Episode 108 - Mr. Tony Blauer

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Aug 7

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Mr. Tony Blauer is best known as the founder of SPEAR - Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response.

Mr. Tony Blauer - Episode 108

We come back to the question of why? People ask me, "what's the best martial art for the street?" And I would say, no. Art is for the museum. Street is completely different.

Our guests come from a variety of sources. Some are referrals from past guests, some are listener suggestions and some are people we reach out to. One of our goals on Martial Arts Radio is to bring you diverse guests that tell great stories. Another goal is to make you think. We try to bring on guests that we know will upset the apple cart, so to speak. Guests that make us think differently and challenge some of our long-held beliefs. Traditional martial arts, and martial artists, can get stuck in the way they look at things. [Jeremy's note: I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else.]

Enjoyed this episode? Why not pick up the book: Tony Blauer - An Interview: The Founder of SPEAR & Preeminent Self-Defense In An In-Depth Conversation About Real World Violence & More

Part 1 - Uncut

Part 2 - Uncut

Part 1 - Clean Version

Part 2 - Clean Version

Mr. Tony Blauer is here to upset the apple cart a bit. Some will claim he's not a martial artist, but if you check our definition of a martial artist, you'll see that he certainly is. What Mr. Blauer has done exceptionally well throughout his career is look at martial arts, combat, and self-defense in a different way. He's not someone who will simply accept the words of another. That's not to say he's not respectful, but he challenges convention when he sees it to be appropriate. In a sense, he's a martial arts researcher.

What follows is our longest show yet. Mr. Blauer gave an incredible amount of his time and geared the conversation to our audience - traditional martial arts & martial artists. You may love this episode, which has been split into two parts, or you may hate it. Regardless, you're going to think about martial arts, your training, self-defense and more. Our intention in bringing you this episode is not to steer you to sign up for anything from anyone. (Disclosure: we have never, and will never, taken any financial incentives from guests for them coming on the show.) Our intention is that you listen, consider Mr. Blauer's words, and look at your life and your training.

This episode is not only in two parts but in two versions. Here on this website we've released both the uncut and clean versions of both parts, while the podcast feed we put out to iTunes and others is simply the uncut version.

Today's featured whistlekick product is our sparring boots. With sizes from the smallest child to the biggest bigfoot, we have something for you. No toe strap, excellent reinforcement, and far better materials than what you're used to. These are the most durable, comfortable foam sparring boots you've ever used.

Show Notes

Movies - Enter the Dragon, Ong BakActors - Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Tony JaaHere are some links to things Tony Blauer mentioned on the show:Train-the-trainer certification: http://blauerspear.com/get-certified-in-spear/The High Gear Impact Reduction Suit: http://blauerspear.com/the-high-gear-impact-reduction-suit/Blauer Tactical courses: http://blauerspear.com/training/His blog: http://blauerspear.com/blauer-blog/Instructional videos: http://blauerspear.com/downloads/You can find Tony Blauer on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & Instagram.

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below or download here.PART 1

Jeremy Lesniak: Hello everyone, it's episode 108 of whistlekick martial arts radio, the only place to hear the best stories from the best martial artists like today's guest, Mr. Tony Blauer. Before we go any further I want to let you know that there are two parts to this episode and two versions. Mr. Lauer was kind enough to give us more than two hours of his time and in order to make that easier for everyone to manage we split that into two parts. This is part one Mr. Lauer is a candid and passionate speaker and some of his language can be a bit rough at times. Censorship isn't something we like to do a martial arts radio, but we felt it was important to both bring you this episode in the uncut form but also give you the option of a clean version. This is the uncut version you can find a clean one at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com at whistlekick, we make the world's best sparring gear and here on martial arts radio we bring you the best martial arts podcast. I'd like to welcome you personally, I'm Jeremy Lesniak and I'm whistlekick founder but I'm also blessed to be your host for martial arts radio. Thank you to the returning listeners and hello and welcome to those of you listening for the first time. If you're new to the show or you're just not familiar with what we make, check out our sparring boots. No tow strap to slip on, tons of reinforcement to resist ripping, better materials for comfort and durability, in short, a big step forward in the evolution of sparring boots. Check them out on our website or at Amazon if you want the show notes, including links and photos and a bunch more you can find those at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com if you're not on the newsletter list, sign up now. We sent out exclusive content and is the only place to find out about upcoming guest for the show. Sometimes mail out a coupon. And now for the review of the week. This one comes in from wedtwaffle and its titled inspiration in every episode and it’s another five-star review. I began my journey to a black belt in taekwondo on November 2, 2012. It has given me so many benefits from stress management to confidence and so much more. Taekwondo has changed my life forever, the more I train the more knowledge I gain and the more I seek to learn about martial arts. As a fan of podcasting I did a search martial arts themed shows, I came across this podcast just after episode three was released and I’ve been hooked ever since. Each episode is so inspirational to me, when I'm not training, I'm listening to this podcast. I find so much similarity between myself and many of the guests helping me feel like I am part of a big family united by our love for martial arts. I thank you for providing us with the stories, helping us remember that the martial arts journey is not without its struggles, but the training we acquired through our journey builds our endurance and perseverance, gives us strength and helps us become a better version of ourselves with each step. Wow. I want to thank you for that wedtwaffle, guessing that some kind of play on your name but regardless thank you so much. We really appreciate those reviews, personally they just mean so much to me to hear that the time that I spent talking to guests means that much to you. So, as always go ahead shoot us a message and we'll get you your free pack of stuff for living us a generous review. For many of you the name Tony Blauer is one you'll recognize. Maybe is from his seminars his spear system or something else. For the rest of you, you're about to meet a man who is dedicated his life to the martial arts but in a different way than many. Mr. Blauer has built a reputation for being direct and speaking his mind and his time on the show was no different. In fact, his entire approach to martial arts and training are just that, direct. We cover a great many things and in detail at times. You'll never wonder how Mr. Blauer feels about anything we discussed and you'll be entertained along the way. I will go so far as to say that this episode if you listen to both parts with an open mind, will inspire some changes in the way you look at your life and your training. In short will be a better martial artist and I don't know if I make that claim of any other episode we've had yet. At least not for the majority of listeners let's welcome him.Mr. Blauer, welcome whistlekick martial arts radio.

Tony Blauer:

How are you doing?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’m doing great, how are you?

Tony Blauer:

I'm good man, good man. Looking forward to this.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. This is can be a lot of fun and you know, one of things that we try to do on the show is bring in different people that have different perspectives and of course anyone that knows you and knows your name, knows that you do some things a little differently. No, you are not the typical traditional karate guy or tae kwon do guy and so that's why we reach out to you. Cause you’re gonna have a different perspective and I like that. So, thank you for coming on.

Tony Blauer:

My pleasure you know it's always a, a lot of people don’t realize, especially since that the trend for so many years has been the reality based self-defense and you know, since the UFC hit and all the MMA. You know, it's created stir the pot a little bit and created more separation but you know, I’ve been involved in since martial arts since the early 70s and you know, if you include wrestling since the 60s and you know that's always been, magazines back from the 60s where people are still question what's the best art for the street and what's the best art for fighting and what's the best art of these two guys squared off. And so that’s kind of been you know, and every kung fu movie does that to so is in the back of people's heads. You know, when you practice when you do stuff and I guess, you know we'll end up talking a lot about efficacy and why we do things and why you know, we do things a certain way and anything about you know, just ah, you know, I’m looking forward to exploring this. I don't know if you got questions from some of your listeners or a typical like seeing that comes up but, not knowing anything about that, I welcome like throw that stuff at me because I don't know what I'm gonna saying and it will be cool and it will be fun for the listeners.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure, sure. Sign of, sort of a corollary there between the questions I'm gonna ask you in a street confrontation, right? you don't know what you're gonna get.

Tony Blauer:

Right now, probably if anyone knows what I do these spears of some start to finch, I may flinch but no one will see it because this is just audio but.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right I love it. So, you said you got started in the early 70s. How? What you know, what was your introduction of the martial arts?

Tony Blauer:

My introduction martial arts you know, I’ve got, I got a neat legacy because of my age. I'm as of this call I’m 56 and which kind of scares me to say because, I remember when I was six and I remember when I was 16 and I remember when I was 26 and looking at people in their 50s as old and wow. You know, what am I gonna be doing then. And but my start was kind of like a legacy, it was being introduced via the green hornet from Bruce Lee. You know, that may not be legit for people but that was real, that was like black and white TV and I was glued to the TV for whatever reason. You know we had the Dick Van Dyke show then and honeymooners and I Love Lucy but when the green hornet came on, you know, may mom went up to call me like three times, I'm calling you get up here, you know, it was the 60s and you listen to your parents back then differently than today but that'll be another interview on this [00:08:07.04] entitled community that we live in now. But that was really back then. I was like whoa, what is this? You know, that was the conversation I had them talk like that but I was transfixed. And I remember, for some reason where the old wild wild West with Robert Conrad back then and he was really into martial arts and in boxing and he choreographed, he's a stuntman who became the star cause the start got sick or injured one day on the set. They're all set up and they were like oh my God you know like the directors flaking out and they grabbed him he said I know the guy's lines, I can do it and he, that's how he got his role, a lot of people don’t know that. He was just a stuntman and the slickest stunt double and got his break that way but he choreographed all his stuff Because he was you know a skilled boxer and into martial arts. And so, both those shows I was like, I’ve got a learn that and I didn't know it, like again, I didn't light and watch, sometimes you see something in the news or TV and you go check it out because we have access to the Internet and there's so much, the ability to go shopping now it's not like back in the 60s so there wasn’t that like, connection. I just knew there were something special there and I remember that, I remember talking to my dad, cause is getting ready to go to high school and I was just, I don't know why, but I was kind of obsessed with you know, what if I get beaten up in school you know, I'd heard about that. I remember I make a joke now when I talk at certain types of conferences or seminars and talking about situational awareness and fear management and I go you know back in my day, the scariest guy in school was somebody you never saw fight but, somebody said he heard you kick somebody in the balls. You know, just like back then I was the scariest thing you can imagine in the late 60s early 70s and you look at the stuff that goes on in schools now is horrifying. You know from the bullying and the gang fights to people with weapons and stuff like that, but just as the juxtaposition in my mind is saying. But anyway, that's really how it started you know, I said to my dad you know, kina want to learn a little bit more about you know, to the defend myself cause I’m gonna be in high school and you know I heard there's gangs and stuff. Just whatever you imagine as a 12-year-old right and he said to me well, you know the best thing is to learn some sort of martial art and is just around the Bruce Lee craze 1973 and I just turned 13 and a tae kwon do school opened up a few miles from my house it was the only place you go to and so I signed up there fell and love with it. And the course was you know, a long long journey but the, as they say the rest is history. I mean, that's started in the 60s in the in the same way people watch stuff on semi-online, I was the first online thing, right? I had TV and I was just watching these fights and then when it started and started pursuing other stuff after that but that's really were it kicked off.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So that the Tony Blauer that so many of us know as you know, doing some pretty diverse and to some radical things started as a taekwondo guy.

Tony Blauer:

Yeah and you know, had there been a boxing gym 10 feet closer maybe I had gone there. Had been at jujitsu place 10 feet closer maybe I had gone there, right? It was, it was really okay where am I gonna go. There's, okay there's one place let me see should I go here or you know that was the only place I could go. My instructor was cool, you know I enjoyed the stuff I was pretty good you know. But I worked out like literally seven days a week, I would roll out of bed and before I actually got to the bathroom to brush my teeth I already know cranked out 50 - 100 push-ups to handstand push-ups, smashed little Mac and wore a little thing for my knuckles that I had under my bed and I walked down the hallway, throwing kicks towards the bathroom and I mean I was a complete fanatic. Turned our basement into a little gym in fact may dad passed away last year and that my sisters were cleaning out some stuff and sent some old pictures and some of them actually, just post them up on my website. You know, like pictures of me as a you 14-year-old you're working with nun chucks in the mail with pictures of Bruce Lee posters and bag and like my own basement. I was completely immersed in it you know. And when I was 13 like I'd started maybe I’ve been doing it for 6-7 months and I was completely obsessed and when I was 13-14, my mom said to me and what are you gonna do when you're older and I was on the floor looking at some Bruce Lee magazine stretching, and I just looked at it without hesitation and said I’m gonna be a famous martial artist mom just like Bruce Lee. I’m gonna to develop my own self-defense system. She patted me on the head and said okay son we'll talk about this in you’re a bit older. You know, it was funny, it was just that's all I wanted to do, that's all I thought about.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow. so, the seeds were really planted that early.

