Dog Brothers Public Forum

Let the Howl go Forth:

I would like to announce the beginning of a Saturday class at 11:00 on Saturday July 25th in Dog Brothers Martial Arts.  The class will be held either in Hermosa Beach or Redondo Beach.

In DBMA we look for our training to be three things:  fun, fit, and functional.

1) FUN:   For us to continue our training over time and to grow in the Art and to grow into whom we are meant to be, the training should be Fun-- or perhaps that which once upon a time was called "the pursuit of happiness".   (For those interested see the discussion at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics for the Aristotlean origin of the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in our Declaration of Independence , , , but I digress , , , how rare)

2) FITNESS:  Our life-long path as a warrior should produce good health, not batter us into crippling later years.  The better one's health and animal vitality, the better the results-- in everday Life itself and in defense of Life.  Although we are known for our "Dog Brothers Real Contact Stickfighting", in DBMA we are proud of both the efficacy and the safety of our training methods.

3) FUNCTIONAL:  The training should produce results in the real world.  If thanks to our training we see clearer into other people and if we see problems developing sooner, then we may be able to prevent things from coming to a head.  Similarly, if we know who we are and what we can do, we should be less susceptible to allowing others to draw us into foolish incidents.  And should it be necessary to act, we should have a good sense of how to operate effectively and to act with Consciousness in the adrenal state.

In closing I want to make it clear that ALL LEVELS ARE WELCOME.  Certainly those inclined to "Dog Brothers Real Contact Stickfighting" will feel quite at home but I wish to make it perfectly clear that NO ONE WILL BE PRESSURED INTO DOING MORE THAN HE WANTS TO DO.  This is a class for students and practitioners of all ages as well as competitive fighters-- in short, anyone looking to walk as a warrior for all his days. 

If you are interested, please contact me at craftydog@dogbrothers.com and tell me a bit about yourself, including your goals, age, height, weight, fitness level, experience, training (what systems, which teachers, for how long, etc).

The Adventure continues,
Guro Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny
Dog Brothers Inc. (this is here as part of protecting me personally from law suits)
Head Instructor
Dog Brothers Martial Arts
craftydog@dogbrothers.com
310-543-7521 (a 24 hour number)
www.dogbrothers.com

Security at Places of Worship: More Than a Matter of Faith
June 17, 2009




By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In recent months, several high-profile incidents have raised awareness of the threat posed by individuals and small groups operating under the principles of leaderless resistance. These incidents have included lone wolf attacks against a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, an armed forces recruitment center in Arkansas and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Additionally, a grassroots jihadist cell was arrested for attempting to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and planning to shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

In addition to pointing out the threat posed by grassroots cells and lone wolf operatives, another common factor in all of these incidents is the threat of violence to houses of worship. The cell arrested in New York left what they thought to be active improvised explosive devices outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Community Center. Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Although Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad conducted his attacks against a Little Rock recruiting center, he had conducted preoperational surveillance and research on targets that included Jewish organizations and a Baptist church in places as far away as Atlanta and Philadelphia. And while James von Brunn attacked the Holocaust Museum, he had a list of other potential targets in his vehicle that included the National Cathedral.

In light of this common thread, it might be instructive to take a more detailed look at the issue of providing security for places of worship.

Awareness: The First Step
Until there is awareness of the threat, little can be done to counter it. In many parts of the world, such as Iraq, India and Pakistan, attacks against places of worship occur fairly frequently. It is not difficult for religious leaders and members of their congregations in such places to be acutely aware of the dangers facing them and to have measures already in place to deal with those perils. This is not always the case in the United States, however, where many people tend to have an “it can’t happen here” mindset, believing that violence in or directed against places of worship is something that happens only to other people elsewhere.

This mindset is particularly pervasive among predominantly white American Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations. Jews, Mormons, Muslims and black Christians, and others who have been targeted by violence in the past, tend to be far more aware of the threat and are far more likely to have security plans and measures in place to counter it. The Jewish community has very well-developed and professional organizations such as the Secure Community Network (SCN) and the Anti-Defamation League that are dedicated to monitoring threats and providing education about the threats and advice regarding security. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has taken on a similar role for the Muslim community and has produced a “Muslim community safety kit” for local mosques. (I have written to Stratfor complaining of the credibility it gives here to this nefarious organization-Marc)The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) also has a very organized and well-connected security department that provides information and security advice and assistance to LDS congregations worldwide.

There are no functional equivalents to the SCN or the LDS security departments in the larger Catholic, evangelical Protestant and mainline Protestant communities, though there are some organizations such as the recently established Christian Security Network that have been attempting to fill the void.

Following an incident, awareness of the threat seems to rise for a time, and some houses of worship will put some security measures in place, but for the most part such incidents are seen as events that take place elsewhere, and the security measures are abandoned after a short time.

Permanent security measures are usually not put in place until there has been an incident of some sort at a specific house of worship, and while the triggering incident is sometimes something that merely provides a good scare, other times it is a violent action that results in tragedy. Even when no one is hurt in the incident, the emotional damage caused to a community by an act of vandalism or arson at a house of worship can be devastating.

It is important to note here that not all threats to places of worship will emanate from external actors. In the midst of any given religious congregation, there are, by percentages, people suffering from serious mental illnesses, people engaged in bitter child-custody disputes, domestic violence situations and messy divorces. Internal disputes in the congregation can also lead to feuds and violence. Any of these situations can (and have) led to acts of violence inside houses of worship.

Security Means More than Alarms and Locks

An effective security program is more than just having physical security measures in place. Like any man-made constructs, physical security measures — closed-circuit television (CCTV), alarms, cipher locks and so forth — have finite utility. They serve a valuable purpose in institutional security programs, but an effective security program cannot be limited to these things. Devices cannot think or evaluate. They are static and can be observed, learned and even fooled. Also, because some systems frequently produce false alarms, warnings in real danger situations may be brushed aside. Given these shortcomings, it is quite possible for anyone planning an act of violence to map out, quantify and then defeat or bypass physical security devices. However, elaborate planning is not always necessary. Consider the common scenario of a heavy metal door with very good locks that is propped open with a trashcan or a door wedge. In such a scenario, an otherwise “secure” door is defeated by an internal security lapse.

However, even in situations where there is a high degree of threat awareness, there is a tendency to place too much trust in physical security measures, which can become a kind of crutch — and, ironically, an obstacle to effective security.

In fact, to be effective, physical security devices always require human interaction. An alarm is useless if no one responds to it, or if it is not turned on; a lock is ineffective if it is not engaged. CCTV cameras are used extensively in corporate office buildings and some houses of worship, but any competent security manager will tell you that, in reality, they are far more useful in terms of investigating a theft or act of violence after the fact than in preventing one (although physical security devices can sometimes cause an attacker to divert to an easier target).

No matter what kinds of physical security measures may be in place at a facility, they are far less likely to be effective if a potential assailant feels free to conduct preoperational surveillance, and is free to observe and map those physical security measures. The more at ease someone feels as they set about identifying and quantifying the physical security systems and procedures in place, the higher the odds they will find ways to beat the system.

A truly “hard” target is one that couples physical security measures with an aggressive, alert attitude and sense of awareness. An effective security program is proactive — looking outward to where most real threats are lurking — rather than inward, where the only choice is to react once an attack has begun to unfold. We refer to this process of proactively looking for threats as protective intelligence.

The human interaction required to make physical security measures effective, and to transform a security program into a proactive protective intelligence program, can come in the form of designated security personnel. In fact, many large houses of worship do utilize off-duty police officers, private security guards, volunteer security guards or even a dedicated security staff to provide this coverage. In smaller congregations, security personnel can be members of the congregation who have been provided some level of training.

However, even in cases where there are specially designated security personnel, such officers have only so many eyes and can only be in a limited number of places at any one time. Thus, proactive security programs should also work to foster a broad sense of security awareness among the members of the congregation and community, and use them as additional resources.

Unfortunately, in many cases, there is often a sense in the religious community that security is bad for the image of a particular institution, or that it will somehow scare people away from houses of worship. Because of this, security measures, if employed, are often hidden or concealed from the congregation. In such cases, security managers are deprived of many sets of eyes and ears. Certainly, there may be certain facets of a security plan that not everyone in the congregation needs to know about, but in general, an educated and aware congregation and community can be a very valuable security asset.

