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    TargetTargetTargetTarget----FocusFocusFocusFocus

    TrainingTrainingTrainingTraining

    THE ART OF HEAD TRAUMA:

    DUMPS, DROPS & THROWS

    TFT Thowing SeriesTFT Thowing SeriesTFT Thowing SeriesTFT Thowing Series

    v3.0v3.0v3.0v3.0

    Chris Ranck-Buhr

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    2

    TFT Group

    Publication

    R-WEv1

    2007

    Target-Focus Training Weapons Series, Volume One. All information pre-sented here is Copyright 2007 by The TFT Group. The terms Target-

    Focus, TFT, TFT Group, Cause-State, Effect-State, and the TFT logo are allservicemarks sm 2002-2007 of the TFT Group. All rights reserved. No part of

    this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express writ-ten permission except in the case of brief credited quotations.

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    1

    Important Note Concerning TheVideo Presentation

    Why is he just standing there? Shouldnt he be

    throwing a punch or grabbing you or

    You dont expect him to be standing still whenit starts, and neither do we. Instead of attemptingto model all possible initial states of all possible

    violent situations, we are choosing to start where

    everything changes in your favorthe point whereyou cause the first injury.

    If we tried to factor in all possible initial stateshe could throw at yougrappling from every an-

    gle, with one, the other, or both hands (not to men-tion legs), standing up and on the ground; punching

    from every angle with straight punches, hooks, up-percuts (not to mention chops, claws, hammers,and elbows); kicking with the foot, shin, knee,

    backwards and forwards, out to the side, round-house and crescent; and we havent even gotten to

    every permutation of knife, stick and gunwedboth just get exhausted, the video would consist of

    a googol hours (thats a one with a hundred zerosafter it) and it would cost the National Debt com-

    pounded through all Eternity.

    Its not as useful as youd think.

    Instead, what do all these bazillion possible

    situations have in common?

    Everything changes in your favor when you

    injure him.

    i

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    Everything that happened or didnt happen be-fore the injury is immaterial. Once you injure him,you are in absolute control of what happens next.

    Whether hes throwing a punch or you just gotpunched, whether hes pulling a knife or you justgot cut, or whether hes attempting to pull off a

    Buddhas Palm Descending from low Earth orbit

    once you injure him, the rest is easy.

    Because now all you have to do is take out an

    injured man.

    And how hard is it to beat down a man with a

    broken leg?

    Starting from the initial injury gives us a

    framework within which to illustrate a physicalexample of a principle of violence. This maxi-

    mizes your ability to learn and dramatically in-

    creases your chances for success.

    ii

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    Table of Contents

    IMPORTANT NOTE CONCERNING THE VIDEO

    PRESENTATION ii

    Executive Summary The Big Idea 1

    Forward: Head Injury Roulette 2

    Introduction 6

    The Goal of This Product 8

    How to Use This Manual 9Training Methodology and Safety Issues 12

    Why Go Slow When Everyone Knows

    Real Fighting Is Fast? 12Why Go Slow II: The One Thing Missing

    From TFT Training 15

    Target-Focus TrainingViolence as a Survival Tool 20The Effect StateInjury & Spinal Reflexes 21

    The Triad of Violence: Penetration-Rotation-Injury 24

    Throwing: The Hammer of Gaia 28Techniques or Principles? 30

    The Difference Between a Sport Throw

    and a Combat Throw 32

    Throwing as a Special Case of Striking 34The Results: Falls, Throws, and Injuries 38

    Requirements for Throwing 46

    Components of a Throw 52The Mechanical Definition of Balance 56The Two Throw Families 58

    Slips: The Patch of Ice 58

    Leg Sweeps 58Trips: The Crack in the Sidewalk 61

    Direct manipulation of the CG

    hip pushes and pulls 62Base-break throws 63

    Drop throws 64

    iii

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    Hip throws 65Shoulder throws 69

    The Power of the Bad Landing 70

    Learn more about Target-Focus Training 74

    iv

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    v

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    1TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES Executive Summary THE BIG IDEA

    In violent situations you want to cause injury.

    The primary way to do this is with impact

    by striking him.

    A throw is a kind of strike.

    A throw is an uncontrolled (for him) fall that

    results in head/cervical spine and other trauma.

    You injure the man, cause him to fall and

    then control the fall to maximize that trauma.

    Throwing is using the planet as a bludgeon to

    go straight for the brain.

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    2

    NOTES

    I us

    ed to have a weird little hobbycollectingnews stories about people who got knocked down,

    hit their head on something, and died. It was oneof those things that started when I began training.

    It was the second article I remember reading wherethis happened, and that second iteration synced upwith all of the dumping, bouncing, slamming, and

    kicking of heads we were modeling on the mats,

    always with the typical admonition, Dont do thisif you dont want to kill him.

    I dont recall the first article I read, only the

    second. It was notable in that dj vu sense, Hey,Ive seen this before... and the fact that no oneinvolved meant for anyone else to die. A man exits

    a donut shop and is accosted by a beggar. The manrebukes the beggar; the beggar shoves the man and

    the man falls backwards, striking his head on the

    doors push bar. He later died of his injuries.

    I clipped this one out and began collectingthem, a new one every two, three months or so. Icollected them until I had a fat file folder of brown,

    curling newsprint. The sum total of theignominious ends of too many lives. And then,

    suddenly, I lost all interest in the topic.

    Why? It wasnt for a shortage of material,thats for sure. There was a surfeit of the stuff, as

    if there were only so many plotlines for personalstupidity that had to be played out over and overagain. What finished it for me was that sickeningregularity, and the fact that all the stories began to

    Forward: Head InjuryRoulette

    Forward Head Injury Roulette

    NOTESNOTES

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    3TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES sound the same:

    A & B have a problem. B pushes A. A falls

    down, brains self and dies. B is really, really sorry.

    The problem was usually one that you or Icould solve given five minutes and a mug of hotcocoa; sometimes the deadly impetus was pushing,

    sometimes it was a haymaker. But the last partnever wavered from what youd expect: head

    bounces off something solid, person dies. Like anyhobby, youd leave it as I did; imagine if everygame of golf you played suddenly became identical

    to all the games that came before it. Youd quit,

    too.

    Now, it must be said that many more peoplebounce their heads off of things everyday, with no

    lasting effects. Ive suffered at least nineconcussions, one of which was from falling off aroof onto a brick patio (kids, tomfoolery is no

    laughing matter); another was from leaving abicycle at full speed with no helmet (and no

    hands!), though I did end up with a goose egg thesize of my fist on my forehead... Again, this

    happens everywhere, every daypeople see lights,get dazed, or knocked out, often leaving withnothing worse than a headache. Natures brain

    bucket ends up doing its job after all.

    So what then, is the difference between all thatcomedy and those few unlucky deaths? How can

    you keep Americas Funniest Home Videos from

    becoming Faces of Death?

    Heres the deal:

    YOU CANT.

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    4

    NOTESTheres no way to know if its going to becomedy or tragedy; if youre just going to knockhis ass out and teach him that lesson or commit

    manslaughter. The obvious variables, like speed,angle of impact, acceleration, and fitness of thetissues involved are all out of your control, at least

    in any meaningful way. In other words, theres nosafe way to bounce someones head off the

    concrete. The only meaningful effect you can haveon the above variables is to do it as hard as you

    can.

    Which is to say that bouncing peoples headsoff the sidewalk, or kicking them in the head ashard as you can when theyre down, works likegangbusters when our desired goal is non-

    functionalityknocking them senseless, orunconscious, or dead. We can be assured ofnumber one, sometimes number two, andoccasionally number three. But we dont get to

    pick which its gonna be this time. You can spin

    the wheel as hard as you can hand hope the balllands someplace usefulbut you cant forget that

    one of the colors on that wheel is black, for death.

    More than anything else, this single idea colorshow we interact with violence. Its why we tellyou to let the stupid stuff slide, and, a hint: its allstupid stuff. Its why we tell you not to tear intosomeone unless youre comfortable with a terminal

    outcome. Its also why I wont tolerate peopleputting their hands on me in anger on the street; Idont want to end up in one of those stupid articles,the end of everything I am reduced to three column

    inches and one very, very sorry jackass.

    Forward Head Injury Roulette

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    5TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES

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    6

    NOTESIntroductionGravity and hard surfaces probably cause more

    accidental injury than every other methodcombined. The simple fallsolo, with no helpfrom another personcan result in something as

    trivial as embarrassment, or it can, in the rareoccasion when everything lines up just right, cause

    death.