Tony Blauer:

Yeah and I, it's one of those things, I mean I don't you know, it's not obnoxious to say it yourself but it's like, when somebody fix a guitar and they know that they're going to be musician. You know it's, I just I just knew when I started doing this, I could see things differently, I question stuff I mean you know, when we started learning how to you know, you have to [00:14:22.59] and then throw your punch at the end of a kata right? And as you know 14-year-old, I go why am I yelling before and punching? Wont that alert the bad guy that I'm about to do something and why would I scream yaah and then throw the punch. And that became like part of my martial arts standup routine where separating what I call the categories now, I got these four categories; traditional martial arts, combat sports, reality based self-defense, and then category four is violent encounters and my focus was always self-defense which was my you know, which is what got me into this stuff in the beginning. So, I just assume that anything that anybody taught me was street ready and three practicals, right? So, I go, why are we doing this that's weird. Why would, you know. But it was, it wasn't like grandiose, I didn’t go look how much smarter I am, I'm 14 you know my instructor could kick the shit out of me, right? He was he was amazing. But I would question so many things that people would do you know, at the age of 15, I was able to intercept so many things because I would, I could see the set up in what we call in our defensive tactics law enforcement training, the pre-contact indicator. You remember like when you're you were in gi pants and you start to sweat when you want to throw kick, what you always did is you'd bounce couple times especially if you’re taekwondo played and you would grab your gi pants around mid-thigh and you’d yank them up a little bit just to just to kinda disconnect the sweat from your knees right? Are you visualizing that? So, everybody does that. And we bounce around and we kick and spar but I realized, that I did it when I wanted to kick and therefore my point was doing it when he wanted to kick and so I would throw something when somebody went and tug at their pants. And I would always be casting the side kick, or a round kick or a back fist, and nobody could understand like why I was so fast. It was that I was so fast, I was sooner. I was moving before you could reset but I could see that and understand that and now I teach people how to do that, I teach what that formula is for whether it’s a haymaker or somebody trying a baseball bat or somebody moving down the street and you know we call that, it is a whole and I think you are exposed to that stimulus stimulus stimulus response model, what happens before, what happens before I got to do this move that I practiced. And if you can’t get to the left of the ambush in your mind the brain-based learning model, and so we used neuroscience and a neurophysiology to quantify, measure and explain how we train. That's why were able to hack self-defense. We can’t hack skill because you can't shortcut experience, right? I can't, I can't there's no fast way to stamina or endurance or strength. You know, you can't, is no fast way to have 10 fights under your belt, you gotta do 10 fights, right? But there is a way to hack self-defense by understanding the categories and understanding of the brain actually learns and so the concept here is that if we can improve our perception speed we can decrease our reaction time. And so that was whole thing, if I had a back fist in my toolbox, if I had to wait to throw it like Olympic fencing, you go, I go, you go, right? And we go back and forth and so this should be this what was lovingly and poetically referred to as the deadly dance, right? When we talk about old-school martial arts and that deadly dance and I bet that was truly dance. When I was looking at was and it was kind of like intuitive to me, I didn't know I was doing and it was this hacking, how do I get out sooner. And I need people understand what I use the term hacking, it’s not like the illegal hacker breaking into you know so his computer and then put in a virus, I'm using it in the term, I’m all looking also I want to qualify this going, were not doing shortcuts to avoid the work, were doing, were talking about how do we create a shortcut to create a result? And I think there's a, there's a kind of integrity distinction there that I just want to point out.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Absolutely. The I I'm an old IT guy and the actual the original definition of hacker was to break something down so you can understand it on a different level. So, I think actually get correlates really well on what you’re saying.

Tony Blauer:

I never heard that explanation. I mean, it’s gotta a negative connotation in the general public. So, cool. It was a fascinating time and the but I loved it I mean the whole journey; the journey was great. You know I got into boxing and but I was, I got into a fight in high school where the range was really interesting because it was a confrontation that I had participated in as just a you know 15-year-old with a few friends were kinda bugging and some other kids and they were bugging us, it was really consensual and then it started to get a little crazy. And this guy kind of, the guy that was the kind of the target of some of the and let's call it bullying at the time. That is more one of those you know geeky guys standing there like laughing instead of breaking up, but it was 1975 and shit like that happen in school and still does to this day. But you know, it was meant to be more innocent back then and some shouting started happening in and this guy Lance got upset and shoved one of my friends and then he ran out and I was laughing and he came towards me and I hadn’t done anything, I didn’t touch him or anything, I’m just one the guys laughing and he shoved me and my hands came up in what we now were lovingly referred to as the nonviolent posture right. And it was just that instinctive position and my, you shoved me back towards the wall, the teacher had gone out of the classroom which is why this [00:21:14.24] was able to happen and everyone else who would provoke this whole kinda scattered so I was left there and he was in the proverbial sense of like mistaking my kindness for weakness and I say that not to be cavalier, but I was in a my hands are up hey calm down and take it easy you know were just joking around and but these other kids that pushed him over the top and he was looking for a fight now and at that moment there I was like oh wow, I kind of felt like me even about to get in a fight and 15 and you know, your testosterone is going and you know, you know like no one's got any guns or knives, this isn’t a gang fight right, this isn’t like 2015 or 16 fight, this is 1975 and I'm like okay and like thinking, here we go and then I heard my instructor from my tae kwon do school, his voice in my head and he said really loud and clear, if I catch any of you, I’m gonna preface this by saying I loved martial arts, I love going to the dojo, I love you know helping clean up and learning the stuff in the all the, I was just so into it and my instructor used to tell us in a regular basis that if I catch any of you using any martial arts as a bully, get in fights, you’re out of the school. No questions asked. If you need to defend yourself, that's okay. But if you're abusing this you're out. And I realize while this is great and I wasn't like Ii hadn’t fought, I hadn’t done anything, I hadn’t touched kid but here I was joking around and building of this drama because at this moment where there was almost this thing of where you know like the two guys all yeah yeah you know, you shove each other and then it’s like who’s gonna go first, that moment. And were standing just know, within arm’s reach from each other and I hear my instructor say this and I immediately go, dude I can't fight you. I'm not fighting you, I'm sorry about what happened, let’s just, I'm apologizing. And he looked at me and I could just see he was getting angry and he was again that interpretation of oh Tony must be scared and that's why in and he got even more like brazen and he shoved me and I'm still pleading with him a pushing away, you know my hands are padding the air, outside 90 fingers splayed, I have no idea what outside 90s finger splayed is and you do because you did the training with us, but and I tell the story because often when you know I look back at everything that happened there, I'm in this nonviolent posture body language is 60% of communication, I'm trying to diffuse it which is the moral and ethical thing to do and the legal thing to do and sometimes your inside a confrontation where nothing can be done its on. And this guy says to me, you know come on, you’re pussy and he's try to revoke it and I said Lance I’m not fighting you no matter what, I’m not fighting you. And I could see that he's corroded in the veins in his neck actually you know expanding, I mean he's getting ready to sucker punch me and he goes, come on you you know you freaking chicken, I’ll let you have the first punch and as he says the word, I’ve tried now for like a minute, I’ve tried to defuse it three or four times and I realize he's gonna sucker punch me. I just knew it and when said I’ll let you have the first punch, I hit him on the U of the word punch. And just flew out there because I knew it was going to happen and I hit him with a lead jab and visualize that you know, I’m standing and kinda flat-footed with my hands out, your fingers play, talk try to talk him down and I just fired a lead hand in caught him in the jaw, walked his head backwards, just the quick little jab, right. And I wasn't bouncing around dancing didn’t have a lot behind it, his had rocked back and he came right back with that big, you know John Wayne sucker punch. And I went, my hands came up and cover my head and pushed away the danger and you know this and anybody, if people are a little feeling you with the spear and the startle flinch, that was the first time I did the protective spear. And I had no idea there is no spear acronym back then, I did know at the startle flinch, cross extensive reflex was or any of that stuff this was just instinctive, intuitive, you know physics and physiology working together. My hand shot out towards the threat it deflected his arm, you know, I craned off my forearm, it bounced around me and we got we got stuck in the inside really sloppy clinch cause his arm that punch turned into kind of like that shitty inside clinch. And Id wrestled for years before that, before I started tae kwon do then we bumped off of him and I immediately grabbed him by the by the hair in the head like a headlock, I transitioned, scooped his neck, grabbed his triceps and did a wicked hip throw, just from wrestling just tossed him. He went down hard, landed between my feet, at that point, he was sitting right there and you remember some of our performance psychology we talk about CW CT, closest weapon, closest target, so I didn’t dance to another position, I didn't let them get up, he landed like right square in front of me with his back to me. I grabbed him by the one hand under his jaw one hand on the crown of his head then I grabbed him by the head and I threw them into two desks. And I’ve kinda lost my shit at that point he went careening into these two desks, he was like completely winded because he got hit by the furniture. And he is lying on the ground and at that point I was kind of like in a nice side stance, looking down at him and I screamed them if you get up, I’ll kill you, right. And obviously I didn’t mean that, I just blurted out but this happened so fast in slow motion and total adrenaline dump after but I realized years later thinking about that, that, you know that was the first evidence that you know, what we practice in martial arts does not manifest itself in a real sudden sweet fight where emotions are you know running around, where emotions are running around, your brain is worrying about the legal and ethical and moral in your trying to diffuse and stuff just, stuff just erupts. Because you know, when it was when it was happening, part of my part of my thought process was at the range he was like in that poking your face range you know, come on man let's go, poking in the chest type range. I remember thinking, he's too close to kick, he's too close to kick because my martial bias and preference was taekwondo and it was after, it was after that that fight that I actually started boxing because I realize that taekwondo didn't really offer much in the way of, back then you know hand striking arsenal. Where, but everything that happened there was all startle flinch, push away danger, closest weapon, closest target, improvise this. And it’s interesting to look back on that and see, when I’m explaining that, the hack of self-defense that tell you what your body already knows how to move, that it’s got these survival reflexes that have kept our ancestors alive for years, you know, hundreds of thousands of years. And my favorite line I’ve been using the last couple years on these interviews cause when everyone asks the question like, hey what's the best martial art for the street? I always answer artistry Museum, you know when I'm trying to figure a way to monetize my haters because every time I say that, all I get is okay I hate Blauer. You know I go artistry museum, the litmus test is what you see on Google, what you see on the news always on smartphones, what you see in bodycams, on CCTV, when you're watching real people fight, you I’m sorry but you mostly 99.9% of the time do not see any technical combative martial arts. Even in trained hunters, people who willingly move towards the danger and I think that something that everyone should kinda think about and introspect and scratch their head and you know let me again the caveat on qualification is that, I’m not saying that you shouldn't do MMA or jujitsu or tae kwon do or karate I’m just saying that you know, if you one they said I need a weapon for home defense, something that I know has stood the test, you’re gonna get a catapult like from an old castle right? You’re not gonna get a black powder gun just because it was historic, right? You’re not gonna get a mace and yeah it would work but if you really were thinking about the zombie apocalypse and you wanted a weapon you would, you know this is just a metaphor for the gun haters, you’d want a glock and an AR, right? You know something that you get dirty and wet. You know I have a gun collection you know, my main glock I don't even know that I’ve cleaned it yet since I bought it. It has got 5,6, 7000 rounds through it and I’m just doing this is just as a test, just to see when its gonna start jamming right? So, but that's what I want, I want something I just grab the use and the metaphor there is like, god forbid I got to defend myself or my family, I don't to be something that's complex motor skill or technical I need the universe to unfold to my behalf so that I can use this favorite move. I need something that's just right there I can grab it and its gonna work and then therefore it needs to be primal, it needs to be gross motor and it need to be something that I believe is hardwired in every one of us and that's why I created last year to help people understand this, are these categories to think about in the same way you would maybe put weapons in categories and trauma kit in categories. You know like do I need tourniquet at home or do I need a Band-Aid or should I have both. In understanding what category of danger, you would you know, you have to be experiencing to use white men do not use that. So, you don't just repeat again is like the categories, category one or all martial arts and those are mostly, you gotta understand for everyone listening of that the martial arts were very much a consensual practice even samurai. You know if you look at the you know all the lore and stories around samurai, and if two samurai ended up killing each other, they are representing you know each other's shogun and but it was a very ritualized tea ceremony agreed to fight in a certain time, it was like a duel like the old west duels. People don’t fight like that anymore. And so, you know, if it was you know, like it was taboo to throw your sword, right? But, this is the thing that I go, that I tell people, if part of your practice is pure self-defense or you protect yourself or your family, you may need to look outside your martial art and not that I may as me being pc right there, you need to. Are there attributes that you’re gonna develop from your training? Absolutely. Is it a waste of time? Of course not. You know it’s amazing but that's like you know, so I’m very big into CrossFit for a lot of reasons in terms of the connection to self-defense is every CrossFit work out the wad's, work of the day, has a part in it where you want to quit because the magic sauce and CrossFit is the intensity. So, cross fitter like a lot of people like to go off a little tangent bring it back here, my passion for CrossFit was that the adaptation occurred psychologically so my buddy founder of CrossFit the Greg glassman said the greatest adaptation CrossFit is that occurs between the ears and he's talking about you know, what happens with learning about you. What workouts do you avoid, what movements do you avoid when something is scary or tough you know, how hard you push? Did you quit? Did you keep going and if you keep doing that, what you become a better version of yourself each time and that was my connection to it. So, I every time I do it it’s making me more mentally tough for what I’m all about in my life and its teaching personal safety. And so, there were, you know, there was to me there is a parallel relationship in the workout you know I could do high yoga and long-distance running for fitness and you know TRX and anything. But there's something very violent about the CrossFit workout that resonated with me and it’s not for everybody. But I understood why I was doing and why I recommend it to the law enforcement. Remember this also, anybody for listeners who don't know who we are, my students our cops and military. I teach their company with our trainers all over the world and we do stuff with every category, were probably the only one of the few companies that have worked at a high level with like governments to law enforcement, the local state and federal level. The department defense and various companies but also with women shelters and mixed martial artists of you know, from BJ Penn to Frank Mir to Joe Lauzon to you know, like not like you know the guy down, the street and not putting the guy down the street might be the next world champion. I'm just saying that we've done stuff over a 30-year career at the tier 1 levels and in each one of those and also traditional classical martial artist, the ones that have an open mind to our stuff. We’ve got some very, very high ranking martial artists in Europe, in the states who are like way up there, like travel the world teaching taekwondo and their martial arts and stuff who are doing their best to integrate the spear research into that to make those audiences safer because as you know, the martial arts can be metaphorically like religions and people go a little myopic and a little protective about that. And you know years ago I wrote that you know that and I always remind people that, that when it comes to your personal safety and family's safety, there cannot be any ego or politics, this has to be about practicality. And you know we come back to the big question of why, you know people asked me what's the best martial art for the street, I would say no, no artist for museum. Street is completely different, you need to reverse engineer your approach. You need to look at how the bad guys are attacking people to understand how you must prepare for that. And so about two years ago, when I got asked the question for the thousandth time in an interview, I said how did people fight before martial arts? It was just like really funny pregnant pause there, I go because like was the world peaceful in then martial arts were invented and people started fighting? Because like there’s like a fatalism causal like oh no I don't learn, [00:37:42.34] people who go I don't want to learn martial arts because they'll attract violence. Have you heard that shit? I’m like, really? Oh my god, so what you even think about? What do you do? You know, so forget those people but I go like, the world was always violent whether it was, you know and you think about that pain is a modern invention, so mother nature's violent and so what happened right? So, our ancestors, like a modern man like around 80,000 years ago when, I used 80,000 mark because there's evidence of weapons being developed and used to the oldest spear and might've been just like a sharp rock that everyone's mistaking. But there's evidence of like man-made stabbing like spearing impaling tools 2- 300,000 years old and the oldest one is 400,000. But the evidence of modern man starting to migrate, move around the world is around 80,000 years ago. And so, might my theory I know nothing about any of this anthropology and archaeology and I know nothing. This is just, I’m using the same intuitiveness of that are used to develop the spear system saying, I gonna assume that, that until people started roaming the planet that the colonies and communities were fairly peaceful because it was just you and your tribe, right? That's probably not true because if you know, you look at husbands and wives and bullies and what have you, but let's just pretend they were for the purpose of this cartoony, visual that when people started you know, moving around the globe and they didn't recognize each other, that's what all the misunderstandings right? That’s where I make the joke that your communication is the usually the first and greatest cause of most wars on the planet right? Lack of communication. And so, play with as little visual, so modern man 80,000 years ago starts exploring the globe and I’m thinking that when fightings start. But that wasn't at the time you know like you come out of your cave and you and I are gonna go eat or cavemen, I go hey, Jeremy, check this out a caveman kung fu studio opened up over there and let's go study there. No, no look over there there's caveman combatants over here and I’m going there. You know what I’m saying it’s like that would exist, people figured out how to handle violence and my explanation if you'll humor me and listen to this, is that when mother nature got violent, modern man in their brain and there you know ingenuity figured out how to build shelter and how to protect and how to predict and how to anticipate the stuff right? Otherwise, we'd all been wiped out and then when people went out hunting and you know for people went out and three will came back as a giant wolf or sabretooth tiger or a bear ate somebody cause they were looking for, whatchamacallit, greens and wheat berries didn't have any weapons with them, modern man figured out. To me the first weapon was a rock and then somebody went you know when I threw my weapon away, like I threw that rocket at bear, once that rock was going, he was out of ammo. And so eventually someone figured out that you keep things away from you with a long pointy stick and then they figured out if we can tie something that's more rigid to the end of it we could do more damage with it and there is interesting thing that we're just reading online about the first spear that there is a direct link with the growth and the size of the brain in the skull size, this is the interpretation when man started hunting because it started getting protein instead of you know just all the carbs.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’ve read that myself.