Training

In order for a congregation to maintain a sense of heightened awareness it must learn how to effectively do that. This training should not leave people scared or paranoid — just more observant. People need to be trained to look for individuals who are out of place, which can be somewhat counterintuitive. By nature, houses of worship are open to outsiders and seek to welcome strangers. They frequently have a steady turnover of new faces. This causes many to believe that, in houses of worship, there is a natural antagonism between security and openness, but this does not have to be the case. A house of worship can have both a steady stream of visitors and good security, especially if that security is based upon situational awareness.

At its heart, situational awareness is about studying people, and such scrutiny will allow an observer to pick up on demeanor mistakes that might indicate someone is conducting surveillance. Practicing awareness and paying attention to the people approaching or inside a house of worship can also open up a whole new world of ministry opportunities, as people “tune in” to others and begin to perceive things they would otherwise miss if they were self-absorbed or simply not paying attention. In other words, practicing situational awareness provides an excellent opportunity for the members of a congregation to focus on the needs and burdens of other people.

It is important to remember that every attack cycle follows the same general steps. All criminals — whether they are stalkers, thieves, lone wolves or terrorist groups — engage in preoperational surveillance (sometimes called “casing,” in the criminal lexicon). Perhaps the most crucial point to be made about preoperational surveillance is that it is the phase when someone with hostile intentions is most apt to be detected — and the point in the attack cycle when potential violence can be most easily disrupted or prevented.

The second most critical point to emphasize about surveillance is that most criminals are not that good at it. They often have terrible surveillance tradecraft and are frequently very obvious. Most often, the only reason they succeed in conducting surveillance without being detected is because nobody is looking for them. Because of this, even ordinary people, if properly instructed, can note surveillance activity.

It is also critically important to teach people — including security personnel and members of the congregation — what to do if they see something suspicious and whom to call to report it. Unfortunately, a lot of critical intelligence is missed because it is not reported in a timely manner — or not reported at all — mainly because untrained people have a habit of not trusting their judgment and dismissing unusual activity. People need to be encouraged to report what they see.

Additionally, people who have been threatened, are undergoing nasty child-custody disputes or have active restraining orders protecting them against potentially violent people need to be encouraged to report unusual activity to their appropriate points of contact.

As a part of their security training, houses of worship should also instruct their staff and congregation members on procedures to follow if a shooter enters the building and creates what is called an active-shooter situation. These “shooter” drills should be practiced regularly — just like fire, tornado or earthquake drills. The teachers of children’s classes and nursery workers must also be trained in how to react.

Liaison

One of the things the SCN and ADL do very well is foster security liaison among Jewish congregations within a community and between those congregations and local, state and federal law enforcement organizations. This is something that houses of worship from other faiths should attempt to duplicate as part of their security plans.

While having a local cop in a congregation is a benefit, contacting the local police department should be the first step. It is very important to establish this contact before there is a crisis in order to help expedite any law enforcement response. Some police departments even have dedicated community liaison officers, who are good points of initial contact. There are other specific points of contact that should also be cultivated within the local department, such as the SWAT team and the bomb squad.

Local SWAT teams often appreciate the chance to do a walk-through of a house of worship so that they can learn the layout of the building in case they are ever called to respond to an emergency there. They also like the opportunity to use different and challenging buildings for training exercises (something that can be conducted discreetly after hours). Congregations with gyms and weight rooms will often open them up for local police officers to exercise in, and some congregations will also offer police officers a cup of coffee and a desk where they can sit and type their reports during evening hours.

But the local police department is not the only agency with which liaison should be established. Depending on the location of the house of worship, the state police, state intelligence fusion center or local joint terrorism task force should also be contacted. By working through state and federal channels, houses of worship in specific locations may even be eligible for grants to help underwrite security through programs such as the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

The world is a dangerous place and attacks against houses of worship will continue to occur. But there are proactive security measures that can be taken to identify attackers before they strike and help prevent attacks from happening or mitigate their effects when they do.

Mucho para analizar y pensar aqui.  !Adelante caballeros!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDSXnnjZAWA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVNekTyg65E&feature=related

Kicking this thread off with a nice post from Gabe Suarez on the WT forum:

 After The Fight - What To Say?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At GOTX, they are discussing the after-event-discourse. In other words, what do you say...or not, after you have whacked an attacker. As expected, the variety of advice is as different as people's choices in guns and ammo. A prevailing attitude is to simply shut up and say nothing under any circumstances. I disagree and here is why -

I have been in a few of these and also investigated quite a few of these. I noted some trends, as well tried to use those trends to my benefits when it was my turn at the plate.

The bad guys will not be "keeping quiet". They will be telling the cops you pulled on them, perhaps create some appearance of racism if they can exploit it, and generally make it look like you are the bad guy. What happened may not be obvious to the cops who come out to investigate.

So picture this scene. Two guys have been, as we used to say, "eye f*cking you", and followed you for some time, maybe yelling stuff at you. Finally, while you did your best to avoid the issue, they pressed the confrontation and attacked with sufficient force to justify a gun solution.

You shoot one of them, wounding him, and the other runs off. You saw the first man drop his pistol in a clump of ivy and the other man throw his knife on a rooftop as he ran away.

You immediately call 911 and give a very cryptic account of what happened..."there has been a shooting...I'm the victim...send help".

In the meantime, one of the assailants...the one who got away, is also calling. His story is a little different. According to him you called them "dirty Norwegians", and pulled your gun on them and shot his buddy. As far as the police know...they got two calls. One a cryptic call, from someone who seemed to be concealing somet6hing, and another reporting what amounts to a racial hate crime.

They arrive on scene and after controlling the event, ask you what happened. What you do now will have a bearing on the rest of your life.

The guys who advocate saying nothing will not be able to point to the two weapons which were discarded...and which will disappear as soon as the scene is cleared. The police may not even look for them since no one told them they were in existence. No one will tell them you are a good guy who was a victim of an attempted robbery, as the ONLY info paints you as some KKK wannabe.

Sure...you'll have a lawyer...but all of the evidence the police may have collected will no longer be available, and the investigation will not have been an even and equal one, but rather one where you alone are the suspect.

See the point??

Is it hard to control your mouth? Yes it is. But no harder than to control your trigger finger, your desire to drink to excess, or to control the vertical displacement of your zipper. As the Nike commercial said....Just Do It.

It, like many other things, can be trained and developed. If you ignore it, it will never be developed.

Think in these terms...you train gun handling and shooting skills to make them reflexive in the most stressful event someone is ever likely to face....and we tend to do fine. The guys who never train...thinking they will "rise to the occasion" usually fail. To say, "I will simply say nothing", is in that same line of thinking is it not?

I agree that saying nothing is a good default, but the default is not always a good idea.

What I have done with success is this. I give a limited statement and them excuse myself from any further questions until my mouthpiece arrives.

Anything I say focuses on what the bad guy(s) have done and not on what I may have done. Something like this -

"Officer. I am glad you are here. Thank God.

I am a good guy. I was minding my own business on my way home when those two guys attacked me.

The one in the blue shirt had a knife. He threw it up there on the roof as he ran away. there should be some blood on it from my arm when I blocked his attempt to stab me.

The guy on the gurney was armed with a pistol. He dropped it right there in that pile of ivy when he fell.

I was terrified. Boy am I glad you guys are here.

Listen...I am still a little shaken up. I want to cooperate with you guys. This has never happened to me (or this hasn't happened in a while). I have heard stories of good guys getting sued for saying too much. My attorney is on his way and as soon as he arrives I will be happy to give a statement with him there. Until then, I think I need to sit down and calm my blood pressure."

At that point things are no longer in your control but you have set the investigation on the proper course, and the truth will be determined instead of being overlooked.

Just got this question from a TV producer.  Anyone have a good and/or clever answer?
==================

Me again, in regards to the Time Warp segment you all did on stick fighting!  The Discovery Channel is asking for a bit more information on the force of the blows a rattan stick can wield.  Something along the lines of how a stick wielded at this speed striking a man weighing XXX pounds would exert XX force.  I’m not sure how we can address this (seems like too many variables) but
do you have any suggestions?

=================

Woof All:

One of the things we say in DBMA is "The Search for the Totality of Ritual and Reality".