    If we add another person into the equation,someone to shove, trip or otherwise knock down

    the victim, we begin to leave the realm ofunfortunate accident and enter into the willful useof gravity and hard surfaces as a tool for violence.

    We are now throwing people.

    Predictably, this leads to the creation of

    techniques for throwing, whole schools anddisciplines devoted entirely to its study and

    perfection. The result is a forest of techniques, the

    growth of a thousand treeseach one a more

    interesting and impressive throw.

    And for all this, a simple fact gets missed,

    forgotten:

    People get hurt falling down.

    A throwno matter how simple or

    complicated, how cool or mundaneis only asgood as the injuries it inflicts. The answer to the

    question, Whats the best throw? is: The one

    that puts the man down so he cant get back up.

    This was our starting point for this manual and

    video. Instead of demonstrating the crowd-pleasing super-impressive throws that no one butthe most coordinated, athletic and highly-trainedcould ever hope to achieve, we chose to share with

    Introduction

    NOTESNOTES

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    7TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES you the base principles that drive all throwing. Toshow you how people fall down and get hurt, and

    then show you how to help them on their way.

    Let's be very clear: we are not trying todebunk or contradict any training or technique outthere; the goal of this text and video is to educate

    you in throwing to cause injury. If you haveprevious experience or training, this informationwill enhance your skills and give you new ways toevaluate and apply what you already know. If youhave no experience whatsoever, this information

    will give you the fundamental tools required to useyour body as an impact weapon. Either way, ourgoal with TFT is to give you the tools to allow youto come out the other side of a violent situation

    alive and well.

    There are many places where throwing to causeserious injury is not desirable or appropriate, the

    most obvious being sporting competition andcertain law enforcement applications. In thecompetition ring, the goal is to best your opponentwith skill, speed, strength, endurance andcunningnot by causing life-long, debilitating

    injury. Likewise for LE, dumping someone ontotheir head in order to break their neck is almost

    always entirely inappropriate.

    Throwing to cause debilitating injury is

    violence. The only time this information is

    appropriate and useful is in violent conflicta

    situation where the goal of the people involved is

    to maim or kill.

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    8

    NOTESChris Ranck-Buhr The Goal ofThis Product

    In a nutshell: To keep you from having to

    choose between memorizing a thousand techniques

    or just giving up on throwing altogether.

    If the man is standing up, hes already halfwaythere to falling down. All you have to do is knowwhere, how, and in which direction to knock him

    over.

    To this end, we will:

    - Demystify throwing by removing it from therealm of special techniques and put it back whereit belongsas a special case of striking in order to

    cause a bad fall

    - Show you how to recognize the potential for a

    bad fall and then make it happen

    - Explain how balance works and what you

    need to do to take his while keeping yours

    - Give you an operational understanding of the

    specific injuries youre gunning for

    - Break all throwing down into the only twoways people can fallby slipping or trippinggiving you the toolset you need to build any throw

    you need, on the fly, from the ground up.

    NOTES

    The Goal of This Product

    NOTES

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    9TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES How to Use This ManualThis manual is meant to be used in conjunction

    with the video. Either one used alone will lead togaps in understanding. The manual itself goes intogreat detail on points that are merely mentioned in

    the video; likewise, reading the manual withoutseeing the principles applied to a human body inreal-time makes the whole affair unnecessarily

    abstract.

    The video contains all the illustrations you

    could ever need to understand the manual, and viceversa. Writing about physical action is a difficulthalf measure. If you find yourself confused by any

    of this textespecially when were writing about aspecific throw or throw family, your best bet is towatch the portion of the video covering the sametopic. This manual is, after all, commentary and

    reference for those physical examples.

    The manual is the thoughtbut the video is the

    action!

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    10

    NOTESNOTESNOTES

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    11TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES

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    12

    NOTESTraining Methodology andSafety Issues

    Understand that the principles and techniques

    illustrated in this manual and video product are fora singular purpose: to cause serious, debilitating

    injury and/or death.

    With that in mind, understand that practicingthem is dangerous. To minimize this inherent

    danger, you will need to:

    Work with a partner who understands andcan successfully model the basic concept

    of the Effect State (spinal reflexes)

    GO SLOW

    Work in an environment that is appropriatefor safe practice (or look out for

    Grandmas Hummel collection!)

    DID

    Why Go Slow When Everyone

    Knows Real Fighting Is Fast?Because targeting is a skill.

    It takes practice - you want to practice hitting

    targets, dead-on, accepting no errors.

    Its hand-eye coordination. Its foot-eyecoordination. Its body-space coordination. Its

    being able to successfully apply your body parts in

    motion to his body parts in motion.

    But even more than that, its the visceral/spatial

    understanding of where the targets are on his body,

    and how to get to them from where you are.

    NOTES

    Training Methodology and Safety Issues

    NOTES

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    13TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES This only comes from practice - slow, steady,and correct - on a real human body.

    As far as practice goes, speed only mucks

    things up.

    Fast practice actually hinders your targeting.

    Lets be real about this - on the street, in aviolent situation, youre going to strike him as hardand as fast as you can. But if you dont have the

    underlying skill of targeting, you will miss and be

    ineffective.

    If you go fast, without the requisite underlying

    wetware of targeting, you will not cause injury.

    Youll smack him around instead of breaking him.

    Reliable, repeatable injury ONLY occurs when

    you strike a target.

    Remember: Perfect practice makes perfect

    performance.

    So get to it - but use common sense, take careof your partner, and slow it down so you can get it

    done right!

    Why Go Slow II: The One Thing

    Missing From TFT Training

    Speed. We make you train slow, or, at least notas fast as you could go if you went full-bore. Inorder to understand why we do this, we need to

    look at what's required for injury. Debilitatinginjury is the result of an interrelated chain of

    factors:

    You have to drive your entire mass through atarget and follow all the way through with your full

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    14

    NOTESforce and effort.

    A shorthand way of stating this is:

    Penetrate & rotate through a target at speed.

    So that's what it takes to crush a throat, gougean eye, rupture a kidney or break a knee. All welland good until you try to figure out how to train forthat. If you keep it all as is, your 'training' isactually maiming. Every training regimen has to

    remove one or more of those elements in order totrain without putting the practitioners in the

    hospital. (At least on a daily basis.)

    So if you're going to go fast when you train,

    you have to lose something else. But what?

    Take away the follow-through.

    Almost no one goes here. You still have

    bodyweight on a target at speedtrain like this &even without the follow-through someone's going

    to lose an eye.

    Take away the target.

    This is a typical padded-up sparring session. Ifwe make the target indistinct, we can run aroundand hit each other pretty hardbut the minute it alllines up right, someone's screwed. You're also

    training to cause generic, non-specific trauma:bumps, bruises, lacerations, etc., and not the kind

    that results in a reliable state-change in the man.

    Take away the bodyweight.

    This is a slap-fight. You're swatting attargets... but without your mass, there's nothing to

    compress the tissue, and effect the kind of volume

    Training Methodology and Safety Issues

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    15TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES change that breaks, tears, and ruptures anatomy.Some targets, like the eyes, throat and groin canstill be injured practicing like this, which is why

    they'll almost always end up 'off limits' for safety.

    The problem is that the result you're reallygunning for is only ever going to occur through

    accidentwhen all the elements are present atspeed. In other words, if you remove anything elseother than speed, you're not training to get the

    results you need in violence.

    And the funny part is that speed is the one

    thing everyone walks in the door with. It's the onlything on the list that you don't have to train. The

    other elements, yesno one walks in with goodtargeting, or the ability to control their mass suchthat they can drive it like a battering ram whilemaintaining balance, or the proper mechanics toreally sink it with complete follow through. These

    things have to be learned.

    And once you learn them, you just add the speed

    which you already had to begin withand you end up

    with injury, any time, every time.

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    16

    NOTESIn Summary

    People get hurt falling down

    Throwing is making them fall down on

    purpose in order to cause serious injury

    In order to practice this safely:

    Work with a willing partner who knows

    how to fall

    Work in an appropriate environment

    (matted floors, etc.)

    GO SLOW

    Training Methodology and Safety Issues

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    17TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES

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    18

    NOTESTarget-Focus Training Violence as a SurvivalTool

    The goal of violence is debilitating injury -injury that fundamentally changes the normal

    functioning of his body and will require medical

    attention.

    Target-Focus Training is a trainingmethodology by which you can learn to wield

    violence as a survival tool. In short, this means wecan teach you how to injure people.