Tony Blauer:

Yeah so anyways that's neither here nor there as far as combatants go. But maybe but you know, the point is you know the spear system is both a metaphor and its actually, you know, and I didn't know all of this when I came up with spear, and spear being an acronym for spontaneous protection enabling accelerated response. But the acronym is you has three aspects to it that make it this congruent trinity, one is the that shape your arms take when we deploy the converted flinch, right, is in the shape of the spear and that's basically really simple to visualize because your arm to test your shoulders and your hands are coming in or towards the threat and so they naturally form this the spear point just because that's anatomy in physiology. The fact that were using the human body's fastest and strongest reflexive movement the startle flinch response is the fastest response the human body has and it’s this 80,000-year-old and older DNA and then the strongest framing position, from a pure physics point of view is outside 90 fingers splayed and using the extensor chain harmoniously and balancing it from a kinesthetic point of view. And so, everything we do is based on the science, and this discovery of mine was accidental and it was incidentally, I was doing isolation drill in the 80s called the sucker punch drill and I was had one of my students try to sucker punch, videotaping it is just gonna watch what my body was going to do and I’ll get more into the second cause I want to finish the caveman story but, I believe that the first spear was developed as a protective mechanism, it wasn’t like oh let's go hunt. I believe that the threat from the outside is what created the weapon wasn’t people like sitting around going let's go kill bears and eat them right. I think the bears tried to eat the humans first and but if you do the research on the startle flinch cross extensive reflex and what it does is it pushes away danger or it covers up in that fetal position to cover the head in the same movement of like a crossbow by drawing a narrow. That same movement of the recoil of and then drive forward that's the movement of the start of flesh that's also the same kinematic movement you would use to impale a spear into a threat. And so, there's this weird serendipity that I discovered doing all this research on spears and modern man that I went wow, cause that wasn’t my intention in 1988 when I came up with this. It was it was it was truly just this experiment where I went, how is it that I’ve been training now for let's say 1988? So, I’ve been training for, let's say 18 years you know doing some sort of force on force stuff, how is it during this this isolation drill that we lovingly call the sucker punch drill and we watched we watch back the videos after hours of that I was getting clock. I mean when I finish the drill Jeremy, I had a migraine I had a mouse under each eye, I was bleeding from my mouth my face was swollen, it was like wax on wax off like in the movies.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Can you describe that drill? Just for everybody listening

Tony Blauer:

