0:00

Welcome to Nobody

0:03

Told Me. I'm

0:05

Jan Black. And

0:14

I'm Laura Owens. We're glad you

0:16

could join us for this very

0:18

important episode because we're going to

0:20

find out what you can do

0:22

if you're in a situation where

0:24

an assailant is trying to harm

0:26

or even kill you. Our guest

0:29

is internationally known self-defense expert Tim

0:31

Larkin. Over the years, Tim has

0:33

trained elite military special forces and

0:35

law enforcement units in addition to

0:37

corporate and civilian clients. Tim's books

0:39

include How to Survive the Most

0:41

Critical Five Seconds of Your Life, Survive

0:43

the Unthinkable, a Total Guide to Women's

0:45

Self-Protection, and When Violence is the Answer,

0:48

Learning How to Do What It Takes

0:50

When Your Life is at Stake. Tim,

0:52

thank you so much for joining us

0:54

today. Hey, thank you for having me. So

0:57

talk to us a little bit about your

0:59

background and how you became a self-defense expert.

1:02

I was a Navy brat growing up. My father was

1:04

a military officer, a naval

1:06

officer. And I got introduced

1:09

to the SEAL teams when I was about 12

1:11

years old. I lived literally right

1:13

across the street Navy housing from where the

1:16

SEALs train. And that's what I

1:18

wanted to do. And I had a martial

1:20

arts background growing up because

1:23

growing up on Navy bases, basically, wherever

1:26

you go, usually there's some sort

1:28

of a martial art being trained

1:30

at the local fitness facility on

1:33

base. So I got into martial

1:35

arts early on. I always had a fascination with it. When

1:38

I got into the SEAL teams, I

1:41

went through training. I was two weeks

1:43

away from joining the

1:45

SEAL teams, finishing my training.

1:49

And I had an accident. I had

1:52

a diving accident that

1:54

injured my eardrum. It burst my

1:57

eardrum, put me into vertigo. When you

2:00

first your ear drum, you can empty

2:02

out the inner ear of the semicircular

2:04

canal fluid. What that does is it

2:06

leaves all sense of balance. It was

2:08

the first time in my life that

2:10

I'd ever lost complete control of my

2:12

body. And this was injury

2:15

to the human body. And it literally ended

2:18

my career as a fuel

2:21

operator because if I can't dive, which

2:24

I can't dive because my ears,

2:26

you can't obviously be in the field team. So

2:28

they switched me over into the intelligence community. And

2:31

what I thought was the end of my career actually

2:33

was the starting of a brand new career that I

2:36

didn't even know about was about to happen. And

2:38

it was all because of that injury to

2:41

the human body. You know, when I understood

2:43

that being bigger, faster, stronger doesn't prevent you

2:45

from being injured, which sounds

2:47

logical to people. But when

2:49

it comes to your self protection, people

2:51

tend to get that really wrong. That became

2:53

the whole, you know, turning

2:55

point in my life where I was

2:58

able to teach, you know, any human being,

3:00

you know, regardless of gender, regardless

3:02

of size, regardless of their, you know,

3:04

what they think their perceived abilities are,

3:06

to use, you

3:09

know, this information of injury to

3:11

the human body to protect themselves

3:13

against bigger, faster, stronger opponents.

3:16

And your latest book is called When Violence

3:19

is the Answer. And in it, you say

3:21

that violence is rarely the answer, but when

3:23

it is, it is the only

3:25

answer. Tell us more about what you mean by

3:27

that. Yeah, the

3:30

people love the first part of that statement, you

3:32

know, when violence is rarely the answer, and we

3:34

can all name those times. The

3:36

more interesting question in this why I

3:38

wrote the book is what about when

3:41

violence is the answer, you know, when

3:43

it is the only answer. And that's,

3:45

that's the interesting part, because when you

3:47

clearly define, you know, when the tool

3:49

of violence would ever be justified and

3:51

being used to protect yourself, you

3:53

quickly realize that the situations you're talking about,

3:55

that's literally the only tool left to you.

3:58

And a

4:00

point where either you've ignored warnings

4:03

or it's, you know, everything's imminent, meaning

4:05

there's imminent grievous bodily harm coming at

4:07

you, meaning a bigger, faster, stronger person

4:09

is trying, or people are trying

4:11

to control you in some way, shape, or form and

4:13

injure you. And the only

4:15

thing, if you get to that point, the

4:18

only thing that's going to get you out of there is

4:20

the knowledge of how to use violence. So

4:23

it's never best to try and reason with somebody

4:25

first if they have a weapon or if you

4:27

feel like you're in an imminent danger situation.

