Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today we talk to one of the grand Masters all about self defense. Let's get started, sir.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I will live with perseverance in the spirit of Taekwondo, courtesy for fellow students, integrity within myself, and to become a black belt leader.
Welcome to the Ata Nation podcast.
[00:00:34] Speaker C: Welcome back.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: It is episode 95 of the Ata Nation podcast. I am your host, Senior Master Zach Hayden. Thank you for tuning in, ladies and gentlemen. We are pleased to be back with you. 95 episodes in, we have one of our favorite guests. I say that all the time. We have lots of favorite guests. We love all our guests. Anyways, Grandmaster Caruso is joining us on the show today, and I wanted to have him on one because Fall Nationals is coming up. Pittsburgh, we're heading out that direction.
We talk a little bit about that, but then we also talk about self defense. I love self defense. Obviously, as martial artists, it's something that is near and dear to, you know, we don't always talk about it the same.
And Grandmaster Crusoe is one of the guys that is up there in doing self defense, teaching self defense, understanding self defense with all his work with law enforcement and lots of different areas. So I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking to Grandmaster Crusoe all about self defense. So let's get right into it.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Special guest interview.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Ata Nation. I am super excited to have back with us today grandmaster Caruso. How are you doing, sir?
[00:02:05] Speaker D: Doing wonderful, sir. It's a great day here. How about you?
[00:02:08] Speaker C: I am fantastic. Before we get to kind of the topic I want to talk about today, you know what, nationals coming up. We're going to be heading over to Pittsburgh. Dallas beat Pittsburgh last time. How's it looking?
[00:02:22] Speaker D: Are you talking football, hockey, or Taekwondo?
[00:02:26] Speaker C: I'm talking yes, sir. Yes, sir.
[00:02:32] Speaker D: Yeah, they did. And the region of Dallas and the entire Ata community did what they were supposed to do, and we're accepting of that. And it was a wonderful event in Dallas.
Great venue, wonderful venue, and everybody had a good time. And of course, it's all in fun. I am predicting that our tournament here in the Berg coming up in October, 18 through the 21st has a lot to offer, not just with Ata, but our straight city.
We're going to do fine. I think we'll beat the numbers from last year, and we should, because a lot of people last year weren't really sure about what Pittsburgh had to offer. And the buzz of those people that were here that went back and spread the word a little bit got a lot of excitement. And just at this past world championships in Phoenix, I had a lot of people come up to me and said, we're sorry we didn't come, but we're coming this year. So that made me feel good.
[00:03:30] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:03:31] Speaker D: Even in our own region. So, yeah, it's going to be a bigger number.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: It's a beautiful venue. I love the facility. I love the area.
It's nice to go somewhere where it's not 1000 degrees.
And the venue for me, I just love you can see the sunlight like you're not underground or in some big cave and it just is such a great venue. So we're excited to be there.
[00:03:55] Speaker D: Yeah, you have a good feeling.
It's really an uplifting experience because you're right, it's got a good view. That a lot of natural sunlight in the roof system and out in the foyer area. It is really great and I think people will recognize the kindness and the support that the city has to offer. And last year was a pretty exciting year as far as sporting event was. I don't know if you knew this, but our Pittsburgh Penguins opened up their season last year on a Thursday of that same week, and then they played again on Saturday. And then our Steeler team had an opening day with Tampa Bay on Sunday. So there were actually three sporting events in the city and this year we don't have that. Steelers, I believe, are out of town, and I think I know the Penguins are, but it's going to be still great.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Well, that makes hotel rooms a little bit more available. I know we're still booking up pretty awesome. So people need to haven't made their plans. They need to do that, right?
[00:04:54] Speaker D: Yeah. And from what I understand, it's slim pickings on rooms, so still working. There's a lot of great hotels in the area. They might have to just drive a little bit or take an Uber or whatever, but there's a lot of great hotels.
[00:05:06] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Well, I wanted to talk to you a little bit today and we talked a little bit last time you were on the show about self defense because you were getting ready to do at Nationals some new knife defense stuff. And I know between your training with PPCT, all the background that you have, you're kind of a self defense guru.
And I love training with you in self defense.
A lot of our students do.
