Defend University/Women’s Self-Defense Newsletter

January 2002

In this issue:

Nation’s Trucks Get More Security Scrutiny
Forensic Dentistry Solves Cases, Highlights Savagery of Rape
Learn From Your Tactical Mistakes
Speaking of Training, Your Instructor Should Take the Falls
What Do the Advanced Students Look Like?
Knives for Weapon Retention?

_______________________

Nation’s Trucks Get More Security Scrutiny

Heightened security precautions are in full effect for the 2.5 million commercial truck drivers licensed to carry hazardous materials after 20 Middle Eastern men were charged with fraudulently obtaining licenses to haul hazardous cargo in Michigan and Illinois.

The nation’s truckers and their rigs are getting more attention because it’s relatively easy to make a truck into one huge rolling bomb.

Around the country, inspectors are forcing more trucks into weigh stations for driver background checks, cargo examinations and random inspections.

And new technology is being considered to track and control a rogue trucker, including devices that can track a big rig remotely or engage its brakes. The American Trucking Associations, the industry's trade group, wants funds to perform more thorough background checks on drivers. It is also warning truckers to drive in tandem and to be wary of helping stranded motorists, in case they are hijackers.

Don’t scoff; remember that truck bombs are a common weapon among terrorists. The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was carried out with a rental van packed with explosives. Timothy McVeigh used a truck bomb to destroy Oklahoma City's federal building, killing 168 people, in 1995. In 1998, terrorists blew up the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya with truck bombs. The embassy attacks, blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, killed 224. In California last January, a trucker rammed his tractor-trailer into the state Capitol in Sacramento. Predictably, the rig exploded into a fireball damaging the building, but only the kamikaze driver was killed.

To reduce the threat, law enforcement officials are also looking at technology to help. A global positioning radar is being tested that can alarm dispatchers if a truck strays off course or comes too close to a predetermined sensitive area. Another system, being tested at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, allows a patrol car to activates a truck's air brakes by bumping a metal bar placed on the back of the vehicle.

__________________

Forensic Dentistry Solves Cases, Highlights Savagery of Rape

The science of Forensic Dentistry is credited with solving a recent brutal murder case involving a 16-year-old Canadian girl. Her nude body was found in a river and the investigation revealed that she was drowned, but prior to her death she'd been raped, stomped and beaten with a baseball bat. During the autopsy, a pathologist identified a bite mark on her right breast. A DNA specialist was able to retrieve the attacker’s inner cheek cells from the saliva, which can usually be found on injured tissue. This DNA led to the conviction of the attacker.

In another case, a similar DNA test taken from a bite to another victim actually exonerated a suspect from the crime. In this murder, an elderly woman was found in a park near her home. The woman had been stabbed 29 times and strangled. She had been disemboweled and a knife had been forced into an eye socket. The DNA was taken from a wound where one of her nipples had been bitten off.

The presence of bite marks on rape victims is not uncommon, although it’s not often noted in the press reports about rape. Experts say it is a sign of a very primal sort of anger and aggression – something that should remind you of the savagery of rape and why you need to train to fight for your life.

_______________________

DO NOT BECOME A VICTIM – JOIN THE WAR AGAINST CRIME!

We offer pepper spray, animal repellent, stun guns, advanced Air Taser guns and laser sight modules, PLUS hidden and surveillance cameras.

Wouldn’t you like to know what the babysitter is doing when you are not there?

__________________________________

Learn From Your Tactical Mistakes

What’s the old quote about wisdom being gained from experience and experience is gained from mistakes?

You’re going to make mistakes, some strategic and many tactical. But the key is to learn from those mistakes. And, believe me, sometimes those mistakes are the best teachers.

I learned a lot from the time I hurriedly pushed my way through a crowd to break up a fight, only to find myself to be the only officer in the middle of a melee involving 150 people.

I learned a lot from the time I fought with one drunk suspect (it actually started through the patrol car’s driver’s side window, but that is a story in itself!), only to release him to his family, and then had to fight him again to arrest him for trying to drive while intoxicated.

I learned a lot from the time I had to make an emergency draw of my firearm, only to get it caught in my jacket which caused me to sweep the muzzle over my support hand while I was taking slack out of the trigger -- I came very close to discharging my pistol into my other hand.

I learned a lot from the time I confronted a carload of punks, but parked in such a way that I was caught in between my own car and the front of their jeep.

I learned a lot when I assumed that my son was "hearing things" in the middle of the night and did not make a search of my residence in a serious, controlled, professional manner.

I guess a good shock really can be worth a lot. These "mistakes" are troubling to me because I KNOW better, but still found myself either violating my own cardinal rules or found myself in a situation that had changed faster than I could control it.

And therein lies the value of experience. You learn from that experience. It’s one thing to read about it, or watch some guy’s videotape. Knowing how to do something is not nearly as important as the "doing" of it.

But how can you get experience without exposing yourself to the dangers that you are trying to avoid in self-defense in the first place?

The answer is in your training. Find experienced, knowledgeable sources and instructors. Train with them. Draw from their experience to allow you to solve problems without having to go through the pain of trial and error. Train in a realistic fashion. The system you are studying or your workout partners should have attacks that mimic those you are going to find on the street. Your training environment should be structured so that you "experience" being attacked over and over and over.

