Three of the men

going into midbrain,
ran for the door in an attack of panic, one even
elbowed his girl friend in the face to escape. Their brains
thought that the danger was real and thousands of years of
instinct locked into their genes went into action. They fled
for their lives. I explained to my horrified friend that these
men did nothing more than react to natural instinct. Believe
me, no-one will be feeling as bad as these men, who will be
sitting at home beating themselves up, wondering why they
are such cowards. It takes great understanding and will to
override these very strong instincts.

Therefore,

when faced by danger, 95% of us want to run
away. This feeling is not easily overridden, it is so strong
that most of us will flee before we even know what has
happened to us. This is because when we are in fight or
flight mode, we revert to what is called the mid-brain, and in
mid-brain we are hardly discernible from animals.
My friend was telling me how disgusted he was by the
actions of several men who displayed 'cowardly' tendencies
in a 'virtual reality' ride that he went on in London. This
virtual
reality war game involved a group being locked in a room
and exposed to a pretend war scenario. Several men were in
the room with their girlfriends and wives eagerly
anticipating the fun, when suddenly the doors burst open and
some soldiers burst in with automatic weapons (part of the
game) and opened fire.

What this fact

allows us to comprehend, is that the
majority of people don't want to fight and if we can give
them any way out they, and we, will take it. The instinct to
run as opposed to fight, as stated earlier, is deeply imbedded
in our genes
and goes back to mammalian ancestry. Our Instinct In that
dangerous age was sharply honed for survival at any cost,
this usually meant fleeing from wild animals that wanted to
eat us and were to big/dangerous to fight against.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your views),
these instincts are still with us, though we have lost our
understanding of them somewhat. If we flee from potential
danger in this age, especially the male of the species, we feel
-or we are made to feel -like cowards.

These soldiers are

generally classed by society as sociopaths, people that have
no problem killing others of the same species. This is similar
to the way the immune system sends out killer T -cells to kill
cancerous or viral cells entering the body. The other 95% of
cells in the body are not designed to kill, instead they are
designed to help sustain life.
What the 95% Rule tells us, is that in violent conflicts of a
self-defence nature (eg. street fights), 95% of the people are
going to react in exactly the same way. As in warfare
between nations, the same rules apply to a small conflict
between two people, or any situation that the brain sees as
contentious. This is a war in microcosm -a small war. So
95% of us, when faced with conflict, are not going to want to
be there, we too are going to become conscientious
objectors.

Firstly

let me explain why posturing works and where the
premise for the 95% rule was formed. There have been
numerous surveys carried out on soldiers in wartime, which
reveal that in most conflicts, bar the Vietnam War (I'll
discuss that later) -at the point of actually killing another
human being, even at the threat of being killed themselves -
95% of the soldiers became conscientious objectors. That is,
at the point of actually killing another person of the same
species 95% of the people couldn't do it. They shot their
bullets into the ground, high into the air or they didn't shoot
at all. Hence the need for a sergeant kicking the soldiers up
the arse and making them kill. So 5% of the soldiers did
approximately 95% of the killings.

Whenever a

potentially confrontational situation arose on the door I
would practice posturing to see if I could psyche the
opponent out instead of knocking him out. I had great
success with it, now it is my teaching mainstay.
I generally employ posturing when verbal dissuasion is not
working. You can usually tell when this occurs because the
attacker will keep moving forward and touching the fence a
very bad sign. Distance close down is one of the final precursors
to a physical attack. I never let anyone touch the
fence more than twice -it's too dangerous.

Posturing

Posturing is the all but lost art of beating people by means of
psyche, winning with guile as opposed to force. It is the art
of fighting without fighting. In layman's terms it means
scaring the shit out of the opponent with 'blag', so that they
don't want to enter a physical arena with you. For every fight
that I've had where I employed a physical response, I must
have had at least another three where I beat my opponent
with posturing techniques, guile as opposed to force.
Initially, in my early days of door work I postured
instinctively, though not very convincingly. Then, when I
realised the potency of the long forgotten art of posturing, I
started to explore the histrionics of it and then, subsequently
fine tune it until it became laser sharp.

