Transcription
The ugly truth about self-defense is that real violence is ugly. And if you don't replicate ugly in your training, you're gonna have a rude awakening.
That's Tony Blauer, world-famous self-defense expert.
All fights are dangerous, but the most dangerous fight is an ambush.
He's teaching me the secrets of self-defense.
I create the space for my nervous system to do what it does best. 'Cause if you can't manage the fear, you're gonna have trouble managing the fight.
And why most martial arts fail.
Real violence isn't dojo violence.
The stuff we do in the training works when we know we're about to fight. But that's not what reality is.
And even then, think about this...
What is the ugly truth about self-defense? When you teach how to get out of a headlock, where does the drill start?
Somebody holds you in a headlock?
Right. When you teach how to block a kick, who moves first?
The kicker. The attacker.
So action's faster than reaction. In all of those demos, we've let the attacker start the drill. It's trained in a way that I am waiting for the stimulus from you so I can deploy my counter.
Isn't that self-defense though? I'm being attacked and then I react.
The problem with it, I call this ACP, Awareness, Consent, Preparation. I just did this last night at a talk. "Who here knows how to demo defense against a headlock? You two guys go." They stood up, Jesse, and the guy goes like this.
Yeah.
Puts his head down so the guy can grab him. Do you know Pavlov's dog? Pavlovian response. That's how the brain learns. So if I go like this, I didn't wanna shake your hand, but I can make you do that. Your body's twitching inside there.
I wanna shake your hand.
You know, I've been studying the neuroscience of this for a long time. We have a maxim, all fights are dangerous, but the most dangerous fight is an ambush. So here's the difference between practicing self-defense and an ambush. When you practice self-defense, you have ACP, Awareness, Consent, Preparation. I know it's gonna happen. I've trained some moves and now I'm allowing this scenario to take place. The problem when it's an ambush is it wasn't consensual. So you turn around an ATM machine, putting your money in your pocket, and there's a guy with a gun or a knife or two guys, strong arm. You're not going, get back, right?
No.
Have you ever walked into a spider web?
Sure.
When you walked into a spider web, did you do this or did you go?
Something like that.
That's a startle flinch.
A startle flinch?
Startle flinch. So it's part of the body's survival system. A lightning fast gesture. The eyes close, the head move, the shoulders come up, the hands come up.
Like if somebody throws something at you.
Yeah. So the brain startles, the body flinches. You need medical grade equipment to measure the speed of it. Muhammad Ali, best boxer in the world. He's on a talk show where they had this comedian named Freddie Star. He's high on coke and he's talking. He goes like this, "Muhammad, let me tell you the story." And he tells this long two minute story and he's lowering his voice. And Muhammad leans in to hear him. And the guy goes, and he fires a jab at Muhammad Ali. And Ali goes, "Whoa." When I tell martial artists and train people, you will flinch. They're like, (beep) They crossed their arms wrong. And they go and flinch. I've done my 10,000 reps. I've trained. No one wants to be on the cover of "Black Belt Magazine" like this.
(Jesse laughs)
Right? And I'm glad you laugh 'cause I make this joke when I'm teaching. I go, "I get it. But you flinch when your situational awareness has been compromised." And he's trained not to flinch. He fought Kenny Norton with a broken jaw. George Foreman, Joe Fraser, the best of their generation. And if Ali can flinch, why the (beep) can't you flinch? Your flinching is your actual backup. Someone goes through a car windshield and acts that they're not wearing a seatbelt. Guess where there's always trauma?
Forearms.
Guess in every knife attack, where's there's always trauma?
[Jesse] Forearms.
[Tony] Motorcycle accident.
[Jesse] Forearms.
Right? We have all these like sports pictures where a baseball is going into the crowd or a football or a broken bat. And you see everyone doing this. I was once trying to light an element that had propane gas. It was on and the match wouldn't light. And I was like 11 years old. I didn't know anything about like this propane is still leaking. And it finally sparks. The thing went...
Yeah.
