Episode 749 - Conversations with Tony Blauer

In this episode, Jeremy is joined by SPEAR System creator, Tony Blauer, for another interesting conversation.

Conversations with Tony Blauer - Episode 749

If you love learning about self-defense, you’re in for a treat. In this episode, Jeremy is joined by SPEAR System creator, Tony Blauer, for another interesting conversation.

If you haven’t already, you can check Tony Blauer’s f-bomb-filled first episode here: Episode 108.

Coach Blauer has been in the martial art, self-defense, defensive tactics, and combatives industry for four decades! 

He is one of the only Combatives experts who has successfully affected training across all the combat-related communities: self-defense, combat sports, and the military & law enforcement sector. His research on physiology, and mindset as it relates to confrontation management has influenced over three decades of reality-based martial artists and enhanced the survivability of law enforcement, military, and emergency services personnel around the world.

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 below!

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey Tony, what’s going on?

Tony Blauer:

I hate being late.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It’s all good 

Tony Blauer:

And I went to two places to try and have lunch. Like planning this okay, I want to eat before the podcast starts. I want to be energetic because I know you're going quite a while to the long form. And I went to the first place and there was a lineup and then it went to the second place and there was a lineup, and I was like, and so I just raced back in here. Let me have a sip of water. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. 

Tony Blauer: 

Filled with a secret elixir here. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

What is tequila? 

Tony Blauer: 

I could use some. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sounds like it is. 

Tony Blauer:

No man. It's crazy. how busy I am. It's just nonstop action. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

That's what I've been seeing. It's great.It's like the world's finally, I don't want to say waking up. But it seems like the ripples of what you're doing. More and more people are paying attention. Is that true? Or is that just my perception?

Tony Blauer:

Dude, there's a part of me that's such a wimp. Like, not in that sense. But emotionally I'm really a poet. And I wanted people to love what we're doing for the longest time. And, in the truest sense of being this romantic poet. It saddened me, like literally, like in the 80s, I was sad that I was ostracized and ridiculed by so many of the reality-based self-defense community. Who do you think you are? Bruce Lee coming up with your own approach like that? And I'd be like, what are you talking about? Like, this is just different. It's adding on, it's augmenting, it's amplifying. So, it's neat. It's weird. In the last few years, it's almost made me blush. Like sometimes when people refer to me, and how they refer to me, because I don't feel like I'm 62, my body does. But in my mind, I don't feel like I'm 62 and sort of have like, our main business training, law enforcement, public safety. So, like, I'll call people back, I still do like the hosting call interviews. Someone says hey, we'd like a spear course. And I'll call up and talk to the guy. It'd be like, Jeremy, if you call, if you send an email on our hosting for me, we'd like to host you and get a phone call from the founder. Jeremy, what do you want to host? Right? And you'd be like, who is this? No, it was Tony Blauer. And then people are like, Oh, my God, Mr.Blauer. And I'm like, hey, like, that's my dad, call me and it was kind of neat, after all these years so thank you for noticing. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Well, and it's deserved because I've known who you are for a long time. And you are just a throw to the audience. You were on Episode One. Oh, wait, still the only episode that we ever released a censored and uncensored version. Because I sat down, I did the editing at that point. And I sat down, I was like, alright. oh, because I still have all the sheets in the course, so fill in this box. And then it was on here that it was here to go through. We're gonna, so but we released it in two different versions, we released an edited and an unedited because for you because you know, for authenticity purposes, but you are also essentially such great stuff that we wanted people to be able to hear it if they didn't want to hear that stuff. And so

 Tony Blauer:

I just gotta interrupt you. 

 Jeremy Lesniak:

So, go for it. No, it's all good.

 Tony Blauer:

I was on a call with one of my team in Austria today. And she held up like a document like that, but it was like 100 pages thick. She said because I teach live every week right on Zoom four times a week. And she had them, she had a bunch of calls like if a particular class really impacted her, she'd have transcribed. So, she goes, it's funny because the otter is an artificial intelligence, it will create a separate section of most used words and my thinking Guess what it is? Are you gonna say it to me? 

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'll let you it 

Tony Blauer:

It was f*ck. Like we had such a good laugh. So, like literally two hours ago, I was on a call with her. And she shows me this and I go like most common words, do you want to use words? So, I can get a little emphatic?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Well, it's funny. There's a little bit of synchronicity, we're talking about this. Andrew and I recorded an episode earlier today. And it was the first one I ever swore on. Your voice was, and here's why your voice was in the back of my head, because we talked about it before we rolled and you said, look, I'm paraphrasing here, but you said, I've told myself, I'm going to start censoring myself. It's inauthentic. This is how I talk. And this is how I'm going to talk. And I think we recorded like five years ago, so like, it's been in my head that long, that strongly.

 Tony Blauer:

And so, what do you say? We're just swear what was the word? 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, I dropped a bunch of bombs.

Tony Blauer:

I have somebody who works for me. Jenny, who you are rebilling. She cannot swear that it will not come out of her mouth. I'll be in a meeting with her. And I'll go f*ck Jenny. Come on. Like what is this? She'll go. What did the guy read that back and she'll go, he said, you can go f yourself. I go no, what did he say? You go she will not she has never.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I love it. So let me guess it's a mission now to get her to swear.

Tony Blauer:

I got her smiling about it now and giggling and things, but she will not. She will not say it. I don't know if I told you the story in our first talk five years ago. But in the 80s, when I was teaching in Montreal, Canada. We will do these seminars. And it was Jerry Beasley's karate college the first year I taught in the 80s. He came up to me and complained, not complaining, but told me that some people would complain that I was swearing at the seminars. It doesn't go f*ck Jerry in. Look, come on Tony, can you? And I said okay.

But that made me think, like, in my next seminar.  I said, Listen, I swear not because I've got loose lips and like a weak mind. I swear to punctuate that the level, I almost want to say like bone marrow deep is my passion for your personal safety. And a buddy of mine, who introduced me at this big event to soar next summer, was 600 people in the audience. And he said, it gave me goosebumps and almost made me tear up because I've spoken at some of his events, and we've been friends for years. 

And he says this man cares more about your safety than you do, I promise. It's a weird thing. It's like if I was a therapist, I'd be dead already. Because I take every one of my students’ homes with me. I'm like I gotta do a good job. But even to today, right? I am 62 years old. I have been teaching since 1979 - professionally since 1980. I've taught 1000s. I'm still like a class on Friday going off. I forgot to tell them this. I didn't include that like I'm just trying to always squeeze everything in not knowing what idea is going to make the difference in somebody's competence, confidence, situational awareness, or skill.

Jeremy Lesniak:

But isn't that inevitable? Because you're not just sitting back and writing about what you did 20-30/40 years ago, you're still thinking about stuff. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure we got into. We don't have to like, attack it as a subject. But you've been doing what you're doing for long enough that the world has changed. And thus, I assume, while the principles, while the absolute fundamentals may not have changed, some of the implementation likely has.

Tony Blauer:

As a fascinating question, and a great observation. And here's a neat thing. Ego, power, greed, abuse, violence. I just write three times a week. And in my last newsletter I said, hey, like, it's not that, like violence is here to stay violence has always been here, right? It's always been. We were hanging out; you were hunters and gatherers. And then we look up, there's like a tribe we don't recognize that has also long pointy sticks and they're wearing dead animal furs. And next thing we know, we're fighting for our life because we've got food and they don't. Whatever the reason was, and this goes back 100,000 years, there's always been violence. 

And what hasn't changed? In terms of what's the best way to describe this? Like, if you are going to go into a lab and reverse engineer survivability.  You would, we put you in the lab, we put me in the lab, and we dissolved ourselves and then we erlenmeyer flask and I heat you up and bunsen burns you and all that I can't remember. I'm remembering these names from 30 years ago in school. And I go oh, look, this is how this caveman spotted danger, intuition. He had a bad feeling. And then he looked around and used his senses. And then oh my god, if it was a saber- toothed tiger or a bear, he ran. Then he got an improvised weapon and then he fought. There was a pointy stick on the first spear, right?

He uses crossed extensor reflexes to drive and impale that in there. Somebody grabbed the hands and came up when someone hit him with a rock. And he stopped that, and then he grabbed the guy's head and smashed him. And he's using the cross-extensor chain to push away. So, if I go back and we had a video of caveman fighting, we actually have this in. We have a new iteration of our bureau bodyguard program. And I found some amazing old pictures depicting violence and fighting. And so, our spear stance was his fingers splayed with the whole the way we've reimagined and engineered it. But there's like hieroglyphic pictures of guys doing this or doing I'm gonna like. So yes, to answer your question. Yes, so much has changed, but what hasn't been physiology, kinesiology, psychology, every victim of violence, who lived to tell the tale, so they had a bad feeling?

Well, that's like 1000s and 1000s of years old, if you could go back and you go how did you know to run right? Then go like,I knew something was wrong in the jungle, or in the forest. And you learn? And that's what we call the three eyes, instincts, intuition, and intelligence. So, what I've done, whether it's somebody sending me messages and channeling or I'm just clever. I believe that I've created and sounds grandiose and noxious - a pure behaviorally based self-defense program, every ingredient in it, you bring to class, and you walk the street with, there's no listening in 30 days. If you do this, your legs move that way, and you'll be able to do this move. And there always was with and I've been in multiple mini altercations. Growing up, I remember a fight ahead when I was nine, and then one when I was 12. And then one was 15. And then a few things in 17,18, 19. 