    TFT is not self-defense or a combat style. We

    are not interested in defending against an attackeror competition with a persons skill, speed, or

    physical ability. We are not interested in modeling

    all the possible variables found in a fight. Instead,we are only ever interested in injuring people. Real

    criminal violence is not about competition, it is

    about destruction.

    Violence is the use of physical force to cause

    an injury.

    A violent situation would be one in which theparties involved are trying to injure each other,typically with the prevailing party maiming or

    killing others.

    Simply put, the best way to survive a violent

    situation is to be the one doing it.

    NOTES

    Violence as a Survival Tool

    NOTES

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    19TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES EFFECT STATE Targets &Spinal Reflexes

    Nothing changes in your favor until you injure

    him; once youve injured him all thats left to do is

    take out an injured man.

    You will be causing injury by striking orotherwise affecting targets, anatomical weak pointsof the hu-man body that are naturally susceptible to

    trauma, typically with cascading effects to otherbody sys-tems - causing an interruption of normal

    function. For example, a blow to the solar plexuswill interrupt normal breathing; he cant walk with

    a broken knee; gouging the eyes will blind him.

    In addition, there is a single universal effectthat all targets have in common: a spinal reflex in

    re-sponse to injury.

    A spinal reflex is an involuntary, pre-programmed movement, specific to each target,

    that is acti-vated in response to injury through a

    threshold switch in the top of the spinal cord.

    It does not involve the brain proper, orconscious thought. If you kick a man in the groin,rupturing one or both testicles, he will bend hisknees, put his hands over his groin, and bendforward at the hips with his chin up - even if he

    doesnt want to.

    Knowing targets, how to affect them to cause

    injury, and the associated spinal reflex grants you

    two major advantages:

    1. You deny him control over his own body

    2. You can predict what he will do nextbymaking him do it.

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    20

    NOTESFor example, say youre facing a man who isbigger than you, stronger than you - hell, hes evenmeaner than you. And he has a knife. How could

    you possibly overcome his superior size andstrength? His cruel tenacity? And whats he going

    to do with that knife?

    All those question marks vanish with a hardboot to the groinhis size and strength aremeaning-less as he momentarily loses consciouscontrol over his body to execute a picture-perfectgroin reac-tion. Hes still mean - but he cant do

    anything with it. His will has been trumped by thethreshold switch at the top of his spine.

    And whats he doing with that knife?

    Hes a doing a groin reaction is what hes

    doing.

    Find your next target while hes busy, injure

    him again and repeat until satisfied.

    In Summary...

    Target-Focus Training is:

    A training method to learn how to use

    violence

    Not competition, sport, or fighting

    How to use violence to hurt another human

    The Effect-State is:

    A response to injury

    Involuntary reaction

    Predictable

    NOTES

    Violence as a Survival Tool

    NOTES

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    21TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES

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    22

    NOTESThe Triad of Violence:Penetration-Rotation-Injury

    Techniques are worthless; how many ways are

    there to kick a man in the groin?

    Theres only one way to kick a man in the

    groin - as hard as you can.

    You can be in front of him, off to his side,behind him, standing, sitting, on the floor, etc.Though there may be thousands of techniques for

    getting it done, the base answer is always the same.As hard as you can!

    Beneath all possible violent techniques thereare three common elements. Effective violence

    starts with penetration, drives it home with rotation,

    and winds up with injury.

    Penetration

    In order to injure someone with your barehands, you need to be near enough to touch him.Pen-etration gets you to him and through him and

    beyond; getting you right on top of him,dominating his space, driving him off balance andmaximizing kinetic force for injury. You want to

    penetrate so youre standing where he used to be.

    RotationThis is the follow-through; rotation is how

    youre going to take his balance and beat him down

    with it. Its the drive all the way through the ribs

    you just broke by penetrating, above.

    Injury

    The ultimate goal of violence; this is what youget when you penetrate to a target and rotate

    The Triad of Violence

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    23TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES through it. And then hes locked into spinalreflexes as discussed above.

    Injury is the light at the end of the tunnel. It isthe bright hole in a dark shroud of chaos; it is theway through, the way out, the way back home to

    your loved ones.

    Lets take a look at how the three snap togetherinto the triad of violence with the following

    example:

    You step in and punch him in the solar plexus,

    then grab his hand and break his wrist, slamminghim down into the concrete.

    This is really two iterations of penetration-

    rotation-injury:

    You step in (penetrate through his space) &punch him (rotating your torso to throw the punchand follow all the way through) in the solar plexus

    (thereby causing an injury to the target).

    You then grab his hand (penetrating) and breakhis wrist (with rotation & complete follow-through

    to cause the injuryas well as additional injuriesfrom the fall).

    Effective use of violence as a survival tool willalways include this triadit powers everythingfrom striking to joint breaking and throwing. It

    exists in the use of extraneous tools like knife,stick, curb, etc. The triad of violence makes it all

    work for you.

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    24

    NOTESIn Summary...

    Violent techniques have three components:

    Penetration (maximizing force)

    Rotation (follow-through)

    Injury

    The Triad of Violence

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    25TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES

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    26

    NOTESThrowing: The Hammer ofGaia

    Throwing is one of those things thatsimultaneously delights and intimidates a crowd.

    On the one hand, it looks greata smaller personsteps through a larger person and then, as if bymagic, hurls the bigger man to the ground in a

    mysterious flurry of limbs and blurred motion.

    We all know theres no way the smaller personcould pick up the larger; that means it must beeither magic or highly advanced skill. And this, ofcourse, is the intimidating partpeopleimmediately assume they cannot hope to replicatewhat they just saw without years of work, bulging

    muscles, robes covered in black sashes with gold-fringed epaulets, and, not to mention, a law-

    professor-load of certificates papering their walls.

    Nothing could be further from the truththrowing is as simple as knocking people down.

    Its doing the work of a patch of ice or a crack inthe sidewalk.

    Its simply recognizing when people arewindmilling at the top of that last stair and givingthem a good, hearty shove down the flight. What

    happens next is just the laws of the universe

    screwing with them.

    All throws, from the simplest takedown to themost complex example of free flying lessons arisefrom the same set of rulessimple, easy rules

    anyone can remember, recognize and master.

    NOTES

    Throwing The Hammer of Gaia

    NOTES

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    27TFT Throwing Series

    NOTES And the best part is, between gravity and theground, youve got a fool-proof weapons system atyour disposal thats always on and everywhere you

    go.

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    28

    NOTESTechniques or Principles?

    Smooth performance of throws does not

    involve 'doing a technique' but rather recognizingopportunities to manipulate balance into a fall,seeing a through-path from where you both are

    now into either a slip or a trip.

    If he's already moving, he's already falling

    saving it is a matter of him getting his legs backunder him. Sticking your wooden shoe in hisgears, either by preventing him from getting his

    feet under him or knocking him down, istechnically a throw.

    With two bodies in motion you don't reallyhave time to sort through a mass of techniques

    looking for just the right one you need to be ableto take full advantage of where you're both going to

    break his structure and put him down.

    This ends up looking very much like a specifictechnique; many of us have had training partners

    ask, "Can you show me that throw you just did?"This becomes difficult because what happened was

    correct for that specific set of circumstances thatone time, it was merely the recognition ofopportunity followed by the application of a few

    simple rules.

    If I show you three throws, then you knowthree throws. Sometimes they'll work, and

    sometimes they won't. They'll work best when theinitial state was amenable to that particular throw;they'll fail when you try to shoe-horn it into a set ofcircumstances that are not favorable to pulling it

    off.

    Techniques or Principals

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    NOTES If, instead, I show you:

    1. How to recognize the opportunity for a

    throw, and

    2. The few simple rules to take advantage of

    that opportunity,

    well, then you know every throw you'll ever

    need in a combat situation.

    Of course, 'knocking people down' isn't nearlyas cool as knowing 50 different throws that you can

    practice by the numbers, one through 50, for anadmiring crowd. But being able to put anyone in

    the world down so they can't get back up is farmore effective and, training-wise, far more easilyachieved. It's the difference between a two-step

    process to learn every throw and a 50-step process

    to learn 50 throws.

    Just as emptying a clip into a man's chest isn'tas 'cool' as trick-shooting a slug through a tossed

    50-cent piece, effectiveness and looking good are

    often at opposite end of the spectrum.

    One is good when ego is involved and you'remaking friends and influencing people, the other

    when someone wants to kill you.

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    NOTESThe Difference Between aSport Throw and aCombat ThrowThe following facts hold true no matter

    what the tool:

    In a nutshell, its the end result.

