Holding Back

One of my favourite training exercises over the past year and a half has been a type of conditioning we call “body hardening”.  Every week, usually on Saturday, Thor and I trade sets of straight punches to the stomach, hooks to the ribs, and kicks to the outer and inner thighs.  We always start off with test strikes, so that the other person knows how hard to hit.  The idea is to hit hard enough so it’s uncomfortable by the end, but not so hard as to cause any real damage beyond the occasional bruise.  

When I describe this activity to people from outside the gym, I get that look - and then come the questions, always some variant of  “Why on earth would you do that?”

I find I get a lot out of this type of training.  First, there does seem to be some degree of toughening that takes place.  I can tolerate being hit much harder these days than when I started.  I also have a better understanding of the difference between pain and damage - after taking hundreds of strikes, I hardly ever get satisfying bruises anymore.  

Second, I have become more mentally accustomed to taking a hit … realizing it won’t mean the end of the fight and that I can keep going.  There’s no question in my mind that being able to take a punch is an important aspect of self-defense training.  Obviously it would be preferable not to be hit - but if I do get hit, I want to be able to keep myself together so I can respond.  Yes, the strikes are painful - but pain doesn’t mean I have to stop.

Further benefits have included learning how to kick and punch properly.  Punching a heavy bag or focus mitts is not the same as hitting a body.  When I started doing cut kicks, it actually hurt me to deliver them. Once I figured the technique out, the next step was to learn to generate power.  

While throwing my test strikes, I got very used to hearing “Harder.”  “Harder.”  “Is that as hard as you can?”  “Ok, just go as hard as you can.” I dreamed of the day I’d hear “That’s hard enough” or maybe even “Ok, ease up a little!”.  I always figured that once I developed the skills, I’d be there … but I was wrong.  

In the end, the most difficult thing has not been learning to hit hard, it has been allowing myself to hit hard.  

A few weeks ago, Thor grumbled that I was holding back on my kicks, even though I insisted that I was kicking as hard as I could.  Suspecting that I was subconsciously pulling my strikes, he grabbed a kicking shield, held it against his leg, and told me to go for it.  After a few whipping strikes, I had to admit that there was no comparison - I was definitely hitting the shield much harder.  Even though I had thought I was giving it everything I had, there was now no question that I had been holding back.  Logically, I know that he can take a hit much harder than anything I can deliver, and yet, I still couldn’t unleash.

Something told me that the seemingly arbitrary line I couldn’t push past wasn’t so arbitrary at all.   It’s the place where a mistake would mean causing serious injury to someone I would rather not damage!  Maybe I could make myself kick Thor with full power … except I was worried I’d accidentally veer off target and hit his knee instead.  Maybe I could charge in harder on a tackle … except I was worried I’d somehow tie up his arms and prevent him from break-falling.  These concerns were largely unreasonable - Thor is no delicate flower, and he regularly plays with people who are bigger, stronger, and more skilled than I am, and they aren’t holding back.  So what’s my problem??

It isn’t about me feeling like I am somehow super lethal; it’s that I don’t trust that I have the control to go above a certain level of force without risking injury to my training partner.  Self-defense training has been all about breaking through barriers for me - some expected, some surprising.  I certainly never expected that I’d be afraid to inflict damage!

This past weekend, I tried to give a little more juice to my kicks.   I felt like I was starting to push past that barrier, but I still worried and I still got adrenalized and needed a minute to collect myself after each round.  When Thor reminded me that I wasn’t injuring him, and that I had to keep pushing, stop worrying about hurting him and not get upset, I had the following retort:

“Baby steps!!  Step 1 is kick you hard but hate it and get upset.  Step 2 is kick you a little harder and be kind of okay with it.  It's not until Step 3 that I kick you as hard as I can and then laugh and point as I dominate you!  Today we are still on step 1!!”  

He laughed and agreed that Step 1 sounded like a good place to start.  

Baby steps.  

The Right Coach

I’ve been trying to write a testimonial about my experiences training with Thor, and I’m finding it a nearly impossible task.  I’ll start to write, type a few lines, delete them, and then just stare at the screen.  I’ve passed at least two or three hours this way so far.  I think the problem is that I don’t know how to do justice to my coach in just a couple of paragraphs.  I barely know how to start.  