And all I remember, in these violent encounters some of them weren't that violent, but that perception of getting jumped when you're 12 is an extreme violence even though nothing really happened. But what if I was aware that I wasn't in control of my cognitive function? If I say to you now Jeremy, what you do you turn around and you take some money out of the ATM, you turn around, and there's a guy that would have done. He's gonna give me a wallet and negotiate. He doesn't have a mask on, we're kind of in isolated areas, fingers on the trigger. What I've done 20 years ago, and disarms f*ck this guy, right? Like you could have a theoretical answer to what you do, whether it's to your wallet or not.

But what I've noticed, and this is now my first inkling, I call the 80s, my incubator period. And it’s where I created all the fear management, the de-escalation, and that's an interesting thing. - me and my tangents. The escalation is the biggest thing and this the biggest buzzwords in public safety now, if you were studying with me in the 80s, you were introduced to nonviolent postures and you were told that everything we do must be morally and ethically and legally sound and you will always diffuse, take the fuse out through choice speech. If you look at Panther productions, the first video from 1986, when it was released is called cerebral self-defense, the mental edge. So, in the 80s, I was going to watch the mind navigate the body. We're not just going to do a move. I didn’t, what’s really changed to try and answer six of your questions at once is how I articulate now, I've gone. So, in the 80s, I couldn't explain signal speed, modernization of a neuron interleaving brain based training, none of that nomenclature or language existed, because neuroscience had not discovered parts of the brain, where now, like, specialists are going, I think last year, they discovered a part of your brain where they think courage, the origin for courage is.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, you knew the what, but not the why.

Tony Blauer:

I knew why. It's crazy

Jeremy Lesniak:

Why but not how.

Tony Blauer:

Or they were, okay. There was so much going on in the 80s. But I feel like I'm still answering your question on what has changed because the world has changed. It's interesting because fear has been really weaponized. And I've been studying and trying to understand fear management since the 80s, the 60s and 70s. More for myself, I never really talked about it. And I was as interested as two weeks ago. I realized I never told my mother or father that I was afraid of anything. When I was, in fact, often very afraid of certain things. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Was that behavior they modeled?  

Tony Blauer:

I think it's cultural. Well, I think that's part of how I was wired. But I don't think even today people talk about fear. People rationalize, the plain words rational- lies. Hey, why didn't you do that? Last night in Colorado? Because I knew hey, why don't you defend yourself there? Now what's the point and I'm not saying that everyone should fight but a lot of times what we're doing is we're listening to our the conversation of fear in our mind and then selecting the path of least resistance or strategy or it's an interesting introspection when you can separate the two and then say, I'm scared to do this and then figure out okay, I got to do this anyhow, because that's the only way you're going to self-actualize. Becoming a better version of yourself is if you manage fear. And that's become like my primary mission right now is growing - the No Fear program - and helping people understand it. 

Because the truth of the matter is, every single martial artist has a theoretical explanation for what they do in any situation. But when you look at CCTV, or smartphone footage, or body cam on a cop, or any type of footage of violence, we never see ever except for very specific situations, which we can get into if you want, but 99% of time you don't see anything that's practiced in the dojo or in the studio school. 

And I was, like, for me why is that? And when I would have my altercations like, okay, I'm a good boxer. I'm good at taekwondo. I love Bruce Lee by messing around with Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do. And all that, and this happened, and I got scared. My heart started to race, tunnel vision here. And then when we fought, I don't even remember what happened. But I don't think I did, -bonks out. I don't think I strayed last. I don't think I did a sidekick. I don't know, it was more like a hockey fight just f*cking like, you just write sloppy wild. But it’s funny. I wrote an email to my team, our affiliates. 

We had an instructor program last week and I always go on and talk on them. And I did this rant, it was just a wonderful rant, and I knew I wanted to share with all the affiliates around the world. And I said, hey, here's a message from your fear, hyphen last and fear hyphen fault leader, put a little smiley face. Reminding people that here I am like this guy like I do talks at like major companies, tier one military, all on managing fear. During creating scenarios, there's this assumption that I'm like, beyond fear for some people, and I reminded people like literally it's like two days old. Hey, please watch this message from your fear list. fearful leader with the hyphens, look at that and go, what the f*ck is he talking about? Like, because I'm always trying to instill an opportunity to go deeper in yourself. What is he? Why would Tony say he's fearful right now, full of fear. And also, the same sentence beside each other, says fear less fearful. 

And then, I went on Facebook Live with the team a few days later, and I said, hey, let's talk about that, right? Because that's me, if you think back at some of the, let's say, origin statements of why we train martial arts, it's not for self-defense. At some point, it's transcendence and self-actualization. It's out of one's true self-emerges, or one's true self emerges out of the practice and all that. I don't know if that was for… or there was some quote.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's familiar, but I can't place it.

Tony Blauer:

And so that's stuff. That stuff occupies my mind more than could I hit this guy with an eye gouge and hope you never watched the Three Stooges.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Fear is so interesting. And I could probably pull a lot of examples, but the one that's comes to mind, that scene in tickets, the first Christian Bale. Batman really falls into the well on the bats, right? And then he's terrified as a kid that he goes back later. And he's just kind of embraced it. It's not that he's no longer afraid, it's that he's willing to face that and use it and I would imagine an understanding of it. And we can look at that in other ways. It's not just fear, but all the scariest things, you give her well, you have far more contact with law enforcement that I do. But when I listen to accounts of people, especially guys that go undercover, they're writing a very fine line, and they're watching a part of themselves shift because they have to embrace that so they can do what they're doing. There are deep dark places in all of us. And sometimes we've got to tap them. 

Tony Blauer:

That's an interesting observation. And there’s a fancy term and in law enforcement scenario training called stress inoculation. You expose yourself to the stress your body creates an adaptation for that. I'm friends with a lot of retired Special Operations guys. I've worked with a lot of them when they were still friends with them. 

I was at Fort Bragg working with a lot of these guys. And there's this, this assumption when you first meet them- of well, not just the courage and the power and the strength, but there's an assumption that we make going that they're fearless. And the coolest guys will tell you, we're scared shipless. But this is our job, and we're trained. In other words, the idea of the penalty. If this doesn't go well, isn't lost on them. But they still go. Let's go and they've got their own pre-fight ritual. 

A lot of people don't realize, hate him, or love him. Tyson was an incredibly formidable boxer. He's regularly telling people how scared he was and how he used fear and custom motto to his coach. It was very famous for some Maxim's on fear that the difference between the hero and the coward is what they do with their fear. They both feel that fear is like fire. It can heat your food and warm you or it can burn your house down. It depends on your relationship with it. And so, all those things really are kind of nods or confirmations that this intuition I had back in the 80s that this is way more important that we realize, it's still to this day.

The single greatest overlooked area of developing personal scale competence and confidence. It’s fear in anything and you can, I can. So I do things now with like, I think I alluded to it earlier I have a guy who started training with us as a self from a self-defense perspective, big guy, former Marine, but he's required now and he's working in the private sector, and in a billion dollar industry, and he just got promoted, and the expectations is your sales this year are going to be this many million. And your team is 12. And, and he's thrust into that. 

And here's a guy that when he was in battle, understood the risks on the battlefield, call me up and said, I am looking so scared, like, of this challenge in front of me, and asked me if my no fear could help him. So, we're doing it and it's neat. 

I tell people that you've been on my website, and we've talked before we'd like gunfighting courses and multiple selling courses and, what protection courses and probably about 16 different programs that we run. And if you said, what's the most important course you do? It'd be my mindset. Now, the fear management because and this is something that I discovered and observed in the 80s when I created that panic attack, force on force. It was like Fight Club before a fight club was a movie. And I realized that the people who manage their fear always manage to fight and the people who don't manage their fear, don't fight, don't fight back, don't fully engage, didn't try so hard, because they were preoccupied with the movie in their mind, right? So, I use the acronym false expectations appearing real to describe probably the most potent and debilitating part of psychological fear. And some of the stuff we're doing. 

And I'll tell you, man, it's so cool. When I've had talks with neuroscientists and people like that, and they're like, like listening to me and have never thought about it that way. Like to kind of get them to lean in because they're all nerds.  I'm in awe of them. You did this, you opened a brain and looked in here, and were like, my insights were from studying victims of violence. And then intuitively mapping where there was an overlap.  And it was always things like no one ever said, well, thank God, I was like, a fourth Dan. And this because when you interview people well, I lost that fight, because I hadn't been promoted to blue belt. And I was just if you get them to emote, honestly, there was always fear.

Jeremy Lesniak:

There's a drill that I run sometimes when I travel, and I teach, and I didn't make this up. And I don't know where it came from. I learned it from my instructors when I was in the early mid-80s, when I was young. And it's very simple and what I love about it is that it beautifully illustrates what you're talking about, because there's so little risk. So what you do, you take the class, and I've talked about this on the show a couple times over the years, take the class, make two lines, everybody's just standing there, you pull one person, they come to the head, you turn them around, and you go through and you pick roughly half of the people, you're all attackers, they get one single, moderately paced, low risk attack. Three quarters of people lose it.

I've watched people who have been training 20 to 30 years, you turn them around, and they go to step in, and they just can't function. And I use that as an illustration of what you were talking about. It's not about the technique. It's not about the blocks, it's about can you get yourself to function and then the environment? And if the answer is no, there's something to work on. 

 Tony Blauer:

There's a maxim that I heard a long, long time ago was just the sentence the mind navigates the body. There's a lot of people that think there's muscle memory and the muscles don't have the capacity to store memory, but there's a part of your brain that produces a motor and gram, which is like a, let's say, a memory circuit of how something is supposed to fire. So, let's say you stop playing golf for 10 years, and then you pick up a club and you go, well, I guess I still got it. Below that muscle memory was a neural pattern. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

You were talking about the myelin sheath. I can think of that earlier, right? 

