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Speaker 1: That's s o f r EP dot com. Ah beat force.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 1: listening to software radio, special operations, military news and straight
Speaker 1: talk with the guys and the community YEA. In this episode,
Speaker 1: Manaton editor starus At Latmazo Wood and former Delta Force
Speaker 1: operator and software priator George Hunt sit down with sensor
Speaker 1: James Williams. Sense Williams trained America's most elite personal operations
Speaker 1: units in combatives and knife fighting. During their discussion, they
Speaker 1: talk about knife making, combatives, and the right mental state
Speaker 1: of for combat, among other things. They also go over
Speaker 1: some amazing stories from downraids and how sensors combative teachings
Speaker 1: has saved the lives of America's best Did you please
Speaker 1: go over your time in the military Callimardo sta Rose
Speaker 1: was in the notary from sixty six to sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Started out as a lab Bravo. I did end up
Speaker 1: going to after candidate school because I couldn't do what
Speaker 1: I wanted because I couldn't see. But it is a
Speaker 1: good interesting time for me. Taught me a lot of
Speaker 1: things besides that special sense of humor we discussed that
Speaker 1: have helped me throughout my life and helped me later
Speaker 1: on here to be able to help our modern military.
Speaker 1: Modern because it's it's actually quite a different military from
Speaker 1: the sixties too. Now help me understand in designing tools
Speaker 1: and stuff for them and training them how I can
Speaker 1: benefit them better, and gave me a lot of motivation
Speaker 1: as well to help. I buried a lot of guys
Speaker 1: in sixty through Big Tet and you see survivor assistance,
Speaker 1: initial notification of death. You see the consequence of that
Speaker 1: over and over and over. And I was in a
Speaker 1: little base we had that. It was a ninety degree
Speaker 1: duty that I had for nine months, and I finally
Speaker 1: had to go to Jack and just say I can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. The workload was intense, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I can't remember most of it, remember specific things.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember how many people I bury, but
Speaker 1: somewhere probably be seventy hundred or more. So it's it
Speaker 1: really let you know. I mean the warriors. The warrior's gone,
Speaker 1: he's done, he's dead. But the people that are left,
Speaker 1: the cost of them goes their entire lives. It changes
Speaker 1: their lives, and so you recognize that any helpe that
Speaker 1: can be given. In fact, I just had a long
Speaker 1: conversation with the gentleman that it got a hold of
Speaker 1: me who I had trained, who was special operations. One
Speaker 1: of those special guys, and I wanted to thank me
Speaker 1: because stuff that I'd taught him saved his life several
Speaker 1: times down range. He was saying, well, you know, thanks
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like enough, and I said, there's nothing better
Speaker 1: I could have than just knowing that you're safe because
Speaker 1: of that, and you got home in something besides the
Speaker 1: flag direct ca And so all of this teaching designing tools, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Is very personal for me. It's not an ego thing
Speaker 1: about doing my knives look cooler or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's are they going to work in the most extreme
Speaker 1: of situations when life and death is on the line.
Speaker 1: So my original knife, the Hasatsu, was designing that. I
Speaker 1: went back and looked at Japanese history because I have
Speaker 1: a a long background in martial arts that started I
Speaker 1: don't count going to Catholic school with the Irish and
Speaker 1: the fifties, but I learned a lot there. But at
Speaker 1: the arts for sixty plus years of almost every kind,
Speaker 1: and the last forty has been concentrated more into classical
Speaker 1: summer I code to you, which means like old method
Speaker 1: or old way. The vast majority of what we call
Speaker 1: martial arts are not martial in the classical sense of
Speaker 1: the term Mars was the god of war. Wars about
Speaker 1: killing people and break and ship. It's done with tools,
Speaker 1: art's ability due to your opponent without doing it back
Speaker 1: to you. And when you don't do the art of it,
Speaker 1: the battle of the zone pick it's charge up some.
Speaker 1: I mean you could, we could go on and on
Speaker 1: and on. Right. When you don't do that, no art
Speaker 1: in it, there's just freaking carnage. So when you have
Speaker 1: back and forth exchanges of force, m m A and karate.
Speaker 1: Not that these things are bad, by the way, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I did almost all of this stuff and I learned
Speaker 1: a lot from it. We just need to understand if
Speaker 1: you're studying something, what was it designed for? J J
Speaker 1: which is basically Japanese judo. Katami waza from Japanese judo
Speaker 1: is a really fun sport. I had my boys do it.
Speaker 1: I've still want son that's still involved my grandchildren doing.
