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TargetTargetTargetTarget----FocusFocusFocusFocus
TrainingTrainingTrainingTraining
THE ART OF HEAD TRAUMA:
DUMPS, DROPS & THROWS
TFT Thowing SeriesTFT Thowing SeriesTFT Thowing SeriesTFT Thowing Series
v3.0v3.0v3.0v3.0
Chris Ranck-Buhr
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2
TFT Group
Publication
R-WEv1
2007
Target-Focus Training Weapons Series, Volume One. All information pre-sented here is Copyright 2007 by The TFT Group. The terms Target-
Focus, TFT, TFT Group, Cause-State, Effect-State, and the TFT logo are allservicemarks sm 2002-2007 of the TFT Group. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express writ-ten permission except in the case of brief credited quotations.
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Important Note Concerning TheVideo Presentation
Why is he just standing there? Shouldnt he be
throwing a punch or grabbing you or
You dont expect him to be standing still whenit starts, and neither do we. Instead of attemptingto model all possible initial states of all possible
violent situations, we are choosing to start where
everything changes in your favorthe point whereyou cause the first injury.
If we tried to factor in all possible initial stateshe could throw at yougrappling from every an-
gle, with one, the other, or both hands (not to men-tion legs), standing up and on the ground; punching
from every angle with straight punches, hooks, up-percuts (not to mention chops, claws, hammers,and elbows); kicking with the foot, shin, knee,
backwards and forwards, out to the side, round-house and crescent; and we havent even gotten to
every permutation of knife, stick and gunwedboth just get exhausted, the video would consist of
a googol hours (thats a one with a hundred zerosafter it) and it would cost the National Debt com-
pounded through all Eternity.
Its not as useful as youd think.
Instead, what do all these bazillion possible
situations have in common?
Everything changes in your favor when you
injure him.
i
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Everything that happened or didnt happen be-fore the injury is immaterial. Once you injure him,you are in absolute control of what happens next.
Whether hes throwing a punch or you just gotpunched, whether hes pulling a knife or you justgot cut, or whether hes attempting to pull off a
Buddhas Palm Descending from low Earth orbit
once you injure him, the rest is easy.
Because now all you have to do is take out an
injured man.
And how hard is it to beat down a man with a
broken leg?
Starting from the initial injury gives us a
framework within which to illustrate a physicalexample of a principle of violence. This maxi-
mizes your ability to learn and dramatically in-
creases your chances for success.
ii
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Table of Contents
IMPORTANT NOTE CONCERNING THE VIDEO
PRESENTATION ii
Executive Summary The Big Idea 1
Forward: Head Injury Roulette 2
Introduction 6
The Goal of This Product 8
How to Use This Manual 9Training Methodology and Safety Issues 12
Why Go Slow When Everyone Knows
Real Fighting Is Fast? 12Why Go Slow II: The One Thing Missing
From TFT Training 15
Target-Focus TrainingViolence as a Survival Tool 20The Effect StateInjury & Spinal Reflexes 21
The Triad of Violence: Penetration-Rotation-Injury 24
Throwing: The Hammer of Gaia 28Techniques or Principles? 30
The Difference Between a Sport Throw
and a Combat Throw 32
Throwing as a Special Case of Striking 34The Results: Falls, Throws, and Injuries 38
Requirements for Throwing 46
Components of a Throw 52The Mechanical Definition of Balance 56The Two Throw Families 58
Slips: The Patch of Ice 58
Leg Sweeps 58Trips: The Crack in the Sidewalk 61
Direct manipulation of the CG
hip pushes and pulls 62Base-break throws 63
Drop throws 64
iii
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Hip throws 65Shoulder throws 69
The Power of the Bad Landing 70
Learn more about Target-Focus Training 74
iv
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v
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NOTES Executive Summary THE BIG IDEA
In violent situations you want to cause injury.
The primary way to do this is with impact
by striking him.
A throw is a kind of strike.
A throw is an uncontrolled (for him) fall that
results in head/cervical spine and other trauma.
You injure the man, cause him to fall and
then control the fall to maximize that trauma.
Throwing is using the planet as a bludgeon to
go straight for the brain.
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NOTES
I us
ed to have a weird little hobbycollectingnews stories about people who got knocked down,
hit their head on something, and died. It was oneof those things that started when I began training.
It was the second article I remember reading wherethis happened, and that second iteration synced upwith all of the dumping, bouncing, slamming, and
kicking of heads we were modeling on the mats,
always with the typical admonition, Dont do thisif you dont want to kill him.
I dont recall the first article I read, only the
second. It was notable in that dj vu sense, Hey,Ive seen this before... and the fact that no oneinvolved meant for anyone else to die. A man exits
a donut shop and is accosted by a beggar. The manrebukes the beggar; the beggar shoves the man and
the man falls backwards, striking his head on the
doors push bar. He later died of his injuries.
I clipped this one out and began collectingthem, a new one every two, three months or so. Icollected them until I had a fat file folder of brown,
curling newsprint. The sum total of theignominious ends of too many lives. And then,
suddenly, I lost all interest in the topic.
Why? It wasnt for a shortage of material,thats for sure. There was a surfeit of the stuff, as
if there were only so many plotlines for personalstupidity that had to be played out over and overagain. What finished it for me was that sickeningregularity, and the fact that all the stories began to
Forward: Head InjuryRoulette
Forward Head Injury Roulette
NOTESNOTES
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3TFT Throwing Series
NOTES sound the same:
A & B have a problem. B pushes A. A falls
down, brains self and dies. B is really, really sorry.
The problem was usually one that you or Icould solve given five minutes and a mug of hotcocoa; sometimes the deadly impetus was pushing,
sometimes it was a haymaker. But the last partnever wavered from what youd expect: head
bounces off something solid, person dies. Like anyhobby, youd leave it as I did; imagine if everygame of golf you played suddenly became identical
to all the games that came before it. Youd quit,
too.
Now, it must be said that many more peoplebounce their heads off of things everyday, with no
lasting effects. Ive suffered at least nineconcussions, one of which was from falling off aroof onto a brick patio (kids, tomfoolery is no
laughing matter); another was from leaving abicycle at full speed with no helmet (and no
hands!), though I did end up with a goose egg thesize of my fist on my forehead... Again, this
happens everywhere, every daypeople see lights,get dazed, or knocked out, often leaving withnothing worse than a headache. Natures brain
bucket ends up doing its job after all.
So what then, is the difference between all thatcomedy and those few unlucky deaths? How can
you keep Americas Funniest Home Videos from
becoming Faces of Death?
Heres the deal:
YOU CANT.
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NOTESTheres no way to know if its going to becomedy or tragedy; if youre just going to knockhis ass out and teach him that lesson or commit
manslaughter. The obvious variables, like speed,angle of impact, acceleration, and fitness of thetissues involved are all out of your control, at least
in any meaningful way. In other words, theres nosafe way to bounce someones head off the
concrete. The only meaningful effect you can haveon the above variables is to do it as hard as you
can.
Which is to say that bouncing peoples headsoff the sidewalk, or kicking them in the head ashard as you can when theyre down, works likegangbusters when our desired goal is non-
functionalityknocking them senseless, orunconscious, or dead. We can be assured ofnumber one, sometimes number two, andoccasionally number three. But we dont get to
pick which its gonna be this time. You can spin
the wheel as hard as you can hand hope the balllands someplace usefulbut you cant forget that
one of the colors on that wheel is black, for death.
More than anything else, this single idea colorshow we interact with violence. Its why we tellyou to let the stupid stuff slide, and, a hint: its allstupid stuff. Its why we tell you not to tear intosomeone unless youre comfortable with a terminal
outcome. Its also why I wont tolerate peopleputting their hands on me in anger on the street; Idont want to end up in one of those stupid articles,the end of everything I am reduced to three column
inches and one very, very sorry jackass.
Forward Head Injury Roulette
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NOTES
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NOTESIntroductionGravity and hard surfaces probably cause more
accidental injury than every other methodcombined. The simple fallsolo, with no helpfrom another personcan result in something as
trivial as embarrassment, or it can, in the rareoccasion when everything lines up just right, cause
death.
