Episode 719 - Model Mugging Program

In this episode, Jeremy talks with Mark Vinci of Model Mugging Self Defense about the Model Mugging Program.

Model Mugging Program- Episode 719

Model Mugging Self Defense provides students the greatest impact on personal safety and overcoming personal fears of being assaulted through role model mastery. Many self-defense courses are simply comprised of a group of techniques without continuity between techniques, strategy, and the reality of effectiveness for women.

In this episode, Mark Vinci of Model Mugging Self Defense talks about their program and how effective it is for women. Listen to learn more!

After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below!

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey Mark, welcome to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio.

Mark Vinci:

Hey, thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for having me on your program. Hopefully we can show some good insight to your audience.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, yep. One of the things that we're trying to get more into doing is bringing in experts on subjects. You know, of course, obviously, it's almost always in the martial arts space. We've had some people have talked about some other things related to movement and physicality. But, you know, we're here today we're going to talk about some self defense things, we're going to go over a bunch of stuff, and I want to let the audience know right off the bat that you're not an academic sitting on the sidelines. With this, you, you have a background. And just as if not more importantly, you were working with people with this stuff. 

And at some point, we will get into what you do, and your business name and all those things. But I want there's always a fine line between bringing in someone who works with and knows this stuff. And this was a commercial, this is not a commercial. And because we have new listeners all the time, I just want to underscore we are never paid to play, we have never received a nickel from any guest for any reason. And it's important that I say that. So there we go. All right.

Mark Vinci:

On my cell phone, in my teens, I started in the martial arts and had good success with it. My belt of background in the military is in law enforcement, as well as a crime analysis that came out years later, but it's been a journey with this program. It's been very rewarding how we can change people's lives literally in two days. And that's the most common combat comment we get. From our students. It was a life changer. And it's been a life changer for me to the joys of watching the progression of our students as they come into a class timid and, frightful and they leave with big smiles even though the content that we're we're dealing with is a frightening topic for people, especially those that are survivors of crime. 

And then the other reward is watching the youngsters start to take this program and teach it. That's also, I think, very rewarding since we have been doing our teaching, model mugging for over 30 years. And it's that the improvements that we made and watching the progression is one of the reasons why I keep doing it. And like to pass it on before I can no longer model what it takes to be in the paddock body armor that I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit later, which is kind of like the icon of the symbology of what modelmaking started back in the 70s. So after that story, go ahead.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Well, before we go there, you know, as human beings, we tend to find context as we relate to others. You know, you mentioned the military, a bunch of the people who listen to the show, have military experience. You mentioned law enforcement of a smaller percentage, but still a chunk have experience in law enforcement and corrections. Well, what almost everyone has, is a martial arts background. Now, you mentioned you started, did I hear you say as a teenager? Yes. But could you give us a little bit on why you started and why you continued?

Mark Vinci:

Well, I enjoyed the martial arts. And it was a long time ago in terms of the actual reason why I made the movement, the being able to challenge yourself, develop your skills. And you had the young, male testosterone driven concepts, trying to prove yourself but as I was going through the training, we were looking at teaching a women's self defense course. And that's how I got involved in the modeling program as I was doing some research and I came across modeling back in the late 80s. And that was interesting. And then, you know, contact them. There's a lot of political stuff that went on, but along with parallel lines, I was helping my ROTC program with a program in San Diego and there were the safe streets. 

And really what it was an obstacle course where they had certain stations where they pair up the young ladies and they'd go to maybe it was being a costume as the car broke down and ended up in an armed robbery. And then they had to at the end of these stations, they would meet at a potluck they had and they went over some crime prevention, but they showed them on a mug and clips were a few minutes long. All right, I realized that that was one of the best ways to train. I never looked back. So I ended up getting involved in model mugging and being in a story in terms of progression due to the political fallout, so forth. That happened in the late 80s and early 90s. But I think we've come a long way in terms of how we've developed the program and in conjunction with the founder, Matt Thomas.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Now, that's kind of an interesting point in that we've had people on the show who have developed things, self defense programs, and other sorts of training protocols. But I don't think we've ever had someone on the show who was kind of that second generation that didn't start it, but I get the sense that you run it, administer it, whatever, whatever word, right? 

Mark Vinci:         

Model mugging.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Direct. So it started as a thing before and without you, and was then something that became, for lack of a better word, yours. Can you talk more about where it came from, and what the transition to you being so happy with what this is that you said I want to put my energy into it.

