Awareness Drill - Maps #1

This drill will take about 20 minutes. It doesn't cost anything, and will require only a pen and paper.

From a place that you spend a lot of time in, spend 10 minutes draw a map of your immediate surroundings. If you are at work (where most of us spend much of our days), try to map your floor. If you are outside, try to draw a map a hundred yards square, or a small neighborhood block.

When drawing your map, pay specific attention to safety. If you are indoors, where are the nearest exits? If you are in a restaurant, would it be through the kitchen? Do the restrooms have windows? Are you sitting next to a large plate glass window?



A few scenarios to help you:

1) (for indoors) - A shooter comes in off the street. Where are your exits? If the nearest exit is a window, what is nearby to break it? If you are on a floor higher than ground, is this even a possible route of egress? What would you need to do to leave the building safely in this manner? How long would it take to prepare? How noisy would it be?

2) (For indoors) - A person who is already inside the building suddenly becomes a shooter. Maybe it's a restaurant patron sitting near you, maybe a frustrated coworker. What routes do you have to get away? If you are in a larger building with corridors, what routes give you more options? Visibility?

3) (For indoors) - Where are good places to hide? Are there rooms or areas that are lockable from the inside? The building I am in now has many rooms that are lockable - but each one has a large decorative glass panel next to it that is easily broken and that anyone could walk through with little difficulty. Does that necessarily make it a bad place to hide?

4) (For outdoors) - where is the nearest very public place? If you had to attract a lot of attention, where would you go?

5) For anywhere - What is around you that can stop bullets? Or a determined follower? Where could you quickly lose someone who was chasing you?

Take about 10 minutes to draw your map. When you are finished, take another 10 minutes to walk around the area and see what you've missed. Forgot about a chain-link fence? Were there stairs that you didn't account for? A secure room that you missed? It's enlightening what you can miss about a place you spend 1/3 of your life in each and every day.

Awareness Drill - Sense of Smell

This drill will cost you nothing, or possibly one onion if your refrigerator is not well stocked. It takes 5 minutes to play, but if you find yourself having a good time, it can go much, much longer. It also requires a partner, and is suitable for work with kids.

This drill comes from an interesting source - the 1919 book "Scouting Games", by BSA founder Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Take a look through the book; boys were trained to be straight-up miniature ninjas 100 years ago. (There was even a "Master At Arms" merit badge, retired in 1911, which was earned through fencing, quarterstaves, archery, boxing, and wrestling. Few den mothers would allow this today, I'm afraid...)

I'll tell you right now: all things being equal, women are better at this game than men. People who spend tremendous time outdoors are better at it than their office-dwelling counterparts. I spent 4 weeks living like a caveman in a desert; 2 weeks after getting back to civilization, I was able to find a grove of Paw-Paw trees from 20 yards away based on smell alone - I could smell the fruit rotting on the ground. Your sense of smell can be sharpened, and will likewise atrophy without use. Start sniffing things now.

The most straight-forward version of this drill is to have your partner take an onion or similar pungent object, and rub it on various objects in your yard (out of your view, of course). Make it easy on yourself and do it at nose-height for the first few attempts. Then see if you can discover where that onion has been rubbed. The BSA manual recommends that the finder be blindfolded; I think that is because rubbing an onion on things leaves a wet mark and sometimes other visual clues like flakes of peel - but I don't think you need to start off blindfolded. For most people, the drill is challenging enough with your eyes open.

Permutations on this involve closing your eyes and having your partner bring various objects up to your nose. See if you can identify what they are made from. Aluminum has a sharp smell to it. Wax, not so much. Raid your kitchen on this one. Tomato plants have a similar smell to cut tomatoes, especially when the stem is crushed. Not so much in the leaves. What does your shirt smell like? Your wife's shirt?

In his excellent blog, Rory Miller talks about the sense of smell often. Nobel Laureate and physics genius Richard Feynman used to impress (disturb?) people at parties by having a guest pick a book from his shelf at random and open to a page while Feyman was out of the room. He would then smell the guest's hand and find what book they had touched, often finding the exact correct page.

Start working on this under-utilized sense now. Experiment. Discover. Play. Your environment is flooded with smells - see how much information is out there, free for the taking, that you never noticed before.

Awareness Drill - Whose Ride Is It Anyway?

This fascinating awareness drill was given to me by an alumni of Tom Brown's Tracker school in New Jersey.

This drill will cost you one cup of coffee and take about 30 minutes.