Tony Blauer:

What's interesting is a buddy of mine, Tom Campbell, also 62, lifelong martial artist. We were talking, catching up Sunday. And he said, hey, he says, how many jabs do you think you've thrown in your life? And I'd like jabs at people like physical jabs, like joking around. And he goes, he says, I've been boxing since I'm like seven years old. And as I just rounded it off because there are some days that I was in the gym all day, right, just while it was working out. But let's say I did 100 jabs a day. This is maybe less, maybe more. I don't want to screw the math up here. Because this is a fantastic thing, we're talking about myelin sheath, and signal speed and neural patterns. So, he's 62 so if he does 100 jabs a day, times 365 days, is 36,000. In one year, times 50 years. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

1.825. Close to 2 million. Imagine it's a lot of repetition. 

Tony Blauer:

Well, this is the thing that I did. I turn that into a whole class on Monday. And I've seen this talking about the difference between motivation and discipline. And it's easy, just as a refresher for anybody that's not current or familiar with it. When you're motivated, nobody needs to say, hey, you want to go do this because you're motivated. The trick is when you don't want to do it, but you've committed to it or you're supposed to that's discipline. And so, it's great to be motivated. But then it's like, Sunday, you don't want to work out but it's not your rest day, or you said you said yesterday, I'm gonna go for a run or I'm gonna hit the weights or I'm gonna hit the bag. And then you go do it. That's discipline. 

And the people that really, I think get the best out of life are the ones that are disciplined, they make s*It happened. And I tie this into this and my maximum, be careful when you practice, you might get good at the wrong thing. And a lot of people misunderstood that is me putting down their style, but it was my initial intuition about neural patterns. Because what I would say in the 80s, I go, look, you're a wrestler, you're a boxer, you're Wing Chun guy. And you came to my Fight Club experience. We didn't call it Fight Club; we called the panic attack. And we would do these force-on-force scenarios. And nobody looked like they warmed up. Nobody looked like the martial art they practice, very similar to your drill of walking down there. And just the fear builds up the pressure. 

And this went off of one of my rare tangents, but there's, there's two places that are trying to think of the best way to describe this. There are two types of fear that we can discuss. And most of the people talk about fight flight freeze, and tonic immobility and all these fancy terms are referring to the physiological fear response when dangers close. What they're not talking about, which is more significant, is psychological fear. Because I always make this joke that you're out in the woods or the desert, you grew up playing golf in the south and you hit your I'm not a golfer, but I was used as this analogy, I hit the ball into the woods. And I'm looking for my ball and as they reach down, I hear a rattle sound. My brain for a moment doesn't think it's a small tambourine band immediately. I think it's a rattlesnake. Your body always airs on the side of survival. Well, that fear response, whatever it was, freeze, run scream would be based on survival instincts. But immediately what's triggered is a psychological fear of what happens if I get bit and so false expectations appearing real the way I define it is, I'm visualized as in a future event that hasn't happened, and it's immobilizing me in the present. And it's very subtle. So, I know, red, this has happened to me where I go to grab something, and there's a branch in the grass, and my brain thinks it's a snake and I go, and then I see that it's a stick, but I've already made the fear response, the arousal, the heart rate has changed, the physiology starting to change. 

So, what happens is there’s two were impacted on two levels, by the perception of a threat, what is instinctive that hits our physiology and our and then that that sends messages through our brain in our body, that will produce the flinch that will change your breathing, that you'll hold your breath, or you go to hyperventilating, or your palms, sweaty palms butterflies. But then, almost immediately, a psychological fear response happens. And that's the movie in your mind. That is depicting like your demise, this is going to knock this is not going to turn out well. And this is why I say this is the most fascinating area for me. 

Because when we improve our self-awareness to catch that we change what happens next, in the next minute of our life. And so, love this connection that, fear management, when you understand the formula, and its essence is time management. Because when you're in the fear loop, you're consuming time.

If I say to you, Jeremy, why have you turned to this report? Why didn't you finish this book? Why did you punch that guy in the face? What were you waiting for? I got how many times. I don't know if you still do this, but remember when jump back kicks in back kicks and spinning up kicks? Their funding, right? Do you still do them? Can you do that? Mike can move faster.

 Jeremy Lesniak:

Because you stopped doing them? You keep doing them? Can you keep doing it?

 Tony Blauer:

Pretty much, what do you think about sparring? Like everyone is doing their back kick in the air. And then they're doing their back kick on Bob or on a bag. And when you're standing in front of a bag and you tell yourself, you're going to do 10 back kicks, jump back, and then click, you do them. But when you go spar, you can't do 10. Something happens when there's somebody else there. And what, this is the onion that I help people deconstruct. That guy's clearly open for a back kick when he does that. Why didn't you throw it? In the answer? If you peel the onion, is I didn't think I was gonna pull it off. What do you mean, I was what they'll eventually say, if they can lean into being vulnerable and transparent, is I was afraid I was gonna get a reverse punch in the back of the head. I was afraid I was gonna get counted. I was afraid I'd lose the match by doing something so risky. It All. So, the fear spiked. And this is such an important thing for you for I believe everybody in your audience is most type A males in particular don't like the word fear. Because there's a part of us that assumes part of that definition means I'm a warrior like or I'm a cowardly or I'm where the idea of survival and surviving from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the bottom tier, like if you're think of like a bunch of military guys where I said, hey, man, were you afraid in battle? 

Because there's a lot of people that I trained that have done stuff that I'll never do. And I recognize that and I'm in awe, that they trust me to come in and train them. So, I asked very probing questions, because there's several people that respected my opinion enough to ask me questions. I want to be able to not just be sure about my idea, but also to have vetted this from other people that have done like 10x what I'm hypothesizing about 

He goes, Man, he says, these guys, they'll go listen, one of my buddies, Mike Readlyn, he's a former seal. He goes, I can remember so many times we're stuck outside the house, and we knew every single person in that house was a bad guy and they were going to try and kill us. And anyone who tells you they weren't scared is just full of s*it. We were scared. But we knew why we were fighting; we knew what we're supposed to do. And if you talk to George St. Pierre, who will say, hey, the worst day of my life, my life is every day I have to fight. Say, I'm so scared before I go, if you saw a picture of him, like jumping across the ring, doing a superman punch, like ripped, or whatever mess or knocked him out, but he makes a joke about that. He says the only time I wasn't afraid in a fight was when I fought Sarah. And then he jokes he goes, maybe I should have been afraid. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

But you've used the word a couple times. And it's a word that we keep coming back to in so many conversations on so many subjects. And that is why all the examples you're giving fear exists, but the why is stronger. 

Tony Blauer:

Why are we afraid? Or why do we..?

Jeremy Lesniak:

GSPs in the ring, and he's afraid of his opponent. But that's his job. That's his mission. That's his purpose in life. And that is stronger than the fear. Because if it wasn't, he wouldn't be there. The fear would win. 

Tony Blauer:

It is an interesting thing. Did I ever tell you in the in our first talk that ever talked to you when I interviewed Maurice Smith, about fear doesn't ring a bell. So, I'm at a seminar that I'm teaching at, and Maurice is there I'm playing as at any time, anytime I meet somebody, that song said that woman was almost murdered, that woman was raped for that guy was jumped. If it's appropriate, I'll try to pick their brain but and I've also found that it's a little cathartic for people, if you're talking to somebody who can understand and help them through some stuff. But I was talking to Maurice, and I said, Maurice, like, I always like to talk to fighters about fear. And what's your pre-fight ritual? What's how do you manage fear before a fight? And he goes, let me ask you a question. 

And I'm like, Okay, I thought I was interviewing you. But okay, go ahead. And he says, do you have a job? And I said, I do. He said, are you afraid to go to work? I said, no, he said, Me there. And I was like, f*ck, like, what a cool line for a movie. But so, most of the people I train now are coaches and trainers and instructors. And I share with them a story because it's very easy. That's, like, that's a unicorn answer. That's not for most of the world. And it'd be very easy, and this is what you see with a lot of self-help. Or protocols. Or even in systems and styles. This is what we do when this happens. It's not I saw this interesting article by f*cker just forgot his name. Oh, s*it, Tucker? Oh, this name. If I gotta look it up on my cell phone, right? So, it's no, we're just we're just getting a job. Tim Larkin mentioned me in a thread. 

And it was, there we go. I can't believe I forgot his last name. Because he wrote he's famous author now. He wrote an interesting book, back in the day, and now he's got a publishing company. He's a very provocative author, British wrote an art blog, and a video. And he and it's like, my complete self-defense system. And he goes on to explain how he created his own self defense system, and his rocket of title because you're like, What the f*ck him and you create it. But he trained with this military guy, and he trained with Tim Larkin, and he took any train with Tim Kennedy and he, and he's got guns and he shoot, and he goes to jujitsu and all of that, but the essence of it was that only he knows what he needs to protect himself and his family. And it resonated with my very first article in black belt magazine in 1980. Where I said that I believe that there should be as many self-defense systems as there are people practicing self-defense. This is 1980 and I didn't like it.  

Jeremy Lesniak:

it's at least part of it. No point you're serious. It's like I know you're not the only one on this on this podcast that gets hate. You probably get less of it than you used to.

Tony Blauer:

Come on. I thought it was me. I'm trying to monetize.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You get more; you get more because more people know who you are.

