Photo by Bev Childress of Fort Worth, Texas

In our polarizing age of extremes, it is easy to lose ourselves in rhetoric and spin. The #MeToo movement began as something nearly every American united around. We were aghast to see how many men used their power differential, however, defined, to impose their will on females. Though the bullying label is insufficient and oversimplified, these acts were a manifestation of simple bullying psychology applied in the most heinous fashion. Bullies seek a sense of power and control by imposing their will on the less powerful.

We all agree that women should not have to fear sexually predatory men or any men for that matter. Still, the reality is that regardless of the lengths societies take to make these instances less common, pathological men will still seek to dominate women. Utopia is a delusion. So, what can you do?

Get Strong Enough

Look around the animal kingdom. Women are not intended to be meek, dependent, and fearful. They are ferocious mama bears and huntress lions. Broadly speaking, human women are at a genetic strength disadvantage, but this is overplayed.

Pound for pound their legs are as strong as any male’s, and they tend to possess far better mobility, allowing them to easily get into mechanically advantageous positions where their strength is magnified.

Regardless, the goal shouldn’t be to be as strong as your opponent, but strong enough. Anyone who has ever been around fights knows that as long as strength is comparable, it will not be the deciding factor. Furthermore, bullies don’t want to fight, they want to dominate. There is nothing more terrifying to a would-be assailant than a vicious, shockingly powerful counter.

Georges Hebert founded the Natural Method on the notion that life inserts hardship and chaos so we should be strong to be useful. Western women have been given a different message. Fashion norms condition them to believe the ideal woman is exceptionally gentle, soft, and feebly thin.

They feel obligated to avoid calluses and spend their days walking on three-inch spikes. Fortunately, this is being challenged by the popularity of a fierce US women’s soccer team and the growing number of moms opting for kettlebells, barbells, or CrossFit.

Women Must Get Strong

There are a seemingly infinite number of reasons for women to get stronger, from staving off osteopenia to stoking the metabolic fires, to kicking ass whenever and however life demands it be kicked. Still, many fear they will get too muscular. “Lifting heavy weights makes you bulky.” Tell that to model Kate Upton, who deadlifts over 200lbs, does sled pushes with over 500, and bear crawls pulling 300lbs.

The reality is becoming a bulky female would take years of obsessive training, supplementation, and rare genetics. Lifting heavy weights a few days a week won’t add any bulk, particularly as most of the adaptations are neurological, focusing on the bodies ability to more efficiently recruit and fire motor units. Lifting heavy is actually the best path to gaining a lot of strength without bulk. Let’s get started.

Create an Effective Body

Remember, your legs are far stronger than your arms. Kicking someone away or pushing them away should start from your legs and transfer through a strong connected body. We want to train efficient, effective movement patterns, not isolated muscles. The body is most effective when many muscles are synchronized into an efficient, powerful movement. Let’s make it simple. Prioritize these movements a couple days per week:

Warm Up (3 rounds):

• X-Band Walk – x5 per side
• Superman – x5
• Split Squat Holds – x1 per side (hold bottom position for 10 seconds, then drive out)
• Dumbbell Row – x10 each arm
• Push Up – x5

When you are considering what to train next, take a look at the following ideas and start with your weakest area. Incorporating all of these exercises will benefit you in the long run.

1. Sprints: Humans should maintain the capacity to sprint. Your best bet, when met with a violent altercation, is to create distance between you and your aggressor. Run as fast as you can and fling obstacles in their way. More noise is better. I recommend starting by running up a hill of 20 yards or less. Do 5-10 sprints recovering fully between each set.
2. Squats: Nothing will transform lower body power faster than good, old fashioned squats. Start with heavy dumbbell or kettlebell goblet squats. Work towards heavy front squats and finally back squats. I recommend adding a little weight each set and doing a set of 5, then 3, then 2.
3. Romanian Deadlifts: Power comes from the backside of your body—those muscles that lie dormant when we sit all day. Nothing attacks the hamstrings and glutes like a good RDL. Do 3 sets of 5.
4. Dumbbell 1 Arm Push Press: This one will teach you to transfer energy from your legs through your arms. A great total body lift for total body power. Do 3 sets of 5 per side.
5. Daily Pull Up Practice: Finding time for daily pull-ups ensures you won’t bulk and is a great barometer of relevant strength improvements.

This program won’t get you ready for UFC 234, but it will equip you with a far more capable tool kit if the need ever arises to defend and evade. If for whatever reason, this plan doesn’t jive with your lifestyle and preferences, I recommend looking into other training options. There are a billion ways to get strong and most plans will work. The best plan for you may simply be the one you will consistently do.

