Knife Defense Seminar with Marc ‘Animal’ MacYoung
Where: 171 Magnolia Blvd. Burbank CA 91502 5 Hours: 1pm – 6pm Only $50 – PreRegister Now for this Price!
Okay incredibly short, crazy notice, but…
I’ll be teaching a 5 hour long “Surviving a Knife Attack” seminar Sunday August 12 in Burbank.
It starts at 1pm (that’s the earliest we could get the Aikido dojo) and goes until 6.
****Even if you’re not in L.A. throw a rock at someone you know who is and let them know****
Read MoreCrimes We Stop
We all want to make a difference in our neighborhoods, and the Guardian Angels get VERY involved and proactively patrol the streets and neighborhoods, deterring crime, and even stopping crimes in progress. But, what are the crimes we encounter? Specifically, if we stop somebody (and especially if we arrest them!) we MUST have a VERY clear understanding of what we’re allowed to do. Otherwise, we’re possibly committing a crime ourselves - the exact opposite of our goal! Let’s get some clear definitions in our heads.
Read MoreFear, Pride, Monkey Brain and Not Stepping On Your Dick
Peter’s Note: This is an exclusive from Marc “Animal” MacYoung. He’s brutally honest, and you need to know what he’s talking about. Oh, and it’s NOT for the kids.
No reflection on your sex life1 but, every night you go to bed with a human, a monkey and a lizard.
This is a model that reflects the different parts of your brain. A rough breakdown goes like this: Your Human is your thinking, rational neocortex. Your Monkey is your socio-emotional limbic system. (It’s what allows humans to function in groups.) Your Lizard is your survival-oriented hind brain and cerebellum.
This model isn’t technically accurate, but that’s OK. It’s hard to remember scientific explanations when someone is in your face, barking, howling, drooling, insulting or threatening you.
On the other hand, when someone’s acting like a pissed off monkey it’s pretty easy to remember this model. Also it’s important to know because someone making references to your testicles on your mother’s chin is trying to light up your Monkey and get you to act the same way.
Read MoreTony Blauer Interview with Guardian Angels
I recently had the awesome opportunity to speak to Mr Tony Blauer. His advice and philosophy will directly impact how you think about self defense training.
We cover a lot of topics, and this is a fairly long interview. We had originally scheduled a ten minute talk, with the expectation that some potentially boring parts would probably get edited out. Well, it turns out that an interview with Tony Blauer doesn’t really have any boring parts! He’s a great speaker and presenter, and this interview is no exception.
I should mention that Tony travels A LOT and teaches workshops and seminars around the planet. He is a dynamic teacher, with awesome concepts: everything I’ve ever seen him teach is directly useful for the Guardian Angels. If you have the opportunity to attend one of his workshops, do it.
Tony mentions in this interview that he is open to audience questions. If you have any questions, ask them: He will answer your questions in the next interview … so please send some questions!
Read MoreVideo: Violent Attempted Purse Snatching in Venice Caught on Security Cameras
You have to watch this video through to the end to see the “action” section, but it does make you stop and think.
This is the real thing – random violence, for the sake of monetary gain, with no regard to the effects on the victim.
Worth noticing:
The victim has the physiologically expected reactions: once she becomes aware of the threat-stimulus (about 0:52 or 0:53), she turns her torso towards the threat, her hands come up, at 0:55 you can see her knees bend (right knee bending is more obvious), which she uses in her reaction.
Also important, people tend to increase their grip on something if it is pulled away from them, or if they are falling. In this case, both are true: she clings instinctively to the object being pulled from her (the purse) and she is pulled towards the ground in the process.
Would she have been better off by letting go and instead trying to do some fancy falling/rolling method? Probably. In this case, she does keep her purse, so that has some value, I suppose.
What else could this mean to us?
Let’s take the case of a “good samaritan” action: we see a person being grabbed, groped, or choked, so we want to intervene. So far, this makes perfect sense, and it’s the kind of thing we see as Guardian Angels all the time.
We *could* try to stop the assailant by striking at them, perhaps even attempting to knock them down so that we could arrest them, in case the victim wanted to press charges, etc. But, is this a good idea?
Heck, no! Why not? Simple: if we strike at the assailant or otherwise attempt to knock them down, their strongest reaction will be not avoid falling. That is, they will grasp more strongly at whatever is in their hands – quite possibly, our actions in this case could make them grab/grope/choke the victim even harder!
In a case like this, a faulty action could easily cause more harm to the victim. We need to take care to avoid this kind of problem – ideally this will happen through proper training. I’ll soon be adding more here on what I consider proper training. Until then, please consider what actions might contribute to the problem, and what you can do to always be a part of the solution, instead.
What’s your opinion?
Read MoreStopped an Assault with a Weapon: Incident Report for July 19th, 2010 (Hollywood Division)
File Photo
On patrol this evening was Adam/Explorer, Jerome/Z and Jeremy/Titan.
The patrol started off pretty uneventful, as most patrols start, and tonight was no exception.
But, towards the end of our patrol, we saw a young Latino male and an older Black male aggressively exchanging words just west of Wilcox. Patrol stopped to observe because the Latino male was making aggressive motions toward the elderly Black male.
The Black male disengaged himself from the conversation, and headed west bound on Hollywood toward Schrader. The Latino male watched him, and seemed very agitated. When the Black male had walked away about 15 feet, the Latino male picked up his skate board and held it in a batter’s position, and began running toward the Black male.
Immediately, our patrol took pursuit, and right as the Latino male began his swing with the skateboard at the Black male, Titan and Explorer gave a warning shout to startle him, and we caught hold of the Latino male’s arms and Z pulled the skateboard out of his hands.
Titan moved the Latino male to the wall and cuffed him, while Z checked on the elderly male and Explorer contacted the LAPD for police assistance. When the police arrived several facts came together. The elderly Black male was clearly disoriented, and possibly of diminished mental capacity. The young Latino was 17 years old, on Probation and just released from Juvenile Placements; he was intoxicated, in possession of tobacco and tobacco paraphernalia, and was out after curfew.
The police did take the Latino male into custody for public intoxication, possession of tobacco products by a minor and a violation of curfew. Although the Patrol did quite clearly observe the assault, the victim (Black male) was not aware of the attempt until after the Angels had the subject restrained, and did not want to press charges. As a result, the subject was not charged with assault or battery.
The elderly male thanked us and the police officers complimented us on stopping the attack before physical contact was made. They also told us, “to keep doing what you are doing.”
With the exception of this incident, patrol was quiet.
As always keep it classy, Hollywood, because we know you can.
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