If we add another person into the equation,someone to shove, trip or otherwise knock down
the victim, we begin to leave the realm ofunfortunate accident and enter into the willful useof gravity and hard surfaces as a tool for violence.
We are now throwing people.
Predictably, this leads to the creation of
techniques for throwing, whole schools anddisciplines devoted entirely to its study and
perfection. The result is a forest of techniques, the
growth of a thousand treeseach one a more
interesting and impressive throw.
And for all this, a simple fact gets missed,
forgotten:
People get hurt falling down.
A throwno matter how simple or
complicated, how cool or mundaneis only asgood as the injuries it inflicts. The answer to the
question, Whats the best throw? is: The one
that puts the man down so he cant get back up.
This was our starting point for this manual and
video. Instead of demonstrating the crowd-pleasing super-impressive throws that no one butthe most coordinated, athletic and highly-trainedcould ever hope to achieve, we chose to share with
Introduction
NOTESNOTES
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NOTES you the base principles that drive all throwing. Toshow you how people fall down and get hurt, and
then show you how to help them on their way.
Let's be very clear: we are not trying todebunk or contradict any training or technique outthere; the goal of this text and video is to educate
you in throwing to cause injury. If you haveprevious experience or training, this informationwill enhance your skills and give you new ways toevaluate and apply what you already know. If youhave no experience whatsoever, this information
will give you the fundamental tools required to useyour body as an impact weapon. Either way, ourgoal with TFT is to give you the tools to allow youto come out the other side of a violent situation
alive and well.
There are many places where throwing to causeserious injury is not desirable or appropriate, the
most obvious being sporting competition andcertain law enforcement applications. In thecompetition ring, the goal is to best your opponentwith skill, speed, strength, endurance andcunningnot by causing life-long, debilitating
injury. Likewise for LE, dumping someone ontotheir head in order to break their neck is almost
always entirely inappropriate.
Throwing to cause debilitating injury is
violence. The only time this information is
appropriate and useful is in violent conflicta
situation where the goal of the people involved is
to maim or kill.
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NOTESChris Ranck-Buhr The Goal ofThis Product
In a nutshell: To keep you from having to
choose between memorizing a thousand techniques
or just giving up on throwing altogether.
If the man is standing up, hes already halfwaythere to falling down. All you have to do is knowwhere, how, and in which direction to knock him
over.
To this end, we will:
- Demystify throwing by removing it from therealm of special techniques and put it back whereit belongsas a special case of striking in order to
cause a bad fall
- Show you how to recognize the potential for a
bad fall and then make it happen
- Explain how balance works and what you
need to do to take his while keeping yours
- Give you an operational understanding of the
specific injuries youre gunning for
- Break all throwing down into the only twoways people can fallby slipping or trippinggiving you the toolset you need to build any throw
you need, on the fly, from the ground up.
NOTES
The Goal of This Product
NOTES
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9TFT Throwing Series
NOTES How to Use This ManualThis manual is meant to be used in conjunction
with the video. Either one used alone will lead togaps in understanding. The manual itself goes intogreat detail on points that are merely mentioned in
the video; likewise, reading the manual withoutseeing the principles applied to a human body inreal-time makes the whole affair unnecessarily
abstract.
The video contains all the illustrations you
could ever need to understand the manual, and viceversa. Writing about physical action is a difficulthalf measure. If you find yourself confused by any
of this textespecially when were writing about aspecific throw or throw family, your best bet is towatch the portion of the video covering the sametopic. This manual is, after all, commentary and
reference for those physical examples.
The manual is the thoughtbut the video is the
action!
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NOTESNOTESNOTES
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NOTES
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NOTESTraining Methodology andSafety Issues
Understand that the principles and techniques
illustrated in this manual and video product are fora singular purpose: to cause serious, debilitating
injury and/or death.
With that in mind, understand that practicingthem is dangerous. To minimize this inherent
danger, you will need to:
Work with a partner who understands andcan successfully model the basic concept
of the Effect State (spinal reflexes)
GO SLOW
Work in an environment that is appropriatefor safe practice (or look out for
Grandmas Hummel collection!)
DID
Why Go Slow When Everyone
Knows Real Fighting Is Fast?Because targeting is a skill.
It takes practice - you want to practice hitting
targets, dead-on, accepting no errors.
Its hand-eye coordination. Its foot-eyecoordination. Its body-space coordination. Its
being able to successfully apply your body parts in
motion to his body parts in motion.
But even more than that, its the visceral/spatial
understanding of where the targets are on his body,
and how to get to them from where you are.
NOTES
Training Methodology and Safety Issues
NOTES
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13TFT Throwing Series
NOTES This only comes from practice - slow, steady,and correct - on a real human body.
As far as practice goes, speed only mucks
things up.
Fast practice actually hinders your targeting.
Lets be real about this - on the street, in aviolent situation, youre going to strike him as hardand as fast as you can. But if you dont have the
underlying skill of targeting, you will miss and be
ineffective.
If you go fast, without the requisite underlying
wetware of targeting, you will not cause injury.
Youll smack him around instead of breaking him.
Reliable, repeatable injury ONLY occurs when
you strike a target.
Remember: Perfect practice makes perfect
performance.
So get to it - but use common sense, take careof your partner, and slow it down so you can get it
done right!
Why Go Slow II: The One Thing
Missing From TFT Training
Speed. We make you train slow, or, at least notas fast as you could go if you went full-bore. Inorder to understand why we do this, we need to
look at what's required for injury. Debilitatinginjury is the result of an interrelated chain of
factors:
You have to drive your entire mass through atarget and follow all the way through with your full
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NOTESforce and effort.
A shorthand way of stating this is:
Penetrate & rotate through a target at speed.
So that's what it takes to crush a throat, gougean eye, rupture a kidney or break a knee. All welland good until you try to figure out how to train forthat. If you keep it all as is, your 'training' isactually maiming. Every training regimen has to
remove one or more of those elements in order totrain without putting the practitioners in the
hospital. (At least on a daily basis.)
So if you're going to go fast when you train,
you have to lose something else. But what?
Take away the follow-through.
Almost no one goes here. You still have
bodyweight on a target at speedtrain like this &even without the follow-through someone's going
to lose an eye.
Take away the target.
This is a typical padded-up sparring session. Ifwe make the target indistinct, we can run aroundand hit each other pretty hardbut the minute it alllines up right, someone's screwed. You're also
training to cause generic, non-specific trauma:bumps, bruises, lacerations, etc., and not the kind
that results in a reliable state-change in the man.
Take away the bodyweight.
This is a slap-fight. You're swatting attargets... but without your mass, there's nothing to
compress the tissue, and effect the kind of volume
Training Methodology and Safety Issues
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NOTES change that breaks, tears, and ruptures anatomy.Some targets, like the eyes, throat and groin canstill be injured practicing like this, which is why
they'll almost always end up 'off limits' for safety.
The problem is that the result you're reallygunning for is only ever going to occur through
accidentwhen all the elements are present atspeed. In other words, if you remove anything elseother than speed, you're not training to get the
results you need in violence.
And the funny part is that speed is the one
thing everyone walks in the door with. It's the onlything on the list that you don't have to train. The
other elements, yesno one walks in with goodtargeting, or the ability to control their mass suchthat they can drive it like a battering ram whilemaintaining balance, or the proper mechanics toreally sink it with complete follow through. These
things have to be learned.
And once you learn them, you just add the speed
which you already had to begin withand you end up
with injury, any time, every time.
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NOTESIn Summary
People get hurt falling down
Throwing is making them fall down on
purpose in order to cause serious injury
In order to practice this safely:
Work with a willing partner who knows
how to fall
Work in an appropriate environment
(matted floors, etc.)
GO SLOW
Training Methodology and Safety Issues
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NOTES
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18
NOTESTarget-Focus Training Violence as a SurvivalTool
The goal of violence is debilitating injury -injury that fundamentally changes the normal
functioning of his body and will require medical
attention.
Target-Focus Training is a trainingmethodology by which you can learn to wield
violence as a survival tool. In short, this means wecan teach you how to injure people.
TFT is not self-defense or a combat style. We
are not interested in defending against an attackeror competition with a persons skill, speed, or
physical ability. We are not interested in modeling
all the possible variables found in a fight. Instead,we are only ever interested in injuring people. Real
criminal violence is not about competition, it is
about destruction.