Ideally, when you are in a "real" fight it should feel close to "training". One of our favorite stories is about Neil Armstrong’s second radio transmission from the moon. After his famous, "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" was the comment, "it’s just like drill". Many students have told us that fights they have experienced were "just like class". Some even indicated that the real fight was actually easier than class, because the opponent was not trained and, therefore, made predictable and stupid mistakes.

_____________________

Speaking of Training, Your Instructor Should Take the Falls

Here’s something you should keep in mind when you are looking for a place to train: watch the instructor train with the students.

What? The instructor doesn’t train with the students? I’d give some second thoughts to this training environment if I were you. No disrespect to the elder masters out there running hundreds and thousands of martial arts studios, but the best schools and clubs I’ve seen are the ones where the instructor is actively training with the students AND it’s the instructor that takes most of the falls.

That’s the key; the instructor is not there to beat on you. Although pain can be a good teacher, extreme pain is not an extremely good teacher. So having an instructor pop you a few times then walk off to pop a few other students does very little for your learning curve. (After a while, you start to dread coming to class and that’s not what you need for your training environment). Similarly, being stuck exclusively with other students doesn’t help you. Beginning students can’t do the technique correctly so you are not learning from them and they can’t provide feedback on whether you are doing it correctly either. Intermediate students are often more interested in using you as "new meat" to experiment on and to get in some licks for all the times they’ve been tapped or hit by advanced students.

You want the instructor (or his highly competent senior staff) to work WITH you.

They should be training with you so you can FEEL how the technique works – when they do it to you (in a controlled manner), but more often, how the technique feels when you do it to them.

Relson Gracie’s gym in Hawaii is a great example of this. The gym is full of bona fide studs that could rip your head off at any time. Yet, when you train with them, they fight at the student’s level, adding coaching comments from time to time. This is true at all rank levels there. (If you are ever going to Hawaii, contact me and I’ll set you up with an introduction to Relson so you can get in some incredible training).

The majority of the time, the best instructors are the ones tapping the mat, absorbing the punches, and taking the falls as they coach their students to become better than the instructor ever was.

________________________________

What Do the Advanced Students Look Like?

On a side note, it is often useful to observe the advanced students or practitioners work together so you can see where your training is going to take you.

Quite frankly, if the instructors or senior students look terrible and can’t fight their way out of a paper bag, chances are you are going to look terrible and can’t fight your way out of a paper bag also. You want to get on the bus that takes you to the highest, most competent levels. And the indicator of where that bus is headed is the performance of the senior students and the instructor.

It’s easy for instructors to overlook this in their classes. A former partner of mine and I divided up the numerous classes in our martial arts school for efficiency’s sake. During one particular class where we were both instructing, the rotation of drills paired us up together. As we (the instructors) were drilling, it became apparent that the entire room had virtually come to a stop and the students were watching us. The revelation from the students was that they had never seen the drill being done full speed at the black belt level. After that, we endeavored to make sure students regularly saw drills and techniques being performed by the black belts at full speed so they could "model" their techniques after us.

If you are an instructor and you don’t regularly train (I mean do the drills, spar, grapple, do the push ups, etc.) then shame on you. Your students will learn more from watching and feeling YOU do the techniques than they will from you walking around pointing out details in their techniques. Humans learn by watching and doing. If you are talking during most of the class, your students are not really "learning". Don’t cry that you don’t get enough training time for yourself because you are teaching all the time. Get in there and train – really train. Plus your students will observe your work ethic and work as hard themselves.

____________________

Knives for Weapon Retention?

Can someone shed some light on the current infatuation of using a knife as a tool for weapon retention?

I’ve seen more than a couple nationally prominent trainers who are now advocating the use of a knife to cut their opponent off of their weapon. Just recently I’ve seen a very credible publication with two very credible trainers demonstrating a variety of moves using a fixed blade knife to cut the opponent who is grabbing their long gun.

What’s interesting about these moves is that the good guys are in full military/police tactical gear. That includes a very cool dropdown holster (presumably with a loaded pistol) on the good guy’s thigh. The bad guy is shown grabbing the long gun with two hands and attempting to wrest it away from the good guy. In all of the responses, the good guy lets go of his rifle/shotgun with one hand while drawing his knife and stabbing or cutting the bad guy.

I’ve seen similar techniques demonstrated to defend against an attack on your holstered pistol as well as a response to a rear choke (he’s choking you from behind and you draw your Spyderco Clipit, open it, and slice the forearm of his choking arm).

Are these realistic responses to these attacks? Are they preferable to drawing your own pistol/secondary firearm? Can you realistically expect to keep control of your shotgun with only one hand vs. his two-hand grip? If you are drawing and deploying your knife with one hand, are you losing focus on retaining your firearm with your other hand? If you grip your firearm reflexively with one hand in a desperate attempt to retain your weapon do you have the dexterity to manipulating a knife in the other?

Best wishes for a safe and happy New Year to all our members and friends worldwide!

Brad Parker
Defend University/Women’s Self-Defense Institute

www.defendu.com