Speaker 1: It's a nice base, but it's the root of a tree,
Speaker 1: not never designed for war, and really not well adapted
Speaker 1: to street stuff or anything else. When you're looking at
Speaker 1: the arts that were used for war, they're completely different,
Speaker 1: so much different that it's hard to describe in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's easier to feel no contesting for space. In our
Speaker 1: sword system, we don't even have blocks. We don't block punches,
Speaker 1: we don't block swords, we don't block all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: There's a cou concept called coal etai and it means
Speaker 1: attack and defense as a single motion. And there's several
Speaker 1: of these fundamental principles, and one of the foundations of
Speaker 1: all of this is deception and not fakes or fence,
Speaker 1: because those don't have integrity they can be perceived easily,
Speaker 1: but literally methods of moving and stuff that you could
Speaker 1: tell a person what you would do, and yet when
Speaker 1: you move and they have to go to deep programming,
Speaker 1: they can't see it. And and the human mind is
Speaker 1: programmed in particular way so that no conscious thought is
Speaker 1: needed to like walk or stand up, or go up
Speaker 1: and downstairs or do all kinds of things. We be
Speaker 1: overwhelmed if our conscious mind had to do that. And
Speaker 1: so you're literally going in and reprogramming. Which was interesting
Speaker 1: to me because I had to give up something that
Speaker 1: I had worked really really hard for. I'd spent a
Speaker 1: huge part of my life getting on top of an
Speaker 1: alpha male food chain, and my kick boxing and stuff
Speaker 1: in the seventies and we actually could do takedowns and
Speaker 1: stuff was a little bit different. I was trained much
Speaker 1: differently than the full contract roy stuff at the time,
Speaker 1: and I actually had to give up that programming in
Speaker 1: order to do this programming, which is which is interesting.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the very very best that
Speaker 1: we have, they don't contest for space hardly. Ever, it's
Speaker 1: interesting how some of them have come to those same
Speaker 1: basic programming mechanisms in a sense, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but some who have. You know, I'm always interested because
Speaker 1: I'm working with these guys. They're going down range. In
Speaker 1: the last what nineteen years, we've had people who have
Speaker 1: had more experience in combat by orders of magnitude than
Speaker 1: we've ever had before. Ever, there's a huge wealth of
Speaker 1: knowledge there. I'm not optimistic that it's going to go
Speaker 1: up the food chain. However, I'm trying to learn as
Speaker 1: much as I can from them as what I'm teaching,
Speaker 1: because it's a two way street and you need to
Speaker 1: stay a student. You're constantly learning. So when it came
Speaker 1: to time to design a knife, the single most important
Speaker 1: thing for a small knife, and I define small as
Speaker 1: if they can't lop off a limb. It's a small
Speaker 1: life is penetration. And so when I was looking at
Speaker 1: a lot of designs out there, are recognizing that, well,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get penetration out of that, and
Speaker 1: not just penetration of soft parts of the human body,
Speaker 1: but what are people wearing heavy wool and cotton clothing
Speaker 1: in a lot of these countries, maybe military style vest
Speaker 1: where you have to punch through nylon and everything as well,
Speaker 1: and then bones and then whatever you have, because you
Speaker 1: don't always get a perfect toy with these things. So
Speaker 1: I look back in uh in history and found style
Speaker 1: called osakuzukuti. I was looking at what do we need most?
Speaker 1: So penetration is critical. And when you look at a
Speaker 1: lot of shapes and you and you test them out,
Speaker 1: you find that they're not very effective at this except
Speaker 1: and there maybe some ideal conditions, but I'm are not
Speaker 1: very effective at all. So I knew I needed that
Speaker 1: and that shape was was just perfect. It was made
Speaker 1: famous by the mid sixteenth century daimio or warlord Takeda Shingen,
Speaker 1: and so I looked at that and not only did
Speaker 1: it have tremendous penetration, because it's got a very extended point.
Speaker 1: But it also had the ability to slash really well,
Speaker 1: which is secondary, but still it's not that it's not
Speaker 1: important because of the shape of the blade and the
Speaker 1: art that an arm makes when you're slashing, and so
Speaker 1: the two went together. So well, you shouldn't surprise anybody
Speaker 1: because that was a sword culture for a really long
Speaker 1: period of time into actually the modern era. When Admiral
Speaker 1: Perry's ships, you know, went into Tokyo Bay in the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, it was still a feudal society. So I
Speaker 1: looked at that. I looked at handle shape to be
Speaker 1: a neutral handle, because how are you going to hold
Speaker 1: a knife? Well, I don't know yet. People say, well,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do if this or that happens?
Speaker 1: I go, I don't know, and they're like, well, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be the expert. I said, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to know. I'm listening to the problem. Right, Every
Speaker 1: problem in the universe has inherent in the problem the solution.
Speaker 1: When I bring my style, my anger, my aggression, my
Speaker 1: subjectivity to the fight, I'm not looking at clearly at
Speaker 1: what's actually happening. And there's a couple of concepts in cody.
Speaker 1: One is called motion, which means no mind, but it
Speaker 1: means like no thinking conscious mind. So that includes your fears,
Speaker 1: your biases, your political ship, all of that subjective app
Speaker 1: has got to be gone here. And another aspect is
Speaker 1: misu no cold. Mesu means water and jakokoto is like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not quite soul in a sense, but
Speaker 1: it's like mind spirit essence. And if you think about water,
Speaker 1: if it's ruffled by wind or dropping the pebble in it,
Speaker 1: you look at it, you can't clearly, it doesn't clearly reflect.
Speaker 1: If it's absolutely calm, it clearly reflects. So you want
Speaker 1: a mind like a mirror. I want to remove myself
Speaker 1: from the equation. I want all the information about what's
Speaker 1: happening to come into me, unbiased, objective as it can be,
Speaker 1: and then the solution is going to be apparent in
Speaker 1: that problem, and all I have to do is implement
Speaker 1: the solution. So getting jacked up and all of this
Speaker 1: stuff before a fight is a fear based mechanism. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make you run and scared, but it makes you
Speaker 1: very subjective in the process. And it doesn't it's not
Speaker 1: the highest level of human function. And another aspect is
Speaker 1: no normal physical strength, no contract or muscle strength, which
Speaker 1: is very counterintuitive, but it's primarily counterintuitive because our normal
Speaker 1: outlook is fear based. And again I go back to
Speaker 1: being very successful. I climbed my way to the top
Speaker 1: of an alpha male food chain um which eventually, as
Speaker 1: I looked around, I realized, I don't even like after
Speaker 1: these people. Mean, we had Hell's Angels, we had guys prison,
Speaker 1: we had some hard guys, and I'm like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't like most of these people. What am I doing here? Right?
Speaker 1: This is a complete hundred and eighty degrees from what
Speaker 1: made me successful. There if success could actually be beating
Speaker 1: a people up his ex success, And I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I haven't had to scratch the itch, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if that all that success or not? Right? And
Speaker 1: I was, and I was telling you earlier stuff I was.
Speaker 1: I could count the number of teeth I had to
Speaker 1: replace in the couple that I haven't, but I don't
Speaker 1: know how many brain cells I lost in the process.