4:30

I think a better way to put

4:32

that point across is a story

4:34

that I use often to

4:37

talk about the differences. There was a young

4:39

lawyer in London who, he was working late

4:41

one night, wasn't a bad part of London

4:43

that he lived in, got off the, you

4:46

know, the metro, the tube station, and

4:48

he was followed. And he walked through a park,

4:50

he took a shortcut through a park, but it's

4:53

very well lighted. It wasn't like a, he wasn't

4:55

really taking what he thought were risks. And

4:58

he was followed by two people that followed

5:00

him off the tube stop and

5:02

they attacked him. They pulled knives and they

5:05

put him up against a tree and they

5:07

demanded his watch, his wallet, everything.

5:10

And that part of the story everybody likes because

5:12

he was able to use his negotiation

5:14

skills. He was able to sit there and

5:16

say, fine, yeah, take this, take it. What do you want? What do

5:18

you want? Great, great, great. Take it.

5:21

The authorities would tell you to do things. Don't

5:23

resist. Don't, don't put up a fight. And

5:27

they left and that

5:29

was great. He was kind of relieved. And

5:31

then he starts, you know, taking

5:33

off, going back towards his house. And

5:36

then all of a sudden they come running up behind

5:38

him. They'd come back. And

5:41

this time, this time when they came back, they

5:43

came back, the knives were drawn, their heads were

5:45

down. There was no communication whatsoever. And they ended

5:47

up stabbing him eight times and killing him. Oh

5:49

my God. As he, as

5:51

he was being stabbed, people were, you heard him,

5:54

you know, people said they heard this, this

5:56

young man yelling basically why, why,

5:58

why I gave you everything. I gave you everything.

6:02

It's my goal whenever I have a

6:04

new client that that

6:06

situation becomes crystal clear to them the

6:08

differences between the two. The first situation

6:10

where he was able to use his

6:12

communication skills when he was up against

6:15

the tree with a knife to his

6:17

neck, he

6:19

was able, he was able to communicate with

6:21

him because even though it was unpleasant,

6:25

it was basically antisocial aggression, meaning

6:27

there was still communication going on.

6:30

And he was able to use, he chose to use

6:33

his communication skills at that point and it had a

6:35

favorable result. What

6:37

the whole reason the book was written on is

6:39

the second part because the second part is how

6:41

people end up seeking me out. And the second

6:43

part was when their heads were down, their knives

6:45

were drawn, they ran him down, the

6:48

only thing that would have worked is the tool

6:50

of violence. And he had no idea how to

6:52

employ that correctly. He had no skill sets for

6:54

that. And the thing that

6:56

triggered that, people always say, well, what triggered the

6:59

fact of them coming back? They literally walked back

7:01

and this is from police interviews after,

7:03

and they looked at each other, the two

7:05

guys that had just robbed him and said,

7:07

ah, he saw our face. It's

7:10

probably not good. And that was

7:12

it. That was their impetus to just run him down

7:14

and stab him to death. And so I know it's

7:16

a really extreme story. I know it's hard for people

7:18

that aren't familiar with these predators and what they're like.

7:22

But that's my whole

7:24

goal. There's aggression, which

7:27

is avoidable. Normally, antisocial

7:29

aggression are things that we

7:31

think we need to respond to with violence

7:34

or aggression. But

7:36

we do it by choice. We

7:39

still have choice available. On

7:41

the other side of the equation, the second scenario

7:44

that I talked about, the

7:46

individual is devoid of choice, meaning

7:48

this act of violence is going to happen regardless

7:50

of whether he tried to protect himself or not.

7:53

And not having the skill sets, he basically

7:55

participated in his own murder at

7:58

the second time. That's not to put him down. down, it

8:00

was solely on the predators, but my job

8:02

is to inform

8:05

the people that come to me and my clients of

8:07

the realities. Oftentimes

8:10

we have a view of the world that

8:13

we wish it was a certain way, and

8:15

I absolutely agree. I understand that all things

8:17

working perfectly, you should be

8:19

able to go unmolested in your life and you

8:21

should be able to do what you want. But

8:24

my goal is to really talk to people about

8:26

the reality of the world and how it actually

8:28

operates. Oftentimes that involves

8:30

taking precautions and taking

8:33

actions that are unpleasant at times for

8:35

us. Meaning it's unpleasant to walk away

8:38

from somebody that is saying derogatory things

8:40

towards you or making aggressive gestures towards

8:42

you. But that's

8:45

the idea. When you understand where violence can go,

8:47

you make much better

8:49

decisions. That's probably the biggest change in

8:51

why would anybody even look at the

8:53

subject. The thing most people, especially

8:55

women, need to look at the subject just

8:57

because we make false

9:00

assumptions oftentimes. Oftentimes when we're talking

9:02

to another individual, we think we're

9:04

talking in the same social setting

9:07

with the same mindset. We make

9:09

these really bad assumptions that

9:12

the predator on the other side is just like

9:15

us and would respond to what would work with

9:17

us. And tragically, that's

9:19

just not the case. We

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11:40

So what could this guy have done

11:43

the second time these guys came back

11:45

and decided that they really

11:47

were going to kill him because he had

11:49

seen their faces? What could he have done?