Mark Vinci:

It started back when we used 1971 as the start year, but actually in 1970, the founder or Matt Thomas was studying at a karate studio. He had a black belt. He was one of the students. They're one of the female students. She had a black belt, she'd won trophies for tournament competitions. And she came to the black belt class and she was visibly upset. And she shared that she was really great and she felt like she disgraced her school, disgraced her style and her instructor being that traditional martial mindset said, hey, you need to train harder. Well, they can wait a minute, I've trained with this woman, she trains just as hard as everybody out here. And, what he came to find out is that when a woman's attacked, she's attacked differently than the males are attacked. So that hypothesis immediately formed in his head, she described that she was walking and she was blitzed from behind. 

She was able to deliver a punch, she pulled the punch, because that's how she was trained to fight and was brutally raped. She was not taught what was going on during the attack. And she at that point, shared this and as she left the school, visibly upset, Matt chased after her at this point, what we need to find out more about this. And as he did his vow to exit the school, his instructor said don't come back. So he went and talked to the girl and she said, now what are you doing, you've just made things worse. Well, here you have a woman that got mugged or raped. And in particular, she technically got mugged again, psychologically, I mean, from the resistance from mostly trained with, and then she's mugging herself, because of everything that came out. But this was, I think, a catalyst, a point where Matt looked at this and said, There's something wrong with what we're doing. And how we're doing things. So he ended up researching 1000s of crimes, when he was at Stanford, crimes against women, and confirmed this hypothesis that when men are attacked, it's often different than when women are attacked. And I like to say he had what I described as a perfect storm of instructors at that point, he kind of did an East Meets West with how we evolved the program. And we can spend a lot of time on each one of these topics, but in general, he put a course together. 

Based on this, when you look at the elements of the course Joseph Campbell's work here with 1000 faces because it's a journey of actual class is a journey for people when they start and when they complete it. He did teach a class when he was at Stanford finishing up and then he transferred to Harvard to go to medical school there. And they had a violent assault that occurred on that campus and his classmates said, hey, you've done all this work once you put a class together. So he ran them through his new material. And at the end of the class, he decided, you know, I want to test my students, I want to see how well they did. So he put on what we termed as primitive body armor, and he attacked each one, and they all failed. They froze fear they're inhibited about striking him. So he extended his extended class up to a few five more sessions and they work the breaking up freeze reaction, working using their skills full force, and then at the end of that session, he said you know, let's invite friends and family at as a graduation to welcome them back because as the final part of their journey, and during the second fight, he got knocked unconscious. 

So he realized two things, one stuff works and I need better body armor. So, since the program really took in terms of its body armor took its form back in the early 80s, where it started to shift into what we have today. And I'll just turn the camera here for you if for those that are maybe listening, radio wise, it's the padded assailant. It's the icon of full force fighting adrenaline stress training, as it's called. But as they tell the initial stories that this course did come up with, hey, let's put on some body armor is a good idea. Matt did a whole number of analysis, from animal communications to how to teach the program the dynamics, working with different factors or own body and unable to look at the first part of cognitive dissonance and cognitive consonants cognitive dissonance, being from Leon Festinger, his work and then Phil Zimbardo, both psychologists that work that when you have two conflicting beliefs, two conflicting emotions or thought dynamics, and they're in conflict, for example, we have people that are loving and caring and hospitable people, but yet, how do we become violent when we need when we need to protect ourselves, our families. 

And so there's a disconnect there. So what we're able to do in the class is merge those two with an understanding of what goes on during crime, and then develop that willingness to defend yourselves. But as a, as a program evolved, I got involved in the late 80s. And I said, I already mentioned the fallout. So at that point, the organization basically imploded, and was teaching on my own and I came across another group that was trying the patent assailant concept. And realize, you know, what, this is going backwards in time that you should limit taking combative stance to punch an attacker, the things that take a lot of time, a lot of training, and actually do the opposite of being able to avoid the violence in the first place, de-escalate it and hopefully win without having to actually fight. So okay, I didn't realize there was nothing there for monologue in terms of a real organization of material. 

So I ended up putting the five principles of self defense together. And this we're looking at about the Late 90s, at that point, mid to late 90s. And I gave Matt a call and said, “Hey, you're and he's real into statistics in the numbers”. And I asked him, you know, what are the results of women that have to protect themselves, the feedback that we've gotten over the years, and we had a long conversation invite, hey, why don't you come down to our class. Now prior to that he had come to one of my graduations back in 92. And he gave us the compliment, Hey, your students are overtrained? Because I go back a little bit. Because in the early 90s, I, like I said, I have the law enforcement background went through the academy and what changed me I started teaching modeling before that, but what changed my angle on this is that was the sections on Homicide, sexual homicide in particular. 