If you have time to train frequently, but in shorter bursts, I recommend Pavel’s Simple and Sinister or Power to the People. Both are optimal for creating massive changes in physical strength without bulk.

If you like my plan, but want variety and/or complexity, I have many more premium training programs that will be released over the coming months. These would be perfect for taking this plan to the next level. I even have a 3 phase plan to take you from a kettlebell beginner to a strong, confident kettlebeller.

Create a Strong Mind

I’ve emphasized strength because I believe a strong body and strong mind are the most crucial variables for successfully countering an attack. Still, there are other pre-emptive measures you may want to consider:

• Playing tag with the kids. Life happens in three dimensions. Tag is fun and also surprisingly good training.
• Pepper spray. That stuff hurts!
• Practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Any martial art will help, but as I understand, BJJ is the best for overcoming strength differentials.

When in doubt remember that this fight is not meant to fair or civil. Kick for the groin, gouge eyeballs, bite, tear, and do what is necessary to separate yourself from the monster.

The post Defensive Strength for Women: The Power of a Push appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Training in self-defense and martial arts in general can not only be a very practical and pragmatic tool to avoid and deal with violence, but it can also be a vehicle for self-discovery and healing for many after a violent assault.

Assume the Worst

With spring upon us in Australia, unfortunately so is the higher likelihood of violence. Assault is seasonal. The number of assaults here peaks in the spring and summer months of October to February, and is lowest from April to July. Criminals are opportunistic, so when people are more out and about, so are they.

Many people who are assaulted ask, “why me?” In realistic situations, there doesn’t need to be a reason for violence. The person can simply be having a bad day and you are now their target. It’s irrelevant. You are in wrong place and at the wrong time, and getting caught up emotionally in the situation or taking it personally isn’t going to help, nor is it the right internal dialogue. Our number one priority is to survive and to remove ourselves from the situation.

Everyone has read the clichés about assumptions. But I can safely say when it comes to self-defense training, there are some safe ones to make. Most people assume that “it won’t happen to me,” but the statistics on violence in Australia show another story. Survey data from 2012 shows that both men and women in Australia experience substantial levels of violence.

• 1 in 5 women and 1 in 22 men had experienced sexual violence
• 1 in 6 women and 1 in 19 men had experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner
• 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men had experienced physical violence

Assumptions aren’t a bad thing when it comes to personal protection, either. In training, I tell my students, “if you prepare for the worst, only the best can happen.” Research indicates that when women partake in effective self-defense training, they end up stopping violence brought to them more often than those that don’t.

If you ever find yourself presented with a threat situation, here are some other pretty safe assumptions that might save your life.

It Will Feel Sudden

In many real-life situations there is a build-up, whether it be verbal abuse, someone following you home from the bus stop, or muggers silently stalking their prey near an ATM. When the victims are interviewed about the lead up to their assault, they generally mention that there were signals displayed, or an “interview” prior to the assault, and often those signals were missed or ignored.

What many people underestimate is that the transition from non-violent to violent is usually very sudden and explosive. Most are caught unawares by the ferociousness of the assault. This is very different from movies or tournaments where two martial artists bow to each other, then take fighting stances before they trade blows and duel within a set of predefined rules and with preparatory training. This is why sport fighting isn’t self-defense.

Training for situational awareness can help prepare people for real world violence. The use of role playing, scenarios, and timelines can help them learn to detect threats, look for and recognize non-verbal and verbal cues, and the signals attackers display when selecting and interviewing victims. Effective training includes preemptive strategies to deal with the situation before it becomes physical, and how and when to choose to make it physical on our terms, rather than the aggressor’s. Training needs to address fear, surprise, and pain, in ways that emulate real life. An absence of this in training is setting people up for failure with false confidence.

One of the biggest erroneous assumptions that is repeatedly taught in self-defense schools is that you must wait until you are attacked or assaulted before you can respond. This is a dangerous and utterly stupid way to train. Most technique training has us wait until we are assaulted before we respond. In essence, you get good at being assaulted over and over, instead of being proactive from the very beginning. The point is to avoid being a victim, and that means responding verbally or physically before it happens.

They Will Have a Weapon

It is a potentially fatal error to assume your assailant is not armed. When you speak to people who have been assaulted with a weapon, in many instances they state that they didn’t even realize their attacker was armed until sometime into the assault, or even afterward. Some stabbing victims, in the heat of the moment, just felt like they were being punched. They didn’t even know that there was a sharp object involved and that they were, in fact, being punctured.