They're really into their forms and their sparring and their weapons. Whatnot? And I want us to kind of think about how we can think about our training and make sure that we're applying that real world self defense to it. What is it about self defense that the martial arts is helping us learn?
[00:05:58] Speaker D: Well, first of all, I appreciate the kind words. I've been very fortunate in my career when I really saw a need in law enforcement back almost 34 years now with Mr. Siddle and the organization of PPCT Human Factors, and now being a staff instructor, I'm really glad I made that distinction. In the days, I always took some of our song on taekwondo movements and that became self defense. We recalibrated how I taught in my schools and with the pressure points and things. Now, if you remember that old black belt curriculum book that we had back when I was involved with the instruction department as vice chairman, instruction grandmaster H u Lee, when he first met Bruce Siddle, they hit it off really well. Grandmaster really appreciated the research behind it, and what the biomechanics of pressure points training and digital tip pressure and striking the motor points and pressure points could do for our organization. And I was given the task by Grandmaster H u. Lee back then to just take some of those snippets of pressure points and put that into our belt color system. So when you look at those old black belt curriculum books, you'll see the white belt section had one or two self defense. They all had two.
[00:07:16] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:07:17] Speaker D: And that was a way for us as an organization to start to experience the side of PPCT. And a lot of people don't remember this, but that was a certification requirement. You could not get your black collar unless you went through a two day PPCT course. And we offered that. And that's what I was teaching at all the training camps over the years. So those trainings, we would break them know, remember the camps for a whole week in Little Rock?
[00:07:46] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:07:46] Speaker D: Every night, we would have about an hour and a half of training on pressure points. And they took a written test at the end of the week, and there was a practical examine all that, and that put a lot of value into our program at the time. And of course, I just kept moving up through the ranks with Mr. Siddle and recognizing his research, I realized, know what we do in song on taekwondo, that's an art form. That's our martial art. And when you do a technique, whether it's a front kick, a high block that's training our muscles to be actively participating and making ourselves strong. Learn how to make hand and foot timing, rhythm and timing to hit on impact and hit with reactionary force. Be able to know what it means to do a cutting strike versus a time on contact strike. Because both of those strikes have different implications, different results of the subject that would be getting hit with one of those.
So I think this is why I've been pretty successful with my adult market in my schools. I have a lot of adults here between the ages of 30, 32, all the way to 70, that are still actively training and pursuing black belt ranks because of the type of self defense we do. And I change it up here at our school every ten weeks. So I have some element of that, whether it be edge weapon, just hands on, close quarter, somebody grabing you at the collar.
And I use the PPCT system because it has been researched, and it left all the guesswork out for me. And it's practical if it works for law enforcement and correctional officers. If it works for them in their particular domain, why wouldn't it work for us? So I didn't reinvent. I really think that self defense, the priority model that I would like to see in our Ata schools would be teaching avoidance. Just try to avoid things first. That's the safest and cleanest thing to do. And how do we avoid avoidance is by one of our senses perceptually what we see, secondly might be what we hear. But you got to be vigil. You have to be always scanning your areas where you're at, be very vigilant in what you're seeing in the atmosphere that you're involved in, whether it's outside, inside.
So I always teach avoidance and I teach those kind of things in the class. Second is when something can't be avoided, then you have to have the skills that you're confident with that would be able to assess and engage. So once I assess what I need to do, am I willing to and confidently engage in a particular technique? And that all comes from the PPCT survival reaction time model. I know this sounds like a lot, but I teach it all the, you know, that reactionary time model comes under perception. What we see first analyze and evaluate, and that's based on our experience and our training. And then we have to formulate a strategy and whatever that strategy is that's that go to fight or flight. Then you go into the last part, which is initiate your motor action. What are you going to do physically? So you have to initiate and once you hit that initiation part, it's all out. I mean it's hit fast, hit first and get out of there. There's nobody raising your hand. Oh, you won first place, you won second. And to do it as safely as you can. And there's other factors. You could be by yourself, you could be with a couple of friends, you could be with a couple of martial artists, family members, children. So you got to take all that into account and that survival reaction time basically dictates the amount of time between perceiving the threat queue and the process to initiate the physical response. And you do that through constant repetition. Now what I like to do is, and I have found it to be more successful for me was, and I learned this the hard way, it took me five or six years and I revamped everything was I got my staff to realize when is the best time to practice any self defense techniques. So to encourage our Ata licensees, whatever they're teaching, I'm sure it's fine, I'm sure they're confident with it. Do it at the end of a class. You can work on teaching it and showing it to work on precision and doing it very slow with repetition. Maybe in the beginning of a class, at the end of the class. But you want to do that when you want to do it ballistically and dynamically. I have found you're training your students better physically and mentally by doing it at the end of the class when they're already, what, pretty fatigued, because now they're going to have a real sense of when the sympathetic nervous system is charged at the very end. So that's when they'll build their confidence. If you do it when they're real fresh, that's good. But at the end of a class, when they're fatigued and they think their energy is spent, that's the time to see if they've got it. So when I redid that, I got a different reaction from my students. I think they appreciated it more.
