V.I.P.A Tactical Training

Within the combat fraternity there are a number of myths that are in existance and used with no thought as to their validity by instructors. Regurgitating unresearched knowledge is as bad as training people in unrealistic defensive practices.

In one way the phrase ''Action will always beat reaction' is basically true, but only if you aim the comment at untrained people. Those of you who regularly read my blog or have bought my book will know that a reaction is a natural instinct, the flinch or freeze is a natural reaction.

A response is a cognitive action and so for the trained individual the comment is untrue and could be changed along the lines of 'Action will not always beat a response'

Lets take a car crash or any other vehicle accident as our first example.
 

Most of us drive, some for pleasure and some like myself drive as part of our profession. I am sure most of you have see a car crash and I am also sure some of you have been involved in a one

What is the first 'Reaction' of a driver on seeing an accident happen directly in front of their vehicle or for that matter hitting a patch of oil or black ice?
Yep they violently hit the brakes, a natural reaction. Hitting the brakes is an instinctive reaction to what is occurring and is what makes matters worse, its what causes pile ups, loss of control of the vehicle or sends a vehicle into a skid.

What is the response from a driver trained to respond to these types of incidents?
A choice of actions that can keep you out of harms way. Applying the breaks firmly and smoothly, not an instant motion, similar to gently pressing your foot down onto a grape without squashing it. Gently turning the wheel while smoothly breaking helps avoid collisions, if skidding turning into the skid, looking where you want to go and not where your car is pointing will turn your hands in the same direction and make the car come out of the skid. These techniques though need to be practiced and response time also plays its part here, from seeing to acting obviously means that the earlier you see an action the better chance you will have of choosing the correct response.

For the second example lets look at a boxer and an untrained street fighter.
'Action will always beat reaction' JAB = DUCK, HOOK = ROLL, CROSS = LEAN
Hmmm not going to well for 'Action' at the moment.and again our response and not getting hit is governed by our response time.

This is unlike the untrained person defending themselves on the street who is acting purely on 'Reactionary Instinct'. Actions that are guaranteed to cause the defender harm. Freezing, flinching or punching wildly, looking away or closing their eyes, putting their heads down, covering up and if lying on the the ground curling into a ball. All unsound practices performed with no thought of their combat performance or their own safety.

If the phrase 'Action will always beat reaction' were really true then every punch would connect. you would not be able to avoid a collision and your cognitive choices would be of no use, we would be able to rely on our instinctive process to keep us safe. How wrong that all is.

For those new to the blog and also as a reminder to regular readers, QUESTION everything you are being taught. As students  we rely on our instructors to point us towards the correct path and furnish us with the skills to walk that path as safely as possible and as instructors we must know the truth about what we are passing on in relation to combat to those wanting to learn how to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Are you questioning what you are being told or do you accept that what you are being told is the truth?

Stay Dangerous

Rock

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. - D. H Lawrence

In many combat systems this subject is so far on the back burner I am not sure that it is still lit. It is so taboo that to even mention it causes people to shudder, never mind not coming back to train again, after all protecting ourselves surely cannot involve death, my death; can it? Oh there is abstract talk about it, you know the whole roundabout way in which fighting/combat is discussed etc. But there is no direct implication of the Grim Reaper standing there on your right shoulder waiting until it is your time to travel on, no training on the reality of what your dying will mean for your family, no training to understand and accept that this shit is real. Yes there is reality training to make people better at protecting themselves, but the mind-set for accepting ones own demise is lacking with the exception of ancient texts concerning death and the life of a warrior, which are only read and understood by those who accept to choose a warrior lifestyle, the hardcore who accept who and what they are. 

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome outside of the military is the acceptance that what we do can get you killed, and for the civilian practicing self protection or the executive protection operator standing in harms way, means that get it wrong or right as the case may be and you may very well die.

Nobody in their right mind wants to die, but the reality and  fear of it is to some people just not something they can deal with and so they blatently hide their head in the sand or even worse they play at combat thinking they will be ready when the time comes for the physical aspect of self protection.

The younger we are, the thoughts of death are a long way in the distance, we have less or nothing to lose, we have that 'Who gives a shit' attitude. The older we get we gather bagagge, responsibilities, family, houses, possessions, money, things. Things that we like, things that we want to hang on to, things we would miss. Even for the young fighting in our military, death; although all around, for the self it still seems a long way a way. Anyone who has ever served will know and recognise this.
As we age we become less likely to take risks, we want to live as long as possible and to be able to do this we start to rap ourselves in cotton wool. We no longer want to put ourselves in harms way in any form, never mind in a combat situation.

We do not know how long we have to live, we do not know the circumstances of our inevitable passing, some go through the worst danger and emerge without a scratch to live a long life and die peacefully at home. Others die early in some cases it seems needlessly, unluckily or wasteful without ever having achieved anything or had a long enough life. Wherever you are in your life understand that HE is coming never the less.

The Hagakure - Book of the Samurai is a collection of commentaries by Yamamoto Tsenetomo, in which he describes how Bushido is a way of 'Dying' or living as if one were already dead. You would think that upon reading that it was written in the feudal era when war was rife, but you would be wrong, it was written in a time of peace. A constant reminder for Samurai to be prepared to die at a moments notice in the protection of their Lord. Would you sacrifice yourself so easily in defence of your loved ones?
It would be easy to say to yourself 'Yes' while you are reading this, but have you ever thought about your own ending. 

The Valkyrie above is from the old Norse Religious Tradition, today known as Asatru. Fallen warriors who died bravely in battle were thought to have their souls transported to Valhalla to sit in the halls of their ancestors forever, until they are called upon once again to fight in the time of Ragnarok.