    The goal of a sport throw is to up-end youropponent, to change the orientation between the

    two of you to one that puts you in an advantageousposition while simultaneously putting him in an

    awkward one. Imagine any number of wrestling,Jiu-Jitsu, or mixed martial arts takedowns. The

    players are typically looking to disrupt balance,take each other off their feet and down to thecanvas in such a way that facilitates the setting of a

    painful joint lock or choke-out technique in order

    to subdue and win the match.

    Youre looking to turn an equal situation, both

    of you standing, into an unequal oneone guy

    down with the other lording it over him.

    The goal of a combat throw is to land the manon his head to directly injure the brain and neck.Youre looking for everything from a fractured

    skull with a concussion to severe head trauma(bleeding in the brain) and a broken neck. In other

    words, youre putting him down in such way thathe cant get back up. Think in terms of traumaticsports injuries and the rare instances in which a

    tackle or sport throw goes terribly wrong andsomeone gets a broken neck. In terms of the sport

    this is an awful accidentit wasnt supposed to

    end like thisbut in terms of illustrating what wewant out of a combat throw, these are the rare

    Sports Throw vs Combat Throw

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    NOTES instances where everything went exactly right.

    This is taking advantage of circumstances touse his own mass as a hammer to break him against

    the anvil of the entire world.

    The desired outcome colors the execution ofthe throw. In sport, throws are not meant to cause

    career- or life-ending injuries; a lot of care andattention is given to throwing safely, to ensure that

    the man can tuck his head, roll with it, and not getunduly wrecked in the process. This necessitateslarge arcs to create enough space and time for your

    opponent to land the throw successfully. Incombat, throws are meant to cripple and kill. To

    this end they need to be targeted, e.g., aiming thehead at the ground, and need to be sharp and tightto ensure that there is no slop or room for the other

    guy to weasel out of the desired impact.

    The state of the man being thrown also changes

    the manner of execution. For a sport throw, youllbe doing it to a man who has all his powers and

    faculties at his disposalyou will be competingstrength to strength, speed to speed, technique to

    technique. Miss your timing and you could end upgetting countered. This changes the nature of thethrow into one that is essentially a struggle for

    balance; the advantage will tend to go to thesuperior competitor. When your life is on the line,you cant afford to enter into such a strugglefor a

    combat throw, you must start with prior injury.The injured man will not have his powers and

    faculties at his disposal. This changes the basicnature of the throw from a struggle for balance to a

    purely mechanical exercise of dumping him on his

    head. Without the struggle, you are free to

    concentrate on technical accuracy; you have the

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    NOTESopportunity to set up and execute the throw withoutany say or undue resistance on his part. There will

    be no countering, or fancy break-fall. Just

    wreckage.

    While combat throws are not appropriate forcompetitionpurposely landing an opponent on

    his head in an effort to break his neck obviouslyviolates the rules of good sportsmanshipalmostall good competition throws can be turned into

    combat throws. Its really as simple as:

    1) Start with prior injury,

    2) Tighten it up, and

    3) Specifically target the head.

    Tighten it up means removing the spacebetween the two of you to shorten the arc of thethrow, reducing his ability to tuck and roll with it.You want to remove as much slack as possible; ifyoure moving and hes not, then youve got space

    and slack between the two centers of gravity. Whatyou want is a nice, tight integration of your two

    centers of gravity into a single systemwhen youmove, you move him, too.

    Specifically target the head means to aim it at

    a spot on the groundand then drive it straight intothat point. Its the X youre going to bounce his

    head off of. This is the opposite of the typicalcompetition throw approach of up-end theopponent to flat-back him on the mats. In one,

    youre simply looking to alter his orientation. Inthe other youre looking for head trauma. Its

    enormous target (the entire body) vs. small target

    (the head).

    Sports Throw vs Combat Throw

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    NOTES A great example of this can be seen in theclassic hip throw. For competition, youd want toround it off at arms length and roll him around

    your hip in a large arc so he can transition overonto his back and hit the mats flat. In combatyoud want to keep it tight, in close, so you can see

    -saw and pop him into the air for just enough hang-time to allow you to ride him down, dropping to

    one knee as you pile-drive the top of his head into

    the concrete.

    Unfortunately, most combat throws make for

    terrible and inappropriate competition throws, forall the obvious reasons cited above. The two skillsets do have a lot in commonthey both requirecoordination, timing, and training, chiefly for the

    physical understanding of how to take someonesbalance while maintaining your ownbut in the

    end, truly, they are worlds apart.

    Throwing someone to not hurt them is a very

    different thing from throwing to kill.

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    NOTESThrowing as a SpecialCase of Striking

    When looking at throwing from a technique-

    based perspective, it appears to be its owndiscipline, removed from other aspects of violence.A throw looks like nothing else its much easierto see the connection between striking and joint

    breaking. Stomping an ankle looks like a strike, as

    does hammering the back of an elbow to break it.But a throw... a throw must be a discrete

    technique, unlike any other method of injury, right?In reality, throwing is nothing more than a

    special case of striking. Striking, as we define it, is

    applying bodyweight in motion through an

    anatomical target in order to break it:

    Striking = penetration + rotation through a

    target

    When that target is a joint at the pathological

    limit, i.e., its at the end of its range of motion andcant bend any further in that direction, we get a

    joint break:

    Joint breaking = penetration + rotation

    through a joint

    For throwing, the only change is in the targetthe target ceases to be a piece of anatomy and

    becomes a component of balance:

    Throwing = penetration + rotation through

    structure

    With the goal of disrupting balance to initiate

    Throwing as A Special Case of Striking

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    NOTES and accelerate a fallan aimed and assistedcollision with the ground, typically isolating aspecific piece of anatomy or cluster of targets (like

    the head) for that collision. Instead of smashingourselves through that anatomy (as in a vanilla

    strike) were going to smash it against the ground.

    We can also look at this progression from the

    striking side:

    Striking applied to a target causes injury

    Striking applied to a joint at the pathological limit

    breaks it

    Striking applied to structure is a throw

    With the end of the throw resulting in injury.

    The question, of course, is wheres the bodyweight? We know that in a typical strike (like a

    shin through the groin) you dont just want toswing your leg up, you want to drive your entiremass through those testicles, his pelvis, his center

    of gravity, with everything youve got. Thatswhat causes anatomy to fail and gets an injury. So

    wheres your body weight in a throw? Your bodyweight will typically be used as a battering ram to

    buckle his structurethink of kicking his legs out

    from under him, tripping him or body-checkinghim to knock him off balance (or maybe a lotta-bit

    of all three). When he falls it will be hisbodyweight in motion that smashes his own anatomyagainst the ground. If you dump a man on his

    head, his mass becomes his own worst enemy. Topile on even more, you can use your own mass as

    wellriding him down as he fallsso he hits as if

    he weighs twice as much.

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    NOTESRotation also plays a key part, both in takinghis balance and in accelerating his fall. If youshove someone off balance in a straight line

    simply pushing them backwards its a very easything for them to figure out where to put their footdown behind them to catch their balance. So easy,

    in fact, its an automatic response they wont evenhave to think about. Their body will naturally

    move and set the foot in exactly the right placeevery time. Instead of pushing him straight back,lets say you grab the injured man by the hair and

    pull his head around and down to your hip and then

    towards the ground behind you in a descending arcor, even better, a decreasing spiral. With thisadded rotation and the body has a harder time

    figuring out where to put the foot, and even if itgets it right its only right for that small moment

    before the CG gets twisted past the base again.

    Because you used a descending, decreasing spiralhis weight will make that foot stick, e.g., he wont

    be able to pick it up and place it again to catch his

    ever-changing balance situation. In short:

    Linear loss of balance > easy to catch

    Rotational loss of balance > difficult to catch

    It also means we dont have to travel as far to

    take his balance. If you shove him backwards three(linear) feet to make him stumble he ends up threeor more feet away from you and now you have

    to play catch-up and run after him to keep him offbalance or effect a throw. With rotation, you can

    easily describe a three-foot arc around you, morethan enough to take his balance and effect a throw

    without having to take a single step. This

    allows you to throw in close quarters as well as

    stay right on top of him once you put him down.

    NOTES

    Sports Throw vs Combat Throw

    NOTES

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    NOTES

    Rotation also allows us to accelerate his fall.Left to his own devices, hell go down at thegravitational constant. With rotation, we can makehim fall faster, and that means hell hit harder. Ifyou take him through an arc when you throw him,

    youll actually accelerate him into the throw; formaximum effect youll want to use thatdescending, decreasing spiral throwing him onan arc that gets tighter, curling in on itself, to getthe most out of rotation. This idea can readily be

    seen in drop, hip and shoulder throws where weakor large rotation makes the throw seem to losesteam halfway through. When done with a nice,tight spiral the man picks up speed and gets

    whipped into the ground instead of simply falling.This allows you to load him with as much kineticenergy as possible before he lands. The more kE

    he has in him, the more he breaks when he hits.