The idea is simple: find a brick and mortar store (a Starbucks at off-peak hours is perfect), and walk slowly through the parking lot. Ideally, there shouldn't be more than 10 or so cars, and all the cars should have owners inside the Starbucks (so in areas like strip malls where parking spots aren't well defined, this can be more challenging, but still fun).

As you walk past the cars, try to learn what you can about their owners. DO NOT be obvious about this -- you'll look like a hood looking for a car to break into! Sometimes learning about the car's owner is easy (who hasn't seen those stick figure family stickers on the backs of minivans?) A tricked-out Honda Civic with spinners probably doesn't belong to the senior citizen with the military crew-cut. He probably has the ride with the blue Department of Defense sticker at the top. The $60k luxury sedan probably doesn't go with the pimple-faced teenager working the cash register.

Usually. Sometimes you get surprises.


Go inside and get your favorite FourBuxx latte, then grab a seat near a window where you can observe the parking lot. See if your guesses were correct as the patrons eventually return to their cars. Remember that some of the cars (usually the ones with the best parking spots) will belong to the barristas (don't forget to tip!). Sometimes you can even strike up a conversation with one and see if you can non-chalantly learn if a car is theirs, but this works best if the car has some kind of highly-personalized feature (such as bumper stickers or expensive after market mods).

If you want to get better at this drill in a hurry, spend 10 minutes watching a drive-thru line. First observe the vehicle, then try to paint a mental picture of what kind of person would drive that, then look in the driver's seat.

An excellent video that shows how much information can be read from vehicles (and many other sources) is below. It's worth the watch.






Let me know what you discover!

Awareness

We train hard at Virginia Systema. A typical workout will involve 20-30 minutes of body conditioning (exercises to get stronger, move more fluidly, or ideally both) followed by an hour or more of combative drills. Our drills cover a really broad range; common topics include striking, lock flow, grappling, ground mobility, knife work, and stick work (single and double). Anyone who wants to stay later and spar or play with what they've learned is welcome. It's a combination of laboratory and playground to experiment with new techniques and concepts.

But techniques and concepts are physical things. And physical training just isn't enough.

In every single martial arts school, seminar, and training event I have attended (which is a lot, going back to 1989) emphasis has been placed on awareness of surroundings. Every single teacher agrees that situational awareness is very important, but almost none of these places has done a good job of explaining how one BUILDS this critical skill.

I've pieced together a large number of drills to accomplish exactly that. I've picked the brains of instructors with 4 decades or more of experience, friends with military/SF backgrounds, public and private forums, and every other relevant source I can think of. When class is in session, the training time that we have is valuable, and should be used to build skills that can only be built with a willing and respectful partner in front of us. But for all the times that class is NOT in session, we can be working to build awareness of the world around us.

Awareness makes us less easy prey. It gives us advanced warning of Bad Things that are about to happen in our immediate area, and gives us extra seconds to respond. It connects us to the world around us and makes us active agents instead of just passive observers.

I have started a Twitter feed where I'll be giving 2 new drills every week that anyone can practice to build greater awareness of their surroundings. Each drill will be thoroughly explained, and any materials needed will be cheap or free whenever possible. The majority of the drills won't require anyone else, because you don't always have the luxury of a good training partner. Drills are spaced out with 3-4 days in between so you can practice them over and over again and share any insights you gain in the process.

Check us out and let us know what you think!

The Law of 3

I learned the law of 3 in the middle of the desert in Utah. I had been in the desert for 14 days when my teachers called the students into a circle. We had been constantly hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, rained upon, sick, and 2 had twisted their ankle. We were also 100 miles from paved roads, so their words carried more weight.

Your body has many needs, but some have higher priority than others. When the shit hits the fan and an all-out crisis happens, it is important to know what the priorities are. The Law of 3 helps you to remember them.

Calmness is the first priority. No how bad an accident is - whether it's losing your backpack down a cliff, breaking your leg, feeling an earthquake, or even something as mundane as a computer problem - it will get MUCH WORSE in the first 3 seconds if you allow panic to take a hold of you. You'll slide down that unstable ledge after your pack; you'll stand up and turn that hairline fracture into a compound fracture; you'll freeze where you stand instead of seeking safer cover; you'll hit the power button without saving your data - and POOF. The situation just got much worse. Awareness of your state and control of your breathing are the two biggest factors in controlling this panic.
 