In the Reality category we have, for example, our "Die Less Often" DVD series (currently two releases, should be 4 releases by year's end).  And we will gradually begin offering practical reality items in our catalog too.  Typically these items will not be weapons-- there will be practical things such as emergency medical kits (you survived the knife attack, but you are bleedling badly.  Now what?), mini-flashlights, cool "just in case" things to carry in your car or to set up for your wife to have in her car, walking sticks, and things of that sort.  Now, no doubt some of you may be thinking that some of these items can be improvised weapons too.  No doubt some of you would like that we sell weapons too! But then Pay Pal would be unhappy and be unwilling to do business with us.  That said  we will be kicking things off with some key fobs.  Huh?  Key fob?  Wuzzat?

=======================
Woof All:

As defined on Wikipedia, "a key fob is a generally decorative and at times useful item many people often carry with their keys, on a ring or a chain, for ease of tactile identification, to provide a better grip, or to make a personal statement. Key fobs are often called "key rings" or "key chains" in colloquial usage. The word fob may be linked to the low German dialect for the word Fuppe, meaning "pocket", however, the real origin of the word is unknown."

Made for the esthetics and hands of dainty women and the men they rule, the simple fact of the matter is that most fobs simply are too dainty and delicate to meet the demands of folks like ourselves.   "Ease of tactile identification" for us means something big and sturdy and these sturdy hard plastic fobs are exactly that.

When you are rooting around in your gym bag looking for your eyes amongst your training gear, you want something big and obvious.
When you are looking for your keys around the house, you want something big and obvious.

When you are wearing gym shorts or sweats, which when they have pockets at all have pockets which are rather untrustworthy for something as important as your keys, you want a practical solution and these fobs give you just that!  Just tuck the fob down your shorts or sweats and let the keys dangle outside-- its just that easy.

As seen in the fotos in our catalog (any day now- when Cindy gets them up), we offer five basic models:  two different lengths of tapered, one cylindrical, and one cylindrical with a loop so you can choose the one that suits you for your every day carry. The fifth model is a softer and relatively pliable version for those of  you who prefer that.

In a related vein, we also offer a sturdy manly sized stylus-- no more fussing around with dainty little styluses made for soft unathletic
hands. It the size and appearance of a normal pen (pocket clip included of course) and is made of the same hard, easily gripped material as the key fobs.

The Adventure continues!
Guro Crafty

Some of you may remember the name Sam Tendecia.  He appears in our "The Grandfathers Speak" DVD,  and has done some wonderful hilot healing work on both Top Dog and me. 

He is in his late 80s now and recently we received word of his new website and are glad to post hear about it:
http://www.arnistendencia.com/

The following is from a recent DBMA Newsletter.  Have YOU signed up?

============
Alignment

DBMA has as its mission statement "Walk as a Warrior for all your days". To this
 end, we have "The Three Fs": Fun, Fit, and Functional.  By this we mean that a)
 the Art should be fun to train b) it should promote Fitness, and Health c) It should
be Functional-- it should work.

This point about Fitness and Health is also made by one of my teachers, GM Myung
 Gyi, who speaks of The Three Hs":  Hurting, Healing, and Harmonizing". By this
he means that we come to the Art seeking to learn how to Hurt.  By so doing, we
accumulate injuries, and must learn to Heal them lest we and our comrades be reduced
in our capabilities, and by learning to Heal we learn Empathy and thus learn to
live a more harmonious life.

In DBMA we integrate the concept of The Three Hs into our curriculum.  In other
words, there are portions of our curriculum which are not directly about Fighting,
but are about Fitness, Health and Healing-- as well as Harmonizing.

As some of you may know, in 1992 I had a terrible knee injury wherein my ACL, PCL
and Lateral Collateral Ligaments were all snapped in half due to a horribly misapplied
throw by a training partner.  It took three surgeries over the course of many months
to replace these ligaments and during this time many muscles atrophied dramatically
which resulted in tremendous misalignment of my posture.  Thus, as I returned to
 training and fighting, many other injuries both small and large occurred.

Of necessity, I became extremely interested in matters having to due with postural
alignment and over time through research, investigation and experimentation, I developed
a body of principles which I call "The Self Help Principles".  Although in their
development I ran them by experts in many fields to favorable reviews, please understand
that I have absolutely no credentials in these matters and offer them only as what
works for me. As always in anything having to do with my teaching, for reasons of
legal liability I am Dog Brothers Inc and only you are responsible for you-- no
suing no one for no reason for nothing no how no way.

The first principle is the importance of postural alignment. When our posture is
 bad, certain parts of our body become overloaded.  As such they wear out more quickly
and are more susceptible to injury.

So the first question becomes "How can we tell if we are in alignment?"

It will be helpful if you have a training partner to observe you from the side.

Stand in front of a full length mirror with your eyes closed.  Open them and move
nothing.

The first thing to notice is your feet.  They should be directly under your hip
socket and evenly weighted.  They should be parallel.  Many/most people will have
one or both feet pointed outwards to some degree.  This is a sign of imbalance between
the external rotators (e.g. the piriformis) and the internal rotators (e.g. the
adductor complex) of the femur.   Typically this correlates with pressure at the
 sacrum (where the spine and the pelvis meet)

The second thing is to notice whether your hips are level or tilt forward. If your
training partner lacks the eye to discern this, a simple indicator is whether your
belly has a tendency to protrude (no matter how much ab work you may do)  This is
a sign of tight hip flexors (psoas, ilio, and quads) and typically it correlates
with a tight/achy lower back

The third thing to notice is whether your thumbs point straight forward (parallel)
or inwards.  They should be parallel.  If they are inwards, there is an issue with
the shoulder being internally rotated/collapsed.  This correlates with shortened
 pec minor and overextended external rotators of shoulder (e.g. teres minor).  This
often correlates with an irritated bicep tendon under the front deltoid muscle of
the shoulder.

The fourth thing to notice is the position of the ears in relation to the shoulders.
 Your partner should see that your ears are directly above your shoulders-- the
seam of your t-shirt is a good indicator of exactly where. With many people the
ears are forward of the shoulders.  This correlates with a tight neck and trapezius
muscles-- and the solution is not to be found in the neck.

To put things right requires a synergistic series of exercises.  The muscular skeletal
system is a magnificent creation in tensegrity and to put things right requires
an understanding of how to restore function to a state of complementary opposites.

But that is another subject for another time and place.

The Adventure continues!
Guro Crafty

Woof All:

Many/most martial arts have/had some sort of tradition of secrecy-- Kali/the FMA in particular.

In a youtube UFC world that is being put to a severe Darwinian challenge. Many questions are presented. 

They tend to fall into two basic categories:
1) Dangerous knowledge
2) Competitive advantage

For example, concerning Dangerous Knowledge:

Why keep knife techniques secret that are already being shown on youtube for free?   Why should knife techniques be secret in a world of guns?  What screening should teacher do? 

This thread is for consideration of these and related questions.

We kick things off with this clip of a white supremacist group into street MMA. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pxhx4d-w0k&feature=dir

The Adventure continues,
CD

TAMPA, Fla. — Isaac Newton’s apple hurt considerably less than Ryan Clark’s coconut. But they did have a few things in common.


A head-on hit from the Jets’ Eric Smith sent the Cardinals’ Anquan Boldin to the hospital.

Clark’s shockingly violent hit on the Baltimore Ravens’ Willis McGahee two Sundays ago — a full-speed, helmet-to-helmet crash that left McGahee unconscious and Clark all but — didn’t just follow the N.F.L.’s rules, but Newton’s as well. Force equaled mass times acceleration. Momentum was conserved. And the bodies finally came to rest, McGahee’s on a stretcher.

“How I look at it, you can be the hammer or the nail,” the inner scientist in Clark explained this week. “I try to be the hammer.”

The tackle, the art of making the ball carrier not stay in motion, is football’s most primeval action. Amusing physicists the way batting averages do actuaries, collisions lead the highlight reels, impart the force of a deadly car crash, and rely upon kinematics that date to a considerably different big bang.

Sunday’s Super Bowl could very well ride on how well the Steelers’ defense — known as perhaps the most fearsome and bone-clattering in the N.F.L. — can tackle the Arizona Cardinals’ fast and evasive wide receivers. From angles and acceleration to speed and centers of gravity, players might not understand the physics of tackling, but they know how to wield it.

“It’s all about timing and leverage,” Cardinals safety Adrian Wilson said. “Being able to time the hit the right way, and the leverage you’ve got to have once you make impact so the other player goes back, and not you.”

Trying to trip up or throw down a ball carrier with only one’s arms can be a risky maneuver. Barreling straight into him with 200-plus pounds of muscle at 20 miles an hour is a more reliable impediment.

