Are you ready to confront the complex and alarming realities of active killer situations? Buckle up for a deep dive into the realm of self-defense with Aaron, as he recounts his journey from Krav Maga to BJJ to conducting active shooter seminars across the country. His experiences emphasize the critical role of decision-making in surviving such situations, with his stories providing valuable insights into the importance of fast, decisive action.
This episode delves into the nitty-gritty of self-defense training, highlighting the distressing prevalence of blade attacks and underscoring the urgency of practical, realistic training. Hear about the Knife Control Concepts program, a potent tool in equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills to safeguard themselves better. We'll also uncover how to create intensity within the training environment in a meaningful manner, using a gamut of techniques ranging from dry fire shooting and timing drills to incorporating running into the regimen.
This episode brought to you by Blackstone Publishing. Make sure to check out Andrews & Wilson’s new thriller, SONS OF VALOR III
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Are you ready to confront the complex and alarming realities of active killer situations? Buckle up for a deep dive into the realm of self-defense with Aaron, as he recounts his journey from Krav Maga to BJJ to conducting active shooter seminars across the country. His experiences emphasize the critical role of decision-making in surviving such situations, with his stories providing valuable insights into the importance of fast, decisive action.
This episode delves into the nitty-gritty of self-defense training, highlighting the distressing prevalence of blade attacks and underscoring the urgency of practical, realistic training. Hear about the Knife Control Concepts program, a potent tool in equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills to safeguard themselves better. We'll also uncover how to create intensity within the training environment in a meaningful manner, using a gamut of techniques ranging from dry fire shooting and timing drills to incorporating running into the regimen.
This episode brought to you by Blackstone Publishing. Make sure to check out Andrews & Wilson’s new thriller, SONS OF VALOR III
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome to the Protectors podcast. We just go on a show. We just go Now. Aaron, I met you through our illustrious friend Todd Fox.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think Todd is everywhere.
Speaker 2:I think Todd is like he's literally.
Speaker 1:I'm in another country right now. Yeah, man, aaron, you got a lot going on. Man, I like talking to people who are in this realm the defensive end, slash offensive realm when you talk about active shooters and stuff, because active killers, as you like to call it and I think that's a great thing to talk about, man right off the bat is active killers. Not everything is defensive, yes, not everything's controlled. Sometimes you have to go on the offensive. So when you're talking about someone who's actively trying to take a life, including maybe yours, you got to respond, man, you got to go offensive. How'd you get into this space, man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to be honest, I found martial arts in Krab Maga back in 2008. And for me personally, I was coming out of college, didn't really have a lot of guidance on where I was going to go, so I was a pissed off, angry kid and I happened to find see a commercial for a Krab Maga gym that was local and I had been looking for to get back into martial arts. Anyway, I did a little bit when I was a kid, but anyway, so that was the introduction. To be fully honest, I happened to find a really really great place, hard training, not you know the age of knowledge, but you know, not like BS, like we were doing Jitsu and kick boxing and Krab Maga concepts, and we were training hard. But I started coaching there pretty quick. Pretty sure the guy knew, like, this dude doesn't have much going on, probably help him out a little bit. He seems to be here a lot and he seems to be pretty good at what he's doing. So I started coaching there very quickly. I joined in February of 2008. And I was certified in coaching by August and again, I was there probably six days a week at that point. Anyway, my first introduction to self defense was through that and through coaching self defense was that my first introduction to teaching, you know, active shooter or active killer courses actually came through.
Speaker 2:One of the gentlemen that taught at that facility was a lieutenant for the one of the police departments in the area and at the time this is 2009, it was usually referred to workplace violence seminars or school shooting seminars. We hadn't really adopted the like. Oh, you know crap, this actually happens out in public too. So I, we were just attending his seminars or assisting. You know. By assisting I mean pretty much letting him spear tackle us with a gun and, you know, walk everybody through all the drills. So I started assisting with a lot of those courses and I learned a lot from from Matt his name was Matt Kissel learned a ton from Matt. That set me kind of on that path of helping out and assisting and learning more you know research wise about what was going on there and then drove a little bit deeper into it with a gentleman by the name of Rob Pinkes who's a good friend of mine. He was running a school attacker response course kind of jumped in there, did some training with him as well. We started teaching some loose seminars at my facility. This is now fast forward to 2013,.