Violence is the use of physical force to cause
an injury.
A violent situation would be one in which theparties involved are trying to injure each other,typically with the prevailing party maiming or
killing others.
Simply put, the best way to survive a violent
situation is to be the one doing it.
NOTES
Violence as a Survival Tool
NOTES
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19TFT Throwing Series
NOTES EFFECT STATE Targets &Spinal Reflexes
Nothing changes in your favor until you injure
him; once youve injured him all thats left to do is
take out an injured man.
You will be causing injury by striking orotherwise affecting targets, anatomical weak pointsof the hu-man body that are naturally susceptible to
trauma, typically with cascading effects to otherbody sys-tems - causing an interruption of normal
function. For example, a blow to the solar plexuswill interrupt normal breathing; he cant walk with
a broken knee; gouging the eyes will blind him.
In addition, there is a single universal effectthat all targets have in common: a spinal reflex in
re-sponse to injury.
A spinal reflex is an involuntary, pre-programmed movement, specific to each target,
that is acti-vated in response to injury through a
threshold switch in the top of the spinal cord.
It does not involve the brain proper, orconscious thought. If you kick a man in the groin,rupturing one or both testicles, he will bend hisknees, put his hands over his groin, and bendforward at the hips with his chin up - even if he
doesnt want to.
Knowing targets, how to affect them to cause
injury, and the associated spinal reflex grants you
two major advantages:
1. You deny him control over his own body
2. You can predict what he will do nextbymaking him do it.
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NOTESFor example, say youre facing a man who isbigger than you, stronger than you - hell, hes evenmeaner than you. And he has a knife. How could
you possibly overcome his superior size andstrength? His cruel tenacity? And whats he going
to do with that knife?
All those question marks vanish with a hardboot to the groinhis size and strength aremeaning-less as he momentarily loses consciouscontrol over his body to execute a picture-perfectgroin reac-tion. Hes still mean - but he cant do
anything with it. His will has been trumped by thethreshold switch at the top of his spine.
And whats he doing with that knife?
Hes a doing a groin reaction is what hes
doing.
Find your next target while hes busy, injure
him again and repeat until satisfied.
In Summary...
Target-Focus Training is:
A training method to learn how to use
violence
Not competition, sport, or fighting
How to use violence to hurt another human
The Effect-State is:
A response to injury
Involuntary reaction
Predictable
NOTES
Violence as a Survival Tool
NOTES
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NOTES
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NOTESThe Triad of Violence:Penetration-Rotation-Injury
Techniques are worthless; how many ways are
there to kick a man in the groin?
Theres only one way to kick a man in the
groin - as hard as you can.
You can be in front of him, off to his side,behind him, standing, sitting, on the floor, etc.Though there may be thousands of techniques for
getting it done, the base answer is always the same.As hard as you can!
Beneath all possible violent techniques thereare three common elements. Effective violence
starts with penetration, drives it home with rotation,
and winds up with injury.
Penetration
In order to injure someone with your barehands, you need to be near enough to touch him.Pen-etration gets you to him and through him and
beyond; getting you right on top of him,dominating his space, driving him off balance andmaximizing kinetic force for injury. You want to
penetrate so youre standing where he used to be.
RotationThis is the follow-through; rotation is how
youre going to take his balance and beat him down
with it. Its the drive all the way through the ribs
you just broke by penetrating, above.
Injury
The ultimate goal of violence; this is what youget when you penetrate to a target and rotate
The Triad of Violence
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23TFT Throwing Series
NOTES through it. And then hes locked into spinalreflexes as discussed above.
Injury is the light at the end of the tunnel. It isthe bright hole in a dark shroud of chaos; it is theway through, the way out, the way back home to
your loved ones.
Lets take a look at how the three snap togetherinto the triad of violence with the following
example:
You step in and punch him in the solar plexus,
then grab his hand and break his wrist, slamminghim down into the concrete.
This is really two iterations of penetration-
rotation-injury:
You step in (penetrate through his space) &punch him (rotating your torso to throw the punchand follow all the way through) in the solar plexus
(thereby causing an injury to the target).
You then grab his hand (penetrating) and breakhis wrist (with rotation & complete follow-through
to cause the injuryas well as additional injuriesfrom the fall).
Effective use of violence as a survival tool willalways include this triadit powers everythingfrom striking to joint breaking and throwing. It
exists in the use of extraneous tools like knife,stick, curb, etc. The triad of violence makes it all
work for you.
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NOTESIn Summary...
Violent techniques have three components:
Penetration (maximizing force)
Rotation (follow-through)
Injury
The Triad of Violence
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NOTES
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NOTESThrowing: The Hammer ofGaia
Throwing is one of those things thatsimultaneously delights and intimidates a crowd.
On the one hand, it looks greata smaller personsteps through a larger person and then, as if bymagic, hurls the bigger man to the ground in a
mysterious flurry of limbs and blurred motion.
We all know theres no way the smaller personcould pick up the larger; that means it must beeither magic or highly advanced skill. And this, ofcourse, is the intimidating partpeopleimmediately assume they cannot hope to replicatewhat they just saw without years of work, bulging
muscles, robes covered in black sashes with gold-fringed epaulets, and, not to mention, a law-
professor-load of certificates papering their walls.
Nothing could be further from the truththrowing is as simple as knocking people down.
Its doing the work of a patch of ice or a crack inthe sidewalk.
Its simply recognizing when people arewindmilling at the top of that last stair and givingthem a good, hearty shove down the flight. What
happens next is just the laws of the universe
screwing with them.
All throws, from the simplest takedown to themost complex example of free flying lessons arisefrom the same set of rulessimple, easy rules
anyone can remember, recognize and master.
NOTES
Throwing The Hammer of Gaia
NOTES
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27TFT Throwing Series
NOTES And the best part is, between gravity and theground, youve got a fool-proof weapons system atyour disposal thats always on and everywhere you
go.
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28
NOTESTechniques or Principles?
Smooth performance of throws does not
involve 'doing a technique' but rather recognizingopportunities to manipulate balance into a fall,seeing a through-path from where you both are
now into either a slip or a trip.
If he's already moving, he's already falling
saving it is a matter of him getting his legs backunder him. Sticking your wooden shoe in hisgears, either by preventing him from getting his
feet under him or knocking him down, istechnically a throw.
With two bodies in motion you don't reallyhave time to sort through a mass of techniques
looking for just the right one you need to be ableto take full advantage of where you're both going to
break his structure and put him down.
This ends up looking very much like a specifictechnique; many of us have had training partners
ask, "Can you show me that throw you just did?"This becomes difficult because what happened was
correct for that specific set of circumstances thatone time, it was merely the recognition ofopportunity followed by the application of a few
simple rules.
If I show you three throws, then you knowthree throws. Sometimes they'll work, and
sometimes they won't. They'll work best when theinitial state was amenable to that particular throw;they'll fail when you try to shoe-horn it into a set ofcircumstances that are not favorable to pulling it
off.
Techniques or Principals
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NOTES If, instead, I show you:
1. How to recognize the opportunity for a
throw, and
2. The few simple rules to take advantage of
that opportunity,
well, then you know every throw you'll ever
need in a combat situation.
Of course, 'knocking people down' isn't nearlyas cool as knowing 50 different throws that you can
practice by the numbers, one through 50, for anadmiring crowd. But being able to put anyone in
the world down so they can't get back up is farmore effective and, training-wise, far more easilyachieved. It's the difference between a two-step
process to learn every throw and a 50-step process
to learn 50 throws.
Just as emptying a clip into a man's chest isn'tas 'cool' as trick-shooting a slug through a tossed
50-cent piece, effectiveness and looking good are
often at opposite end of the spectrum.
One is good when ego is involved and you'remaking friends and influencing people, the other
when someone wants to kill you.
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NOTESThe Difference Between aSport Throw and aCombat ThrowThe following facts hold true no matter
what the tool:
In a nutshell, its the end result.
