by looking at people who is going home to provide a loving, supportive and stable household and who is going to go home and beat the shit out of their 6 year old for not putting away the groceries fast enough.  While I obviously have some knowledge of the people I'm working directly with, it seems that the most useful thing I can do is pay attention and listen to my gut.  There's a line in the book Game of Thrones (my current obsession) where Arya's swordfighting teacher reminds her "See with your eyes".  What he means is for her to put aside her hopes and fears of how the swordfight might unfold, to release her assumptions about her opponents strengths, weaknesses and intentions.  To see with her eyes she must observe objectively her opponent's behavior in this moment and act according to the situation.  It's so hard!!  I'm learning to see with my eyes. It turns out that jumping to conclusions is a big time-saver.    

Try Not To Think About It

I've started teaching again and it makes me so happy.  Working in the jail is good, the inmates are fascinating to me, but I'm a teacher at heart.  And a student, too.

We've re-started the women-only class now that my time at the academy is finished. Today we worked defenses against chokes, both standing and on the ground. Additonally we talked about the whens and why's of eye contact.

But what's really on my mind right now is some of the questions I received from a student and in particular how she asked them.  Okay, I'll be frank, I can't remember her exact questions.  But the gist of it is something we hear frequently:  "You're teaching me this, but what if he does that?  Or that? Or that?"  Occasionally this line of questioning devolves into the "27 ninjas" scenario...what if 27 ninjas come at me all at once?  What do I do then?

Now this woman was NOT giving me one of those scenarios, and her questions were completely valid.  But she was asking us in a sort of shy and uncomfortable way that tells me she doesn't yet believe she can pull this stuff off. Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

The truth is there are experienced trainees who have have beaten off an attack successfully and those who have failed.  There are people who have never trained a day in their life who have beaten off an attack successfully and those who have failed.

What we're doing in class is merely working to improve our chances.  That probably is a real bummer to hear, but it's true.  No matter how much you train, there are no guarantees you will succeed.  Anyone has the potential to lose when attacked.  But here's the awesome news.  You might be "anyone".  But your attacker might be "anyone", too.  Isn't that lovely?  I think it is. 

So here's what you do in class.  When you are new to training, don't try to master all the "what if" scenarios.  That comes bit by bit as you continue to train.  Absolutely ask "what if" questions if its something that's bugging you or if you've faced a particular situation in the past or expect to in the future.  But don't get eaten up with all the minutia of each possibility, you'll drive yourself nuts.  

Allow yourself time to work on the basics and to master what makes them effective.  Things like driving with your feet and transferring your weight to put the power of your whole body into a strike.  Engaging with aggression while maintaining control.  Staying loose instead of tightening up & moving like Frankenstein's monster (we all do it sometimes).  And one of the most important, yet most difficult: learning to keep a clear head under pressure.  These concepts apply regardless of the technique you're performing.

If you can get your body to grasp all these concepts they will serve you well no matter if an attacker does "this" or "that".   As you put the concepts into play through repetition of training, and you work them into a growing number of techniques, your confidence will grow along with your chances of success.

Thanks to everyone who came out today, we'll be working one person's choke from behind "what if" on the first Saturday of October.  Come train with us!

Running and Burning

Running:  One of my coaches recommended a new training technique to me, so I thought I'd give it a go & see if I liked it.  It was horrible.  You should totally do it.


There's a 1.5 mile track near my house, so I took my dog Raleigh, The Raleigh Lama, with me and did this:  run about 200 yards fast.  The sad reality is that I'm slow as Christmas, but I was pushing it to move fast.  Stop & do 10 squats.  Run 200 more yards.  10 pushups (burpees, lunges, whatever).  Run 200 yards, etc.  Keep it up for a mile and a half.  I was dying about a mile in, audibly sucking wind.  That far in, the exercises actually started to feel like a break.  


As we rounded the track & ended back up near the start Raleigh started dragging me back toward the car, so I went along & grabbed him a bowl of water.  After he lapped it up I said, "Ok boy, let's do another!" intending to just jog the next lap, as I was clinging to some shred of sanity.  He moped back along, and I could tell he didn't really want to do it again...oh, jeez, do I really have to drive this dog home and come back for the second lap?  The thing is, Raleigh is about 12 years old, smart enough to do your taxes and he's never steered me wrong.  So yeah, I drove him home and came back to run (jog) the next lap.  I was pooped.  POOPED!  But happy.  

I trust this dog's judgement.

The last couple of years I've focused so much on learning to be a good instructor & studying the psychology of violence that I forgot to be a lean mean fighting machine.  Being at the academy has forced me to get back out there & use my body, and it feels really good.   So, yes, I do recommend trying this workout, it's difficult but I think there will be a nice payoff if I keep doing it.


Burning:  I'm not supposed to talk about specific law enforcement or corrections training that I experience or witness, but I don't think it's any big secret that those who serve, if they might carry pepper spray, have to get sprayed.  I got sprayed a few days ago.  I'm here to tell you that stuff is it's own special Hell.  