I was a lot more proud of their performance in the class when I could put them under those extreme pressure. Adds a little bit of what, anxiety to what they're doing, because that's what's going to happen in the real world.
[00:13:14] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: You're not getting attacked when you start your run out through the park. It's halfway through when you're huffing and puffing or whatever, the attacker is not coming and looking at the fittest. The person who is most ready to defend themselves, they're waiting for a time when you're not ready.
[00:13:34] Speaker D: Sure. And a good point there about just using what you just said to give you a little bit of an analogy to that. If I'm going somewhere to start that run and I didn't even take my first step forward and I have a confrontation, somebody coming up with a blade or a firearm or whatever, you're going to feel like you just ran 4 miles, you're fresh. And that feeling when that sympathetic nervous system kicks in, you're dealing with many hormones that are just they fire in the bloodstream. And again, it's going to come down to how you handle that is how you've been trained. What experiences now, people will say to me, well, how do you develop that experience? You have to create scenarios in the classroom setting. You have to get that mindset and say, okay, let's say this would happen, this is the scenario. But then you want to do it like I said, when they're fatigued. Because as we fatigue, we get what? We get sloppier in our technique.
[00:14:33] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:14:34] Speaker D: We don't have the same amount of energy behind the techniques.
The fuel tanks going a little empty. Yeah. Even though if it's full, you're going to feel like it's gone on me.
[00:14:45] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:14:46] Speaker D: Those are the things that I really talk about. The main factor here, Senior Master, is your mindset. Are you confident of your ability? And everybody's going to be different. Why? We have variables. One is what gender?
Okay.
And that's going to have something to do with strength.
Two, what about age?
Age is going to be a big factor. How about the person's condition, their overall well being, their physical condition? Those are what I just call variables. And you're going to have to react off of that. And in self defense, everybody thinks, oh, picking up my leg knee high, throwing a round kick to somebody's head, that takes a lot of time to do that. But maybe throwing an angle kick into the femoral nerve of the inner thigh or the common pronial outside of the thigh and knee level just to drop somebody and you know they're going where they're dropping. And that's the time for you to find your exit door.
[00:15:45] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:15:46] Speaker C: Well, with what you were saying about awareness and practicing these scenarios, do you suggest you encourage your students to practice these scenarios kind of mentally as well?
Let's say I'm getting ready to go somewhere, I think through what would I do if this happened, what would I kind of inoculate themselves from these scenarios by walking through them mentally as well?