So, you know, if it's more than just the martial art, because if we're wrong, it could be definitely wrong for our students. And so I looked at what I was taught and said, Learn for people separate from Matt, taught somebody taught something taught somebody gold. So he taught me and there were several people that I worked with and helped in terms of working with the program and doing the implosion. We separated and ended up coming back with Matt back in the late 90s and went to his class. And that was eye opening. And I'd been doing it for probably seven years. And I got schooled. I mean, in a negative way. But here this guy founded it, what I went through and experience was very diluted, in terms of how he taught what he taught the methodologies and worked with him on that. So in math using the way you teach the class, we can teach the whole curriculum and we can mean we can teach a defense against an unarmed attack or defense against the weapons and defense against multiple attackers. Now, mind you, we're not teaching a lot of techniques, we're teaching basic stuff that can be used repetitively throughout these movements. 

So it's not just a whole bunch of other moves for us to know the brilliance of what he developed, was a system, a system behind and and originally when he worked with the techniques, it was to defend against armed attackers, and then he worked back to the single American. For example, he went to Russia and was working with the Sambo chief, Sambo instructor and he was showing what he was doing and one of the younger Sambo instructors said, that's boring, you're doing the same stuff over and over again. But the senior focus is no, that's brilliant. Because here we can train an adrenaline stress that they learn the same movements that are able to practice when they have that startle reaction that freeze reaction and ultimately break through it. We had the five principles of self defense I gave to our students, and they were supposed to read it before they came to class. Well, when we went to weapons, you know, people read and they don't read the environment, you know, it's just, it's just that thing, but I could identify who read and who didn't. 

And the ones who did not read the material, they were especially weapons, they didn't have the intensity to lock the weapon down to engage the attacker with a mindset to really win, they wanted to do it over and they made mistakes. But the women who read the material came in with a completely different mindset, they had that winner's mindset that they were able to engage the attacker in lost things and almost invariably picture perfect technique over and over again, for those that read it. So I realized that while some of them aren't reading it, they're losing a big value of the course. So we ended up separating the back out. And now we cover the dynamics of sex crimes, the phases of an attack to typologies, the criminal mindset, what goes on physiologically in our own body, so we're not scared of it that we can actually welcomed in and actually channel it and use that fear as a benefit rather than a negative negative force. And with that experimental process, we actually change the fighting spirit. I can take somebody in 20 hours, and give them the psychological benefits of how we're teaching, that you can't get an A in a martial art school for up to maybe three years on average. And he said, Well, that's really a claim you're teaching all these fancy techniques. 

No, we're teaching basic crime prevention, self to self protection, that they can actually get the experience of doing but it's because they can follow through with each one of their strikes, and, and get channeled into what would be most powerful and most effective. But that willingness to fight back is, I think, one of the factors that in order to to actually gather because when you integrate a martial art, you know, you can't hurt your partner. Because otherwise you're going to hospital, and there's no training value. And that ultimately, I mean, there is for the person that put the class.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Nobody wants to get it.. 

Mark Vinci:

Exactly, exactly. So by being able to put this body armor on, we're able to work what you always teach it a male, female instructor. So we want it. It's a model or a model mugging. I mean, the name originally Matt came up with was based on. He called it roll, roll model rate prevention. And it was using Albert Bandura. His work was a psychologist, he did a lot of work with agencies with efficacy, being on how to develop somebody's abilities. And he was working with a lot of clients that had fear of snakes, fear of flying, and how do you slowly overcome those fears? Well, Matt took the constant says, let's overcome the fear of being assaulted, fear of being raped. So that's where the term role model rape prevention came? Well, in those early years in the 70s, when he was teaching, the women would refer to the guidance suit as the mother. And because the mugger is an easier word to say, than then use the word rape or are those connotations, so he changed the name to role model McGee, and in 1973, got changed to to modeling. So from that, that process, so where were we at before going to the grass? What do you want?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Doesn't matter, tangents are not only welcomed, but encouraged. I would like to ask you, you've brought it up a couple of times, the five somethings of self defense, the five principles of self defense, are you willing to share those? 

Mark Vinci:

Well, yeah, the first principle is, crime is an emotional, physical, and spiritual problem. So we're looking at you, look at what the criminal does, how's he doing? Why is he doing it? That will ultimately determine our options, it doesn't matter how well you can kick a punch. What matters is how well you can respond under the conditions that are imposed upon you during a violent attack. So once you develop those options that are most realistic, given the conditions that you're going to be in, now you can start to prepare. And one of the preparations that we use is the use of the pattern assailant and putting the scenario based training, the realism behind the attacks where the factor of for example, garbage mouth, and this is what the women use the term back in the 70s is that the attacker and we've all heard the word the F word. And we've all been called it at certain times. But when it's directed, especially at women, they have a tendency to walk up, even though they're the more articulate of our genders, they typically will freeze just with words and doesn't have to be a bad word. It's the presence and the words that can many times just lock them up into a freezer, actually, they can't move, they have trouble breathing. 