Tony Blauer:

It's funny, but the idea there was that when it comes back it's full, it comes back full circle too. What the hell's the sphere system? And? And if that's true is that a contradiction that I'm teaching a system if I also believe no because the starting to say earlier, if we went into a lab and reverse engineer survivability, we will have to look at physiology, we'd have to look at instincts and intuition, we'd have to look at kinesiology and natural biomechanics. And we'd have to look at psychology. And if you looked at the ingredients, on the side of the bottle of spear, it would say all organic, and it would say physiology, kinesiology, psychology, and everything we teach even the way we throw an elbow the way we rate the way we do a palm strike, the origin, impulse is from cross extensor reflex from a physiological impulse. The hypothesis is that our situational awareness has been compromised. When your situational awareness is compromised, if there's truly danger, close and imminent, has become immediate. And your situational awareness, your situational awareness is a conscious cognitive skill. I'm here looking at you. I'm totally focused here. 

If a spider dropped down in a spiderweb here, and it was just hanging here, and I'm like, looking at you, and then you see it before I do, and you go on your right shoulder. And I'd be like this, were, if I see it near you, or if I see it on the wall again, f*ck is mightier that's nasty, right? So, if we've got time and space, we can self-regulate, we can change. So, it's when a stimulus is introduced too quickly that our physiological system grabs the steering wheel metaphor.

And this big connection. And this is like, delving into the fear spike that triggers the startup venture just to get small cover the head move away from danger, and if there's time and space push away, and that's where finger splayed outside 90 came from, where what you're doing is you're weaponizing your startle flinch, because, in essence, your startle flinch is a biological airbag. And it's way cooler than the mechanical airbag in the car. Because the airbag in the car needs the car to be struck for it to deploy. And airbags save lives, you know that right? If we closed off all airbags for 24 hours, fatalities in road in car accidents would go up. Airbags save lives. But consider this metaphor, the car needs to be in a collision for the airbag to deploy. Where if I were closer and it wasn't zooming, and I went what did you say and I stood up, you'd go without me hitting you. Whoa, do calm down and you would start to deploy the biological airbag if you don't have any understanding of how this operates, how this works, how to turn this into something that is protective by design in nature and can be tactical because that's what I said like the way we teach a palm strike it's not like it is your palm get your hand up here drive it out. It's the nerve and the nervous system. And all the survival reflexes of pushing away danger form the first ignition for the palms wreck. Then what we do is we in training we go micro flinch, push away danger, and then from there, we will drive out and put it out now we practice a cognitive control of that. 

But every class we're reminded that the nucleus of this complex motor skill is a primal gross motor skill that you don't even have to think about. So, if I whipped something through the screen to you and your hands came up, and I love asking this like you flinch 10,000 times in your life, and it's always perfect, right nobody goes to flinch school, right? Someone goes look out, you do this, you're at the golf course there's golf again. I don't play golf. So, I'm gonna look out for you. you're getting something out of the closet, and you post something in a shoebox that falls in your hands. Your hands go up, you don't hit the horse stance, you're not punching it. You're, you move. And so, there's a lot cooler things to do than flinch. We always look. We look like awful athletes when we flinch like nobody wants to be on the cover of whistle kick or Blackbell times going.

Jeremy Lesniak:

But that's a great idea for a magazine, right? People martial artists that they're worse.

Tony Blauer:

They're all who were worse. But the idea here is nobody in the world thinks to flinch. But flinching is a survival reflex when your conscious cognitive situational awareness has been compromised. So, we built this whole system around this idea that all fights are dangerous, but those dangerous fights are the ambush, the ambush, they will 99.9% of time hijack executive function. For a brief time, executive function is hijacked, you don't have any lucid access to your cognitive brain. Your cognitive brain is where we keep all our motor Engram connections to all the stuff we did. 

So, if I say to you guys coming at you with a number one angle with a Kali stick, you'd go well, I will just rise here blocking, like we have all the patterns that we practiced. But when we're surprised, we don't have access to that immediately. We need to recalibrate is a term I use when you recalibrate, and it might be an emotional or psychological or a physical recalibration or all the above. And so, for 30 years now, I've been developing drills around this hypothesis that this is the whole thing we started off. The talk with me making fun of myself being the romantic poet where I go, yes, your boxing is great. Yes, your crowd is great. Yes. You're just as great. Yes, your Taekwondo is great. Yes, your tie is great. 

But if you're standing in line at Starbucks going on, what should I have? And I'm like, cut man has not nobody wants, he's been lying for 10 minutes he should have. Now he's reading the menu. And he just got up to the front of the joke, right? Because people do that, you're in line, I can help you. You don't know yet even in line for 10 minutes. Just kidding. But if you're in line at Starbucks, or waiting to get a burger or sitting down to dinner, or filling up your car with gas, and something just erupts, you're not your style, you're the human being going what the f*ck is going on? Holy s*it. 

And unless you're highly trained, and there are some people that are highly trained for those situations, but in some cases of the unicorns like the Maurice Smith answer, and then some cases, they're like the guy's been in military law enforcement for decades. But even then, there's a video I did of the company caliber press.

Their big, big law enforcement, education company out of Chicago, probably one of the biggest in the world. So, I've written a bunch of articles for them, and I was the first guest on their podcast. And on it, we had CCTV video of three Israeli soldiers, walking up to a guy and asking him for his papers. He goes like this. Let me see if I can replicate this here. He pulls out. He stands that he's that you stand. He stands up from a bench. And he goes like this. He goes,hold on. Let me get my papers. And as he pulls his papers out, he comes out with a knife and slashes. I've seen this clip.

Slashes one of the guys in like, into the subclavian. Like, just like Adam. And it's three Israeli soldiers with long guns and kid on and helmet. And then he slashed another guy, and the guys went there. Like the guy standing here like this, this guy goes like this back here. He slashed another guy, and this guy's law. He's moving backwards like that. And then he's running. And then I think five or six other soldiers come running in and frickin lights him up and he dies of length. And I asked the question, not trying to be a d*ck. I go, where was their Krav Maga?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Like, a reasonable question? No, it's exactly the type of scenario that they theoretically that they are training for have been trained for. 

Tony Blauer:

And nowhere would it have been more authentic Krav than here's a guy in the Israeli army. And in this where and this is the poet in me going, I'm just trying to make you safer. I had a tagline that I would say I would always end my interviews with: don't hate me, hate the bad guy. if there was no violence, you and I wouldn't be teaching self-defense. And I'd be okay with that. I know that I figured out something else to do.

That's how much I abhor violence. I have heard so much. It scares me so much. That's why I practice. And that's why I teach it. Because when I hear a violence or I see violence, I'm not looking at whether they should have done this, they should have done that. This is so true, man, I get so sad, because I immediately think of the fear of the victim. What were they thinking there? What were they wishing for somebody please help me. 

And so that's what I know, like, the most important thing that we could do, as martial artists teaching self-defense is, to lean into fear management. Because it is the single most potent and powerful energy you can have. I wrote this in 1985 for Inside karate magazine. I wrote “there are more people who get attacked every day, and successfully defend themselves than there ever will be trained people who get attacked, and successfully defend themselves. Like every three seconds, something's happening somewhere. I don't know what the numbers are now. Three seconds, six seconds, someone's getting attacked. 

And we don't hear about all the attacks, because if you fight back and the person runs away, you don't run to the police office, then go, hey, man, I didn't get a good look at the guy. But I smacked him in the head. And he took off. Okay, thanks, right. like and it's only one in 10. Crimes that say like sexual assaults that are recorded. But it's an interesting thing. It's the power of the mind that navigates the body. Now, what if we're teaching intelligent fear management? Not. And I don't mean to make fun of other systems. But a lot of, I don't mean martial arts systems, but like performance systems. 

There's a lot of performance systems out there that are deep into K, visualize getting the happy space, remember Happy Gilmore, go to your happy place. And I say like, you don't have time to do that in a fight. You can't namaste your way out of being alone. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

There's no time. There's no time for preflight rituals. 

Tony Blauer:

Exactly, exactly. That's one of the things. And this is one of the things that people would ask me, I remember was already this one military group, they had tons of discretionary funds. And so, they could train with anybody. I mean, they like literally, this group, when Evil Knievel was around, like, hired him to come in and teach them motorcycle works. So they brought me in, and they asked me, they sent me some video of a guy doing some demos of resilience, like being able to take full on punches to the throat, like kicks that are growing.

And they were asking, like, what do you think of this is bulls*it. And so here's the guy like inviting people to a crowd, and he's punching him in the throat. You've seen those types of kicks the nuts, and I suppose what the body can do is amazing. The resilience we have. It's amazing what the body can do. However, and I'm glad you asked and listened, you guys are discretionary funds trained with the guy. But here are the questions. How long did it take to learn? How long does it take to activate? In other words, if he needs to do two deep breaths before the kick to the balls, that has zero application for you in an ambush? If he needs one second to get ready, that has zero application for you in an ambush. Because these guys were like high level operators, right? I'm going if he needs to know the attack is coming to get ready. That has zero application for you. Get an ambush, right. You're tracking? Yes. Like if I need to know. Okay, hold on a second here. Ready? Like even if you could do it quickly. You need to know. I mean, how Houdini died, Harry Houdini. Do you know the story?

Jeremy Lesniak:

He drowned, right? Oh, I thought it was in a box and wrapped up and didn't couldn't get to his key or something like that.

Tony Blauer:

One of his demos, this is my understanding, you may be right, but there's my understanding. One of his demos was aside from getting out of chains and doing all that Houdini stuff that he's known for, if you let anyone in the audience punch him in a bottle. That's right. And he was hurt by this one. I didn't know this, but he had an appendix that needed to come out and Some guy wanted to do the demo or had done it and he said, I'm not feeling good. And he waved the guy off and the guy was either drunk or angry, followed him. And when Houdini turns you hooked, punches him and he ruptured his appendix and he dies. That's what I know. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Now that you say that. That sounds familiar.