Speaker 2:The facility that we're at here and we started teaching some smaller seminars and programs just to educate the community. And then 2000 and 2015,. You have the the France attack, the Vatican theater, and then the multiple attacks around the area and in close proximity to the San Bernardino attack, and that was when everything really put a spotlight on that subsection of issues that we're running into. So we happened to run a free course quickly here in here and a buddy of ours came out and just wanted to film it. It was like, hey, can I document this course? So anyway, long story short, we had a ton of people show up from all over, all different backgrounds, and we ran them through a physical training class. They were hitting things, fighting over guns. You know, we were doing simulations at the time. We didn't have the money for sin guns and things like that. So we've got a guy running around a corner with a fake gun and somebody behind him clapping focus mitts together just to create some of the chaos. And we had some of our staff as roleplayers. We're trying to simulate the best version at the time of what we know to create stress and then help people walk through.
Speaker 2:Okay, what happened? What adjustments do we need to make? What's the difference between if you're across the room versus next to the shooter and versus going after them and running away and all that kind of fun stuff? So then the video that that my friend Ward took went viral. We had hit like. He posted it online for, for the record, which is the company he was with, it got picked up by the blaze at the time. It was like 3.8 million views in three days. I mean it was. It was crazy. So, anyway, we started traveling across the country. A ton of people were asking us to do it, and so I used 2016,.
Speaker 2:I taught more than 80 seminars on active shooter, which we eventually evolved into active killer. Because then what did we start seeing? We started seeing not just shooting. It was people using their cars to hit people, and people you know using their cars and then getting out of the car and using a knife, which happened right here at Ohio State.
Speaker 2:And then you know you have the, the Parisian attack, where he started with a rifle and then, when I got taken away, he went to a handgun and when that got taken away, he had a box cutter and he also happened to hammer and he also happened to petrol, so it became more than just the gun. It became the concepts of survival. Okay, so how do I deal with somebody trying to kill me or the people I care about and what are the choices? I think that's the biggest piece for us is it's really about decision making. There's the execution of I hate saying techniques, because fighting is just learning how to fight really, as it comes down to, but the physical execution is going to happen. The faster that I can make decisions and the more aggressively I can act on those decisions. So we build our courses around teaching physical skill sets and, more importantly, giving people opportunities to actually have to make decisions on what skill sets are necessary at any moment in time.
Speaker 1:I think you brought up you know a few things there before we go on too is like blades. Blades are huge and we're going to get into the knife control later on, but stress, stress, stress, stress and you're gonna, and I always hate that edge. We got to practice something 10,000 times. I'm like you know what you throw someone. I could dry fire all day long, but if there's no stress involved with it, there's no violence of action, there's no something that's going to trigger that response. You can get. You can get quote unquote muscle memory maybe.
Speaker 1:But when you're in training environment and you start throwing different variables at people like, okay, maybe someone comes in with a gun cool, you know, we're used to active shooters, run, hide, fight, whatever when you start thinking about blades blades are so Speed, is so efficient that they come from nowhere and more people are carrying a blade than they are a gun. And a lot of times maybe that violence isn't coming just from someone who's set out to do it, but you trigger someone and their rage comes out and they pull a blade. How many videos have we seen lately? How much documenting have we seen lately? If people just they get in a fight, boom, they pull the blade and before you know it, an artery is cut and the dude's dead. So I like the idea of thinking about the blades, brother.
Speaker 2:Well, the blades are terrifying and that's one of the reasons that we really started diving into the knife control concepts program, which is one of the other courses we travel around with. Is you know, 15 plus years of doing this, I've yet to find a knife defense system program teaching, whatever it is that I'm like hell. Yeah, that's the one Like I feel really confident in my ability to not get cut up with that set of skills and it kept falling back to the fact that it's really about percentages. It's the more I train, you know, as realistically and pragmatic as possible, the higher the likelihood I can survive the largest amount of variables that could be thrown into any type of situation. I started to learn more and more over the years that the old school way that I was originally introduced to knife defense, specifically an even gun defense, going back to shooter things it's never a technique. You know, when you're in a training environment a lot of times like, for instance, I started in Krab Maga and in the Krab Maga world it's you have gun from the front, one handed, and the person standing there relatively stationary, and I'm doing the movements and nine times out of 10, everything's going pretty well for me and then we'll build stress into that, but it's still taught as a subset of techniques and the distance of the whole entire picture, like how did this start?