August 23, 2011 was an eye-opening example - the east coast of the United States (where I live) experienced a 5.9 earthquake. As soon as I realized the slight rumbling was not a nearby truck, I got up, quickly walked away from the large glass windows to my back and into a doorframe. I called out to my coworkers loudly and calmly to GET IN A DOORWAY. Yet by the time the quake ended, only 1 person (out of roughly 20 within earshot) had even started to approach any doorway. The rest were frozen, asking "Is this an Earthquake?". While they would not identify that as panic, that is exactly what that freezing in place is. They also were not able to hear my clear instructions - this is called "auditory exclusion", and is a common trait of panic. Trauma survivors frequently report auditory exclusion when recounting the ordeal.
 
Air is the second priority. You can go roughly 3 minutes without taking in air before serious and permanent damage or death takes place. If your (or someone you love's) airway is blocked, whether its from swelling from an allergic reaction, choking on food, or being trapped in an airtight space once the air has run out, you have 3 minutes to remedy the problem. Whatever the answer is - Epinepherine, Heimlich maneuver, tracheotomy, etc - you have 3 minutes to fix whatever has gone wrong. The time goes down if there is panic, as you will be expending much more air than is necessary. (blood chokes, which occur in martial arts where the carotid artery is blocked via external pressure, preventing oxygen from reaching the brain, are a special case. These cause unconsciousness in much less than 3 minutes - in seconds if the choke is well-executed. But for the Law of 3, we're dealing with situations where vascular blood flow is not restricted.)
 
Shelter is the third priority. If you are cold or wet to the point of hypothermia, you will succumb to exposure in about 3 hours unless you are able to find a place to dry out. Having a change of clothing, knowing how to make a weatherproof shelter - even fabricating cover out of garbage bags (I have done this) is something you need to recognize and know how to do if help is more than 3 hours away. I have a friend who almost died (she lost 4 toes instead) when a 3 mile snow hike went very badly wrong and lasted 12 hours. Obviously, this is less of a problem if it is 72 degrees and dry, but the point is to prepare for all situations - not just best case scenarios.
 
Water is the fourth priority. The human body can generally go 3 days without water. Environmental factors such as temperature and humidity, as well as exertion of the individual, can make this number go down. Knowing how to locate, store, sterilize, or filter water is vital. Knowing how to treat diarrhea is just as important. (Did you know that you can make a tea out of pine needles that will help with that? It's not as good as Immodium, and it tastes like shit, but it was helped me out before)

Food is the fifth priority, and is way further down the list than most people think. Your body can go about 3 weeks without food before lasting and irreversible damage to organs and tissues takes place. I have personally gone 5 days with zero food, hiking 10-15 miles per day with severe elevation changes, with no ill effects (other than I was grumpy and had a headache for the first 2 days). The rule of thumb is that if you are surviving long enough to get hungry, you're doing alright.

Companionship is the sixth and last priority. If you go longer than 3 months without human contact, it can be psychologically harmful. The instructors who took me into the desert to learn how to survive like an Anasazi Indian from 1500 years ago are a unique and interesting bunch. Many of them live year-round in tents (yurts) that they have made themselves. Several of them have not had indoor plumbing or a traditional roof over their heads in years. But it is a close-knit community, and even when one of them is soujourning many miles away from civilization for weeks at a time, their friends will make sure to do sanity visits and check in on them every few weeks. People need other people. It's what keeps us from having conversations with bloody handprints on Wilson volleyballs.

Spotting the Lie

Last night was a beautiful night, and on all beautiful nights, Virginia Systema trains outdoors. There's a nice lush strip of grass perfect for a small group to roll around a punch each other on, and that's exactly what we did for an hour and a half. After checking the area for any sharp rocks or debris, we started rolling. Just walking at a slow and leisurely pace, tucking into a forward roll, and returning to standing and walking. The rolls happened whenever the students wanted them at first. No pressure.

The students there had each done hundreds of rolls before on mats. The lush grass and soft earth was almost as soft as a mat, and once their bodies realized that, the rolls came easier. Those first few rolls where the ground was an unknown were hesitant, but quickly smoothed out. The ground was bumpy and uneven, which added an interesting dynamic, but it was nothing people couldn't overcome.

But then I changed the rules. You couldn't roll whenever you liked anymore. You had to do it only when I clapped.

Fear. Tension. Stutter steps to get to that favorite leg (I was guilty of this one a few times when I had one of the students clap). Held breath. All just from losing the control over when the roll happened.