11:51

Would he have done anything? See, that's the question. I

11:54

mean, everybody wants to know, okay, what's a cool

11:56

technique he could have done or something. And there's

11:58

many things. I teach my goal. is

12:00

when people come to train with me, they

12:02

don't get lectures, they actually immerse themselves in

12:05

the physical. In

12:07

a good educational way, you need to

12:09

understand how to injure the human body,

12:11

injuring on the human body. The reason

12:13

you need to understand injury is because

12:15

when you truly injure somebody, and everybody

12:17

who's listening has had this type

12:19

of effect happen to them, if they've ever stepped

12:21

on a sharp object or they've touched

12:24

a hot stove, what that

12:26

triggers is the trauma of the hot

12:28

stove or the sharp object that you

12:30

step on produces enough

12:32

of the stimulus that your arm automatically

12:35

moves away from that without thought whatsoever.

12:37

Your brain has no control over the

12:39

situation. It is reacting, trying to protect

12:41

the body. There's a response

12:44

in the body that automatically does that. And

12:46

then after the fact, your brain registers what happened.

12:48

You say, oh, I burned my finger. It's

12:52

done to protect the body. But the interesting part

12:54

about that is when you understand injury of the

12:57

human body, you can actually take a person's

12:59

brain out of the equation to where they

13:01

can't control their body. And

13:04

that's the value of learning injury because it

13:06

doesn't matter if the guy is

13:08

much bigger, faster, and stronger than you. These

13:11

areas of the human body just

13:13

can't be protected,

13:16

no matter how big everybody is.

13:18

So the idea is

13:20

there were a lot better decisions he could have

13:22

made. There are many things he could have done

13:24

prior to the event happening where he could

13:26

have made better decisions. When it

13:28

got down to that, basically what he had to

13:30

do is he had to be able to exploit opportunities. When

13:32

the predators were close to him, he had to know where

13:34

to go on the human body to get a result. And

13:38

that's the information he didn't have. And

13:40

where would that have been? It

13:43

depends on what part of the profile

13:45

that he's facing. Meaning there's

13:47

over 120 to 30 targets

13:52

on the human body, areas of the human body that

13:54

you can put force into that get a result. We

13:57

know a lot of the normal ones that people talk

13:59

about. about all the time are

14:01

things like eyes, groin, and throat, but

14:03

there's many other areas of the human body

14:05

that you can

14:08

affect. But that's, you don't

14:10

want to have a tactical conversation

14:12

right now. I mean, okay, what targets? Everybody

14:14

wants to just give me three things to

14:16

memorize. And the reason we say that all

14:19

the time, and we would never do that in

14:21

anything else that was really important. Like if you

14:24

were trained to be a doctor, you wouldn't

14:26

say, hey, just show me the three best

14:28

procedures. Right.

14:32

And I'm not equating this to medical knowledge.

14:34

What I am equating it to is you

14:36

want options. You want to learn principles of

14:38

protecting yourself. You don't want to learn

14:40

just one or two tricks. Principles are

14:42

understanding injury to the human body, trauma to

14:44

the human body. Meaning the idea is if

14:47

I inflict trauma on the human body, any

14:49

one of us, you know, will

14:51

be affected by that. And so it's the

14:53

idea that when you study alpha predators, when

14:55

you say like, I go in the prison

14:57

systems, and I've studied a lot of the

14:59

prison gang leaders and how they

15:01

look at violence and what they do. And I do that

15:03

because oftentimes, the best information

15:05

comes from the worst people in the worst

15:07

parts of society. And it

15:10

doesn't mean, you know,

15:12

we would never employ it in a

15:14

criminal manner, but the information is still

15:16

good. You know, I can

15:18

show an effective injury to somebody

15:21

that may have been done by a criminal,

15:23

I could sit there and say, okay, this

15:25

is criminal what this guy did, but look

15:27

what he did, he got a result on

15:29

the human body. And that's good information for

15:31

us to know if we ever have to

15:33

protect ourselves. And this is it, we

15:35

would never, we never use it in the context of the

15:37

criminal shows it. But in the

15:39

context of us trying to protect ourselves and save

15:42

our life, it would be absolutely justified. And

15:45

I think it's really interesting too, that not

15:47

all criminals are very big. But they seem

15:49

to have more willpower than a person if

15:51

they're trying to overtake them or when adrenaline

15:53

is involved. Why is that? They

15:55

have intent. And that's all

15:58

it is, meaning they're intent is the

16:00

intent to do harm. And

16:02

that trumps, intent

16:05

trumps people, you

16:09

know, as far as technique and stuff like

16:11

you'll see very highly trained fighters

16:13

and martial artists. And they

16:16

look great in the ring and they do well. And

16:18

I'm not saying that they're not capable of protecting themselves.