From there, Newton’s second law of motion (force equals mass times acceleration) and conservation of momentum take over. Mass is the players’ weight, which in the N.F.L. grows higher every decade. Acceleration is not that of the incoming tackler, as is often assumed, but how quickly both the defender and runner slow down through impact.

It is this duration of impact, between one- and two-tenths of a second by many estimates, that has tremendous effect on the force of a football collision. Hard objects repel each other quickly; equally heavy but softer objects have “give” that allows their contact to last longer and accept the force less jarringly. It’s the difference between being hit by a baseball and being hit by an overripe peach.

“The tackler doesn’t want his body to be a big spring — these players lower their shoulder and tense up and launch to make their force go up,” said Stefan Duma, a professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech who has studied the similarities between football collisions and car crashes. “It’s like trying to break down a door — you try to get all your mass behind you and drive it through one point. You want to get all your mass to act as one mass, one missile.”

Reaching the ball carrier at full speed is crucial, as any deceleration before impact saps force from the hit. This is where angles come in, said Timothy Gay, a professor of physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the author of “Football Physics: The Science of the Game.” Football instincts allow the best safeties to anticipate where the runner or receiver will be and then take the shortest route to him, maintaining speed and even allowing for one final push.

“Jack Tatum was vicious — that helps — but he had a way of popping with the perfect angle and timing,” Gay said of the former Oakland Raiders safety called the Assassin in both reverence and fear. “The best hitters accelerate at the last instant. That final jolt of speed allows them to apply a bigger force to their victim.”

Ask a physicist and a coach where that force should be applied, and they can answer differently. Gay said that the hit should be applied at the runner’s center of mass — just below the rib cage in the center of the chest — to direct all the force into stopping his forward motion. Missing that spot by too much, Gay said, “Causes the ball carrier to rotate around his center of mass, and he might not go down. The announcer would say, ‘He bounced off him.’ ”

But Ray Horton, the Steelers’ defensive backs coach, preaches a different approach. He is all for the ball carrier rotating, as long as he does so violently enough to wind up on the turf.

“We teach you tackle at the knees — if you tackle at the thigh to the shoulders, that’s his power box,” Horton said. “If I want something to tip over, I don’t want to hit it in its center of gravity, because it might go straight back and stay upright. If I want it to go down, I want to hit below the center of gravity, and that’s why we hit by the knees.”

Horton added: “Low man wins. If you hit him too high, he’s going to run you over because of the physics of how big these guys are.”



Page 2 of 2)



Which is why trying to run over the most massive running backs, from Earl Campbell to Brandon Jacobs, is asking for your action to get an equal and opposite (not to mention embarrassing) reaction, with you on the ground and the runner continuing onward. Because momentum — defined as mass times velocity — is conserved in all collisions, Jacobs moving at any decent speed is almost impossible to stop by an outweighed defender’s merely running into him. Tripping him or wrapping him up and waiting for help is a far better option, as long as you are not under him when he finally falls.

Running backs do not sustain the hardest shots in football, though. Few plays get more oohs and aahs than when a lithe receiver crosses the middle and, with or without the ball, gets hit squarely by an oncoming safety.
Duma suggested imagining the body as a primary mass (the torso) in the middle with several other masses connected by springs (the limbs and neck) attached to it. When the tense and intent defender hits the center of this object, the torso accelerates back while the head and feet stay behind temporarily, before flopping back. These are the hits that make the highlights.

Duma said that in his experience — he watches dozens of N.F.L. games each season — these hits are more frequent at the end of games already in hand.

“When you’re up, your defense hits harder,” Duma said. “They take more risks. If you come across the middle on the slant, they’re going to go after you and not worry about missing the tackle and giving up the touchdown.”

He added: “I think that’s what you saw on the Clark-McGahee hit at the end of the last game. I saw it a lot in these playoffs. Baltimore against the Dolphins, they were just leveling people. Ed Reed could run all over the backfield, and if he was out of position, they wouldn’t lose the game.”

Clark appeared to concur. On Wednesday, he said: “The McGahee hit, that was a point where I probably could have stopped and waited and tried to tackle him, but it’s sad to say I think I closed my eyes and I was praying that I’d wake up when I hit the ground.”

In the end, players leave physics out of their own definitions of hard hits. Anquan Boldin, the Cardinals’ receiver who was hit so high and hard by a Jets defender earlier this season that he now has 7 plates and 40 screws in his face, said he defined the perfect hit as “when you get hit hard enough to make you rethink about having anything to do with the ball,” which apparently the Jets hit still was not. Clark said, “What makes a good hit is not getting fined.”

Clark said he was not particularly familiar with Newton’s laws — but then offered his own theory of momentum, one he plans to use in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“A good hit can change the momentum of the game,” he said. “If we come out there and hit them, be physical with them, and get a good hit early, I think they might go back to the quarterback and say, ‘How ’bout you not throw the ball in there?’ ”

Dog Brothers Kali Tudo ™: The Running Dog Game---
Kali Silat vs. The Guard
By Guro Marc “Crafty Dog” Denny


In 1998 there was a big internet brouhaha about “Where’s the trapping?” I always felt the question a fair one. As I wrote at the time:

“Lets us begin by avoiding overstating things. We need to remember that in the current environment that a lot of this stuff continues to work. When I was in Brazil in June 1992 I showed Renzo Gracie the video from Paul Vunak: "Headbutt, Elbow, Knees". I have the ringside video of Renzo’s next vale tudo fight in which he drills some guy he gets in the corner with this precisely this structure.

“It is also important to remember that MANY situations that one might be in are quite different from the cage. How many people would want to have to close on concrete against a guy with good fast savate feet in cowboy boots? Yeah, it can be done, but some of you are going to get seriously zipped in the bladder. A straight blast might get you through a barroom ruckus to the door better than a single leg takedown/side control/arm bar. Many bouncers and others with lots of experience swear by trapping. So in my opinion we should not get carried away with the "Where-is-the-trapping?" stuff.

“Still, there is a legitimate question in all this. Little of what we see today is the way it is taught in many Jun Fan/Wing Chun or Kali/FMA classes and , , , it is important to honestly raise this question.”
END QUOTE

I also felt that the question had an answer—that the material was valid.

Allow me to begin my answer with an anology: In engineering, different types of strength are distinguished: compressive, tensile, shear, fatigue, etc. (I hope that any engineering people amongst our readers will be kind with any technical corrections of what follows.) My understanding is that compressive strength is the ability to bear weight. For example, you can put a lot of weight on concrete and it won't crumble. Tensile strength is the ability to withstand a pull. Think of the metal cables of a suspension bridge. Why aren't they made of concrete? The answer is that concrete has lousy tensile strength and easily snaps when tested in this way.

Against the fighting structures used in the 60s and early 70s JF/WC trapping structures worked. As Muay Thai came in this was less so. And as BJJ came in it seemed even less so. It is as if the BJJ question tested the tensile strength of concrete. Concrete is strong, but not in that way. The challenge, as I see it, is the equivalent of learning to put "rebar" (those metal rods that are laid out and tied together in a gridlike pattern) in concrete; something is need to provide tensile strength.

Before continuing, I’d like to clarify the terminology a bit. To my present way of thinking, “trapping” is simply a subset of Kali Silat striking and so for me the deeper question is where is the Kali Silat striking? We have heard the assertion of Kali and the other FMA that the motions of the empty hand are like the motions of the weapons—and again the infuriating question comes, “OK then, why is it not seen in the Cage?”

In my humble opinion, the answer is this. Although there are many people skilled in the drills and skills of the FMA (which are sometimes mocked as “tippy tap martial arts and crafts”) the key point is that most of them have never used these skills in the adrenal state. The only skills most people have used in the adrenal state are based upon boxing and Americanized Muay Thai tested in increasingly vigorous sparring that eventually becomes combat sport. Thus, it simply is no surprise that when they find themselves in a fight they use these skills and do not turn to their Kali Silat skill sets! In short, what we do, what we experience in the adrenal state is the deepest learning of all and as such it has a very strong tendency to supersede skills trained without adrenaline.