I continued to change rules. Now you had to walk backwards and roll. This caused a different, new tension, since now you couldn't see what was in your path. (ah, but you COULD once you realized you could watch the shadows of the setting sun... then you could at least be sure you weren't about to collide with another person. There are all kinds of clues about your surroundings you can find, but you'll have to try these drills on your own to discover them). Things got REALLY interesting once I took the group away from the soft grass and onto asphalt. Suddenly no one could roll anymore! Everyone had visions of their heads being dashed in by the hard, unyielding pavement and froze with both hands on the ground and their butts in the air. Norman Rockwell would have totally ran and grabbed his easel.

I circled my guys up and we talked about what had just happened. The point I made was that when you train, there is always a lie. Maybe lie is too strong of a word? It's a deviation from what would actually happen in reality. A technique - in this case, a forward roll - isn't the same when practiced in isolation as it is in the real world. We roll so that if we are tripped or knocked down, we can get up quickly without damaging ourselves. But in order for this to happen, we have to be able to do it from either leg. Without warning. Without maybe even knowing that a roll is coming up until our balance is already taken. That perfect, tactical, lifesaving roll is practiced slowly, in calm and sterile environments, and that is a lie. Or maybe it's a white lie - that slow, sterile roll is perfectly valid, but it is the practitioner's belief that he "has it down" that is the lie. "Aikido works fine; your Aikido doesn't."

It's a lie that people have to know and be able to spot on their own, so that they can adjust their training so that there's less of a lie. You'll never completely remove the lie - a sane and reasonable person will never train rolls by having people jump out of alley ways and slug them in the jaw so that they trip over a concrete curb - but it's important to know where your technique fails. And then to fix it.

Fighting Back

On 22 July 2011, a gunman in Utøya, Norway disguised himself as a police officer, called together members of a youth summer camp, and began shooting at them. The latest figure is 86 dead, 20 injured. The gunman's shooting spree lasted for over an hour, in which time he was able to reload multiple times and hunt down his victims. Most of the survivors escaped by hiding or pretending to be dead.

This murderer's spree lasted over 90 minutes.

Compare this to another horrifying attack that happened recently. On 8 January 2011, at a political assembly in Tucson, Arizona (United States), a gunman opened fire specifically at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her entourage, then indiscriminately into the crowd. 6 killed, 14 injured.

His rampage only lasted 1 minute due to aggressive civilians fighting back.

The Tucson gunman had 33-round clips on his person, and the deathcount could have been much higher. instead, he was stopped by a 61 year old houswife, a 74 year old retired vet, and a 2 other civilians, all unarmed. They hit him with chairs, they wrestled him to the ground, they interfered with his hands as he tried to reload. They saved lives - their own, and countless others around them.

Arizona is a very gun-friendly state. Anyone over the age of 21 without a felony can carry a concealed handgun without a permit. But the only person who was carrying a weapon who had anything to do with resisting and subduing the gunman didn't even draw his weapon - he (wisely) kept it holstered since by the time he arrived on the scene, the gunman was already on his face and largely under control. It's laudable that this citizen was prepared, but in this case it wasn't necessary. The aggressive instinct of the 3 heroes was what saved the day.

Airline industry shows the same trend: the increase in x-ray machines, ID checks, TSA employees, and other measures are not what is saving lives. The only things that have saved lives on airplanes since 9-11 has been arming cockpit doors and teaching passengers to fight back.

At the end of the day, it's far more important to fight back with what you have, immediately. When I was in the kidnapping captial of the world (Bogota Colombia) in 1999 working against drug traffickers, the advice was the same: "Fight back. No matter what - even if they have a gun, even if there's a dozen of them. Don't let them put you in a vehicle. The situation never improves at the second crime scene."

Here at Virginia Systema, we train to overcome our natural hesitancy and tendency to freeze. We train with and against weapons, from a conflict's start to its finish. So from the instant when someone draws a weapon from a hidden pocket to the moment you've escaped to a safe zone and are searching yourself for wounds (many people don't realize they've been seriously injured because of the adrenaline dump), it will feel familiar because you've already seen it and practiced it a hundred times.

Continuous motion. Breathing. Forward aggression. Using everything in your aresnal. Pocket change flung at their eyes. Your Starbucks coffee. Your pocket knife. Your hands. Your feet. Your whole body.

It's up to you. When seconds count, the police are minutes away.

Good luck, and safe training!



















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