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The Tactical Freeze

It is always interesting how life presents little lessons in the most unexpected way.  These small lessons can have huge impact however in larger applications!  Take the reaction of someone trained versus someone untrained to a violent encounter.  They can be very different reactions with life affecting consequences! Yesterday, while going to a local pharmacy […]
Mike Patrick
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The OODA Loop

OODA Loop is a concept created by USAF Colonel John Boyd. It is an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Action. He created this primarily for helping fighter pilots get through the mental process for taking action more quickly. In the business world, “time is money” but in life-and-death situations, “time is death.” If one […]
Mike Patrick
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fairbairn

Fairbairn’s Timetable of Death

About W. E. Fairbairn Let’s begin our Discussion of the Fairbairn’s Timetable of Death by first looking at who he was.  The following was taken from WikiPedia: William Ewart Fairbairn (28 February, 1885–20 June, 1960) was a British soldier, police officer and exponent of hand-to-hand combat method, the close combat, for the Shanghai Police between the […]
Mike Patrick
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womens-self-defense

Forced Teaming

Forced Teaming is a common tactic to gain compliance over an Interviewee. What is it? It is simply making an implied connection between two parties when there, in reality, is none! Let’s look at an example. In Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear, he describes an example of Foirced Teaming where a predator […]
Mike Patrick
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alley

The Interview

The Interview is a process of victim selection which few prey know anything about. Unfortunately, this causes them to pass the Interview process. Having an understanding of what it is and how it is conducted, and more importantly, why is instrumental in failing it. Why would you want to fail an interview? Because this one […]
Mike Patrick
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Universal Response Technique (U.R.T.)

Due to the implications of Hick’s Law, I developed a concept several years ago called Universal Response Technique, or U.R.T. for short. This concept is about minimizing the decisions one has to make during a violent encounter. As we discussed previously, more decisions equals more reaction time. Consider what often happens during an attack. The […]
Mike Patrick
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hickslaw

Hick’s Law

There is a common principle that many Martial Artists are familiar with called Hick’s Law. Hick’s Law is named after British psychologist William Edmund Hick. The HickHyman Law (for Ray Hyman), also called simply Hick’s Law, describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices […]
Mike Patrick
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CoopersAwareness

Levels of Awareness

Are you familiar with the principle originated by Jeff Cooper called Levels of Awareness? Depending on who you ask there are a number of levels. The idea is that a person’s awareness of their surroundings directly affects your response time. Those with a lower level of awareness will take longer to respond to a threat […]
Mike Patrick
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Avoidance

As I have been preparing verbal de-escalation principles for my curriculum, I was surprisingly faced with an opportunity to put my study into practice. What timing!!!! For those of you who know me, I am not the type that takes ‘crap’ off people. That is putting it mildly! I grew up being bullied and reached […]
Mike Patrick
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Stress Inoculation

During our research, we have discovered dozens of Body Alarm Responses. Since it is beyond the scope of these reports to examine them all, we will jump to the topic of controlling them and using them to our advantage. If our techniques are based primarily on Gross Motor Movement, then we assume that a heart […]
Mike Patrick
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BAR-Chart

Body Alarm Reaction

Body Alarm Response (B.A.R.), or as some like to call it, Adrenal Stress Response, is a reality of most violent encounters. Fortunately, it can can make you stronger, decrease your cognitive processing time, protect you from bleeding too rapidly from cuts and other trauma. Unfortunately, it can also make you do the exact opposite of […]
Mike Patrick
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Beating Your Adversary with Distance

If you have been reading the previous training reports, you have learned about Non-reactionary Distance. If you haven’t read them and started here…shame on you and go do your homework before reading on! Since we know what Non-reactionary Distance is and how to measure it, it is time to put that knowledge to great use. […]
Mike Patrick
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The Non-Reactionary Gap

I have talked previously about the Tueller Drill for firearm training. This time, we will be talking about my corollary to this drill that measures response time to an unarmed opponent striking. For my experiment, I set up a scenario where I defined a successful response as stepping forward, making a block, and then a […]
Mike Patrick
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