And my arm here just read like a carpet burn. But that stopped my eyes from getting (beep) burned. We had this is crazy. And it sounds like (beep) Remember the Boston marathon bombing? One of my students was in the building and he was rendering aid to people. He calls me from the station, from the scene. He says, "Coach B, there's a woman here that I'm helping who has a water bottle wrapped around her forearm." That's a startle flinch with (beep) plastic coming in there.
Are you saying we should repurpose this move for self-defense using maybe our martial arts skills and combine that with this fear response?
You're not repurposing it because you have no choice. Your body's gonna do it. What we're doing is we're recognizing what is instinctive to our survival system. Hardwired through our nervous system. We know it's faster than cognitive thought. And we're not repurposing it. We're integrating it. So one night in the 80s, I forgot a glass of water. One of my daughter's name is Madison. She's like seven years old. I rub my eyes and I walk out. And as I'm walking through the threshold of the door, there's a window over there with the moonlight coming through it. And as I'm clearing my eyes and I walk through like she's right where you are, I see like in a horror movie, a porcelain doll that came to life. Her skin is white. His hair is like this. I just see like a little witch walking towards me. I'm like literally like walking out like this. And I go, "Argh" she goes, "Hi, dad." She doesn't even move and walks past me and sneaks into bed. And I'm thinking, holy (beep) My hypothesis in the 80s was this, the thesis statement. What does your body want to do prior to any training? Remember the Matrix? I put a hose in your head. And instead of dumping you with, I know Kung Fu, I take all your martial art out.
You suck it out of me.
So you're now Jesse, you have no martial art.
Okay.
And I go, (beep) you. And I go to hit you. What are you gonna do?
Yeah.
Now, you know all your martial arts. And I go, Jesse, and I go to hit you. You're gonna do the exact same thing. Isn't that interesting? It's fear that triggers the flinch. So I built a whole system starting in the 80s around understanding how fear can hijack what we need to do. There's evidence of trained operators hesitating during real combat that cost them their lives. Why are they hesitating? They're trained. And they all have the same skills they got there. It's fear. Mismanaged fear can unravel everything. So you get a fear spike. You can't access the complex motor skill you practice. I've studied thousands and thousands of real violent encounters, CCTV video. There is no evidence of a John Wick, of a Bruce Lee, of a Jackie Chan. All the moves we're practicing, all this stuff, they don't appear in a real fight. We can get really good at a demo of self-defense. The problem is that if I say to you, you try to surprise me today. I know that you're trying to surprise me. So even though you might surprise me, do you remember the jack-in-the-box? I used to bring that to seminars. I would say, before the lid pops up, shoot your hand inside there and finger jab him. So you're stop hitting. You're intercepting.
Yeah.
Could never happen. The optic nerve, there's a delay. So the clown popping out of the box, he represents the attacker. Now, this is a wonderful metaphor. So I created a graphic called "The Timeline of Violence." There's what we call the three Ds. Detect and avoid, defuse and de-escalate. And if push comes to shove, defend morally, ethically, legally. 99% of the world focuses on D3. What it does is it defaults you to a physical response. And they leave out D1, D2. They say, hey, head on a swivel. Talk your way out as you can. Now, let me show you how to get out of a headlock. What's the difference between a headlock on a judo mat, a headlock in a cave in Afghanistan and a headlock in a street fight?
Pretty much the same.
They're all the same if you only look at them from biomechanics.
Yeah.
But the difference is the scenario.
The context.