Yeah sure. So back in the 80s what was really big there was the jhun Rhee safety chop era and bill Wallace and Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris and you know, that was the big thing was kickboxing. And so, what you did to practice self-defense, as you've gotten, you sparred and that was your idea doing scenario training. If you look at the old book Danny Inosanto's old book on jeet-kune do, where he talked about multiple [00:46:17.44] drills you'd see like three guys or four guys surrounding one guy and they were all in boxing stance wearing like 16-ounce boxing gloves. And they're doing with multiple, they would call multiple [00:46:27.51] in other words and this wasn't malicious, this is what we just understood back then. Like guys weren’t going, I know this isn't the most practical way to train but let's teach this to our students, right? Like nobody was just where we are at. And so, one day in remember I said when I first started talking, I just would see things differently and I always did and that I would act on it, I wouldn't I would shut myself down. It was one thing, that I was fortunate as part of my psychological makeup is that, that you know when I was 15 and the instructor was a key eye and then punch I wouldn’t do it. I always mouthed that in the class, I refuse to do it because I believe that it would, it would alert my opponent that I was about to do something and I knew that I didn’t want to do that. So, I never develop it as a habit there's no pavlovian conditioning for me. But what I would do because I didn't want have to do push-ups or run around the gym or spar you know the higher belts and get my ass kicked because I wasn't following orders I would lip-synch the key I right. But it but in my mind, is some reason why are you doing it I had a strategic and tactical explanation for why thought was wrong. But how audacious was would be for a 15-year-old to tell a taekwondo master, I’m not doing that here’s why. You know, that would be, you don't do that and that's to me, that's some of the problems I think that we should be able to put our hand up in class and say why and then instructor shouldn't say will it’s because my master told me to or you know, I would like you know, I want one my students come in actually the kid that I developed the sucker punch with comes in one day, he is new and I have all these stuff planned to work with him and he says hey he is doing privates and he says that hey a coach can we do something, I don’t want to do anything physical today, got some questions for you. I’m like, sure man. And he goes could we talk about the role emotion plays in fighting? I’m like what? He was like this 15-okay right. Yeah like two lessons I want to talk about the role of emotions and I just like immediately fell in love. You know I mean is like it’s a holy shit, because that that is what drew me to everything. I just posted meme yesterday on Facebook and Instagram and stuff where I said you know, the real value of training with us is trying to, is learning to understand how to manage fear because fear throttles everything we do in life. It really it influences who you marry, where you work, how much weight you lift, and most importantly whether you defend yourself or not. And if you can't manage fear in situations, you are then moved by the current of fear, right. It'll push you into corners and places you probably didn't want to go and then what happens is, homeostasis and adaptation, you find that and that's the proverbial rocking chair test if I should've said this or you know I should've, should've asked her out on a date that girl from high school or should I punch that guy in the face what he you know, when he can't do that anymore. But back when I grew up, punching people was okay, but that'll be another talk the good old days. But the sucker punch drill, so this kid warren, he trained with me for years turned out to be really good boxer. One day comes and I say warren, I wanna do something with you. I woke up this morning, I hallucinated this drill. I said were always talk about self-defense and the we do all these drills we'll were in the ring were doing like kicks, and you know blocks and strikes and throws and grappling and all the stuff and very eclectic. But it’s not the street man. The street starts off with the scenario and I said, we need to, we need to start looking at that he's what do you wanna do? I said well you can put on boxing gloves, I’m gonna put a mouth guard. I'm not going to hit you, I’m not gonna do anything other than trying not get hit and he says okay. He says so let me let me understand this, I’m just gonna hit you you’re not gonna hit me? I go yeah that's kind of it. And kinda like evil kinda look in his eyes and I start thinking, I wonder if this is a good idea. And quite literally you know what I said was, I said the going to need you to do is I need you to start a scenario. He goes what do you mean? I said I want you to like, you 'll walk up to me and I’m gonna to suspend reality, if you come up to me and you say hey the boss wants his money back then I going to assume that your strong man from a loan shark I borrowed money from the wrong people. And if you come up to me and you asked me a question about the weather, even though were inside on the lookout that the ceiling and pretend look at the sky, I was gonna go with it and then you obviously try to create some sort of dialogue that would provoke some tension, so that you know we can practice verbal and then you just gonna hit me whenever you want. It was really weird because I had been so acclimated to boxing and kicking range that when he encroached me and he walked in with his hands down, wearing gloves and had a mouth guard on, when he got inside my arms reach, my heart started pounding I got a wicked adrenaline dump and actually the first time he walked up to me to go like nose to nose, like a jerk in a bar, road rage situation, I actually pushed him away you know and I went hey get out of my face, and I had to stop myself and go whoa like this is weird because, what we're doing was now introducing distances and dialogue inside the discomfort zone. And again, so this is all the, this might be psychobabble for some people but this is this is the secret sauce for understanding self-defense. I still look at this this day and this is you’re 30 years ago, I still look at the way people teach self-defense and I go oh my god you like I’ve written about it, I share the stuff in publicly, we got 40 videos out, there is a lot of information that, that people could use to augment how they do so because the only way to really learn about personal safety is to do scenarios. Cause you need, it’s not about the knee or the elbow or the kick and that's the mistake that is made in category one and category two and even in some of category three where the focus in the category one martial arts and the focus in category two combat sports is mostly the physical realm, the execution of technique. I’ve got a very provocative expression I tell people that you the singular pursuit of technique is really your greatest hindrance to your spontaneity in the street. And it drives people crazy again I don't how to monetize the haters, I wish I could maybe can help with that. But its, because you’ve got like famous legendary martial art expressions like you know that, you know the 10,000 reps and then you know you’re self-mastery and stuff like that, and I think people are misinterpreting stuff. A lot of it is just, I saw funny a funny comment on an Instagram post yesterday were some well-known tactical magazine was showing a guy doing a weapon protection, he had a pistol in his, the other guy had a knife and people are going crazy on the guys under handgrip, over handgrip, should be here, was the gun in the right position, what would happen and one guy finally just posted guys, it’s a staged picture in Instagram calm down. Like, as if this was like the holy grail and we had to decode this. And so you this is the area like when I say you’re pursuit of technique could be your single greatest hindrance your spontaneity in the street and what I mean by that is like look at what I said when warren stepped inside what’s called a reactionary gap, when he stepped inside that, 3 foot demarcation write that that that invisible line when as Americans, as north Americans, were standing and talking to somebody, like someone gets a little bit closer, you back off unless you are in competition and you’re and you're just being like a douche bag you let somebody get that close to you, you know what I’m saying? But instead sparring, if will be a box and I moved into close quarter range, you’d to step back. You get used to, just like magnets of the same polarity. We kinda however at the distance that were acclimated to and you can't and this is so subtle Jeremy, but this is this is the moment where somebody steps too close to you, your physiological system gets a fierce bite because you're inside of a discomfort zone. Therefore, outside of your comfort zone it triggers a fierce bite but you never talked about fear management, you get this adrenaline dump, you get sweaty palms may get a little auditory exclusion, a little tunnel vision, because you never really explored the difference between the psychology, if you're in the biology fear what ends up happening is, your brain does two things; one cognitive dissonance kicks in right away because it goes, okay you cool your cool everything is cool, but you're not cool and then your other part of body your brain starts to identify what are these feelings. And then and I’ve interviews so many people in my 30+ year career most people interpret those feelings as lack of preparedness, lack of understanding, some people escalated to I must be a coward, I’m not ready to fight. And they don’t understand this this is just like adrenal dumps and the fear spike and what the goofiest name ever from the research community, arousal, you know, fear-based arousal. You know, I don't like the word because I prefer arousal to take place somewhere else, not in a fight. So, but again just, this is the nomenclature but people don't people don't study that stuff that's really where we kind of differentiated our self. I don't know if you know Kenneth jay's like a researcher from Europe, they got big you do know him or you don’t?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I don't, no.

Tony Blauer:

He's a big, big man but he trains a lot of fighters but he's kind of aerobic capacity person, does a lot of stuff with the treadmill and I don't know him very well but like I’ve had lunch with him once in the trained with one of my, one of our instructor development courses, I wasn't I wasn't the lead instructor at it like maybe 15 years ago. But as a researcher you know he’s big into the measurements and you know we posted something recently that basically just we just said flat out that there is nothing we teach that be analyzed, quantified and measured from the sciences of psychology, kinesiology, physiology. We won’t show you anything on our system and will explain it through those definitions and filters. And so, there was this you know, it was one of the slides from our instructor power point that we posted and he just, he reposted and said this is why I love these guys. And this is why it’s one of the only self-defense programs I’ll endorse because it’s science you know. And we talk about our three pieces, its, everything is based on physiology, physics and psychology. So, unless you’re unicorn or at an alien you know or mermaid or something else, study what we do will make you safer because its only about physics, physiology and psychology. So, but anyways and that's what I, then that is what I discovered in the science of this sucker punch drill where I thought it would be competence, confidence and complex motor skills that would get me through the drill. And so, I thought that when warren would throw something that I could do wax on, wax on all day because he was my student, even though he got to be pretty good boxer, good fast twitch muscle fibers, and you know we changed stuff up. He was firing from an unorthodox position, his hands were down so he wasn’t in a boxing stance he was in a new range, and so this is category four. It's the brain-based learning model of understanding category four which his violent encounters or someone comes up to me, comes up to me and he's like a man the boss wants his money and I’m like dude I need a couple extra days, uppercut right boom hits me and my head turns into a pez dispenser. You know threw the punch while I was in midsentence. You know, I had mouth guard on, gloves on and this went on for almost an hour. Did I block some stuff? Yeah, but I took more clean shots but I knew I was onto something. It was I think 1987-88 and were filming with one of those old rca vhs machines you know where that, pop the side popped open, you know. Some of your listeners are going vhs, what is that, I gotta google that. But it was amazing experience but I sat down after you know. Just, ice pack on my face and Tylenol’s and going what the hell was that. And that was the birth of the spear system, there was no spear, there was no startle flinch, there was no acronym. It was why every time I flinched I got hit in the forearm, elbow, triceps, shoulder, I intercepted stuff but every time I tried to do wax on, wax off and I use wax on, wax off as tongue-in-cheek block, a parry, a slip and you know what I tell people this; you know that you can't intercept a complex motor skill with another complex motor skill if you allow somebody to start their complex motor skill first. It just doesn't happen its physics, its pure physics. I guess the sat exam, like you know two trains leave one leads you know, you know the question? A train, your travel 70 miles an hour and you know who gets here first? You know, at the end of the day if 1 train is moving way faster, you can figure out some algorithm to figured it out. You know if they, if they’re, if they’re travelling the same speed, travelling the same distance, someone moves starts just such a second earlier, and the action versus actions. It’s pure physics. And so, you know we started investigating, interpreting that but there's a lot going on not just understanding stimulus response and gap time and how your brain needs to make a decision, but also recognizing that we weren't, we weren’t doing any patterns. It was a very interesting study done with one of the, like a chess grandmaster who they did this test with her where they had his van driving by and on the side of the van was a magnetic chessboard and had the pieces on the chessboard and it would drive like, just drive by her she was like sitting outside or inside of a coffee shop so just drive by and she could replicate where all the pieces all were on the board every time he drove by. Just like slight glanced all the pieces and so she's like this savant chess master, right? But then they did something interesting it was this brain scientist test. And they started putting the pieces randomly on the board and she couldn't remember any of it. In other words when they changed, when the when the when they had the traditional set up the one that we all learn right, where the rook goes, where the bishop goes, where the king go, all of all the pawns, when they had all the pieces there she could, she could replicate the board and show what the next move was and how to you know she could start again. But when they put them randomly, like as if a kid put them on and had no idea where things are supposed to go, it threw her brain completely off and she couldn’t remember, she couldn’t remember the pieces, she’s going to remember a couple of them but it was like, complete like Latin. And it was an amazing study because, do you see where I’m going with this as far as martial arts?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I do. Yeah, I do.

Tony Blauer:

It's fascinating. It was a, I believe it’s a national geographic study and I just got, I was doing some training with the military down Australia and there they are so fascinated with our brain-based research, one the guys had seen this and sent it to me and I was like blown away by because what it does is, its again a like a separate study that just shows how we identify stimuli and how you know. If were so used to being in a boxing mode or MMA mode or jujitsu mode, what we do is we predispose ourselves to look for that set up, so that we can set up our set up, so that we can do the show, were good to go, were goo to do it. This is what I meant by what I said that, that, this is kinda a deeper philosophical re-understanding of my statement that, that singular pursuit of technique of mastery could be your greatest hindrance to street spontaneity. Because the bad guy in the street isn't coming at you like a chess board, he’s not coming at you from the orthodox position with an agreed two stances where you go, oh I know where this is going. It's pretty deep.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, let's talk about what someone that you know, sees the logic in what you're saying and I think that you know, we may have some people out there that might take issue with some of the things you're saying, but for the most part... I’m gonna guess that the audience is...

Tony Blauer:

I just figured out a monetize my haters. All my haters, 10% off all my DVDs, email us. Okay go on what’s the question.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, for the majority and put myself in this group that are hearing what you're saying and saying, yeah this make sense I get it, how do you, how might you merge the two? How you take some of these concepts that you're talking about and work them but yet not give up, maybe the karate, the taekwondo, the jujitsu that you love the even doing for 10-20-30 years?

Tony Blauer:

Yeah, it’s you know what I use a stamp metaphor and I’ll give you a couple things out there and hopefully... My passion is making the world safer. When I was 20, I was asked by a business developer what I want to do and I said, I wanna make the world safer and he look to me and he said hello okay that's kinda, grandiose and you think? I was like, why you know, it was like, like you know, wow how are you gonna do that? I said, I don't know exactly but I think we teach self-defense wrong, I think we need to reverse engineer, I think we need to use our emotional, psychological systems differently and we need to not focus so much on complex motor skills. This is 1980 and you know, so here we are, how many years ago was that? 36. Holy shit. So, you know that's still my passion. That's still my passion. It is you know, I’ve got teams around the world helping me do this and some people don't get it. So, if you put me in in front of like you know hundred taekwondo grandmasters, who you know can kick apples off of kabanas, jump up in the air and studio split boards and do like amazing things with their body and lightning fast and they're all bad asses you don't want you to want to fight them. But you know one of our maxims in our train the trainer courses is don't show your students what you could do, show them what they can do. And its huge at the end of the day unless that person who's that amazing is your bodyguard, you're no closer to be known to protect yourself than you were when you started. And the other thing is there’s a lot of evidence out there and when I say a lot there are many examples, of very trained people getting messed up big time in real fights because they're not able to read the dangerous signals cause they’ve never done scenario-based training they just go out you know. There's going to be an obvious metaphor bell when the fights gonna go and the I’ll step back and kick this guy, or punch this guy or take him down. And you'll see like anytime there's violence, you know, on any one of our posts someone will go, you know, krav maga is the best, and then someone ese will post, no jiu-jitsu is the best. You know, I post stuff where like I’m promoting the CrossFit defense course and I guy like on there going, you know, this is fake you know no one to attack you with a med ball. This is bullshit, you go to study jujitsu and like oh my god. You know it’s like 2016 and you still have like the Shaw brothers kung fu movie going on Instagram. You know Bruce lee, return of the dragon who can do karate better than the Japanese? You know it’s like, and so you know coming back to you question of, for some people there is no blend its understanding that I’ve got this antique gun collection because I collect guns but my home defense weapon is my glock right? And I have this collection of these swords and knives but you know I’m gonna use a combat tomahawk as my bladed weapon in home defense. I’m actually being literal, so I’ve got right pistols, and I’ve got tomahawks with you know, you know they're bad ass, they’re insane what you can do it and so I look, okay what if I have a home invasion and I need to fight and grab shit fast you know? What I want to be able to do and what I want to be able to grab. I want, imagine this can be a ton of fear and ton of adrenaline so I want something that is primal and gross motor, that's a hatchet and then if I get to my, if I get to the gun you don't want something that that you know is gonna work that I trust is gonna work. And I got more high-tech guns, that if I go if I go you know do a competition or something but the tolerance is on those things that you little bit dirtier they jam, right?