The goal of a sport throw is to up-end youropponent, to change the orientation between the
two of you to one that puts you in an advantageousposition while simultaneously putting him in an
awkward one. Imagine any number of wrestling,Jiu-Jitsu, or mixed martial arts takedowns. The
players are typically looking to disrupt balance,take each other off their feet and down to thecanvas in such a way that facilitates the setting of a
painful joint lock or choke-out technique in order
to subdue and win the match.
Youre looking to turn an equal situation, both
of you standing, into an unequal oneone guy
down with the other lording it over him.
The goal of a combat throw is to land the manon his head to directly injure the brain and neck.Youre looking for everything from a fractured
skull with a concussion to severe head trauma(bleeding in the brain) and a broken neck. In other
words, youre putting him down in such way thathe cant get back up. Think in terms of traumaticsports injuries and the rare instances in which a
tackle or sport throw goes terribly wrong andsomeone gets a broken neck. In terms of the sport
this is an awful accidentit wasnt supposed to
end like thisbut in terms of illustrating what wewant out of a combat throw, these are the rare
Sports Throw vs Combat Throw
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NOTES instances where everything went exactly right.
This is taking advantage of circumstances touse his own mass as a hammer to break him against
the anvil of the entire world.
The desired outcome colors the execution ofthe throw. In sport, throws are not meant to cause
career- or life-ending injuries; a lot of care andattention is given to throwing safely, to ensure that
the man can tuck his head, roll with it, and not getunduly wrecked in the process. This necessitateslarge arcs to create enough space and time for your
opponent to land the throw successfully. Incombat, throws are meant to cripple and kill. To
this end they need to be targeted, e.g., aiming thehead at the ground, and need to be sharp and tightto ensure that there is no slop or room for the other
guy to weasel out of the desired impact.
The state of the man being thrown also changes
the manner of execution. For a sport throw, youllbe doing it to a man who has all his powers and
faculties at his disposalyou will be competingstrength to strength, speed to speed, technique to
technique. Miss your timing and you could end upgetting countered. This changes the nature of thethrow into one that is essentially a struggle for
balance; the advantage will tend to go to thesuperior competitor. When your life is on the line,you cant afford to enter into such a strugglefor a
combat throw, you must start with prior injury.The injured man will not have his powers and
faculties at his disposal. This changes the basicnature of the throw from a struggle for balance to a
purely mechanical exercise of dumping him on his
head. Without the struggle, you are free to
concentrate on technical accuracy; you have the
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NOTESopportunity to set up and execute the throw withoutany say or undue resistance on his part. There will
be no countering, or fancy break-fall. Just
wreckage.
While combat throws are not appropriate forcompetitionpurposely landing an opponent on
his head in an effort to break his neck obviouslyviolates the rules of good sportsmanshipalmostall good competition throws can be turned into
combat throws. Its really as simple as:
1) Start with prior injury,
2) Tighten it up, and
3) Specifically target the head.
Tighten it up means removing the spacebetween the two of you to shorten the arc of thethrow, reducing his ability to tuck and roll with it.You want to remove as much slack as possible; ifyoure moving and hes not, then youve got space
and slack between the two centers of gravity. Whatyou want is a nice, tight integration of your two
centers of gravity into a single systemwhen youmove, you move him, too.
Specifically target the head means to aim it at
a spot on the groundand then drive it straight intothat point. Its the X youre going to bounce his
head off of. This is the opposite of the typicalcompetition throw approach of up-end theopponent to flat-back him on the mats. In one,
youre simply looking to alter his orientation. Inthe other youre looking for head trauma. Its
enormous target (the entire body) vs. small target
(the head).
Sports Throw vs Combat Throw
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NOTES A great example of this can be seen in theclassic hip throw. For competition, youd want toround it off at arms length and roll him around
your hip in a large arc so he can transition overonto his back and hit the mats flat. In combatyoud want to keep it tight, in close, so you can see
-saw and pop him into the air for just enough hang-time to allow you to ride him down, dropping to
one knee as you pile-drive the top of his head into
the concrete.
Unfortunately, most combat throws make for
terrible and inappropriate competition throws, forall the obvious reasons cited above. The two skillsets do have a lot in commonthey both requirecoordination, timing, and training, chiefly for the
physical understanding of how to take someonesbalance while maintaining your ownbut in the
end, truly, they are worlds apart.
Throwing someone to not hurt them is a very
different thing from throwing to kill.
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NOTESThrowing as a SpecialCase of Striking
When looking at throwing from a technique-
based perspective, it appears to be its owndiscipline, removed from other aspects of violence.A throw looks like nothing else its much easierto see the connection between striking and joint
breaking. Stomping an ankle looks like a strike, as
does hammering the back of an elbow to break it.But a throw... a throw must be a discrete
technique, unlike any other method of injury, right?In reality, throwing is nothing more than a
special case of striking. Striking, as we define it, is
applying bodyweight in motion through an
anatomical target in order to break it:
Striking = penetration + rotation through a
target
When that target is a joint at the pathological
limit, i.e., its at the end of its range of motion andcant bend any further in that direction, we get a
joint break:
Joint breaking = penetration + rotation
through a joint
For throwing, the only change is in the targetthe target ceases to be a piece of anatomy and
becomes a component of balance:
Throwing = penetration + rotation through
structure
With the goal of disrupting balance to initiate
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NOTES and accelerate a fallan aimed and assistedcollision with the ground, typically isolating aspecific piece of anatomy or cluster of targets (like
the head) for that collision. Instead of smashingourselves through that anatomy (as in a vanilla
strike) were going to smash it against the ground.
We can also look at this progression from the
striking side:
Striking applied to a target causes injury
Striking applied to a joint at the pathological limit
breaks it
Striking applied to structure is a throw
With the end of the throw resulting in injury.
The question, of course, is wheres the bodyweight? We know that in a typical strike (like a
shin through the groin) you dont just want toswing your leg up, you want to drive your entiremass through those testicles, his pelvis, his center
of gravity, with everything youve got. Thatswhat causes anatomy to fail and gets an injury. So
wheres your body weight in a throw? Your bodyweight will typically be used as a battering ram to
buckle his structurethink of kicking his legs out
from under him, tripping him or body-checkinghim to knock him off balance (or maybe a lotta-bit
of all three). When he falls it will be hisbodyweight in motion that smashes his own anatomyagainst the ground. If you dump a man on his
head, his mass becomes his own worst enemy. Topile on even more, you can use your own mass as
wellriding him down as he fallsso he hits as if
he weighs twice as much.
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NOTESRotation also plays a key part, both in takinghis balance and in accelerating his fall. If youshove someone off balance in a straight line
simply pushing them backwards its a very easything for them to figure out where to put their footdown behind them to catch their balance. So easy,
in fact, its an automatic response they wont evenhave to think about. Their body will naturally
move and set the foot in exactly the right placeevery time. Instead of pushing him straight back,lets say you grab the injured man by the hair and
pull his head around and down to your hip and then
towards the ground behind you in a descending arcor, even better, a decreasing spiral. With thisadded rotation and the body has a harder time
figuring out where to put the foot, and even if itgets it right its only right for that small moment
before the CG gets twisted past the base again.
Because you used a descending, decreasing spiralhis weight will make that foot stick, e.g., he wont
be able to pick it up and place it again to catch his
ever-changing balance situation. In short:
Linear loss of balance > easy to catch
Rotational loss of balance > difficult to catch
It also means we dont have to travel as far to
take his balance. If you shove him backwards three(linear) feet to make him stumble he ends up threeor more feet away from you and now you have
to play catch-up and run after him to keep him offbalance or effect a throw. With rotation, you can
easily describe a three-foot arc around you, morethan enough to take his balance and effect a throw
without having to take a single step. This
allows you to throw in close quarters as well as
stay right on top of him once you put him down.
NOTES
Sports Throw vs Combat Throw
NOTES
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NOTES
Rotation also allows us to accelerate his fall.Left to his own devices, hell go down at thegravitational constant. With rotation, we can makehim fall faster, and that means hell hit harder. Ifyou take him through an arc when you throw him,
youll actually accelerate him into the throw; formaximum effect youll want to use thatdescending, decreasing spiral throwing him onan arc that gets tighter, curling in on itself, to getthe most out of rotation. This idea can readily be
seen in drop, hip and shoulder throws where weakor large rotation makes the throw seem to losesteam halfway through. When done with a nice,tight spiral the man picks up speed and gets
whipped into the ground instead of simply falling.This allows you to load him with as much kineticenergy as possible before he lands. The more kE
he has in him, the more he breaks when he hits.