Context. So if you're in a headlock in a cave in Afghanistan, that means you're a soldier and you got jumped by an enemy combatant. This could cost your life. You're likely not going to have your head cut off in a grappling match. If a guy gets you in a headlock. The street fight, maybe somebody breaks it up. You get hit. You lose the fight. But it's not going to turn into what could happen overseas. The distinction there is huge. Breaststroke in the pool. Breaststroke in a lake in Scotland. In the pool, there's no sharks. There's no riptide. There's no jellyfish. So imagine we're hiking somewhere. We come over, we go look at a lake. And as we go down there, there's a sign that says, "Beware the Loch Ness monster." What started there was doubt. And doubt creates hesitation. And hesitation creates procrastination. That's like domino effect. Procrastination is where the danger starts. I go Loch Ness monster. We might not go in the water. We still have the breaststroke skill. We still know how to do that. The only thing that changed was we got a fear spike. And a movie in our mind started. You've got to clear your fear to access your complex motor skills. 'Cause if you can't manage the fear, you're gonna have trouble managing the fight. There's a Dan Millman quote that I love. That, "If you face just one opponent and you doubt yourself, you're outnumbered." Like if you don't believe in yourself, that will cause that hesitation. The first opponent in a fight isn't this guy.
[Jesse] No.
It's your mindset. And people have said that, like there's maxims and quotes in every dojo and school. Like, you know, the mind is fear. The enemy is within. But then it starts with getting me in a headlock. It goes right to the physical.
[Right] So they don't actually apply it in their training.
If I say to you, hit me as hard as you can. But the only way you could hit me hard is if you stood up. My brain only starts to get ready when you get here.
Yeah.
And then when you get here. But now your nervous system isn't moving. If you've been trained like that's your block, are you gonna slip it? Are you gonna parry it? Your brain is trained to wait for the right vector. But what you should be doing is when I went like this and I went, what did you (beep) say, you should be moving now.
Yeah.
Now is where a palm strike hits me in the face, right?
But I've never trained for that.
Right. If you can't think to do it in training, what makes you think you'll think to do it in the street? And so I built an entire system around priming the nervous system so that if you and I are in a confrontation, I would have my hands down here. My hands would be here. Like, so I'm not here like this, where I got to travel an extra six inches or 12 inches to get to where I was. We call these Trojan horse nonviolent postures. You know, if people see this wooden horse and they go, let's steal it and bring it in the compound, not realizing there are soldiers hidden in the body of it. Meaning somebody looking at you, somebody filming you doesn't know you're getting ready to protect yourself. We have four classic nonviolent postures, hands on hips, arms crossed, half negotiator, full negotiator. So here, very different than here.
Also, it's not locking up your arms.
Yeah. Because if I flinch, my arms will cinch. It'll create a micro delay. My hands over here, I'm free to move. I'm also free to preempt. If I need to palm strike you, or let's say you get in really close and I got to throw an elbow. All of them prime the nervous system to say, get ready to deploy the airbag. And the airbag in the metaphor is this, like if you're a really good driver, let's say you have a 1967 Mustang and you've refurbished the engine and it's like fast as (beep) It's a muscle car and you're a good driver and you put in good stereo and land nav. Guess what that car is missing from 1967?
An airbag?
Airbag. Good guess. You as the driver represents all of your skills, the theory. If I said, what would you do if a guy had a knife? You'll give me like 10 answers. What about a baseball bat? You'll give me 10 answers. We all have theoretical answers, but if it happens while you're like this.
Yeah, yeah.
So what I tell people is if you're scared shitless, unconscious or dead, you won't get to your complex motor skills. The more ready you are, the less you flinch. You won't flinch and you guys won't flinch if you're not caught off guard. Meaning if your situational awareness is not compromised, you'll catch the punch. You'll do some Jackie Chan move, but we don't see that. Why? You only flinch 'cause you are surprised. The airbag deploys, it buys you time, it helps you re-regulate your mind and you've got to convert the flinch before you can access your complex motor skills. I don't care how good you are. If I jumped across the chair right here, we would fall to the ground and the first couple of seconds would be, (beep) what the (beep) are you doing, Blauer? Holy (beep)
It would look nothing like my training.
