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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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Criticism of Kyusho: Teaching is Too Static

One of the criticisms we hear often is that Kyusho is taught with static techniques and is not dynamic enough. There is some merit to the claim but it is not entirely accurate either. When teaching amy new skill, it should be practiced in a safe and static manner. The fundamentals must be taught and […]
Mike Patrick
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The Five Levels of Martial Arts Skill Development

The DSI generally categorizes each of the components of Martial Arts skill development into one of the five following areas: Karate Do Karate Jutsu Tuite Life Protection Life Taking The majority of practitioners never make it beyond the first level of Karate Do. Most Martial Artists stay in this level for their entire career.  This […]
Mike Patrick
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Secrets of the Martial Arts?

What are “Players to the Game?”  This is term defined by Professor Rick Moneymaker, co-founder of the Dragon Society International.  One of the goals of the DSI is to keep terminology simple and easy to understand.  As such, this term was coined to refer to principles and methods that make techniques work much better. These […]
Mike Patrick
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Secrets in the Martial Arts?

As we travel around the world, the DSI often asks the question “Are there any secrets in your system of Martial Arts?”  Without exception, when we ask “What are they?” or “Name one.” we get confused looks.  And these are not strangers we are asking.  These are those who are close to us.  The bewilderment […]
Mike Patrick
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The Stretch Reflex

The Stretch Relex is where stretching a muscle causes the excitation of muscle spindles which causes contraction of large skeletal muscles. A simple example of this is when jumping from a height and landing on the feet, the impulse in the leg muscles will likely cause a corresponding reflex of contracting the gluteal muscles in […]
Mike Patrick
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The Crossed Extensor Reflex

The crossed extensor reflex is also known as the Cross-body Motor Reflex and is one of the Somatic Reflexes we discussed previously. Let’s look at a practical example of stepping on a nail with your right foot. Naturally, the right leg will contract, via the flexor muscles, to withdraw the foot from the source of […]
Mike Patrick
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Somatic Reflexes

Have you ever had a doctor, or a really twisted friend, tap a spot near your knee and it reflexively kicks? If so, you have experienced a somatic reflex. There are essentially five somatic reflexes. Three are spinal reflexes: Stretch Crossed Extensor Superficial Cord And two are cranial reflexes: Corneal Gag A reflex arc is […]
Mike Patrick
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Fast Pain vs. Slow Pain

How fast do you make your techniques hurt? Seems like an odd question, right?!?!? Well, it is actually quite a good one! Not all pain is created equal. It turns out some pain is faster than others! Time to talk some science… By studying a scientific process known as nociception, we learn that pain comes […]
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’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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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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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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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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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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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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How many ‘players of the game’ do you see?

Look at the picture above, how many ‘players can you identify?  Listed below are a few that you should see immediately. weapon first angle direction shooters stance feet to the core of attacker anatomical alignment wave form quadrant tongue to the roof of the mouth weight evenly distributed on both feet mind, breath, body power […]
Rick Moneymaker
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The Knockout

Anyone who has studied traditional martial arts for awhile has been to a seminar where the master, shaman-like, lightly hits a couple of points on the uki’s body and he goes out, caught by the faithful followers before he hits the ground.  No explanation usually is offered other than the implied idea that knowledge to […]
David Hansford
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