This also answers the question why I at fifty six years of age and counting I dare to seek to be someone who leads the way in establishing the validity of the Kali Silat idiom of fighting in the Cage. Of course the obvious logic is to leave it to some young lion to prove the theory with his deeds as Royce Gracie shocked the larger martial arts world with the advent of the UFC—I know that! The reason that in my humble opinion I remain relevant is that I HAVE hit people with sticks and these movements to me represent success in the adrenal state and I rely upon them in my own sparring. Combined with my many years of training under Guro Dan Inosanto (including as a private student) and other of the finest FMA, BJJ, and MMA teachers in the world, I believe this enables me to convey the necessary understandings to those who will actually step into the Cage.

Naturally the question arises whether any of our Kali Tudo ™ is relevant to those without extensive FMA type weaponry training and the answer is yes, but I must be candid. The mission statement of Dog Brothers Martial Arts is “To Walk as a Warrior for all your days”—and this means a lifelong path for the dangers of the real world, not just those of young male ritual hierarchical combat. This means we seek a system that uses the same underlying idioms of movement, regardless whether there are weapons and regardless of the numbers involved. This is precisely the point why Dog Brothers Martial Arts develops the subsystem of Kali Tudo ™ so we can use the same idiom of movement both with weapons AND empty hand AND to test our way of fighting empty hand in the adrenal state without concerns or pretensions that what we do is “too deadly for the cage”. In short, the highest levels of Kali Tudo are achieved by including weaponry training. There is no avoiding building the foundation. Those of you who put up the walls before thinking about putting in the wiring, when the sun of youth goes down you may find yourself in the dark. Conversely, those of you who put in the wiring without building sturdy walls and a watertight roof will may find yourself wet from a rain of blows , , ,

So how did “the Running Dog Game”, which is the subject of Kali Tudo ™ 2 come about and why is it the subject of the second DVD on this subsystem of ours?

In the aftermath of the aforementioned internet brouhaha of 1998, I began searching for my answers to the question presented. About two years later I had my first answer in something I called “The Running Dog Game”.

The RDG had its genesis in an unusual guard pass I learned from Renato Magno, BB in Machado BJJ, Pan Am BB Champion, and much more. In essence, it involves passing the guard, and perhaps snatching a foot lock, while running over the guard players head. Given my penchant for odd humor, I nicknamed the technique “the Running Dog” which in leftist-Marxist lexicon was a perceived calumny heaped upon the less powerful who benefited by aligning themselves with the capitalist class. It seemed humorous to me to embrace the insult of both my right wing “free minds and free markets” perspective and my doggy nature.

As I explored in the horizontal world of the ground how to best set up the Running Dog, I began to recognize reference points originally installed in my previously vertical Kali Silat (and Jun Fan Gung Fu) training. Very interesting! There were lots of successes, but also lots of getting arm-barred and lots of getting backswept. With further exploration, I developed “the Running Dog Posture” and developed a special exercise (which is shown in the DVD) to develop the physicality to maximize its capabilities.

So, in summary, what is the Running Dog Game? It is:

a) a way of standing up inside the Guard so as to establish the RD Posture

b) with the RD Posture established, the following options exist:

1) the signature move of the RD Game matrix: The RD pass over the head, either taking a foot or hip lock, or simply
standing up first and punting his head or taking controls from north-south. Typically the RD is facilitated by Kali Silat striking.

2) Kali Silat striking to knock out/TKO;

3) Kali Silat striking to “the Rico Kickover Heel Hook”;

4) Kali Silat striking to shucking the legs over to standard MMA type side control/knee on belly positions;

5) Kali Silat striking to shucking the legs over to Silat type leg attacks.


One of the key insights that opened my understanding was that a goodly part of the challenge of applying Kali Silat striking was facilitated by the fact that the because the Guard player had the ground behind him he found it much more difficult to move away from the traps, destructions, double timing and triplet timing strikes of Kali Silat. That is why this material is ideal for the second DVD covering our Kali Tudo subsystem—it is shockingly easy to apply against many people. Of course, nothing works against every one! Once this understanding is in place, the next step will be to apply it standing-- both in open range and clinch.

In 2000 I showed the RD Game to my backyard group (with drive by guest appearance by Top Dog) and filmed it as a “Vid-lesson” for instructors and private students of the DBMA Association. Some of this footage now appears in “KT2: The RD Game”. It was precisely because of the efficacy of the material that I held it back as a bit of a “secret weapon”. My reasons for changing my thinking in regard to secrecy are for a separate conversation on some other day. For the moment it suffices that in some regards my thinking has changed and that in September of 2008 I visited my good friend and hero Dogzilla and the Hawaii Clan of the Dog Brothers where we shot the current incarnation of the RD Game , , , as well as some other things that will appear in KT 3 and KT 4

So there it is: DBMA Kali Tudo (tm): The Running Dog Game.

The Adventure continues!
Guro Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny
======================
 We hope to have "The Running Dog Game" out by the end of February.   We will be taking pre-orders soon!

We kick this thread off with a newsletter from Gabe Suarez:

===========

MAGAZINE CAPACITY FOR SELF-DEFENSE
 
 
Last time we discussed calibers due to some new discussions at warriortalk.  It seems some people are still thinking like it was 1911 in terms of terminal ballistics. I think the truth of the matter is that all self defense handgun calibers (excluding the pocket pistol category) are basically the same when it comes to dropping an adversary.  That being the case, should we carry a pistol that only holds seven marginal shots, or one that holds as many as twice that number?
 
I wrote this one a while back and it seems the discussion and emailed questions I got come back to this issue.
 
Magazine Capacity
 
I suppose this will be yet another highly controversial issue, but what the heck.  Controversy makes for interesting discussion, no?  The issue is to look at whether high magazine capacity gives you a tactical advantage, or if we are better served by carrying an equally sized weapon with a smaller capacity of bigger bullets.  Before I answer my own question, let me put forth some facts as seen both in force on force training and on the street.
 
Point One - Pistol bullets, regardless of caliber are all, what one colleague calls, "iffy".  None can be guaranteed to drop an adversary in his tracks reliably.  The notion of a  one shot stop  is an urban myth dreamed up by those with a vested  interest in such things.  I have seen 45s work and fail, and I have seen 9mm both work and fail.  For the record, the only one shot drop (excluding head shots) I have ever seen with a pistol was fired by a good friend as we entered a  crack house  during a SWAT raid.  He shot the bad guy squarely in the heart with 9mm +P+ out of a SIG P-226.  He only fired once because the bad guy fell before my friend could reset his trigger for the next shot!
 
If we look at the most prevalent calibers we see that there is very little difference between them.  A 9mm (also .38/.357) is only one little millimeter smaller than the 10mm (aka .40 S&W), and that is only one little millimeter less than the vaunted 11mm (aka .45 ACP).  And before we get into the high speed light bullet versus the heavy slow bullet argument, lets remember that you can only drive a pistol bullet so fast without drastically affecting its integrity.  Moreover, since penetration is affected by weight, sacrificing weight for speed will not yield good results.  Finally, you can only make a bullet so light or so heavy.  There are limits to what you can shoot out of a pistol.
 
I have seen every one of these calibers fail at one time or another.  There are those who disdain the 9mm as unsuitable for anything larger than squirrels.  With modern ammunition, this is simply not true.  There is also a myth and a cult grown up around the .45 ACP in this country.  Sadly, it is not the deadly hammer of god its proponents suggest.   This is not new.  Read Fairbairn's Shoot To Live.  He writes of two separate times when the .45 failed to work any better than anything else.  Although one millimeter may give you a slight edge in a less than optimum body hit, under most circumstances, there will be very little difference between the effectiveness of the various calibers when modern anti-personnel ammo is used.  Trauma injury doctors and reputable terminal ballistics experts tend to agree with this statement.
 
Point Two - Private Citizen CCW Operators do not go looking for trouble.  If they are called to fight it is either because they have inadvertently crossed paths with bad guys while they are doing  bad guy  stuff (walking in on a robbery in progress as an example), or because they have been specifically targeted and stalked (such as a carjack, or home invasion event).    They will have to use extreme violence to fight off the surprise attackers.  When we translate the conversion of fright and startle into a firearm application we wee that definition is high volume of fire.  You will shoot a lot, and until the threat is no longer there.
 
While these events share slightly different dynamics, the common thread often seen is that of multiple adversaries.  The lone criminal or terrorist is an urban myth.  If your fight only involves one, consider yourself lucky.  More often than not you will be outnumbered. 
 
Another point is the time frames in which these events take place.  Think three seconds.  After this, either you will be dead, or your adversaries will be dead.  Urban gunfights do not go for hours.  Unexpected, short duration, high intensity, extreme violence, multiple adversaries.  That is the back drop.
 