I remember walking in to the old location for my first lesson, and it seems like so long ago.  My mouth was dry, my heart was pounding.  What on earth was I getting myself into?  When I’d come in a couple of weeks earlier for a trial lesson, Thor had been so down-to-earth and fun and easy to learn from that I’d signed up for private lessons that very day!  Something about doing it for real was scary, though.  I was sure he’d figure out right away that I was uncoordinated, ran out of steam quickly, and was completely useless at anything physical.  I was convinced that he’d quickly get tired of having to show me every move fifty times because I just couldn’t get it right, and that he’d start dreading seeing my name on the schedule.  It feels ridiculous typing that now, but it was absolutely how I felt at the time.  I was so intimidated by his skill and knowledge that I found myself having a mini panic attack before every lesson for the first little while. 

Week after week, Thor patiently explained and demonstrated each new technique.  When something was too complicated, he’d break it down into smaller parts and slowly build up to the full move.  He’d try explaining things in several different ways until he hit on the description that would click for me.  I never felt any disapproval or annoyance from him, even when he must have be wondering what on earth was wrong with me that I couldn’t seem to grasp basic human movement!!

A huge strength for a self-defense coach is the ability to read people, and Thor is an expert!  He always senses the exact moment when my mood shifts, whether I’m overwhelmed, panicked, or just frustrated.  He knows my “tells” better than I do!   Very early on, just a few months into my training, Thor one day swapped out the flexible rubber knife we usually used for the red-grip folding knife.  While he was going over the technique, he suddenly realized that I’d stopped talking … and I *never* stop talking. He also noticed that my eyes were tracking the knife as he gestured with it, and that I kept retreating slightly any time he moved towards me.  He immediately stopped, stepped back himself, and put the knife down before asking me if I wanted to talk.  (I hadn’t even been aware of what I was doing.)  He asked if I would feel better if I was holding the knife myself.  I said I wasn’t sure, but I did take it, and fiddled with it as we talked through the rest of my session.  (A couple of days later I went and bought the identical training knife for myself.)  

Thor watches like a hawk any time we do anything emotionally difficult in training - I’m so stubborn about letting on when things are bothering me, but he sees.  He always sees.  Because he’s so aware, he’s able to push my limits, without ever going too far.  I’ve never in the whole two years ever felt unsafe in training, even though self-defense training can sometimes get pretty harrowing.  One thing I particularly dislike training is strangles.  I suppose there’s no question that when it comes to strangles, it’s better to give than to receive, but it’s been a major barrier for me either way.  How Thor deals with this is to to revisit the topic every so often, and suggest that we spend just five or ten minutes working on it - and it does get a tiny bit easier each time.   

I talked about scenario training in another post.  At the time I wrote that post, I was really just focussing on what it had meant for me and my training journey; I never wrote about how Thor helped to get me there.  During the planning process, the decision whether or not to go with the difficult scenario chosen for me had been left completely up to Thor, although I didn’t learn this until after it was over. 

I know it was hard for him. On the video, you can see he’s agitated, pacing as the scenario is getting underway.  Afterward, he hovered, making sure I was all right, watching closely for any signs that I was having a bad reaction to the stress of the scenario.  Later, as we all went our separate ways, Thor took me aside and confessed that he had been the one to make the final call on my scenario. 

“It was so hard.  I knew you could handle it, but at the same time I didn’t want to put you through that.  But I knew you could do it.” 

Of course he chose correctly. He made sure I got the training I needed, putting aside his own comfort. It was a risk - if it had gone horribly, it might have damaged our training relationship - but he decided the risk was worth taking. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.  
  

To paraphrase Rory Miller, part of the job of a self-defense coach is to make an emotionally safe place to do physically dangerous things.  That’s even more important for those of us that come broken.  Thor creates an emotionally safe place where I can push myself to do things that scare me.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t still get scared, but it means that it’s not unmanageable anymore.  He gives me the tools to deal with the tough stuff, and is right there to guide me through.   Once, while talking about why he’s so good at what he does, I told him it was because he is a gentle person.  Surveying my bruises, I quickly amended: “I meant emotionally gentle … you are definitely not physically gentle!!”

Change is something that can be hard to notice in yourself.  I often only realize how far I’ve come in training when other people point it out, or when I watch Thor training new clients and I remember when he used to have to be that slow and careful with me.  We play pretty rough these days, and it can be easy to forget how I used to flinch whenever he touched me.  When I’m creepily eyeballing someone as I attack them in class, it’s easy to forget how I used be unable to maintain eye contact for more than a second at a time.   

Another client calls training with Thor her “Thorapy”.  That pretty much sums it up.  He’s all those things you’d want and expect in a coach: skilled, knowledgeable, methodical, with fantastic attention to detail.  Where he really shines, though, is with the other stuff that’s so essential when teaching self-defense.  He’s patient, kind, empathetic.  He manages to get more out of me than I even knew was there.  Every good change I’ve made in the past two years is a result of training with him, and I’ll never be able to adequately repay him for that.   

