War Story

Got this from Tom Saviano in Chicago. He got it from Brad Steiner, a name many of you know. Read on.

These are the kinds of stories that crop up, and that make us happy as hell!

Note: 1. No ground-grappling bullshit
2. More than 1 attacker
3. Elderly man targeted
4. Only simple, basic actions retained from long ago worked
5. ATTITUDE saved the day
6. The multiple attackers were plainly cowards
7. The attack came in a street environment - unexpectedly
8. Initial attacker came from BEHIND
While we prefer actions other than the over-shoulder throw (the first technique employed by O'Dell), note that ALL 8 FACTORS THAT CHARACTERIZED THIS INCIDENT REFLECT EXACTLY THAT WHICH WE HAVE ALWAYS INSISTED IS LIKELY WHEN A REAL ATTACK SITUATION OCCURS!
Brad

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70-year-old ex-SAS soldier dares to tackle four muggers and wins
A 70-year-old former British soldier who fought guerillas in Aden and Triad gangs in Hong Kong showed four muggers how it doesn't pay to mess with the SAS.
Douglas O'Dell is past retirement age but the moves he learned as a volunteer in Britain's toughest regiment half-a-century ago stood him in good stead when he was ambushed near his home in Bielefeld, Germany, by four local toughs.
The former Provost Sergeant put paid to the danger on the street like he once took out bandits in hotspots across the globe.
THWACK! The first mistake came when one of the teenagers grabbed him around the throat and said in German: "Give my your money, grandad, if you don't want to get hurt."
"Bad move," said Douglas. "The only part he got right was grandad. If you're gonna grab someone from behind take their arms and pin them to their waist.
"This joker, I was able to grab his elbow, crouch down and throw him over my shoulder. He landed on his back on a fence and squealed like a stuck pig."
CRASH! As one went down another moved in and Douglas thought he saw him reaching for a knife. The Birmingham-born divorcee, who has a daughter and three grandchildren, said: "I had the measure of him but I slipped on some wet leaves as he came for me and bashed my face badly on the concrete.
"I saw his boot coming towards my face and I thought: 'No you don't, sunshine.' I grabbed his leg and twisted it until he too was screaming out in agony.
"Then I got to my feet and kicked him in the chest." With two down the two remaining would-be muggers had enough. One peeled his groaning pal from the fence, the other picked up his crippled accomplice from the pavement.
"The last I saw of them they were limping down the pavement like a WW1 trench raiding party who got clobbered," said Douglas.
Douglas, who served nearly nine years with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment before leaving the army in the late 1950s, learned his combat moves when he was accepted for SAS training.
He completed the course and was to join the famous regiment when he contracted malaria and had to leave the army.
"I was upset at the time but I made the best of it. It's funny, but I never thought I would need to know that stuff again, the unarmed combat, but it came back just when I needed it."
The youths ambushed him just 60 feet from the flat he lives in in the British Army garrison town he has called home since 1961.
He went on: "The police only became involved because I went to the hospital with my face. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. They didn't get anything except a bloody good hiding.
"They were German, I think east Germans, from their accent. There have been a lot of break-ins in my road.
"I just didn't think this would happen to me. I was only returning from a pal's place after drinking a few beers."
Douglas, who spent three years as a policeman in Birmingham before returning to Germany to live after his marriage ended, shares his flat with a mongrel dog called Schnuffi.
He still works, as a delivery driver, "because my pension isn't very good." Police in Bielefeld are still looking for his attackers. But a spokesman said: "He had everything under control. These guys picked the wrong guy on the wrong night."

Lineage patch

Jack Nilon in Australia created a lineage patch for us and I have some. If you're in one of our schools you can buy them through the online store on my site at http://www.leewedlake.com/. Thanks, Jack!

