Training for Scenarios...
The Great "What-If" Fallacy

It’s very popular in self-defense training and martial arts training to do what is often called one-step sparing. Sometimes it’s called training certain set scenarios. And that’s really just what it is. It’s pre-determined, pre-programmed responses to simulated attacks.

It makes people feel good because what they try to do is to imagine one of the thousands of various ways you might find yourself in a violent situation, and then what one response may be appropriate.

Target-Focus Training has a totally different approach to this type of situation. We talked a little bit earlier about the importance of being a principle-based, knowledge-based system. And where it really comes into play is this: we understand that whether you like it or not... violence is random, it’s totally chaotic. You never can predict how it’s going to come about. And to sit there and waste your time trying to predict all the various ways somebody could attempt to put violence on you or use violence on you is a total waste of your time.

What’s far more important is to try and understand all the different ways that you can attack the targets of the human body! That’s why Target-Focus Training tries to give you as many different profiles for striking targets as humanly possible.

What this allows you to do is regardless of the scenario whether you’re attacked on the left or the right, whether you’re sitting down, standing up, knocked off your feet, somebody’s standing above, somebody’s below you, no matter where the initial attempt at violence occurs, you’re able to recognize targets available to you from that particular profile and work with it.

That’s why we never call anything a technique. We call it a coordination set. Because anytime we show you a set of targets and we might show you various ways to strike the targets, break the joints, execute a throw, create injuries in a various set manner that is merely to coordinate you. That is, to show you that from this particular profile, you can do this to a human being.

Where you really start to put it together is when we start allowing you to just go at it in our free fight periods. This is where you and your partner basically do whatever feels natural at that point, and you start putting all this information together. All we do is show you these things, we call them the Legos. We show you all these targets. Imagine a set of Legos and we show you different ways to build things with the Legos. Then what we do is we take all the Legos apart, we throw them out on the ground and then we allow you to start putting the Legos together the way you want to put them together. That’s what makes you a fighter... and gives you the ability to deal with any criminal violence, to really use the tool of violence.

You then can sit there and say “in this particular circumstance, I choose to do this”. Not, “Oh my God, what is the circumstance? I don’t know a technique for that one”.

The worst thing in the world is to sit there, be faced with something and not know what to do.

When you have a knowledge-based system that allows you to handle anything from any profile, then you always know the answer. And that answer is really very simple... find a target, destroy that target and keep destroying targets until the person is no longer functional. Regardless of whether or not I’m sitting in my chair or I’m walking down the street with my briefcase... I know what to do. I’m not worried about having to do it a specific way, I’m not worried about the guy coming at me from a specific manner. It’s random. I understand that.

And so, I understand that my response is merely to just strike targets. It’s just a very simple yet high concept that will save your life and get you to use the most out of what we call this tool of violence.