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Something about training with Rory Miller will always inspire me to write.  

I love writing, but I hate having people read what I write. I abandoned this blog after my last post, where I wrote about my scenario training with Rory last spring. Whenever I spend time around Rory, I leave with tons of ideas squirming around in my brain afterwards, and I write to process - but then I feel like what I write is never quite good enough, never quite polished enough, so I blog, and then I don't really tell anyone how to find it. Classic monkey move. It was while explaining this, out loud, to Rory, that I heard how stupid it sounded ... so here I am.  

This past weekend was my third time training with Rory in the two years since I first read Meditations on Violence. It was also the first time I can truly say I enjoyed a seminar.  

Other seminars I'd attended (Rory's and others) always had their moments, but I'm a clock-watcher. I spend so much time worrying about looking stupid or unskilled, or even worse, reflecting poorly on Thor, that I end up mentally exhausted. Time and time again I'd go up against an advanced student and be convinced I was wasting their time ... surely they'd rather be playing with someone more skilled! 

The focus of this seminar was infighting. I love grappling and close-range fighting, so this was two straight days of play time for me. (I kept a running list of all the drills and games I can't wait to revisit during my private lessons!  Sumo ... it's happening.)

In between all the skill-building sessions, we did round after round of infighting. Sometimes (often!) I'd see a stronger, more skilled opponent beaten by someone smaller and less experienced.  It wasn't always possible to predict who'd come out on top. Randy summed this up beautifully using the rock/paper/scissors analogy. He said that even though rock beats scissors and scissors beats paper, rock loses to paper.  None of them is inherently superior to the other.  

Even though there was a range of skill represented at the seminar,  as the weekend went on, I managed to stop worrying about whether or not I was good enough or experienced enough to be there. Nobody was guaranteed a win, and nobody seemed to care. I gave out my first ever black eye (and managed to stop apologizing after thinking how tickled I would have been to get one). Sometimes I dominated, and sometimes I got dominated - and it was just as fun either way. When I got beaten, I didn't feel like a failure. I just got more data about what worked and what didn't. I felt like I belonged there, in a way I hadn't before. (My monkey found its role!)

I didn't magically become a kickass fighter and suddenly feel evenly matched with the advanced fighters - far from it - but I did start to see that all the weird little things about me as a fighter mean that better fighters can still learn something from me. It's not a waste of their time to play against me. I never looked at it that way before this weekend.      

And I can't wait for next time.  

A Physically Safe Place

“SD [self-defense] training has a progression: First, you have to make an emotionally safe place to do physically dangerous things.  Then you have to make a physically safe place to do emotionally dangerous things.”  (Rory Miller - blog post)

The last day of our nine-day self-defense workshop, a Sunday, was designated “Scenario Day”.  Rory, Thor, and Fearless Leader, along with a few others, had met up on the previous Friday to design and plan scenarios for everyone.  The idea was to match the scenario to the student, and to customize it so that it would be of greatest benefit to the student. 

We arrived at a bar on Sunday morning, where one side had been closed off specifically for us.  (Fearless Leader has connections!)  We had the safety briefing, went through the rules, and learned how the scenarios would work.  For each scenario there would be the student, the facilitator (the person in charge, who would explain the parameters of the scenario, and give the formal commands to start and end), one or more role-players, and several safety officers, who would make sure nobody smashed their head on a table or got thrown over a cement wall.  The student and role-players would be outfitted in body armor; shin pads, arm/elbow pads, chest shield, and helmet with face shield.  Before any individual scenario began, the student and the role-player(s) would do an “armor check” – a strike to the chest at ~50% power, a strike to the front of the head at around 10% power, and hits to the side of the head at around 10% power.  This was to test out the armor, and to let the participants know how much force was safe to use during the scenario. 

I’d read about scenario training in Rory’s Drills book, so I had a general idea how the day would go.  I had wondered how real this would actually feel, though; we’d be dressed up in RoboCop gear, play-acting with people we knew.  As the day went on, I realized that this all felt very real.   

My scenario was one of the last ones of the day, and I was the last out of the three women.  The first step was for Thor to help get me into the armor.  I was nervous, not knowing what to expect, but there’s a picture of me getting suited up, and we’re both laughing.  The armor check with my role-player was fun too.  I like the full-contact stuff, so I giggled when he hit me in the face (it was through the helmet, after all).  Once we were ready to go, the facilitator set the scene.  He directed me to a pile of armor/padding on the floor.  “The scenario is, you’re at home, and you’re lying on the bed.  There’s your bed.” 

