Daniel Penny’s acquittal in the death of Jordan Neely, and, perhaps more importantly, the commentary that followed in its wake, supplies the average citizen with much food for thought when it comes to the topic of self-defense.
First, run—do not walk, but run—from anyone who says that people must wait until after they’ve been assaulted before they seek to defend themselves. This is stupid. It is reckless. Any self-defense instructor, law enforcement officer, politician, or media personality who so much as thinks this, much less says it aloud (as Neely’s apologists have repeatedly done), has absolutely zero right to presume to speak on behalf of the safety of law-abiding citizens.
Second, it matters not why an attacker preys upon innocents. It matters to talking heads and scribblers who, looking to score partisan political points, have the luxury of bleating and waxing indignant from the luxury and security of their laptops and studios. But it does not, and must not, matter a lick to the person attacked. There is one and only one concern that the latter can and should have: Keeping him or herself safe.
And this, in turn, means neutralizing the threat, by whatever means, before it escalates to physical violence.
All of this I write, not as a partisan booster for any political party or movement but, rather, as a master-instructor of Warrior Flow (see here and here), a variant of what’s commonly known as “closed quarter combatives.” Founded by retired USMC Lieutenant-Colonel Al Ridenhour, Warrior Flow is designed to help people, regardless of their size, strength, level of athleticism, experience, age, or body type, achieve mastery over their own bodily movement. Students are taught how to move with maximal efficiency, maximal subtlety, maximal fluidity—which is, to say, maximal deceptiveness. Subtle movement is deceptive movement in that it is difficult for an aggressor to gauge.
Warrior Flow Combatives is not a “combat sport.” Sportive fighting is all fine and good, but Warrior Flow is a martial art in the literal, etymological sense of the term “martial,” which means “of or pertaining to war.” The art is an art of war, a warrior’s art. Warrior Flow practitioners do not compete in contests. They don’t prepare to square off against opponents. They train to defeat…the enemy.
They don’t aspire to attain belts and stripes. They don’t wear uniforms. Their training methodology doesn’t include running, jumping rope, calisthenics, or “boxing” with hand gear and head gear. They don’t’ spend time rolling around on mats looking to subdue or “choke out” their partners (or anyone else). It’s not that such activities are objectionable per se, and anyone is free to engage in them if they are so inclined. But they do not belong to the methodology of the art.
The only time, outside of a sporting event, that decent people should be using violence against others is if the only alternative to doing so is to become victimized. In other words, it is only for the sake of protecting oneself and/or others from being critically injured, maimed, or murdered, and only when the threat is imminent, that the use of violence is justified. And, so, it is only for this kind of scenario that students of Warrior Flow train, for all other potentially violent confrontations are almost always avoidable.
A potentially mortal conflict is the only kind that ultimately means anything. In light of it, the proverbial mano-a-mano duel (with which, scandalously, many a martial arts practitioner continue to equate a real battle), is seen for the exercise in prolonged adolescence that it is.
This being so, Warrior Flow instructors train people—again, regardless of who they are (as long as they are of decent character)—to move as well as possible within the constraints of their own bodies, as well as the constraints of the principles of physics and human physiology, so as to incapacitate the enemy, the inescapable threat, by whatever the means.
Warrior Flow’s methodology is predicated on a hypothetical presupposition: The enemy—and anyone who preys upon innocents is an enemy of God and humanity—has every physical advantage over the practitioner. The enemy is stronger; larger; younger; taller; heavier; more experienced in the use of violence; faster; more agile; more athletic. The enemy is many in number and in possession of lethal weapons (knives, guns, etc.). Now, far from being self-defeating, this assumption motivates the Warrior Flow student to train so as to develop the skill and the will to neutralize these advantages of the enemy before they become a problem.
Unlike in a sport fight, in real life, you have no idea who you’re going to encounter, and what they have up their sleeve (whether literally or metaphorically). You don’t know when and where, in what environment, the threat will appear. And so, in Warrior Flow, students are taught to assume from the start that anyone can kill anyone.
The analogy we use is that of the matador and the bull. The bull has every physical advantage over the matador. However, the matador can defeat the bull as long as his movement is more efficient, more subtle than that of the bull. If the matador moves too soon, he’s dead. If he moves too late, he’s obviously dead. But if he times his movement precisely—if he moves ahead of the bull before the bull recognizes that the matador is already in the future, in another location in space-time, then, in that instant, that micro-second, he nullifies all of the bull’s advantages and kills him.
Just. Like. That.
The superior efficiency, the subtlety, of the matador’s movement deceives the bull. It throws off the bull’s sense of time and space just long enough for the matador to take the decisive action necessary to defeat the bull.
Move before the enemy moves.
Move better—more efficiently, more subtlety, more deceptively—than the enemy moves.
And move with every intention of defeating the enemy at all costs.
This is what Warrior Flow instructors teach students. They teach them how to do this.
Real violence, the violence of an attack, is always potentially mortal. One’s life, and/or the lives of one’s loved ones, are on the line. These are the stakes.
Putting up the dukes, squaring off, assuming a horse stance—these take time that, under the immediacy, and the adrenaline-fueled conditions of a real attack, people will not have at their disposal. (Imagine having the time to assume a conventional boxing stance while you’re being attacked in a public bathroom stall, or in the hallway of your apartment between your bathroom and bedroom, or in any other confined space?)
Besides this, launching the kinds of strikes characteristic of sports fighting contests require as well a level of preparatory movement that is all too discernible to the naked eye. The element of surprise, the deceptiveness (on the basis of which, as Sun Tzu famously remarked, victory in warfare depends), is forfeited.
Decent human beings must assume responsibility for their own protection. It is a fool’s errand to think that either a gun will suffice to do the trick, or—which is even more foolish—that the police will be there to protect them. People must train to develop their own bodies, to develop, neurologically, the ability and the mental determination to be victorious, under duress, over those who would attack them. Whether it is with their natural weaponry, their bodies, or with artificial weapons, training to become the matador will only improve their odds over the predators who would prey upon them.