So we're doing a class where the attacker is able to use that garbage mouth to where it desensitizes them to the tactics that they're using. And the words kind of go in one ear, and then they go off together. And now we can focus on more of what they can do given the situation, and blend or even navigate the situation to a better position for them to counter attack. And then, once you have that preparation that we're able to put in the body, the principle fours, mind, body, spirit are one you have to, you have to be one in yourself. And also you're looking at the attacker, if he's balanced, and he's mentally focused, it's going to be very difficult to beat anybody in that regard. Now it has become a skill contest. But we're looking at a criminal event, which is not, which is very different from, you know, a cage fighting or any sparring competition with both people already, you're looking at different dynamics where if you can offset his balance, that you have an advantage, and then keep him off balance. 

So that's the principle four is the tactical side, it's the actual fighting side, how do you take the tactics, merge it with the strategy, and then operate within that environment? And then the last one is awareness. Well, the first thing that you have to be aware of is what? And so this awareness is the cycle, it's actually the crime prevention cycle is one in the same. You have to look, hey, as a criminal changes their taxes, you have to be aware of that, what are they doing, how are they doing? Why? So that you can then adjust your options, and then against those through the preparation, and then practicing those. And what we do is the full force scenarios, which gives people immediate biofeedback, if you will, because as we're in the soup, I'm taking hits, I'm teaching them as I'm taking the hits, I'm just not a human punching bag walking around. So I want to look at what they are doing? I mean, you have a new instructor that all tents are getting hit in all different ways. 

And they're very intense, they exhaust themselves, but by being in the body armor, you can develop a skill set to where you can be more relaxed and conserve your energy. And then also look at, hey, how do you wear out your opponent's energy if you need to do that. So that's the biofeedback, that when they do an incorrect wrist, strike or striker, it's not going to be very effective. And it's tactically maybe unsound, you don't respond accordingly, you don't give the feedback of a normal normal strike. And then you're also working with your coach, your co instructor, she's coaching the women. So you're working in tandem, where you can be fighting full force and directing and developing their skills within the fight. And this when you look at the adrenaline response to it, the last adrenaline experience gets uploaded to the most when your body gets scared, you immediately go to that top level that that most recent adrenaline experience. 

So as we're channeling them through it, we want them to do the techniques in a more effective way than just flailing a mollen session, which really does not have the best value. And I've seen quite of that over the years is people take the concept of, hey, I'm gonna get in the suit. But they forget, there's a whole other background and, and foundation underneath that. And then remember, the bottom again, didn't start with the suit. That was a testing ground that actually worked and evolved and developed into stress training. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Interesting. Now, I'm curious because your diverse development of these five principles came from some lack of need. I imagine you didn't just go home and say, there's no need for this, but I'm going to invest my time and energy into putting it together. Anyway, there was something you saw, and I suspect that what you saw, then that led to that development is something that others today also see, maybe they would use different terms. But if you wouldn't mind, I'd love for you to share. What was it? You saw that he said, this needs to be codified and simplified into these five principles? 

Mark Vinci:

Well, it was a group that was kind of copying what we were doing, and they were using just their favorite skills, martial arts skills, and it was like going through a time mark when you looked at it and then you have to reflect back as well. Why but then you say, you know, we don't have a solidified body of information, and then end up developing that and then following through and developing the depth behind it's just not having the principles and outlined those and going through it very quickly. But when you go back and revisit those different disciplines from, you know, the medical background, the sciences, the fighting, what goes on physiologically in the body from the criminology. That's when things can open up and confirm what we were doing. But at the same time says, You know what, we have to be very careful with our students, we don't want to give them a false sense of confidence. 

To where, yeah, I thought this guy out of the situation. Well, I've seen situations where, you know, he posts things on media where she strikes some of the hill pom and it just falls down. I tell you, right, yeah, I've seen a lot of fights and struggles, the use of horses and so forth. It doesn't go that way. So that we want to teach the development of success within our students that goes with it with a mindset, because you can also go the flip side of doing adrenaline stress training, where you can create learned helplessness. And I've seen that where you put on the body, I mean, you're just a small student. And that's not very effective, either. Because now you're developing, we turn this into something that nothing's working. So there are options or contingencies to be able to work with the behavior that they want to employ, which is not working effectively. 

And they say, well, what good is doing anything that goes back to settlements, we'll work with the dogs, the learned helplessness where he shocked the dogs. And he did some conditioning with them. But eventually they gave him an opening. And even though that opening to escape, the shock was there, they had conditioned themselves as I was going to work for me, I'm trapped in and they just lie down and get shocked with it. And so that's a factor that we have to worry about. But on the flip side is that you don't want to give them so much success, that they realize, Oh, this guy is gonna fall down, I took this class and hit this guy with a big, big marshmallow suit, and knocked him out. So we're trying to leave the students when they increase their abilities, their options, but also their awareness. And there's the respect of there's danger out there, we have to navigate this world, we can't be afraid of it. Otherwise, what's really the point of living? So I think we do a pretty good balancing of that. And we don't want to develop the attitude that hey, this is my world I can take it on. For example, I said one story was where you know, a woman who wanted to use an ATM, it was at night and she realized this guy was there. Well, I have the right to use an ATM. 