Speaker 1: HOWE these conditions so that no mind and no muscle.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna define a few words, how how we
Speaker 1: define them in nomine? So normal is a fear based construct,
Speaker 1: and that's how plus percent of the population makes their
Speaker 1: decisions based on normal, because that's the only paradigm they have. Now,
Speaker 1: some of those fears are rational fears, but a huge
Speaker 1: number of those fears, as we conceive from the current
Speaker 1: you know, insanity, are subjective inner fears that cause reactions
Speaker 1: and in people they're not acting, they're reacting, and they
Speaker 1: get played by that. They get played by politicians, they
Speaker 1: get played for the press, which has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with news and information or nothing to do with the information.
Speaker 1: So you have to actually have a methodology for training
Speaker 1: for what we call normal, which in our words this
Speaker 1: means faith based and I'm not talking about religious those
Speaker 1: are belief systems. That's a different thing. So hence, you
Speaker 1: know the need to define words when we talk about them,
Speaker 1: and simple things like we depend on gravity for everything,
Speaker 1: but nobody thinks about it and worries about it. Oxygen
Speaker 1: transfers the single most important thing that happens in an
Speaker 1: individual to keep them alive. But I haven't found anybody
Speaker 1: yet that lays awake in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: wondering if I take the next breath, is oxygen transfer
Speaker 1: going to take place, so about that would be pretty weird.
Speaker 1: So that was one of my chief fears, honestly, Yes,
Speaker 1: And so when I talk about that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: What you find is what I find personally is the
Speaker 1: lastic James does, the better the solutions come. And that
Speaker 1: includes solutions that may be what people would call violent
Speaker 1: solutions and literally learning how to access your physiology differently,
Speaker 1: Like I'll sit and face somebody and I'll move my
Speaker 1: right scapula up, but you can't see any motion in
Speaker 1: me because only one muscle debater or scapula moves that.
Speaker 1: And if you can isolate it, it'll pull the scapule
Speaker 1: up and somebody behind me can feel it or pull
Speaker 1: them into the center. Will by flexing the rhomboids minor
Speaker 1: and major, you know, actually starting to go in and
Speaker 1: turn off all of the unnecessary muscle flections that come
Speaker 1: from the fight flight. I had an interesting couple of
Speaker 1: discussions with Dr Dan Siegel a few years ago at
Speaker 1: Slin Institute and Big Sir, he's one of the leading neuroscientists,
Speaker 1: really a really interesting guy. And at one point we're
Speaker 1: walking back to lunch from from the lecture hall, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, Doc, your survival instinct will get
Speaker 1: you killed, and he goes, well, it's there for a reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: survival of the species, not for survival of the individual. Right,
Speaker 1: And you can see this in Africa. It's really easy
Speaker 1: to watch the herd instincts for survival of the species.
Speaker 1: The individual is sacrificed in the process. Okay, well, if
Speaker 1: we're going to be more than that, and then you
Speaker 1: have to take responsibility. There's a big word for everything,
Speaker 1: your gender, your height, whether you have good eyes or
Speaker 1: bad eyes, your age, all kinds. You have to take
Speaker 1: personal responsibility for everything in your life if you're going
Speaker 1: to be able to develop and actually change that fundamental programming.
Speaker 1: And so there's a method for that. And the old
Speaker 1: Cody was a method for that. It's mostly gone. And
Speaker 1: I would say even in Japan, I don't know how
Speaker 1: much of this exists anymore. Their society has radically changed.
Speaker 1: You need some violence, I think too, right, because it's
Speaker 1: the things that said, can you do this in extremists
Speaker 1: or is it something you end up doing in the
Speaker 1: dojo with a bunch of people that cooperate with you.
Speaker 1: The great thing is because I travel and teach a
Speaker 1: lot there's always at least one or two people out
Speaker 1: of a vested interest in my failure when I'm demonstrating
Speaker 1: techniques or are doing this, so I get to go
Speaker 1: out against people in that sense of the term. Now
Speaker 1: I've had other situations as well, but still I'm in
Speaker 1: my seventies and I still work with the very best
Speaker 1: that we have, and I have to make this work
Speaker 1: on them, even when they're contesting with me and trying
Speaker 1: not to have it work, because we both need to
Speaker 1: know is this going to work better or not? Because
Speaker 1: if it's not, I'm gonna sit down and shut the
Speaker 1: funk up. There's much for this, right. The worst thing
Speaker 1: that could be is somebody coming back, yeah, that you
Speaker 1: taught us or got a couple of our guys killed.
Speaker 1: Fuck right. I can't have that, So I'm very careful
Speaker 1: with I have to know it works better. Had a
Speaker 1: situation a few years ago with a group that wanted
Speaker 1: to do scenario training. We went out by we went
Speaker 1: out to another part of the range and they had
Speaker 1: an SUV and they were showing me, you know, this
Speaker 1: is scenario by route, middle of the street, middle of
Speaker 1: the day. We're blocking the guy in front, back two
Speaker 1: guys out on the driver's side, one down the pastor's
Speaker 1: side to keep from getting a weapon. You know, we'll
Speaker 1: reach the window with a couple rounds of nine if
Speaker 1: we need to. It's taken us about ninety seconds to
Speaker 1: get the guy at the car. We're getting we're getting
Speaker 1: scratched up and cut up a little bit on the glass.
Speaker 1: In environments like that, people are starting to collapse on
Speaker 1: us after about forty five or fifty seconds, which complicates
Speaker 1: the problem. And they asked me, well, how would you
Speaker 1: do that? So I got the guy out of the
Speaker 1: car by myself in fifteen seconds. The reason is the
Speaker 1: solution orientation and how I look at those things is
Speaker 1: really different. The great thing. But that group is there
Speaker 1: and enormously fast learners. A few years later, we had
Speaker 1: another group in I'm not going to mention their name,
Speaker 1: and it was taking them even longer because they were
Speaker 1: dominating a situation by striking the guy first and all
Speaker 1: of this, and they end up with a big fight
Speaker 1: and it took them two minutes to get him out.
