What are your win conditions?

When we bow onto the mat, whether it is judo, aikido, kendo or some older budo, we engage in controlled violence where there are set rules, limitations and boundaries. No matter how hard I train I know that I will still be getting in my car afterwards and driving home, healthy and happy.

That is a good thing. I want to reuse my training partners from week to week and we all need each other fit and healthy. Unfortunately, this mentality doesn't lead to good self defence psychology.

I have been re-reading Rory Miller's book, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence. I also have been listening to an Australian podcast called Managing Violence by Joe Saunders and another podcast called Walking with the Tengu by Matthew Kreuger. These three men have left me with many thoughts about my own martial arts training.

Joe Saunders has created the Violence Survival Pyramid. He talks about four factors that go into increasing your chances in a violent encounter. From the most important at the base of the pyramid to the least important at the top. If you have a look you will notice that he puts physical techniques at the top (the least important factor). Rory Miller writes about dealing with sudden, violent encounters. Although he wrote a whole book on the subject, most of his writing is not on physical techniques, why? Finally, many Walking with the Tengu episodes mention win conditions. Despite the different topics this podcast host explores, he often returns to win conditions. 

These thoughts and ideas have been percolating in my mind. I keep coming back to win conditions. What have you decided is your goal for any given confrontation, whether it is verbal or physical? In sport karate it is scoring a clean touch on a designated area. In MMA it is getting the tap or the knock out. In kendo it is getting a clean strike on a designated target area while showing strong spirit. As a high school teacher managing challenging student behavior, it is deescalating the situation to a point that allows learning to continue. For a police officer it may mean the restraint of a person with handcuffs. To a soldier it may mean killing the enemy. 

All these win conditions set up very different training regimes for the people above. It makes no sense for a karateka training for his next tournament to learn the verbal deescalation techniques of a teacher. The teacher does not need to learn how to fire a rifle to get the focus of students in a classroom and teaching an MMA fighter how to strike with a kendoka's shinai is not going to help him much in the cage. This may seem obvious but people still have arguments over 'the best martial art' or 'the best technique' when what they should think about is the win conditions assumed with each of those statements.

If I am put in a self-defence situation where my life is threatened and I may be able to escape,  my win condition is to get away. Everything I do in that moment is to try to make that a reality. Any actions I might perform that aren't helping me achieve this goal are pointless and in this case, potentially deadly. 

If you are practicing a martial art I hope you have thought about the win conditions that have created the training paradigm you are involved with. Is this what you thought you were training for? Is it not clear what you are training for? I started aikido in 2002, I joined because a workmate of mine had been practicing a long time, he was a black belt and because he was a nice guy. I thought the dojo must be pretty good to churn out a guy like that. I went into it with the thought that I would do it as long as life didn't get in the way. Little did I know that martial arts training would become part of my life. However, my reasons for training in aikido changed over the years and so did my assumptions about its practice. You could say that my interpretations of what the win conditions were changed. At first I considered the win conditions to be the resolution of conflict through superior technique. An aikidoka could skillfully use his opponent's force against him and the adversary would see the error of his ways. The more I trained, the more I found this difficult to believe. So I started to doubt my practice and the purpose of my training. That was a confusing time for me. Because the win condition was not clear, it was hard to decide which elements of my training I should focus on and which parts I should forget. Then I decided the win condition of aikido was still about conflict resolution but through deescalation and we were practicing a physical metaphor. It was more about training a mindset that was open to resolving conflict through deescalation be it verbal or physical. The physical training kept me fit and flexible and wasn't that practical. For me, this was particularly true of aikiken, the wooden sword training. At this point I had started as a high school teacher in a co-ed state school and the mental skills I had learned in aikido practice paid off. I could see a link between my training and my profession. My training found renewed purpose. I could also blow off steam on the mat. 

I still had my doubts about all the sword swinging I was doing. That didn't seem to fit into my deescalation paradigm very well. In 2011, I was introduced to Takamura-ha Shindo Yoshin Ryu. This is a classical Japanese sword school. Everything I thought I knew about using a Japanese sword was wrong in this training paradigm. The win condition in TSYR is very clear. Kill the other guy. However, do this in the context of medieval Japan. The mindset is different. Deescalation is not important. You have to have the mind of a predator in this martial art. Everything I learn and train for in TSYR is to gain advantage over an adversary to kill him. This makes training so much clearer and straight forward. If I perform a movement that gives an advantage to the other person or is done in an inefficient manner I am 'dead'. There is something very pure about this type of training. 