Okay, yeah, you have the right to use the ATM, but she went up there and all of a sudden, this guy starts harassing him. And she turns around to keys and knuckles and says, you know, and gives him a verbal barrage of things. And I figured well, that's dangerous. In fact, I actually had a case like that, where a woman fled a situation where her other friend went with her. She's in the alley and this guy just walking down the alley approached him. And she went verbally off on Well, this guy Allison pulled out a gun and told her friend she better apologize to me right now. So there's, there's got to be a balance, there's got to be an understanding that, you know, I've mentioned we want to win without having to fight. We want to be able to teach them to one they can recognize the dangers. I mean, the first principle of what we do is what does a criminal do? How's he doing? Why is he doing it? 

From that understanding, you can then identify when you're in a care situation. I don't want there to be something wrong here when they recognize that they can get to safety sooner. For example, one of our students was going to do some work in a prison. And she went through the class and she had the dynamics of what we teach. And she went in there, and she's dealing with these inmates a lot of more sex offenders. And she almost started to laugh, not literally out loud, but she's laughing because she's thinking about it in class, and this is what these guys actually do. And, it was just the recognition of it that brought her a peace of mind that says, You know what, I'm not going to be taught by these guys, because I recognize the tactics that they're employing. And when you can recognize going back to the fifth principle is awareness. Alright, being aware of what well, that little bill is gonna go on in their head and, and hopefully that will keep them at a much better recognition of safety.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You're throwing so much stuff out and it's hard for me to pick, like, where I want to go. But let's kind of follow the timeline, the storyline here. At some point, you became director, which suggests a couple things: one, the founder's name is Matt Thomas. Yeah. So Matt saw enough in you he liked you. I assume it wasn't some corporate takeover. You know, this. This was no, this wasn't some sort of backroom deal against his will.

Mark Vinci:

We've always developed a good relationship over the years. We were training like I said, we were merging that Uh, I had that, that break from him for about six or seven years and, and really he got pretty beat up over this, he got stabbed in the back, I mean and LM purposes there. So he's a little leery of getting involved with needles. The time had healed a little bit when I reached out back to him, and so we started working together. He liked what we were doing in terms of the evolution of taking what he had started. And I don't think I would have been able to do what I did without having that fundamental origin that beginning balance that he established. But we are working within this ‘96-’97 time period. And then 911 happened, he went back into service. And I didn't go until later I did two tours overseas. 

But then I just started running with the program at that point. And we've always stayed in contact, I pretty much run it. He's a lot older than he was, but 1920-21 when he was working with his content and developing programs, so relatively young, brilliant, brilliant tactician. His story is an amazing story as well, in terms of what he went through as a youngster and then ultimately developed and how he thought and and what was it that developed the catalyst in his approach and his instructors at Stanford and, so I have to give credit, I'll piggyback off of him. But it was that piggyback on the best stuff done.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, that's what all the best stuff is. Don't reinvent the wheel, you can help it, right. 

Mark Vinci:

No, no, I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. There was no point when I was a youngster wanting to get involved in the program. I saw how beneficial it was. But I didn't recognize there's a lot of depth here. And working with Matt again and developed a depth and it took it farther. I mean, we've gone back and forth. And so I always consult with him. It's out of respect. He did find it. He's like I said he is a brilliant tactician, and we go back and forth on some stuff. And we've changed things and said, “Hey, Matt, you got to look at this as why this technique needs to be adjusted because of what's going on on the criminal side”. And, we look at it, we go back and we consider we're just not looking, hey, this is the technique, we're looking to responses beyond the technique. Because when somebody's going to attack somebody, they're in this position. And if you're going to respond to it, well, they're going to do something better, you know, they'll I'm sure you've heard it, the enemy gets a vote. 

And that's a common theme is that just because you do something doesn't mean they're just going to let you do it. So they're going to be a response. And that's how we've adjusted our material, and how we can give students in just a short period of time something that they can take away from those that want to do more, I mean, there's a whole plethora of different martial art styles they can join. And we welcome that. In fact, when we get instructors that want to teach, I prefer they have martial arts background, I don't care which one it is, because it's a blending of ideas. It's a blending of a common goal of basically using the skills that we've learned to master ourselves to then help others master themselves. So it's, again, falling in line with the journey of Joseph Campbell's work The hero with 1000 faces is that and it also works with working with survivors is that you have to acknowledge that, hey, horrible things happen in life. And sometimes it's happened to us, and you step into that abyss. 