This leads me to one of the biggest flaws in a lot of self-defense training: having two different techniques for the same threat. Intelligent self-defense systems such as Krav Maga have just one technique to deal with a number of similar attacks. Take a straight punch and straight stab. The action is basically the same so why not treat it in the same way? If a victim is surprised with a weapon, instead of the punch they were expecting, are they going to be able to change from one technique to another in the blink of an eye? Heard of Hick’s Law? Too many choices equal freezing and poor decision-making time.

Intelligent systems have a hand and a body defense and deal with the stimulus in the same way. That way, regardless if the attacker is armed or not, your chances of survival are higher. In high-stress situations, gross motor skills take over, critical thought and fine motor skills are lost.

They Are Not Alone

I don’t care how good your training is. If you’re confronted by a group of 7-foot-tall bikers built like brick shit houses who are intent on ripping your head off, your line of thinking needs to be “how am I going to get out of this one?” The choreographed rubbish you see in most movies, where everyone attacks the defender one at a time, and the defender miraculously knocks everyone out with just one strike, is unrealistic to say the least, and again feeds false confidence.

In the real world, you can safely assume that honor has gone out the window, and the mob rules. Assuming that your assailant is not alone is important in your decision-making process. If you assume that the person you are confronted by is alone and you decide to act with a strong physical response, unaware that a table of their friends is a few feet away, you are probably in for a bad night. Assuming they are not alone puts you in a better position, should things go physical and you are caught up in the chaos of dealing with more than one attacker.

Multiple opponent awareness and high-pressure training drills are crucial in your practice, and active scanning for further threats (including weapons, exits, and common objects to use to assist) should also be a part of completing a scenario/role play or technique in your training.

They Are Under the Influence

Sometimes, regardless of your best attempts to logically, calmly, and rationally talk your way out of a situation, your violent offender isn’t going to respond the way you would like. This is far worse if they are under the effects of drugs or alcohol. At a high level of excitation and arousal, logic and rationale have already gone out of the window for most people, let alone someone who isn’t sober. 

De-escalation, defusing, or even compliance is possible in some situations, but in others, it won’t be. Unlike sport fighting or martial arts practice, your goal is not to “win” but to survive. Assume that your attacker might be irrational or incoherent, so you can plan your next step if your attempts at a peaceful resolution fail.

Smile for the Camera

In the age of ubiquitous mobile phones and CCTV, you can safely assume that your actions will be caught on camera. Why is this important? If things go legal after an incident, you may have to justify your behavior and use of force in front of an investigator or a judge. If you are a tactical operator, you will need to justify your actions according to the use of force continuum guidelines and operational procedures.

Remember, the first rule of self-defense is avoidance. If you chose the art of not fighting as your first response by fleeing, complying, posturing, de-escalating, and negotiating, then you will find that besides being able to avoid violence in the first place, if you show this on footage, even if things do go physical and then legal afterwards, the ramifications will be few because you took the steps to avoid the situation before things kicked off.

Many self-defense experts teach that the only solution is to strike the offender. This is socially and legally irresponsible. Would you really belt a slightly drunk family member or friend being an ass hat at a party? Context is everything. Sometimes a “soft” option is required to deal with a lower-level violent threat than the false bravado offered by egotistical instructors.

On the flip side, many people also think that self-defense is a passive act; or that it is primarily defensive or non-aggressive. All the magical and superstitious clichés such as “using your attacker’s force to overcome them,” or “using a minimum amount of force” come to mind. But as those who have experienced it and fought to save their lives or the lives of others will testify, violence is ugly, stressful, and desperate. There is no fairy tale in this pressure cooker.

Self-Defense Training Needs More Than Drills

Training tactically is crucial to survival. Techniques are fine, but training should also include role playing, scenarios, timelines that include hard and soft options, practicing situational awareness, training assertiveness and boundary setting, stress inoculation, and contact work. Training should always cover preventative and pre-emptive material, along with active scanning to find exits and further threats. It should create automatic assumptions while remaining adaptable to the situation.

Learning how to outwit, rather than just outfight predators is part of any realistic self-defense training. Self-defense starts long before any one touches you. Experience is something you get after you needed it, so maybe assumption isn’t the mother of all fuck-ups after all.