Speaker 2:What was your day like? Are you injured? Are you not injured? Are you with your kids? Are you not with your kids? Are they just threatening you with the gun or the knife, or are they actively stabbing at you and going there? There's a whole psychology of components of that as well, like were they even willing to use the blade and they just wanted to threaten you and overpower you? Or did they actually come into it and go no, I'm going to stab this person. I'm going to feel a blade plunge into their body. I'm going to feel them. You know the blood on my hand, which is a completely different style of psychology. Then I'm going to shoot you from 10 feet away, where I don't have to touch you or, you know, smell your breath or anything there. So we started to see like okay, yes, there are some elements that go specifically to blades, but really the reality of it is is I have to train consistently, I have to train a lot. I have to train under what we refer to as meaningful intensity, which is where you're going with the conversation you're at, which is okay.
Speaker 2:So fire example what fires learning? It's the techniques, it's the fundamentals, it's the basics. It's removed of for the most part I don't want to say all stress. Holding a gun can be very stressful for some people but it's removed of most outside stress. I'm in complete control. There's no live ammunition. So that's a good way for me to work on my grip and work on my trigger control and my breathing and all that, and then eventually we need to add layers of intensity to that to start making it real. That's going to be different for everybody, but we use the term meaningful intensity because I can also take somebody that's done nothing but dry fire and then go well, you need to train with stress. And then I throw them immediately into a full simulation where they just botch it completely and now I didn't really teach them anything, except for I'm starting to loosely convince them that everything they've done before was worthless and it didn't mean anything. And you suck at this and you're going to die, which is a terrible lesson to try to teach them.
Speaker 2:So we talk about building intensity in a meaningful way, and for us, you know, if you've been in training long enough, any variable you add to training technically is a layer of intensity. Like if I have you dry fire shooting and then I just say, ok, well, now you need to do the same exact thing, but strong hand. That variable alone is already like holy shit, like I got a man like the way I'm holding this, and now it's moving on me. It's like all right, cool. Then you get good at that and it's like, ok, well, now, have you ever done weekend shooting? And then it's like it goes out of your mind. And then it's you know, hey, now you're on a timer, ok, cool.
Speaker 2:So now our shot timer. We're starting to add a layer of intensity. How I'm going to have you, you know, sprint 50 yards now, get your gun out and make live fire shots and actually hit those on whatever target we're describing. And then it's you know, ok, now you're going to fight somebody and then maybe run up to the line, access a live firearm and then go to shoot. So now we have the complexity of that and then we can start adding, you know, simulation training into it. And now, all of a sudden, it's. When do I even pull the gun out? Does it make sense for me to have the gun?
Speaker 2:in my hand yet you know, and how is that so like, but it's, I've got to do that or I should do that. I don't say I have to, but I should do that in a way that's like OK, you've gotten good at this, Now we're going to add some friction and then, when you meet that friction, we'll add some friction. Meet that friction, add some friction. Meet that friction, add some friction. And then you know you're in a Craig Douglas course, which, if anybody knows Craig Douglas, you know you're in a Craig Douglas course starting on your back with a sim gun, with a guy over top of you that just happens to be a third degree black belt and jujitsu.
Speaker 2:That's two hundred and seventy pounds and it's like three, two, one, go, don't die, and that's like a decent expression of a real life situation. Well, there's some steps between here and there that we should probably look into as some skill sets, and to me, stress and variables is an important one, because everybody needs it. You know, if you walk in we usually say if you walk in and you're killing it, like if you go to the range and you fire 50 rounds and all 50 hit exactly where you want it to hit then I'm not going to say he's to turning session.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a training session, because you're not putting yourself to go. I want to miss. You know, I want to go 45 out of 50 and I want to. You know, for whatever reason it is, maybe I'm trying to draw faster and shoot. Well, it works the same exact way in fighting a sick wrestling. For instance, if I teach somebody a double leg on a completely cooperative opponent, eventually they're still going to fumble it in the beginning, but eventually they'll be able to nail that exactly how we want it. And then I give you a little bit of pressure. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Then I started adding in some other elements. Okay cool. Well, that's light years away from. I'm fighting you and now I'm trying to hit a double leg on you and you don't want me to hit a double leg, but also you're trying to hit me with whatever you're trying to hit me with. So there's steps and layers of that, and rushing people too far can be a problem. Rushing them not fast enough, or I should say holding them back too much, is definitely a problem. So there's a sweet spot in coaching, that is, we refer to it at. You know your basic, you know Pareto principle or the 80 20 principle right?
