The other day I was having a conversation with my son.
He graduated from college about 2 years ago and he said something that stuck with meโฆ
He told me that he has learned more from his work than he did in college. This is coming from a kid who had a 3.8 GPA in college.
You see most people think they need to go to school, get a degree, and use that degree to be successful.
That not the case though for most peopleโฆ
Maybe a doctor or lawyer you need a degree to be successfulโฆbut for the average personโฆyou simply donโt need it.
In order to be successfulโฆ you need experience.
And when it comes to self-defense, I say this at every seminar I teachโฆ
โBook learning doesnโt mean anything if you canโt actually get out on the mats and do it.โ
The key phrase there is โget out on the mats and do it.โ
And it couldnโt be more true!
It wonโt be about what youโve read, watched or listened toโฆ
It wonโt be what youโve thought or talked aboutโฆ
It wonโt be dynamics or fitness workโฆ
When you are in a violent encounterโฆ your life will depend solely on what you have physically done on the mats.
You already know that getting a reaction partner and hitting the mats is important, but did you know itโs so important as to be the only thing that matters?
This singular importance hit me today as I was thinking about teaching, and I realized that the bulk of what I know came as a side effect of my mat time.
No one taught me the things in the SourceBook or the Joint Breaking manualโฆ
What I learned were the base principlesโฆthe gist of which can be summed up in less than a page.
The rest of my knowledge comes from implementing the base principles on another human body in real-time. Everything I know is just memories of mat time.
Videos and manuals inform the physical training spectrum; the training spectrum (dynamics and coordination sets) is there only to inform your mat time.
From the very beginning, everything is a pointer for your time on the mats.
Another way to look at it: thereโs getting ready to work and then thereโs doing the work.
Hitting the mats is doing the work.
Everything else is just getting ready.
By getting ready and then doingโฆ you create a complete training system that will allow you to experience the highest-grade violence possible.
Doing nothing but getting ready all the time means youโre not doing any work.
Doing the work without getting ready is fineโฆ though a little on the rough side.
And when your lifeโs on the line all you will have is what youโve physically done.
Your performance wonโt be about how much you got ready. Itโll be about how much you did.
All Iโm doing whenever I teach is reporting on what Iโve experienced on the mats. Anything I tell you is a distillation of subjective, physical experience.
Most of what I know is of very little use to you; most of what I know applies to only me, and how I have to move to get stuff done.
What little I know I share freely in the hopes that it will improve your performance on the mats and give you the keys to unlocking your potential so you can end up knowing what I know โ but for you, and you alone.
For that to happen, you have to do the work. You have to hit the mats with another human body.
Everything we say and do is to improve the quality of your mat time. So read, listen, watch, think, talk, do your dynamics and fitness work. Then get your ass on the mats and make it all mean something.
In shortโฆexperience is everything.
The #1 secret to survival nobody will talk aboutโฆ
This is something no one will mentionโฆbut it is the ONLY thing that tips the scales in your favor during a violent attack. I cover the secret and more in my introductory training…