The post Safe Assumptions in an Unsafe World appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Unless you’ve been exposed to a lot of violence, your training will be subjective. Most people’s idea of violence is one based off their own interpretation of what they learn in the dojo, see in the ring, or watch in a movie. In rare cases, it comes from personal experience working as a police officer or prison guard. But how many of us deal with violent offenders daily?

Violence Is About Conflict

Many people teaching martial arts have little to no experience with real-world, brutal violence, yet proclaim to teach self-defense. And very few critically look at what they are teaching or have been taught. Many of us have been caught up in dogma, a way of looking at violence due to our work—the martial art or ring sport in which we participate. Because we lack real world experience, we tell ourselves a story about how we think it is, rather than how it is in reality. We assume way too much.

Unfortunately in the realm of martial arts, “sexy” sells. Many practitioners are not able to separate reality from the stuff they see in the movies. And this is a problem if we are teaching others the same. We often use assumption, reason, tradition, and recreation as a way of training for real-world violence.

Violence is ultimately about conflict. Conflict comes in many forms:

• A group of guys brawling in a pub.
• Two muay Thai fighters duelling it out in the ring.
• A psychiatrist trying to administer a sedative to an aggressive emotionally disturbed person.
• A police officer trying to handcuff a drug addict.
• A crowd controller escorting a drunk off the premises.
• Someone being held up at an ATM at knifepoint.
• Armed bandits invading a home.
• A sexual predator following a young female home from the bus stop.
• Kids bullying on the playground, or a violent, drunken spouse abusing his partner.

These are all different situations, and all require different psychological, tactical, and physical skills. Yet they are all lumped into the subject of violence and self-defense. The only real experts are in voilence are the criminals who perpetrate it onto others regularly and without conscience.

Do You Teach Self Defence?

The million dollar question is, how do we train for something that is so hard to define?

Martial artists try to do it all. Self-discovery and enlightenment, physical fitness, street fighting, ring fighting, and self-defense. We try to be all things to all people. We even throw in military and combat training to macho it up. While all these aspects can be connected in some way, they are not interchangeable.

Training in a martial art is not necessarily training for self-defense. Training for a ring sport or mat sport is not training for self-defense, either. And training for combat is also not self-defense, unless you walk around with an automatic weapon in tactical gear on the street every day.

All of these domains certainly have practical applications that can be useful in self-defense training, but they are not, on their own, self-defense training. Yet when someone rings up a martial arts school and asks, “Do you teach self-defence?” the answer is always yes. And that irks me. The dollar has become more important than integrity and responsibility.

If you look at the roots of most traditional martial arts and how they train, they have little to do with dealing with modern day violence and assaults. If we take an amazing traditional art like ninjitsu and look at its origins—assassination by stealth—then I think we can safely say many people are going to question its modern day self-defense applications.

I love the traditional arts. They are amazing, and how I got started. I don’t think one style or system is better than another. The problem lies in practitioners being delusional about what it is they are training for. While carrying a ninjato, climbing trees, and disappearing into puffs of smoke might humorously be considered useful strategies to avoid conflict, they probably don’t have practical application for modern day self-defense.

Many systems offer scenarios like this: Attacker assaults defender. Defender does technique X. The technique is successful. Finish. They woefully attempt to replicate real world violence. When you think about effective self-defense training, does waiting for ideal circumstances to perform technique X seem like a great strategy?

In many real life situations, unless we are assaulted by surprise, there is both a pre-confrontation and pre-fight stage. So why aren’t we learning in training how to deal with the situation earlier, to avoid the physical assault to begin with? It is foolish to believe that being attacked under ideal circumstances will ever happen. Attacks don’t occur in well-lit, spacious areas with soft matting and minimal contact.

Real World Self-Defence Training

Useful training needs to address how to recover from the fear, pain, and surprise of an assault as quickly as possible to survive. Stress inoculation must happen in training, otherwise we risk sending people into the wilderness with false confidence.

You may be injured and in pain before you are even aware of the conflict, in a real life situation. You will need to break free of the shock and surprise to beat your own fear, and change instantly into the mindset of a predator from that of a victim. This needs to happen in just a few seconds in order to survive. This is no easy feat. But it needs to be trained if we are to successfully prepare people for “the wild.”

Real self-defense training also needs to address how to avoid violence, and how to not be assaulted in the first place, either through bad luck or stupidity. Training needs to be proactive, and we need to spend more time learning prevention techniques. We should be looking to flee or avoid, de-escalate or negotiate; posture, stun, and run; or comply, depending on the context. If it has to become physical, then we must train to do so on our terms, as much as possible.