Speaker 1:Well, aaron, I want to. Before we go on, I want to mention a few good things there. Coaching is one. Yes, because a lot of people like well, training, you're going to go there and you're going to have a set thing and it's not tailored towards any one individual. No, the first thing you mentioned, though and I this word, I wish people would understand what this word really means is stationary. Yeah, so much of our training is stationary.
Speaker 1:You know, law enforcement, your handcuffing techniques are always with a compliant. When you're starting a compliant, eventually they're rolling into it, or with a roll one. Like you know, one or two role player situations here and there, firearms, all, almost all qualifications I know of are coming stationary, but the big dynamic is they turn the target, you know, but you're not moving. There's no dynamic, there's no stress. So, ramping up that stress and, like you said, coaching the right person and not having them hold back. Some people are ready to go, and then you got to push them a little bit farther and little bit farther each Time, but some people are like, oh shit, this is a gun. What do I do? So, yeah, man, so 80, 20 or whatever you want to talk about those. I like that, like where this is going.
Speaker 2:You're a hundred percent on that. You know it's. Fights are never Stationary. Nothing. You know what I mean, whether it's from law enforcement trying to cuff, you know whether it's, you know, a military operation, whatever they have to do. I mean, movement is everything. And now that all of that comes back down to where I'm at, which for the most part is in the Private sector, it's, it's, you know, civilian training. And the second that you stop moving, you lose a ton of options. And most fights are dynamic. They're going to be stand up, they're gonna be on the ground. So you're a hundred percent right.
Speaker 2:Even just getting somebody to walk the line and have to shoot and then even a walk, walk somewhere else, square back up to a target, make a shot or shoot while they're doing a nice easy walk, is Complicated enough for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:But again, like if we kind of play that 80 20 principle and it's a loose rule, obviously there's no specifics to it, but the idea behind it is in a good learning environment, in my expense, you should win in the vast majority of the time and you should still be struggling a little bit or failing a couple of times.
Speaker 2:And if you keep that for the most part in that 80 20 rule, then you should be in a pretty good spot to continue to progress forward. And then if you come off of a training program or, let's say, a training session, and I go like man, like I was getting my ass kicked today, like there was nothing was going right, it's like, okay, let's analyze that it could just be today's not your day which happens for some of us, some days are just off but it could be the way we're training. Maybe I need to slow something down, maybe I need to go back and finalize things. So you know, we're big fans of Consistently adding layers at a meaningful pace, so that people feel good, they feel like they're making progress, they are actually understanding what they're doing. But they're also starting to realize that it's not this easy.
Speaker 2:And every time I start thinking it is this easy, coach throws in another layer of something and I go crap, like I didn't even realize that was there, and that's starting to build us closer and closer to what may look like a real fight. You can never simulate real attacks, real violent encounters inside of a controlled environment, because you're taking away the biggest component of all, which is I could actually die, you know. You know, even in the most chaotic training environments, most people are going into it, going even though this is gonna suck, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna leave here relatively unscathed. So even just taking that element out of it, the person standing across me doesn't actually want to kill me. But even if they hate me, they sure as hell don't want to deal with the lawsuits and in all the legality of it. But that out, it's no longer a real fight. Nobody's actually stab me or shooting you. So we have to create as much intensity as we can to get them as close as possible. And whether we do that here at the gym, in our you know our Krab Maga program, our Jiu Jitsu program, our firearms program, or whether it's when I'm traveling around teaching you know the active killer courses, or teaching the night control concepts courses, that's a huge piece of the puzzle. It's not about getting people to memorize a series of techniques. It's about giving them a baseline to work off of and then showing them how to practice it by gradually increasing intensity to get as Close to realism as possible because, like we were talking about earlier, a lot of fighting, a lot of self-defense survival is decision-making and we see this Blasted across. You know you're talking about, you know how much. How many videos have we seen lately where a simple fight starts to turn into Somebody getting stabbed, or a simple road rage incident starts to turn into somebody getting shot?
Speaker 2:Those are decisions on both sides of the coin. Those are decisions for the one dude that is getting out of his car and he's ramped up too high and that's a whole psychology thing because he's made enough decisions to that point in his life where he hasn't dealt with his trauma, his anger, issues, whatever the hell that is to deal with. So he made a crap ton of decisions up till this point and For some reason, the guy that cut him off in a red light justifies Killing that person or potentially killing that person a good. At this moment we can't see past that decision to realize that you're just about to screw up the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years of your life and Everything's gonna go down. Go from there.