16:21

But what I am saying is, they

16:23

are able to understand that they

16:25

don't have to compete. They just

16:27

have to understand destruction. And

16:29

I do the same thing for my clients. My

16:31

clients think you're competing. Like most of us look

16:34

at a bigger, faster, stronger individual. And

16:36

we start thinking about, oh my God, they're so much stronger

16:38

than me. They're so much bigger than me. They can do

16:40

like somehow they're immune to all the things that make us

16:42

human. And the trick with

16:45

the predators, the people that you're talking about

16:47

in the prison system is two things. One,

16:50

they don't look at the differences in a

16:52

human body. They look at similarities.

16:55

So a person could literally be, they could be,

16:57

they could be five. You know,

17:00

I'll try not to keep, I won't give you

17:02

like graphic examples of it. So I'm not trying

17:04

to, I try not to be graphic. I'm trying

17:06

not to be gratuitous with, with, you

17:09

know, just descriptions sometimes, but oftentimes it actually

17:11

does help. So if I think it'll help,

17:13

I'll, I'll give you a more graphic

17:16

example of it. But basically the prisoners have

17:18

two things. They look at all

17:20

humans as the same meaning they would look at

17:22

a guy who's six, seven, 280 pounds, not an

17:24

ounce of fat on his body and incredibly aggressive.

17:26

And they would say, Oh, look, he has a

17:29

collarbone like me. He has a throat like me.

17:31

He has knees like me. They would look at

17:33

all the similarities of the human rather than saying,

17:35

Oh my God, he's so much bigger than me,

17:38

so much stronger than me because they understand there's

17:40

no use. There's, there's no useful information there. Okay.

17:43

He's bigger, faster and stronger than me. That's a given,

17:45

you know, that's a given that when I'm going to

17:47

be facing, you know, somebody,

17:49

you know, you could put balance on me, most

17:51

likely, you know, if I'm

17:53

smart, I've assumed three things. I've assumed

17:55

that there's going to be multiple attackers,

17:57

not just one person. they're

18:00

going to be bigger, faster, and stronger than me. And

18:02

I'm also going to assume that they carry weapons. And

18:05

so that way it takes care of all the

18:07

potential outliers that are out there and everything operates

18:10

in the real world. And they look at

18:12

that. And then the other thing that they have is

18:15

they never look at violence from

18:18

anything but the winning side. And

18:21

what I tend to do with

18:23

audiences all the time, when I'm

18:25

at one of my speaking events or

18:27

something like that, I will show a

18:29

scenario where somebody is being

18:31

choked by another person. So we'll

18:33

see. Imagine one person, you're just

18:36

looking at two males. And

18:38

one male is literally physically choking the other male. And

18:40

the other male is reacting to the choke. And

18:43

I'll tell people, I'll go, OK, you

18:45

just see the end of my presentation. One of my presentations, I'll

18:47

say, OK, what would you do

18:49

in this situation? And

18:51

then I'll take audience response. Some people

18:53

would say, well, it looks like

18:56

I can kick him to the groin. Or

18:59

it looks like I could use my arms and

19:02

I could knock his hands off of my throat. Or

19:06

some way of wrenching the choke off

19:08

in some way, shape, or form. And

19:11

then I nod. And I tell, hey, that's all good information. I go,

19:13

would you like to see what I would do? And

19:16

they say, yeah. And so then

19:18

I replace myself with the person who's choking

19:20

the other guy. I continue to choke

19:22

him. And then I'll do about three or four

19:24

more strikes, taking the guy to

19:26

the ground non-functional. And people will just, there's like

19:28

a hush in the audience. And

19:31

I have to explain. And they go, well, no, no, no,

19:33

you didn't say that. I said, no,

19:35

listen to what I asked you. I

19:38

asked you, if you found yourself in this

19:40

situation, what would you do? You

19:42

all chose to take the victim profile. You

19:45

all chose to see yourself as a person

19:47

being choked. Because you could never imagine in

19:49

your mind where

19:51

it would ever be OK for you to start out

19:53

choking. And then I give them an

19:55

example. I go, what if the first attacker, you

19:57

just finished off your first attacker? you

20:00

look back and you see, oh my gosh, there's a

20:02

second guy. And the first thing you see is a

20:04

neck. And the only thing you can think of is

20:06

just to step in and start choking

20:08

them. Why couldn't that been the story that you

20:10

tell yourself in your head? Because

20:13

we've stigmatized violence so

20:16

that we see if we ever see

20:18

anything that we think is unfair or

20:20

graphic or anything like that, we

20:22

never allow ourselves to be in that

20:25

dominant position. And

20:27

so there's nothing wrong with

20:29

seeing yourself on the winning side of violence.