Stop Being a Victim

Waiting for a person to bring violence to you before you execute your technique isn’t a great strategy. We need to outwit, not just outfight. Non-reality-based training sets you up to become a victim, rather than learning to take the upper hand with initiative. There needs to be a change in mindset, from one of reluctant victim to wary predator, in order to shift the odds of surviving violence in your favor.

(This article originally appeared on Breaking Muscle Australia)

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• In Defense of Self: The Real Mental Value of Self-Defense Training
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• Do Violent Sports Create Violent People?
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today?

The post Martial Arts Is Not Self-Defense: Real World Violence Prevention appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

When it comes to self-defense, the failure to acknowledge fear and its part in survival is preparing for failure. You must understand how fear works, how you react to it, and how you can make it work for you. Any instructor, trainer, or fighter who says they don’t experience fear is stupid, lying, or dangerous.

The Biochemistry of Fear

Fear is not only natural, but you can guarantee in the emotional pressure cooker of a real situation that you will experience it. Accepting that you will experience fear is an important step to trying to overcome it. The adrenal dump we experience in the fight-or-flight mode of our sympathetic nervous system is a natural part of the process of fear. While the experience of fear and the adrenal dump aren’t one and the same, they certainly show up hand in hand when things go south.

“Learning to confront fears in day-to-day life and learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable can help us develop our inner strength.”

Adrenaline has a number of physiological effects that are important to recognize. The adrenal dump can freeze an individual in the extreme pressure and stress of a violent encounter. Our heart rate increases, breathing becomes rapid and shallow, legs shake, and mouth goes dry. We experience tunnel vision, time distortion, auditory exclusion, and the need to urinate or make a bowel movement. We become monosyllabic in our verbal communication, and endure a loss of fine motor skills and a slowing down of decision-making and data recall.

Fear and stress change everything, even in the most trained individuals. And once fearful thoughts enter the mind, they can become contagious. Once one fearful thought enters, then others may follow.

But this same fight-or-flight response can also make us stronger, faster, and more resilient to pain. The adrenaline dump can actually mobilize us for action should we be able to control it. And we want all this to happen in a real survival situation, don’t we? This natural response to threat is hardwired into our body to help us and gives us the opportunity to influence the outcome of a situation.

Training Does Not Equal Total Preparation

I have witnessed experienced martial arts instructors be assaulted successfully by predators with zero training. And in the professional fight game strong, fit, and technical fighters fall apart against less strong, less fit, and less technical fighters because of a lack of mental preparation.

If your body is a loaded gun, then your mind is the trigger. If you can’t pull the trigger, you are in trouble. Teaching the mind to pull the trigger rather than to hit the power switch is a difficult skill to develop and especially hard to implement with a window of opportunity that lasts only a few seconds. Overcoming that fear and having the confidence to act decisively is the name of the game if we want to survive an assault.

Confidence is often defined as “believing in yourself.” I think this is absolute dribble. If confidence is a “belief,” then you could believe (without any swimming lessons) that you can swim, but when you jump in the pool and sink to the bottom, you may find “believing in yourself” doesn’t work. But if confidence is your actual capacity to employ some tactical, psychological, and physical skills even when you are scared, then I think confidence is one the most important attributes you can develop.

“The adrenaline dump can actually mobilize us for action should we be able to control it.” 

There are many ways to overcome fear and develop confidence, but here are some of the things I think are vital to include in your training.

Mental Training

• Mastering positive internal dialogue and positive self-talk, including learning affirmations, counterattacking negative thoughts with positive ones, using repetitive mantras, and rejecting negative thoughts are vital tools. These tools have been used not only by the world’s greatest professional fighters, but are used in any pursuit or challenge where there is a considerable inside game.
• Guided mental imagery and visualization are amazing tools to assist in dealing with a real situation. Playing out a “what if” scenario in your head or being guided through one can prepare us mentally for it happening in the real world. If you have played the scenario over and over, when it actually happens you may be more adequately equipped to deal with it. Studies show the brain differentiates little between real life and visualization techniques.

• Learning to confront fears in day-to-day life and learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable can help us develop our inner strength. Learning to work past your power switch. We are all creatures of convenience and comfort, but gravitating toward doing things that make us uncomfortable and facing other fears rather than putting them in the “too hard” basket can help us become more confident. It can highlight how we respond to and act in the presence of fear and what we can do about it.
• Understanding your core beliefs. If you don’t think you are worthy, worth saving, or worth fighting for, then you won’t fight for your survival.

