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There are people training in disciplines where “kicking ass” is thought to be mostly harmless, something to be engaged in to defend honor, ego, and as an expression of general inter-male bravado. Coroners, cops and lawyers can all tell you unfortunate stories where the opposite was true; a loaded gun is obvious, a brain slapped against concrete less so. But the results can be the same.

Understanding what you’re doing and why can go a long way toward saving you a lot of trouble — whether keeping you from engaging needlessly or to get it done right when nothing else will do.

The reason an imprisoned sociopath wins is the same as a highly trained military operator… or really anyone who comes out on top in physical violence. Not because of hate or rage or training or practice, but because of debilitating injury. Period.

Before we can discuss the principles that underlie game-changing/game-winning injury, we must cover some baseline assumptions for how to make the choice to “pull the trigger” on physical violence, in other words, first principles to drive the decision-making process and initial contact.

The essential problem is one of variability in the amount of force used, or the fact that half-measures expose you to greater risk.

If you don’t want to hurt him, chances are you won’t — but you have no idea what’s going on in his head.

It’s the old “slap a killer” problem. Letting him know what’s up without shutting him down, pissing him off, or even intimidating him to the point where he pulls that gun are all ways to end up horribly surprised.

If the situation didn’t call for an all out response, why are you laying hands on him? “Shooting to wound” is a seductive fantasy, but ultimately unrealistic. If you had reason to pull it and point it, it’s to kill him.


If we understand that hands-on violence, with fists and boots, is necessarily all-or-nothing as well, then the overarching idea is a single word:

Choice.

Which leads us to the following first principles:

■When violence can be avoided you must do everything you can to avoid it.

If you have a choice, the answer is “no”. Having options means there are other avenues open to you: using words and reason, disengaging or simply leaving. Plowing in to injure people is inherently risky.

If you lose, it can cost you your life. If you win it can ruin your life. The only thing worth that risk is your life, or the lives of others. Nothing trivial compares favorably.

When violence is not avoidable you must do everything you can to win.
When there is no choice, the only thing left is violence. And there’s only one way to reliably use it — by causing serious, disabling injury and taking full advantage of that injury to get more.

■You win in violence by attacking and forcing the other parties to react to your actions.
You don’t win a gunfight by not getting shot — you win by shooting the other guy dead. Likewise, in hands-on violence the defensive posture is the one victims adopt. You want to make things happen — injuries — not react to what he’s trying to do to you.

The unfortunate truth of this can most clearly be seen in stabbings — there is no back and forth, no “knife fighting”… just repeated stabbing. If you try to respond to this by trying to block, control the weapon, etc., you’re going to get stabbed to death.

If, instead, you attack and cause disabling injury, chances are good you’ll get cut but he’ll be down, injured, and helpless to stop you from doing more. This is why you must foster and train a constant state of attack.

These first principles give us an uncluttered perspective on why we train as we do, as well as a clear decision-making process (got choice?) that can help cut through the obscuring fog of crummy social interactions. It’s as close as we’re going to get to philosophy, being that we want to hew more toward the operational than the theoretical.

And lest you think these ideas only apply to TFT, I’d go so far as to say they apply to all uses of violence across the entire spectrum.