Blink

If you read my recent article on implicit or explicit thinking, either the excerpt I posted here or the whole article in my website, you will enjoy Blink. It was written by Malcolm Gladwell, an insightful writer and a columnist for the New Yorker. I read his books, Outliers and The Tipping Point ,originally recommended to me by Teresa WestkaemperPennsylvania (Thanks!). Both were very interesting.
    The book is about how we make decisions, snap decisions in particular. They are made in a blink, hence the title. He posits that often our best decisions are the ones made quickly versus what we are taught, which is to gather as much information as possible, analyze it and make the decision.
   I think it's a good read for martial artists because that's what we have to do when applying our art. We must take in loads of information and react appropriately. He writes that it can take longer to describe a complex reaction(s) than it took to do it and cites many examples. A section on bodyguards is particularly interesting to me and will be to you, too, since it deals with personal protection.
   Gladwell researches his material well and gets top-flight professionals to fuel his information base. In this section on bodyguards he writes about Gavin DeBecker, who wrote The Gift of Fear. That book is now in a second edition and has been referred to as a book "any serious self-defense instructor" uses. I highly recommend it. Every woman I have urged to read it has come back and thanked me. Gladwell made a mistake in Outliers regarding aviation and I sent him an e-mail with the corrections and sources. I did not expect a reply. But he wrote and thanked me and assured the next edition would contain the correction. The items were minor but I felt they affected credibility in a book that I thought was outstanding. It was a pleasant surprise to get the response. Back to the bodyguards. When he gets into reaction time and examples of how your mind works he points out that we can be functionally autistic due to stress reactions. He refers to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's books there, too. Grossman wrote both On Combat and On Killing, two more books you should read. I don't hear kenpo instructors talk about the effects of stress on performance or how it goes all the way down to the biochemical level. The chemicals released into your blood during a stress event differ depending on whether it's physical stress or perceived life-threatening stress. We always said that a hard physical belt test replicated the stress one would experience in a street altercation. Apparently that's not so according to studies. The book will provide some perspective on how we decide to do so much in our lives but when put in the Kenpo perspective, I think it will give you a lot to think about.
   

I hate those guys

That was just to get your attention. I was thinking about how there are three body types. There's a classification that calls them mesomorphs, endomorphs and ectomorphs but that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the average, round and sharp types.
     Most of our training partners are of the first two. The last is the group that "cuts". I have partners who fall into that category, as you probably do. Most people you work with it's about as comfortable as it can be, considering that you're throwing fists and feet at each other and you get hit now and again. That third group just lets you know every shot is there.
   I call them sharp because most of them are slim people; crane-body types. It seems that their elbows, forerarms, knees, shins, fists and feet are just that much more angular or unpadded than most. So you work with them and it's just one ding after another. Sure you get some of that with the average and round people, that's what karate is about -  making pointy things to hit with. But these guys will slice you up, intentionally or not. Not much you can do about it other than laugh. It's just an observation on one of the small things we run into in martial arts practice.

Online learning site update

The beta testers are in and I'm getting good feedback. We are having a problem on the registration end that absolutely is priority one to get fixed. We've found some other items that are being addressed, too. The comments so far are very encouraging.
   I just uploaded about 15 more clips in the Instructing for Instructors section. They range from appearance and demeanor to descriptions of the Telling/Doing and Demonstration/Performance methods of instruction. Yesterday I shot 15 more of the original Blue belt techniques. When are loaded we will have about 550 videos available for you.

Heard of this?

Chess Boxing! I heard about it on the radio last week and looked it up. It's a blend of boxing and speed chess. Who would have thought? They call it the thinking man's contact sport. From Wiki - "A match consists of up to eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess. The match begins with a four-minute chess round. This is followed by three minutes of boxing, with rounds of chess and boxing alternating until the end.[1] There is a one minute break between rounds. Speed chess is used, a form in which each player has a total of only twelve minutes for the whole game.

Competitors may win by a knockout, achieving a checkmate, by the judges' decision, or if their opponent's twelve minutes of chess time is exceeded.[1] If a competitor fails to make a move during the chess round, he is issued a warning and he must move within the next 10 seconds.[2] Repeated warnings may result in a disqualification. The players put on headphones so that they do not hear any shouted assistance from the audience."

Here's the Wikipedia description.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing
Here's a YouTube clip.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Wcbd0dJpQ
There are several links available if you want to know more.

This is an example of Grafting!

Carotid choke article

Some of you have asked about the article I had published last year with Dr. Rowe. You can find it for purchase here.
http://www.journalofasianmartialarts.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=103&category_id=23&page=shop.browse&limit=20&limitstart=40