Correct. But at some point I'm like this and you finally find a little space and you hit a short palm strike and it stuns me. And then you go whack and you throw an elbow and it stuns me. Then you get up and you're reverse punching me like the end of Chinese Connection. We've had cops who get sucker punched inside the reactionary gap, like a hook punch. The movement is, the guy goes, oh (beep) But then right away he knows there's a brachial strike here. He steps in and he hits the brachial and then he goes into arm bar and he's arrested the guy. And then I get an email going, holy (beep) the guy went to sucker punch me. Airbag deployed, target opened up, hit the target, stunned him, put the cuffs on. The ugly truth about self-defense is we have this idea that if we buy a gun, we're safer. If we get a black belt, we're safer. If we get a dog, we're safe. All of that can be circumvented. They're just tools and assets. At the end of the day, you need to be the human weapon system.
So for people watching, no matter what martial art they practice, could they just apply their flinch response in their regular training and then just add their own martial arts techniques on top of that? Even if they don't follow your exact system, would that help them?
I'm a purist. So I'm like, why not learn it properly?
Luckily, you can learn all of Coach Blauer's best skills and drills in his online course. And right now, you get $100 discount with the offer code JESSEKARATE. Just click the link in the video description.
So when I do the flinch response, I tense up. But a lot of martial arts experts tell you that you need to relax. How do you combine those two?
When somebody says you need to relax, they're talking about a demo or sparring. When we flinch, our body contracts. When we're sparring or we're competing, our hands are free. In the real world, you're holding your kid, a briefcase, your phone, a police officer has ID and a flashlight, and a guy grabs his gun or throws a punch. And we think we're gonna do wax on, wax off, but neuroscience tells us we're not going to. I'm teaching 32 cops in Wisconsin. I said, "How many of you can do whatever you want in a fight?" Now, cops have a very specific use of force policy. They can't do whatever they want. But there's a gray area for improvisation that people don't realize. Like if your life is online, you do something, but you got to be able to articulate it. "Yeah, we do untrained, but justified under the circumstances." I said, "I've never heard that anywhere. I've taught all over the world." Untrained, but justified under circumstances. I said, "I need you to do a demo. I want you to demonstrate something untrained. Three, two, one, go." I go, "Go, demonstrate something untrained." If I were stabbing or shooting or tackling you, you're kind of (beep) right now. So if I said to you, demonstrate a reverse punch, your brain, at blinding speeds, downloads the right neuromuscular communication. And it goes, yeah. And it fires the punch. If I said, demonstrate a reverse punch, and what the hell is that? And I hit you, you don't go, like you go, (beep) And then you hit me.
So you're saying the stuff we do in the dojo in training works when we know we're about to fight, but that's not what reality is.
Correct. And even then, think about this. I know you've been training, like, since you're a kid. Your parents taught you in your training. And everybody here, if you love martial arts, you're following Jesse's channel. Think about the first time you went to spar, how scared you were. And then you got comfortable with it. Now think about, now you've got some tools, and you're sparring somebody who's new and they're scared. Your energy was this. Come on, you're okay. Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. Let's go. Keep your hands up. The bell rings, or the instructor goes, okay, switch partners. And you rotate, and now you're sparring somebody who started when you were. And now you're laughing, you're smiling, and you're back and forth on each other, and you're doing stuff. The bell rings, and now it's a senior student who's two years more advanced than you, and he's the guy that has no control. Didn't your movement change? Now it's more defensive.
[Jesse] Yes.
Take it easy, man. Hey, not so hard. That's (beep) fear. I say to you, hey, you got to spar this guy. It's gonna be hard contact. And it's Masoyama. We know he's passed away.
[Jesse] Right. But like, who wants to spar with Masoyama?
No thanks.
[Tony] Right? Why? 'Cause he could chop the horns off a bull.
Right? 'Cause he killed a bull. Now here's the thing. Did you know that the bull was restrained when he did that demo? The bull was drugged. So I go, "Oh, so the bull wasn't really fighting and attacking him." Having said that, I don't want to get hit by a guy who can kill a bull with a punch. Right? I still acknowledge and recognize that. But I say this. I go, so it wasn't a fight. Like, if I said to you, hey, Mr. Oyama, what's that? And the bull's charging at him. And he's like, oh, (beep) Like, suddenly he can't...
