#442 | Todd Fox | UNDERPINNING

Todd Fox joined The Protectors® to talk about his new book, UNDERPINNING.  This is a MUST have for any defensive tactics instructors that teach LEOs, this is important for LEOs as well.  There is a ton to unpack in the pages of Underpinning, a ton of NEEDED information.  Listen in as we talk the book and a ton more.  

About Todd: Todd Fox is the founder and owner of the Close Protection Group. He is a former U.S. Marine and was assigned duties that spanned the Corps’ broad gamut, ranged from washing dishes to operating with JTF-6. His access to “B” billets offered insight into unique realms outside the military. Mr. Fox is also a former law enforcement officer. He was responsible for the creation, development and training of a regional law enforcement Special Response Team. His team participated in the protection of humans and assets during several pivotal national events. He is a graduate of multiple advanced programs at the Counterterrorism Division of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Mr. Fox has been a lifelong martial artist. He holds three black belts in uniquely different arts. While in the Marine Corps, he fought in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and retired with a professional record of ten wins and two losses. Mr. Fox is a black belt U.S. National Champion, U.S. Open Champion and Pan American Medalist in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He continues to actively train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai. Mr. Fox has authored three books on protective service operations and numerous articles as a protective security subject matter expert (SME).

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home. Rumi . I love that brother, and I love talking about this book. I didn't have the opportunity to go page by page, but I did go through every, I , I went from front to back and I cherry picked , we were talking about cherrypicking things, but I cherry picked the items in this book that I think are completely relevant for this conversation. Now, joining me today on The Protectors podcast is Todd Fox, author of numerous books now, underpinning being one of 'em . And Todd, thanks for sharing a book with me, brother, and thanks for coming back on the show.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Thank you, man. Appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Now, the title underpinning we were doing like, believe me guys, before we started the show, we talked for 45 minutes. We, we didn't hit record. So I want you to understand that this book is geared towards those who are not l Leos, but as a former retired LEOI like to say that

Speaker 2: 1:08

Congratulations.

Speaker 1: 1:09

I thank you, sir. I think I got a ton outta this book and I want to go back and, and read through it more because there's more fundamentals to this for the protector community than you can imagine. And you know this, I know this, but underpinning the title, where did this come from?

Speaker 2: 1:27

So in, in my realm , uh, crossing over into a bunch of different orals between the military law enforcement protection work and, and fighting , uh, competitive jiujitsu to MMA , um, I have a lot of guys that end up teaching who are my, my peers. They end up teaching law enforcement, but they don't have a fundamental understanding of everything that is rooted in use of force in America. So this book really touches on all of those aspects, the things they need to know with regard to laws, with regard to policies, with regard to, you know, gear and environment and , uh, you know, governing bodies like post and, and all these different aspects that if they're aware of, they can help mold or modify their material that they're presenting to Leo. So for me, when I thought about the material that I was presenting, to me, it all the material is the underpinning of use of force and defensive tactics for the instructor.

Speaker 1: 2:20

That is key. 'cause like the, the book opens up and it's like, hey , more than techniques, and this is the first paragraph, it's crucial for professional defensive tactics. Instructors have a solid understanding of use of force laws, relevant legal cases and agency policies before teaching students for many reasons, absolutely relevant. Listen, you've been in A BJJ world forever. I mean, a long time. Very long time. I'm 30 . I know . I don't , I don't want , I don't wanna bring that up here , <laugh> , but No , but the thing is, man , you've been around, you've, you fought or tussled, what do you call it? Rolled, did all the cool b jj stuff for a long time. But it's not just that you have the background with the military and , and law enforcement and in the security world still, you need to know when you're gonna go and instruct l Leos specifically. You need to understand that it's not just techniques, it's what comes, what , what can you use, what is legally justified to use and what is going to be in each individual agency's policies. 'cause yeah, fourth amendment cool is very cut and dry. It's right there. You know, you can, the constitution pretty cut and dry. You can find it everywhere. But each individual agency has their own use of force policies, continuums, spectrums or whatever they want to call it. So when you came up with this, this idea for this book, I can imagine you were looking at like say , man, wow, it's cool. I know a lot of great instructors out there, but they need them to have a baseline before they go out there and put together their training plan.