In Summary
Throwing is a special case of striking
Instead of striking a target, youre striking
through his structure to make him fall
Injury occurs when he hits the ground
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NOTESThe Results: Falls,Throws, and Injuries
Why Bother?
This is actually a great question. Throwingsure does look like a lot of effortand while any
actual exertion is an illusion, it does take a little bitof know-how, as well as some set up. Why go to
all that effort when you could just punch him in the
throat and be done with it?
Well, like most things in violence, were in it
for the injury.
Throwing people into the ground gives us somebig payback for that (small) effortnamely, headtrauma. Its the only way, absent a baton or
firearm, that we can get right at that brain. Weregoing for concussion, skull fracture, and serioushead injuriesbleeding in the brain. To be bluntabout it, we throw people to crack their skull open
and kill them.
On the way there well get some other injuriesas well. Going head-first into the ground with allhis bodyweight over him (ass over teakettle) isnt
going to do his neck any good, so we can gun forsome cervical injuries as well. Not to mention theadded bonus injuries hell get when he reachesout to break his fallsprains, dislocations and
breaks of the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder to
name a few possibilities; we can also end up withthe same kinds of injuries in the legs, all the way
up to broken bones.
Lastly, injured people dont operated well onthe ground (not that theyre any good anywhere
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NOTES elseits just worse for the downed man; harder toget his bodyweight into the equation, etc.). Thestanding person can very easily engage more
bodyweight against the downed manthroughstomps and knee drops, upping the severity of
further trauma.
So, a single strike applied through his structurecan get you multiple injuries, some life-threateningly serious, put him into a vulnerable
position and allow you to really ramp up whateveryou do next. Thats a lot of gain for a single strike.
The punch to the throat, on the other hand, gets youa single injury that will take time to manifest fully.
Throwing is the injury multiplier; it magnifies
your efforts.
Its Not the Fall, But the Sudden Stop at
the End
Injuries from simple falls can be fickle things.
Sometimes you bounce back without a scratch,and sometimes youre dead. A common thread
in the news, if you pay attention over a longenough time, is the odd fatality resulting from
a relatively trivial altercation. The stories arealways the same: A and B get into a
disagreement and go to blows, B catches A
with a solid right hook to the head, A fallsdown, brains himself on the street and later
dies. This is almost always the result of an
uncontrolled fall, that is, the man lostconsciousness because of the initial blow to the
head and fell to the ground without trying to
catch himself, striking his head on the
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NOTESconcrete. The initial injury is usually small a concussion but directly contributes to themajor injury that ends up killing the man,
usually intracranial bleeding. For every one of
these tragedies, there have to be thousandsupon thousands of fistfights that dont result in
death, legions of heads bouncing off of hard
surfaces with no lasting ill-effects.
There are two important lessons to take from
the information above:
1. Throwing is not trivial it actually
kills people, and
2. In order to get the results we want, we
need to throw injured people.
This means that if you dont want to kill the
man, dont knock him down and bounce his
head off the sidewalk; if you do want to kill
him, then make sure hes injured ahead of time
and that his fall is, for him, uncontrolled.
This is the essence of making an accidenthappen on purpose its sussing out all the
awful things that lined up just right when
people died and turning them into a checklist.
Injuries Typically Associated With Falls
Unless hes unconscious, the man will usuallytry to catch his fall by extending his hands and
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NOTES arms. For throws that are untargeted (that is,not isolating the head for impact) and/orotherwise restricting his ability to catch his fall
(dislocating his shoulder as you throw him),
the initial impact will be to the hands and arms,making serious head injury less likely. It does,
however, make injury to the extremities highly
likely:
- Sprained or broken fingers and/or wrist(s)
- Sprained or dislocated shoulder
- Broken clavicle (collar bone)
The last two (shoulder injuries) are the results
of landing on either a locked-straight arm
(elbow completely extended) or the shoulderitself.
Should the torso strike the ground as a result of
failure to catch the fall, we can momentarily
stun the diaphragm:
- Wind knocked out
If he lands face-first, whether as a targeted
throw or happenstance, we can cause cranio-facial injuries:
- Broken nose, teeth, zygomatic arch(cheekbones), mandible (jaw)
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NOTESIf he lands on his head, with his body weighteither driving him down or transitioning overhis head after it strikes the ground, we can
cause neck injuries, leading to impairment,
and, in the most energetic and severe cases,death:
- Sprained, dislocated or broken cervical spine(neck)
The most serious injury, and the one usually
targeted for, is traumatic brain injury (TBI). Ifwe understand that for the purposes of combat
the goal is the shutdown of the human brain, it
stands to reason that hurling it against theplanet is the most direct way, without the aid
of other tools, of achieving this goal. It is the
primary purpose of throwing we hope for itin untargeted throws, we make it happen in
targeted ones. TBI includes:
- Concussion (for impairment and loss of
consciousness)
- Intracranial bleeding (for impairment, loss ofconsciousness and death)
For our purposes a skull fracture is a side-effect of TBI. Its not a necessary component.
The target is the brain, and if the case gets
cracked while we wreck it, thats just fine... butits not the goal, but rather a symptom of the
goal.
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NOTES A typical combat throw is going to differ froma simple fall in that the man will be injuredbefore throwing, increasing the chances of
further injury. An untargeted combat throw (a
simple takedown) will very often result inseveral of the injuries listed above a
sprained wrist, a jammed shoulder and a mild
concussion, for example. Targeted throws,obviously, cause a specific injury, or cluster of
injuries, to the targeted anatomy. If you up-
end the man and drive him down into the
ground face-first, for example, you can expectcranio-facial, cervical spine and brain injuries.
Again, the entire point of a targeted throw to
begin with.
While it is possible that the man may break
long bones in the arm(s) (radius, ulna,humerus) or sustain fractures in the feet, ankles
and/or knees in throws that toss him ass over
teakettle (thereby accelerating the feet/knees
through a large arc and into the ground), were
not going to rely on such things. Yes, they canhappen, and if they do well gladly take
advantage of them. In the end theyre unlikelyside-effects to the injuries were after and
those injuries will be more than sufficient to do
the job.
Done right, hes not getting back up. Broken
arm or no.
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NOTESIn Summary
The goal of throwing is debilitating injury
These injuries are the same ones that can
occur in simple falls:
Broken or sprained fingers and/or wrist(s)
Sprained or dislocated shoulder
Broken clavicle (collar bone)
Momentary inability to breathe (wind
knocked out)
Sprained or broken cervical spine (neck)
Traumatic Brain Injury (concussion,
intracranial bleeding)
Targeted throws make specific injuries
much more likely
NOTES
The Results Falls, Throws and Injuries
NOTES
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NOTES
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NOTESRequirements forThrowing
Ideally, throwing a man is as easy as
recognizing that the opportunity for a fall exists,and then stepping in, and through, to exploit a setof advantageous circumstances to make that fall areality, and to make it as bad for him as possible.If a man is leaning or stepping in a certain
direction, its easier to effect a throw that keepshim moving in the direction hes already going, for
example, you just need to trip or shove him to turnthat motion into a fall. On your end, there are threethings you must do to make this work as simple
and effective as possible: you have to want toseriously injure him (intent), you have to injure him
before (or while) going for the throw (prior injury),and you have to use your mass to effect the throw
(body weight in motion).
Intent
You have to want to plow him into the groundwith everything youve got and bounce his head off
the planet to shut him off. If youre worried aboutkilling him, youll botch the throw. Just rememberall those articles weve looked at the in past (and,
sadly, well see in the future) about people gettinginvolved in monkey politics, striking their head onthe ground and ending up in a coma or dead. Thisis what youre gunning for. Go for it 100% or notat all. Going after it half-hearted or half-assed can
get you killed. Remember, throwing without aresulting injury is horseplay. Its worthless to you
in a life-or-death situation.