And when you step into this, you have to let go. And in order to get to the other side, you have to actually reach out to faith. And when you do that, that faith will reach out and grab your hand and she will take you to the other side. Now in doing so she has one requirement, and that is that you share the way. So if you look at all the heroes of time, they always get help and never do it alone. But they have that requirement, they come back and they show other people how they can find healing through those tough times in life. And so the class itself models that and that's why many of our survivors find it's so rewarding, they can actually change the endings. So the material that we've come up with in terms of how we've structured it, the terms of the organization of the class, is actually a healing process. In many respects, when we did seven scenarios training when you actually do the actual sexual assault scenarios, a lot of women would break down and cry. And that's because that triggering is all coming back. Right now we get very few women that actually cry on the mat. Meaning that they because through the educational process, we're able to dissipate a lot of that acuteness of the past of the actual trauma. And we've been doing this for about 15 plus years, and then we came across Phil Zimbardo who was a world famous psychologist for prison study. 

And so but he was working with Richard and married Mary and see what they were working on a lot of a lot of trauma survivors, whether it from my accent, whether it was from a sexual assault, whether it's From another type of crime, could be from war, it will work in all different types of trauma. But they found when you could dissect the dynamics of that trauma as a way of understanding it, you could actually spread the cuteness icon spreading the acuteness out so it's not as focal point and allows you to function more freely. So we've done fine with that ability in class that we have survivors go through. And they're able to change that ending as they rework it. If they want to revisit their actual scenario, we can roleplay that, but most of them, most of them don't, they don't need to. But their ferocity in which they fight and how they respond is wonderful to watch. Now, the flip side of what we do when we teach the class with the educational dynamic is that we can take somebody who's fortunate enough not to have that horrible experience. And so that, especially for maybe some of the younger women, so they start looking at this is what goes on during these attacks. This isn't going to happen to me, and they start to develop a willingness to fight something to fight for something to fight against. And to watch, their willingness to fight back is also wonderful, as well. So we can take the two parallels, and move them through that hospital journey of the class. 

And again, when we come to the end of it, I don't want to build up that false sense of confidence. That's something that's always plagued me. It's always said, are they going to be able to perform as well? Because like I mentioned before, we're going way back to when I started is, Is this realistic enough for them to survive a violence encounter with a with a criminal that's in a rage, and we give the women options, they just because it took a class we emphasize you don't have to use anything, the most important thing is to survive the assault. That's most important. And there's four general options that we do know, they can acquiesce they can Swinerton many people have survived violence assaults, and by acquiescing to it, and there's nothing wrong with that nobody could criticize them. I mean, think about it, you're not them, you're not dealing with that person at that moment in time. So who are you to give judgment on what they did to survive, given what they know, the options they can maybe try and negotiate, try and verbalize the way to maneuver a situation maybe to get out of it, or to make it less, less of a situation and women have some women have found success with that. And some men as well. But that may not work. 

The other option is that, hey, you fight back to escape. Okay, well, that's a good idea. But not all your situations would allow you to get to an escape, can you hurt him a little bit and run away. And I did my study on the benefits or the statistics on running away and the effectiveness, but you may be in that situation, you can't. So what we take in the classes, we try and look at what's worst case scenario, now we don't work the whole class on worst case scenario, because otherwise, it'd be the what ifs to the world, but we're able to, to get them to respond in a way that they will finish the attack, if you've hurt him enough to where he's dazed, we're not going to give them that second chance to recover and hurt you. Especially if he's bigger, faster and stronger, or you're an isolated blood spot, and you can't get to safety. Because if you run too soon, he may chase you and you have a bigger problem if he catches you. 

So that's when we look at the four general options that we give our students. That's where we base the curriculum from, and it's up to them to make the choice. And that's all we can do. I mean, I can't cover all the variance. The research that I've done in terms of when you look at how predators what they do to people during the crimes and, and from this position, that position, it just, it just can't, otherwise the class would be going on. And that's not the point. The point is to give them something that they can function effectively, more effectively in life. And that's the feedback we get from our graduates is that, hey, this course, literally changed my life.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And one of the relevant subjects that come up in any kind of self defense discussion at a higher level has to do with legal ramifications. Is that something that you step into? I would imagine that something you're aware of given your background.

Mark Vinci:

I have looked at hundreds of federal cases, and looking at the affirmative defense, the side of defending yourself in court, per se. And so we develop the, you know, the Justice skills, and what we want to do is we want to balance many of the justifications on our side versus the arguments on the other. And so when we look at that, when you've taken the time to look at what goes on during the crime, and it's not just simple 123 you look at especially for sex crimes, that's the most complicated of all types of crimes. That's there's so many different dynamics that are involved in that. So once the idea is to get as many of those things on the other side of that scale, that can be arguable. And once we can argue those things, yeah, it'd be hands down from the jury standpoint, because ultimately, that's what we look because we teach them, hey, you know, what some of the jokes are hanging out one or two strikes is enough, and then run away. 