20:31

As a matter of fact, for your, for

20:33

your people, everybody listening to this right now,

20:36

I would give everybody this homework. And

20:39

if nothing else, it'll, it'll mentally change how

20:41

you look at the subject and really help

20:43

you should God forbid you ever

20:46

need information on self-protection, if you

20:48

merely just, every time you see an act of violence,

20:50

it can be movie, it can be on TV, it

20:52

can be on the internet or what it is.

20:54

Get over the story. Don't,

20:57

don't look at the story. Look

21:00

at who ends up winning in

21:02

that situation. And when I say winning, meaning

21:04

the person that walks away or is

21:06

dominant in the situation and then

21:09

ask yourself, okay, what did they do? Where did

21:11

everything change in the other person's favor? You'll

21:13

usually see an injury to the human body. And then

21:15

if you want to make yourself even

21:18

more immune to defensive

21:20

thinking, you would say, well, how

21:22

could he have done it better? Was

21:24

he efficient that way? And what I'm saying,

21:27

you're, you're, you're, you're looking

21:29

at from our aspect of it, it sounds

21:31

really hard to do, but think about yourself

21:33

as a coroner. A coroner can have empathy

21:35

for the murder victim. But

21:37

when the coroner has to start the description

21:40

of the analysis of everything that they've seen,

21:42

they get very clinical and

21:44

they talk in straightforward terms. This is what

21:46

happened to this person. This is how it

21:48

happened to them. The knife went in here.

21:50

They made their defensive wounds here. That's how

21:52

you should talk and protect your brain. When

21:55

you're looking at violence, you should only

21:57

see yourself being successful using the tool.

22:00

That does not mean you condone the criminal

22:02

act that you're seeing. It's just you protect

22:04

your brain because that

22:06

is critical in being able to protect

22:08

yourself. And that really, I

22:10

hope you understand how that answers the question that

22:12

you're answering because every prisoner, they

22:14

did a study a while back where they showed

22:16

a bunch of the prison population self-defense videos. And

22:19

they said, what do you think of this? And

22:22

the most interesting thing they took away from it

22:24

was not one time did

22:26

they ever look at the defensive side of

22:28

things where somebody was trying to keep somebody

22:30

from doing something to them. They

22:33

only saw themselves on the winning side of

22:35

violence each and every time. And

22:38

they if they made comments, it was

22:40

to improve upon the violence that they

22:42

saw. They said, well, he did this, he

22:44

did that, it was okay, but I would have done it this

22:46

way. And what they're doing

22:48

is you're, you're absolutely protecting

22:50

yourself. This is not, this

22:53

is not a light subject because very few people

22:55

teach this aspect of it. This is what can

22:57

absolutely save your life. And when I talk to

22:59

my clients, this is, you know, unfortunately,

23:02

the ones that have had to use the information, this

23:04

is what they come back saying was the most

23:06

valuable was the fact that they, you know, they

23:08

immediately focused on what was available to them and

23:10

what they could do to the other person rather

23:12

than what was either being done to them or,

23:16

you know, what they would try to get out of. So

23:18

they wouldn't sit there. Something had already been done to them.

23:21

They'd been thrown up against the wall or they'd been had

23:23

their feet kicked out from under them. They

23:25

didn't try to undo that last act. What they

23:27

saw themselves is, okay, this is the position I'm

23:29

in right now. There's his

23:31

body, what's available to me. And the first

23:33

thing that hopped out of them was a

23:35

way to injure the person. And you

23:37

say too, that hesitation can really be

23:39

the difference between life and death. Explain

23:41

more about that. So

23:43

when I, when I train people, like I don't

23:45

want people to ever not have fear. I think

23:47

that's ridiculous. All these people that talk about no

23:49

fear and all this crazy,

23:52

you know, chest lumping. But

23:55

what I want to make sure is that my

23:57

people don't freeze, that they

23:59

don't hesitate. And you hesitate when

24:01

you don't have anything in the toolbox, when you

24:03

don't have an answer. And

24:05

hesitation in a violent situation,

24:08

unlike hesitation, say,

24:10

in a public interview. Like

24:12

if for some reason in the middle of

24:14

this interview, I just got stage fright and

24:16

I couldn't continue on, it

24:18

doesn't really affect whether or not

24:20

I'm going to be living. And

24:22

so I can afford to get away from it. Whereas

24:25

if I have hesitation in a life or death situation,

24:27

it's probably the difference between me walking

24:29

away and not walking away. And

24:31

that's why it's really important how you train

24:33

yourself to look at this subject. There's nothing

24:36

more important. You know, if

24:39

your listeners aren't familiar with me, that's a

24:41

really good sign. That means you've lived a

24:43

good life and you probably haven't had anything

24:45

really happen to you. The

24:47

reason I like to do podcasts like this, and I really

24:49

appreciate a chance to get out to your audience, is

24:52

I'm trying to reach that 30% in my world.