Physical Attributes

• Many of the physiological effects of the adrenal dump can be offset by the effective use of breathing. This is best practiced using diaphragmatic breathing techniques or meditation.
• Realistic self-defense training including stress inoculation and aggression drills may not be able to directly replicate the full experience of a real situation, as nothing can, but it can certainly take us as close as possible within the bounds of safety.
• Just like you can’t fake swimming once you are in the deep end, you can’t fake employing tactical, psychological, and physical skills in real situations for the most part, either. If you want to increase your chances of surviving a violent encounter, you need to experience the realities of fear before you are faced with them in real life.
• A knowledge and familiarity with the subject of self-defence, safety and personal protection.
• Health and fitness.

“Learning to confront fears in day-to-day life and learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable can help us develop our inner strength.” 

Mental Mastery

Remember the mind comes first. Techniques are useless unless they can be applied tactically and with intent. People survive deadly assaults every day with no physical self-defense training whatsoever. This is because of instincts, luck, and having some of the tactical, physical, and psychological skills necessary to survive. This indicates to me very much of survival is determined by mindset.

One of my old teachers used to ask our class, “Who are you more afraid of, the guy who walks in and says he has ten black belts or the guy who says it doesn’t matter what you do to resist, but I’m not going to stop coming at you until I bite your nose off?” Who is your money on? And can you be that guy in return if your survival counts on it?

Check out these related articles:

• The Defense of Self – the Real Mental Value of Self-Defense Training
• How Being Fit Can Keep You Safe and Improve Your Day
• How Can Your Fitness Keep You Safe?
• What’s New On Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post You Are Not Prepared: How to Survive a Life-or-Death Situation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As my life has evolved to include becoming an urban park ranger, I realize there is such a strange dichotomy between living freely and living practically. What I mean by this is the deeper we delve into our human body, we become saturated in focus on what our body is sensing, feeling, releasing, and doing. This incredible focus inward allows us to review and see where the patterns, memories, injuries, or emotional wounds are stored. This is a unique and wonderful tool when coupled with the vigilance of remaining attentive to the external world as well.

We cannot afford to pretend everything outside of our selves is all rainbows and unicorns. There is violence. There is human trafficking. There is burglary. There are dark layers of human actions perpetuating harmful acts toward the earth, animals, and other humans. We cannot ignore or negate the facts. Reality can be ugly.

We must remember to protect ourselves, to implement boundaries. How much negativity or violence will we allow before we take charge? How much are we willing to allow another person to take from us? We must know our breaking point. We must have a plan to maintain boundaries and if someone moves past the boundary, have a practical plan to enact.

It’s like running with scissors. Practical knowledge and gut sensory may warn against this action. We would be countering our own innate methodology of self-protection and preservation if we did run with scissors. So why do many of us resist training ourselves to protect or defend?

I have noticed trends amongst modern yoga practitioners where they become obedient followers of their own hearts, guiding them towards a freer emotional state. I have also witnessed countless conversations lobbying for ignorant means of protecting oneself. Call it a conscious objection to perpetuating violence, but if someone comes knocking down the yoga studio door, what is the correct method of defense? What if your life is threatened? What if you are assaulted? Do you simply lie down and allow people to walk in and take your belongings, or worse yet, threaten lives? Or do you take a stand, grab a tool, and wield it as a weapon?

Remain practical, plan, prepare, and learn self defense techniques. Your loved ones may depend on your skills someday. Every child must learn discipline and esteem improvements, why not involve them in Brazilian jiu jitsu, boxing, self defense, MMA, or weapons training? With preservation and self defense training, it’s easier to feel relaxed, calm, and less anxious about world affairs.

This is what I have learned through my work as an urban park ranger. Remain vigilant and ready for the unexpected, as well as attentive and focused to body and gut. The best application of multi-tasking I have ever experienced.

Yoga teaches us to listen to our intuition. This sixth sense aids in detecting danger as well as finding safety. Intuition is a heightened sense of awareness to the external surroundings. This is the scope we use to determine direction in life. Yoga poses provide strength and stamina. Holding the poses for multiple breaths makes us prepare mentally to override messages to give up.

Never give up. Certainly don’t give up your freedom, and hopefully don’t give up the willingness to protect what is most precious to you. Bikes come with patch kits. Cars come with methods to change flat tires and insurance in case of an accident. We learn first aid and CPR for medical emergencies. Why not prepare and have a plan for an extreme survival situation? I have a survival kit in my car, run with a weapon, train for self defense, and practice yoga by doing no harm.