If you dont want him to strike his head on theplanet, then dont throw him. Period. Throwing,
Requirements for Throwing
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NOTES as a method of causing fight-ending injury, isnt aparlor trick that somehow dissuades a would-bemurderer from finishing the job on you just
because you tossed him. If youre throwing him inan attempt to impress him with your skill and cowhim into submission then you better pray that the
situation was truly social in nature, and all part of anasty misunderstanding... and even then, what good
is it to make him afraid if, for the sake of argument,
hes armed with a firearm?
What would you do if someone made you fear
for your life while you had a gun in your pants?
What makes you think hell do anything
different? Human is human, and knowing that, youneed to keep things streamlined and throw for theright reasons. If youre going to throw someoneits to knock them unconscious, kill them or makeit otherwise impossible for them to get back up.
Youre throwing them to do the most damagepossible with your bare hands. Youre throwingthem because its exactly like smashing their skullwith a concrete club that weighs as much as they
do.
If you wouldnt have the wherewithal to crushtheir skull with a chunk of concrete on the end of a
steel pole, swung overhand in both fists, then youshouldnt be throwing them. If such a thing seemsinappropriate, you shouldnt be doing violence at
all.
Lack of intent is a self-fulfilling prophecyif
you dont want to hurt him, you wont. Youll pullit, youll hesitate to land him on his head, youll
blow it. And for the other guy, thats an
opportunity to do it to you. Its his chance to pullthe gun you didnt know he had and use it to save
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NOTEShis life by ending yours.
Go in with the intent to wreck him, and youwill. Youll put him down so he cant get back up,or do much of anything at all. Which is exactly
why you bothered to throw him in the first place.
Prior Injury
No one wants to get thrownputting it on the
uninjured man is wrestling. Injury ensurescompliance and negates intelligent break-falls &slap-outs; unless hes unconscious hell still
reflexively reach out to stop his fall, getting youthose extra injuries to the proffered limb. The
injured man doesnt actively resist the throw (inany meaningful way, in other words, the injuredman cant counter) and he doesnt do a nice tuck,
roll and slap-out at the end. He just eats concrete.
Injury is the difference between throwing awild animal or a sack of potatoes. Throwing a manwho is in full control of his body is a difficult anddangerous feat. Its not impossibleit just
requires strength, training, and skill. Throwing a
man who is injuredbusy reacting to beingbroken, semiconscious or on his way to beingunconsciousquickly reduces things to the physicsof the situation. It leaves you free to concentrate
on the throw proper, how best to angle, drive and
land the throw to get the worst outcome for him.
Look at it this way: which would you rather doif your life depended on the outcome? Try tothrow a man whos going to actively resist you or
knock down a blind man?
Prior injury means youre always throwing
injured people. And thats just easy work.
Requirements for Throwing
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NOTES Body Weight in Motion
Throwing, as a special case of striking, meansall the usual rules still apply. Its never going to bemass against massyoull apply your mass againsta leverage point in his structure to get him moving,
falling, and then add your mass in motion to his to
accelerate his fall.
This is also a backhanded way to keep youfrom using your strength against his, or against hismass or inertia. If youve done your job properly
to this point, the strength-to-strength problemshould already be solvedprior injury should have
taken care of that. But people tend to go stupidbiomechanically speakingin the realm ofpersonal combat and forget what their body knowsnaturally. To the point, ask someone to move arefrigerator and theyll tend to employ their entire
mass, using the power of their legs, squatting lowto get their center of gravity below the fridges,using their arm strength to clamp themselves to thefridge. Ask them to move a person and its allmonkey-slapping with the prime movers being arm
strength. Because what were talking about herehas nothing to do with social dominance, andeverything to do with unbalancing and moving amass, your best bet is to throw that injured guy thesame way youd tip a fridge. Use your massand
the chassis of your legs and hipsto get himmoving while saving your arm strength as the
clamps to tie the two of you together.
In other words, youre going to hang onto himwith your hands and arms, but youre going to
throw him with your entire mass.
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NOTESIn Summary
Throwing requires:
Intent (the desire to cause injury)
Prior injury (its easier to throw an injured
man)
Body weight in motion (to break his
structure, displace him, and drive the
throw)
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NOTES
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NOTESComponents of a Throw
If we think only of the most base requirements fora throw intent, prior injury, and body weight we have you simply shoving an injured man to the
ground. Its almost the oldest trick in the book.(The oldest trick in the book is where your friendgets down on all fours behind him as you shove sohe trips over your friend and falls over backwards.)While not bad theres a reason its still in the
book its not optimal, either. Theres nothing,
other than perhaps the prior injury, that says hecouldnt conceivably catch his balance and arresthis fall, or fail to break anything important when hehits the ground... all weve done with those base
requirements is shove him into accident territory.With prior injury and a good shove chances arehell smack his head. And chances are he wont.
By failing to turn this accident into a purpose we
have left the outcome up to chance.
And thats not good enough if lives are on the
line.
A real combat throw is more than a happyaccident its making the accident happen in theworst way possible for him. Youre going to get
things going with intent, prior injury, and bodyweight in motion, and then youre going to finishthem off by breaking his structure, taking his
balance, aiming a target at the ground, and
accelerating his fall.
Break his structure.
All things being equal, hed prefer to stand upwith his center of gravity stacked up on top of his
Components of a Throw
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NOTES legs. When everything sits nice and neat like this CG over legs over base he can easilymaintain his balance and move his weight around
at will. You want to break his structure knockone of these pieces out of alignment. This can be
buckling his leg so he starts to collapse, or
knocking his CG past his feet (base) so thingsarent stacked up so nice and neat anymore. When
done properly, youve interrupted the normalrelationship between his CG and his base such thathe cant reacquire a nice stable system of balance
without stepping, moving, or laying down, i.e., it
doesnt count as broken structure if he can simplyshift back into balance.
Imagine kicking a leg out from under a stool,
or kicking the stool over. This is your bodyweightstriking through either his base or his CG to get
him moving or make him vulnerable to a fall.
Take his balance.
Start the fallthis usually happens in
conjunction with breaking his structure, but not
always. It gets its own entry so you dont forget it.Take his balance and dont inadvertently give it
backuse it to wreck him. In other words, dontbreak his structure and then grab onto him and hold
him up so that he comes back into balance. Keephim moving into the throw, with the new
equilibrium of balance occurring when he smacks
down at the end.
Aim the target at the ground.
Isolate a single body part for impact usually
the head, but can also be a single shoulder (from
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NOTESthe side), the scapula (shoulder blade), the coccyx(tailbone), among others. Aim, in this case, is atwo-part deal, with an X marks the spot on the
ground and a projectile that youre hurling at that X(the anatomical target). Your job is to make surethe two connect as precisely, and as hard, as you
can.
Its better to have a specific target (landingsurface) in mind than notyoull be more likelyto get the injuries you want on the street & morelikely to give your reaction partner direction for
their break-fall on the mats. Simply tossing peoplewith no idea of how theyll land tends to result inno injury on the street and serious injury on themats. Murphys Law. Youre the one doing the
throwyou should know how hes going to land.
Accelerate his fall.
Add your body weight & rotation to the mix.This is one of the features that makes throwing sodevastating: youll have his body weight in motionfor the strike, and can add yours in as well. This
doubles his mass for the fall & final impact.Imagine youre striking people while weighing 400
pounds with fists of concrete. Thats the picture.
Also, accelerating him into the throw screws withthe timing of his catch-fall reflex. Chances are his
arm will be late for the party, though his brain will
get there just in time.
Using these specific protocols, we can turn any
shove-and-fall accident into an effective combatthrow with minimal training. If you grab theinjured man by the hair, or neck, and buckle his leg
by driving through it with your own and then ridehis head down into the concrete with your entire
Components of a Throw
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NOTES mass either shoving it away to accelerate it tobounce it off the ground or simply landing on it you have a targeted and controlled sequence of
events that make serious head injury as likely aspossible. Now youre leaving nothing to chance,
replacing all the variables with constants.
Instead of shoving and hoping for the best,youre going to take charge of the situation to do
your worst.