24:55

And what I mean by that is of

24:57

the 100% of my clients, 70% of

24:59

them come to me after the fact, after a violence

25:01

has already affected them or somebody in their life. And

25:05

I can't undo that. And

25:07

the other 30% are people that were just proactive

25:09

and they came in and they just wanted to

25:11

get some information. And I'm always happy when those

25:14

people show up, because that gives

25:16

me the ability to, you

25:18

know, get to them ahead of time and possibly

25:20

give them really great information that will help them

25:22

avoid a situation that if they didn't have the

25:25

information, they may have walked right into it. And

25:28

we're always told to be aware of our

25:30

surroundings, but what exactly does that mean? Well,

25:34

if Eric talks about situational awareness, and

25:36

so I'll give you a perfect example

25:38

of the stupidity of it and

25:41

what real situational awareness is. I

25:43

show a video, there's a video training that

25:45

I put together on my YouTube channel, where

25:48

I show an elderly couple coming

25:50

to an ATM and

25:53

they walk in there and you can see the

25:55

woman walks up and both of them are, you

25:57

know, they're older. They're definitely, they.

26:00

don't move as spryly as they used to.

26:02

The one man has a limp, they're both

26:04

a little bit overweight and

26:06

they go to the ATM

26:08

and they end up getting attacked at the ATM

26:11

and it's a horrific attack and it really is

26:13

hard to watch. But I've

26:15

shown this to many of the

26:17

industry experts and other people and

26:19

I said, okay, hey, what could they have done differently?

26:21

What did they do wrong here? And everybody starts talking

26:23

about, well, the woman went up to

26:26

the ATM, the husband should have turned around

26:28

and faced the parking lot and

26:30

looked at that and he

26:32

wouldn't be more aware and he would have seen it

26:34

coming and then they'll talk about, they should have

26:36

had a car

26:39

up there, they should have been more aware

26:42

and everything and that's great. And

26:44

then after everybody's done telling me

26:47

all of this, I

26:49

said, if anybody knows the timestamp on

26:52

this video, because it has one of those

26:54

timestamps, what time of night it is and

26:56

it was nighttime and it

26:58

was 10, 30, I think 10, 32 at night. Not

27:01

one person in my industry noticed that. Not

27:03

one person that I've ever asked noticed that.

27:06

And my whole idea is situational awareness is what

27:09

is so important that

27:11

you couldn't have got up 20 minutes early the next day

27:13

and gone to the

27:16

ATM in the morning because statistics, precipitously,

27:18

after 8.30 at night at an ATM,

27:20

your chances of going attacked, of getting

27:23

attacked, go through the roof compared

27:26

to any other time. That's

27:28

real situational awareness, not this false sense

27:30

of being on guard

27:33

your whole life and walking around with

27:35

a head on a swivel. That's just

27:37

not practical. It's being smart. It's understanding.

27:39

It's minimizing the chances of violence ever

27:42

coming into your life. So behavior modification,

27:44

to me, is far more important than

27:47

phony situational awareness. But

27:49

what is your best advice if

27:51

a person is walking alone, it's

27:53

dark outside, nobody's around. How

27:57

do you become aware of your

27:59

circumstances? There and how do you

28:01

prevent something from happening? Yeah, or if you feel like

28:03

somebody's following you. Yeah. Yeah Well

28:06

number one don't Don't

28:08

walk around Don't do you

28:10

see this is this is like life the way I want

28:12

it I should be able to walk at night by myself

28:14

I hear women say this whole time I

28:17

should be able to jog at night with my power beats

28:19

on and I can jog at 1030

28:21

at night and nobody should molest me And I'm

28:23

like, you're absolutely right in a perfect world. That's

28:25

great. And also in a perfect world

28:27

I shouldn't have to lock my doors at night In

28:30

my neighborhood because I live in a pretty nice neighborhood I

28:32

got a gated community and all of a sudden guess what?