Speaker 2: 3:56

Yeah. If, if they go to teach just the techniques from the martial arts, then it's left up to the guy at the street level to figure out the surrounding context and then modify it specific to what they're doing. And the chances of that happening in their own time is pretty slim. So if the instructor understands the context and all the surrounding issues that underpin , uh, you know, use of force and defensive tactics, then he can modify the program so that he's providing the end user that adjusted material. Right. Um, I talked to guys about this a lot. Some of the things that we deal with when we talk about gear, like, okay, I'm wearing 45 pounds of gear, or , um, I'm a pavement, right? I'm training on , on juujitsu mats that are two inches thick and they're soft foam. Instead, now I'm going to concrete if I'm, I'm working in an urban environment, or if I'm in the country working rural area, maybe I'm in a creek on rocks or in mud or dirt or sand. Um, so the environmental factors of cars and multiple opponents and, and you know, individual skill sets and the history of, of the suspect and you know, what substance they're on. So I , I don't want to be using all pain compliances because if I break this guy's arm and he's on crystal meth, a chance of him stopping fighting is pretty slim. Maybe I disable that one arm, but that's a small percentage of the fight. So this is trying to build enough context for the instructor so that when he builds his program, he accounts for these things so that the end user's getting more of a finished product as opposed to, oh, now I've gotta adjust for what he taught me. 'cause I can't really do that with, with our agency policy or with our state statute.

Speaker 1: 5:32

So when you're going in there to do this training plan, and I imagine like if you're a solid instructor, you're going , you can't just have car blanche like, okay, I'm gonna be training in May in one day, New York another day. And then you're gonna go to like, places who may have very strict use of force policies or may have very lenient use of force policies they may have working off of different types of ordinance, different types of, you know, legal mumbo jumbo, different types of liability issues. So you have to understand where you're going and do your, do your research. It's, it's just part of the thing. Even if you just have the basic in your mind of what to do and know what not to do, I think that's, that's very fundamental and that's one thing I like about this book. 'cause you can kind of use it as a, like a training plan and kind of like to spark your memory, okay, yeah, I'm gonna be doing this. I'm not an LEO, but maybe I should talk to an LEO before I go out and do this.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Yeah, absolutely. And you , you have to have some frame of reference for what it is that person's gonna do with the material you're presenting to them. And you really don't want to send your person out to get hemmed up for something. And, and if you look at the book, I talk about the hot button topics and use of force right now and all the things that are associated with it and, you know, duty to intervene and duty to render medical aid and all these different elements that if you're not a Leo, you probably are not aware of.

Speaker 1: 6:56

If you're not a Leo, you could always go over that, that mabo alpha male crap . The , uh, I'd rather be judged by sixth than carry or no judged by 12 than carry by sixth . You can't, and the real world, if you're an l Leo , you're, let's say you're just on a job, you don't have any issues that , hey, you know what, if I lose everything, I'll, I'll be able to adjust. The reality is a lot of l Leos out there, especially the ones that are looking for training now, they've been on a job for a while , probably have families. And what comes with families is not just legal liability, financial liability, and now you have to have the liability of your function. You know, so I like this thing of like, and this is good for instructors too, is like L Leos look at liability a lot different than a civilian instructor dealing with civilians liability when you lie about your ability. And that's true. So if you're gonna go and you're gonna, and to me you could look at this a couple ways. Like yeah , you might know what you're doing, but if you're gonna be teaching L Leos, you have to know, you have to understand, you have to know what your ability is to teach them and not just be like, oh, hey, we're gonna go give free BJJ classes. But yeah, let's look at that aspect of this because you can't, as an LEO , you could literally lose everything, including your freedom if you use the wrong techniques

Speaker 2: 8:16

Or if it's, if it's seen that way, if it's, it's perceived that way. Again, court of public opinion is strong. Um, this is something guys gotta understand when they're teaching. And, and so with this explosion of BJJ, which by the way, just to be very clear, if I had a choice between teaching guys regular, just simple BJJ versus nothing or other DT uh, forms, I would absolutely teach them regular B uh, BJJ and then have them adjust it for their environment. But there has to be that adjustment made and this book is kind of working to , to help that happen. But , uh, BJJ absolutely is, is I think, the best fit for a lot of factors. But , um, consideration's, number one, you have to understand all of the factors that come into this contact, this law enforcement contact that happens.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Well, that's what's great about this book too, is like Dr. Bill Lewinsky , you have this quote from him and he's like, I'm a , he taught at my alma mater, which is Mankato State University slash Minnesota State University. No, profession trains so little , but expect so much. How many, I mean, I was guilty of it , you know, I didn't train BJJI was a fed, but hey, you know, my street , my street time was a long time ago. But hey, if you're in the street, you have to do some sort of training. And you and I were talking about that. Okay? So if you're in a big disciplined or not , I'm not gonna say discipline , but if you're in a big agency, if you're in NYPD or in LAPD , you're somewhere where you have different types of resources. And even them , I mean, you , you might not have everything available to the agency that has a hundred, 200 officers, but you're one of these small agencies out there, 10, 15, 20 people, and you're making anywhere from 15 to $25 an hour maybe. And you have to , the training you wanna get is expensive. It could cost you like, you know , uh, when you're talking about such little money to put so much on the line and not just your life when we just talked about liability, your whole financial life and your freedom for, you know, 15 to 20 something bucks an hour, you still need to train. Unfortunately, you have to find the training and yeah,