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, what I’m hearing is you’re advocating if I can use that strong of a word, a separate component. It's not that reality-based you know let's stay alive sort of training falls under the heading of traditional martial art, it’s not a piece of my karate class, my tae kwon do class, it’s a wholly separate thing. It requires a separate attitude, separate skill set, a separate lesson plan.

Tony Blauer:

I believe that. I believe that it’s almost like, you know, Greg glassman of CrossFit notoriety for some you know. Like people, I’ve been around him for a decade now it’s actually been 10 years that I’ve been involved with CrossFit and where people say I have a question, should I continue doing tennis, but also incorporate CrossFit because I’m professional tennis player. And he goes yes. They go should I do less tennis and more CrossFit or more tennis and less CrossFit? And he goes yes. You know, and then someone go, I’m a MMA guy, should I do more CrossFit, he always a yes. In other words, what he saying is you gotta find that balance of works for you and if you do more of something that suddenly you’re doing so much CrossFit that you're starting to lose fights, you’ve gone the wrong way the pendulum is gone too far. I really believe after 36 years of teaching and watching and interviewing real victims of violence, you have to remember this also, I said that earlier, my students actually fight. I hope I got a whole bunch more haters there. My students are police officers Blauer tactical does is our main business is training law enforcement or military. So, the feedback I get from people is them fighting the meanest pieces of shit out there. You know, I mean, just people who just don't care about your body, your property, your life and I get feedback on what works the 3d's, of the verbal, the spear, the closer, all our stuff as performance-enhancing based, it’s all based on something that you know, our criteria are it can't be gender age task or body type specific right? So, if you’re [01:12:34.19] or a mesomorph that’s gonna change whether you like wrestling or taekwondo at certain levels, right? What you can adopt too, faster and so, so you know, so it’s, if I say hey this all based on science, this here and this works and this is the hack, but I’ll tell you this here's another one, that will blow people's minds, I can teach almost anybody, I say almost that mean somebody doesn't have some sort of serious physical disability or emotional disability, in 48 hours you can learn to defend yourself. That might seem absurd, I’ve actually said to high-ranking martial artists who've challenged me verbally in in front of people, where I say, give me a week and with somebody and they will be able to protect themselves and their family. I’m not talking about you know, I got this friend who’s got like hitman after him and you know he's in a whoa, okay like, you know what I’m saying, I’m exaggerating to make a point that if you got like trained assassins after you, maybe need more the weekend.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Two weekends.

Tony Blauer:

But if you're, if you're just a good Samaritan, trying to get through life, right you wanna go to your tae kwon do class, you want to go to your judo class, you want to go to mma class and I’d say that I wanted a ballet, I want to go to my art class. I'm working during the day, I want to see my family, what you need is some fundamental situational awareness, you need some, understand the strategy and tactics for verbal de-escalation, and how to use choice speech and how to read body language signs of things are working or not and then some simple, simple smart self-defense, some simple stun and run. And you need to know the lines that need to be crossed for you and they’re different, they can be different for each person and these things will throttled or influenced by who you are, where you work. Literally like for example you know, if you go to Italy people stand like 18 inches closer than they do in America, right? So, someone come right up to you and your like, you don’t want to shove somebody like get outta my face, you know, it’s like you gotta understand the culture and so but I can spike in I can, I can do it in a week and I can do it in a day. And the way I explain this is in, we just we just published something on Facebook and Instagram about this, that true self-defense meaning category four violent encounters, most of the stuff can be handled by just understanding d1d2 detect and avoid and defuse and de-escalate. That most situations if you're not there the situation can happen so avoidance is paramount, but most people have no idea what to look for and they also don't have the internal self-awareness and you'll appreciate this is an it person, they don't have a directive. They don't have like an internal if, then, go to like dos command that says, right? So, if you been training in the physical applications of confrontation management, there's a part of you that wants to get into a fight maybe. You want to test this or see this and maybe that's too provocative and you don't want to get into it but you don't know how to get away from it because you never practiced that's I the stuff. We did drills back in the 80s Jeremy, back in the 80s, I just talk about this is week which is why I remembered it, where you’d be the person the middle and you are told you can't do anything you can be surrounded by six people and they’re to shove you and bitch slap you and poke you and call you names they’re gonna verbally assault you, this is way before RBSD was even an acronym and I don't even like RBSD. I guess I shouldn't say a mocking to make fun of it, but what other type of self-defense should be like why coin reality based self-defense, you're either training self-defense or you’re not. It was like guys, today were going to unreality based self-defense, tomorrow is the reality based self-defense class. It should never be an acronym and I look at the RBSD as a looser version of category one martial arts. Category one, I’m gonna circle back to this, is the technical martial arts where what you trying to do is embody exemplify and replicate the style. This is how we kick, this how we punch, this where we move, we learn all these katas, we learn all these moves. If you study my head to look google [01:17:38.08] you understand that, the more choices you have, the slower you are. That's just neuroscience and so the idea of saying like my style has like 300 counters to a jab, you're going to be slower than somebody that has got one move. So, spare system is hex law compliant and again, provocative, still working on ways to monetize the haters. Understand as I make that I say that joke tongue-in-cheek, I want any good Samaritan to be safer that's all I want and so the greatest value that training with us, is understanding how to manage fear because you get a fierce bite, when you think you're being followed or you think you're moving towards danger. That's when it starts, and that's the biggest problem our research of victims of violence are, cause they didn't know how to get away from moving towards the acts, the acts being the proverbial kills zone, or shit was gonna happen, the ambush point. And so, the ones that live to tell the tale all say yeah, I had a bad feeling, and I go, why didn’t you move? What cognitive dissonance shuts it down right? Your body chose to correct it. Or you didn't want to create an embarrassing situation or you didn't want, it’s all these, like so many so many social stigmas that, but a lot of it is just people don't know how to choose safety and that’s our big hashtag in our class is just to safety. There's no downside to choosing safety, whenever you choose safety you are safer. Right? And so, if you choose safety and you misread a pre-contact que, guess you’re still safe. But if you ignore it and you don't follow my guidance and it turns out to be a problem, you are in a lot more danger than had you chosen safety and the danger is real because you would now be in a place where your further way emotionally and psychologically, physically from the threat because you started to take action this what we call the directive right like, you know, you open your computer and you know, a smart computer does some shit for you, you don’t have to write the dos commands but the human being needs the dos command, if then go to. If you had a bad feeling, I want you to stop and I want you to move away from it, I want you to assess it, I want you to evaluate it and if you’re late, big deal, right? That's the only downside of like, I took a longer route, I didn't go on that date, I stopped here and I circled back around. I didn't go into my apartment because I had a really bad feeling I called the superintendent up and he came in with another guy and nothing was there, but I’m safe. That was weird, let me think about what happened, right? Instead of shutting it down. So, the first big one d1 and then the d2 is that the de-escalation and I’m off on some crazy tangent and so reel me in. But at the notion is like, I want people to still study, I want to get you’re tenth degree taekwondo rank and I want you to open up a school and I want you to do seminars all that but don't confuse the categories. Don't think that when you're sitting in your car and you just for your seatbelt on and you’re air conditioning isn’t working or you roll down your window, you know, that’s the first thing so many people do soon as I get in a car?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Put their seat belt on.

Tony Blauer:

Yep and after that?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Turn the car on.

Tony Blauer:

And then after that?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Plug in there phone.

Tony Blauer:

Yeah and as soon as you plug in your phone, before you go to your next meeting or you go somewhere, people check their Facebook or check their Instagram or check their and you may not do that but so many people do that and that's opportunistic bad guys look for. So, true story I’m having dinner with my wife and my daughter one night and we pull up in three cars cause were all out and we went for tacos and it was nighttime and where in this dark strip mall and everything is closed but this little restaurant and we all get in the car and I get in car and I and I’m parked furthest to the left and I look to the right and I see the glow of my wife's face and in through the window I see the glow of my daughter's face and I’m like oh my god. So, I shut my engine and I walk around the back, my wife sees me I do the put my finger to mouth like shhh. Like you know my daughter's car is three cars over I walk over to her car, like a cop approaching, she's looking down at her phone and I hammer fist the window and she just about shits. And almost drops her phone. And she looks at me like with anger and terror in her eyes. She goes, Jesus murphy died, you scared the shit out me. I said, roll down your window and she rolls it down and I grabbed and she like recoils and starts pushing me away and I scream and I go roll up your window. And she's like what are you doing? I go roll up your window and she rolls up her window so I gotta pull my arms out cause they’re gonna like, arm lock myself, right? And you are visualizing this?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Tony Blauer:

Terrifying. I want everybody listening to this. You’re a taekwondo black belt female and you go man I’m a taekwondo black belt and but you got in your car you put your seatbelt on, you crack the window little bit it was a hot nice night or whatever. And you’re looking on your phone. You’re texting you know your boyfriend, your husband, your kids I’ll be home dinner and just leaving now. Headed to a movie and now out of the dark the attack happens. Your taekwondo black belt in a seatbelt in your car, what are you doing?

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's irrelevant the training's relevant.

Tony Blauer:

You’re a jiu-jitsu black belt in your car in your seatbelt looking at your phone. You’re MMA. You know what I’m saying? Is like you and so we can say all this and like you know the mma guy or that the jiu-jitsu guy or the aikido guy he would understand how to use like an elbow breaker, yeah, yeah. Okay. Everything works once it doesn't work twice. Once I put you in the scenario and startle the shit out of you, you can start the correcting figured out and you missed the whole point. The point is, that was a violent encounter and where you get attacked versus emotional, psychologically, your breathing stops, you’re now moving out aerobically, you’re startle flinch mode, you recoil you're now the 80,000-year-old modern man going yah, shit, where did that giant will come from? And now you try to push away danger and unless you've incorporated that into training, the conversions are gonna happen slower and that's the magic of science and art of the spear system training. Separate do this and you got to expose to this to the seminar, we do cycle behavior and the neural circuitry fear is understanding how to anticipate and think and look at the stuff but also how to manage that fear up. My point being here, let me finish the story with my daughter because she was furious with me. I said, what would you do if this happened? She goes dad used to scare the shit of me and I go, answer me. What would you do? What if the guy put his arm through the window and you rolled it up and he didn't like, he’s crank and he’s hang and he’s any stuck in your car. She goes dad this is scary me, I said I need you to have an imprint of this in your brain. You’re my 18-year-old daughter, I just did this to you, anyone else could have. People get attacked in parking lots at night, right? And they don't get attacked in the dojo. They don't attack in the wrestling mat room you to see a mugging happen in the octagon, right? Very few people track and hope you guys are tracking this, I just want the world to be safer and so I just want my daughter to be safer and so it’s an amazing moment for her because I said here's what you gonna do, bad guys don’t wanna get caught, they don't wanna get hurt, they don’t want for things that take too long. You just disrupted all of that. What you gonna do is you’re gonna use your car as a weapon, and you’re gonna use your car as a mode of transportation and what you're gonna do is you’re gonna roll up the window on them if he's pinned in the car, you're going to, and if he’s trying to grab you, have put the car in reverse to get back out I don’t care if you hit cars behind you and you’re going to drive to a police station. Do you know the police stations are around here? If you don't, learn where they are. You’re gonna drive to a police station, with this guy hanging out an arm. He's gonna get his arm out of there and disappear from you, trust me and if he doesn't, you’re gonna help assist in the citizen’s arrest here he is pinned to my car. But the point is, what I did as I did I trained her in something about situational awareness, and I trained her in some practical tactics that are not gender, age, mesomorph, ectomorph you know, specific the not martial, they’re not complex motor skill and I said to her, why are you on your phone sitting in the car here? You could be carjacked that I can bust you’re window you know if you looked up and the gun was there he said, don't fucking move or I’ll shoot you, right? I mean [01:26:52.20] open the door, right? And I said you getting in your car parking lot at night, you start driving right away. You scan your surroundings first, if you have a bad feeling when you walk out the door, you go back in and have one of the one or two of the guys from the restaurant walk you at your car. People want to be heroes, if someone came up to me and said hey, could you walk in the car, I’ve got a bad feeling, the first thing I would do is wonder if it’s a set up. So, I would, you know because that shit happens I and I know people, personally know people who been mugged like that you know. Where someone goes, help me, help me, help me and you know, like and go to be the good Samaritan only get mugged by the accomplice. So, like, what a horrible world we live in but you know, you got to you got a threat discriminate.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And that concludes part one of episode 108. You can find the rest of the episode in part two which is already been released. I hope to see you back here shortly as we finish up our time with Mr. Blauer.