28:34

I lock my doors and have a security system You

28:37

know and it's okay. You can do these things

28:40

like you can say, you know I'm gonna go

28:42

to shopping mall and then I'm

28:44

not gonna valet the car cuz I'm gonna save

28:46

ten bucks or twenty bucks and I'm

28:49

gonna park in the really far part of the parking

28:51

lot and I'm gonna walk by myself Through

28:54

this parking lot all the way

28:56

through and you know what? I've got away with it

28:58

before so it'll be fine Everything will be fine because

29:00

I've got away with it before and

29:03

I call this, you know, basically I have tons

29:05

of people that do things That

29:07

are the equivalent of sleeping with their heads on a

29:09

railroad track Mm-hmm, and they think just because the train

29:11

doesn't come that you know, the train is never gonna

29:13

come Right and my

29:15

whole goal is to take your head off of the railroad track

29:17

So you look at a situation like that man coming out. He

29:20

didn't have to cut through the park He could have stayed

29:22

in a really well lit straight street that could have walked

29:24

him home Sure It would have taken him probably an extra

29:27

10 or 15 minutes But it

29:29

would have been much harder for those two

29:31

predators to run him down in a right

29:33

light, you know You know in a well

29:35

populated lit area. It's all about

29:37

minimizing your risk Yeah,

29:39

it's just like anything else you do with this

29:42

I mean, I tell people all the time

29:44

that the reason you need to understand self-protection

29:46

you need to understand things a life skill

29:48

It's the same reason that parents want their

29:50

kids to learn how to swim very

29:53

few parents I tell people all the time ago. I'll

29:56

say hey how many people you

29:58

know have had kids many

30:00

teach you kids to swim

30:03

and the majority of them have the ability to to

30:05

say yeah you know I want my kid I want

30:07

my kid trained to swim I go great because you

30:09

want him to be the next Michael Phelps right you

30:11

want to make sure they get seven gold medals and

30:14

they all start laughing and

30:16

like no the reason is the license I don't want my

30:18

child to drown and that's why

30:21

I teach that's why I teach people how

30:23

to you know I teach my kids how

30:25

to swim it's the same thing with self-protection

30:27

and learning this you know I don't learn it

30:30

because I want to use the information you know

30:32

I don't want to I don't want to learn to swim and then

30:35

you know test whether or not I can you know

30:37

really push it and drown but

30:39

I want to make sure that my kids swim so they

30:42

don't drown and therefore you know

30:44

in self-protection I want people have

30:46

enough knowledge you know it's almost like CPR you

30:49

know I know doctor would

30:52

laugh at CPR you know it's not you

30:54

know you're certainly not at the level of

30:56

a doctor but you can administer life-saving help

30:59

with a little bit of training and that's

31:02

really what you know what

31:04

learning self-protection is all about it's not

31:06

about competing in a martial art or

31:08

combat sport that's completely different information that's

31:11

competition it's

31:14

not necessarily going to give you a

31:16

direct path to being able to truly

31:18

protect yourself in a violent situation that's

31:20

not denigrating combat sports and martial arts

31:22

people they're amazing athletes I work with

31:24

a lot of them but if

31:26

we just think about it for a minute what

31:29

makes a combat sport like a mixed martial arts

31:31

match or a martial art that

31:33

has competition what makes it so

31:35

fun to watch and it

31:37

comes down to the rules and

31:40

if you're going to look at violence and

31:42

you're going to gamify violence how can you

31:44

gamify violence what's the most important thing well

31:46

you have to take deliberate injury to the

31:48

human body out of the equation which

31:50

is the exact information that you need if your

31:52

life's on the line because you don't want to

31:54

compete with somebody you want to make

31:57

sure you can shut them down immediately

32:00

And the problem is when I looked at

32:02

the UFC the last time, they

32:04

have 31 rules, 27 of the rules

32:07

outlawed injury to the human body.

32:10

And that basically just tells you the difference. You

32:16

have to decide why you're training. If you're

32:18

training for your own self-protection, then you want

32:20

to make sure that you go direct to

32:22

injury of the human body and very, very

32:24

few people and systems can

32:26

correctly teach you that information. Tim,

32:29

our show is called Nobody Told Me

32:31

and we always ask our guests, what

32:33

is your Nobody Told Me lesson?

32:35

So what is it that nobody told you

32:37

about self-defense, that you had to learn on

32:40

your own and that you kind of wish

32:42

someone had told you? That

32:45

the best way to learn

32:47

is actually cooperative, not

32:51

competitive training. Meaning,

32:54

the best information

32:56

comes from modeling

32:58

information. We know

33:00

if you're really trying to improve yourself in any skill

33:02

set or a way, shape, or form, oftentimes

33:05

slow deliberate training gets

33:08

you the best methodologies.