Speaker 1: And I took couple of these people group aside and
Speaker 1: spent ten minutes showing them how to do it. In
Speaker 1: seventeen seconds they had the guy out of the car.
Speaker 1: It's just a completely different way of looking at solutions
Speaker 1: where fighting doesn't come into play. Fighting by definition, is
Speaker 1: an inefficient solution to problems. And I always ask guys,
Speaker 1: you know, especially married guys. So how many guys are married?
Speaker 1: Hands go up, I said, how well does fighting work
Speaker 1: at home? Doesn't work at all? Right, even if you
Speaker 1: are opponent, like my former wife is literally happier size, right,
Speaker 1: I mean happier weight in the foot, shorter, it still
Speaker 1: doesn't work. Why would we look at that as a
Speaker 1: solution to problems, right, because it doesn't work right, it
Speaker 1: creates more problems. So this is something that virtually has
Speaker 1: to be felt. I have to demonstrate. I've got plenty
Speaker 1: of videos up when my system is threading YouTube channel stuff. However,
Speaker 1: what you see in what I'm doing are not the
Speaker 1: same things. It's designed so that you actually can't see it.
Speaker 1: It's designed to look like something that you already have
Speaker 1: a paradigm for, you're already programmed for. And it's not
Speaker 1: that when I used to go down to enable special
Speaker 1: warfare San Diego and work with trade at the most
Speaker 1: common thing I hear is will serve yourself fast like, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's not to come fast. I'm not doing very much.
Speaker 1: So if I could start at the line in who
Speaker 1: Saint bolt Stead it started a hundred and still have
Speaker 1: a shot at winning. If I started at sixty, probably
Speaker 1: not right. So if I do a lot less, it
Speaker 1: takes less time, and it seems like it's faster. But
Speaker 1: it's just that I'm not doing very much. And then
Speaker 1: what you're seeing and what I'm doing are not the
Speaker 1: same things. So when you move and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you have a knife at your throat, it seems
Speaker 1: like it happened almost instantaneously. That, of course, doesn't help
Speaker 1: them a lot other than the fact that they can
Speaker 1: know that I do it. But I'm trying to take
Speaker 1: them down a path that as they continue to look
Speaker 1: at it, they can start taking less time and being
Speaker 1: us obvious, shall we say, And since you asked the
Speaker 1: Stubb roast, I look at this as because you're trying
Speaker 1: to make You're trying to make an analogy so people
Speaker 1: can have a way of taking a look at this.
Speaker 1: Tens of millenniu go our ancestors saw a log floating
Speaker 1: on a lake, and they pushed on, it had positive
Speaker 1: buoyancy and when they laid on it, it held them
Speaker 1: up and you could put your spear in your addleaddle
Speaker 1: and paddle across the lake instead of walking around it.
Speaker 1: You could kill something, put it on and come back. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, you come all the way into the modern
Speaker 1: And when my brother was living in Pacific Beach, he
Speaker 1: had a twenty ft Hawaiian race. You can do that
Speaker 1: weigh like thirty pounds because it's carbon fiber and kevlar.
Speaker 1: I could put that thing on my shoulder and walk
Speaker 1: to blocks to the beach and get in and I
Speaker 1: mean enormously more access much faster than the log and
Speaker 1: the hand paddle. But you're still accessing the universe law
Speaker 1: the same way. It's still meant is determined by my physicality,
Speaker 1: my strength, how much food water I can take in
Speaker 1: for how long and all of that. Also, who know
Speaker 1: is how long ago somebody felt this really strong wind.
Speaker 1: I always say maybe in northern Scotland where you can
Speaker 1: lean into the wind at like fifty degrees and it
Speaker 1: holds you up. And they held up an animal skin
Speaker 1: and they sat on that log, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden the log moved without them doing any physical effort.
Speaker 1: And so like sailing, sailing is the process of recognizing
Speaker 1: an invisible force by its effects and shaping the boat
Speaker 1: and the sail and the point of sale in accordance
Speaker 1: with that. And the better you can do that, the
Speaker 1: more you know, the more you get from it, the
Speaker 1: better boat speed, the better everything. If you see a lift,
Speaker 1: the water is darkling in a bit. You can see
Speaker 1: a lift, you know it's going to change, you can
Speaker 1: prepare for that. You don't see the wind. Ever. So
Speaker 1: what I'm starting with this kinetic energy without muscle flexion.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wait two d and fifteen pounds six
Speaker 1: to well not quite six too, But I'm still as
Speaker 1: tall as I was when I was thirty, which is
Speaker 1: a whole another thing altogether. And so I have an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of potential energy and as soon as I move,
Speaker 1: it manifests itself. And one of the things I'll do
Speaker 1: is I'll take one of my ten twenty two pound
Speaker 1: club belts and I'll put it outside. I'll put it on,
Speaker 1: you know, like maybe a board or something undeathaid I'll
Speaker 1: drop that, And I mean the amount of energy when
Speaker 1: that hits the ground is enormous, and yet I can
Speaker 1: let golden touch the ground faster than it gets there. Well,
Speaker 1: I wait, more than twenty two pounds, and I can
Speaker 1: move faster than that thing can move. How come I
Speaker 1: can't take that energy and transfer it? Muscle tension gets
Speaker 1: in the way. Relaxation allows that energy to move through
Speaker 1: your body and you're not emitting in the way of it. Right,
Speaker 1: how do you manage to stay relaxed in a high
Speaker 1: stress situation though? Training? So so yeah, it's yet say
Speaker 1: it's actually that it's training trazing, right, And so that's
Speaker 1: again why I like to talk to some of those guys,
Speaker 1: uh and and find out what's going on with them.