Yeah. I remember when I first started getting into breaking boards. I said to one of my students, inspired by Bruce Lee, "Boards don't hit back." So I went out to a hardware store and I bought some wood. But I didn't know that the boards used in breaking demos are dried. They're not fresh wood. If you got a good grip, you can snap it. But I got fresh wood. So I hit it and stung my hand. I was like, well, maybe it was 'cause I kind of hit a hook 'cause I was turning. So I said, but I broke it pretty easily. So I said, let's put two boards up. He was ready with one hand. I had him grab my shoulder and whip me. And then I just came across from it, and I broke my pinky knuckle on it. I cracked one of the boards, but they didn't go through.
No.
But I also broke my hand. But I wanted to do something in motion where I was creating, blending a bit of a scenario. Like, that's what you need to do in a fight. You can't stand there and go, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Okay, now I'm ready. Performance is impacted by our psychological self. If I said, do you know gun disarms? You'd say, yes. I bring out a prop here. Then I go, let's use a real gun. You would do this. You go, no. If you can't even train with a real gun, and guys, I'm using this as a joke example. Do not train with a real gun. But at the same time, we'll say to a student, if somebody tries to kidnap you, I want you to do this. Do you understand like the contradiction? Now, it's a conundrum because you can't train with a real knife. That's stupid. And you can't train with a real gun.
So what do we do?
You practice managing fear. And then you reverse engineer the training because the literature online is fight, flight, freeze. And then language like fear spike equals arousal. Heart rate goes up. Complex motor skills go down. And I'm like, and I'm not trying to make fun of it. It's important.
But it's theory.
But it's not just theory. It's factual, but it's post-mortem. It's after the fight. In the fight, we have a voice in our head that's saying, oh my God, I'm gonna die. Or why isn't this working? If you Google right now, the definition of self-defense, 99% of them will say something like the physical act of protecting your property or your life. But there's no mention of awareness. There's no mention of de-escalation. Why wouldn't you wanna learn the three seconds? But that's the moment. That's D1 and D2, detect and avoid, diffuse and de-escalate. If you walk into an elevator and the doors close and two guys walk in and they kind of look at you, you're trapped. Here's the thing that people don't contemplate is they go, oh, well, I would just do this. That's D3. That means the attack happened. You didn't avoid it. It's just a narrow definition.
Yeah.
So we change it. Our definition is, "The decision to choose safety when danger is imminent."
I love that.
And it's just semantics.
It changes your mindset.
Exactly. And I always tell people bad guys only want one of three things, property, body, or life. It's a short (beep) list. Bad guys don't want three things to get caught, to get hurt, for things to take too long. So you go to grab me to pull me to a secondary crime scene and I (beep) claw you and I'm screaming, fire, help me. And if they fall into the category of I don't want these three things, they let go and run. In fact, there's a famous story about the Boston Strangler who allegedly raped 2000 women and murdered 12 women. And when they caught him, they asked him, "Were you successful with everyone?" Like those numbers are astronomical. And he said, "No, only the people who cooperated." He talked about one story, a woman came forward when they had his picture. She said, "oh my God, that's the guy." He grabbed her from behind. She bit his hand and he let go, and she turned and he ran. In 1985, I wrote an article for "Karate Illustrated" and I said this line in here, "There are more people with no training whatsoever who successfully defend themselves through sheer will and indignation than there ever will be trained martial artists who get attacked and successfully defend themselves."
And that's kind of sad.
It also speaks to our resilience and our ability to fight without training. You're already a human weapon. I tell people we've outsourced our safety for so long that when you call for a first responder, you've forgotten that you're the first responder. The first responder is actually the second responder.
Yes.
And it's not no one's coming to save you 'cause the cavalry is coming. They're trying to. But you need to be able to, in some cases, 'cause of the speed of violence, be able to take care of (beep) yourself. And it might be barricade behind a door, create a disturbance, honk a horn, break something. You know, you think you're being followed and you're like really stuck and there's houses around you. There were like these scenarios. What if I ring a doorbell? Because people don't wanna help. So I go, imagine this. I ring the doorbell. Hey, somebody's following me. Can I please come in and call the police? Go away, right? That's what people do today. I go pick up in like in the front of my house. There's rocks and then throw it through my window. The window breaks. What's the homeowner gonna do?