Point Three - Our staff has collectively been in a large number of gunfights ranging from police, citizen, and military events.   We draw on those experiences to set up mock gunfights in dynamic, unscripted force on force training drills.  Although the  surprise factor  is missing (you generally don t know you will be in a gunfight until it is upon you), the dynamics of its evolution do not change much.  Here are some other observations from watching hundreds of those drills.
 
1).  Defenders will fire their weapons until the threat disappears.  That means that until the role player falls down (simulating effective hits delivered), or runs away (removing the target), the good guy will keep firing.  The concept of  school solutions, controlled pairs, or otherwise artificially limiting the number of shots (as one does in a firing string on the range) does not hold up even in guys who've been extensively trained to do it.
 
2).  When a training gun stops firing (due to running out of pellets), the shooter is still in the fight and still trying to shoot his enemy as well as trying to not be hit by him.  We see them continue to try to work the trigger for one or two times before there is a realization that there has been a stoppage (malfunction or empty gun).  This is followed by a visual examination of the gun, and only then is remedial action taken. 
 
This can take upwards f a second and a half before anything is even attempted to fix the gun, and then the additional time needed to reload.  Thus the idea that one can  read the gun s feel  and immediately realize a need to  speed load  simply does not hold up.  Running out of ammo is usually a fight ender if there has been a failure to stop, or there are multiple adversaries at hand.
 
3).  Participants in these reactive mock gunfights are debriefed immediately to get a clear picture of what happened before any rationalization takes place.  Besides a shoot them to the ground  firing process, most shooters do not remember seeing the crystal clear sight pictures they learned on the shooting range.
 
We see a great deal of point shooting, and gun index shooting.  I have yet to see anyone strike a classic shooting posture and press off a carefully sighted pair in these room distance drills.   
 
The point to remember is that in a fight such as what are likely for the private citizen, one can easily develop  Bullet Deficit Disorder , and that this can have deleterious effects on the outcome of that fight. 
 
The idea that a pair or trio of  quality rounds  carefully delivered onto a  high scoring  target zone will stop the action fails both the terminal ballistics test as well as the applications test. 
 
A truth of gunfighting - Having more ammo immediately on board lessens the likelihood of ever needing to reload.  Not needing to reload translates into more time delivering lead and less time manipulating the weapon.  More trigger time increases likelihood of hitting, which increases survivability.
 
So the question is this.  Given that there is a limit to the size pistol one can carry, do I want that pistol to hold more rounds?  My answer is a strong YES! 
 
Consider the similarly sized Glock 36 in .45 ACP, and the Glock 23 in .40 S&W.  The latter holds nearly twice the ammo of the former in an almost identical package.  The Glock 19 is an even more drastic comparison with 15 shots available.  Of course there are also high capacity 45 pistols for those so inclined and for those who can wield them.  I would argue that if your choice is a 45, a gun holding 13 would be better than a gun holding 6.  And if your hand is too small for the 13 shooter, rather than decrease capacity, I d decrease caliber.
 
I have a colleague is South America who has been in High Risk Police Service for close to three decades.  He has been in over three dozen verified gunfight .   His weapon was originally a Browning Hi-Power and later a Glock 17. 
 
I was very interested in hearing more so I asked him about the load he used.  He said he had always used military ball full metal jacket.  Astounded I asked him why he chose that.   That is all we can get here.  Hollow points are illegal . 
 
I shook my head and told him that there was a belief in the USA that 9mm was an anemic caliber, especially in the load he d chosen.  He shrugged and said that his adversaries must not have gotten the word.  He said he fired a burst at the chest and if they didn't fall fast enough, he fired a burst at the face.   He never needed to reload and had enough on board so if he missed a shot or two he could  catch up  in the fight.  And before we hear the careful shooter versus the spraying prayer, this man is one of the best shots I have seen and competes on an international level.  Even so, he knows the chaos in a gunfight can play havoc with even the most gifted marksman.  Perhaps we need to take a lesson from him.
 
I still carry a Glock 17 with 17 rounds of Corbon DPX ammo in 9mm.



Gabe Suarez

One Source Tactical
Suarez International USA
Christian Warrior Ministries
 

I am in awe!

http://dotsub.com/view/80f72f12-a701-4520-9925-d96e2d9d4808

ALL SCHOOL OWNERS PAY ATTENTION!!!  (Danger Lurking!!)


New Jersey Senator PAUL A. SARLO - District 36 (Bergen, Essex and Passaic) has proposed a State regulatory bill that would INCLUDE stringent regulation of YOUR martial arts school! (If you Live in New Jersey)

On October 6th, legislation was introduced in the State Senate that would place unnecessary and burdensome licensing requirements on New Jersey personal trainers and group exercise instructors (which is written to SPECIFICALLY include EVERY martial arts school owner in the state).

School Owners in New Jersey would face unrealistic and stifling measures that will put much undue financial strain on individual school owners, including State mandated and facilitated training. This bill is now in the Commerce Committee where legislators will discuss the financial impact of this regulation.

NAPMA has always lobbied for "self regulation" of our industry, and we have had a great track record of defeating such damaging regulation attempts.

**WE NEED YOUR HELP!!**
If you live in New Jersey, Please click this link, and send your state representatives a message describing your concerns!
http://napma.com/LegislativeAlert/index.html

If you do NOT live in New Jersey, pay CLOSE attention to your state. If this bill passes in NJ, it could very well pave the way for more regulation and interference from other states. NAPMA will always represent the interests of it's members and it's industry, and continue the revolution of professionalism it began more than 14 years ago!!

Yours for Success!
Toby Milroy
Chief Operating Officer
NAPMA - National Association of Professional Martial Artists
TobyMilroy@NAPMA.com
==========================

Woof All:

Here is what I wrote a few years ago.  Please feel free to use any or all of it.

Crafty Dog
--------------------

Recently there has been a push in the State of New Jersey to regulate martial arts. Originally it was pushed as protection from child molesters, but when it was pointed out that if that were the case then those regulated should be all who dealt with children, not martial arts. So now they're baaack, seeking to set up 5 bureaucrats to study things and make rules. This of course shows that "the children" had nothing to do with the original impulse to regulate. These 5 bureaucrats are the proverbial camel's nose and we must stop hit this initiation of yet another attack on our lives as a free people. So I will be writing yet again and ask you to do so as well. I know that many people are not sure of what to say and this hinders them from getting started. So, if you want to use any passages from this for "write-your-congressman" efforts, then DBIMA and Marc Denny waive copyright. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Do your part.

Crafty Dog

PS: Thanks to Jeff Finder for getting me going on this.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Concerning the proposal to regulate martial arts:
People who are not involved with the martial arts usually have no idea of the extraordinary breadth and depth of martial art world, both in its offerings and in the people who come to the arts and the reasons for which they come. My particular martial art comes from the Philippines, which has nearly 1,000 islands and 90 major dialects. The result is that not even the name of our art is agreed upon! In can be Kali, or Arnis, or Eskrima, or simply FMA (short for "the Filipino Martial Arts"). There are hundreds of styles within the FMA.

Similar diversity can be found in the Chinese Arts, even though it is all lumped together in the general public's mind as "kung fu". To a person in the martial art world, the statement "I practice kung fu." can properly be answered with the question "Which style?" Is it Wing Chun- a close quarter trapping system with mostly linear strikes? or Hung Gar a deep stance system with more emphasis on slashing strikes? or is it one of the northern Chinese systems with an emphasis on kicking? Or acrobatic Wu Shu? Or meditational Tai Chi? Similar variety can be found amongst the Malay cultures (Indonesian, Malaysian, southern Filipino) or the Japanese/Owkinowan systems. And what about the Indian systems? Or the European, e.g. France's Savate, or English quarterstaff? Martial arts is much more than a matter of the few names with which the American movie going public is familiar. Martial Arts is about the study of what to do about human aggression and the solutions are as various as the human condition.

Look at the array of reasons that people come to martial arts: Some come for fun, some come for fitness, some come for functionality as they percieve it, some come for moving meditation, some come to socialize. Some are young males looking to compete. Some are women looking for anti-rape skills, Some are big and strong, many are not. Some want to grapple, some want to strike. Some practice forms, some do not. Some are children looking to join the Ninja Mutant Turtles, some are prison guards and law enforcement officers with real and immediate practical needs.