'Listen,'

I'd continue, 'if you respect me then don't fight in
my place. You know I run this door and you shouldn't fight
in here. Now do me a favour and leave it out.'
With this the fellow would walk back to his mates and tell
them how he was letting the guy off because Geoff
Thompson had asked him to do so as a personal favour to
him. That's the loophole: he doesn't really want to fight
anyway, so I'm giving him a way out, he just need
something that he could tell his mates.
Most people, despite their posturing and loud mouthing,
don't really want to be in a fight. Again the 95% Rule applies
95% of the people don't want to fight and if you give them a
half-decent reason not to, especially an honourable excuse,
then they'll take it.
Chapter Four

He knew that the ring leader

was in danger of losing face in front of his mates so, as they
came out of the cellar and back into the bar, he would
overtly make a fuss of the guy -arm round the shoulder and
free pint from behind the bar. This meant that the lad could
go back to his mates and they'd be none the wiser as to what
had gone on. Only he and the gaffer would know, and that
was enough because once he had control of the one he had
control of the ten.
I loopholed a lot when I worked as a nightclub doorman. If a
guy was looked as though he might start trouble I'd pull him
to one side and say, 'Hey man don't you respect me? I
thought we were friends?'
'Yeah I respect you, but that wanker over there ...I'm gonna
kill him.'

The One in Ten Rule

One of my friends, a veteran street fighter used what he
called the 'one in ten rule'. His theory (and he made it work
many times) was that if you can find the leader of a gang of
ten men, and control him, then you automatically controlled
the other nine.
He was a pub landlord and whenever he took over a new
pub he'd find out over the first few weeks who the ring
leader was, who played up, who was chancing their arm as it
were. Once he knew he would choose the right moment and
separate the one from the ten and take him into the cellars
saying that he had a proposition. Once in the cellars he
would lock the door and offer the guy a 'square go', a match
fight. Due to my friend's fearsome reputation as a fighter,
they would invariably bottle it at this point and he'd warn
then never to cross him again.

As
the potential aggressor was moving back to his mates, I'd pat
him on the back in a friendly manner so that I didn't look
like the aggressor. The lad could then go back to his friends
and tell them what ever he liked to save face, and they'd
believe it because I was not aggressive.

Loopholing

If someone approaches you aggressively and accuses you of
'staring' at them, even if you haven't don't be afraid to
apologise if you think that it might get you out of a violent
confrontation. It doesn't have to be sycophantic, it doesn't
have to be weak, it can simply be a statement like, 'I wasn't
aware that I was staring at you, if I was then I'm sorry.' End
of story. If you felt that the energy was right you could even
say it aggressively, to let him feel you intent. This would be
loopholing, what I call giving the opponent and honourable
way out of the situation. I can say 'sorry' to a man in such a
way that it will frighten the crap out of him, but it will still
be loopholing, because he can go back to his mates or
girlfriend without losing face and say 'Yeah, well he
apologised, lucky for him. If he didn't I have done him.' I
used to take people to one side, away from their mates, and
place my arm around them and tell them quietly that if they
didn't fuck off and quick I was going to hammer them in
front of their mates.

Before my students

took place in animal day sessions I
would get them to converse with each other so that they can
learn to raise their voices above the voice tremors and
practice voice control. It works. If you want to get used to
the water, get your trunks on and get wet. Hypothesising for
an eternity won't get you used to the feel- you get used to the
sensation by 'feeling' .

You have

to be able to talk your way out of
conflict. This is not so easy when you consider that a great
deal of blood is drawn away from the brain during fight or
flight and pumped to the muscular areas involved in
behavioural release (physical action). This lack of blood in
the brain often leaves the recipient unable to talk in
sentences and often unable to talk at all. Not good if you
need to employ verbal dissuasion. Even for those that do
manage to talk the voice often quivers fearfully for all to
hear, this is not good if
you are trying to convey a message of confidence. The only
way to overcome this disability is to practice by placing
yourself in fearful situations, ones manufactured in the
controlled arena or life confrontations, and practice speaking
whilst under the influence of adrenaline.

They say

it is a strong man that
can walk away -there was never a truer statement. Your
ippon should never be defending a space by the bar, or a bit
of tarmac on the road. Your ippon should be over-riding all
the non-starters and escaping if the circumstances allow. If
you can't escape, verbal dissuasion Is the next line of
defence and also incorporates escape. We are employing
verbal to escape a potentially violent situation.
If you are walking down the street and you sense malice in
front of you, walk the other way or cross the street, nip into
a busy shop, stop a policeman or knock on a house door and
ask them to call the police. If you're in a bar and you sense
that there is going to be trouble inform the doorstaff, escape
out the back exit, phone the police etc. If you are forced into
verbal dissuasion, then communication is of the utmost
importance.