Speaker 1: And I have to be careful with this. So I
Speaker 1: was just back for a ceremony for an award. One
Speaker 1: of the guys I've known well for a long time
Speaker 1: stayed his house and stuff, and a situation took place
Speaker 1: down range and he breached a gate coming through three guys.
Speaker 1: A k s up on him and he said, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I knew I was dead right, but it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: So in less than three seconds, he fired twenty four rounds,
Speaker 1: eight rounds per guy. All the rounds hit including a
Speaker 1: slight hesitation because the guy slipped behind some one of
Speaker 1: the guys slew behind some women and children. You can't
Speaker 1: do that with your conscious mind. And what he had
Speaker 1: forgotten to tell me or hadn't hadn't taught me because
Speaker 1: of his own personal character and humility, as he'd been
Speaker 1: fried twice outside the gate before that and had to
Speaker 1: sit down not too long thereafter. And one of the
Speaker 1: guy that was telling the story said, he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling faint, and and the guy who's telling the
Speaker 1: story at the ceremony goes, well, probably the hyde grate,
Speaker 1: And he goes, no, I think it's loss of blood.
Speaker 1: Right when I first beat him, he couldn't even train
Speaker 1: with us because he was still recovering. Right. That's the
Speaker 1: type of thing in a sense, you can't think that
Speaker 1: he says yes, or I can still tell you where
Speaker 1: every round hit. You can't consciously think that. So you
Speaker 1: train to let go into a state, right, And you
Speaker 1: have to be able to do that if you're going
Speaker 1: to work at the highest level. So some quotes from history,
Speaker 1: one is fear makes men forget, and skill which cannot
Speaker 1: fight is useless. Pricies of Sparta, you know that's how
Speaker 1: their training went way, you know, from from the classical Sumurai.
Speaker 1: You know the way of the warriors, resolute acceptance of death.
Speaker 1: So you accept the situation. You can't be thinking of
Speaker 1: the fears, and you can't be all of those things.
Speaker 1: You just accept this as the deal. Just like if
Speaker 1: you're sailing in the storm, is fear going to help you?
Speaker 1: The ocean is a scary play. I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in the ocean. It can be a really
Speaker 1: scary place. And all you can do under those circumstances
Speaker 1: is get out of yourself and get connected to what's happening.
Speaker 1: Feel that boat, trim those sails, look at the point
Speaker 1: of sale, what's happening. How is the wind doing? You know,
Speaker 1: you know what's the what's the ocean like? I mean,
Speaker 1: how steep are the waves? Don't be a land lover
Speaker 1: and get close to shore. You see that thing from
Speaker 1: Thirteenth Warrior, well, where they're in the storm. That was
Speaker 1: actually one of the better parts. The guy that was
Speaker 1: playing in the air of Antonio Barreras of Vanderis goes,
Speaker 1: shouldn't we be closer to land? And the Viking laughs
Speaker 1: and go this is no day to be close to land. Boy,
Speaker 1: you have to know that you want deep water in
Speaker 1: a storm. The deeper the better. The shallow water changes
Speaker 1: the shape of the waves on the surface that makes
Speaker 1: it sor together and steeper. So you have to know
Speaker 1: that and relax into those things. So people do this
Speaker 1: in other ways as well. Okay, it's just more difficult
Speaker 1: when you're in a situation of life and death. But
Speaker 1: that's what you train for at the highest level, So
Speaker 1: in the old ways, that's what you're training for. One
Speaker 1: of the things I'll do when I'm with a new
Speaker 1: group is, uh, I'll take an eight and a half
Speaker 1: eleven piece of paper and I'll hold it up and
Speaker 1: I take one of my swords and I cut it.
Speaker 1: Just just whispers you the paper and I look out,
Speaker 1: who's tough. I never get anybody saying they're tough. They
Speaker 1: recognize the sword is going to go right through you.
Speaker 1: And then I point at the edge and I go,
Speaker 1: Betty tasst. This is the truth. If you're going to
Speaker 1: study a martial art in the classical sins, you first
Speaker 1: have to define the tool and the situation. Toughness doesn't
Speaker 1: help here, right, You're not tough enough to take bullets
Speaker 1: or bombs or all the other things in a combat
Speaker 1: zone that are that are bad for you. You can
Speaker 1: be persevering, right, you can be determined. Toughness is not
Speaker 1: one of those things when it comes to that, because
Speaker 1: the human body just and that tough. So now we're
Speaker 1: training for the environment by thinking, Okay, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be able to take a sword cut and survive.
Speaker 1: The chances are how do I get through this? I
Speaker 1: tell people when when people say they're teaching knife courses,
Speaker 1: we'll expect to get cut in a knife fight. I go, well,
Speaker 1: do you expect to get cut in a gunfight? I mean,
Speaker 1: people get shot in gun fights, But do you go
Speaker 1: into it expecting to get shot? I said, Is that
Speaker 1: how you would train expect to get shot? No, you
Speaker 1: don't train like that. Why would you do that with
Speaker 1: the knife? If you're fighting with the knife, like some
Speaker 1: of these guys I'm seeing back and forth, you can
Speaker 1: be killing each other or not know it. Speaking from
Speaker 1: personal experience, you probably won't even know your cut most
Speaker 1: of the time in a fight with a knife, and
Speaker 1: I'm not so some of this I learned from being
Speaker 1: really stupid and for some reason surviving it, So why
Speaker 1: would you do that. You could actually be mortally wounded
Speaker 1: still in the fight but not know it yet. That's
Speaker 1: really bad, right, Yeah, that's scourging, is what it is.
Speaker 1: So when you take a look from their perspective, and
Speaker 1: another thing that was looked at is oh too nashi
Speaker 1: no kachi, and that basically means silent victory, no touching
Speaker 1: of swords, no clashing of blades, which goes with the
Speaker 1: Kobali tie attack and offense as a single movement, not
Speaker 1: a block and encounter and stuff that's taught in so
Speaker 1: many of these things. So this was fundamental to really
Speaker 1: high level coue you, which was not most of what
Speaker 1: people learned. Everybody's skill level was higher because you had
Speaker 1: to be just for survival. But again, it's like being
Speaker 1: a faster paddler because you train all the time. That's
Speaker 1: still not being a sailor in that sense of the term.