Okay, we've gone over what if what happens to be chased you? And now you have a bigger problem, but then if you do 3,4,5,6, it's manslaughter? Well, you have to look at what they are. If you and I got in a situation, and we're probably comfortable height, weight, at a certain point, you get the best of me, you have to stop. Otherwise, it becomes that now. So but if you take somebody who's smaller, I take a woman defending against a criminal, who's probably going to be bigger, faster, stronger, and has maybe more experience in committing crimes. And also you don't know where he's going with the assaults, right? How often is it publicized, the media loves these stories, right? This person was killed over that, and that person was, was captured, tortured, and you know, the list goes on and on. So that part of it's very easy, you don't know what their intent is. So if you have to kick them, and to a point where they're not moving anymore, now you've allowed yourself to have time, time to get to safety. And then we have them report the crime, because that reporting the crime also absolves them of a lot of accusations that they're just running around, beating people up. 

So they have to make that requirement, you probably heard the or maybe possibly seen it, you know, our, our end to fight is called 911. And it's to reinforce the fact that you need to report the crime. Because that does absolve you of a lot of the liability accusations that a prosecutor may take against you. And there's, there's many more I mean, we could spend a section on just this topic alone. But that's really how, why would we justify that, hey, you have one opportunity? And if you don't, you're gonna have an educated angry attacker out to know what you think the rapid ramifications are at that point, you've given them a second chance to harm you, and you've lost your ability to escape, maybe permanently at that point. So that's, that's the reason and you get some of those comments on, you know, the going overboard on it, but you're not in that situation dealing with them, and they have to make the choice. 

You know, for example, 80% of the time a woman's going to know their attacker, does she knock him unconscious? Well, that's a choice she has to make. But we don't have the full dynamics, is it just a spat between a couple spat where they're initially dating, or she being stalked because she's trying to get away from this guy. So here we go. The spectrum is significantly very, very wide on what you can what you can do, but they have to make that choice. And we do have a segment on class, the legalities of using force, what justifies us that teach him to or teach them to win by knockout. And they have to have to pick that I can't pick them pick it for and they have, they have to walk away understanding that, that particular that that's the secondary threat, but at the same time, I know what your listeners have probably said, you know, it's better to be, you know, judged by 12, or whatever the jury box is going to hold and carry by six. Right. And that's the premise we take, at least at least in this country. We still have some type of judicial system.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Let's be careful. Let's be careful. Let's not go there. If I were you and I am probably on the same page. But I want to make sure people don't miss the stuff that you're saying. Given that the majority of people paying attention to what you and I are talking to you today are in fact martial artists and quite a few of them are martial arts instructors. You and I talked a little bit before we started recording that, you know, we've got some likely shared thoughts on what we're not going to necessarily say most but at least many martial artists who are teaching self defense are missing some things. You've got an opportunity to give some advice to these folks, if you're willing. What would you tell them?

Mark Vinci:

There's no point recreating the wheel. I don't want to share what we've taught or what we've learned and how we're progressing and look forward to how we can actually improve the program and make it more effective for the students we train. There's no point in keeping it all bottled up and trying to hoard it. It's a way of sharing it and there's the other thing you have to consider safety. Safety will be on a number of playing fields, there's physical safety. That's why people asked me, Hey, you want the suit so far away, you need to be trained in the suit, you can be injured in it. But so you have to look at the physical safety of the person wearing the equipment. And that corresponds with this, we want to teach with a coach, a qualified coach who can recognize certain factors, they can also help to read how the fighting goes, because it's still far right in the body. 

And I fought somebody 66,300, over 350 pounds, and he wasn't fat. So he's given it everything and the fight was done, and went back and got it to work on the next student. So the equipment does work. But there's certain ways that I can move and be able to absorb the blunt force energy. So it's not as impactful. My body, I've had a brain scan, and it's kind of up to normal. I keep getting in the suit, right, but, but that's part of the factor that you watched your student progress, because even though I'm getting hit, and it looks like I'm losing, but every time my student wins, I've won. And that's the dynamic that I've always taken even from the very beginning is is how can you help the person that you're going against, it hasn't affected my martial arts skills, I can able to put the body armor on and response in some respects, it's probably helped me kind of more of an Iron Man principle, because you're sweating out enormous amounts of liquids, and you're going from student to student and you have to respond, especially when you're fighting men in the body armor you have to be on because that power ratio is typically two to six times greater not to say that women don't hit hard. There's some really heavy hitters, for women as well. 

