Knife Fighting Courses and Common Misunderstandings

Targeting templates 

A friend just went to a seminar hosted by Sayoc and his thoughts were overall positive and his negatives I will address.

1. Violence?
2. Targeting templates and accuracy

These were the big ones and I think they are important to address to understand.

Violence in the world of knife fighting is paramount. If a blade is pulled on you it is extremely dangerous and can cause real damage REAL FAST. There is a common term “the 21 foot rule” https://lawofficer.com/exclusive/21footrule/ that states when a cop has a holstered weapon a bad guy with a knife can fatally injure the good with the knife before the good guy can draw his weapon and accurately fire his gun. Now if you are unarmed or even armed, and the guy has a knife how are you going to effectively stop the bad guy. The first answer is violence of action. In the military we called them immediate action drills or IA drills. When x happened we would practice to respond immediately with y. This increases survival odds a great deal. 

Once Violence has begun you are not going to be able to de-escalate or retreat until the violence is dealt with. The best way to deal with violence is precise overwhelming violence. Having a plan or response and using extreme intelligently delivered violence to solve the problem is probably the safest course of action. Once the threat is no longer a threat quit applying violence. Violence does not equal anger it just means overwhelm and dominate. Violence is a tool, and you need to understand it. 

This leads to the second problem my friend had. “It seems that trying to be that accurate with a template would leave to stress freeze response,” and “It seems the target drills don’t incorporate what is happening with bad guys appendages or if he is moving his head etc.”

The template that my friend saw was from Sayoc the 3 of 9 template https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pophQZ2JJk so we will work with this one.

The targeting templates work for a couple of reasons. They allow you to have an immediate action to a large set of problems and they allow you to pick up anywhere in the flow of the template. Just because it starts with right hand jugular it does not mean you will start there in real life. If the guys head is ducked and he is swinging a blade at you, you may start further into the template but once you start you have an immediate attack strategy. Do, it violently and practice it.

Remember that as you practice your actions angles and dellivery of your weapons become faster and more accurate. You have to start somewhere and that is where targeting templates work. They work at the beginning so you begin to understand how things happen, or can happen. If you train something like Sayoc you will see that they have a few begining places to start from. They have targeting templates like the above 3 of 9 and pantatukan stuff that begins from punches and knife feeds or good blade attacks. Whatever your system it will start you somewhere like that. Do the drills until they are rote, but understand they are drills to teach you immediate action when you are attacked.  Train have fun and critically think about both.  

https://blackscoutsurvival.blogspot.com/2013/04/stealth-and-survival-by-adam-ticknor.html

An article about some of the training and ideas

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/building-muscle-strong-body-journey
This article is about a friend and former client and her understanding of trainings it developed.

IT has been a while so here is a video for the new warm up

Lying

I get this question a lot, "What do peoples eyes do when they are lying"? and the problem with this is

it doesn't work that way with eyes. Deception is tricky because people will express the same cues if they are very emotional. 

Before I get into this 3 keys to remember:

1. One cue is not an accurate read. Every emotion will show up in more than one place on the body. You need at least 3 to be accurate, 2 to be confident, 1 is a guess.
2. Don't get attached to what you see, because if you are not clear you will misrepresent what you are seeing. You will see things that are not really present.
3. There are 2 delinations of nonverbal cues, I teach the second:
1. Cultural like flipping someone off, or giving the okay sign.
2. Cross cultural, what is hardwired into the system. Why do blind people smile when they have never seen anyone do it?, because it is innate in the system. 

There is a myth  that if someone looks up and left or low right it means blah blah blah. It is not true. One guy proposed it but it didn't stand up in peer reviewed studies.

http://www.nlpu.com/Articles/artic14.htm

This is one of the more passive articles about the eye tracking stuff. The idea is/was, when you are accessing one part of the brain you look a certain way. This can be true but isn't across the board true. A key piece to think about is when someone is lying and someone is feeling emotional the same cues tend to be expressed.

So what can you do?

How can you tell deception?

The first question, "Are their verbal expression congruent with their nonverbals?" This is good for people that have been readers for a while, but what about people who are just starting?

Some consistent cues that help:

• Regardless of handedness left hand is low left when talking the are creating a distraction and it is probably not "keepin' it 100"(accurate). Here is a slide from my power point presentation. Cover one up and then look at the other.
• 
  
• People turn away from you towards the/an exit when they are trying to convince you of something. This is them providing themselves "an escape." Most people will turn slightly when talking and they should it makes them feel safe, but if they back up significantly or turn towards an exit take notice. 
• If their feet shift angles dramatically. Foot angles all mean something different, so don't get twisted on this. Sometimes a foot switch is because they are anchoring their point but if it shows up with some of the others take notice. 
• If they face you hard and over emphasize, this is an aggressive posture and will put up hackles on both people. Turn slightly and it will deescalate and you will have a better read. If someone faces you hard then you will be distracted by your own defense mechanisms, so turn a little bit.
• If it is an unnatural gesture (Clinton: I did not sleep with that woman)
• 
• 
  He doesn't actually mean what ever he is about to say
• 
  He is feeling attacked but is hopeless and trying to escape and push back
• http://www.americanbanker.com/news/law-regulation/the-long-shadow-of-robert-rubin-1071601-1.html
• I have no understanding of the financial wizardry that goes on so this is not calling Rick Rubin out it is just the first thing that came up in google images.

Some thoughts:

• All of these can mean something else except left hand. (Left hand low is a 90% kind of read.)
• Some people lie as a habit so don't hold it against them
• Does the lie really matter?, if not just catalogue it to decide how to deal with the person.
• You press them and you can end up with 2 very different things 
• They will provide better reads because they are reinforcing the lie.
• They move into an emotional space and then the reads are invalid for deception.
• Narcissist and socio/psychopaths tend to be VERY VERY good liars so if you are dealing with that then don't try to deconstruct them. It isn't worth it. 

Read "spy the lie"

http://www.amazon.com/Spy-Lie-Former-Officers-Deception/dp/1250029627

If you have any questions email me or leave them in the comments.

I you want a workshop on how to read body language call me, email me, come by and see me, but lets do it!

Thanks 

Adam Ticknor

quadrapedal switches

Play with em and let me know

This is a photo of late 1990s Marine Corps Sniper School, and the students are following me on or off the rifle range, running just like little piggies should.
 I just watched the American Sniper movie. First Bradley Cooper...strong work. Secondly I think that the movie did a great job at showing the gambit of stuff without making it about politics or trying to glorify him. Sure there is some hollywood in there but far less than you would imagine. I want to thank Clint for doing something that showed a broad spectrum of what happens and what we struggle with. It shows how we get indoctrinated emotionally in such a way that combat is more comfortable than daily life and how we struggle and fight with trying to re-assimilate into a society where the skills we have dont translate well into the homogenous sterility of American life. It shows how we lose some of the ability to express and feel all the emotions that we have. This happens to all combat arms, and some supporting arms, now when it comes to snipers or special operations we are the best in the world and we come back to the United States where we are not allowed or have no venue to do what we are best at. Remember that you maybe good at what you do and some may be one of the top folks in the world and that is something that you will be able to do until you die. We cant. So not only are we fragile our expertise is removed, and for some it is how they are defined. It leaves us feeling lost with little to nothing to replace it. SO when you criticize the military remember that it is a necessary evil and the real problem is how those in power have used us. The propaganda machine is being put into place by us as a public. So if you have a problem with combat put people into office that know how to properly use the military tool.