Speaker 1: How sustainable is that mentality of the mentality of going
Speaker 1: to war without any regard for your physical safety. I'm
Speaker 1: saying there's acceptance of the environment you're in. It's just acceptance.
Speaker 1: It's not that you don't do all the smart things
Speaker 1: you should have trained things in already right like I
Speaker 1: shoot right handed, left handed, right, I left eye because
Speaker 1: I don't want to go a right handed corner with
Speaker 1: with with the gun in my left hand, or or
Speaker 1: vice versa and using the other you know, So my
Speaker 1: eyes don't like that. But I work every day to
Speaker 1: make sure if I pick a pistol up in my
Speaker 1: left hand, it comes to my left eye. If I
Speaker 1: pick it up my right hand, it comes to my
Speaker 1: right eye. So you train these things over and over.
Speaker 1: This is what you do so that in the moment
Speaker 1: you've already done all the stuff that you can do
Speaker 1: about the life and death part. And Paul House, a
Speaker 1: personal friend, only years ago, the best delta operator I
Speaker 1: ever knew was killed by an unsided a K in
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Black Sea and Somalia. Right, once
Speaker 1: you get in a position where you get dragged behind
Speaker 1: the curve, which is basically what happened there. They couldn't
Speaker 1: stay that step ahead because of lots of factors. Right, well, now,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do, but I mean, stuff comes out.
Speaker 1: That's what happens, right the whole biking your fate. Your
Speaker 1: fate is what it is. So and that was another
Speaker 1: way of recognizing that just you have to let go
Speaker 1: of the fear of life and death in the moment.
Speaker 1: Does it? Is it possible? Absolutely, But you can't have
Speaker 1: that in your head. If you have that in your head,
Speaker 1: you kept function properly. So you train for that. That's
Speaker 1: what you train for. Hey, um, since A and Star Wars,
Speaker 1: there's I think I have a real dumb down version
Speaker 1: of the philosophy that you're talking about right now. And
Speaker 1: the example comes from and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people can relate to it, but from the series Band
Speaker 1: of Brothers. There was a scene where I think the
Speaker 1: guy was Lieutenant Spear was talking to Okay, private Blythe
Speaker 1: how Private Blythe was asking. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you cope? How do you
Speaker 1: handle it? How do you handle your fear? How do
Speaker 1: you get through this this situation? And Spears said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, Blythe, if you can just accept the fact
Speaker 1: that you already dead, everything will be just fine. And
Speaker 1: this was a thing that has been echoed throughout ancient
Speaker 1: warrior cultures is acceptance of death. Yeah, this is the deal.
Speaker 1: I mean, every person needs that to a point because
Speaker 1: none of us know, right, it could be anything you
Speaker 1: just don't know. You could be doing the most dangerous
Speaker 1: job and get killed walking across the street, or have
Speaker 1: a drunk driver jump the curb, or any number of things.
Speaker 1: So it's not that you don't recognize the danger. I mean,
Speaker 1: listen as as as my son, the doctor says. He says,
Speaker 1: life is a sexually transmitted, uniformally fatal disease. We're all
Speaker 1: going to die here. What you want is to die
Speaker 1: the best way you can. For the warrior especially, but
Speaker 1: for any person, die the best way you can die
Speaker 1: in service to others. Die doing something you know that's
Speaker 1: helping somebody else. Once you start contracting into your own fears, well,
Speaker 1: a few years ago in California, woman recognized that I
Speaker 1: was concealed carry and she was freaking out, that makes
Speaker 1: me so afraid. What are you so afraid of having
Speaker 1: to carry that? And I go, we know what I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of is I'm afraid that something could happen and
Speaker 1: I might not be able to help. I said, what
Speaker 1: you're afraid of is you're afraid of being afraid. That's
Speaker 1: a whole different thing. I'm carrying a tool because I
Speaker 1: have the experience, the training and the willingness like the
Speaker 1: gentleman in the prime of his life in that church
Speaker 1: in Texas, to solve a problem if it comes about,
Speaker 1: and problems come I just traveled back and through Europe.
Speaker 1: Every single European airport I got pulled aside from my bag.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, yep, that's me. So because I've got
Speaker 1: turning gets in he stats and chest seals and you know,
Speaker 1: I carry stuff with me, right, because you never know,
Speaker 1: and and and jo you know this absolutely as well.
Speaker 1: You never know, and stuff like this is going to happen.
Speaker 1: The only thing you can be sure of it is
Speaker 1: the day you're not prepared death and the ship goes down.
Speaker 1: It's just I mean, it's like universe law, right, So
Speaker 1: what do you do? You're prepared all the time. So
Speaker 1: I didn't get anything taken. I was able to explain
Speaker 1: to people over time, you know, what's this? What's that
Speaker 1: you know? Blah blah blah. Why are you medic or
Speaker 1: a doctor? I don't know, but I've had some training
Speaker 1: and I know how to use what I have to
Speaker 1: be able to help somebody if something happened. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is just what you do for your daily life,
Speaker 1: and that brief gift goes with me everywhere, right, goes
Speaker 1: with me in my car. I have, of course more
Speaker 1: medical stuff in my car. A briefcase goes with me everywhere.
Speaker 1: And I've got lots of things, including a life straw
Speaker 1: which I saw software was putting up. Carry a lifestra.
Speaker 1: I carry a life straw with me everywhere, because if
Speaker 1: you've been in some of these places, you know that
Speaker 1: that water will put you down as fast as almost anything,
Speaker 1: and it's a miserable experience. So I carry a life Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, since say I I follow that philosophy. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a photographer. You know, I'm a shoot, big time shooter,
Speaker 1: and I always have a camera when I leave the house.