    In Summary

    Throwing is a special case of striking

    Instead of striking a target, youre striking

    through his structure to make him fall

    Injury occurs when he hits the ground

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    NOTESThe Results: Falls,Throws, and Injuries

    Why Bother?

    This is actually a great question. Throwingsure does look like a lot of effortand while any

    actual exertion is an illusion, it does take a little bitof know-how, as well as some set up. Why go to

    all that effort when you could just punch him in the

    throat and be done with it?

    Well, like most things in violence, were in it

    for the injury.

    Throwing people into the ground gives us somebig payback for that (small) effortnamely, headtrauma. Its the only way, absent a baton or

    firearm, that we can get right at that brain. Weregoing for concussion, skull fracture, and serioushead injuriesbleeding in the brain. To be bluntabout it, we throw people to crack their skull open

    and kill them.

    On the way there well get some other injuriesas well. Going head-first into the ground with allhis bodyweight over him (ass over teakettle) isnt

    going to do his neck any good, so we can gun forsome cervical injuries as well. Not to mention theadded bonus injuries hell get when he reachesout to break his fallsprains, dislocations and

    breaks of the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder to

    name a few possibilities; we can also end up withthe same kinds of injuries in the legs, all the way

    up to broken bones.

    Lastly, injured people dont operated well onthe ground (not that theyre any good anywhere

    The Results Falls, Throws and Injuries

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    NOTES elseits just worse for the downed man; harder toget his bodyweight into the equation, etc.). Thestanding person can very easily engage more

    bodyweight against the downed manthroughstomps and knee drops, upping the severity of

    further trauma.

    So, a single strike applied through his structurecan get you multiple injuries, some life-threateningly serious, put him into a vulnerable

    position and allow you to really ramp up whateveryou do next. Thats a lot of gain for a single strike.

    The punch to the throat, on the other hand, gets youa single injury that will take time to manifest fully.

    Throwing is the injury multiplier; it magnifies

    your efforts.

    Its Not the Fall, But the Sudden Stop at

    the End

    Injuries from simple falls can be fickle things.

    Sometimes you bounce back without a scratch,and sometimes youre dead. A common thread

    in the news, if you pay attention over a longenough time, is the odd fatality resulting from

    a relatively trivial altercation. The stories arealways the same: A and B get into a

    disagreement and go to blows, B catches A

    with a solid right hook to the head, A fallsdown, brains himself on the street and later

    dies. This is almost always the result of an

    uncontrolled fall, that is, the man lostconsciousness because of the initial blow to the

    head and fell to the ground without trying to

    catch himself, striking his head on the

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    NOTESconcrete. The initial injury is usually small a concussion but directly contributes to themajor injury that ends up killing the man,

    usually intracranial bleeding. For every one of

    these tragedies, there have to be thousandsupon thousands of fistfights that dont result in

    death, legions of heads bouncing off of hard

    surfaces with no lasting ill-effects.

    There are two important lessons to take from

    the information above:

    1. Throwing is not trivial it actually

    kills people, and

    2. In order to get the results we want, we

    need to throw injured people.

    This means that if you dont want to kill the

    man, dont knock him down and bounce his

    head off the sidewalk; if you do want to kill

    him, then make sure hes injured ahead of time

    and that his fall is, for him, uncontrolled.

    This is the essence of making an accidenthappen on purpose its sussing out all the

    awful things that lined up just right when

    people died and turning them into a checklist.

    Injuries Typically Associated With Falls

    Unless hes unconscious, the man will usuallytry to catch his fall by extending his hands and

    The Results Falls, Throws and Injuries

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    NOTES arms. For throws that are untargeted (that is,not isolating the head for impact) and/orotherwise restricting his ability to catch his fall

    (dislocating his shoulder as you throw him),

    the initial impact will be to the hands and arms,making serious head injury less likely. It does,

    however, make injury to the extremities highly

    likely:

    - Sprained or broken fingers and/or wrist(s)

    - Sprained or dislocated shoulder

    - Broken clavicle (collar bone)

    The last two (shoulder injuries) are the results

    of landing on either a locked-straight arm

    (elbow completely extended) or the shoulderitself.

    Should the torso strike the ground as a result of

    failure to catch the fall, we can momentarily

    stun the diaphragm:

    - Wind knocked out

    If he lands face-first, whether as a targeted

    throw or happenstance, we can cause cranio-facial injuries:

    - Broken nose, teeth, zygomatic arch(cheekbones), mandible (jaw)

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    NOTESIf he lands on his head, with his body weighteither driving him down or transitioning overhis head after it strikes the ground, we can

    cause neck injuries, leading to impairment,

    and, in the most energetic and severe cases,death:

    - Sprained, dislocated or broken cervical spine(neck)

    The most serious injury, and the one usually

    targeted for, is traumatic brain injury (TBI). Ifwe understand that for the purposes of combat

    the goal is the shutdown of the human brain, it

    stands to reason that hurling it against theplanet is the most direct way, without the aid

    of other tools, of achieving this goal. It is the

    primary purpose of throwing we hope for itin untargeted throws, we make it happen in

    targeted ones. TBI includes:

    - Concussion (for impairment and loss of

    consciousness)

    - Intracranial bleeding (for impairment, loss ofconsciousness and death)

    For our purposes a skull fracture is a side-effect of TBI. Its not a necessary component.

    The target is the brain, and if the case gets

    cracked while we wreck it, thats just fine... butits not the goal, but rather a symptom of the

    goal.

    The Results Falls, Throws and Injuries

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    NOTES A typical combat throw is going to differ froma simple fall in that the man will be injuredbefore throwing, increasing the chances of

    further injury. An untargeted combat throw (a

    simple takedown) will very often result inseveral of the injuries listed above a

    sprained wrist, a jammed shoulder and a mild

    concussion, for example. Targeted throws,obviously, cause a specific injury, or cluster of

    injuries, to the targeted anatomy. If you up-

    end the man and drive him down into the

    ground face-first, for example, you can expectcranio-facial, cervical spine and brain injuries.

    Again, the entire point of a targeted throw to

    begin with.

    While it is possible that the man may break

    long bones in the arm(s) (radius, ulna,humerus) or sustain fractures in the feet, ankles

    and/or knees in throws that toss him ass over

    teakettle (thereby accelerating the feet/knees

    through a large arc and into the ground), were

    not going to rely on such things. Yes, they canhappen, and if they do well gladly take

    advantage of them. In the end theyre unlikelyside-effects to the injuries were after and

    those injuries will be more than sufficient to do

    the job.

    Done right, hes not getting back up. Broken

    arm or no.

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    NOTESIn Summary

    The goal of throwing is debilitating injury

    These injuries are the same ones that can

    occur in simple falls:

    Broken or sprained fingers and/or wrist(s)

    Sprained or dislocated shoulder

    Broken clavicle (collar bone)

    Momentary inability to breathe (wind

    knocked out)

    Sprained or broken cervical spine (neck)

    Traumatic Brain Injury (concussion,

    intracranial bleeding)

    Targeted throws make specific injuries

    much more likely

    NOTES

    The Results Falls, Throws and Injuries

    NOTES

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    NOTES

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    NOTESRequirements forThrowing

    Ideally, throwing a man is as easy as

    recognizing that the opportunity for a fall exists,and then stepping in, and through, to exploit a setof advantageous circumstances to make that fall areality, and to make it as bad for him as possible.If a man is leaning or stepping in a certain

    direction, its easier to effect a throw that keepshim moving in the direction hes already going, for

    example, you just need to trip or shove him to turnthat motion into a fall. On your end, there are threethings you must do to make this work as simple

    and effective as possible: you have to want toseriously injure him (intent), you have to injure him

    before (or while) going for the throw (prior injury),and you have to use your mass to effect the throw

    (body weight in motion).

    Intent

    You have to want to plow him into the groundwith everything youve got and bounce his head off

    the planet to shut him off. If youre worried aboutkilling him, youll botch the throw. Just rememberall those articles weve looked at the in past (and,

    sadly, well see in the future) about people gettinginvolved in monkey politics, striking their head onthe ground and ending up in a coma or dead. Thisis what youre gunning for. Go for it 100% or notat all. Going after it half-hearted or half-assed can

    get you killed. Remember, throwing without aresulting injury is horseplay. Its worthless to you

    in a life-or-death situation.

