Uechi-Ryu.com

The appropriate emotional response when confronted by someone intending you harm is calm, determined, righteous indignation.

You should be angry that someone has chosen you or someone you care about to be their bitch! Not anger to the point of rage, which will compromise your reaction, but anger that fuels your adrenaline and aggressive counter attack.

Let it fuel your determination and drive and push you past any pain intended to defeat you. Not you! Not today! Not now! Not here! Pierce his heart with your war face and make your enemy realize he has chosen poorly and that choice is going to cost him dearly.

See the fear appear on his face with that realization. See him looking for a way out that is not there; searching for a solution he will not find. See his expression of fear freeze his body as it succumbs to your dynamic delivery of speed and accuracy.

We're thinking of angry drivers who choose to get out of their cars to confront you; of ferocious dogs that won't give way; of bears who lay in wait for a once-a-year appearance on your favorite trails. There are times you don't get to choose fight-or-flight. And that's what the Kimber PepperBlaster II is all about.

Kimber PepperBlaster II is unlike any pepper spray or mace-like stuff you've ever seen before. Stuff like "Halt!" is a marshmallow gun by comparison. Kimber refers to it as a "less-lethal weapon", and as one of the world's premier manufacturers of 1911 pistols, they know lethality.

Unlike typical pepper spray, PepperBlaster II isn't aerosolized. Rather, each unit contains two cylinders with powerful concentrations of near-pharmaceutical grade oleoresin capsicum (OC) -- a devastatingly effective irritant.

Each cylinder is driven by a pyrotechnic charge and a piston, and the solution travels at 90mph, giving it enough energy to wrap around glasses or a face mask. Unlike conventional pepper sprays, you won't get any blowback into your own face since it isn't an aerosolized mist.

You don't need to worry whether you're downwind. And you get a substantially longer effective range of 13 feet. Instead of a "spray", it fires a compact stream of OC. The effect is immediate, it lasts for 45 minutes, and it allows you to extricate yourself from the situation with plenty of time to spare. And unlike sprays, it's reliable at any temperature, and won't rupture, burst, or depressurize.

What makes PepperBlaster II different from the first incarnation? The new package is more pistol-like. It has a stubby handgrip that makes it more natural to aim and fire. It will work with right or left hand grips, and it has a built-in notch sight to aid accuracy. It has a swingaway tab for a safety, so it won't accidentally discharge in your jersey pocket. But you can easily push away the tab in an instant when you need to use it.

Each unit has two charges in it; i.e. you can fire it twice.

Just how effective is it? When OC gets in the eyes the effect is immediate, and it causes eyes to slam shut and excruciating pain to kick in. If it gets in the nose and mouth, the effect takes 7-10 seconds and causes no small amount of gagging (caused by irritation to the respiratory system) to complement the debilitating pain induced by the OC. And while it'll incapacitate the assailant (human or canine), it won't cause permanent injury or death.

The Kimber PepperBlaster II weighs 100g. Its dimensions are 4.3" x 2.7" x 0.9" -- easy to fit in a jersey pocket along with a gel or your Blackberry. Like any good weapon it's hard to envision ever needing it, but if the time ever comes, you'll be glad you brought it along.

The Quiet Enemy

There are so many clichés that come to mind when I think about how easily we are lulled into complacency, where we are slowly led to believe a lie. The frog in the pot of water comes to mind immediately. For the couple of people that don’t know, it goes like this, “Throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and he will immediately jump out, but put a frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly bring it to a boil and the frog will cook to death.” You see, the frog’s mind never hits the action mode in response to danger because the danger is not obvious until its too late.

So it is with us. We respond to imminent and obvious threats and actions easily and without thought. We respond to a car rushing toward us. We respond to someone screaming at us. We respond to a misbehaving child. What we don’t respond well to, what we can’t seem to recognize, are the quiet enemies in our lives. Laziness. Apathy. Gluttony. Lust. Selfishness. Greed. Comfort. Work. The list is endless.

These are the little things. The things on the margins. The corners we cut. The excuses we make. The things we don’t do instead of the things we should do. The things we do that we shouldn’t do. It’s a battle fought minute by minute and day-by-day. It’s a battle we are losing every day and the world is telling us its ok.

Except its not. Look, we should never major in the minors, but it’s the little things in life, the little battles won, that make the war easier to win. The battle we fight is one of attrition and we are our own worst enemy. It shows up in what we chose to eat. It shows up in what we choose to do, or not do. It shows up in how we treat those around us. Our laziness, greed, apathy, etc. is apparent in everything we do, if we just take the time to look for it. But we don’t.

So it is with training. Losing in a violent encounter doesn’t happen during the encounter. The battle is lost way before the fight. The battle is lost when we eat one more doughnut or when we decide to sit on the couch instead of getting up to train.

We lose it in our prayer life where we refuse to acknowledge God in our motivations and actions. We lose it bit-by-bit and day-by-day and we think its no big deal. We lose in our marriages, we lose in our work, we lose in our life because we don’t get up and do the hard work of being deliberate about what we are doing.

So, what are you going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? Start being more deliberate today. Look at your calendar for next year. Start to schedule your training year.

What are you going to do weekly, monthly and quarterly? What refresher classes do you need to take? Where do you need to get initial skills training? Companies all over the world right now are working on their vision, strategy and budgets for their business for next year. We should do the same.

Visualizing can be good. Most people that do it though probably visualize themselves being ready and having the tactically superior vantage point instead of from the perspective of just picking yourself off the floor after some jerk laid your head open from behind with a pipe.

Violence is a violent thing and violent recitative predators like and practice their craft usually only when they think they have the advantage.
So try some visualization from both angles.

I don't mean visualize loosing, but include the possible reality of injury and coming from behind the curve to dig deep to turn the tables with that controlled rage you have been cultivating.
Sweet dreams...