Speaker 2: 10:22

It depends on the results you're looking for, right? Like you , what else would you do that you just expected to have positive results without actually going out and training that thing? And the cost is high, but what's the alternative? If you don't train it and you go into some type of lethal confrontation, you know, you're not gonna ever need to train it again 'cause you'll be done.

Speaker 1: 10:43

The other thing too is like, if you look at, and I keep touting this book, but it's true. It's like if you are one of these small agencies, vet your instructors just because you're, you know, Johnny X , former blah, blah, blah, doesn't mean that you were one an instructor when you were in that agency or that military affiliation. Um, two doesn't mean they like, you know what the hell you're talking about other than just technique and the other aspects of it. And three is, are you even prepared to deal with teaching someone who's gonna be wearing 40 something pounds of gear on them ?

Speaker 2: 11:21

Absolutely. You gotta know that it's coming. But, but you make a really important point here. And that is that with respect to fighters or military or whoever it is, the fact that they can do something has no correlation to what they can teach you. And in what context they teach you, they can be a 10 time world champion. It , it makes no difference. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm competing in , in Juujitsu. I used to compete in MMA , but that doesn't make me know more or a better instructor. There , there is no correlation there. I've had exposures, but that doesn't mean I'm good at the instruction side. And it's far more important to find somebody that can help you develop you as opposed to, Hey, look at me. I can dance around and do all these cool things. The point of having a good instructor is to develop you, not the instructor, even though that does happen. So that , that's a really big thing. It's cool to be around somebody who's a champion. Oh, that's great, that's nice, but I want to find an instructor who can help develop me with what I have. And not everybody is created equal. Not everybody has the same skills. Some people are taller or shorter, meaning their limbs are longer or shorter. Some people are, are heavier or thicker. Some people are thinner, some people are fast, some people are slow, some people are flexible, some people are inflexible. So it's not a one size fits all program. It has to adjust for all the differences that we have. And, and in particular, you know, in law enforcement, I , I run into this problem a lot. Everybody thinks they're an alpha. And I can tell you something, not everybody is an alpha. So this idea that that, you know, yeah, I'm this, I'm that you're not, you're not. So you have to adjust for the mindset. Or do they have their a default aggressive mindset? Do they have a default passive mindset? Can they toggle between based on their level of confidence in a situation? And you, you as an instructor, you have to be able to adapt. That's why I'm so against these one size fits all programs. That's not how things work.

Speaker 1: 13:11

You brought up a big huge word that some people don't realize about the LEO world. Not everybody that puts the belt on that puts the gun in the holster, puts the vest on in the morning and goes out in the street, has a hundred percent confidence in their abilities. But the more training you get, the more sweat you do, the more knowledge you obtain, the better your confidence comes. And it all comes back to like, you know, man, I hate to say it, A lot of it comes back to liability. Confidence. Killer is liability. They don't wanna go and learn. Sometimes people don't like, I , I , I know you've heard this and I know other people have heard it when it comes to shooting, I never wanna get expert. 'cause if I go to court, they're gonna be like, ah , how come you didn't shoot him in a leg ? No, I don't wanna train B jj because if what if I go to court, they're gonna say, well, you're a killer. No, the more training you get, the more confidence you're gonna get and the less the liability you're gonna feel.

Speaker 2: 14:12

It's, it's not just confidence, it's competence. So the more that you train, the more that you have exposure. Yes, you have confidence, but you also have competence in that subject matter. And if you can do that same thing in different realms with different people under different circumstances and different environments, you know, you're paying dividends not just for you, but everybody that's working around you and the community because you're able to do more to keep the community safe. So everybody wins when you get it in context,

Speaker 1: 14:44

When you get that confidence and you're rolling up on a suspect and you feel it, you know it, it's a different context, it's a different feeling. It's like civilians, I know civilians feel this. If you've had training and you'll notice they back off the guy who's the quote , the guy girl too or the alpha, they'll get into someone's face, they'll be blah, blah, blah . They'll do this, they'll do that. Look how macho I am. Um, cool. The one who has a confidence, you could always tell. And the same thing is like if you're an LEO and you're on the street and you're roll up on a suspect and he knows you're confident, they might think twice about, you know, whether or not they're gonna fight or flight.