Speaker 1: I just never leave it behind. And people ask me,
Speaker 1: you know why I carry it so often, and I say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, the day I leave my camera at home
Speaker 1: is the day I'm going to see a unicorn. I
Speaker 1: know it'll be the best one moment of shot that
Speaker 1: will never repeat itself. And it's a pain in the
Speaker 1: butt to carry the camera all the time. However, so
Speaker 1: what right, right? You're right? So what is right? So?
Speaker 1: But so it's a pain the butt. So what people
Speaker 1: think you see doesn't make you feel I said, no, actually,
Speaker 1: it's a pain in the buttet. Okay, right, since we
Speaker 1: know that you design blades. Okay, you're not necessarily a
Speaker 1: Mr Smith by hand, but you design blades. And who
Speaker 1: who is it that comes to you asking for specific
Speaker 1: blade design? I mean, do they just tell you what
Speaker 1: what they do and you design a blade for them
Speaker 1: or that? Actually? Yes, generally yes. The his satsu was
Speaker 1: because of an article I wrote, the truth about Tonto
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Because we're seeing points and stuff like
Speaker 1: the American Tonto point didn't exist in Japan. It doesn't
Speaker 1: penetrate well, it separates a small cutting edge, it does
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. So so when I'm looking at there,
Speaker 1: I was looking at blade shape. Actually got some I
Speaker 1: got some flat for the article, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: and my mail speaking here, I'm like, fuck you. I
Speaker 1: buried a lot of guys. I've got sons. What would
Speaker 1: I wanted to carry? What can an oh three eleven eleven, bravo?
Speaker 1: What can they carry? Right? Because it can't be a
Speaker 1: three or four hundred dollar knife. For those guys that
Speaker 1: can't carry that kind of stuff and they don't need
Speaker 1: it right, you don't need super steel. So that's where
Speaker 1: I started looking and came up with with the satsu,
Speaker 1: and then it worked from there and then I got
Speaker 1: a request out of SOCOM for deep concealment folder and
Speaker 1: that became the Otanashi. Had had some guidelines and that
Speaker 1: knife has probably been in more people downrange than any
Speaker 1: other knife almost period because actually do that otanashi, which
Speaker 1: is a four and a half inch folder in that
Speaker 1: Osa Rocks recority design, and then you know, I made
Speaker 1: a smaller version of that. So and then I've had
Speaker 1: some other very specific requests out of units for particular knives.
Speaker 1: Most of the time they trust me with you know,
Speaker 1: this is what this is what we're going to use,
Speaker 1: this is why. So the Williams blade design started with
Speaker 1: that from requests, specific requests, and I try to match
Speaker 1: it to the task at hand. Like we just did
Speaker 1: a double edge dagger, not a huge double edged ban
Speaker 1: Actually I like a single edge for lots of reasons. However,
Speaker 1: this group needed what they needed. Um So you know,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time working on what all
Speaker 1: do you need if you have two parallel of edges
Speaker 1: that won't cut very well and It's not that you're
Speaker 1: gonna slash with us so much, but there's there's entry
Speaker 1: points where you want the blade. A little bit of
Speaker 1: angle will facilitate sliding through there to get maximum tissue
Speaker 1: deformity to facilitate hemorrhaging. That's a kind way of cutting
Speaker 1: the ship out of people. So so you know, I
Speaker 1: took I took a look into history and handles, guards
Speaker 1: and stuff get in the way and they're not necessary
Speaker 1: if you hold it what but properly and it's designed well,
Speaker 1: they get caught on stuff, all of these things. But
Speaker 1: you know, for me, a double edged dagger wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a direct action. You know, door kicking type of knife
Speaker 1: would be a different type of knife for a different
Speaker 1: type of tasking. It's like people say, well, what's the
Speaker 1: best knife steal and I go, well, there isn't the
Speaker 1: best knife. What are you going to do with the
Speaker 1: knife if it's going or I'm not concerned with edge holding,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned with toughness. Right, if the shape is properly,
Speaker 1: you'll still punch it down to the handle even if
Speaker 1: you couldn't cut yourself with it. But if it breaks, well,
Speaker 1: as they say in Ireland, you're fucked. I grow with
Speaker 1: the Irish. Yeah, if I'm doing it something else, maybe
Speaker 1: like I heard deal flipping a particular knife that I
Speaker 1: recognized the sound or something else really well, yeah, you're correct,
Speaker 1: So that knife holds an edge really well. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of my tough students skinned out to orcs, which
Speaker 1: are an African anelope about the side is a big
Speaker 1: mule gear and and uh skinned out two orcs with
Speaker 1: just having to touch it up a little in between.
Speaker 1: And it was interesting because one of his buddies there
Speaker 1: is a former dev gu guy. When they pulled the
Speaker 1: folder at he what do you do with that? They
Speaker 1: had to sharpened the night four times on the one
Speaker 1: that they did, jay Row only had had to sharpen,
Speaker 1: just basically touch it up in between. Because M three
Speaker 1: night steel holds an edge really really well. It's one
Speaker 1: of the new supersteels. Now, I wouldn't put that on
Speaker 1: a night going to war, right, because you everything is
Speaker 1: a compromise in this universe. It's one of the things
Speaker 1: we learned from observation and everything. If it's really really
Speaker 1: high edge holding, it's going to be more brittle. That's
Speaker 1: what you get. That's just how it works, and so
Speaker 1: you're you're taking and designing, you know, the steel and
Speaker 1: the shape to the task at hand. Same with the handles.