The funny thing is, I still practice some aikido. I teach it to children. My TSYR training has clarified the win condition of my aikido practice. It most certainly is not the desire of my aikido training to kill the other guy. That, I am very sure of. So what is it? 

 I believe it is beneficial to learn to be strong of mind but willing to deescalate a situation. That is the win condition I have for my students. Do what is needed to deescalate and no more. That is a valuable skill I can give them to take into the world. 

So I go back to Joe Saunder's "Surviving Violence Pyramid". We see mindset is the very foundation of this diagram. As he says, "get your head straight" and everything else falls into place.  Rory Miller discusses the psychology of both attackers and victims in his book. He understands that the mindset of a person is key. Know what your win conditions are and train hard to ensure you can achieve them. Your win conditions will decide your mindset, your mindset will decide your training parameters. Then you can train with sincerity and purpose, without distraction and without the 'fluff'. 

When I step onto the mat I will be one of two people in that moment. If I am practicing TSYR, then I am the predator, seeking an opportunity to kill. If I am practicing aikido then I am the mediator, seeking to find a solution through deescalation but not devaluing myself in the process. As my mindset shifts, so too does my training. This gives me a sense of clarity.

So, what are your win conditions?

Train safe.

Why do I train?

When I started writing this post I wasn't sure where it was going to go. It started with a question raised while reading one of Rory Miller's books and as I really began digging deeper into why I train and I got really honest with myself I realised the truth of the matter. I struggled with deciding whether to publish this post or not because it is of a more personal nature than anything I have written before.

I did publish it because maybe one of my readers out there may appreciate me sharing, I'm not really sure. Maybe it will help in some way. 

I have asked myself this question many times over the years. Why do I train in the martial arts? While learning aikido I asked myself this question at certain points in my training. When I was a brown belt and close to getting my first black belt. When the weapons training didn't make sense to me. After achieving another dan grade. Why am I training? What's the point?

My answer to this question has changed over the years. Believe it or not, I got into aikido for reasons other than self-defence. I never felt I needed to learn 'how to fight' or do cool martial art moves. I had learned over the years that the best self-defence was to avoid trouble. It had served me well up to this point. I had never really been in any serious physical confrontation and never intended to start now. I was 25 when I started aikido and got into it because a workmate was doing it. I was single, had time to kill and energy to burn. I had a blast!  Aikido's philosophy intrigued me and I learned how to breakfall pretty well. Outside of my job at the time, it gave me purpose and something to work towards. During my time training in this martial art I met my wife, started a new career path (as a high school teacher) and not long after that we had children. 

At some point I began seeking something else from my martial arts training that aikido did not provide. For about two years I started looking for that new thing. Eventually I discovered Robbie Smith and Takamura-ha Shindo Yoshin Ryu.  

My training moved up to another level. I trained in both aikido and TSYR for a while but with a young family and a job and now two martial arts, I was squeezing things pretty tight. Something had to give. As much as I still enjoyed aikido I decided to focus on TSYR. This martial art has a different feeling to it. There is an edge to it. I feel that the stuff we are taught comes from a place of knowing what it really was like in a violent confrontation. Toby Threadgill's sensei certainly had an air about him (according to those who knew him) that he was dangerous, not someone to be messed with. People don't just get a presence like that without having been through some stuff. I joke that TSYR is like aikido on steroids but joking aside, there is a no-nonsense training to the art that I never felt in aikido circles. 

Studying a martial art is studying violence. No matter how much you pretty it up, that's what we do. I live in New Zealand, probably one of the safest places in the world, and I live in the countryside away from big cities. I am probably one of the least likely people to be confronted with violence in the near future. So shouldn't I be spending my leisure time pursuing something more meaningful or useful? Hell, I am more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a violent offender. Shouldn't I be working on defensive driving skills? What is this attraction I have to martial arts, to controlled violence?

Even if I do find myself in a violent confrontation is any of the stuff I have learned even useful or accessible to me in those extremely stressful situations. I'm currently reading Rory Miller's book, "Meditations on Violence" and he looks at martial arts training compared to real world violence. He talks about the freeze response and the debilitating effects of an adrenal dump. He talks about how all martial training has flaws to allow our training partners to be safe. So we can train with them again another day. So what does that mean for my training? What does it matter if I enjoy it and I live in a relatively safe society anyway? Why should I even care?

Why do I bother?