Speaker 2:Those are decisions. Those are decisions before a bad event happens. Those are decisions taking place very quickly in a very violent encounter, and then, obviously, there's decisions be made afterwards. And then, on the other coin of that, if I'm the one that did the cutting off, I have decisions I can never stop. Don't get baited by the person that's following me trying to get so. I keep driving, I drive to my nearest. You know law enforcement.
Speaker 2:I know department, parking their freaking driveway while I'm talking to them to get them to come out and deal with it. I can, if I do find myself where I can't get away. You know what security and training do I have inside of my car? If it's a verbal confrontation, learn to just eat your freaking ego. And hey, you know what man I just? I'm having a terrible day. I wasn't even paying attention. I'm so sorry. I cut you off. That's totally my bad. Whatever that is, I don't need to puff my chest up and go. No, you know f you man ego I'll do what I want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ego just kills. So it's all decisions, and so decision-making is a huge part of self-defense to me. I think the decision-making process is what differs Not completely, but what differs from learning techniques and martial arts, an Actual application to protecting myself and my family. It's gonna come down to decisions. I have these tools, whether it's my firearm, my open hand skills, maybe I'm carrying a knife, maybe I'm carrying a medical kit, whatever those tools are. Those are the skills and rules resource I have access to. But if I'm in a self-defense situation, when do I use those things? How do I use those things? What are the repercussions of using those things and, more importantly, how fast can I process Whatever's happening in front of me, take that information in, make a decision to then use one of those resources, and we don't. More often than not, decision-making is not at the forefront.
Speaker 2:Lot of training, and that can be super problematic, no matter what you're trying to train Especially this episode brought to you by sons of valor three and blackstone publishing sons of valor three War machine chunk is back.
Speaker 1:Man, I love this series, this, you know. I just really started listening to sons of valor, probably about a month and a half ago, and I was instantly hooked. I cannot wait for this third book to come out. It's gonna be my first purchase. Ray Porter is incredible as a narrator and Andrews and Wilson are Two of the best authors out there. You really need to check out sons of valor three war machine out Now.
Speaker 1:The only time I've seen decision-making being primary is, well, you know, some law enforcement, you know, but primarily in a military. It's like you need to make a decision. It may not be the best decision, but you need to do it now or people could die. You know, and that's the same thing when you get the concept of I really like this idea of People need to understand that hesitation kills. Yeah, you need to make a decision. It may not be the most, the perfect absolutely nothing's ever perfect but you have to make a decision. And that is like what kind of tools do I have? Like you know, am I carrying a knife today? Am I carrying a gun today? Am I carrying nothing today? Am I gonna take the? If I'm gonna throw my ego out the window, just drive. You know it all comes down to decision-making. You're right, brother and it's easier.
Speaker 2:It's easier said than yes you go back to.
Speaker 2:You know coaching and you know I'm. I was a very young coach. I started, I mentioned I found it. I you know I was 20 when I first started doing this stuff and there was a lot I didn't know. But life and everything, life, law enforcement, what self defense was, I had to punch somebody and I didn't want to get in trouble for it. That's why I ended up in martial arts right and you know, over time you learn those things.
Speaker 2:So I always encourage young coaches to be bold in what they represent. You know to be humble in the fact that they don't know what they're doing, but to be bold to get out there and say some things. Let people call bullshit on you and accept it when it is bullshit. But Teaching, like good coaching, comes down to what am I trying to accomplish? And when it comes down to self-defense, the only metric is how safe am I making my students after every one hour that I see them? And safety is Not a right cross. Safety is not a you know a, faster shots on target, all that type stuff. Those are tools to potentially get there.
Speaker 2:But safety really comes down to again, like you're talking about those decisions. It's like if I've never taught. If they've always come to class and I always teach them that the answer to aggression is to be aggressive, which is a good answer, like you need to harness violence and understand how to use it and understand how to temper it, but if I never teach them that in an active shooter situation or in a knife attack or in a violent encounter, that you should run away. Or, more importantly, if you see the opportunity to use your words to de-escalate a situation, then do that. Because no matter, even if you win the cell, that situation there could be Legal repercussions afterwards, could be traumatic emotional repercussions afterwards. Even if I win you know, quote-unquote, win a knife attack, that doesn't mean I didn't get stabbed in the process.