33:11

I'll give you an example. In shooting, they

33:13

have a mantra and the mantra is slow

33:15

is smooth, smooth is fast. And

33:19

I used to think, and when I grew up originally

33:21

with some of the combat sports that I learned, most

33:23

of my training was very ballistic. It was very fast.

33:25

It was very chaotic. When

33:28

it came down to learning how to

33:30

really protect myself, and I got this

33:33

originally when I was trained in the

33:35

field teams, the first part of training in

33:37

the field teams is all physical. It's usually

33:39

the stuff that most of the people see

33:41

when they see films of guys running around

33:43

boats on their heads, wet, sandy, miserable, getting

33:45

yelled at. What they don't show

33:47

oftentimes is the next phase of training, well,

33:50

it was the next phase of training when

33:52

I went through, which was weapons and explosives.

33:54

When you get to weapons and explosives, the

33:56

instructors aren't yelling and screaming. They aren't going

33:58

crazy. They aren't doing anything ballistic. everything

34:00

is slow, methodical, and calm.

34:03

And that's how you need to have this information

34:05

installed. And so that was the biggest

34:07

leap to me was it wasn't this chest

34:10

bumping, Rambo, tough guy

34:13

stuff. It was just methodically

34:15

learning where on the human body to

34:17

go and slowly and deliberately learning to

34:19

use the tools of your body and

34:22

being able to place them in the correct areas of

34:25

another partner. And that partner has to be cooperative. That

34:27

partner has to allow you to go into these very

34:29

vulnerable parts of the human body. And

34:31

you get to model injury and

34:34

you do it slow, deliberate. And

34:36

it's amazing the learning curve

34:38

that you get from, they're

34:41

calling it now deep practice. And

34:44

I just saw that you guys had interviewed Daniel Coyle

34:46

from the Talent Code. Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah,

34:48

so Daniel, I've interviewed him a couple of

34:50

times. It's exact same thing. He

34:53

talks about the music, he

34:55

gives examples of say, the

34:58

music school up in upper state New York

35:00

where the rule is if a

35:03

teacher can walk by one of the cabins and

35:06

figure out the music that the kid

35:08

is playing on his cello or on

35:10

his violin, then he's going too fast.

35:13

And that was probably the biggest change

35:15

to me was the experts, the real

35:17

key people are using some version of

35:20

deep practice. I was just lucky enough

35:22

that the instructor that I originally learned

35:24

from just inherently trained

35:26

people that way first. You

35:29

had to earn your right to use velocity. The

35:31

last thing you needed to add to anything was

35:33

speed. And that probably was

35:35

the biggest change, especially for a young man.

35:39

Young men, especially, want to go hard and fast, hard and fast all the

35:41

time, I think that's the only way to go. And

35:43

to be able to slow down and do this

35:45

deliberate practice, which people like Daniel have really brought

35:47

to the forefront. And then of course, a lot

35:50

of other great researchers. But

35:52

applying it to your self-protection, I've

35:55

never seen such gains in people's

35:57

abilities once they've allowed themselves

35:59

to do this. slow practice. That's

36:01

an absolutely wonderful answer. Tim,

36:03

how can people connect with you? I'm

36:07

on most social media platforms. At

36:11

Tim Larkin TFT is my

36:13

Instagram and Facebook

36:15

is either Target Focus

36:17

Training or Tim Larkin. You'll find me either

36:19

way. And of

36:22

course, the website, if they want to

36:24

take a free... I got a really

36:26

great masterclass out there. If they just

36:28

go to surviveviolence.com, surviveviolence.com, all

36:30

one word, they can get a free

36:32

masterclass, which really will take them through

36:35

the concepts that you and

36:37

I discussed, that we all discussed today, and then

36:39

I'll go even further in depth. I

36:42

think you folks would really get a lot out of it. And

36:44

what about your YouTube channel? What's

36:47

on that? Yeah, and then that's

36:49

Tim Larkin again, the YouTube

36:51

channel on that. If they

36:53

go to surviveviolence.com, they'll get contacted. We

36:56

give them all those assets. But

36:59

yeah, and you can find me on YouTube too. I'm all over

37:01

the place. Okay. And timlarkin.com

37:03

is also a website for you. Yes, it

37:05

is. Okay, perfect. All right. Well,

37:08

thank you so much, Tim, for joining us. I

37:10

really appreciate the opportunity. Our

37:12

thanks to our guest, a self-defense expert,

37:14

Tim Larkin, whose latest book is called,

37:16

When Violence Is The Answer, learning how

37:19

to do what it takes when your

37:21

life is at stake. I'm

37:23

Jan Black. And I'm Laura Owens. You're

37:25

listening to Nobody Told Me. Thank you

37:28

so much for joining us.