But it's that safety factor, that physical factor, but you also got to be able to move in a way you keep your students safe. How we move in class may not be particularly realistic in some respects, but I try to give them hey, these are some of the different looks you may get as you deliver a good solid qualified blow. Because you're gonna get a response from the attacker, good batter difference. And if it doesn't work, you don't respond as well. But you gotta keep that student safe. So that when our safety record is really wonderful, you look at the most common injury you get is broken fingers, and they're going as hard as they can. But we also take other safety precautions, if a woman has some type of injury, we will adjust the fights accordingly. Because they all came into class, we want them to all leave class a point to mentioned earlier is not to not to get hurt, nobody wants to get her being able to adjust their situations be able to teach somebody in a wheelchair, while at the same time you're teaching the rest of the class, whose functional. 

So there's that safety factor that has to go both ways physically. But then there's also the emotional safety factor not only to protect the students emotional where they're at, when you have dealing with survivors of crime, you have to be very attentive to that and understand where they're coming from. And then how do you move them through their journey, it's their journey, they have to be willing to make the journey otherwise, they'll get benefit from it, but it won't be as powerful as if they can do that. And then also emotional for years to where and when I teach, when I call phonology, you know, the study of the thought, how does he act? How does it behave? Because it's just not a matter of getting him to Sutton and being that character? It's how do you portray the character realistic to give a representation to your students, so that they can kind of see their bodies when they leave class and are attacked, they physiologically know no difference from the class to the real situation. 

For example, you know, we brought up garbage mouth, the students that have been a cost that have been threatened by an individual and the words were going in one ear and out the other. But they said in their mind, they're thinking, is this all you got? Because it's lost its effectiveness, I heard worse in class. And so as we get towards the end of class, the garbage mouth is it really goes away, but from a psychological standpoint, and that's usually the cases where we have good men that want to help people who say I don't know if I can do that. Well there's different dynamics that we take that we can adjust to to get rid of that cognitive dissonance of being able to portray the actions and characteristics of an attacker of a criminal minded individual. So you can better help your students. So it's that dynamic of being able to protect everybody in the class the best we can and we're dealing in the abyss you know that the Nisha said that you look hard enough into the abyss the Abyss looks back into you. 

And we are dealing with that and it does and how do you keep that balance in life and and Have you developed that resilience, resiliency for this type of work in this type of topic? From the martial arts standpoint, it's difficult to do, if you don't have all the various things we're able to hide behind the mask behind the helmet, there won't retain the characteristics. So when we develop certain things that we can separate ourselves out, but also give that representation to our students in a very effective way that they leave the class, better prepared to recognize danger, and then ultimately get away from it. And worst case, if they have to use the skills to probably go on with different different types of topics. I mean, the skills that we teach are not a lot of variety of skills, we have to really think about, in fact, they tell us students being in a class, I don't want you to remember, I'm sure remember what we taught you in class, they kind of look at you, what am I? 

Why am I even here, because if you have to think about what was going on in your classroom too late, you're too slow, you're behind the time, do you have to blend with that situation. And just what I do is I like to call it a mud board, a basic shape, a basic understanding of the dynamics of these types of crimes, and then help your student once they can recognize the shape, they can actually pick out the typology of survivors, the way we pray the information. That was the typology that attacked me, or they understand the phases of the assault and are able to recognize when's the best time to strike back, because you're gonna get somebody's bigger, faster and stronger depends on on again, that that principle, mind by body spirit, have one and be able to recognize and maybe maneuver a tactical situation to where you put them at a separation point where they become more vulnerable to attack. So it's a lot more than just, hey, I'm just gonna hit the guy, the marshmallow suit, Darth Vader run around. And the equipment. It's a lot more to that. So we're here to help people out. And that's what I've done for over 30 years and will continue to do it. And so I don't I can't physically model the attacker anymore. It's just but I can still mentor the youngsters coming out. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

This has been awesome. There's been a lot of great information. And I suspect that there are people who want to go deeper. So how would they do that? I assume there's a website that they can go to.

Mark Vinci:

Yeah, you go to [00:52:17-00:52:19]. You should get on a contact list, shoot me an email, and I'll be happy to talk and share how we can help you help other people if that's what somebody wants to do.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's, you know, what you're doing needs to be done. And, you know, I'm sure we're both aware you're not feeling when doing and you're not the only one doing it well, but you know, to the listeners, we had a recommendation from someone who's been through this program, who also has been on the show as a guest, and maybe multiple times trying to remember. And so those recommendations carry some weight. 

And my hope for everyone is that you're letting what we've talked about today get wheels turning. Because if the wheels are turning, you're seeking answers much in the same way that you did early on Mark much in the way that Matt did early on. There's stuff missing here. Let's find some solutions. And I think that's the most important part. Gregg thanks for being here. And stick around. We'll chat a little bit more. All right. 

Mark Vinci:

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.