Speaker 2: 15:24

Yeah, I think that's true. I think you , you don't see the extreme reaction from people that know they can handle it. If things ramp up, you're capable of handling it. So you're not worked up. And this is one of the arguments that I've had , uh, with friends and, and with other leos and even in, in some public sectors. But if you see this spike in use of force going straight to deadly force, one of the things that you can do to offset that is to learn how to fight so that you don't need to immediately go to that. And this is again, competence and competence. If I'm , uh, confident that I can handle this situation, right, the chance of me escalating or feeling the need to escalate it doesn't happen. Especially if I'm competent and I know it. How do I know I'm competent? 'cause I can do it with different people in different environments. Maybe I can do it in tournaments, maybe I can do it in, in training, whatever condition it is that I face. But I've done it and I've done it repeatedly. You know, this is, again, you know, guys saying , well, everybody can't go do this. People get hurt, it's a liability. So no, you take one factor at a time and you isolate it and you add it in and then they get competent at that and you add another factor in and you put those two factors together. And so this, I wrote about in the book as well , um, in relationship to teaching and chunking and , and building blocks on top of each other. That is Fibonacci sequence. And when I start to add the , uh, preceding number to the number in front, we talk about how growth happens in nature. Um, so we, we kind of ignore that. And, and that's one way that we can drive down, you know, extreme incidents in the street, is by developing these skills, developing this confidence where I'm much slower to get from zero to a hundred, right? Because I know, hey, if it gets there, fine, I , I got the skills to handle it.

Speaker 1: 17:12

This book kind of caught me by surprise with , it's not just the law and illegal and you know, come up with like a different type of, you know, the audience and stuff like that. But getting into the different types of concepts, the different types of like the OODA loops in there . You throw that in there. Most of the major stuff in the past, like a hundred years, that's within the law enforcement community, but outside of it as well. But also the physiological aspects of getting into that confrontation that is so much different. When you're, when you're an LEO and you're in this world, your physiological responses may be different because you're, everything to you is a, it's life and death. Everything, everything. Every way you look at something, whether or not it's your physical life or your mental life or <laugh> , uh, you could be canceled, you could be incarcerated, your family could you lose everything. But everything is all in this split second decisions microseconds. And you have got to have the physiological response to it. And that's one thing about the book, it, it touches on his stuff. It's a lot more complex than I thought it was gonna be. I thought this book was just gonna be like, eh , I'm like, let's tie it up to now. Todd's doing a lot of cool stuff, but this is a , this is a a , a good guidebook, man.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Yeah . I mean, it's intended to be broad in scope. Yeah . And not get into, not get into the weeds too much. 'cause I don't want to get into these arguments about what works and what doesn't work. So I don't get behind too much any one principle, but just a broad scope of principles that are reoccurring that you're gonna see throughout a law enforcement career or teaching law enforcement. Um, you know, I've found these principles to apply in a lot of aspects of life even outside of, of, say fighting or outside of protection or the military law enforcement. But these are things that are present and if you acknowledge what they are, it , it helps you kind of understand other aspects. And, and like you talk about when you're operating in a high stress environment, you're gonna have a physiological response to stress. So you're gonna get that. So what happens is how do you manage it? You, you know, those things start to happen. Like I start to feel this thing in my stomach. I start to feel this thing in my skin. I start whatever it is for you individually, then you learn how to manage that thing and that thing being managed is what allows you to make good decisions. And then we get into aspects like, you know, recognition, prime decision making by client and things like that that go kind of more into to , okay, I've been here before, now I can make a quicker decision

Speaker 1: 19:39

And I'm gonna change the subject real quick because I just thought about something. 'cause I said, what's tied up to now, I, I follow your social media. I see I've met you in person, in , in a large venue. You are not just dealing with the street as in like, you know, your life, your professional and stuff like that, but you're also dealing with humongous crowds and the pucker factor and being in control of the entire security apparatus for like major venues and people and stuff. How do you keep your pucker factor down? I mean, and everybody knows the pucker factor is like, when you go through these physiological responses, sometimes your body doesn't operate the way it really wants to. And sometimes you're , you know, your , your, your system kind of shuts down. How do you deal with dealing with that? Is it just experience, is it training or, or what would your recommendations for someone that has to deal with highly stressed environments be ,