Speaker 1: We're not dueling with people with knives like that. They
Speaker 1: shouldn't even see it if you're trained, if I'm training you,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't see the night before it actually feel it
Speaker 1: before they see it. And you have spent I'm with
Speaker 1: that as well. And and unfortunately guys sometimes spend a
Speaker 1: lot more time with one than the other. But but
Speaker 1: most of the time they do because the shooting is
Speaker 1: more important most of the time. But when it's not,
Speaker 1: you want to have to spend enough time to understand
Speaker 1: that other way of application as well. I want to
Speaker 1: handle where I can hold a knife, however, I want
Speaker 1: to point out point back, edge up, edge down, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to be able to push on the back
Speaker 1: of it, maybe even with my body, so I don't
Speaker 1: want spikes and stuff off the back end of the handle.
Speaker 1: You know, I could be up close and we could
Speaker 1: be engaged. Maybe the only thing I can do is
Speaker 1: push my chest into the back of the knife to
Speaker 1: make it penetrate or something like that, or maybe hit
Speaker 1: the back of the knife with my hand in order
Speaker 1: to overcome the fact that the guy's grabbing it. Learned
Speaker 1: a moment here and I need a little bit of
Speaker 1: something to push that blade through what I want to
Speaker 1: get it through. You have to think about all the
Speaker 1: variables instead of I'd like to fight with it this
Speaker 1: way or I like to fight It doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: I like, all right, It's not about me. It's about
Speaker 1: the situation and what solution is being presented by the problem.
Speaker 1: And you can see in this last nineteen years, without
Speaker 1: defining the problem accurately, what are we doing with all
Speaker 1: of this thing over nineteen years? Where's the strategy? I
Speaker 1: can't see a strategy. And my study is actually fundamentally
Speaker 1: the study of strategy. And you don't see a strategy
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Syria, I see a lot
Speaker 1: of reactions, and I see some things people want to accomplish,
Speaker 1: but the lack of understanding of the cultures and all
Speaker 1: of the vast things there that people don't understand how
Speaker 1: complicated those areas are in every way, shape and form.
Speaker 1: They're ethnically the religious complication, there's there's you know, linguistic complica.
Speaker 1: There's everything happening in these regions and without understanding that,
Speaker 1: you can't just tread in there and think you're going
Speaker 1: to you know, apply solutions blanket, which obviously hasn't worked, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can look at that scoreboard, you know,
Speaker 1: send say the last time. You already know that I
Speaker 1: carry a nose zaraku zukuri folder, but I also have
Speaker 1: you know, the fixed prime blade as well, same blade,
Speaker 1: same length, three and a half inches. My son was
Speaker 1: three and a half four and a half, which one
Speaker 1: three and a half, okay, all right? And my son
Speaker 1: was here with me, and you know, I had a
Speaker 1: parcel delivered that day, you know, typical hefty plastic with
Speaker 1: bubble lining on the inside. And he started tugging at it,
Speaker 1: and I pulled out the zookuri, flipped it open and
Speaker 1: turned it around and said, here, use this, and so
Speaker 1: we he was the thing that the whole top of
Speaker 1: it off, and then he just stood there and he
Speaker 1: looked at him and he said, Dad, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: a thing. And I thought that was a pretty good
Speaker 1: testament to how efficient these blades are. Man. Excellent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have boys and girls. I have girls, and
Speaker 1: my granddaughter daughter carries she carries one of your blades
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, and when you think about it,
Speaker 1: in my paradigm, knife is not the best personal defense tool. However,
Speaker 1: they do lots of things. I've had to cut a
Speaker 1: person out of a seatbelt when they're you know, when
Speaker 1: when their vehicle overturned. You have cut an open, open
Speaker 1: a pant's leg up, decide what happened here? Do you
Speaker 1: need to turn a kid? Can we do it with pressure?
Speaker 1: Every antilo? Do I need to open a package? Right?
Speaker 1: It's a fundamental tool of human beings that goes so
Speaker 1: far back in history we can't even look that far back, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean it was I remember when I
Speaker 1: was like six and my my grandfa looks at me
Speaker 1: and he goes, boy, a man needs a knife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thinking about self defense. And in those days, we had folders,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing locked, right, We just had you know,
Speaker 1: we had we had just these little uh pocket folders
Speaker 1: and jack Knight's we called them. One of the things
Speaker 1: we used to practice of when I got a little
Speaker 1: bit older was since you have a knighte that's going
Speaker 1: to close on your hand, you put your fau blade
Speaker 1: right in front of you know, when it opened, and
Speaker 1: then your thumb there, and you practice only moving a
Speaker 1: particular way with the knives of wind full back on
Speaker 1: your hand, man, survive some stupidity in my life. I'm
Speaker 1: not true. Why I fear that I insult you with
Speaker 1: my story about opening the parcel? Oh no, not at all.
Speaker 1: All that are used for whatever opening a parcel. I
Speaker 1: use them to open parcels, right yet, problem, not a problem.
Speaker 1: I use them to open parcels. Um and I mean
Speaker 1: it's a it's a tool. Some get more specific and
Speaker 1: with some of my knives there's no compromise for their
Speaker 1: intended purpose. But that doesn't mean they can't be used
Speaker 1: for other things. I'm just really particular about the kind
Speaker 1: of utility, you know, functions that I'll that I'll use
Speaker 1: this knife for. I mean a lot of other knives
Speaker 1: that carry I'm trying to trip twist screws off with them,
Speaker 1: you know how I know I'm going to but with
Speaker 1: the got three drivers. Yeah, this is a different story
Speaker 1: with this night from real picky about what I'll do
Speaker 1: with it? Right right? Well, again, we have to understand
Speaker 1: what tool we're using, how and why. Perfect James, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us for these episodes of
Speaker 1: Software Radio as well as George Geo My pleasure Man
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. It was fantastic. Yeah, thank you guys. And
Speaker 1: remembering what you what tiputy Greek, I can remember a fish, tostatus,
Speaker 1: I love, I love, I'm jealous. Thank you well. Used
Speaker 1: to be owning languages and I do also yeah, used them.
Speaker 1: Listening to self red Radio. New episodes up every Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday. Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter at
Speaker 1: self rep Radio