    If you dont want him to strike his head on theplanet, then dont throw him. Period. Throwing,

    Requirements for Throwing

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    NOTES as a method of causing fight-ending injury, isnt aparlor trick that somehow dissuades a would-bemurderer from finishing the job on you just

    because you tossed him. If youre throwing him inan attempt to impress him with your skill and cowhim into submission then you better pray that the

    situation was truly social in nature, and all part of anasty misunderstanding... and even then, what good

    is it to make him afraid if, for the sake of argument,

    hes armed with a firearm?

    What would you do if someone made you fear

    for your life while you had a gun in your pants?

    What makes you think hell do anything

    different? Human is human, and knowing that, youneed to keep things streamlined and throw for theright reasons. If youre going to throw someoneits to knock them unconscious, kill them or makeit otherwise impossible for them to get back up.

    Youre throwing them to do the most damagepossible with your bare hands. Youre throwingthem because its exactly like smashing their skullwith a concrete club that weighs as much as they

    do.

    If you wouldnt have the wherewithal to crushtheir skull with a chunk of concrete on the end of a

    steel pole, swung overhand in both fists, then youshouldnt be throwing them. If such a thing seemsinappropriate, you shouldnt be doing violence at

    all.

    Lack of intent is a self-fulfilling prophecyif

    you dont want to hurt him, you wont. Youll pullit, youll hesitate to land him on his head, youll

    blow it. And for the other guy, thats an

    opportunity to do it to you. Its his chance to pullthe gun you didnt know he had and use it to save

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    NOTEShis life by ending yours.

    Go in with the intent to wreck him, and youwill. Youll put him down so he cant get back up,or do much of anything at all. Which is exactly

    why you bothered to throw him in the first place.

    Prior Injury

    No one wants to get thrownputting it on the

    uninjured man is wrestling. Injury ensurescompliance and negates intelligent break-falls &slap-outs; unless hes unconscious hell still

    reflexively reach out to stop his fall, getting youthose extra injuries to the proffered limb. The

    injured man doesnt actively resist the throw (inany meaningful way, in other words, the injuredman cant counter) and he doesnt do a nice tuck,

    roll and slap-out at the end. He just eats concrete.

    Injury is the difference between throwing awild animal or a sack of potatoes. Throwing a manwho is in full control of his body is a difficult anddangerous feat. Its not impossibleit just

    requires strength, training, and skill. Throwing a

    man who is injuredbusy reacting to beingbroken, semiconscious or on his way to beingunconsciousquickly reduces things to the physicsof the situation. It leaves you free to concentrate

    on the throw proper, how best to angle, drive and

    land the throw to get the worst outcome for him.

    Look at it this way: which would you rather doif your life depended on the outcome? Try tothrow a man whos going to actively resist you or

    knock down a blind man?

    Prior injury means youre always throwing

    injured people. And thats just easy work.

    Requirements for Throwing

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    NOTES Body Weight in Motion

    Throwing, as a special case of striking, meansall the usual rules still apply. Its never going to bemass against massyoull apply your mass againsta leverage point in his structure to get him moving,

    falling, and then add your mass in motion to his to

    accelerate his fall.

    This is also a backhanded way to keep youfrom using your strength against his, or against hismass or inertia. If youve done your job properly

    to this point, the strength-to-strength problemshould already be solvedprior injury should have

    taken care of that. But people tend to go stupidbiomechanically speakingin the realm ofpersonal combat and forget what their body knowsnaturally. To the point, ask someone to move arefrigerator and theyll tend to employ their entire

    mass, using the power of their legs, squatting lowto get their center of gravity below the fridges,using their arm strength to clamp themselves to thefridge. Ask them to move a person and its allmonkey-slapping with the prime movers being arm

    strength. Because what were talking about herehas nothing to do with social dominance, andeverything to do with unbalancing and moving amass, your best bet is to throw that injured guy thesame way youd tip a fridge. Use your massand

    the chassis of your legs and hipsto get himmoving while saving your arm strength as the

    clamps to tie the two of you together.

    In other words, youre going to hang onto himwith your hands and arms, but youre going to

    throw him with your entire mass.

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    NOTESIn Summary

    Throwing requires:

    Intent (the desire to cause injury)

    Prior injury (its easier to throw an injured

    man)

    Body weight in motion (to break his

    structure, displace him, and drive the

    throw)

    Requirements for Throwing

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    NOTES

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    NOTESComponents of a Throw

    If we think only of the most base requirements fora throw intent, prior injury, and body weight we have you simply shoving an injured man to the

    ground. Its almost the oldest trick in the book.(The oldest trick in the book is where your friendgets down on all fours behind him as you shove sohe trips over your friend and falls over backwards.)While not bad theres a reason its still in the

    book its not optimal, either. Theres nothing,

    other than perhaps the prior injury, that says hecouldnt conceivably catch his balance and arresthis fall, or fail to break anything important when hehits the ground... all weve done with those base

    requirements is shove him into accident territory.With prior injury and a good shove chances arehell smack his head. And chances are he wont.

    By failing to turn this accident into a purpose we

    have left the outcome up to chance.

    And thats not good enough if lives are on the

    line.

    A real combat throw is more than a happyaccident its making the accident happen in theworst way possible for him. Youre going to get

    things going with intent, prior injury, and bodyweight in motion, and then youre going to finishthem off by breaking his structure, taking his

    balance, aiming a target at the ground, and

    accelerating his fall.

    Break his structure.

    All things being equal, hed prefer to stand upwith his center of gravity stacked up on top of his

    Components of a Throw

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    NOTES legs. When everything sits nice and neat like this CG over legs over base he can easilymaintain his balance and move his weight around

    at will. You want to break his structure knockone of these pieces out of alignment. This can be

    buckling his leg so he starts to collapse, or

    knocking his CG past his feet (base) so thingsarent stacked up so nice and neat anymore. When

    done properly, youve interrupted the normalrelationship between his CG and his base such thathe cant reacquire a nice stable system of balance

    without stepping, moving, or laying down, i.e., it

    doesnt count as broken structure if he can simplyshift back into balance.

    Imagine kicking a leg out from under a stool,

    or kicking the stool over. This is your bodyweightstriking through either his base or his CG to get

    him moving or make him vulnerable to a fall.

    Take his balance.

    Start the fallthis usually happens in

    conjunction with breaking his structure, but not

    always. It gets its own entry so you dont forget it.Take his balance and dont inadvertently give it

    backuse it to wreck him. In other words, dontbreak his structure and then grab onto him and hold

    him up so that he comes back into balance. Keephim moving into the throw, with the new

    equilibrium of balance occurring when he smacks

    down at the end.

    Aim the target at the ground.

    Isolate a single body part for impact usually

    the head, but can also be a single shoulder (from

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    NOTESthe side), the scapula (shoulder blade), the coccyx(tailbone), among others. Aim, in this case, is atwo-part deal, with an X marks the spot on the

    ground and a projectile that youre hurling at that X(the anatomical target). Your job is to make surethe two connect as precisely, and as hard, as you

    can.

    Its better to have a specific target (landingsurface) in mind than notyoull be more likelyto get the injuries you want on the street & morelikely to give your reaction partner direction for

    their break-fall on the mats. Simply tossing peoplewith no idea of how theyll land tends to result inno injury on the street and serious injury on themats. Murphys Law. Youre the one doing the

    throwyou should know how hes going to land.

    Accelerate his fall.

    Add your body weight & rotation to the mix.This is one of the features that makes throwing sodevastating: youll have his body weight in motionfor the strike, and can add yours in as well. This

    doubles his mass for the fall & final impact.Imagine youre striking people while weighing 400

    pounds with fists of concrete. Thats the picture.

    Also, accelerating him into the throw screws withthe timing of his catch-fall reflex. Chances are his

    arm will be late for the party, though his brain will

    get there just in time.

    Using these specific protocols, we can turn any

    shove-and-fall accident into an effective combatthrow with minimal training. If you grab theinjured man by the hair, or neck, and buckle his leg

    by driving through it with your own and then ridehis head down into the concrete with your entire

    Components of a Throw

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    NOTES mass either shoving it away to accelerate it tobounce it off the ground or simply landing on it you have a targeted and controlled sequence of

    events that make serious head injury as likely aspossible. Now youre leaving nothing to chance,

    replacing all the variables with constants.

    Instead of shoving and hoping for the best,youre going to take charge of the situation to do

    your worst.