Tony Blauer:

So, we should fact check. How did Harry Houdini die? Harry Houdini's causes of death were appendicitis and peritonitis. And it was ruptured by a strike. Now, what's the point of bringing that up? How does that fit in here? Is because when Houdini was ready, he could protect himself. And when he turned his back and said, I'm not feeling good, because you had appendicitis. And you got an eruption. So, if you've ever had a flash knockout, I've been dropped a couple of times by good boxers, where I'm over here. The next thing I remember in Gleason's gym sparring this guy. And I was in the middle of the ring, and we exchanged something. And he was a good boxer, but this guy was a pro boxer. And there's a big difference. And I always make the joke that the pledge several seconds of my life is missing in Brooklyn in Gleason's gym, and I just came in a clinch against the rope. I was like, swinging up trying to get a body shot. And I'm like, what the f*ck just happened there? right? It's the shot, you don't see that'll drop you. And the shot, you don't see that, that'll hit you, but anyways. 

 Jeremy Lesniak:

And then the other stuff, I want to make sure that because I know, I suspect we're on the same page. The other stuff is interesting. It's valuable, preparing and walking over hot coals or anything like that. Like, there is carryover, it does make you more resilient. But it doesn't mean that you necessarily, and certainly you're advising against building your self-defense protocols, around that sort of stuff, because why not use the stuff you've already got? 

Tony Blauer:

The law is fine. I think because I'm so passionate about what I do. People forget that I'm a lifelong martial artist, and I love martial arts. And I still make fun of back kicks and stuff like that, but I don't want them every so often. But for 30 years, I've been so singularly focused on training the good guys for real fights. My focus went all in all there. But I've got guns and knives, and I got sticks and I got a martial artist. Because it became my canvas and how I fed my family and grew my company. It's okay, seven days a week for the last 30 years. Just focus on that. And it's you who made the joke, but you were serious. You stopped doing it, you're gonna lose it, right? And I made a joke now I could kick you in the head, Jeremy. Lie down, right? Are you gonna be doing this while you're standing? That's a problem.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Bill Wallace does a very similar joke, by the way.

Tony Blauer:

And Bill could probably still kick us in the head.

Jeremy Lesniak:

He can but he puts like a kick in kicking the knee that I can kick in the head doesn't matter how tall you are.

Tony Blauer:

Right? Then it  just made me think of a time that Wallace and Joe Lewis were was it bill might have been f*ck, it was Joe Lewis. And I think Wallace, they were up in Montreal, and we were there in my car. And my engine died. And we didn't have phones. I'm driving there. And I had Joe Lewis pushing my cheek. But imagine if I had smartphones hurrying back there to film. It was crazy.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You might be one of very few people who can say that they have those to push in a car.

Tony Blauer:

It is some crazy time, some crazy times.  

Jeremy Lesniak:

Absolutely.  

Tony Blauer:

The way you're just asking me we went off on a crazy tangent. 

 Jerry Figgiani

Definitely. Oh, it's fine on the mark of the show. 

Tony Blauer:

But it was that I'm so passionate about this stuff. I think that people listened and they went, he hates all other martial arts except for what he does. He thinks his stuff is the most important stuff. And what I'm talking about, is like truly if you understand how to weaponize the startle flinch, which you will do anyhow, if you caught off guard, if you understand more about fear management, if you look at, if you just step back and when why would governments around the world hire Blauer, in his team to come in and train their trainers on scenarios design? And if you looked at that, and you went, is there anything I could learn from this company or from this system? Because that would just make you safer. And that would and if you're safe for your family safer, and if you're an instructor, your students are safer? Why wouldn't you want to research?

 Jeremy Lesniak:

I've never seen what you do as an either or, I've always seen what you do as another layer. Another insight, a lens or perspective, that greatly informed my trading. I mean, one of the things that I'm traveling doing a lot of training with others now, I'm breaking people down to hyper slowness, so their brain can catch up and showing them a lot of things that are mean, it's a completely different way of getting there. But it's very similar to some of the things that you're doing doesn't mean that that's all I do, or want to do, or think people should do all the stuff well. I still love to inform, but this perspective, I think, helps people get where they're trying to go there. And that's valuable. And as you said, why wouldn't you explore it?

 Tony Blauer:

Good. And I love that. Another layer in I love, and maybe I gotta, I was telling this story. On a podcast last week, in 1993, I was teaching at Aslan, American society, law enforcement trainers. I don't anymore, but it's like, I mean, hundreds of trainers from all over the world. And it was the first ever I had been invited by Corey Kluber who was the Redman rep. But he was also the chairman of Azilect and dealt in law enforcement. And we'd had this five hour talk one night at a high liability conference. And he said, hey, man, I don't know if I agree with everything that you say, but I'm really fascinated. And I'd be doing my community a disservice by not putting you in front and letting them contemplate this stuff and consider. 

And so, he invited me to, it was Dallas 93. And I'm talking to this group, and there's cops in there, like sitting there like this, sneering at me, arms crossed, and a break, don't come back from the break really offended by. And I was like, this is one of the things we talked about, like, hey, times of change. Well, ego and fear haven't changed. And it's like, why? Why would anything I say be so disruptive to you that you would not come back to the class to listen or take notes, and then go back and experiment and go, is this true? Is this bulls*it? And one of the things I told guys, the term reactionary gap, was for people who aren't familiar with that term, that's the distance between a police officer and a suspect. It's referred to as this reactionary gap. They usually assign a six-foot distance called the reactionary gap. 

So, it's 9093. And I say, how many of you have heard of the reactionary gap? Well, they all look around going like this as an audience, what all cops, of course, I go, how many of you believe in the term the reactionary gap, and the reactionary gap is the distance between you and the suspect? And therefore, the implication or the implied essence of reactionary gap, it's the gap with which you have to react. This is when I got to make s*It happened. And then I said, how many of you have heard of Dennis Tueller? And what is commonly referred to as the Tueller drill? Have you ever heard of it, Jeremy?

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I don't think so. 

Tony Blauer:

So Tueller, if anyone's to look it up, it's T.U.E.L.L.E.R.  Dennis Tueller did this drill, where he discovered if you took two average athletes, and one had a knife, and one had a gun, and the gun was in the holster that you needed 21 feet distance.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I didn't know it by name.

Tony Blauer:

But yes, you've heard it as the 21-foot rule. So, the 21-foot drill, it's famous in law enforcement, is completely misunderstood, but famous, right? And it's like, another reason like how I produce so many haters so quickly, is because a lot of people are selective listeners. And I'll say Tueller, misunderstood. There's no such thing and they'll go because like if you teach that was part of your career. Gillum? or maybe it's something you hang your hat on in a demo. It's like, f*ck, what did he say? As opposed to waiting a minute, if there's any truth to what this idiot is saying, I need to know that, because my students really fight. And so, what I explained to people, I said this, the drill, so I'll make a wish. In Toulouse research, he discovered that if I have a knife, way back here, I got a knife here, and I produced it and came running at you that I closed in 1.5 seconds, approximately 1.5 seconds. And that was the gap time, the refractory delay between stimulus response for somebody to go threat, draw their weapons, step offline, and engage, and it was approximately 21 feet all the time. I don't know how that's possible for us. Now. Follow this because I find this fascinating. I love doing this talk, even though this isn't a law enforcement show. It's an important discussion about how myths and legends and misunderstandings happen. 

Let's say it's 21 feet. So, my question was, if I needed 21 feet to come at you, and stab you, with a knife, I would ask the people I'd say what distance is safe for you to draw your gun and shoot me if I don't have a knife? And all these cops, and one of the talks they did there were 400 trainers in the assembly hall. I go, what distance do you need? If I don't have a knife? And they're like, why? Nobody had an answer. I said, if I can run and stab you at 21 feet with a knife, can't I punch you in the face and stun you and steal your gun? From 21 feet less the length of the knife? Because if I can run at you and go slash 21 feet aren't the biomechanics of a slash the same biomechanics of a sucker punch.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Six feet suddenly doesn't seem like anywhere close to enough, doesn’t?

Tony Blauer:

Right, and nobody had ever shipped me that shift. So, I said, Listen, here's a couple other things. While we're putting this in our pipe and smoking it, right. You're safe if suddenly you realize this guy is going to try and kill you and has the means and attention and the ability and he's charging you. And you guys are trying to kill me, you gotta get offline, get unique. 21 feet less the length of the knife in the original demo. The track in that, right. Now, when we did the original demo. Did they sign waivers? Were there cameras? There were. So, is your reaction time enhanced when what the demo is going to be? Well, f*ck. There I wrote a bunch of articles. I don't know if you get my newsletter. But do you remember the ACP awareness? Consent preparation? I write so often that it's like oh, nine other Blauer newsletter, f*ck delete. But I wrote this, I wrote a couple of papers on awareness, consent preparation, and that if I have awareness, and I stay there, I've consented to be there. And if I have awareness, and I've consented to be there, I am now prepared. I may not be as prepared as it should be. But it's very different than someone going dad wake up and you wake up and you're like, what's up, there's someone in the house, you're going, whoa, like that's different than you taking your money going up as $500 out of the f*ck, right. 

And there's a bad guy right there. There's no awareness, consent, or preparation. And to go back to, let's say, the drill you do, where you're going this gauntlet drill, where people just lose their s*it, and they're freaking out and you're going, there's zero risk that you're gonna die, you're not gonna get dragged to a secondary crime scene, you're certainly not going to get hurt, because we know, we're not wearing flowers, hide your suits. We're not knocking people out. Just this is just an exercise in what we're going to talk about after the exercise, you'll learn why we did it, right. 

