The BMF process - Filleting the fight
Street Sence is proud to bring this article, on behalf of Blauer Tacticle Systems (BTS) and Jonathan Berman, copied from facebook.THE BMF PROCESS - FILLETING THE FIGHT
By: Jonathan Berman
“What’s your <expletive> problem, you <expletive>ing moron? Get the <expletive> out of my face, <expletive>head. You want a problem? YOU WANT A PROBLEM, <EXPLETIVE>?”
Um, no Ma’am, I don’t. This thought arrives with a whimper, and before I can follow it with a more assertive one, she shoves me for the second time and unleashes a vicious right, I flinch into a sort of spastic boxer’s shield, and she is all over me….
You know, it’s not my custom to get into physical confrontations with women, and at the moment I am kind of wondering how I fell into this mess, but really, I am just trying to “forget the drill” - Welcome to Herkimer, in bucolic upstate NY, where I am attending a Ballistic Micro-Fight (BMF) Instructor Training seminar with Tony Blauer, a renowned educator Black Belt Magazine has acknowledged as a “pioneer in reality-based fighting”, and one of the most sought-after trainers of law enforcement and military of many years standing.
“Just hang out with physiology.” – Blauerism
Blauer’s philosophy of combative development is founded on the simple, yet profound notion that in moments of instinctive action, the human body is far, far faster and more intelligent than the slower cognitive mind, and to be trusted, though trained. He has studied how the body wants to move prior to any training – the Startle/Flinch Response, developed a combative tactic around it – the SPEAR tactic, and scientifically evolved a highly sophisticated synergistic system of training principles and protocols, drills, tactical tools, and equipment all designed to explore the 3-dimensional (emotional, psychological, and physical) challenges a practitioner encounters in confrontations, the SPEAR System.
This course is an advanced session in the BMF process attended by federal and local law enforcement, private security professionals, and martial arts school owners, all Coaches in the SPEAR System, or its civilian iteration, Personal Defense Readiness (PDR). We are here to learn how to design and safely implement “alive” scenarios that allow the exploration of Murphy moments (when, despite one’s intentions, whatever can go wrong, does) and subsequent adaptation to, improvisation with, and conquering of such instances. We will learn how to finely slice a confrontation into its 3-dimensional micro-moments, acclimatize to them, and explore the relationship of speed, power, and ballistic movement to the tactical issues at hand.
Because we will be using Blauer’s custom-designed impact reduction High Gear, we will be able to behave and move realistically, developing the visceral attributes – finesse, target acquisition, balance, follow-through and follow-up, technique, momentum, speed changes, etc. – of real life rough and tumble fights (as opposed to attributes suited to the more vicarious natures of sparring and sport fighting). Because of the High Gear and disciplined training protocols, we will be able to replicate the scenarios over and over at a heretofore-unrealized very high level of real life verisimilitude, as opposed to the one at best, destructive, and at worst, lethal, rep we’d be able to do without it.
“Know the drill; forget it’s a drill.” – Blauer training protocol
“You cannot access your complex motor skills until you are psychologically and emotionally in control of yourself, and physically dominating your opponent.” – Blauer maxim
Think about it, no matter how well-trained a person is, in whatever the activity, if a stimulus is introduced too quickly for them to cognitively process it, they will be startled, they will flinch, and they will flinch fast. There is a body of forensic evidence to support this (pun intended). It’s how we are wired. This is a tenet of the SPEAR tactic, and the SPEAR System.
A whole slew of Blauer-designed drills bear witness to its truth, and I’ve reiterated this many times in my classes. But I’ve never gone through so many emotionally intense scenario evolutions as I have during this course, wearing Gear that allows for the real energy of a messy, true-to-life fight. And the nugget of truth that keeps manifesting itself with ineluctable regularity is while my previous years of training have afforded me attributes and tactical tools that I can deploy, I do have to hang out with physiology, and allow my sharpened SPEAR to weather the ambush moment - the Big Bang - and THEN once I have attained a semblance of 3-dimensional balance, and THEN a physical point of domination, I can think about getting fancy….BUT, the Bad Guy just fell right instead of left, and I’ve got too much weight on my front foot, and now all these micro- and not so micro adjustments have to come in to play, and I’m back to gross motor tactics to keep myself in the fight. Lesson learned. Again. And again.
This is why the integrity of the SPEAR System dictates that we train 3-dimensionally off-balance – it is how life really is - and learn how to convert that to an on-balance position. But, again, the BMF process is adding layers at which I could not have guessed to this integrity, this understanding of how humans perceive and behave.
“How was it?” Tony has applied a half-SPEAR to my neck as I tried to tackle him, and popped me in the head with a diagonal elbow. “Ow. Fine”. “Fine? That doesn’t tell me anything. Be more specific.” We are performing the Threshold Drill, determining how hard he has to make contact with the both of us wearing High Gear so that we know he’s delivered a solid blow without me being rocked too hard. This also inoculates me to the stress of impact in a gradient process. This type of drill will be done in a static fashion for safety, before any dynamic/alive motions and elements are added to the scenario. However, as I’ve done this before, albeit in less alive scenarios without the Gear, and not to the head, I am unprepared for the “light bulb moment” that the addition of the Gear will provide.