For about the first 20 seconds I thought, wow, this is really horrible, but I can handle it, I can keep my eyes open just a teensy bit.  Maybe 5 seconds later the 2nd wave hit me and quite frankly I don't know how to describe it.  My eyes slammed shut.  I have been told repeatedly that would happen, but somehow I still thought I would be able to open them.  You know, because I'm special.  

NO.  

I tried prying them open with my fingers, but my face was drenched and slippery because they had to spray me twice, since my eyes closed when they did it the first time.


Not realizing I had actually finished the task I was to complete while my face was on fire, I felt someone grab me and say, "stop, it's over, it's over!" and pull me outside, where someone else dragged me away to get hosed down with water.  That's when I panicked.


I almost drowned once in a scuba accident in the Florida Keys when I was about 12 years old, and when the water hit my face it all came rushing back.  I was determined not to cry or scream, but was fighting the urge to do both.  Because I still couldn't see and now couldn't breathe and was panicking, I was afraid I'd faint and slam my head on the ground. I dropped to my knees just in case and rocked myself furiously while I tried to wash my face and eyes and  not to have a total meltdown.  Later, helping out, it was obvious that most people panic when the water hits them.  In the moment you can't even believe how overwhelming the feeling of pain and panic is, and you know it isn't going to be over any time soon.  The next day I saw some friends who've been sprayed in the past & they poked me and said, "Ha ha!  Your face is still all puffy!"  I felt like I had a raging fever for about the next 18 hours, which was really interesting, since I knew it was just the ground up hot peppers someone had flung all over my face and eyes.

Me.

I suspect it's just as painful but not as overwhelming the second time.  I hope I never find out.  

P.R.E.A.

As a Krav Maga instructor, one of my favorite things to do is come up with drills and exercises that mess with people's heads.  


The goal might be to scare them into a freeze & get them to fight through it, create a confusing situation that forces them to take action even when no obvious correct course exists, or tell them things are going to be one way and then change the rules mid-stream so they have to deal with a situation as it actually is and not the way they thought it would be.


Whatever the situation is at any given moment, my ultimate purpose is always the same:  create a situation where they are forced to feel stress and act to end the situation in their favor.  While it's important to give serious thought to what you would/should/could do in a dangerous situation and to create a plan, I really believe that intellectualizing these things isn't enough.  As they say, everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face.  We often have to experience things ourselves, for good or ill, to totally understand.  


One of my own teachers at the Sheriff's academy appears to have the same philosophy.  A little while ago we had a class on the prevention of sexual assault in the jail - specifically on the Prison Rape Elimination Act.  I confess I never really gave this much thought before, and even had a somewhat callous and indifferent attitude about it.  As Miss Charlotte says, "Nobody wants to talk about rape except to make jokes about prison rape, like that's some great thing."


So anyway - we were sitting in class & the instructor came in and asked us to give him some elements we thought a good leader should have.  We said things like decisiveness, good organization skills, compassion, good communication skills, honor, trustworthiness and intelligence.  Then he asked us to say the name of someone in class who embodied those qualities.  Nobody raised their hand - we're a pretty cohesive group and no one wanted to single out a member, but I can never keep my mouth shut for long, so I raised my hand and mentioned that Mr. G seemed to embody all those things.


Mr. G was removed from the class & several minutes later led back in - but the officer's uniform he'd been wearing had been replaced by an inmate uniform and he was handcuffed like a prisoner.  I was scandalized to see him like that.


Standing next to him in front of the class the instructor asked us to imagine our Mr. G, with all his admirable qualities intact, as an inmate in our jail.  He asked us to imagine him being sexually assaulted and even raped.  It was very upsetting to think about and I wanted them to take those damn cuffs off my friend and put him back in his officer's uniform where he belongs.


But the point was well taken.  All the instructors have been stressing honor and ethics in the job, and the fact that we are the keepers of the inmates, not their judges.  But holy cow, it wasn't until somebody started screwing with my head like I do with my students that I truly felt it.  Then we had to watch a documentary about a young man incarcerated in another Texas jail who killed himself after the staff ignored his pleas for protection after being repeatedly raped by other inmates.  Sometimes the stuff we study is pretty depressing.


I'm not trying to imply that my instructors are encouraging us to baby, pamper, or feel sorry for inmates.  They're not - not even a little bit.  But they are teaching us to remember that each human being is more than the current clothes they are wearing, and to make sure the jail is safe and secure for the officers, the surrounding community, and the inmates.


I came away from the lesson with the determination that the inmates under my supervision are going to follow the rules and behave - and that no one is going to screw with them.  No pun intended.


It's pretty much exactly the way I've run things in classrooms in martial arts and the school district, just with more education thrown in and the stakes raised.


I have to admit I'm grateful for the lesson even though it involved a little slap in the face and am a little embarrassed by my previous attitude.  So, instructor, I'd say that was a job well done.