In Summary
Throwing consists of these four components:
Break his structure
Take his balance
Aim the target at the ground
Accelerate his fall
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NOTESThe Mechanical Definitionof Balance
When we say structure were really talking
about upsetting the mans balance by changing therelationship between the two components of
balance, the base and the Center of Gravity (CG).The base is defined by the area under and betweenhis feet; the CG is, for our rough purposes right
now, located just above the pelvis. So, as long ashis hips (or most of his mass) stays above his feet,
hes fine. Should either one of those move suchthat his CG is no longer over his base, hell start tofall. (And try to regain his balance by stepping to
move his base back under his CG. This is typicallysomething well take advantage of either bymaking it impossible for him to step (sweeping theleg or driving him down so he cant step, or, in ahip throw where well supply the base, giving us
total control over it) or otherwise intercepting the
foot.)
This means we have two ways to go: we caneither blast his base out from under his CG, or push
his CG so it falls outside his base. And so we havetwo basic families of throws: slips and trips.
Slips are just like the patch of icethe feet
shoot out from under the CG and he falls.
Trips are like the crack in the sidewalkthe
feet hold still while the CG falls outside the base.
And thats it. It doesnt get any morecomplicated than that. All the myriad throws,
techniques, options, variations, whips, dumps,drops, tosses and rolls are really just doing one of
two thingsbase out from under CG or CG falling
The Mechanical Definition of Balance
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NOTES past base. Period.
In Summary
Balance consists of two components:
The base (the area under and between his
feet)
The Center of Gravity (CGa point just
above his hips)
Balance is maintained as long as:
The CG stays over the base (hips over
feet)
The base stays under the CG (feet under
hips)
This gives rise to the only two kinds of
throws:
Slips (base comes out from under CG
the patch of ice)
Trips (CG falls outside basethe crack in
the sidewalk)
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NOTESThe Two Throw Families
Slips: The Patch of Ice
Leg Sweeps
This is making his base come out from underhis CG having his feet come out from under his
hips. The simplest operational expression of thisidea is the leg sweep pushing, pulling or kicking
one or both of his legs out from under him to takehim down. While leg sweeps can be spectacular in
an ass-over-teakettle sort of way, there are twoissues you have to take into consideration whenexecuting them: picking up vs. kicking out &
reliable targeting of injury.
Pick Up or Kick Out?
It all depends on where his weight is. A legthat is not bearing weight, whether due to injury or
the fact that youre catching it mid-stride (in theair) is easy to hook, pick up, push or pull to takehim down. In that case youre just moving the
weight of his leg, and the rest of him just falls. Ifhe does have his weight on it, youre not going to
be able to do any of that. The leg will stick,anchored to the ground by his mass resting (or intransition) above it. In that case, youre going tohave to strike it out from under him, with your
entire mass, with something akin to a shin kick toblow through the leg or full body check whileviolently displacing his feet out from under him
with yours.
Look at it this way: if a man is walking, at any
given moment hes bearing his weight on one legwhile moving the other one forward. Its an easy
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NOTES thing to nudge the leg in the air into a new,unintended (for him) position and if he was
planning on landing his weight on that leg, well,
now hes going to fall instead. But you can alsosee that you cant do the same trick to the leg thatis currently bearing his weight. It would take a lot
more effort to move that one out from under him effort you can supply by striking with your
entire mass through it. So:
Stepping leg > sweep
Standing leg > strike
Sometimes its obvious which is which, butmost of time its not. Its important to know, or at
least be able to figure out, so you can choose theproper method for taking that leg out from under
him. Here are a couple of ways to make it happen:
Anticipate gait.
In general, people will plant one foot, thenmove the other. This will allow you to make
predictions about which leg is ripe for which
reaping. For example, lets say youre on theground and hes walking toward you you should
be able to figure out which foot hell be picking upwhen hes close enough for you to reach out with
your own foot and sweep it for a takedown.
Use injury to make him shift his weight.
Injured people move. This almost alwaysinvolves stepping to try to maintain their balance asthey go. While strikes to the centerline of the body
tend to make the body move straight back(meaning he could step back with either leg),
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NOTESstrikes to one side of the spine or the other force thebody to rotate, making it much easier to knowwhere his weight will be. If your timing is good
you can catch the leg as he steps, for a sweep; ifnot, you know hell plant his weight on it as hefinishes the reaction, making it perfect for a full-
bodied blast.
Also, the body will shift weight off of aninjured leg and onto the good one. When youinjure one of his legs, you now have a clear-cutchoice sweep the newly injured leg or stomp
through the other one. No more guessing!
When in doubt, blast through it.
This is last because its best. Your mostreliable, default answer is to simply strike throughthe leg as hard as you can, technique and nuance be
damned. If the leg has little or no weight on it(meaning it was sweepable) youll knock it outfrom under him and drop him. If he was standingon it after all, it doesnt matter you just blastedit out from under him anyway. If your timing is as
poor as your coordination, dont sweat it this isthe final answer to the question, Which
technique? How about all of them at once?
Injury Left to Chance
The other problem with slips, especially legsweeps, is that if thats all youre doing taking
his feet out from under him then you arenttargeting a specific piece of anatomy for the
collision with the ground. It will be anuncontrolled fall, for both of you. This leaves the
resulting injury up to chance. Chances are hell
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NOTES smack down badly and catch his head in theprocess... but chances are that he wont. If he getshis hands out in time his reflexes will save his
head, and then you have to hope for sprained orbroken wrists, jammed shoulders, and the like.Maybe hell get the wind knocked out of him. All
told, its not terribly reliable unless youve gone tolengths to ensure that it is, like grabbing him by the
neck, kicking his leg out from under him andhurling his head at the ground as he goes. Withoutsuch measures, legs sweeps are a spin of the injury
roulette wheel sometimes a good number comes
up, sometimes it doesnt. So either make it happenor be prepared to stay right on top of him, puttingmore injury into him when he hits the ground.
Dont count on a simple leg sweep to finish the job
the way a properly executed hip throw can.
Trips: The Crack in the Sidewalk
Trips are a much larger throw family than slipsbecause while there is really only one way to knock
someones feet out from under them you simply
do just that there are a multitude of ways toknock people down. Its important to note, though,
that mechanically all trips are identical, making theCG fall outside the base, its just that there are
many, many ways to effect that change. From thevery simple hip push to drive his pelvis past hisfeet and into the ground to the seemingly esotericshoulder throw (replacing his base with yours andthen making him fall outside it on your terms)
and everything in between theyre all just
expressions of the same simple idea.
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NOTESDirect manipulation of the CG hippushes and pulls
In order to effect a throw, we need to attack,
break, displace or move one of the components thatmake up balance the base (feet), the CG (the
hips or pelvis) and/or the structures that supportone over the other (the legs). In slips, we were
attacking the feet and legs, to drive them out fromunder the CG. Now were going to be looking atstriking the CG directly, to drive it out past the base
and down at an angle to effect a knockdown.
In a general sense, were going to be drivingthrough the pelvis where the CG of a standingman resides to get this work done. Specifically,
were looking at blasting through the targets thatcluster around the pelvis: the bladder, pubic
symphisis, sacrum, and the hip joints themselves.The groin, perineum and coccyx dont figure intothis set because they reside beneath the pelvis and
require striking vertically rather than allowing us to
displace the pelvis and CG laterally.
A full-bodied stomp or straight-arm drivethrough the bladder, pubic symphisis, sacrum, oreither hip joint, down and through at a 45 angle (orless) will effect a takedown. Technically, this is in
the same class as a simple striking knockdown this is the place where the line between strikingand throwing becomes blurred, and we can mosteasily see that throwing is, indeed, nothing more
than a special case of striking.
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NOTES Base-break throws
This is where we attack, and break, thestructure holding him up in balance. This can be assimple as a stomp through the ankle or knee,
breaking the joint, or as nuanced as using body
weight applied to buckle his leg and drag his CG
out past his base (as in a T-Leverage takedown).
Stomping through an ankle and breaking it isobviously a strike, but its also a joint break, andfulfills our definition of a throw as well. While this
is another obvious intersection of those three ideasin action, it underscores the importance of looking
at joint breaking and throwing as subsets of strikingproper. If we look at it purely as a joint break,without paying attention to whats required forstriking, it becomes a useless technique sometimes itll work, sometimes it wont. When
striking is abandoned, what happens next is anattempt to get the ankle to roll. It becomes a pushinstead of a break, a technique instead of an injury.Likewise, if we look at it purely as a throw,ignoring both the striking and joint breaking, we
wander even more deeply into the dark forest ofpushing, losing everything that made it a throw in
the first place.