So, I said that I said to the guys here, so long as the track 21 feet is that the same distance needed? If you didn't know that the guy had a knife and he's going to charge, it would be 31 feet or maybe 41 feet. Because now you know, when you know, you worked out the distance backwards because you did one rep here number two. And that was the whole original intent that completely got misunderstood by an industry for decades, was by acknowledging that you need this much distance. This was a way to defend police officers’ reactions of drawing their weapon in close quarters. There was the idea that saying, hey, we don't have 21 feet. We never have 21 feet. But it just turned into this 21-foot rule like that as you heard it, like and just like wouldn't like what does that even mean? 

Well, I love asking, when did you ever arrest anyone in a 21-foot room that was circular with no furniture? Like it just never happens. It's always like, it's an elevator. It's a stairwell. It's between two parked cars. It's the side of a road. 

Anyways, without turning this into a cop podcast. How do we turn this back into martial artists if we've got all these, like theories and hypotheses about how we're moving when we do stuff. But if we take this Tueller example, a lot of the answers we have for how we would solve a problem are designed in one step two step three step sparring, coordinated and choreographed drill. And we're not ever considering the element of surprise, what that does to our complex motor skill system, because the startle flinch is part of your primal gross motor movement. If I do this, I can't at the same time be doing that. I mean, and when you flinch, your body contracts for a micro moment. And you need to again, I use the term earlier, recalibrate. But it was interesting. 

My whole point of that story was, it probably took 10 or 15 years before the law enforcement community got over all that, where. I had this guy, Joe, that I was talking to, that we're just talking about this week, and I met him originally in 1993. He came. He comes up after my lecture, he says, hey, I work undercover. And your insights are right on the money. However, your bedside manner, you will never get through to these guys.

I was like, what are you talking about? He goes, you can't tell cops that something doesn't exist. Like because I would say the reactionary gap doesn't exist. If we had a time machine. I go back to when someone said, let's call this the reactionary gap. I jump in there and go wait, no, let's not, let's call it something else, but not the reactionary gap. Because it lulls us into a false sense of security. I'm okay. I'm here instead of the reactionary gap. I've got this. But it was guys like that, who in some ways are like a spiritual mentor and I wasn't ready to hear it at the time. But he was like, hey, this is.

Jeremy Lesniak:

If I'm doing the math, right. You've been doing what you were doing for 10 or 12 years, you're still kind of young at it.

Tony Blauer:

At that moment, when you started it, you got well in 1993. So, I'd started 1980 like teaching full time professional England and 93 was 13 years in, as a teacher as an instructor.  I started wrestling when I was seven and martial arts when I was 12 and a half. But I am young, but still well over a decade in. But it's 10 years.

 Jeremy Lesniak:

10 years felt like a lot when I was younger. Here I am in my 40s now and 10 years of anything, it's like 10 years is nothing.

 Tony Blauer:

But you remember when you were coming up, you'd bump into that guy's been training for 10 years. That seemed like forever. That was 10 years. 10 years. 10 years. You go, and we always were off those guys. But you're right. I mean, like, compared to now, here we are 40 plus years later, but what's interesting is, you got to know your audience. And that, you're around teaching, if you're teaching kids, you're making a joke about me swearing my language, I can literally go teach a kid’s class and never swear, I can go, we just did something for we have a new program called spear care for the mental health community. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, that's awesome. Want to hear more about that? 

Tony Blauer:

So, it's several years in the making. We always had like health care professionals, EMS, mental health, health care doctors coming into our other programs, but the standard spear program was really built around a law enforcement scenario. And so, people were coming in and they go hey, I'm not a cop. But can I come in, this is why we do an interview, or they write us a letter. We go to this guy's government he's legit and, but the scenarios were only different. And we always would, and we've worked with the NHS, big friggin organizations. And they would always say like it's good, but like, we don't carry guns and we don't say suspects. We say client and like, it just turns some of the people off. And I'd be like, well go f*ck yourself, sorry. 

But it happened enough, and I got approached mid pandemic, by somebody who's very well-known at the national level. And he said have been following you for a while and your principles of de-escalation of fear management and just even the way you go from a nonviolent posture to deploying the spear is such a scalable movement, right? I can't scale, a back kick what I mean, by scale? I can't, right?  Everyone listens by scale, like I let’s say, you're doing a deadlift, you can scale it.  I can say, hey, you're gonna do 225 pounds, and someone has zero range of motion or strength, maybe we just give them an Olympic bar with five pounds on it, and they're just doing 55 pounds. So you scale it, you can't scale it elbow, you can't scale kick the ball. 

So, I'm gonna kick the balls lightly. Well, but you can scale the actual spear. And that's amazing. And I've always said that I can change the impact zone on my arm. And that changes energy transfer. If I supinate the hand, I rotate it, I hit with the underside of the arm, I can use that to clear somebody. We have like a whole courageous bystander program, where you're moving, but it's all around. How my body in a high stress situation is going to gravitate to a primal gross motor move. But anyways, the spirit care is an acronym for comprehensive aggression, response education, and it's much more the whole language has been modified. But when I went to do the course, I was cautioned by the organizers, hey, like your tattoos and you’re swearing and stuff like that. This is like, health care, mental health. And I was like, I did this two day pilot course and didn't even say Poopoo. I could turn it on and off. But to your point, when we started.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I want to point out, you might know the statistics I don't, but I know the amount of violence that exists in healthcare, and even more so in mental health patient on patient, patient on provider is staggering. And I'm gonna guess you, you can bet, tell me I'm wrong. I'm going to guess there's a greater number of violent incidents in that space than in law enforcement.

 Tony Blauer:

It's huge, and I don't have the numbers handy. I was just reading them and working on the foreword for a buddy's book on situational awareness. And she just listed them so I just, it was just so many numbers. I didn't memorize it. But it is staggering, but it's a subculture because it happens behind closed doors, where we don't know half of the incidents that happen to cops, we only hear the ones that are our supporting narrative. But the other thing about these events that happen in hospitals and mental health facilities, stuff like that, the challenge there is that the individuals that are being assaulted, like in terms of their aspiration in life, was to help others. So, in other words, the Hippocratic Oath didn't include, throwing punches wasn't like, I want to do no harm, show me how to do that elbow, arm, and then show me this head, but this is one of my jokes when I'm talking to them, right? 

And it's how do you find a safe and scientific and psychological system that that protects the end user who's tried to deploy some sort of psychological or medical intervention, and then the person just goes walk you around him and so we have program for EMS like we were we bring in an ambulance and training is in and around the gurney in the back. I mean, you're talking about, like, I mean, this is such a confined space. 

But it's not even like, if you were the suspect, and I was a cop, and I go, Jeremy has any weapons on you, and you go, just me, I'm the weapon, right and oh, s*it. But the cop doesn't show up and talk to somebody without recognizing there could be a possible obligation, at least in theory, a lot of them are switched off, unfortunately. And presume compliance. But you don't get called to some place, right? 

There's Intel when you go somewhere, it's a cat stuck in a tree, or weird screaming in a house, or there's a guy in a bar that is threatening so you're going to an altercation? Where? And so, in the health carrier, the actual origin of spear right, which is, and we can't use the word weaponize with that group. But how do we convert this startle flinch into a protective countermeasure? That makes you safer, but also safer on the client? Or are the individuals having. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

What's the response been?

 Tony Blauer:

Amazing, they love it. I guess there's a lot of other companies that were there before, were usually a lot of retired law enforcement who saw a need, because they all interact. But they were coming from a pressure point armlock. So, they're teaching them all this complex motor skill stuff, that like a nurse and a doctor, they're not going to train. But here's the missing thing. And this ties back to the tour stuff. And everything I've been saying for the last two hours, is when you're leaning over someone and you're going, I need to take this medication, it's really gonna help you. And then the person goes, hey, give me a shot. And you lean in and they f*cking head*tt you or bite you or punch you. Like, that's a surprise attack, right? So, every initial assault in a healthcare environment is a surprise attack versus your police officer. And there's like a drunk walking around outside of the bar. That's the guy, right? And then and I go, Sir, serve over here, can you come towards me keep your hands where I can see them. Like, if the guy runs at you. It's a surprise, but it's not, right? Because of ACP. I've got awareness, I've got consent, I've got preparation, I may still get f*cked up. But you get you had all the pre contact indicators there to be able to intercept.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And they never get that. Health care never gets that.

 Tony Blauer:

And the missing link here is, I believe, and this is the whole thing. The subtle theme here is, for 40 plus years, and you remember, I mean, we talked about this the first time we talked. When I was 20, I was asked by venture capitalists what I wanted to do, and I said I want to make the world safer. And he said, you don't think that's a little grandiose. And I was like why? I mean, that was like, you were if you go to some entrepreneurial school right now, they'll talk about what is your big, hairy, audacious goal, something that's so right. And they use that terminology. 

Well, in 1980, I said to a venture capitalist who I was introduced to. He said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to make the world safer. There was no like, none of that stuff. And he was a guy, we stayed friends, but we didn't do anything together because he was like, just how are you going to do that? And I said to him based on this black belt interview, I go, I have intuited a system that would make people safer, because it's built around how they think and they move, and it would grow and evolve with them, if we build it off of their physiology, their kinesiology, and their psychology, and we just had principal parameters. 

