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TimLarkin90 karma

It comes down to choice, do you have choice in the situation you are thinking of? If there is choice then the choice is always to leave.Violence is only the answer when you are devoid of choice and facing imminent grievous bodily harm. This is the difference between social aggression and asocial violence. Social aggression still contains choice (albeit very unpleasant at times) Asocial Violence is imminent and can only be met with violence.

TimLarkin45 karma

Another way to think of it is "What are you training for, competition or destruction?"

Competition is amazing but requires dedication, immense amounts of training and athletic ability. This is because competition in order to work has to gamify violence. the last time I looked the UFC had 31 roles 27 of those rules dealt with injury to the human body. The goal of competition is to pit skill against skill to similarly sized biters with similar training in the competition designed to see who is a better athlete. There is no room or place for injury to the human body to exist in a competition. Injury by its very nature ends competition.

The skill set of destruction is a simple one that anybody can learn. The beauty of it is a can bypass a bigger stronger faster threat because it focuses on similar areas of the human body that are susceptible to trauma. The learning curve for distraction is very short compared to competition. Destruction is a perfect skill set for when you're facing imminent grievous bodily harm from a bigger faster stronger threat.

It's disconcerting to know that the best people in the world that murdering other humans with their bare hands or improvised tools have almost to a man zero training in combat sports or martial arts. These individuals reside in our prison system and living environment of a social violence.

If you choose a path the competition which is extremely noble it is a path that has a very steep learning curve and does favor the more athletic and genetically gifted amongst us whereas the skill sets of destruction are easily accessible to all of us even limitations to our human machines as long as we can think in move we can put an injury on another human being.

Neither competition nor destruction is better then the other it's just what tool do you need for your training goals if you're concerned with self protection than destruction is a direct path to go in your training. Do not take this as a criticism of MMA or any sort of combat sport in the competition world of nothing but admiration for those amazing athletes. Many of them come to me and asked how do you use the skills they learned to protect themselves in the street and with very little alteration unable to show them how to turn a submission move into an injury a strike into an injury or a throw into an injury. Again it's the right tool for the right job so rephrasing the question to what are your training goals is the best way to answer for yourself.

TimLarkin24 karma

After the UK riots, I was interviewed by numerous UK media sources. My comments were about the limitation on citizens to protect themselves with the current UK self-defense laws. At the end of one BBC interview, the reporter asked me if I was going to visit any of the riot sites when I came to the UK the following spring. I said that yes I was in was invited by some of my clients who are going to show me areas of the cities where they noticed the potentiality for asocial violence and they were able to get themselves and their loved ones out of there before anything happened.

This was reported very straightforwardly by most of them use sources except for the mirror. The Mirror put on an article that said "Larkin to Lead Riot Tour" and basically said that I was promoting a vigilante approach and was attempting to rabble-rouse citizens to go hunt down criminals. I laugh it off because it was outrageous and of course nobody else covered it that way, yet that article was the impetus for then Home Sec. Theresa May to issue a travel ban for me citing I was encouraging vigilantism.

The UK justice system is very different than the US and I was not able to get my case heard because of a technicality saying I didn't respond within the initial 90 day period from when the ban was ordered. Even though the government acknowledged that they doing they didn't deliver the band to me in the prescribed time the UK High Court still sided with the government in the band was enforced with a three to five-year hold.

Since this accession of Theresa May to Prime Minister spot, I've been advised not to try to resurrect the case until she is out of office.

TimLarkin24 karma

Glad you like my podcast interviews. When it comes to training kids combat sports a martial arts are excellent. The most important things that you find the right instructor. You don't want to put them in a school that treats the likely Lord of the Flies or survival of the fittest contests.

I have twin four-year-old daughters in a seven-year-old son all of them will be trained by a local Brazilian jujitsu instructor because he is excellent with kids and it will be a very positive experience for them. So for the athleticism discipline, and, lottery combat sports and martial arts provide excellent opportunities for young children. Just don't confuse it with self-protection.

Child predators are excellent at manipulating young minds. Even though martial arts and comments portray might improve a young child situational awareness it does very little to overcome a well thought out predator and his approach to getting little children to do what they want. There were many disturbing news reports of children that are put through some form of self-defense training. Then when put in the field exercise with role players almost all the children end up either getting in a car or leaving with an unfamiliar adult they just are mentally capable to overcome a predator.

My eldest son is in his early 20s and he was introduced to my system of self-protection just before his 18th birthday. I wanted him to navigate high school without the information of how to injure the human body it's been my experience that teenage males are almost uniformly too immature to be trusted with such information. Whereas I will train young girls at 11 to the threat of sexual assault against women.

When women experience violence it's the real thing there is no locker room confusion that men go through on whether or not this is a social use of violence or criminal use of violence. When women experienced violence is always criminal. Therefore it's often much easier to teach women principles and methods of destruction because they don't try to use strength, or inter male aggression or any of the things and make it harder to train men. They usually get the principles and methods quickly and clearly understand when would be the only appropriate time to ever use such information.

So in closing I'm very big on combat sports martial arts with the caveat that you find the right instructor for children. When it comes to self-protection maturity matters.

TimLarkin21 karma

When you look at a case like Charlottesville it's easy to get diverted because of the emotion, the politics, and all the drama. From my perspective of the violence we saw there, I would say, came down to a matter of choice. There both groups had opportunities to de-escalate numerous times and chose not to.

This is not about who is right or wrong this is about what might lead to violence and unintended injury because when antisocial aggression crosses the physical plane into violence we have no idea how the results will turn out.

So my view on this is very different than most people's view. I see this is an incident where two sides went into the demonstration with their own agendas and continued "to debate" each other until one side decided to use violence. When human discourse turns to antisocial aggression it usually doesn't take much to hit a tipping point to get to asocial violence.

My goal is to make sure that all of my clients understand the potentiality for violence and if you have a choice to de-escalate and get yourself out of their prior to anything like the incidents we saw in Charlottesville.

To be clear this answer is not equivocating both sides nor saying both sides were morally equal. This AMA is about how to deal with violence and the potentiality for violence. My goal in this answer is to look at a purely from that perspective so you can make better decisions for your own personal self-protection.