Injury makes it a throw. Injury makes it a jointbreak. And striking makes it an injury in the first
place. Everything that happens after the strike is aside-effect of that Striking through the ankle breaksit, rolling the foot and moving his CG out past his
base which then causes him to fall.
So, while the answer to the question, Is it a
strike, a joint break, or a throw? is, all of the
above, the answer to the question, Which aspectshould I focus on? is, striking. Strike first, look
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NOTESfor side-effects later.
Drop throws
This is where you attach your mass to him andlay down to throw. Imagine putting your shin
through a mans groin, then grabbing him by theneck and laying down in front of him to body-slam
his head into the concrete. Hell hit as if heweighed twice as much, and itll be twice as ugly
as doing it all by himself.
Drop throws come in two basic varieties:attaching yourself to the top of his spine, and
attaching yourself to the bottom end of his spine.
When you attach your mass to the top end ofhis spine, by grabbing the hair, head, neck, lapels,
shoulders or arms, you move his CG beyond hisbase by creating a new system of balance thatincludes both of your masses, but only his base.The CG for this new system will be outside his
base as soon as you go airborne to lay down
throwing him off balance. You will then use
rotation (rolling or curling to throw him) toaccelerate his fall.
When you attach yourself to the lower end ofhis spine, by grabbing the hips or knees (usually
from behind him), youre using your mass to draghis CG out past his base in a sort of inverted hip
push to make him sit and fall backwards over you.
Drop throws can manifest in something asspectacular as grabbing the injured man by the
throat and neck as you plant your foot in his hipand sit down and roll back to make him cartwheel
over you to something as small and non-obvious as
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NOTES grabbing his wrist in both fists and dropping yourweight six inches while aiming his hand toward a
point just behind his own foot to flat-back him.
While the two techniques appear to be worldsapart, theyre really the same thing attachingyour weight to the injured man and then dropping it
to break his structure, take his balance, and make
him fall.
Hip throws
A hip throw is so called because of the use of
the hip as a fulcrum point for the throw thevictim is kicked up into the air by the hip androunds the hip on his way into the fall. While thehip is indeed the fulcrum point for the throw, its
more correct to view the legs as the primary actorsin getting this done. The hip is more properly the
contact point upon which youll balance his CG.
A better way of understanding the hip throw,and how it is indeed a trip, is to look at it this way:youre replacing his base with yours, taking him offhis feet while balancing him over your own, and
then making him fall outside your base. Imagine aperson tripping over a saw horse that catches themjust below the hips and youre starting to get the
idea. Before he runs into the saw horse, his baseconsists of his own feet. As he hits the saw horse
and bends forward over it his feet leave the groundand for a moment hes balanced like a teeter-totter,head and torso sticking out to one side, legs stick
out to the other. His base as this point consists ofthe legs of the saw horse. Of course, his problem is
his forward momentum hes pitching head-firstover this thing, after all. While this is a pretty good
model for the basics of the hip throw, were notgoing to be content with something quite so static...
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NOTESNow imagine that the saw horse has a
pneumatic lift we can fire off to pop it up a couple
of inches, suddenly, as he flops over it. Now hesnot just tripping over the damn thing, but its going
to launch his legs up over his head as he falls...
But thats not all. Instead of just having it sitthere, waiting for him to bumble into it, were
going to fire it into position through is structure so that even if he were holding still it wouldslam into him, trip him over it, and then launch him
upside-down.
As you may have already guessed, were not
done adding awfulness to the accident wereconstructing here we have one last bit comingup but this is a good point to reign in ourridiculous model and make it real. Youre going to
provide that awful industrial-accident-saw-horse
with your own feet, legs and hips. You will stepthrough him, harshly, as a strike, to make him trip
over your hip and then stand up suddenly to kickhim over the top, striking him with your hip to toss
him into the air. Lest you think this will require alot of brute strength, youre not going to lift hisentire mass youre going to trip him so his mass
transits over the chassis of your feet and legs(merely bracing at this point) and only kick up ashis mass is falling forward off of you. Youll only
need to be strong enough to lift half (or less) of his
mass with your legs. And this, anybody can do.
Now for the last bit, the bit we were aiming forall along the landing. Youre not doing this tosimply make him fall. There are lots of far simplerways of doing that. Youre spending the effort to
get all this dramatic hang-time so you can drive
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NOTES him down, head-first, into the concrete with hisbody weight over the top of it all. (Or, even better,your body weight as well, so he lands twice as
hard.)
Common hip throw pitfalls and fixes:
Attach yourself so the two of you
become a single balance system.
When you move, he needs to move, too. If youcan move and nothing happens to him, youre not
attached. Not only that, but hes probably incontrol of his own balance. You need to be latchedonto him, tight and secure, to take his balance and
incorporate his mass into a single balance system
that you control.
Ideally, you will begin this process with theinjury prior to the throw, essentially striking himinto the throw, e.g., with a backhand forearm
hammer to the lateral neck, bending him sideways
off balance and grabbing the neck out of the strike.
Replace his base with yours.
This is him getting the saw horse rammed
through his structure youll step through hisspace, coming in low and rising up to pick him up
off his feet (your CG scooping up underneath his
CG) to balance him on your hip/back of pelvis.
Its important to note that you want to slide in
torso-to-torso, with no daylight between the two ofyou. If theres space between you when you step into throw, hell fall through that space and onto you,
knocking you off balance and turning the hip throw
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NOTES
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into a dog-pile.
Make him fall outside your base.
This is the continued motion of the initial striketo the neck, above. Tip that teeter-totter so hes
falling forward off your hip. Then, as his weight
shifts off your legs...
Stand up to hip him up into the air.
This is a short, sharp straightening of your legs like a strike to toss his legs vertical and getthat hang-time. This is all about timing: if you go
too early, youre trying to leg-press his entire massand the throw wont pop. If you go too late, you
wont kick him into the air hell already have
fallen off of your hip.
Complete the rotation into the ground.
This is the end of the strike to the neck in theexample above the arc begun with the backhand
terminates in the ground in front of you. You haveeffectively struck his head into the ground while up
-ending him.
Though these bits have been chunked out 1-2-3, in reality its a single, smooth motion from back-hand to the neck to terminal landing. It takes skill
and coordination to pull off, in other words, prac-tice. And while you can potentially get the same
effect from a simple, full-bodied stomp through aknee (something that is easy to pull off without anyskill or coordination or practice), the hip throw al-lows you to target and ensure serious head
and neck trauma. When done right,
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NOTES Shoulder throws
For the most part, shoulder throws are just hipthrows with the fulcrum point at the shoulderinstead of the hip. What we get out of this is a hipthrow with an added lever-arm as long as your
spine. This takes him through a longer arc,resulting in a higher throw you have more timeto accelerate him and he ends up falling from agreater height. When we couple this with an Earth-shattering John Henry swing of your arms
slapping him down by his arm, we get the most
powerful throw possible. Especially if you drop toone knee, pulling him down out of the sky as you
go, to ride him down with your mass.
This throw gets you so much hang-time andprojection you can literally throw a man upside-down through a plate-glass window, or into/onto/
through anything else in your environment thecurb, a fire hydrant, traffic. In training Ive seenlights cleared off the ceiling by the victims feet.Much like the hip throw, if you know what youre
doing, its well worth the effort.
The set-up is very similar to the hip throw injure him, latch on, snug up, replace the base, andhip him up into the air. The primary difference is
that youll snug up with his arm pulled tight overyour shoulder, so his armpit is stuck fast on top of
your shoulder. Think about what we do with theCGs in the hip throw: yours scooping upunderneath his. Youre going to do the same thing
with your shoulder and his armpit: scoop upunderneath and stick them together so that for
balance purposes you both become a single mass.
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NOTESNOTES
The Two Throw Families
NOTESYou do this at the hips and the shoulders at thesame time its still going to set up and fire offlike a hip throw, powered by your legs, but instead
of rounding him off your hip so
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