[00:16:15] Speaker D: Sure, absolutely. And again, I love the word you use. You said inoculated. So when we do these drills, I try to put stress inoculation to it to build that stress up. You're already fatigued. For example, I teach a lot of law enforcement, and I make some impact with firearms. Now, I'm not a firearms instructor. I don't plan on being one. I have friends that are firearms instructors from departments. I constantly just work on the close quarter combat, not getting to the ground. I work on all the defense tactics, the handcuffing, collapsible, baton. But one of the things we've made a dramatic change on firearms training is officers will come out to the range. This is a perfect example, and they're firing magazine. They change, they do all that, and they work their skills perfectly. But to have an officer come out onto the range and then you do that stress inoculation, you drop them for ten push ups. They get up, and they've got to do jumping jacks for 15 seconds, drop and do a couple more push ups, get back up, do a couple more jumping jacks. What happens? Beats per minute, heart rate goes up. So think about it. That officer has got a little bit of inoculated stress hormones running through the system, and now they got to go under stress and shoot with what? Accuracy, precision. So that changes. So if you don't do any of that, there's a good chance that officer is going to be very compliant and they're going to shoot really well. So they'll keep their target tight. But you run them through that stress inoculation, boom. And you get the heart rate up, things change a little bit. And when they recognize that, that's a perfect example of stress inoculation. So if I was in your school and I was teaching, let's just say a one and two line edged weapon attack with a blade, we practice it for refinement, get them comfortable with it, play with it. We do it for maybe a week. And then later on in the next week, as you're developing their skill now, you're dropping them for some push ups. After they've done two, three rounds of sparring, they take their gear off and then you could all right, let's do this. And you put that scenario out there. You can turn the lights out in your academy, okay? You can say, okay, the lights are on. Here's a knife. Boom. Send some lights out, maybe have it dimly lit and get attacked. That's stress inoculation. Wait, whoa, what happened to the lights? Sometimes I'll fire my sound system up. You'll hear some background music, and all of a sudden I crank it up 30 notches on the volume, and just the sound of the music changes things, anything to disorient them. And that works really well.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Yeah, well, and that's such an important message for people to understand, I think. When I'm teaching self defense, one of the things that I really try to get people to understand is just how much different your body acts under that adrenaline stress response. When that nervous system starts firing, it's a whole different game. And just being aware of that and like you said, working on ways to get used to that, to understand that, is super important for our students to be trying and thinking about.
[00:19:45] Speaker D: Yeah, sir, you said that. Well, what you're saying is you got to take away the real key word here. You got to take away the element of fear. And that's where we're building that mindset. So for our listeners out there in our Ata academies, I know we can do a lot of cool things, and I've done it, and I still do it from time to time because you want to show off your art. So I might do a demonstration that has five, six, seven moves in. It something that starts from standing to the ground in realistic, we're looking at one, two, maybe three techniques. And we follow that kiss principle.
And the Kiss Principle is based off of one of Bruce Siddle's research that he complements in all his manuals to us is the Hicks Law. Now, the Kiss Principle, a lot of people think, oh, keep it simple, and you may know what the last word is, but we don't adopt that. We want to be very positive. So my staff, we teach the Kiss Principle. It's keep it simple for success.
So that Hicks Law is a motor learning reaction time principle. And basically what it says is it minimizes the number of skills within a system.
So if you taught me something with, let's say, a knife, gun, disarming, a chokehold, and you said, okay, if the guy grabs you like this, do this, then you do this, then we're already complicating it by adding way too many morphs. Now, like I said, it's okay for the flash in the show, for demonstrations, like at our tournaments and things like that in the community, public, because we want to show all our talent. We want to show what we're capable of doing.
But when it comes to the classroom setting, less is best. And that less is best is what we learn from Hicks Law. And it basically says that your reaction time increases by 150 milliseconds for each technique. So that's the study behind Hicks Law. So I just adopt it. I'm not going to sit here and like I said, I've been with Mr. Siddle for 30, 40 years, and I'm not going to sit here and try to reinvent something, steal something from him. The research has just been proven.
[00:22:04] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Well, I think self defense, everybody who gets into martial arts has some itch for self defense. I always tell people I think of martial arts a lot like a Vinn diagram, where there's a part of it that overlaps, that's self defense. But like, self defense is this thing, and martial arts is this thing, and there's a part that overlaps, because we can say that this is how I would use a square block in self defense, but really, I'm not using a square block very often.
[00:22:38] Speaker D: And you're right, and nobody would. But see, there's the reference. We have to make that beautiful square block that you're teaching your students. What's that teaching them? Motor movement, right?
[00:22:50] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:22:50] Speaker D: A technique and song on Taekwondo has was designed for, and always will be an art.
[00:22:58] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:22:59] Speaker D: Think of any other style ishin rue Shotakan tongsudo. Their style is different. They're proud of their style. That's what they teach, and it's artful. And so, yeah, you're never going to do a square block. There's a good chance you wouldn't even do a high block. You modified.