Speaker 2:And though I defeated that person, whatever that meant, and I got away. But I'm gonna live the rest of my life with a colostomy bag that kind of sucks right. So you know, we need to be Educating them on holistically, like how do I make them safe? And that is more than just a series of techniques and curriculum that is being presented now. The difficulty in that as a business owner is this is all very conceptual, it's. It's it takes a depth of understanding to be able to coach that. That is Very hard to scale.
Speaker 2:You look, you look at you know a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu program. Or you look at, you know a Krav Maga Curriculum or program or association or affiliation, whatever you look at even a firearms regimen. Well, at some point in time, if I'm gonna train trainers to go out and spread the good word of whatever program I have, At some point I need to codify things and I need to water it down a little bit and make it a little more concise and take some of the nuance out of it. So the problem with that then becomes if that's what people then view as self-defense. It ends up being a list of techniques and curriculum, and that's better than nothing by you, by the way, like I. You know, training, any training is Okay, maybe any, but most training is better than no training in some cases.
Speaker 2:But there is a degree where, as you get good at coaching and you really start to understand what you're trying to accomplish, you have to understand that it's not so easily repeatable. It's not just a list of things I'm checking off, it's not just hey, they made 50 classes, so now they understand what they're doing. It's like how am I presenting the material, how am I challenging them? If I have a group of 20 people, it's not gonna be the same one-hour class is not gonna be the same experience for all 20 people. They're all showing up with different backgrounds, different experience levels, different body types, different psychological issues, different context. And I have to, to the best of my ability as a good coach, I need to get to know them enough that I can curate the, the lesson, today's lesson, to whatever their needs are, whether that's an intensity or whether that's a conversation or whether that's a context, you know, and that that comes to deep levels of coaching, which is easier said than done. And I'll tell you right now. Again, you know, I'm almost 16 years into just coaching and I mean at least half of that. I was not doing that well. You know what I mean. So we're talking seven plus years, but that's how I learned to do it.
Speaker 2:You make mistakes and then you look at it and go like man, what did I do there? Like why did that class go off the rails so fast? And it's not their fault, it's obviously my fault, I'm the one leading it. So, like how, what did I? You know? And then you go talk to people and you learn, you train it, exposed to it. But there's a difference between practical application and understanding for an end user, civilian or a law enforcement officer, for someone in the military and then for a coach, and Now in the coaching sector, I need to understand the differences for civilians, for law enforcement, for military context, and then as a law enforcement officer, I need to understand that there's on-duty and off-duty. There's off-duty by myself, off-duty with my family, and all of these little mini contexts matter.
Speaker 1:You know it's and that's that. That's what sets people apart from being a real coach and real trainer. Then, like the the fly the mill where, hey, you come here and you attend ten classes, we're gonna give you XYZ belt, or we're gonna give you a certificate, or we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. You brought up a lot of good points about the different mentalities people. You know Todd wrote his book underpinning about hey, you know, if you're an instructor and you're gonna go out there and you're gonna teach law enforcement, they fall under completely different parameters.
Speaker 1:You can't just kill people. You know it's not like. You know. Hey, you know I gotta fight. You have different, different uses of force. But yeah, the other thing too is, like, you really do need to be a coach. You can't just teach a curriculum. You have to look at your audience, have to look at your students and you have to know something about them and not just like the 30 second hey, tell me about your background, because you don't know what that person did the night before. You know if they have some stresses going on, and especially when you're dealing with people who have been victimized before it, maybe the reason they're there at the training Is because they've been a victim. So now you have to think about the psychological aspects of it.
Speaker 2:I did gosh, this was Was right before the, the COVID issue, so probably 2019, maybe early 2020. We do a challenge here at our our facility endeavor in Columbus, ohio. We do a challenge every year, mostly based around fitness, but to kickstart people before the year starts like, don't wait for the new year, you know, get off your butt, let's get after it right now. Anyway, I did. I offered every single person that took the the challenge that year a 30 minute just one-on-one with me behind closed doors. And I've done previous training with an organization under a gentleman by the name of Mark England. He runs it's called in lifted, but they do a ton of psychology and story work and background training and I've done a lot of communications research.