    In Summary

    Throwing consists of these four components:

    Break his structure

    Take his balance

    Aim the target at the ground

    Accelerate his fall

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    NOTESThe Mechanical Definitionof Balance

    When we say structure were really talking

    about upsetting the mans balance by changing therelationship between the two components of

    balance, the base and the Center of Gravity (CG).The base is defined by the area under and betweenhis feet; the CG is, for our rough purposes right

    now, located just above the pelvis. So, as long ashis hips (or most of his mass) stays above his feet,

    hes fine. Should either one of those move suchthat his CG is no longer over his base, hell start tofall. (And try to regain his balance by stepping to

    move his base back under his CG. This is typicallysomething well take advantage of either bymaking it impossible for him to step (sweeping theleg or driving him down so he cant step, or, in ahip throw where well supply the base, giving us

    total control over it) or otherwise intercepting the

    foot.)

    This means we have two ways to go: we caneither blast his base out from under his CG, or push

    his CG so it falls outside his base. And so we havetwo basic families of throws: slips and trips.

    Slips are just like the patch of icethe feet

    shoot out from under the CG and he falls.

    Trips are like the crack in the sidewalkthe

    feet hold still while the CG falls outside the base.

    And thats it. It doesnt get any morecomplicated than that. All the myriad throws,

    techniques, options, variations, whips, dumps,drops, tosses and rolls are really just doing one of

    two thingsbase out from under CG or CG falling

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    NOTES past base. Period.

    In Summary

    Balance consists of two components:

    The base (the area under and between his

    feet)

    The Center of Gravity (CGa point just

    above his hips)

    Balance is maintained as long as:

    The CG stays over the base (hips over

    feet)

    The base stays under the CG (feet under

    hips)

    This gives rise to the only two kinds of

    throws:

    Slips (base comes out from under CG

    the patch of ice)

    Trips (CG falls outside basethe crack in

    the sidewalk)

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    NOTESThe Two Throw Families

    Slips: The Patch of Ice

    Leg Sweeps

    This is making his base come out from underhis CG having his feet come out from under his

    hips. The simplest operational expression of thisidea is the leg sweep pushing, pulling or kicking

    one or both of his legs out from under him to takehim down. While leg sweeps can be spectacular in

    an ass-over-teakettle sort of way, there are twoissues you have to take into consideration whenexecuting them: picking up vs. kicking out &

    reliable targeting of injury.

    Pick Up or Kick Out?

    It all depends on where his weight is. A legthat is not bearing weight, whether due to injury or

    the fact that youre catching it mid-stride (in theair) is easy to hook, pick up, push or pull to takehim down. In that case youre just moving the

    weight of his leg, and the rest of him just falls. Ifhe does have his weight on it, youre not going to

    be able to do any of that. The leg will stick,anchored to the ground by his mass resting (or intransition) above it. In that case, youre going tohave to strike it out from under him, with your

    entire mass, with something akin to a shin kick toblow through the leg or full body check whileviolently displacing his feet out from under him

    with yours.

    Look at it this way: if a man is walking, at any

    given moment hes bearing his weight on one legwhile moving the other one forward. Its an easy

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    NOTES thing to nudge the leg in the air into a new,unintended (for him) position and if he was

    planning on landing his weight on that leg, well,

    now hes going to fall instead. But you can alsosee that you cant do the same trick to the leg thatis currently bearing his weight. It would take a lot

    more effort to move that one out from under him effort you can supply by striking with your

    entire mass through it. So:

    Stepping leg > sweep

    Standing leg > strike

    Sometimes its obvious which is which, butmost of time its not. Its important to know, or at

    least be able to figure out, so you can choose theproper method for taking that leg out from under

    him. Here are a couple of ways to make it happen:

    Anticipate gait.

    In general, people will plant one foot, thenmove the other. This will allow you to make

    predictions about which leg is ripe for which

    reaping. For example, lets say youre on theground and hes walking toward you you should

    be able to figure out which foot hell be picking upwhen hes close enough for you to reach out with

    your own foot and sweep it for a takedown.

    Use injury to make him shift his weight.

    Injured people move. This almost alwaysinvolves stepping to try to maintain their balance asthey go. While strikes to the centerline of the body

    tend to make the body move straight back(meaning he could step back with either leg),

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    NOTESstrikes to one side of the spine or the other force thebody to rotate, making it much easier to knowwhere his weight will be. If your timing is good

    you can catch the leg as he steps, for a sweep; ifnot, you know hell plant his weight on it as hefinishes the reaction, making it perfect for a full-

    bodied blast.

    Also, the body will shift weight off of aninjured leg and onto the good one. When youinjure one of his legs, you now have a clear-cutchoice sweep the newly injured leg or stomp

    through the other one. No more guessing!

    When in doubt, blast through it.

    This is last because its best. Your mostreliable, default answer is to simply strike throughthe leg as hard as you can, technique and nuance be

    damned. If the leg has little or no weight on it(meaning it was sweepable) youll knock it outfrom under him and drop him. If he was standingon it after all, it doesnt matter you just blastedit out from under him anyway. If your timing is as

    poor as your coordination, dont sweat it this isthe final answer to the question, Which

    technique? How about all of them at once?

    Injury Left to Chance

    The other problem with slips, especially legsweeps, is that if thats all youre doing taking

    his feet out from under him then you arenttargeting a specific piece of anatomy for the

    collision with the ground. It will be anuncontrolled fall, for both of you. This leaves the

    resulting injury up to chance. Chances are hell

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    NOTES smack down badly and catch his head in theprocess... but chances are that he wont. If he getshis hands out in time his reflexes will save his

    head, and then you have to hope for sprained orbroken wrists, jammed shoulders, and the like.Maybe hell get the wind knocked out of him. All

    told, its not terribly reliable unless youve gone tolengths to ensure that it is, like grabbing him by the

    neck, kicking his leg out from under him andhurling his head at the ground as he goes. Withoutsuch measures, legs sweeps are a spin of the injury

    roulette wheel sometimes a good number comes

    up, sometimes it doesnt. So either make it happenor be prepared to stay right on top of him, puttingmore injury into him when he hits the ground.

    Dont count on a simple leg sweep to finish the job

    the way a properly executed hip throw can.

    Trips: The Crack in the Sidewalk

    Trips are a much larger throw family than slipsbecause while there is really only one way to knock

    someones feet out from under them you simply

    do just that there are a multitude of ways toknock people down. Its important to note, though,

    that mechanically all trips are identical, making theCG fall outside the base, its just that there are

    many, many ways to effect that change. From thevery simple hip push to drive his pelvis past hisfeet and into the ground to the seemingly esotericshoulder throw (replacing his base with yours andthen making him fall outside it on your terms)

    and everything in between theyre all just

    expressions of the same simple idea.

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    NOTESDirect manipulation of the CG hippushes and pulls

    In order to effect a throw, we need to attack,

    break, displace or move one of the components thatmake up balance the base (feet), the CG (the

    hips or pelvis) and/or the structures that supportone over the other (the legs). In slips, we were

    attacking the feet and legs, to drive them out fromunder the CG. Now were going to be looking atstriking the CG directly, to drive it out past the base

    and down at an angle to effect a knockdown.

    In a general sense, were going to be drivingthrough the pelvis where the CG of a standingman resides to get this work done. Specifically,

    were looking at blasting through the targets thatcluster around the pelvis: the bladder, pubic

    symphisis, sacrum, and the hip joints themselves.The groin, perineum and coccyx dont figure intothis set because they reside beneath the pelvis and

    require striking vertically rather than allowing us to

    displace the pelvis and CG laterally.

    A full-bodied stomp or straight-arm drivethrough the bladder, pubic symphisis, sacrum, oreither hip joint, down and through at a 45 angle (orless) will effect a takedown. Technically, this is in

    the same class as a simple striking knockdown this is the place where the line between strikingand throwing becomes blurred, and we can mosteasily see that throwing is, indeed, nothing more

    than a special case of striking.

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    NOTES Base-break throws

    This is where we attack, and break, thestructure holding him up in balance. This can be assimple as a stomp through the ankle or knee,

    breaking the joint, or as nuanced as using body

    weight applied to buckle his leg and drag his CG

    out past his base (as in a T-Leverage takedown).