But that great training that song on Taekwondo provides is what makes people like you, me, healthy. We can fire this small twitch muscles, make them move quick. We're not looking for long range stuff. You're never going to go out on the street and set up your hands for a double ladder forearm block that goes behind you to forward.
Because we know one thing that's important about anything we do in self defense is action is faster than reaction, and we're never going to get around that.
[00:23:51] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:23:52] Speaker D: That's it.
[00:23:53] Speaker C: Well, and I always tell my students, one of the great benefits from a lot of the traditional side of martial arts and things like sparring board breaking is understanding distancing.
We all have dealt with it. You have a new student walk in the school, they have no idea where to stand to hit a bag with proper power, hit a board with proper power. You watch a black belt. They know exactly where to stand to have that perfect. And that is such an important skill that you don't think about as much when it comes to self defense. But to know where to stand, where that safety zone is, where I can be to generate the maximum power I need to to throw a technique that all comes from that traditional martial arts background of doing all those different things. And like you said earlier, about the variables of your health, your condition, most of us are going to die from going to too much McDonald's long before we're going to die from a gunshot wound. So a lot of the self defense we're doing is just getting to class.
[00:24:59] Speaker D: Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more. And you're talking about the distance.
Our friend on the street, when we talk about self defense, and I talked about the perceptual part. Right. To avoid something is to put space in between you and the threat. So it's time and distance. Now, I know when you teach sparring, you're talking about timing, right, and keeping your distance. And so when the guy that's in the ring moves forward, are you picking up that front leg and delivering that number one kick without even moving your back leg? You got to be able to be quick, get the knee up and throw it out there or do a jab just like a boxer would. And as they're moving in the ring, you're always thinking time and distance. And with distance, when you have distance, you have what more time to do, what time, more time to think, what selection, what technique do I need to do? And that's all so important. And that's part of that reaction time model that I talked about.
[00:25:54] Speaker E: Yes, sir.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: Well, this has been a super fun conversation. I love talking self defense. I know if anyone out there has not taken a self defense class with Grandmaster Cruz. So you guys got to make sure the next national world regional event, whatever. If you're in the region, 102 east area, you can come talk to Chief Master or excuse me, Grandmaster Caruso at our camp. Master plan there as well, sir. Thank you for your time today. We look forward to seeing you and all of Ata Nation out at Fall Nationals.
[00:26:30] Speaker D: Thank you. And Senior Master, I appreciate what you know. You take time out of your career with Ata to do this for our Ata Nation and provide other people on podcasts. And I can talk to you now about self defense, but I enjoy talking to you about any topic. So you're doing a great job. I want to thank you very much and thanks for providing the time with me with you today.
[00:26:50] Speaker E: Thank you, sir.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: All right, listener feedback.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Well, I want to thank Grandmaster Crusoe again. Can't wait to see him both at our regional camp coming up and then at Fall Nationals. Always a good time. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I posted on Instagram the other day a question. Would you be interested in an AMA episode if you've heard of these? They're an Ask Me Anything episode So the idea is that you would get to ask any questions that you want, and I would go ahead and answer those.
There was a bunch of people who said they'd be interested in that kind of episode, and I thought I would do that next week. But for that, I'm going to need your questions. So shoot me a question. I'm going to be posting on Instagram.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: A couple of times.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: If you want to ask a question, you can respond there or just DM me. But the AMA episode won't work very well if you don't ask any questions. So please send your questions over on our Instagram. I would love to answer those for a special AMA episode of The Ata Nation podcast. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that's going to wrap it up for us today. Until next week, make sure you're out there taking action.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to another episode of The Ata Nation podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share with your Ata family.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Know this secret section. You guys are the loyal guys. And I realized last week after somebody sent me a message, that I did not give you guys the code to get one of our membership cards. So you got to go to Atama Ninja uncut or use the link in the show notes. And to do that, you need to make sure that you buy or excuse me, you use the code Ata. It'll ask you for an access code or a passcode or something, and the code is Ata. So you can get one of those and get our cool training cards. Okay, see you later, guys. Bye.