Do I think the length of our life is written before we are born? Yes I do but not the content. What we do with our lives, how we live our life and ultimately how we face our end is up to us. But come to terms with it, accept it no matter what, it is going to happen but by accepting and living with it it will make life all the more glorious.

So seek out and come to terms with your death, if you are already dead what else is there to lose? 

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. - Mahatma Gandhi

Stay Dangerous

Rock

For those who are not familiar with the term, 'Getting off the X', let me explain.

When working in the close protection field in any of its appearances, Executive, PSD, Royaly, Diplomatic or Celebrity and also for the time the civilian has to protect a family member who comes under attack, this phrase simply means getting out of the immediate danger area. There are numerous terms that explain this, getting out of the kill zone, getting out of the contact area, bugging out etc. The main point is, X marks the spot the attacker is aiming for and that is either where the principal, in the case of the protection specialist is standing or where the family member is standing for the civilian. Getting the Principal or the family member out of there is the all important factor.

I specialise in a couple of skills within the realm of Close Protection and of course combat is one of those. As I am fond of saying I am always a student and it is great when I learn something new, physically or mentally that helps me in some way. This week was one of those times.

On a social media site we were discussing something similar and it was one of those genius moments were someone explains something so simple it was astounding, but i will come back to that in a little while after we have got off the X.

First let me clear up one small factor that has some people confused. There is a massive difference bewteen the three following forms of attack, which as an EPO you should be aware of concerning close range attacks, especially with firearms:
Terrorist attack
Active shooter
Assassination 
I will go into the differences in a future blog post, suffice to say for this post what we are dealing with here is the assassination, close range attack.You can also throw in here the kidnap attempt as this is going to happen at this range too.

This getting off the X thing causes a lot of confusion for martial arts instructors with no CP exeperience who get seconded onto a CP training course for teaching 'self defence'. It may sound simple but the act of defending oneself is totally different to protecting someone else.

Now I hear lots of arguements about 'Well you can use self defence if you are at the right range', so let us look at that range and see why the self defence application will not work.

You will I am sure be familiar with the word 'Concertina' and its application within our walking drills, no threat, no one around and you can push the PES members out as far as it is deemed safe. You can be up to 15ft in some case with only the BG and the Principal together. Now we have people approaching, the PES close in and so on, constantly openening and closing as people around us come and go, Sometimes this may only be 1ft out and 1ft back from the Principal depending on the situation on the ground. If we are so stupid to be caught 5ft or more away from the Principal when someone walks past him then if there is an attack you are no use to the Principal or the BG. So no surprise there, its not called close protection for nothing you know.

This also goes for family members, especially children. Over 5ft away from a child is too far to prevent any sort of attack on them and in the case of a child also from a kidnap point of view.

Now here is the problem, defending from a gun or knife from a martial artists point of view means you get your body out of the way of the attack while at the same time moving the weapon off line also.
Let me ask you a question, how long is your arm? mine is 2ft long, now if i attack the Principal through the EPO because there is no other route and the EPO steps off line like he has been trained to, then not only is my arm going to go past the EPO but my momentum is going to take me past as well and into my target.
That is just the knife, move off line from a firearm and I do not even have to extend, the round will do that for me.

So as the phrase 'In the line of fire' suggests, as an EPO or a civilian defending your family you cannot step off line on a close range attack on the Principal or family member. You need to stand your ground and defend without moving off line while giving body cover in the line of attack. All you are doing is running interference, which gives other team members time to extricate the principal or the second parent to get away with the child/children.

During training this brings home one important message which is not to everyones liking because it is realistic and brings home the truth about what we will have to do in a contact situation. The fact that whoever is dealing with the threat has a high chance of being seriously injured if not killed.
But hey that is the job, that is what you get paid for should it ever come to that, which brings me on to the first part mentioned above of getting of getting off the X, WHY WE PRACTICE IT SO MUCH!

In my 21 years in permanent employment as an EPO I have only ever used what I know on two occassions even though I train in this skill all of the time. Why is this, if it is only going to happen so infrequently, why train in this skill at all? 

Here is how Gene Ferrara explained it:
The fact that attacks happen so infrequently make it necessary to put time into practicing the use of force skills. Not only the mechanical skills of how to apply force, but the decision making skills of when and to what level. I call this 'The rule of inverse proportions': those skills used infrequently need more training time to remain sharp.
Some practitioners misunderstand this rule. They think we hone our use of force skills because that is what we do. Actually the oposite is true. We need to practice these skills through repeated training because they are so seldom used in real life.

Gene Ferrara is Chief Instructor at the Executive Protection Institute and also runs police and  security training.

Thank you MrFerrara for pointing out this simple fact.

We use every other CP skill on most everyday occassions while at work so these skills reamain sharp.Simple equation really when you think about it.

So getting off the X is the main aim, IBG / One parent, 2 man team / two parents, 3 or 4 or man teams. One person, the closest person, deals with the threat the rest get the Principal / family members off the X.

If we look at assassinations from a longer distance, over 5ft  to sniper range then there is nothing defensive physically that you can do unless you are armed. But like Timothy McCarthy during the President Reagan assassination attempt all you can do is stand in the line of fire and take the shot. 

I look at it like this, just because something is not happening, does not mean that there is nothing happening. Just because something has not happened (A contact) does not mean that it will never happen.

This short blog is not the place to discuss any Strategies, tactics or techniques, that can only be done through training. So if you are a professional or a concerened family member then get out there and train.
You can see more on close range gun attacks and arcs of observation in my book, Meditations of a Modern Warrior

The truth only hurts, for oneself and others, but denial kills - Paul 'Rock' Higgins

Stay Dangerous

Rock