They'd think he was

scared that's what they'd think. As you can see, this is all ego
play. It is not the sign of a mentally developed martial artist,
nor is it really his fault because he is no different from many
of the other high graded martial artists -it is the fault of a
system that teaches only the physical response. It is also the
fault of the grading system that elevates the Dan grades to
almost God-like status.
Higher grades in most traditional systems are revered, nay
worshiped. This reverence doesn't squash the negative
emotions in the way that the martial arts are supposed to in
fact it does quite the opposite -it enlarges the ego and
encourages many of the negatives that we should be driving
out like demons. So we end up with a very high graded, very
capable (physically) martial artist that is stuck to a pub bar
by the superglue of peer pressure and ignorance. If a bar is
threatening, go to a different bar and fuck what anyone else
might think about it or you.

Our bodies our designed with a survival mechanism that
does not take into consideration what others might think
about our actions, only what is right for survival of the
species. That's why we have the 95% rule. At times of
confrontation 95% of us (the other 5% are classed as
sociopaths) will have the instinct to run away to protect the
evolution of the species. We won't know this on a conscious
level of course, we'll only know that we want to run and not
why. This is where
the downward spiral of self-doubt begins and subsequently,
in the aftermath the self-esteem falls flatter than a shadow.
Going back to the pub story with my mate the 6th Dan,
escape for him was as simple as walking out of the door to
go to another bar where the threat was not so prevalent. But
he couldn't do that because he reasoned that he had as much
right to stand and drink in that shit hole as anyone else.
Anyway, what would his mates think if he backed down
from this potential confrontation?

He gave his wallet over

without an argument because he was lost for words and felt
terror like he had never felt it before. All he wanted was for
the encounter to end, so that he could be safe again.
Afterwards of course he fell into a terrible depression
because he felt that he had let his wife and his daughter
down by not defending them. He also felt that he had let
himself and his martial art down. The lad was carrying the
world on his shoulders. He had never let his wife down, or
himself, in fact he had never let anyone down before.
Although he was unaware of this, his body reacted exactly
the way it was designed to react, it prepared him for flight.
That was the best option open to him, but contemporary peer
pressure, ego, morality don't comprehend this logic and
wouldn't allow it. He had to stay and meet this threat.

All they would have been

concerned about was getting the hell out of there, by any,
and the fastest means possible. In fact their senses would
have been so honed that they would have noticed the modern
day sabre-toothed tiger, the skin head, long before the attack
and escaped before there was even a confrontation.
I know that it's easy to say in hindsight, but my friend
should have seen the threat and avoided it by over-riding his
ego. He should have gone the opposite way, or made a run
for it when avoidance was no longer an option, or talked
down his attackers if faced with a confrontation.
Unfortunately, he couldn't talk it down, he was so unused to
the amount of adrenaline that it caused 'freeze syndrome',
and he became monosyllabic.

By listening

to his ego he lost any real chance of getting out
the situation in tact. Part of the reason the lad had such an
over-developed ego was the fact that he was a high Damned
martial artist. Physically the lad was a phenomenon, but
mentally he was ill-prepared for this kind of confrontation.
As he said to me himself, 'my bottle went'. Actually his
bottle didn't go. I've never met anyone that ever lost their
bottle, just people that were tricked by their lack of adrenal
understanding. It is our instinct as human being to run not to
fight, unless cornered and left no other option. Do you think
our mammalian ancestors would have had any problem
running away from a sabre-toothed tiger? Do you think that
they may have worried about what their friends would have
thought if they didn't defend their honour by standing and
fighting? I don't think so.

He told me

that, about a
minute before they initiated their threat, he had noticed them
approach and had the chance to make a hasty retreat in the
opposite direction, he actually felt like grabbing his family
and running away but thought that cowardly. No, he couldn't
allow himself to do that. Why? Because his ego wouldn't
allow it. He felt that he had to stay put, like the huntergatherer
he was conditioned to think he was, and protect his
family.

As stated

earlier most aggression In society Is probably due
to displacement. It's not personal so don't let it become
personal. Similarly, there is no room in any kind of lifethreatening
situation for ego -all the ego will do is get you
into trouble. I had a friend who was out in the park with his
wife and baby daughter. The child was in a pushchair. It was
a lovely summer's day and there were a lot of people
wandering around the park. Just a normal Sunday afternoon
really. He didn't even notice the three skinheads sizing him
up about 100 yards in front (avoidance) and by the time he
was fully aware of their presents they already had the
Stanley knife out and were threatening to 'cut' his daughter if
he didn't hand over his wallet.