Speaker 2:You know, the deeper I got into coaching, I started to realize that coaching Literally is communication and if you don't study communication and understand that, you're gonna miss a lot of the coach. But anyway, so I ended up interviewing about 40 people One-on-one 30 minute and usually it started off as you know what are your goals. And then I would. I would just ask questions to get deeper into their goals and out of about 40 people, 50% of them out of a conversation initiated off of goals simply by Asking another layer deeper into what their goal was.
Speaker 2:I learned in those cases about Pre-sexual abuse issues they were having, you know, with marital issues that they're running through right now, financial issues and trouble. They've gone through Stuff they saw as a child seeing somebody get beat, stabbed, killed, all those type things. Things that are never going to come out in a group class and they're never gonna come out in a superficial conversation like you're saying. Like if I come up to say, hey, how are you doing? Tell me about your background, well, if you have never met you before, you go hey, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna go Well, when I was seven years old, I was sexually abused and that's traumatized me for the rest of my life. It's also driven me into really poor relationships and now they've started to abuse me and you know so I'm just in a lot of stress and everywhere I go I'm paranoid and triggered by everything going on. That's not how people express. You have to actually over. Time and again it is easier said than done. I, you know, I want to make people understand that again, I've been teaching full-time for, you know, almost 16 years and and I didn't do this for a long time but you're not, you're rarely going to get those things out of people in a large environment or a superficial conversation.
Speaker 2:You have to be able to look at them and maybe ask a couple of tough questions when it's right. You have to be able to empathize with them. You have to be able to meet them emotionally where they're at. You have to be able to give them space to open up into that stuff. And that's not for every coach because that's deep, that's, it's heavy stuff to hold.
Speaker 2:However, you're going to fully understand why the you know, 23 year old you know kid in your class has trouble paying attention, is always trying to show off. It might be beneficial to understand that he was raised by an abusive father that shamed him for everything he did wrong and he's overcompensating for that going forward. And then we can understand that, well, you know, you're about his dad's age and he's starting to relate to you as a father figure and he started to act out in that case. And again, that's not for every coach to understand or to have to go down, but it's a lot easier for coaches to say, well, that kid's just an asshole and he doesn't pay attention, and it is for them to actually try to figure out what we'll look at it this way too is like, take the variable out of it.
Speaker 1:You know Most of the people I wouldn't say most, but there is a reason they are. They are going somewhere to get that training, even in law enforcement. What something happened was you, were you on a particular stop or a particular investigation where you're like you know that the hair in the back of your head went up and you're like I'm not ready for this. Was it someone like that, like that kid, over compensated because he was abused? He's not an asshole, but he wants to learn and he wants to get over that and he figures hang and to go to this class. I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 1:You know the knife control concepts to is like. You know, growing up and getting in a law enforcement, I've always like I'm more afraid of getting stabbed than I was getting shot, like when I was in a border patrol, like decades ago. I was always afraid to be up in the mountains and get stabbed in my ribs. I was like, oh man, a mountain here in middle of nowhere, more than getting shot, you know, and it's like the knife and like we were talking about before with the, with the blades. There's so much of it out there, man. Yeah, and you guys, what's tell me about the knife control concepts? I know you know you're pretty prevalent on Instagram and all this stuff with knife control concepts. Well, you guys are traveling around and training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so KCC knife control concepts. But if you're cool in this industry you have to have an acronym. So so yeah, kcc Um it's. It's a training program around dealing with a close quarters knife attack. So the way that we look at it is we, we handle the muddiest part of it, which is understanding positions of control and moving in and out of that. So, for instance, in a KCC one, which is our, our introductory program, it's two six hour days. First day is stand up, second day is on the ground and we show you how to transfer those together. We're running you through what we've seen to be both common positions people find themselves in when they're trying to survive, which I think is a very important distinction versus when they're trying to be martial arty. So these are very like starting points that are like oh crap, oh my gosh, that we see not only out of trained individuals, also out of untrained individuals. So we're running them through common positions. We see and then also what tend to be more successful positions and we're showing them how those two intertwine. And I can get one to next. We do that on the stand up. We show them how to use energy and movement, start to treat in the Basic concepts hence the term knife control concepts Around movement and defense, and preferably not getting stabbed. And then we do that all day one. We take them to the ground Voluntarily with us and then we teach them how to control those elements on the ground.