Knowing thyself is also knowing how to take care of thyself, no matter the situation in which you are called upon to take action. Be proactive, not reactive. That is the message in yoga. Never get caught off guard. Never turn your back on possibility. Remain open to opportunity. Always look toward reality, and be prepared for it all. Self renaissance. Self made. This is yoga. This is your life.

Love it.

These are my lessons to you as an urban park ranger, yoga veteran, and witness of both beasts and beauties. Be on alert for guidance toward safety and away from danger, both in the external world and the internal. Focus on the yin, but do not ignore the yang.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Yoga of Self Defense: Arming Your Inner and Outer Self appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Now imagine reaching down to grab the bar for your very last thruster and without warning the bar jumps eight inches from your hand. Not only does it move, but it also tells you to, “Go f@&k yourself.” To add insult to injury, it goes on to tell you if you don’t get a hold of it and perform a legit rep, it’s going to kill you, after it slowly has its way with you for a few hours, and then again twice more once you’re dead.

That is how world-renowned, self-defense expert and CrossFitter himself Tony Blauer wants you to think about your workouts. Tony is the founder of Blauer Tactical Systems and has been studying and teaching self-defense to law enforcement, the military, and civilians for the last thirty-six years.

In the last year, Tony has developed an incredible, full-day course specifically designed for and attended by thousands of CrossFitters. The course, aptly called Be Your Own Bodyguard, has seen athletes the likes of Mikko and Kinnick, Khalipa and Starrett. The material has application for both the elite and hobbiest CrossFitter – scalability – as Blauer’s SPEAR System is functional movement applied to self-defense.

To Tony, CrossFit is a great preparedness tool for just about anyone. CrossFitters are stronger than the average bear, have spent some recent time outside of their comfort zones, have conscious contact with their physicality, and deal with some level of fear (or at least fear of their workouts) on a daily basis. But beyond the physical state of being ready for anything is a mental state of strength and readiness. That’s where Tony comes in. Tony specializes in not only the physical contact aspects of violent encounters, but even more on the psychological, emotional, reactionary aspects. The world’s greatest defensive device or choke escape left unused due to its practitioner being frozen by fear is utterly useless.

CrossFitters may have a leg up on the competition, but there are still two places Tony sees holes in their self-defense game:

1. Recognizing Pre-Contact Cues

Tony’s real goal is to teach you how to recognize the crucial moments before a violent situation takes place so you can be present, be conscious, and be ready to use your hard-earned physical traits.

Violent encounters are often preceded by telltale signs of their impending arrival: body language changes, rapid eye movements, or the cocking back of an arm. Tony wants you to recognize the stimulus behind the stimulus behind the stimulus behind your response. Think that one through for a second.

By teaching CrossFitters what to recognize in his courses, he’s allowing us them to avoid situations far more often and with far more certainty than before. (After all, none of us have ever come home to find a kettlebell blocking our front door demanding 10 perfect, unbroken swings, with potentially fatal consequences assigned as the result of any mistake.)

2. Translating Movements Across Broad Exercise Domains

When a fireman sees a clean and jerk as a training method for taking a lifeless body from the ground into the hands of help above, the bridge between training and function has been achieved. Most CrossFitters can make this mental leap and often find that after a year of training they see movements replicated from the gym into real life.

Mr. Blauer wants you to take that leap one step further and view your thruster as an upward palm strike to an attacker’s nose, your slam ball as driving an attackers face into your knee, and reaching over your shoulder to grab your seatbelt as an identical pattern to ripping your elbow across someone’s brow.

Malcolm Gladwell says you must have 10,000 hours under your belt before claiming an expertise in any area. Tony doesn’t want us all to spend an additional 9,992 hours practicing after his course – that wouldn’t have you been the safest you can be, as soon as you can be – so he picks movements that people of all shapes and sizes have done countless times before and merely shows the transition in thinking – from seatbelt to elbow, thruster to palm strike.

As a fan of Tony’s work long before the CrossFit community found his expertise, I believe the two go naturally hand-in-hand. Tony’s Be Your Own Bodyguard course is a must for all CrossFitters. If you are a CrossFitter, read that again.

If you still have a shadow of a doubt about the course and why you need it, do this – load up a bar with two hundred pounds, lie on your back, and rest the bar so that half of the weight is between your legs and the other half sitting on your chest. Now start mentally listing your escape options. Now do it again blindfolded with a bloody nose. Now call Tony.