So, if I say to you listen, force must always parallel danger. You need to answer for your behavior morally, ethically, legally. You can't just do whatever you want. Well, if I say that in French, and I'm teaching in Paris, where I say that in South America, and I've got to translate or speaking Portuguese or Spanish or wherever, whatever, or I say that in English to you, it means the same. And if I say that to a special operations guy, and I say for summons parallel danger that still resonates with their rules. engagement. So, it's interesting, we've come full circle, you said, Hey, like, how's this change? We've evolved, our language is more elegant if I dare say, I've got cooler big words that make me sound smarter than I am, right. And, we have a small I was gonna use the word army, but I wanted to sound militant, like given the size of the martial art community. We've got hundreds of affiliates around the world but we're very low key. It's the spirit system injects itself into other schools and it's a funny weird thing. 

For years I've been saying we're like the fascia, the connective tissue because if you don't wear the ambush, you don't get to whatever martial art you're practicing. But I say that, and I go, they don't, so I've got like, hundreds of affiliates that love this and they're just released a video of one of my guys in Denmark. And you got to see this class, here's a guy's 30-year martial artist, like probably a world class kickboxer in his heyday. Wing Chun, CrossFit big dude. But he saw a spear and you might only get the missing link, the fear management, scenario training, and weather in the ambush, and using the spear as a bridge to get to our complex motor skills, whatever they are. And he got it where other people will hear it and see it go, oh, he's saying my XYZ doesn't work. And I'm saying nothing works if you don't weather the ambush.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, I want to take something you said kind of full circle. And you talked about your first year at that conference with law enforcement walking out, and pointing, you use the word ego, what is what's going on there. 

And to me what I've started to recognize over the last few years, whether we're talking about this sort of stuff, or really any arguments that exist in the martial arts, if I present something that has validity, that could be a value, that is new information, or even just a better take on it, it means they could have been doing something better. And a lot of martial artists end up in these positions of authority and power and because of the rank structure that we have, they are not questioned.

And so, law enforcement is kind of similar, there's rank, and they get pushed up through and if these are trainers then.

 Tony Blauer:

There's a good point. Good point.

 Jeremy Lesniak:

And I can for me to take what you're saying and incorporate it, I have to suspend my ego and not everybody can handle that. 

 Tony Blauer:

That's a good point. It's funny you just reminded me of the name George Sylvain . He was very famous, I forget his style, but he was in charge in Canada. So, I lived in Canada at the time. He was in charge of Algonquin College in Ontario as the main Police Training Institute for Canada. And he was world renowned but hard.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wasn't he familiar? I'm just not sure why. 

 Tony Blauer:

It's kind of well-known martial arts old school, hard. I think Kyokushinkai is just big, strong, his hands are bigger than my head. But he called me up one day after my Panther videos were released in AD filmed. In 86, they were released in 8687. In 1987, he introduced himself and he asked for permission to show the Panther videos at the Police College to show what real fighting looks like. And I was like, wow, like, you don't need to call me to ask me if you bought them to show them. He said I wanted to. I just had respect for you. I was like, that's a great honor, and I'm just learning who he is. And we became friends, and then he says to me, this is the late 80s, he goes I bet you don't get asked to do a lot of seminars which was true was like I was trying to grow that part and people are like now and it ties back to what you said because to accept my hypothesis, which is, if a stimulus gets introduced too quickly, executive function is hijacked and can't access your complex motor. skills because your cognitive brain is bypassed, and you default to your reactive brain and all that to mean you f*cking flinch or you freeze or a combination. 

And if you study that, you improve your mind speed. You stress inoculate, you do it again, you get it again. And ultimately what you're doing is you're conditioning your cognitive brain to pick up on the startle flinch and convert faster. And so, there's a storyteller in every seminar. I don't remember if I told you in our first talk, but my daughter, I've got three kids, my daughter, Madison just turned 25. So, she was seven years old at the time. And in the middle of night, I woke up looking thirsty, and I forgot to bring a glass of water to bed. So, I got up in our kitchen downstairs, where we lived at the time. And I like rubbing my eyes, adjusting their light as I walk out. And Maddie was seven. She's still petite now at 25. But she's tiny and she's got this like black porcelain, beautiful skin. And but her hair at night. Remember Blair Witch. So, like I get up and walk out the door. And the moonlight is coming through the window. And as I walk through my door, we have a carpeted hallway. 

She's walked out, she's sleepwalking, not sleep walking, walking, just woke up. She's gonna come sneak into bed with mom and dad. I don't see her. I don't hear her. And as I step through my head comes down from rubbing my eye. And there's a f*cking witch, just to my left, right? Like this, there's light on her white skin, her hairs out like this. And I go sock, right and I usually, like I rotate by eye, but I micro flinch. And immediately my hands go back, and my hands are out, fingers play driving towards your face. She goes dead and walk. Doesn't even like no reaction. 

But I tell the sort of intelligence story now for like,18 years or 19 years. Because when I develop the system, part of the Pavlovian theory behind it is like we can't stop ourselves from flinching, nor would we want to, because it's a hardwired survival response. Why would you want to? Why? Because there's a bunch of martial artists out there that goes, flinching, st*pid, why would you want to flinch? I've been asked that question by various people. You don't want to flinch, but you do. Again, I asked you this like an hour ago. Have you ever thought about flinching in your life? If you ever said oh my god, what's coming on my head fast. I need to flinch. Like,you pick up on something. And it's funny. You could be walking on a hike in the forest or like on a trail run. And then as you walk around, you see like a leaf here or a spider web and you do like it is your body just moves that you don't ever go about to.

 Jeremy Lesniak:

Literally an example from my life. I hike a tree branch and it comes at my face. And I'm just out of the way.

 Tony Blauer:

It started flinching, it turned into a martial art, he slipped, but the impetus, like the ignition, is the start of flesh, right. And when you start to explore that, you can call on an access speed on purpose. And so, it's very fascinating because the hypothesis was if I flinch, and then hit a tactical position that I want to be, which is our fingers driving towards the threat, intercepting the eyeline rear hand up in front of me. So, I've gone outside 90, which is the strongest frame the body can hit. And blending the fastest thing my body can do on an unconscious level with the strongest position my body would adopt at a nonconscious level. And now I turn that into something on purpose. 

In the truest yin and yang metaphor, I've taken this physiological response and then turn it into something hard and protective that I can now defend myself from I've deployed a biological airbag, I've created a barrier between you and I, that's my opportunity to recalibrate emotionally psychologically. And it's magical. In the 80s, when I was in my 20s, I discovered accidentally, but here we are, like I've got, we got like videos of cops using this in f*cking gunfights in where people come in there with one guy like running out of a hospital, being chased by two security guys, as the door we get videotape of this. It's crazy. We use it in our instructor glasses. The cops walk by, and the door opens and there's 600 pounds coming out of it.

The emotionally disturbed patient runs out these two big burly security guards chasing after the guy. And you see the cop open the door; you see him double take because he's not even walking to go into the hospital and looks like he's walking by the door. And then you see him flinch. And then he drives the full spear out, you see him extend and drive in hitting the EDP emotionally disturbed person across the sternum. And he drives all three guys back into the hospital where they regain control of the guy and this cop had been to a three-hour workshop at a SWAT conference. Like in three hours, he was able to make that happen. It's just insane. And why can people learn it so fast is because it's hardwired, it's organic. It's so cool, so it's neat. I'm still as fired up now as I can talk about it. And as I was in 1988, when I was like, What the f*ck is this? Right? In the sucker punch drill.

 Jeremy Lesniak:

So how can people learn more? You got websites and stuff, right?

 Tony Blauer:

Tons of websites. If you go to blauertrainingsystems.com, that's my main website HQ site, you can look at our high gear, you can look at the spear system, you can look at the coaching programs that I do, and you can look at our no fear program. My biggest thing, what's meant, most of the people listening to this are going to be martial artists, right? So I would, there’s a few ways to kind of like if you're sitting on the fence going, he talks a good talk. There are some very affordable ways to see if we're full of s*it or not, right. 

 Jeremy Lesniak:

You put a bunch of free stuff out too. It's not like people can't get 80% of the way. 

 Tony Blauer:

And listen, like if I just released an article a few weeks ago, I came up in a garage gym, where I was talking about, there's no such thing as muscle memory, which I use it all the time. Okay, well, you've misinterpreted the concept, right? It's neural patterns, and you do them a lot. And so, I started talking about this story, where I was doing a demo for a bunch of Navy SEALs in Coronado in 1993. And I ended up like doing this whole thing and this gun disarm scenario. That was more jujitsu than gun disarming because I explained and I went. Does anyone know why? When I went to disarm this gun, this navy seal dropped, he changed the elevation I rolled around, but he went right from my groin. 

And I didn't know this guy, and he's moving pretty f*cking fast. I didn't think he was going to stop. So, I cranked his arm and rolled him on his back. And as he came over, still holding the gun, I saw the armbar and I just stepped into, and I pulled it back. pulled him up here, he started to roll into it. I checked his other foot. 

It was the coolest thing, I pulled his arm up and I bet his thumb on the gun in his hand opened and I grabbed the gun with my left hand, immediately came over arm, barred it with one arm and stuck the gun in his head with the other hand, and had five his buddies there that were watching like this. That it had happened in like three seconds. And they were like now they wanted to know because I was there doing a demo for my high gear. It wasn't there to teach them, I was just showing them the first prototype of high gear. Now they want to know what I teach and how much I charge, and it turned into a bunch of contracts. But the point of the story was, I didn't sleep that night, I was so angry with myself that I went into an armbar with six guys that I didn't know because I could have gotten done any gun disarm and had the guy up and maybe held him as a shield in a body armor. I could. I'm a scenario specialist. These guys asked me about gun disarms, and then it fell to the ground. How did that happen? So, I asked the class, why would I scenario specialist do something that I tell people never to go to the ground on purpose if you've got multiple sailings around you, like everything about the scenario was to do something. And nobody could know nobody understood why. Why did I did it?