The interaction of all these styles and the people who come to them also leads to a variety of organizational structures. Some of the very best teach in their back yards for pocket money, others have an independent school and may even support themnselves. Others have large organizations that are financially successful. Some offer belts, others do not. Some require the student to sign up for a period of time, others do not. Some require a testing of the skills (fighting/sparring) others do not. Of those who have impressive looking certifications, some are good and some are not. And ditto for those lacking certifications.

In my humble opinion, THERE IS NO WAY THIS INCREDIBLE VARIETY OF PEOPLE OR STYLES CAN BE FAIRLY OR COMPETENTLY REGULATED. The People's search of what is right for them, the "pursuit of happiness" of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution if you will, is most eminently something for the American way, the free market and its protection by the State in the area of defending against theft and fraud in their many forms. Giving the State the power to determine who may teach martial arts and how they may and may not be taught only lessens both the freedom of choice and of responsibility, but also as a practical matter is quite likely to lead well-known big organization styles to use this regulatory process to squeeze out competition and so deprive individuals who need or desire approaches outside of theirs.

Ultimately, the study of martial arts is, regardless of approach, is a study of aggression, how it is done and how to deal with it. The State is those areas of life which we as a people determine must be dealt with by force. The goal for us is to learn to deal with each other through voluntary interactions- free minds and free markets. When we or the State defend ourselves or the weak from attack, whether by foreign armies or by criminals, we lessen violence. When we make others do what we think is "a good idea" we increase it. Rather, We the People must say to the State, and to the Politicians, the IRS, the factions, the special interests, the computer generated governmental actions so seemingly beyond human control, DON'T EVEN GET STARTED, JUST LEAVE US ALONE.

Sincerely,
Marc Denny
Co-founder: The Dog Brothers
Head Teacher
Dog Brothers Inc. Martial Arts.

Esta' en Portugues:

http://www.nothingtoxic.com/media/1228874022/Pistol_Whipping_Cop_Accidentally_Shoots_Guy_in_Head

Woof All:

Inmy humble opinion there is an American Creed-- that of our Founding Fathers as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and our Constitution.

One are of particular interest to us (use the search funcion for the "Poltics & Religion" forum) is that which has to do with the   Second Amendment and Section 311 Title 10 (see the John Lott article "The Unorganized Militia" on the Flight 93 Memorial page).  Its why we have a thread titled "The Unorganized Militia" on the P&R forum!

Q:  So why have a thread of the same name here?  

A:  This one is to discuss where the rubber meets the road.

We kick things off with a piece by Gabe Suarez:
===================================
There has been a great deal of discussion about what to carry for an event like Mumbai. Gents, let's think about this. If you happen to be caught up in this at its conclusion, facing a dozen riflemen working together as a unit, and you with your Kel-Tec, what do you think your realistic chances of success are? Being real is not being defeatist, but come on.

Now, at the outset of the event, where there may be only one or two adversaries, it gets a little better in terms of odds. But only a little. You have one advantage and that is the advantage of surprise and one target. They, on the other hand have many avenues of danger to cover, only one which is yours. This will be a rapidly moving fluid situation.

One man was saying that using a cell phone to photograph the bad guys would be good. Pictures of the bad guys on your cell phone? Come on....seriously? If you have the ability to take their picture, you also have the ability to take their life, or GTFOT (get the f*** out of there) so get out of the evidence collecting mindset.

Number two, some guys were discussing carrying a special bag with them with all manner of weapons and gear to facilitate such a fight. Keeping a Bug Out Bag in the office or in the car is a wise move, but I doubt many of us are going to walk around fully kitted out all the time, so I think this will be limited to what you have on your person. Know what....you'll carry your tango bag everywhere until you get sick of it and leave it in the car one day and then, that will be the day and you will fight with what you have on your person anyway.

Those of you with little bitty guns (snubbies and Glock 27s and such), I suggest you rethink your weapon choices. I can run a mini-Glock pretty good, but not as good as a full sized gun. What do I carry? A Glock 22 when at home and a Glock 17 when away. 15 rounds or 17 rounds respectively.

Yes, the bigger gun is harder to hide. Yes, I have to choose my clothing more carefully. Yes, its heavier. All of those things they tell you are true. But when you NEED THE MOTHER F'ING GUN NOW, those uber-comfortable pocket chain guns so popular with the CCW crowd will never allow you to fight as well as a full-sized gun.

Calibers - Please! I will take a 40 or a 9mm over a 45 any day of the week for the simple fact of the matter that I can fight much longer with one than I can with a seven or eight shot weapon. It may have been a caliber edge in 1976 when the only thing going was marginal hollow point ammo, but not today bwana. Ask any of those metro-sexual gun instructors if they want to get shot in the face with my "45 set on stun".
Magazine capacity is not an asset, it is a blessing.

Engagement Dynamics - Short range, run and gun, point shooting is an essential skill and must be prioritized for the urban ambush gunfight. However, for anti-terrorist activity, if you find yourself just outside or arm's length with a doped up, combat-trained AK-armed tango, you have already stepped into it. You can still fight, but wouldn't it be far better to be able to ice these monkeys from 25, 50 or even 100 yards?

Read the reports boys. There are folks who had an eye on the action from a distance. "If only I had a gun" was one of the Brit reporters said. The ability to hit out at these distances is not hard at all. But it must be learned and trained. And, your gear must support your ability to do it.

Those uber-court-proof heavy triggers promoted as essential by the lawyer-instructors are trash. Get rid of them. You don't need a hair trigger on your pistol, but you do need a manageable trigger. My Glocks for example all use the standard 5# connector set up and give me a crisp release that is conducive to accuracy. You don't need the 3# target connector, but good heavens don't add one of the abominable New York triggers.

Those big fat close range sights? If you can hit at 100 yards with them, drive on. I cannot, so I use sharply defined black iron sights like the Heines, and the Trijicons. Those of you with eye issues that can't use the irons well enough, invest in one of the Docter red dot sights. Yep....a red dot sight on your pistol. It is small enough to carry around and bright enough that even Mr. Magoo can hit at 100 meters with it.

Another thing - Usually after one of those events I will hear "By golly if I had been there I would have pulled out my custom model 29 and..." That is usually spoken by a guy who hasn't done any physical training since high school, would have a heart attack if he had to run ten feet to cover, and is so out of condition he could not fight his way out of a Sierra Club Tea Party In San Francisco. I'm not trying to offend anyone here but its not just about marksmanship and your ammo choices. If you are already a good shot, you need to get away from the range and into the gym or the street and train your out of shape shooter's body so you will be able to fight not just shoot.

And finally, without which all else is wasted, develop the will to kill. It is hard for some to sneak up on a man and shoot him in the back of the head unannounced, regardless of what the man has done, or is about to do. You need to get over that if you want to be a player at this level. it is not about capturing, or about bringing to justice, or about "stopping the action". it is about getting the drop on a terrorist from a distance, unseen and undetected, putting your sights on his ear, controlling your heartbeat, and then pressing that trigger without a moment's hesitation.

Gabe Suarez

One Source Tactical
Suarez International USA

Woof All:

A friend who is in Iraq training the Baghdad police in modern police skills emails me the following question:

"Are there/is there a pressure point that when pressed would prevent/significantly limit a person from effectively pressing a button (like on a suicide vest switch)?"

Comments/suggestions?

TAC!
CD

Woof All:

My 9 year old son has gotten into whittling with the knife I gave him.  Recently while my portable chess set was in his care a bishop disappeared and so he carved a replacement. 

Out of this has grown the idea of carving an entire set.  Question presented:  Of the commonly available woods, which is the most desirable/easy to work with? 

I was very impressed with GM Sonny Umpad's carvings; perhaps one of his people (or anyone else) here can offer suggestions?

TIA,
CD

Joe Hyams, Best-selling Author and
Martial Arts Pioneer, Dies at Age 85

Joe Hyams (June 6, 1923 - Nov. 8, 2008)

Best selling author of Zen and the Martial Arts -and numerous other
books, Hollywood insider, and veteran martial arts enthusiast, Joe
Hyams passed away, of natural causes, on November 8, 2008.

During his long entertainment career, Joe Hyams was the Los Angeles
Bureau Chief and Hollywood columnist for the New York Herald
Tribune and also actor Humphrey Bogart's best friend.

Joe Hyams took up fencing lessons in the 1950's and through those
classes he met film music composer Bronislau Kaper. In 1958, Kaper
introduced him to Ed Parker, who was teaching Kenpo in the weight
room in Beverly Hills Health Club. Mr. Hyams became one of Ed
Parker's first private students and also one of Mr. Parker's first
black belts.