PART 2

Jeremy Lesniak:

Welcome back for part two of episode 108 with Mr. Tony Blauer. This is the uncut version, if you'd like to clean version, that's available over on the website whistlekickmartialartsradio.com if you haven't listened to part one yet, I strongly suggest you listen to that part first. No full intro here for part two, so here we go.

Tony Blauer:

Is that a set up or not? Last night ironically, I walk with my daughter and out of the blue and I didn't drop my phone, I was looking down my phone waiting for my daughter, she was taking some pictures, I was looking down my phone. The next thing, there’s a lady beside me asking me a question about trying to find somebody on Facebook and that she's not on Facebook and she had this crazy story about this person on the hospital and she looked, she had crazy eyes. And you know, the first thing I did is, I kind of evaluating the distance, I scanned her hands and I kinda looked around and kept to you know looking at her eyes and made eye contact with her and basically because it felt weird, I said I can't help you because I'm kind of in a hurry but there's a coffee shop right around the corner that I know has Internet access that might have some machines if you need to get on and log on. So, I gave her like this really quick story where it kinda force her, if she didn't have a story to go with that right? Like it would just be more revealing and she's like oh no, you know I got a phone that I can get online as well then you can login and look through that. I didn’t think, but it was like, this is d2 right? Detect and diffuse. But it’s interesting how like you know here I am, you know all these years later, just like last night using the system to navigate from some weirdness you know, on the street. But the you know, the story, I don't know why it popped into my head but, you are asking me you know can people, is there a way to infuse martial arts, sorry spear, with traditional martial arts and classical martial arts, there is on the tactical side and there is on the psychological stuff. So, we have, you know we’ve got hundreds of trainers around the world who run their own dojo's and martial arts schools, who, this is kind of a red pill blue pill matrix metaphor, once you do the training and you start understanding physiology, kinesiology, physics you cannot incorporate it. Hey I got a more efficient way to teach you to move but actually I’m not gonna show it to you, I’m gonna show you more archaic in a rigid methodology. And so, what they'll do is a like, maybe they have Friday night self-defense night and they going over cycle behavior and they’re going over ballistic micro fights. And you know, we also have a program in a protocol we say hey spear is a bridge to your next move, we’ve got some videos out online you know, with that were people are gonna, certainly check that out get some ideas. The conscientious thing to do for, if you're serious professional instructor, is get to some of our training and evaluate it or were more than happy to put you in touch with other people who’ve you know, probably been sitting on the fence like some of you might after listening to this call and I’ll put you in touch with somebody doesn't work for me but it was just part of our that affiliate program and you talk to them and ask them. You know, were so apolitical, we just want your students be safer. So, to me, people coming to, like, I study jiu-jitsu. I travel too much to do it at the level that I want but you know, after over 40 years of doing martial arts, I felt like I’ve done my research, I mean I’ll never stop learning and tweaking and polishing but this year, I realized man you know we’ve a program for CrossFit, we’ve got a program for law enforcement, we’ve got a program for military, we've got the kids’ stuff, scenario stuff, and you know I’ve been around for 30 years. We’re not going anywhere, were not a startup. And like the research is done now my attention my focus is training trainers because I can’t make the world safer by myself. We’ve got 168 people on our affiliate team, we trained thousands of police trainers that's a noncommercial, they train their units and agencies and stuff like that. So, my focus now, is on training my trainers, that gives me a lot more freedom cause I'm not on this like, you know this path of all I got, what's the next drill for this or what's that and that opened up some, not so much time because, I you know, it’s just going nonstop all the time, but I said I’m just doing some stuff for myself. When I go to jujitsu class, I can separate the street fight from jujitsu even though in the jujitsu class they are saying here is a good move for the street and I go, oh I don't know that I would do that, right? But I shut my mouth and I’m respectful and mindful and the guys teaching me, I mean if I was grappling with them and they would crush me, they’re animals and their monsters and I mean that in a pleasant way, right? You know in the same way, buddy of mine who take boxing lessons up in LA, from this pro he was just working out Connor McGregor and he said, I would want to do MMA with the guy because he's got too many skills but he said, he would last around with me boxing you know. And you know Connor I’m sure would say something different because Connor does have a solid boxing background, but there’s difference between like being a good boxer and being a professional boxer who's you know, doesn’t you know. It's just different and so it's kind of a little bit like that and looking at like MMA where you go, I need to be decent in all these things like if you look at the average MMA guy you know, he’s gotta have a solid wrestling, wrapping foundations, knows how strike, he’s gotta know how to kick, but if you look at individual punches and kicks and movements so if you asked Dan Gable to look at the wrestling movement and of the world's best MMA guys, he might look at two and go, those guys are good, those guys the other guys' shitty technique. But those guys would double leg us and suplex us on your head you and me Jeremy because they’re that much better than us with a wrestling but they are not Dan Gable wrestling, you know what I mean? And if you looked at a boxer and you said, look at all these boxers and in the UFC, he probably looks at almost all of them and go, none of them are really good boxers, but they would light up, I’m not insulting these guys you get that? Is there that

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's a broad skill set. There's a lot of different components and you only have so much time of the day.

Tony Blauer:

Yeah and it's like CrossFit, right? Constantly very functional movement, performed at high intensity but you can't be a specialist. You can’t be a specialist. And so, when someone says I'm taekwondo, you’re a specialist. You need to then ask yourself you know, is what I'm learning practical in today's age where I don't have like and agreed to ceremonial fight, right? In an auditorium and were fighting to the death and we gotta use each of the style. Is it practical? Is boxing practical? And in here’s the thing that again myopic listeners will go, Blauer said this and I’ve had that. You know, I said this in 1993 I wrote for three magazines after the first UFC, and I wrote this line; although they're really fighting is not the same as a real fight. It was one of my lines and it was published in three magazines. And that got repeated as Tony Blauer said the UFC isn’t a real fighting which turned into the conversations with people in UFC with Tony said that you're not really fighting and I have people like, very famous people very angry with me.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah sure.

Tony Blauer:

And I'm going when I heard, I went no. What the fuck is with the planet? People are selective listeners. That's not what I said. The full paragraph Was only cops and military fight no holds barred. They are not wearing a mouth guard, they don't have a cup, there's no rules meeting, they’re I fighting weight classes, they don't know what the bad guys going to do, that's a no holds barred fight. And so, although the guys are really fighting, it’s not the same as a real fight. That's what I said.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I think that's pretty obvious.

Tony Blauer:

But it’s not. You know, why are people so confused? Why would people still argue, if you look at a real fight and this is the problem is, everything works once, it doesn't work twice. So, when you see the fight, even if it's a street fight, you go I would done a guillotine there and I would’ve stopped him or I would hit him with an uppercut there or I would’ve done like a side kick to the face or I would've done right? And so, when say, well that stuff doesn't work, the litmus test is the CCTV, litmus test is, look at all the thousands of fights that we've seen online and how many times do you go oh wow, that was a good back in a street fight. Right? Look at that Thai kick, oh look at that Thai clinch into that. And then people will post like and I gotta qualify this because you know, if you see if you gave out my email and said send Tony your videos to disprove his contention, I get videos of most of them will be douche bags in consensual fights.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I get tagged and a lot of those on Facebook.

Tony Blauer:

Yeah and I and I get I don’t know if you’re on my personal defense group, I’ve got a close but open group, so that [00:10:30.10] on Facebook and you can’t imagine the people I gotta boot off there and the people that get in there were you know, they show some like wicked krav maga demo and I go he just threw like 16 punches the role player didn't move once, he didn't hit him once. Was the guy fast? Yes. Was he violent? Yes. Well like to fight him? No. He looks really skilled except he didn't hit the role player once and the role player didn't move after the guys combo counter started. So, to me, that's category three Krav Maga, doing a kata but the only difference is they’re wearing bdus and a T-shirt because are not nailing each other. You know which is why I developed high gear. You know if you asked me how many times have you head-butted somebody, you know in in a real fight I’ll go never but I’ve done like maybe like 10,001 head butts with gear on and trained it. So, you know, I know what it's like to have four guys jumping because I’ve had that happen many times in multiple [00:11:43.22] training. But were not, you know, were missing, were falling, were they are watching videos they were going man do we look like shift there. Holy you know and you start to realize that suddenly violent encounters nobody looks good if you actually doing the setup from the phase 1 where were kinda moving in from like stalking to contact, verbal contact. Hey what are you doing here? Anybody can give me directions? It’s like, I was to start when you did the CrossFit defense gig with me was I talking to the Star Trek bottle at that time? Does it ring a bell?

Jeremy Lesniak:

It doesn't ring a bell.

Tony Blauer:

Okay so you know, part of the evolution there is the Star Trek model of self-defense is that, the bad guy beams down into position and you start from there. Like when you practice martial arts getting out of a headlock, where does the drill start?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Starts in the headlock.

Tony Blauer:

Right. But in real life how does somebody get you in a headlock? You have to be like, you just finished a workout so you bent over you’re huffing and puffing and somebody beamed down from another planet in a headlock, right?

Jeremy Lesniak:

There's some kind of transition that gets to them.

Tony Blauer:

Right but there and there's a verbal assault, there is a skirmish, there's a whole bunch of pre-contact use but if you eliminate them if you eliminate them, you don't develop any of the kinda on the situational awareness pre-contact use, how to manage dissidents, how to manage fear, those so those D1 and D2 is what's left out of category one, category two and very often category three and so those are most important are that's where you get your shit together in a real fight. Them you go oh shit, what's this stay calm, take a deep breath okay, verbal tactics, move here, get the improvised weapon, where is your escape route. And you start to see all that happening and you go oh, it’s nothing they walked by me. I’m exaggerating to make a point but, like the people, the people that don't get away are the ones that get caught off guard.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right one of my favorite sayings, and I may have used this on the show before, as you can be underprepared or you can be over prepared. You will never be perfectly prepared and I will always choose to be over prepared. I have friends asked me why do you carry a knife on you? Because there is far more likelihood that I will not have a knife and regret not having it and then I will have a knife and regret having it.

Tony Blauer:

Right, right I dig I like it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I think that ties in well to what you're saying and one of the things it kinda popped in my head as were talking about some of these scenarios and you know you're very tuned into some of the skeptics. I mean you’ve dealt with skepticism from the traditional martial arts community and honesty this is part of why wanted to have you on not because I want to give anyone an opportunity to poke at you or anything I hope it's apparent to everyone that I value what you do and you wouldn't be here if I didn't, right? And that's not just because you and I had the opportunity to take a seminar with you. I've no respected your work for quite a few years and I think your you're doing some absolutely amazing things and I don't think about your...