I know what my worst nightmare is, and Thor knows it too.  These are things that eventually have to come out during self defense training, especially the one-on-one training we’d been doing.  He knows exactly what specific things would put me in a serious panic. 

Fearless Leader had teased me a few nights earlier, when people first started talking about the scenarios.  I’d already known that they would be tailored to each student, and Rory mentioned that it was very useful to have access to one’s instructor when doing this.  Nervous, I protested: “Thor wouldn’t do me like that”, to which Fearless Leader replied “he absolutely would if it’s going to make you better!”.  I didn’t sleep well the next few nights after that, trying to recall just how many of my deepest, darkest fears I'd shared with Thor.    

The armor made it tough to get down on the floor, and I flopped down front-first, since that’s how I go to sleep at home. 

“On your back.”  I turned over, arms at my sides.      

“So this is the scenario, she’s at home, in her bed, and just … react to whatever happens, ok?”

A delay of what would turn out to be a full thirty seconds followed my muffled response of “ok”.  The anticipation was terrifying.  A single phrase began looping over and over in my head.  “Not this.  Not this.  Not this.”  Just fifteen seconds into the delay, I was hyperventilating so severely that the facilitator had to coach me to breathe.        

Finally, I hear “scenario live”.  My “attacker” drops down next to me, putting his face directly over mine, and hisses “don’t fucking move until I tell you to move”. 

I don't get the tunnel blindness that sometimes comes with a massive adrenaline dump. I can’t see anything at all – it’s as if I really am in a dark bedroom.  I only discover a knife held to my throat when my hand bumps into it.  I don’t remember consciously deciding to do anything.  The whole thing is a blank until I hear “stop scenario”. 

The entire scenario has lasted only sixteen seconds from start to finish.  Once it’s over, Thor is the first person I’m aware of.  I don’t see him, but I hear him repeating “let go of the knife”.  I feel him pry it out of my hand.  I hear Fearless Leader's voice from somewhere behind me, saying “your friends are around you, you’re okay” (I was later told he was standing in front of me).  I am still hyperventilating badly, and trying to pull the helmet off (Rory later tells me I was gripping it so tightly to my face that he had a tough time removing it).  I feel people on all sides trying to help me out of the armor because I’m pulling at it and I still feel like I can’t get enough air and all I want is for it to be off me … but at the same time everyone needs to stop pulling at me. 

Immediately after, I am asked to articulate what happened.  It's unsettling that I don’t remember.  Thor asks me how I got the knife away, and I have no idea.  

Luckily, there was a video.  It took multiple viewings, many in slow motion, to even begin to sort out what happened in those sixteen seconds.   

I can see that my “attacker” approaches, and drops down beside me, leaning over me, holding the knife to my throat.  He whispers to me so quietly that his words aren't audible on the video.  For the first few seconds I’m completely frozen.  Then he starts pulling at my clothes, which finally breaks the freeze and I start struggling.  I can see the instant where my left hand makes contact with the knife.  Suddenly my hand is grabbing at the weapon, and I’m shoving it away and down while hitting him in the face.  The weapon starts to come back up, but I lock it against my side in an underhand grip.  Using his pinned arm as a pivot, I roll him over my hip and onto his back to my left.  As he lands, I hold onto the weapon arm, pinning it to the floor, with my right elbow against his neck.  I shift to slam the weight of my upper torso onto the weapon arm to pin it more securely, while simultaneously delivering three elbow strikes to the side of his head in just over a second.  (The first elbow comes in so fast that I only notice it in slow-motion.)  By the second elbow strike, the knife is already in my hand – he’s lost his grip and is bringing his hands up to protect his face and head.  I get up on my knees while switching the knife from a left-handed positive grip to a right-handed icepick grip.  With my left forearm across his upper chest/throat, I “stab” him twice in the left chest before the scenario is ended.  (I don’t even see the second “stab” until I play the clip in slow motion.  The hilt of the knife barely rises high enough to be visible above my shoulder.) 

All of my SD training up to that point was preparing me for this drill.  Although I don’t remember being aware of all that much during the actual “attack”, when I break the video down into its smallest components, I can see the marks of my SD training.  Three elbow strikes to the head … even though I had gained control after two, we train to strike at least three times.  The singular focus on getting and keeping control of the knife … central to every one of my “knife fights” with Thor.  I could never master that ground hip-roll in training, and yet, there it was.  I’m surprised that I was able to put it all together.  If I’d had any chance to consider what I should do, I would have overthought things and been paralyzed.  