Speaker 2:What's beautiful about the program is it's not meant to be a standalone knife defense program. It's meant to supplement whatever you do. So if you're trying to run away, our goal is to get you to whatever point you need to do to run away. If you're a law enforcement officer and you need to cuff, we're going to get you to the position you feel most comfortable doing, whatever your cuffing technique is. So the KCC program Even though you know myself and one of the other coaches, there's three of us Myself, mike Chaney, who's my Jiu Jitsu coach here, and then Eli Knight, who's based out of Charlotte. He's down there with Knight Jiu Jitsu working out of the Fit to Fight area in Charlotte.
Speaker 2:The three of us are KCC, so we travel around and do this course externally. So we teach it in-house. It's mixed into our program, but KCC the stand alone. We travel around the country and do that. So, for instance, I'll be in Boston the week before Thanksgiving. So, coming up here pretty soon I'm doing like a two-hour workshop on surviving, you know, some control positions on the ground, and then we're taking the holidays off, you know, because it's the holidays, and then, starting back up in January, we'll be in Georgia, georgia and Texas in January. We'll be in Los Angeles and Chicago February, and then we've pretty got Vermont, maryland, ohio on the books.
Speaker 2:Oregon will be coming up, connecticut again, and what we do is we essentially host two or three day trainings. They're very intense, they're very hands-on, but to the point that we discussed earlier, it's instead of teaching a series of techniques that are meant to be like well, if they stab you this way, this is your response, but if it's this way, you do a different response. We're teaching people how to fight and, more importantly, we're teaching them how to practice, because you don't learn anything in a two-day training. You're exposed to information. In a two-day training, you're set up to learn that information.
Speaker 2:In a two-day training but I'm a big fan of the quote learning is behavior change and if you're going to actually change your behavior, the way your body senses energy, the way your body moves when you're in those cases, how you respond to certain things. If you're actually going to learn something and own it, you have to consistently train it. So we built the program to not only teach these concepts and these positions and these movements, but, more importantly, for somebody to be able to go. Well, listen, I'm already a law enforcement officer. I already work a crazy schedule and then I'm told, because I'm a law enforcement officer, I'm supposed to do at least two hours at Jiu-Jitsu. So I'm doing two hours at Jiu-Jitsu, and then I got kids that are in basketball and all this other stuff. You want me to add another two or three hours of night defense into my week.
Speaker 2:It's never going to happen. Instead, set the system up to be practiceable for five minutes before your Jiu-Jitsu session, or five to 10 minutes before you go on a shift, or five minutes as a cool down, or five minutes right before you go to bed or right when you wake up, whatever it is. If you're doing five minutes three to five times a week, you're constantly touching the information. It doesn't need to be an hour, it doesn't need to be three hours. You're constantly reminding yourself of the pieces, of the energy, of the pushes, of the pools, of the fighting, of the movement of the hand switches, and you're starting to really build that sensitivity so that when you're running up against, whoever it is, if we stay in the law enforcement context, if I have a situation and I am cuffing somebody and during that cuffing I notice their hand escape and start to move towards their waistline, which is never a good thing- and all of a sudden, a knife is produced, I don't have to think about what to do.
Speaker 2:My body is closer and closer and closer to going. Oh shit, there goes that hand. I want to grab it here, I want to pull this way, I want to move this direction. And so the system is built to actually be practiceable, as opposed to most seminars which anybody who's been in any martial arts or anything you go to a two-day seminar and, man, even if you take good notes, you're lucky if you actually absorb 20% of what you were taught and actually can execute on it like actually execute on it because it's what you do after the seminar that goes.
Speaker 2:So not only do we teach them how to practice, but we supply you on my training module that has all of the videos, lesson plans, backup information. You can send us emails and all that type of stuff. So we actually want people to get better, I think, is where I'm going with this, so we actually train them into it. So, yeah, we travel around with that, we go coast to coast with it. We're actually hopefully fingers crossed. We're trying to make a trip to Portugal and Germany next year and kind of button those ones up as well.
Speaker 1:But I think you need to bring a podcast for when you go to Germany. I think I need to go out there and podcast them.
Speaker 2:Do you have someone in mind?
Speaker 1:I do Well, brother. I appreciate you coming on, man. This was a great topic and we definitely have to Todd. We'll have to do a round table of Todd next time.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I would love that He'll probably talk me out of the table, though that dude is awesome.
Speaker 1:Once he talks man, once he starts, we'll be on here for like seven hours.
Speaker 2:It'll be great. It'll be 12 episodes back to back. That's all.