Tony Blauer is a man you want to meet before you need to or wish you had. Fortunately, Blauer Tactical Systems will have a booth this weekend at the 2012 CrossFit Games. Stop by, introduce yourself, and thank Tony teaching so many of us how to stay alive.

The post Tony Blauer Teaches You to “Be Your Own Bodyguard” appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Miguel DeCoste is a long-time resident of Santa Barbara, CA, and during his time there, he has developed expertise in making it a safer place. As a Certified Protection Professional, Miguel consults with nightclubs and other establishments, works with administrators on city-sponsored events, and provides services to individuals related to assessing and mitigating safety threats. He is the owner and lead consultant of Coast Executive Services, a company that specializes in security consulting and executive protection.

Miguel came to the personal safety and threat assessment field “in a very roundabout fashion.” He had worked as a bouncer for extra income in a previous life, but his “real” jobs had always included a project management component. Upon the advice of a martial arts instructor, he explored the possibility of becoming a bodyguard. When he found that the job entailed “not only the physical aspect, but a lot of research, planning, and coordination, (he) realized that it would be a great fit for (his) personality and skill set.” Always possessed of a somewhat protective bent, Miguel strongly believes “that individuals have the right to live safe, happy lives, free from fear.”

When Miguel is working a job such as providing security for a celebrity at a film festival, “the planning usually begins far in advance and varies from individual to individual. It includes contacting clients and their representatives, event staff, coordinating pick up/drop off, seating, transportation. On the job itself, you are dealing mostly with being close to an individual and watching what is going on around them.” Much of the work on this type of job involves going wherever the client goes. If the client goes to the beach, to a restaurant, or the like, Miguel goes too. There may also be coordination with agents who are part of an advance team, securing a location before the client arrives.

Nightclub consultations, on the other hand, are quite different, Miguel notes. In these situations, more staff training and staff and patron observation take place. Staff members are admonished to go through their checklists, position themselves properly, and deal with patrons correctly. And, of course, the alcohol factor must be addressed, which Miguel does with patience and empathy. “If you can try and see things from (the intoxicated person’s) point of view, it often helps to guide them towards the decision that you are making for them, i.e. it’s time to go home now. At a certain point, however, it is time to become the adult in the room and make them understand that they are indeed going to listen to you and what you say.”

On the topic of what individuals can do to maximize their personal safety, Miguel notes that it is much easier than the public might believe. “First and foremost, people just need to pay attention to their environment. Am I parking in the darkest corner of the parking lot or under a streetlamp? Do I walk home alone after a night out or do I ask a friend to accompany me?” Miguel asks. “If common sense dictates that you should act a certain way, you should listen to common sense. Gavin deBecker’s The Gift of Fear is a book everyone should read.”

Miguel believes fitness is vital to increased personal safety. “The first rule in any situation involving physical danger is ‘Escape!’ If you can run…run! If you can out run your attacker, even for 50-100 yards, you place yourself at a huge advantage.” And the best way to do this is to possess some measure of physical fitness.

A high level of fitness will also help an individual possibly outlast and even overpower an attacker, Miguel notes. “Most aggressors are not expecting a strong physical response to an attack, which can help you gain the psychological upper hand as well.”

Along those lines, Miguel asserts that “your brain needs a workout as well as your body” in order for an individual to maximize his/her capacity to stay safe. Miguel counsels his clients to maintain “situational awareness: Am I parking in a safe spot? Are the guys blocking the sidewalk acting aggressive or just waiting for the bus? Did I lock all the doors in the house when I got home/went to bed/left for work?” He encourages people to consider playing out a “worst case scenario” and asking “What would I do if…” to see what solutions they devise.

Miguel finds that tough workouts help with the mental aspect of safety. Doing a physically challenging workout enables us to see that our limits are probably greater than we imagine them to be; we can do more than we anticipate. “This directly relates to finding yourself in an uncomfortable situation in the street where you may have to move heavy weight (an attacker), run a short distance (to escape), or have an increased cardio capacity (to outlast someone in a physical altercation).

“Pushing through the adrenal shock of an attack is one of the hardest things for anyone to do, but by being physically fit and mentally prepared you put yourself at a distinct advantage. Being conscious of your body and its capabilities is extremely beneficial, especially in potentially dangerous situations.”

Ultimately, Miguel encourages anyone who wants to stay safe to start exercising. As he notes, “It will only help you in the long run…no pun intended.”

The post How Can Your Fitness Keep You Safe? Interview with Bodyguard – Miguel DeCoste appeared first on Breaking Muscle.