I took a lot away from the experience.  I realized I'm not helpless.  Faced with a violent asocial scenario, I was able to "slip the leash".  I broke out of the dreaded "freeze".  I still functioned under a massive adrenaline dump.   Some deep part of my brain knew what to do, and just went ahead and did it.  These are all very comforting thoughts. 

Bringing a Knife to a Knife Fight

“It’s better to avoid than to run; better to run than to de-escalate; better to de-escalate than to fight; better to fight than to die. The very essence of self-defense is a thin list of things that might get you out alive when you are already screwed.”  (Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence)
                                                                       
Early in my training, Thor and I talked about people who carry pocket knives.  I’d said something along the lines of “if I’m attacked by a bad guy, and I pull out a knife … well, now there’s a knife, and of course he’d get it away from me instantly.”  Thor’s response was to hand me a rubber training knife and say, “Ok then.  Let’s see if that’s true.” 

During the spirited grappling session which followed, Thor was sometimes able to immobilize me so that I couldn’t use the knife - but much to my surprise, every time he made a move to take it, I was able to slash at him and maintain my grip.  Even with him kneeling on my forearm, I was able to “cut” him when he tried to pry the knife away.  Winding things down, we talked about how having a knife and being able to get to it can change the whole dynamic. 

Students coming in for the next class caught the final few minutes of our playtime and one of them admonished Thor afterwards: “you can’t be teaching her that carrying a knife will make her safe, it’s just not true!”

That statement bothered me, and continues to bother me.  I bristle at the implication that Thor would give me a false sense of security (he doesn’t), and that I would be so gullible as to believe that a knife will protect me in an assault (I don’t). 

Here's something that nobody has ever had to tell or teach me:  if I’m ever assaulted by a bad guy with a knife, I want to have a knife too (as opposed to an empty hand).  Who wouldn’t?   

I’m under no illusions that having a knife would keep me “safe”.  More than likely, in an assault involving a knife, I’ll never even know a knife is in play until it’s too late.  One of the principles of self-defense is that the force that I may use in defending myself has to be reasonable and proportional to the force I am defending against.  If I ever find myself in a situation where drawing a knife would constitute reasonable/proportional force, I am definitely NOT safe. That doesn't mean I won’t be damn glad to have it.  It might gain me a couple of percentage points when I’m “already screwed”.     

 “Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.”  (Theodore Roosevelt)

Ask Me About My Bruises

“Why is a caterpillar wrapped in silk while it is changing into a butterfly?  So the other caterpillars can’t hear the screams.  Change hurts.” (Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence)

The first good bruises I got at self-defense training were in the shape of a hand.  Four fingers and a thumb, all clearly visible on my wrist.  I‘d been learning how to escape from wrist grabs.  

Another nice set of bruises appeared after a session spent learning how to break out of choke holds.  Two perfect thumb-prints under my jaw. 

Perhaps my best set of bruises came after I confessed I was afraid to carry a knife because I was sure I'd lose it to an attacker.  Showing that this isn’t necessarily true, Thor handed me a training knife and then tried to take it from me for the better part of an hour.         

Today I’m admiring some fresh bruises on my forearms and legs.  Double knife fight two days ago, and Thor kept whacking me with his blade every time I tried to slash at him. 

I started self-defense training five months ago.  Early on, I’d deflect any praise by accusing Thor of going easy on me, or letting me win.  I refused to believe that there was anything I could realistically do to defend against someone so much stronger and more skilled.  It must have seemed like I was complaining about his teaching, even though I’d actually felt from the start that he was an excellent teacher.  I just didn’t believe that I was doing anything of value to defend against his “attacks”, and I wasn’t able to trust that he actually was taking me seriously until he started leaving marks.    (I’m sure a psychologist could have a field day with that statement.)  Once Thor started “attacking” me more aggressively, I found I became better at defending.  The side effect is that I now get banged around more, but every bruise feels like the sign of a job well done. 

When I look at my bruises, I am reminded of the lessons I’m learning in training.  I’m learning that I can still use my arms and hands even after they have been whacked or kicked or stomped or grabbed hard enough to leave marks.  I’m learning that pain doesn’t always incapacitate, that it’s something one can get somewhat used to, and even ignore in the right mindset.  I’m learning not to give up no matter how outmatched I may be.  I’m also learning that inflicting pain on an opponent may only be a very temporary solution.  Most importantly, I am learning that I have a teacher who respects me enough to not make things easy for me.  I am learning that I have a teacher who respects my limits but will not coddle me or indulge a victim identity.  I am learning that I have a teacher who will keep shoving me past my comfort zone so that I can constantly improve. 

Bruises fade.  The lessons will remain.