And I said it was 1993, I was in Coronado Naval Special Warfare. Do you know what else happened in 1993? It was the first UFC cage side writing for three magazines: a UK mag, an Australian mag, and a USA mag. I interviewed Shamrock and Gracie and everybody and then I said to my buddy well why Zack? Who did I go with? I said it's not fake. Like if you had never done submission before.

In 1993 when you watched somebody tap out from an ankle lock, like you go, Zack, I said, Well is that fake? Like why would you attack someone who grabbed your leg? And why don't you just sit forward and punch the guy in the head? He goes, well, he has it online strong. Like there's a lot of pain. And I've known at this point, I'd known well for years. And he would always bring me down to do my cerebral self-defense, my non-violent posture. I never knew that he was a f*cking jujitsu wizard that knows this stuff, right? 

But I never knew this because we were like, it was always me doing that stuff. So, we sat down on the floor in his hotel room. And he puts my foot in here, and he grabs it, and I have a high tolerance for pain. And I go, dude, if you grew up my foot like that, I would lean forward and lean forward to go punch the simulate and punch him in the head, and he goes pink. And my body my nervous system went f*ck. And as like, f*ck, it didn't hurt, but my nervous system recoils the way from. And I didn't have pain. 

And I said, f*ck, I got that doesn't hurt. Why couldn't I lean any bends a little bit more back, and I feel my shin bone bend. And I went oh, he goes, like, if I went a little bit further, I went no, let go. A bit more is a tear, a little bit more as a break. But it's hairs. It's not like big jumps. The point being here is I had no idea about how devastating submissions were. And I immediately said to all I said, dude, how do you know this? He goes, oh, my dad taught me all this. I've been doing it for years. I go, all this and you never told me. 

So, we ended up he started coming up to Montreal. And for months, all I did was ground fighting, ground fighting, ground fighting. Everything in the gym stopped. There was no, it was all I was exploring everything. And then I was in Coronado. And so, this is when I tell people to be careful, you practice and you might get good at the wrong thing. I'm talking about me. Here's a scenario expert, who developed high gear who took scenario training to another level, fear management. Reverse has been doing scenarios for 13 years, right. 1990 was our first scenario and 1980 was our first scenario drill. And I'm here like this and I could have when I rolled the guy down, I could have easily had the gun. I could have gone whack and slammed him in the brachial, rolled his face, pulled them off, ripped the gun off, poked his head. I could have turned it into something just as cool. But it would have been scenario specific to everything going on. I'm in a closed room with five other strangers, one guy pulled the gun on me.

 Jeremy Lesniak:

That's it's not what you've been training recently is that like the punch line?

 Tony Blauer:

The punchline is this. My motor grabs, my neural patterns, my situational awareness was just looking for submissions. And so you might like it if I say to you, let's say you're a boxer guy who comes up to you. On the street, he goes, what a strong-arm robbery is? It's when I tell you give me your f*cking money or I'm gonna beat you up. And you're a boxer. Are you going to think about running? Are you gonna go? I'm gonna f*cking lay this guy out, right? Because I hit him as a body, right? So, you're going well, here's the thing, man. You nailed the guy who won a body shot in Africa, whatever it is. Now you're a taekwondo expert guy. Same scenario, Is the taekwondo guy not thinking I'm going to hit him with a body shot? or Is he probably going to kick him? I'm going to kick him. 

Now the jiu jitsu guy goes, give me your money. The jiu jitsu guy is the jiu jitsu guy gonna go? Well, I'm gonna f*cking, do a wheel roundhouse to the head? or is he going I can take this guy down and chuck them out? In other words, we create an unconscious bias because of a romantic love affair with our martial art. And that love affair, the dopamine relationship we get when we do our stuff. Well, and how do you do it? Well, you f*cking do 1000s of reps. So, we came full circle to my buddy. Tom did 1,800,000 jabs. He's probably not going to do a spinning elbow. When he goes, hey, man, he's gonna fire that jab at the guy, because that's the one he did 2 million times to start the fight. And so, we create an unconscious bias to solve the violent problem with the solution from our menu. The menu that we've created. So, when I say Jeremy, what's your favorite move? You go, well, this is happening. I love this. I love this. I love this. And I remember the last story because we'll talk forever. 

When I first started exploring all this, when we were doing our fight club scenarios in Montreal, I would say to people, as soon as you can break contact, you're going to f*cking run, we had a juice bar near my exit. And I would say, if you clear the juice bar and get to the front door, that's a police station, that's a hospital, you're safe. But I want you, if you can break contact, I don't give a f*ck if it's a s*itty palm strike. If the attacker throws a punch, and you slip it, and he loses balance, and you can run, I was trying to break the cycle of ego, pride and fear, keeping us in a sparring range. So, we could do our martial arts. I was trying to teach people how to choose safety, and choosing safety, unless you're a cop. 

And even sometimes when a cop, it's got the f*ck out of here and call in the cavalry. It was the safest thing I could do right now. So, we would tell people to break contact as soon as you can and get to safety. And we would have people and I remember when the one story that I tell the most is a guidance guy named Larry, who's still a friend of mine. He puts his hand up, I just met him. He goes, hey, with all due respect, Mr. Blauer, we all know how to run. We came here to learn how to fight. Like he didn't want to include running as an option. And it's like, Larry, the fact that you don't even want to practice running in a force-on-force scenario tells me your ego and pride might keep you in a dangerous situation. You need to practice all of it. We all say head on a swivel, but don't practice situational awareness. We all say verbal de-escalation, but we don't practice that. Well. We practice how to get out of a headlock. And if you do your 10,000 reps of how to get what to do with a lapel, grab what to do with a headlock, what to do with a gun in your head. If you do that, proverbial 10,000 reps have that. Guess what you've done? 10,001 reps up. letting somebody put you in a headlock. 

A gun goes on your face. You practice 10,000 sprawls, you're letting 10,001 tackles come at you. Am I saying don't do that? No, you need to develop that skill. But there's another pre fight to the term used earlier. There's the pre-fight funny, Bob Willis was a very famous retired cop. He saw me teaching a 1995 police event, he came up to me and he said, you teach the three seconds before the fight everyone else teaches and that always stuck with me. The three seconds of f*ck what the f*ck s*it. F*ck, and those three seconds where you get back in and if you don't, whether that ambush, the psychological ambush, or the physical ambush, you may not get to the complex motor skill that you've been practicing. Sorry for?

 Jeremy Lesniak:

No, ma'am. That's always we're here for you. And this is a great continuation of what we talked about years ago and listeners, viewers, you'll go back and check it out and pay attention to what you're doing. Because there are a few people in the world who are continuing to dig in the way that you are. When you're, I can't imagine that you found something completely revolutionary tomorrow. You wouldn't throw out everything you've done, if it's genuinely better. Very few people are that way.

 Tony Blauer:

That’s, I love that it gave me goosebumps because I've said that to my team. Because we’ve had people that broke away and said, oh, Blauer is not evolving. And I'm going well, it's physiology, but we're not mutating physiology. It's Kinesiology. Actually, trust the science. This is actual, this is real science, right? Psychology is real science. Kinesiology is real science; behavior is real science. So, I'm not changing anything. I'm just finding better ways to explain it and teach it and coach it. 

 Jeremy Lesniak:

You're simplifying it, people want it to get more complicated, because that's how martial arts goes. As you advance, you get more complicated.

 Tony Blauer:

And this would be my wish for everybody listening. If you're a beginner, recreational martial artists, I promise you, this will make you safer sooner. It has nothing to do with your martial art. It’d be like, well forget, forget the metaphors. But it's like I got one more metaphor. It's like you've just restored this friggin gorgeous Mustang and, you've restored it and you fixed up the engine and you got everything's new and it's ready to go. It's missing one thing, a f*cking airbag. And so, you can be a great driver and the Mustang in this metaphor represents your physique, you're a muscle car, you're in shape, and you're fast and you're strong and you have torque. And you know how to drive. 

Check this out where you can drive. Now you're sitting at a light playing the music, not texting, and somebody has a medical emergency, a drunk driver, or someone's texting, or somebody who hates you and your Mustang goes, f*ck you. In the moment that collision happens, does your driving save you? Not really. Does your car really save? Well, we can be contrarians and say, Well, if I'm in a Prius, I'm f*cked. But if I'm in a Ford Raptor you get the idea. And I tell people this if you're a good driver in your car, what saves you in a violent crash is your airbag. And in the metaphor, that crash represents the s*cker punch to surprise attack, that I can be sitting at a light minding my own business. And it doesn't matter if I'm in a jiu jitsu, an aikido, or a Krav Maga that would suit you if you see a car coming headlong. I had the word head on. I was thinking headlights on, head on to me. I'm like this on the steering wheel. And I realized what the f*ck? And everybody does this. 

And if you're not sure, talk to a doctor, EMS paramedic friend of yours, and ask them where there's always trauma, in car accidents for people in the front seat, and they will tell you there's always trauma on the hands in the forearm. That means faster than somebody can hit a windshield. Their startle flinch got in the way of that impact. And so, I've just spent decades figuring out how to turn that into a self-defense protocol, that regardless of what martial art you do, I go, that's great, but what's beautiful, you got a 67 Mustang. You don't have an airbag man and an airbag could save your life. And that's kind of the metaphor I want to leave on. And we've also been training trainers for four decades. We would love to answer any questions we have about people who want to get more involved in Sharon's research. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Thank you. 

Tony Blauer:

Thank you, buddy, always good to talk to you.