Tony Blauer:

Thank you

Jeremy Lesniak:

You're welcome and I don't think anyone has to look any further than their typical martial arts school to see what you're talking about and here's what I mean. Anybody that’s been training for a few years will usually have inexperience with a brand-new student first day, second day, third day, where if they work with them, that person comes up with something that is so far beyond what they would have expected whether it's a sparring drill or you know, one three-step sparring and it makes them go holy crap what just happened? And it's usually it's not any kind of high speed but it because it's so far out of the box of what would be expected, it shows you that there is more to what's going on in what we’re training as traditional martial artist typically in and it's it was from a number of experiences I had like that, that I started to look at what else was out there like the things that you offer.

Tony Blauer:

Right very cool the, yeah listen you know you asked me something interesting about integration before and I want to just come back to it because as I understand, most your audience you know is from the more classical traditional authentic martial arts, so that’s cool. I love the martial arts, I wanna make that clear. I'm a fan of it, I’m a historian. In the recreational sense, you know I love watching old martial art movies and you know read all the books and I dig all the stuff but at the same time, I know what I know and my students really fight and I know that these people have tremendous courage to move towards a danger cannot pull off complex motor skills. It’s just not happening. Even some very skilled people and so they can keep their metaphor sword sharp like a lot of people I train. All the jujitsu and MMA and it keeps them razor-sharp but you know when some guys grabbing at somebody's gun or throw a punch or trying to head-butt somebody or bite them in the head, this is primal gross motor. They’re not like you know, putting their thumb on the third metacarpal bone and twisting their pinky toward the [00:17:38.01] and driving the. You know, they're not doing that stuff, the Big Bang moment of the fight when the collision happens is primal gross motor. Then there is often a more complex motor skill transition and that's what we mean by spear is a bridge to your next move and so for the average person who just wants to live a peaceful life doing the one-day seminar is all they need. If you're a fanatic martial artist and somebody's gonna spend 60 to 90 minutes listening to the show is obviously deeper in it than recreational. Then you know, listen, something that I tell people especially the skeptics, you can't learn to defend yourself in a day what you can learn, you can take a in intensive CPR first aid course in four hours and possibly save somebody's life but it doesn't make you a doctor. So, I'm not saying that you can train for a day with us and you’re a doctor or a black belt or you can get in an octagon, that's ridiculous. I'm not saying that. I can teach you how use a fire extinguisher in 15 minutes and you're not a fireman but that knowledge of understanding how a fire starts detect diffuse defend the fire might save you or your family's life or your property one day. Property, body, life those are part of my research formula to make people safer. That's what the bad guy wants, that's what the fire wants. So, I can spend an hour with you doing some drills on evacuating the house and ways with you put fire extinguisher. You not a fireman but imagine a firefighter coming into the house while I'm teaching your family this and mocking us. Or a doctor walking into a CPR class going you guys will never be able to do open heart surgery, this is a joke and mocking. And this is the thing that horrifies me online with people where I'm just trying to make people safer. I'm not trying to get, were not giving them a black belt in the day, were not saying you could box or kickbox or anything else, I'm just saying, God forbid, your mom or your daughter, your sister, your friend, your best friend, your aunt was about to be attacked, you could give them some real quick situational awareness verbal de-escalation of quick primal gross motor stun and run move that allowed them to intercept the assault and get away, with minimal emotional psychological injury. Why would you want to deny them that ability and in quite literally that's how we teach self-defense? We teach self-defense the way a fireman with TJ CPR first aid course. This is what you need to know, this is how you gonna put on a tourniquet, this is how you're going to do CPR, somebody needs to call 911 while you're doing this right? And so, it's the same thing you know and those to me are two of the clearest most lucid metaphors that I can give people, but that's where we get our you know, high ranking people online mocking our stuff and I'm going wow, you’re a martial arts instructor and I guarantee your advertising says; you know learn study with us you can learn self-defense and confidence humility and respect and one day I’m gonna do a show where I just read hate emails and mean tweets and all of that. You can't believe the stuff that grown adults have ever written male and female. You’re a scam, you’re a fraud. This is bullshit. Why don’t you come to my school? And these are like people, hundreds of them and I'm going wow. What a role model, what a leader. And I only bring this up because if some of your listeners catch yourself feeling a little defiant and agitated my hater, monetizing haters jokes and but our system, just be careful that you haven't accidentally consumed some of the Kool-Aid that that we all do, right? I did to right it was what started my system, were jumpstarted my system was I didn't start off even though my dream was always to do this. I didn't start off one day going, oh I'm going to open up the school now and start teaching, I was working for my father in a factory getting paid four dollars an hour in 1979. I didn’t have a school, I dint have like rich parents who said you know, here's your dojo you know. I was working in a factory sweeping dirt from the floor unpacking clothing and one my father's top customers comes in, this guy Joey, and he had seen me punching and kicking some with these big boxes that came in from the Orient and they were massive and I was still training every day but I would use the boxes they were so thick, I’ll use them like heavy bags. So, I’ll punching them and nailing them and kicking them and he comes up to me he says, hey my son Mitchell is 15, he's having a bully issue at school, I want you to teach him how to do that and I’m like what? He said I saw you doing like kicks and punches. He's like, I'm like oh okay. He goes do you teach us? No, but I can show him some stuff. And he says how much will you charge me? I said well joey, you’re like a good friend of my dad's I’m not charge you anything, he says no I want this to be separate, I want you to take this seriously. I said, I can’t take your money I’ll just teach him some stuff. He says no. He says I'm paying you he says I’ll pay you at 20, how's that? So, I’m thinking he must mean for you know, for five hours because I’m get four bucks an hour and he goes I said okay, if I can't talk you out of it that's fine, you know, we'll do that. He says okay so 20 bucks a lesson, for one hour once a week. And I’m like suddenly did the math in my head, I’m like oh my god, he’s gonna pay me $20. So, I took this really, really seriously and that's really how my business started. I started teaching Mitchell and then Mitchell's brother wanted a lesson and then the kid across the street wanted a lesson quite literally within a month I had 30 students. I stayed working at my dad's and I would finish work at five between five and six and driving, I do privates for seven days a week for these 15-16-17-year-old kids’ now that might sound like oh, you’re just teaching kids’ well, guess what? That’s what most of the population is at martial art schools and I was only 19 at the time so wasn't like I was 50 teaching 15 year olds going. And they were my laboratory, they're all like athletic, hockey player, skiers, football players, and I was experimenting with different things with them. Well, Mitch add this altercation with this kid and got punched out and lost the fight. And it was that moment that maybe that was when I realized we teach self-defense wrong cause what I’ve been teaching him until then was everything I had been taught. So, I'm trying to get this full circle of drinking the Kool-Aid and I don't mean that in it’s got a really derogatory connotation for many, but what I mean, if you don't know what it means you know, the way I interpret it for this is I just believe anything untold. So, you know, people would say like back in the day I remember asking my instructor, what if the guy has a gun and the answer the default answer is what's in your pockets it’s worth your life, if he is a gun just cooperate with him, give him your property. And I used to, I taught that for years until I realize the reason I was saying that was because I was just repeating what I’ve been told by my instructors and I really didn't understand gun disarms. And I really understand that there are people who have been moved to secondary crime scene at gunpoint and then tortured and murdered and so that didn't have to do with your wallet or your purse and then suddenly I felt disingenuous. As I did more research I realized like that answer wasn't the answer and the reason it was a safe answer because I didn't know what the answer was and that really bothered me. But people have to be that's your integrity, right? That's your self-awareness. So anyhow, the kid I was teaching his name is Mitchell, I come back for private lesson he's furious, he got punched out I’ve been training for three months, thought he would do well, what was I teaching him? I was teaching him privately every week boxing, kickboxing, taekwondo, and wrestling that's a pretty, pretty solid combo. It was a mixed martial art way before the UFC. We grappled, we clenched cause I blended everything that I’d... If you look at there's a video I put out called forging a fighting system and it's got clips of us from 1980. 1980 the first very first video on this, the first very first clip of this video is wearing the Jhun Rhee safety chops, my first student from University, this guy trace. Were good friends, he sucker punches me just after tap Gloves and were filming this thing on a tripod and he sucker punches me in in the funny humorous way. Right? Your buddy you’re gonna work out and you’re gonna film it, we tap gloves and he just nails me right off the tap. Like ricochet, like a rock skipping in a pond. You know I flinch and I cover, I whipped back a short-left hook catching him in the face. He's not wearing a mouth guard and I put his teeth right through his lip. He fires back another punch a wild flurry. I grabbed him I take him down and were doing like on the concrete on my dad's driveway. I mean this is like 13 years before the first UFC, that's how we fought all the time you know. And so, it was everything and slowly adding more equipment as we injured ourselves more, right? But the idea here is that, from me as drinking the Kool-Aid going well this is enough but that was a real fight, what that was that was violent it wasn't a violent encounter. You tracking? And so, jump ahead now to 1990 or 1980, I'm teaching this kid Mitch and he goes to school, the bully trips him he's running late for class the bully trips him. Mitchell loses his shit a little bit, muttering under his breath you know, Curses at the guy, the guy gets up and this is the first time they’ve actually you know, the guy was kinda bullying, him oppressing him, but is the first time there now getting physical and Mitch goes leave me the fuck alone man, I don’t even know you, you’ve been bugging me since school started and the Guy goes what are you gonna do about it and Mitch loses and he’s picked up his books because the guy tripped and fell and he picks up his books. Grabs the kid by the lapel and slams him against the locker bank and says just leave me alone man I don’t want to fight and the kid sucker punches him and just drops him with the left hook. And Mitch explains this to me, and he’s furious and I go why didn’t you slip? Why didn’t you check him? Why didn’t you do all the stuff we do when we did the infighting and he looks at me Jeremy and he goes, well my left hand I was holding him by his shirt, my right and I had my books and in that moment like the god of war zapped me, I went holy shit we do not teach self-defense properly. Sparring isn’t self-defense, are there attributes you can develop, pain management range, distance, aerobic and anaerobic efficiency, learning how to not blank, mental toughness, yeah there's a ton of good attributes but they're not gonna prepare you for the emotional psychological chaos of a violent encounter. The only thing you can do for that, is to do that and to reverse engineer those scenarios and they’re out there for us. There's millions of examples of them and there’s commonalities in scenarios and what I did right there intuitively, I was 20 years old, I looked at Mitchell and I said I'm so sorry and he said what are you apologizing for he said man I said I didn't teach you, I was furious with myself. Now most instructors and I’ve done this as a test a couple times, I’ve you know, in our trainer development course I told the story without the outcome and the conversion and I go, what did Mitchell do wrong? And most instructors before I tell them what I did, talk about all the flaws Mitchell did he didn't keep his distance, he should have kept his hands-free, he shouldn’t have done this, he should have been southpaw instead of regular, you know like whatever the style bias was they had a mechanical answer to why Mitchell lost that fight. And I go no no no no Mitchell lost that fight because we didn't do scenarios. Mitchell lost that fight because we didn’t do verbal de-escalation. Mitchell lost that fight because he didn't understand stimulus stimulus response what happens before what happens. He lost the fight because all we did was spar to prepare him for self-defense which means the only time you feel acclimated and comfortable is when the fight actually starts that's the Star Trek model. Oh, now I know where we are, but until we get there, I don't know where we are. So, it’s like driving lost you’re still driving... You ever been lost driving?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Of course

Tony Blauer:

Or walking? It's uncomfortable,

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure.