Call the cops.
Call the cops. Don't you (beep) move. Call the cops. Thank you. That's what I was trying to do. You'll pay for the broken window instead of being raped and murdered. It's just giving people different things to think about besides a karate chop on the side of the neck. I teach self-defense like a paramedic would teach first aid. It's not heart surgery. It's not brain surgery. But if you go through a stop the bleed class and you learn how to put on a tourniquet and do mouth to mouth stuff like it, you have life-saving skills. I teach self-defense like that. Every move that you're taught in the one day course, you can do right away. The mistake that the professional martial artist makes when they hear, have you heard about Blauer? And there was that guy that teaches people to flinch. Why do you want to teach people to flinch? You can't learn self-defense in a day. The guy's a snake oil salesman. If I gave you a fire extinguisher and you didn't know how to use it and I said, there's a fire there, put it out. You're pulling this pin and then point the hose. Let's practice that. I buy a couple of little training ones. And how many reps would you have to do when I go here? How many reps till you got a hand on that?
Five?
Yeah, maybe one.
Yeah, I'm a slow learner. But I appreciate the joke. But do you wanna get a black belt in fire extinguisher? Well, what you're gonna do is I'm gonna give you a fire extinguisher and you're gonna do fire extinguisher kata. Fire here, fire here. You're probably gonna say, I'm good. I think I got it.
Yeah.
Where should I keep it in the house? That's important. What size should I get? You could learn all that literally in an hour, but that doesn't make you a fireman.
Exactly.
Right? If I say to a boxer, a jujitsu player, karate expert, all martial arts, can you learn self-defense in a day? All of them consider what they do a self-defense option.
Right.
Like if I said to the boxer, can you defend yourself? You go, yeah, I can hit him with a liver shot, an uppercut, he's done. And it's true. You can use that stuff in self-defense. But what hasn't been contemplated is the scenario impact and the scenario influence. So what happens is we create a romantic relationship with our martial art. You have any siblings?
Yeah, brother.
Okay, your brother's wedding and it's an estranged uncle who's got a drinking problem and everyone knows it's crazy uncle Bob and he's drunk and he knows you're a martial artist and you came over to him and said, hey, uncle Bob, you've had enough to drink. And he grabs you and goes, what are you gonna do, Mr. Martial Arts? Are you gonna (beep) elbow your uncle?
(Jesse laughs)
Do you understand I just changed everything?
Yeah.
And in a situation like that, that's where you wanna understand jujitsu. Where if all you know is like boxing, you go, I got to hit this guy with a hook punch. Now you're gonna knock out Bob, right? At the wedding. All you have is a gun, right? You're like, shit, I got to shoot. I'm like, we want a brain based system. We don't touch the art you love. We're giving you the airbag that gets you to it. God forbid you need it by adding the scenario in a violent encounter.
Yes.
And this is how I teach people. Put your seatbelt on, you're driving. Put your hands here.
Okay, I'm driving.
Put your seatbelt on.
Okay.
Faster, there's a cop behind you. You just did a horizontal elbow.
[Jesse] Okay.
If I'm in front of you choking and I go, put your seatbelt on fast and you go, and the guy's face is there. So the new student is afraid. They don't have the right amount of reps. Are they gonna do it? I tell people, you've got the range of motion, the kinetic chain, the neuromuscular communication to elbow the (beep) out of somebody. But this is my first day. I haven't even learned the elbow. How did you get here? You drove. Did you put your seatbelt on?
Right?
Oh, yeah.
You've done the elbow. You ever scratch your back? You (beep) itch. You can do a vertical elbow.
Oh, okay.
Did you ever put your foot up on a chair and tie your shoe?
Yeah.
That means you have the range of motion to knee somebody in the (beep) balls.
Yeah.