I feel I have to justify why I train to myself. I will continue to ask myself this question because it is a point of reference for me. It relates to where I am in my life and what my goals are. I am now a 40 year old father of two children and have a loving wife. My reasons for training have changed from my earlier aikido days. 

I have kept a quote that says, 

A student said to his master, "You teach me fighting, but you talk of peace. How do you reconcile the two?" The master replied: "It is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war."

I like this quote. It speaks to me but am I a warrior? What constitutes a warrior in this day and age. I am not a member of the armed services. So am I fooling myself by training in the martial arts? What drives me to pursue combat arts from another time? 

My first answer is because I enjoy it. It is fun. I still think this is the main reason I turn up to the dojo week in and week out.

It also keeps my body moving through a full range of motion. I sit in seiza which moves the ankles, knees and hips through a range of motion most people would not experience normally. I am placed in joint locks and take breakfalls. I get up off the ground again and again after taking falls. I am pushed around, twisted and attacked with wooden weapons. All this movement keeps me healthy and strong and gives me a better quality of life (you could argue being whacked with a wooden sword does not promote good health).

I train for camaraderie. Many of you may know that Robbie Sensei passed away suddenly a few years into my training with him. The loss was staggering for all. Dealing with the grief of his death brought me closer together with some of the members of the dojo who I still train with to this day. We practise potentially dangerous techniques on each other and laugh and joke about it afterward while getting changed. I value these people and count them as friends. I trust them.

I train to keep myself sane. The kick (pun intended) I get out of exercise makes me a happier person. A better father and husband. It helps me deal with the stress of teaching in a co-ed state school. 

I find myself thinking about one other answer that lurks beneath all these other ones. I want to know what I would really do when confronted with violent, physical assault. I have a short temper, but I am very good at restraining it. Controlling it. I am very good at avoiding situations that may get me agitated. In fact, I would say I had mastered avoiding confrontation. When my wife first met me she jokingly called me a 'fence-sitter'. I believe that strategy kept me safe for a number of reasons. You see, there have been times of high stress when I have snapped, really saw red and I have had to get professional help to pull back out of it. I was caught in an ever increasing spiral of blowing my fuse over small things. My responses were more extreme than the situation warranted. I started to loath myself. I felt guilt and struggled to find a way forward. I have since been given strategies to de-escalate my thinking, to spot the triggers and know when I am close to exploding. I know now that when the flight or fight response kicks in, I fight. That scares me. That scares me more than being attacked in a dark alley. It scares me because in those moments I don't think, I just act and I act out physically, violently. I have no rational thought in those moments. It scares me because I worry that one day it will surface at the wrong time and be aimed at the wrong people (those I love).  Even as I write this my heart rate has increased and my palms are sweating. In my gut I know this is at the core of my motivation to train. I want to confront this and deal with it. 

I have been told I am too passive in my techniques. I think I hold back while training, not because I'm afraid of getting hurt, but of hurting others. There have been a couple of instances in my training over the years where I have felt myself lose it, quietly, inwardly (before I sought professional help). One time I was struck in the nose and the pain enraged me and I threw a training partner too hard. Thankfully he took the fall well and got up smiling and saying well done for the good throw. One of my seniors of the aikido club (who was also a good friend) saw my body language and said to me firmly, "Dean, breath". That simple command snapped me out of it.  The other time did not end so well. I was training with a twenty-something year old and we were working on a technique . He started to fool around, he was young and strong. He started to test my technique, I saw red and threw him to the ground, my forearm pinned across his neck. Our eyes met and I could see I was scaring him. I released him and he got up. We continued training but the damage was done. I had lost his trust. I have not had this issue while training TSYR. This may be partly due to the fact I sought professional help with my anger around the same time I was training in this art. It could also be that my training partners are more mature and there is less a feeling of proving ourselves with each other. Who knows. 

Perhaps I see martial arts as an opportunity to be pushed to/over the edge by people I trust in a safe environment and finally confront my demons. I am reminded of an article Ellis Amdur wrote titled, "Hiding in the Shadows of the Warrior."  He talks of raging against a training companion and of being pushed over the edge. This article still resonates with me. 

If my training can turn my fight response into calculating calm, then I will feel like I have achieved something more valuable than to how to fight in the street or face physical aggression. 

I'm not sure how much of this makes sense to people. Writing this has certainly clarified things for me. 

It would appear that I ultimately train to confront myself. 

Thanks for reading.