Fast forward past the Threshold stage. I’ve been thinking only about the integrity of the power in the shot, but we are also working a scenario, which demands that we adhere to Role Player Rules, in attitude and in movement. Tony has always exhorted us to “lead with speed” – what’s the point of headhunting if you telegraph it from a continent away – and “devour with power” shots once tactical advantage has been gained, and I really did get it. Or so I thought, having not taken the concept much beyond quickly slapping the Bad Guy’s eyes from a submissive posture while he’s feeling his oats and tactically unaware. But I’ve never thought about this from a Role Player context, and I’m now feeling how a Role Player’s speed can add Oscar-worthy veracity to perceived aggression. Fear is engendered through that tidal rush of kinetic energy – that’s what’s scary, not the impact. After all, it’s not the inherent power in the undelivered blow that’s causing me to flinch, it’s the speed. Another BMF nugget reflecting a subtle, nuanced, and profound truth. Integrity in "the application of science to human movement as it relates to aggression, fear and violence in close quarters combat.” Guess whom I’m quoting.
Which brings me to:
“Jonathan, you better get Tactical NOW.” – Blauer instruction
I have just ended a short evolution during which I have been verbally abused, encroached, shoved, hit, and tackled, intercepting the attacks with a protective SPEAR each time. After the final clash, I am allowed to engage the Bad Guy. I begin with my closest weapon, a close quarter strike, and follow it up with another, but the percussive, “in-contact”, visceral effect of the blows is indeed different than the “on-contact”, vicarious nature of the sport timing with which years of such training has imbued me, and I find myself uncomfortably having to reach for my subsequent shots. This embarrassing state of affairs winds me physically and emotionally, and though I know better, I finish up with a blow to the prone Bad Guy’s head while kneeling on one knee. Probably would look good in a photograph, but (a) as Tony would say, I am posing a shot instead of imposing one, and (b) his admonishment is meant to get me thinking about real life, and what is more desirable – being on one knee by the Bad Guy, or standing in a tactical stance, indexing my opponent’s head, and far from his weapons (appendages). Integrity in tactical choice, integrity in training.
“Train for what’s probable, not for what’s possible.” – Blauer training protocol
Of course, one could argue “what if….”. What if the Bad Guy hits with the left instead of the right? What if he pulls out a super-sonic ray gun? What if you could see the future and didn’t show up for the confrontation? You can see where this is going. No one will ever be able to prepare for every possible permutation of all the factors that go into violent encounters. So, we come up with a scenario – it could be something we are faced with due to our profession, or just something we are concerned about; we determine attacks that are congruous with the scenario – no flying sidekicks in the car, please; we storyboard the encounter from start to finish in discrete segments – links in a chain, if you will; and then, we replicate the links repeatedly until the particular tactical problem at hand is owned by practitioner. Only then do we “what if” on to the next probability. Which is not to say that there is no room for improvisation. We don’t devolve into sport sparring, but we aren’t performing a 2-man (or 3-man, or 4-man, etc.) kata either. This is an “alive” scenario, attending to the micro-fights within the fight, and once we have filleted it thin, we let it roll (absent any serious deviations).
Emphasis in the BMF is on learning to own the tactical problems through repetition.
I am trying to forget the drill, but we have worked it through gradated evolutions, and after that first shove she usually swings for the bleachers. But this time she doesn’t and damn she really is pouring on that attitude and what is happening to my voice and gee isn’t this an unsettling experience and oof! she just shoved really hard in my solar plexus haven’t felt that before and wha?! holy ___ there it was thank the god of war I flinched….
Seems simple enough; there were two shoves instead of one. And in spite of everything I was getting anyway, safely, from going through the protocol of repetition – the improvement in technical confidence by working the coordination and fluidity of the actual tactics under duress; the by-products of stamina, endurance, and muscular strength specific to a combative situation; the space in which to see the voids in my decision making – the addition of that second shove did not negate the other gains, and it allowed for some additional improvisational creativity on my part, unleashing in my head a whole bunch of fun stuff to go over in our post-scenario De-brief. This knowledge, these experiences, is sliced so thin I can make a huge submarine sandwich from just one link.
“Don’t let pride or ego dictate your next strategy. What is the intent of the drill? What is your goal, your objective? – Blauer training mindset
Staying true to the drill – the BMF or any other BTS drill - is what allows me to reap the insights, the intellectual capital, the combative nutrition. It forces me to ask and clarify for myself why I train, and if the way I train supports the why. If ever I needed a pristine example of both the importance and underutilization of the psychological and emotional arsenals in training, how the suddenness of perception and speed of thought activates speed of movement – the Ballistic Micro Fight has been my guide: How quickly did I intuit danger? Recover from unsolicited negative thoughts? Notice the Bad Guy’s pre-contact cues? Acquire the closest target to my closest weapon? Miss and recover? No more vicarious guesswork; these are things I now know, and for which I have Mental Blueprints.
Further information on the Ballistic Micro-Fight process can be found at
http://www.tonyblauer.com/
For other descriptions of the seminar I attended, please visit http://www.mma.tv/tuf/inde