Right? Have you ever picked up a watermelon or a melon to check if it's ripe? I can grab your head. I can gouge your eyes.
Yeah, okay. So you're saying we already know self-defense. So you know the movements that can be used immediately at extreme close quarters. What's missing is, can I turn on aggression? Can I manage my fear? That's our art. Let's say you're in a tournament and this guy nails you at a back kick. You're like... I'll tell a real story. This guy Diaz, he was a SWAT team leader for Tampa PD. He was also in the police Olympics for Taekwondo. And he comes up to me and he says, and I wanna see if you can try and see if you're paying attention. "Coach Blauer, I got a question for you. I am competing in the Taekwondo Olympics this year for the police Olympics. There's a guy, my nemesis, and we always end up in the finals. And it's like, he wins one year. I win one year. He wins one year." I said, "Let me ask you a question. Who's supposed to win this year based on your flip flop?" He goes, "Well, this is the year he's supposed to win."
(Jesse laughs)
What is the problem, Jesse?
It creates doubt and hesitation.
Yeah, well, right now he started the movie in his mind that this is the year he loses. How can you hit a flow state and perform at a world-class level if walking to the fight, you're going, this is the year he wins usually.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yeah, if you face just one opponent and you doubt yourself, you're outnumbered. I said, "Don't even show up, man. You're going to lose unless you're happy with silver." He goes, "What do you mean?" I go, "Well, you told me this is the year he wins." And he's like (beep) I go, you're in the fear loop right away. That's how powerful fear is.
Yeah.
Have you ever injured yourself weightlifting?
Deadlifting.
Deadlifting. So get this, before the deadlift, did you have a bad feeling about the lift? And I promise you might not remember now, but I guarantee you did. Just as you were picking it up, you went, I was a little too fast. I didn't set properly or did my feet in the right place or I didn't warm up properly 'cause I'm in a bit of a rush. There's always, I say, intuition whispers in our ear and then our arrogance or our stubbornness or our ego says, I got this. I would get hamstring injuries every time I would run and I'd start the run by going, I hope I don't get a hamstring injury. That's intuition saying, you (beep) go warm up your leg. Your intuition that every victim of violence who lived to tell the tale say they had a bad feeling. If you study any violence and it's a good interview, they will say, I knew something was wrong. Something was off.
So trust that feeling.
You have to. You choose safety. Do you remember our definition? The new definition? The decision to choose safety when danger is imminent. So imminence starts with energetic pre-contact cue. You know what a pre-contact indicator is or pre-contact cue?
Just watching you, body language.
So if I went like this and we were talking and you saw me do this with my hand.
Clench your fist.
Right. So a guy standing here like this and he turns like this and the hand comes down and does that or he moves his sleeve or these are all pre-contact indicators that the guy's getting ready to do something. If I say, what's your favorite move of all the things? Like when you spar, what's the move you know you can always get in?
Side kick.
Side kick. So you love the side kick. You love drawing people in. People don't notice when you pull your gi up and get ready to go. Do you do that?
No, because it's the Seishin Gi. My own brand.
Very nice. So I used to back fist people in the face when they do this.
Yeah.
'Cause I knew when you got sweaty that you always did this when you're getting ready to kick. So I'd be here like this with the guy. He touches gi and I back fist him there. And people go like, "Man, you're so fast. How do you read that?" And I go, "I don't know. Just lucky, I guess." That's a pre-contact cue, right? So you start to read this stuff there. I talk about energetic pre-contact cues because people have bad feelings. But they go, I must be imagining that. If you decide to choose safety and then you explore and nothing is wrong, you're still safe. But if you ignore it and something is wrong, you got a problem.
You pay the price.
Yeah. If you can manage fear, you can make decisions faster. And every market rewards speed. Real estate, business, relationships. Unfortunately, violence loves speed too. And the only way you can compete with the speed of violence is by improving your mind speed. And the only way you can improve your mind speed.
Is to know fear.
And study it and understand.
Embrace it.