    Stomping through an ankle and breaking it isobviously a strike, but its also a joint break, andfulfills our definition of a throw as well. While this

    is another obvious intersection of those three ideasin action, it underscores the importance of looking

    at joint breaking and throwing as subsets of strikingproper. If we look at it purely as a joint break,without paying attention to whats required forstriking, it becomes a useless technique sometimes itll work, sometimes it wont. When

    striking is abandoned, what happens next is anattempt to get the ankle to roll. It becomes a pushinstead of a break, a technique instead of an injury.Likewise, if we look at it purely as a throw,ignoring both the striking and joint breaking, we

    wander even more deeply into the dark forest ofpushing, losing everything that made it a throw in

    the first place.

    Injury makes it a throw. Injury makes it a jointbreak. And striking makes it an injury in the first

    place. Everything that happens after the strike is aside-effect of that Striking through the ankle breaksit, rolling the foot and moving his CG out past his

    base which then causes him to fall.

    So, while the answer to the question, Is it a

    strike, a joint break, or a throw? is, all of the

    above, the answer to the question, Which aspectshould I focus on? is, striking. Strike first, look

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    NOTESfor side-effects later.

    Drop throws

    This is where you attach your mass to him andlay down to throw. Imagine putting your shin

    through a mans groin, then grabbing him by theneck and laying down in front of him to body-slam

    his head into the concrete. Hell hit as if heweighed twice as much, and itll be twice as ugly

    as doing it all by himself.

    Drop throws come in two basic varieties:attaching yourself to the top of his spine, and

    attaching yourself to the bottom end of his spine.

    When you attach your mass to the top end ofhis spine, by grabbing the hair, head, neck, lapels,

    shoulders or arms, you move his CG beyond hisbase by creating a new system of balance thatincludes both of your masses, but only his base.The CG for this new system will be outside his

    base as soon as you go airborne to lay down

    throwing him off balance. You will then use

    rotation (rolling or curling to throw him) toaccelerate his fall.

    When you attach yourself to the lower end ofhis spine, by grabbing the hips or knees (usually

    from behind him), youre using your mass to draghis CG out past his base in a sort of inverted hip

    push to make him sit and fall backwards over you.

    Drop throws can manifest in something asspectacular as grabbing the injured man by the

    throat and neck as you plant your foot in his hipand sit down and roll back to make him cartwheel

    over you to something as small and non-obvious as

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    NOTES grabbing his wrist in both fists and dropping yourweight six inches while aiming his hand toward a

    point just behind his own foot to flat-back him.

    While the two techniques appear to be worldsapart, theyre really the same thing attachingyour weight to the injured man and then dropping it

    to break his structure, take his balance, and make

    him fall.

    Hip throws

    A hip throw is so called because of the use of

    the hip as a fulcrum point for the throw thevictim is kicked up into the air by the hip androunds the hip on his way into the fall. While thehip is indeed the fulcrum point for the throw, its

    more correct to view the legs as the primary actorsin getting this done. The hip is more properly the

    contact point upon which youll balance his CG.

    A better way of understanding the hip throw,and how it is indeed a trip, is to look at it this way:youre replacing his base with yours, taking him offhis feet while balancing him over your own, and

    then making him fall outside your base. Imagine aperson tripping over a saw horse that catches themjust below the hips and youre starting to get the

    idea. Before he runs into the saw horse, his baseconsists of his own feet. As he hits the saw horse

    and bends forward over it his feet leave the groundand for a moment hes balanced like a teeter-totter,head and torso sticking out to one side, legs stick

    out to the other. His base as this point consists ofthe legs of the saw horse. Of course, his problem is

    his forward momentum hes pitching head-firstover this thing, after all. While this is a pretty good

    model for the basics of the hip throw, were notgoing to be content with something quite so static...

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    NOTESNow imagine that the saw horse has a

    pneumatic lift we can fire off to pop it up a couple

    of inches, suddenly, as he flops over it. Now hesnot just tripping over the damn thing, but its going

    to launch his legs up over his head as he falls...

    But thats not all. Instead of just having it sitthere, waiting for him to bumble into it, were

    going to fire it into position through is structure so that even if he were holding still it wouldslam into him, trip him over it, and then launch him

    upside-down.

    As you may have already guessed, were not

    done adding awfulness to the accident wereconstructing here we have one last bit comingup but this is a good point to reign in ourridiculous model and make it real. Youre going to

    provide that awful industrial-accident-saw-horse

    with your own feet, legs and hips. You will stepthrough him, harshly, as a strike, to make him trip

    over your hip and then stand up suddenly to kickhim over the top, striking him with your hip to toss

    him into the air. Lest you think this will require alot of brute strength, youre not going to lift hisentire mass youre going to trip him so his mass

    transits over the chassis of your feet and legs(merely bracing at this point) and only kick up ashis mass is falling forward off of you. Youll only

    need to be strong enough to lift half (or less) of his

    mass with your legs. And this, anybody can do.

    Now for the last bit, the bit we were aiming forall along the landing. Youre not doing this tosimply make him fall. There are lots of far simplerways of doing that. Youre spending the effort to

    get all this dramatic hang-time so you can drive

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    NOTES him down, head-first, into the concrete with hisbody weight over the top of it all. (Or, even better,your body weight as well, so he lands twice as

    hard.)

    Common hip throw pitfalls and fixes:

    Attach yourself so the two of you

    become a single balance system.

    When you move, he needs to move, too. If youcan move and nothing happens to him, youre not

    attached. Not only that, but hes probably incontrol of his own balance. You need to be latchedonto him, tight and secure, to take his balance and

    incorporate his mass into a single balance system

    that you control.

    Ideally, you will begin this process with theinjury prior to the throw, essentially striking himinto the throw, e.g., with a backhand forearm

    hammer to the lateral neck, bending him sideways

    off balance and grabbing the neck out of the strike.

    Replace his base with yours.

    This is him getting the saw horse rammed

    through his structure youll step through hisspace, coming in low and rising up to pick him up

    off his feet (your CG scooping up underneath his

    CG) to balance him on your hip/back of pelvis.

    Its important to note that you want to slide in

    torso-to-torso, with no daylight between the two ofyou. If theres space between you when you step into throw, hell fall through that space and onto you,

    knocking you off balance and turning the hip throw

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    NOTES

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    into a dog-pile.

    Make him fall outside your base.

    This is the continued motion of the initial striketo the neck, above. Tip that teeter-totter so hes

    falling forward off your hip. Then, as his weight

    shifts off your legs...

    Stand up to hip him up into the air.

    This is a short, sharp straightening of your legs like a strike to toss his legs vertical and getthat hang-time. This is all about timing: if you go

    too early, youre trying to leg-press his entire massand the throw wont pop. If you go too late, you

    wont kick him into the air hell already have

    fallen off of your hip.

    Complete the rotation into the ground.

    This is the end of the strike to the neck in theexample above the arc begun with the backhand

    terminates in the ground in front of you. You haveeffectively struck his head into the ground while up

    -ending him.

    Though these bits have been chunked out 1-2-3, in reality its a single, smooth motion from back-hand to the neck to terminal landing. It takes skill

    and coordination to pull off, in other words, prac-tice. And while you can potentially get the same

    effect from a simple, full-bodied stomp through aknee (something that is easy to pull off without anyskill or coordination or practice), the hip throw al-lows you to target and ensure serious head

    and neck trauma. When done right,

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    NOTES Shoulder throws

    For the most part, shoulder throws are just hipthrows with the fulcrum point at the shoulderinstead of the hip. What we get out of this is a hipthrow with an added lever-arm as long as your

    spine. This takes him through a longer arc,resulting in a higher throw you have more timeto accelerate him and he ends up falling from agreater height. When we couple this with an Earth-shattering John Henry swing of your arms

    slapping him down by his arm, we get the most

    powerful throw possible. Especially if you drop toone knee, pulling him down out of the sky as you

    go, to ride him down with your mass.

    This throw gets you so much hang-time andprojection you can literally throw a man upside-down through a plate-glass window, or into/onto/

    through anything else in your environment thecurb, a fire hydrant, traffic. In training Ive seenlights cleared off the ceiling by the victims feet.Much like the hip throw, if you know what youre

    doing, its well worth the effort.

    The set-up is very similar to the hip throw injure him, latch on, snug up, replace the base, andhip him up into the air. The primary difference is

    that youll snug up with his arm pulled tight overyour shoulder, so his armpit is stuck fast on top of

    your shoulder. Think about what we do with theCGs in the hip throw: yours scooping upunderneath his. Youre going to do the same thing

    with your shoulder and his armpit: scoop upunderneath and stick them together so that for

    balance purposes you both become a single mass.

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    NOTESNOTES

    The Two Throw Families

    NOTESYou do this at the hips and the shoulders at thesame time its still going to set up and fire offlike a hip throw, powered by your legs, but instead

    of rounding him off your hip so