Joe Hyams was the first person to introduce Bruce Lee into the
Hollywood community. He helped Bruce Lee, with whom he trained
privately get a foothold in Hollywood during Bruce's struggling
years. Mr. Hyams trained with Bruce Lee for two years, and when
Bruce left for Hong Kong to pursue his film career, he suggested
that Joe learn from Jim Lau, who trained him in Wing Chun.

A thorough treatment of Mr. Hyams life and times is being prepared
by his protégé, martial arts writer and editor John Corcoran.

http://www.martialinfo.com/joe-hyams

http://www.evilchili.com/mediaview/19444/Fight_Breaks_Out_In_Front_Of_A_Club

We don't get to see how the fight starts, but we do get to see classical tactics against the lone individual.  Then a good samaritan enters.

Comments?

http://www.bahalanawarriors.com/

Our logo appears on his front page.

Woof All:

Does anyone have contact info for GM Narrie Babao of the San Diego CA area?

TIA,
Crafty Dog

An internet friend is taking a survey:

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=985984

Pitcher Perfect
Why can't anyone throw a baseball faster than 100 mph?
By Noam Scheiber
Posted Friday, April 8, 2005, at 11:38 AM PT

The physics of flamethrowing
 
When baseball's elders swap stories about fireballers, the name that ends the conversation isn't Nolan Ryan or Sandy Koufax. It's one that never appeared on the back of a major-league uniform: Steve Dalkowski. Legend has it that the 5-foot-11-inch, 170-pound lefty threw his fastball well in excess of 100 mph. We don't have an exact number for the same reason Dalkowski, who toiled in the minors in the late 1950s and early 1960s, never made the big leagues: He was too wild to time. When a scout tried to gauge Dalkowski's fastball with a primitive radar gun?a beam of light the width of home plate?the pitcher couldn't hit the target until after his arm got tired.

Steve Dalkowski sounds like a genetic freak, but so is anyone who can throw a baseball 90 mph. What he really represents is a blow to the basic notion of human progress. In almost every measurable physical activity, athletes show improvement over time. Jumpers jump higher and farther, and runners and swimmers go faster. Since the late 1950s, the high-jump world record has improved by more than 10 percent, the 100-meter-dash mark has improved by 5 percent, and swimming's best 100-meter freestyle has dipped 12 percent.

Pitchers, though, don't seem to be getting any faster. Pretty much every generation since the early 1900s has boasted a supposed 100-mph pitcher, from Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood to Bob Feller to Dalkowski to Nolan Ryan. If we stick with speeds registered since modern radar guns became ubiquitous in the 1970s, peak velocity seems to be a shade north of 100. Major League Baseball doesn't keep official records on pitch speeds, but the Guinness Book of World Records credits Ryan with the fastest pitch ever, a 100.9-mph heater from 1974. This article disagrees, crowning Mark Wohlers the radar-gun champ with a 103-mph pitch. (For an explanation of why radar gun readings can be inconsistent, click here.)

Maybe it only looks like the outer limit for pitchers is stable at around 100 mph because we can't consistently and accurately measure minute improvements in speed. When it comes to flamethrowers, after all, it's hard to figure out what's the truth and what's a tall tale. Feller once sent a fastball zooming by a speeding motorcycle. Maybe the ball really was traveling at 104 mph, as the organizers of the stunt claimed. Or maybe not.

Still, according to experts in biomechanics, that 100-mph ceiling isn't an illusion?it's a basic property of human physiology. A pitcher generates momentum by rocking onto his back leg and thrusting forward. After that he rotates his pelvis and upper trunk, then his elbow, shoulder, and wrist. Intuitively, it seems like building up the muscles in the legs, upper body, arm, and shoulder would generate more force and make his arm move faster. The reality: There's a point when more torque doesn't yield a faster pitch. It simply causes tendons and ligaments to snap, detaching muscles from bones and bones from one another. (Tendons connect muscles to bones; ligaments connect bones to each other.)

Glenn Fleisig, a biomechanical engineer who studies pitching at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., has calculated that about 80 Newton-meters of torque act on an elite pitcher's elbow when he throws a fastball. The ulnar collateral ligament connects the humerus and ulna?two of the bones that come together in the elbow. To test the outer limits of the ligament's strength, Fleisig subjected cadaver elbows to increasing amounts of rotational force. These experiments showed that an average person's UCL snaps at about 80 Newton-meters. Smoky Joe Wood said that he threw so fast he thought his arm was going to fly off. It turns out he wasn't far from the truth.

Another way to test the proposition that ligament fragility limits velocity is to see what happens when pitchers strengthen their muscles. Mike Axe, an orthopedic surgeon and prot?g? of Fleisig's partner James Andrews, advises pitchers to build up their shoulder muscles by practicing with a weighted glove on their throwing hand. According to Axe, a pitcher can add up 2 to 5 mph to his fastball with this regimen. The potential gains are lower for those who throw fast to begin with, though. Axe has seen pitchers increase their velocity from 84 to 88 mph and from 88 to 91 mph. He's never seen anyone improve from 98 to 100. The chief benefit for these hurlers is that they suffer fewer muscle tears.

Why do sprinters keep getting faster while baseball pitchers seem to have maxed out? Because track athletes don't approach the limits of what human tendons and ligaments can handle. When you run the 100-meter dash, no single stride represents as violent a motion as the arm makes during a single overhand pitch. Sprinters can build up their muscles without worrying that the extra force will rip their ligaments apart?that's why steroid use seems to make sprinters faster but won't help pitchers generate velocity beyond a certain point. (A better reason for a pitcher to take steroids would be to decrease the time it takes to recover between games.)

Ligaments and tendons can get stronger, but at a much slower rate than the muscles that surround them. There are rumors that pitchers who've undergone Tommy John surgery?that is, a replacement of the UCL with a tendon from the hamstring or wrist?can throw harder than they did before having surgery. But any increase in velocity probably has less to do with getting a new superligament than with the strict rehabilitation program Tommy John patients are supposed to follow. The reason pitchers get injured in the first place is that their muscles, tendons, and ligaments weren't as strong as they should have been.

What about growing taller, more massive pitchers? That doesn't necessarily make a difference, either. Small, slightly built pitchers like Dalkowski, the 5-foot-11 Pedro Martinez, and the 5-foot-10 Billy Wagner throw just as hard as giants such as Randy Johnson. The physical principle here is fairly simple. If two levers move at the same speed, the ball released from the longer lever will have more velocity. But as a lever becomes larger, it requires more torque to move. Randy's lever is larger; Wagner's moves more quickly. The trade-off makes their velocity roughly equal.

In the last two decades, baseball managers and GMs have focused less on speed and more on injury prevention. According to Fleisig, whose clinic has diagnosed mechanical problems in professional pitchers since 1990, "[Baseball executives] don't come to me and say make this guy a few miles per hour faster. They say, help this guy stay on the field." Steve Dalkowski should have been so lucky. He blew out his arm fielding a bunt in an exhibition game in 1963, on the eve of his first major-league start.

What is worth fighting for?  What are our ROE? (Rules Of Engagement)

---------------------------------------------

Last night (Wed 10 Sep), in a small pub near Durban, two groups of men were watching the 2010 Fifa World Cup qualifying game between England and Croatia. By the end of the evening, three men had been shot dead and two others critically wounded. The whole sorry argument started over the size of one man's dick.

The shooting took place at the Merseyside Restaurant and Bar at the Queensmead Mall in Durban's Umbilo suburb. According to online reports on News24 and iol.co.za a police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The white man went to the toilet and an Indian guy followed him. While in the urinal, the Indian man told the white man that his [the Indian guy's] penis was bigger than his. The white man left the urinal and told his friends about what had happened and this is when the argument started. At some stage, some of the men went outside and there was a scuffle. One group returned to the tavern to watch the game and the other group remained outside," the source said.

"The men outside then went to their cars, opened their boots and returned to the tavern where they opened fire on the five men." A police spokesperson said the armed men had entered the pub and picked out the five men they'd argued with in a "precision style".

The policeman also said the shooters casually exited the tavern, jumped into their vehicles and left. The three victims, aged between 30 and 55, died on the spot. Another two were rushed to a local hospital in a critical condition.

Comment: Whoever said "Size doesn't matter" was wrong.