Tony Blauer:

You have anxiety where am I, I’m gonna be late shit. What if I’m you know. And if you lost a scary area, right? I got lost in one of the shittiest parts of New Jersey once. I mean, I got lost in downtown LA once I turned the wrong street and went down the street where like the cops to go down it. I drove 60 miles an hour down through lights, it was this, it was like night of living dead, it was as scary shot. Total anxiety. It’s like oh my God are you kidding me? I told some cop friends that I actually didn't turn I went oh my God dude you know. And so that what I want your listeners to connect to is that, you can be lost when you're driving, you're still driving but your palms are sweating and you're not yet tunnel vision and you're looking around and you’re worrying about shit, you’re looking on I’m gonna run out of gas and I’ll be stuck here and I don’t have my phone whatever it is. You think about all of the things you not now, you’re not thinking about hands at that you know 10 and 2 pr hands at you know, seven and five you know, how were you driving, posture correct, you know you’re not rocks driving, your panic driving. I'm exaggerating to make the point but I think the point is clear but most people when I tell them what did mitch do wrong, they give me a mechanical answer that's derived or extracted from their martial art encyclopedia. And I go here's what I did with Mitchell, I had Mitchell grab me the way he grabbed the guy holding the books that he was holding and in slow motion, we replicated stuff and started to look at all. We started and work backwards from the sucker punch. What do you see what are the pre-contact use? What do you feel? What you visually tapped out and now you know years later when we do this the startle flinch block, we talk about auditory visual [00:33:38.02] of the pre-contact queues that will trigger the cross extensive reflex. So that when you, when you invest a little time in there, what happens you improve your perceptions but you decrease your reaction time and understanding that now if you're holding something in your hands again deeper research leads us to understand that your holding something in your hands and your opponent makes you flinch that you will clampdown and lockdown on that and therefore if you think you might get into a physical confrontation with somebody, you need to clear your hands. But knowing that in advance only comes out of doing the research and scenario training. And so, what I didn't do is tell Mitchell that he should have been standing at kicking range. What I did is respect the fact that he was in school, in a school fight with the schoolbooks and that I had failed him, and then we reverse engineer the staff so that God forbid he was ever in that confrontation again, he would know better than to grab the person with his books in his hand. It is not the same answer as, it’s completely different than somebody goes, isn’t that what I said, he should’ve been standing further backward, no books, no. Because there's no substance to that, that’s suggesting that he wouldn't have his books to start with and that he could control the distance in a fight. A violent encounter always is inside close quarter range. Even the guy comes running at you from 21 feet, when he goes to head but you, elbow you or stab you, he's in your close quarter range. So anyways. This is a really fun talk because you just let me like ramble. There’s a lot of you know, there's a lot to the tapestry that makes up you know, that the story of how we got to where we are.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I like hearing it because you know, I'm seeing all these distinct pieces that the jump out and I'm wondering you know, had you had these unique circumstances, would you have got often and founded the things that you've found and taught the people you've taught in the way that you've taught them and I'm gonna guess no, it seems you kinda have this unique circumstances.

Tony Blauer:

I gotta agree, that’s one of the books I wanna, I gotta jump on. People been asking for it like hearing the stories because there are, and I started writing them down you know, a couple years ago. Just there are you know those crucible, pivotal experiences that suddenly shape why you do things. And I’ve had tremendous once with, with some very famous fighters and people and in you go wow, that's a piece of the puzzle. And but you know I’ve been fortunate in that way but I also look at it as, you know I go back to this 15-year-old kid who’s use lip-synching the key I you know. I had the personal courage to go, I think this is wrong and you know, but I know that, I'm just a kid so nobody's gonna listen to me so I’m not gonna be disruptive in class and I’m gonna let everyone do it but I'm never gonna yell before I hit somebody. Especially now that I know everything I know about startle flinch. That’s just gonna, that's going to make them more resilient and when I hit you, I don't want you resilient.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I agree. Without a doubt. So, as we start to kinda wind down here. We have some other kinda more fun, if I can use that word, not that our conversation hasn’t been fun and really enjoyable, but lighter questions. Martial arts movies. You mentioned that you’re you're a fan, do you have any favorites?

Tony Blauer:

I'm a huge well, I love most of anything Jackie Chan does. Of course, enter the Dragon is the classic. I love all of Bruce's movies because he's so iconic. Big big fan of Tony Jaa, especially the first Ong Bak or ong bok if I pronounce it right. Have you seen any of the raid movies?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I think is saw the first one.

Tony Blauer:

The first was insane. So, like that, you know the apartment scene. It's just, you know, like all the fights in there just insane. You know it was one of those things when I saw it, I went oh my God you know, bought it right away and watch it every couple months or when I'm traveling I watch that for a good dose of creative violence. And you I know, I like I like a lot of the classics I mean just the new wing Chun movies, Ip Man movies. It is always interesting and also like people that go Tony hates and now I dig all that shit but you know, I can appreciate you know, I can watch a film of Baryshnikov and appreciate amazing ballerinas but I'm not he’s not gonna beat me in a fight. You know, I understand that he's a better athlete than me, he’s got a better balance and he can do things of his legs that Bill Superfoot Wallace can't do, right? But it’s you know, you come back to what you asked me a while back I think I really believe that the self-defense package needs to be [00:39:15.57] the self-defense package because you can't spend years and years and years of practicing attempted you know kidnapping and how to counter this, and attempt it right? You can't if you’re a trainer and you’re make your community safe, so that's what I’ve been doing for three decades. But I think that the reason CrossFit’s was popular and taekwondo's popular, judo and jujitsu is because you’re building community and family. And you’re working together and there's goals and belts of levels and I think there is value in all that. And I think that there's you know, I mean I have a bad ass side kick and front kick and back kick, do you ever see Joe Rogan's kicks online? He can kick like a freaking mule and he’s a black belt from Eddie Bravo you know. Can he handle himself in the street? You know I don't know you know. It's you can separate us, but what I’m getting at here is this is that my kicks, the foundation of my kicks are from studying Thai boxing and tae kwon do. But if I don't whether the ambush in the street I can’t get to my complex motor skill, it’s a separate package, right? So, if you go, jiu-jitsu’s gonna handle this or MMA's gonna handle this, you’ve got to whether the ambush to make that happen and that’s just we come in that's a small package. What I'm saying is like, you could do this right like you could put the fire extinguisher in your house, in your office, you learn about it and how to use it, learn about scenarios and run-throughs some drills in your mind but you don't need to become a fireman. You can still go to jujitsu school, but you put the fire extinguisher in the right place. And if you want to know, now I have some people who are investigating ways to blend the stuff you know. That might be an interesting future interview to have them on, you know, want to call to talk about how they, I’ve got like some really high-ranking taekwondo people travel the world. You know, international level all over the world and they always bring in our personal [00:41:28.22] and spear into the courses they do but you know what they're doing is trying to augment the safety of that particular Association or Federation. So, you know it's, there are ways to do it that's just, that's just not my core competency.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And that's okay I think there's something very martial art-ish about taking what you've learned and running with it and taking in a whole different direction. I think a lot of the thing, a lot of martial artists, a lot traditional martial artist forget that every single style out there was once new and was once developed out of diffusing, fusion of other styles. There's nothing that you know originated from God to say, you know, this you know goju is a style that shall remain pure for eternity, you know it's. So, when I see someone has taken martial arts taken in a direction and it works for them and for other people, I think that's beautiful and I think that, that's ultimately what has happened. Every everything out there was tested at some point by other people I mean you know. We've all seen martial arts school system styles pop up that were junk and they didn't stand those tests and they fell away quickly. The reason a lot of these traditional arts are out there is because for the goals that were set out for them right and we talked a lot about on the show about the difference between self-defense and a martial art. We did whole show where we define what a martial art was and you and I keyed in on the same word. The fact that art, art is the noun in that term and martial, is an adjective it's a modifier. At its core, martial arts are in artistic pursuit, so you know Shotokan, taekwondo Muay Thai, whatever they are, they are not first and foremost combat disciplines. There's combat in there, there's some great stuff in there, there's some stuff that's going to apply and you talked a lot about that and you know I'm trying to tie together some of the things that you said because I don't want anybody out there, you know, note what you said and in chunks and you spoke in depth about a lot of things and if someone took you know, 10 minutes here, ten minutes there, it would be easy to I think the gloss over, the unison that you had for all these things

Tony Blauer:

It’s fine, it says everything about them, nothing about us. So, if they do it, it is what it is.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Well I don't know what more there else is saying we normally at this point we say, would you be willing to offer some advice for everyone listening, maybe you've woven that in but is there a nugget of wisdom you want to go out off?

Tony Blauer:

I would just encourage people to do their research and makeup their mind for themselves and just step away and be objective and just maybe listen to it, listen to this interview. If you found yourself that is all nodding and making notes and googling shit and looking at stuff then cool, right? If you found yourself a little agitated, defensive right, then encourage you to take a break from this and come back. It is a long, long talk is come back and listen to it again and really start from the place of, if you for a moment just assume that I'm completely sincere when I say I want you to be safer. I don't care what style you practice or study or love. If you call me up and you go hey somebody tried to attack me and I did this freaking, I ran up the wall and I did this backflip move I saw Jackie Chan did and I land in person's shoulder and did this like monkey kung Fu drop in there head that I saw in a Shaw brothers film and then I you know did this and did that I got away, I am gonna be happy for you. You know, if you go into, but if you do it in a sneering way and you go, see you said that wouldn’t work, I go seriously, you don’t think you’re a little bit lucky with that like, what if there is not a wall their next time or what if the guy's like too short or too tall, what if he’s wearing a motorcycle helmet. You know, it's a funny argument when people like send you that, or tag you in that video going look see here, jiu-jitsu, see here taekwondo and I go, no, that's a consensual fight, that's not a violent encounter although they’re really fighting is not the same as a real fight and there is that selective listening again. So, the only thing I would do is like, is like hey you know, some people are not ready to listen to this and some people are, let's hope there's more people that are. I don't I don't need people to sign up and do stuff, I'm try to make people safer. Its not like I’m trying to sign you up for like a life lifetime membership and you know, it's like hey, go to a four-hour class for hundred bucks, go to a one-day class for hundred and 50 bucks and you know if it's bullshit and you're not safer then you blew 150 bucks. It's you know, but it's not bullshit, we wouldn’t be in business 30 years and go check us out that's probably place to start. Go to blauerspear.com and look at the testimonials, go to our testimonial page you know, and look at them they're not the John L said this you know Bob Q. They’re actual names of people and read how deep they are and read some of the articles and just remember the fact that you know what we’re doing is all been reversed engineered just like, just like we start out with a kind of caveman metaphor. You know, this is serendipity it’s not you know, I wasn’t trying to build you know a better iPhone, I’m trying to come up with something it's all yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'll leave it right there.

Tony Blauer:

And you know, you got a lot of trainers on here, I mean that’s our core business, man. We’re trying to make the world safer so I don't know when this is gonna get released or how fast it gets put out. We’ve got our annual combatives camp in Vegas, I wish you lived closer cause you could, you could whip to it but hop on a Southwest flight to Vegas august 6 and seventh. But the come to like a camper or camps 150 bucks for the weekend. So, get to experience me in my trainers and go wow this is a community that I want to be you know, part of. You know a lot of the other stuff out there and I see and it’s got this kind of like weird culty, militia kind of energy to it, I’m like no. We just hang out and have fun and our team has fun and we just try to make people safer.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Thank you for listening to part two with episode 108 and thank you to Mr. Blauer. Over whistlekickmartialartsradio.com you can find links and photos to a lot of Mr. Blauer's materials, his social media, websites and seminars. If you know someone that would be a great interview for the show, please fill out the form whistlekickmartialartsradio.com or if you want to shoo us a message with a suggestion for Thursday show or some other feedback, there’s a place to do that too. You can follow on social media, were on Facebook twitter Pinterest YouTube and Instagram and out username is whistlekick. If you like the show, please be sure your subscribing and using one of our free apps, they’re available on both iOS and android. For those of you, kind enough to leave us a review, remember, we randomly check out the different podcast review sites and if we find yours and mention on the air like we did today, be sure to email us for your free pack of whistlekick stuff including a t-shirt and some other good things. Remember the products you can find at whistlekick.com or on amazon, like our sparring boots. If your school owner or team coach, you should check out wholesale.whistlekick.com for a discounted wholesale program. Will be back before you know it, but until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day.

Episode 108 - Mr. Tony Blauer

Mr. Tony Blauer - Episode 108

Show Notes

Show Transcript

Episode 109 - whistlekick Update Show

Episode 107 - Fumio Demura (Profile)