Yeah. There are fighters dealing with fear right now. And the corner is going, come on, man. Come on. Don't you wanna win? Let's go. Keep your hands up. Don't get hit so much. And I remember cornering one guy after the second round. I said, "Sean, how are you feeling?" He says, "Good, coach. I'm a little bit nervous." And I said, "You're supposed to be nervous 'cause the guy that you're fighting is gonna try and kick and punch you in the face. So it's okay to be nervous. If you weren't nervous, I'd be concerned." And he goes, "Thanks, coach." Very different talk. We give people fortune cookies. That's the problem with coaching. No one says, what are you nervous about? So I said, "What are you nervous about?" He says, "I can do 10 rounds sparring, but I keep thinking I've never done a four round fight." And I look at him and I go, "Can you do two rounds?" And he's like, "Yeah, of course." I said, "So just do two rounds twice."
(Jesse laughs)
He won the title because of how we managed his fear. So all my fighters and the people around me, they're educated that they can always say, I'm (beep) nervous. Fear isn't the enemy. Fear is just energy. And it could be used as fuel. I grew up terrified of fear. I hated it.
I think most people are.
They are. I was a competitive skier and I never won a race, and I was one of the best skiers. Started skiing when I was three years old. My family were famous, like ski instructor, ski patrol. And everyone thought I was gonna win, and I always wiped out. And they'd always go, "Man, you were skiing so hard." I was always at the fastest time, but I'd wipe out. I wiped out because I was so worried about letting down the team. I could never hit a flow state because I had the weight of fear on me. And I would think to myself, if I'm so good, why am I so scared? No one ever said to me, when you care about something a lot, or when you're worried about an outcome, you will have anxiety. That's (beep) normal. No one ever said to me, that's normal. Mike Tyson used to cry and throw up before his fights. George St. Pierre, who I knew at the school that I used to teach at. And he'd bow to me when he'd come in. He was like way before his UFC. But it came out now years. He'd say, "I hated fighting. I loved the training." Every fight day, he was terrified. The only fight that he wasn't ever afraid was when he fought Matt Serra and Serra beat him. And he jokes in the interviews, says, "Maybe I should have been afraid of him." He was able to use fear to empower him. But me as a kid, I thought there was something wrong with me because I had the fear. 'Cause type A's and the world in general, we don't talk about fear. I was doing a seminar in Nashville many years ago and I was trying to get more people to it. So I drove around to different dojos and martial arts schools. I said, "Hey, I'm Tony Blauer. I'm doing a fear management seminar on Saturday." I go, "Do you teach fear management here?" They all said yes. I said, "Let Like what? Like what do you do?" Well, when the students test all their... the senior students and the black belts are watching them, they get really nervous.
Yeah.
And I'm like, yeah, that's not teaching fear management. A lot of people think that they're coaching fear management by saying, "Come on, one more rep, let's go. Don't be a (beep) come on."
And that could have the opposite effect.
But it does nothing to resolve the movie in your mind. And so I say a lot of coaches are just cheerleaders. I've spent my entire life trying to make people safer regardless of their martial art. And in many cases I'm hated for that because it means for somebody who's not a conscientious professional is they've got to admit that there was a capability gap. There was something missing. We say, "Be careful what you practice. You might get really good at the wrong thing." When you got really good at your sidekick, you're developing an unconscious bias to figure out how to use your sidekick in a violent encounter where maybe you should run, but part of your body's going, get ready to sidekick.
Yeah, yeah.
Where maybe you should palm strike the guy, but part of your nervous system is, I want to sidekick the guy. And people misinterpret that as me insulting their martial art. I'm not. All of my success, emotional, psychological, materialistic success is because I love martial arts. I've traveled the world and I've had the honor of working with governments all over the world, world renowned martial artists, students, kids, women's shelters, police, firefighters, doctors, and they're learning the same stuff because my system is based on behavior and is based on neuroscience and the sciences of movement. The scenario changes, but the human weapon is still there.
I love that. Well, thank you so much. It's been an honor.
Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for this.