Speaker 2: 20:32

Uh, I , the same thing that I recommend people do is, is literally what I do. So , um, in my case, you know, I'm constantly training so I don't stop because I got to a certain level and then I know everything I need to know. It never ends. And so things are evolving, so I keep doing that. So I have a high, high degree of confidence in what I do in the realms. I work in understanding all the variables that surround those realms. So that helps me stay calm and make the right decision. But, you know, when I come home, I'm gonna be behind the power curve, whether jiujitsu or Muay Hai , uh, shooting doesn't matter. Those are all perishable skills. So I gotta keep doing those things. Uh, I gotta keep doing 'em in the right context, how I want to produce results. Um, and then, you know, I continue to look for new stuff and new ideas and different realms that support what I'm doing. For example, next week I'll, I'll be going to do a , a training course with our cardiac ti . So, you know, those guys are great. I love what they put out. Um, you know, they, they have a podcast called Left of Greg , uh, which is a great one. Um, so I'm constantly trying to improve what I understand how I apply it. So if I go train with these guys, let's say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'll come back and on Thursday I'll do a couple hours of like a , a , a data dump where I'm pulling everything down that they gave me, figuring out what works in my realms, and then starting to assign those things to specific SOPs or TTPs that we use. So I, I want to integrate it immediately. I don't want it to get lost.

Speaker 1: 22:00

Talk about that is how you should be doing is like when you go to training and stuff like that. And I would say like if you're setting up these training instructions and you're going to like, and I'm sure everybody does the ARS afterwards and they do like, they , you know, give us feedback and stuff like that, but use it. And that's like if you're gonna teach a a course to EOS and stuff like that, you're going to use this book, give feedback. I'm sure Todd would love to have feedback from it and say, Hey , you know what, I kinda like this, but have you ever looked at this? It's, it's kind of like, you know, the old, I always like bringing up my infantry background. I'm like, you know , we gotta continuously improve your fighting position. So yeah brother,

Speaker 2: 22:37

I , you know, I don't know, I don't, lemme back up just a little bit. I don't know. When you say everybody does an a a RI think everybody in law enforcement that is required to attend a course and then come back to the unit and provide an a a r , um, and after action review or after action report for the people that don't know what a r is, the same in the military, you have to do that. But what I found is in the civilian community, that's not normal. Hmm . So literally that process forces you to go back and say, well , what did I just experience? How is it relevant to me? How is it relevant to the environment that I'm operating in? And how can that change what we're doing to make it better? I don't, I don't find that in the civilian community. I really don't. And this is one of the things that the military and law enforcement does, right? Usually the civilian side is much better at that, but I don't find that in the security side so much outside of, you know, paramilitary obviously. But , um, we don't see that a whole lot. And, and I think that's one takeaway and I , I didn't write too much about that and maybe, maybe I should have . Uh, but, but that is definitely how I'm continuing to grow and develop is using exactly that protocol.

Speaker 1: 23:46

Well, you and I are both, we talked before about being visual. So if you're at these courses and stuff like that, and like you said, you do data dumps when you're done, come home and just write down some stuff. You're gonna forget some stuff. You go to any training like that, you're gonna forget it. But if you keep getting your muscle and your visualization going, I think it's gonna help, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:06

I'm really good at forgetting the stuff. So that part of it, I've got mastered. So now that's where the pen and paper come in and start to jot down those notes in the classes to remind me to go back and look at something. And I don't know about you, but I'm traveling constantly. So I've got downtime on the plane, maybe , um, in route, in a Uber, a cab or whatever from the airport to the hotel or the venue. I've got downtime. It's gonna take 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour when I get done. Like normally for me and I , again, I don't know how anybody else operates, but I'm taking that time when it's fresh in my mind. When I leave that class with our cardiac ti on Wednesday night and I'm moving back home, I'm gonna have all of that free time to write this down, to jot it down. Because once I get home and I'm, I'm loaded with all kinds of tasks I need to get done, that's going to the back burner and it may not surface again. So I think that's, that's a time when it's fresh.

Speaker 1: 25:03

I love it brother. Everybody, you could pick up the book underpinning@ontourprotection.com. They have iBooks and they have , uh, kennel versions out as well. Paperback version you could buy@ontourprotection.com. Make sure you're following Todd. Follow Damian . You're always doing cool, brother. I love it man. <laugh> ,

Speaker 2: 25:22

Hopefully we get you out here.

Speaker 1: 25:25

I'm coming out man. I have , I have passport. We'll travel's. I don't do it . Need passport. I'm I Jeep will travel brother <laugh> . I .