Violence of Mind Read online

  Violence of Mind

  Preparation for Extreme Violence

  Copyright 2018 Varg Freeborn

  Published by Varg Freeborn

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and publisher.

  Varg Freeborn

  www.violenceofmind.com

  https://www.patreon.com/ViolenceofMind

  Editing by

  Lauren Bechtel

  Cover Art and Design by

  Lorin Michki

  Table of Contents

  SECTION ONE: MISSION

  CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS MY MISSION?

  THE PERILS OF THE SHEEPDOG TRAP

  OBJECTIVE CHANGES WITH CIRCUMSTANCES

  CHAPTER TWO: MISSION PARAMETERS

  INTERNAL BOUNDARIES: ATTACHMENTS AND SELF-CONTROL

  DYING FOR A SPOT IN LINE

  YOU DO NOT CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE

  A STABBING IN WISCONSIN

  COWERING VS. AVOIDANCE: KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

  EXTERNAL BOUNDARIES: LAWS

  CHAPTER THREE: PRISON

  IF YOU LOSE, PRISON IS A LIVING DEATH

  THE HOUSE OF WOLVES

  CHAPTER FOUR: RISK ASSESSMENT

  SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

  STOP LOOKING FOR THINGS AND START LOOKING AT THINGS

  SECTION TWO: TRAINING

  CHAPTER FIVE: FUNDAMENTALS OF TRAINING

  THE PRINCIPLES OF FIGHTING

  PRINCIPLE BASED TRAINING

  WHAT IS ADVANCED TRAINING?

  KATA BASED TRAINING VS FIGHT TRAINING

  CHAPTER SIX: SKILLS, TECHNIQUES, PROCEDURES, TACTICS AND STANDARDS

  SKILLS

  TECHNIQUES

  PROCEDURES

  TACTICS

  STANDARDS

  CHAPTER SEVEN: TESTING AND VALIDATION

  PERCEPTION VS REALITY

  HOW TO SET UP VALIDATION

  TRAINING WITHOUT VALIDATION IS JUST GUESSING AT BEST

  CHAPTER EIGHT: OTHER TRAINING CONSIDERATIONS

  SPORT TRAINING VS FIGHT TRAINING

  THE LOST ART OF “WOODSHEDDING”

  TIPS ON CHOOSING INSTRUCTORS AND SCHOOLS

  SECTION THREE: CONDITIONING AND ORIENTATION

  CHAPTER NINE: CONDITIONING

  PHYSICAL CONDITIONING

  SKILLS TRAINING

  CHAPTER TEN: ORIENTATION

  ORIENTATION IS THE FOUNDATION OF MINDSET

  MENTAL CONDITIONING

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: CONCEALMENT: MORE THAN JUST HIDING A GUN

  FULL CONCEALMENT

  CONCEALMENT IN PRACTICE

  CHAPTER TWELVE: DAILY CONSIDERATIONS

  “KNIFE DEFENSE” TRAINING

  KNIFE “FIGHTING”

  ETIQUETTE: THE “CEREMONY OF RESPECT” IN VIOLENCE CULTURE

  DO UNTO OTHERS…

  Preface

  Information is everywhere. I am not claiming to have the one true way, nor am I claiming that all the information in this work was created by me. Humans have been sharing, synthesizing and creating new forms of information since we have learned to communicate. In the fight training world, this sharing community is smaller and more specialized. Everything we have in skills, techniques, procedures and tactics has been created, tested, refined, and handed down so that the process starts all over again. For thousands of years, in the warrior culture, battles, wars and contests in sport fighting have boiled off the bad and handed down the effective. It is how we continually grow and develop in the martial disciplines.

  Born from my experiences, this book is my endeavor to share my personal views beliefs and methodologies about violence and training. You will find that those experiences are quite unique and, while uncommon for a fighting and tactics instructor, absolutely relevant to the subject matter. Trying to break down the conditioning that creates the calm, decisive, steely-eyed apex fighter and pass it on to the inexperienced is the mystery code everyone is trying to unlock in the higher levels of the training world. When we go into the gym or on the range, we should be working the fundamentals. The rest of the time, we need to be building the mindset. This is the first task I will try to deliver in this book.

  I have tried to cite and credit the proper sources when I’ve felt the need to use concepts or quotes from others. Thank you. I hope I can pay that forward someday and have the same effect on others that they have had on my life and my career. Those of you who have influenced me, thank you. I am sure you will see your legacy here, as I have seen my own live through my students’ words as well.

  To be clear, in no way do I hold this book as an exhaustive work. This book is intended to share information from my own unique perspective and meant to be an introduction. Each section in this book could be its own book (if not volumes). The sheer scope of this work renders it to be an excellent introduction into violence mindset and fight training.

  I’d also like to thank all of you fuckers who kicked the shit out of me, and the few who tried to kill me, over the years. The training I received from you tops anything money could ever buy.

  I’m still here.

  About this book

  Before I began work on this book, I made it a rule not to get extremely technical with scientific terms and big words. I want this to be digestible to everyone. Which sounds better:

  ● “Our primary objective is to gain a kinesthetic awareness of where our bipedal foundation is as we transition dynamically through the transverse and sagittal planes so as to maintain maximum musculoskeletal leverage and stability”

  OR:

  ● We need to understand that where we place our feet and how we move at the waist will have a huge effect on how stable we are

  I’m assuming option two is preferable. It's not a “dynamic critical stress event” or whatever. It’s a fight. Let’s speak directly and simply. It’s hard enough to grasp and internalize all of the concepts involved with fight training without all of the big technical jargon getting in the way (and let’s hope that particular marketing trend dies a rapid and public death soon). It’s also important to point out that this book will not be about “what” to train as much as it is about “how” to train, and even more specifically how to think.

  The mindset of fighting and the structure of training protocol are the first and most important tasks to tackle when making the decision to train for defensive gun fighting, or any kind of violent fighting. Based on my experience, I view this as a priority, because skipping these first steps is the most common mistake in the training world. This book will serve as an introduction to my concepts and methods, which will all be expanded on in my classes, future works and online coursework. Just remember, it’s impossible to put it all down in one place, so there is more behind every thought within these pages.

  Everyone loves to just jump right in and start shooting (or learning submissions), without giving much thought to the violence this is about. There may be a few drills or techniques explained here, but what I am really trying to accomplish is to lay the groundwork for everything that you will train, from here forward. To understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, who we are doing it to, and when we should do it. I hope you will agree that these should be accomplished before you learn “how” to do it. The goal is to be a fighter that is properly oriented and conditioned, able to operate with a controlled mindset in chaos, while being completely focused on a clearly defined mission.

  I am also going to give you a clear look into the violent criminal mind, a topic which I am intimately acquainted with. After literally growing up in extreme criminal violence, and then having spe
nt two decades in and around martial arts, firearms and other “self-defense” training, I am convinced that few truly know the enemy or understand what they must do to be able to meet him head-on someday. Hopefully, I can begin to rectify that here.

  Most of all, I’ve simply attempted to write the book that I wish I could have found many years ago when I was desperately looking for guidance on this subject. I hope it delivers at least some tangible advantages to all the good guys, and girls, out there. My command of the language is not particularly profound, so there will be mistakes here. My editor, Lauren, did a phenomenal job, mostly just wrestling with me over making changes to my book. Whatever is incorrect is undoubtedly my fault, probably left at my insistence. I like to write with the same voice that I speak. My goal was not to write a grammatically perfect book, or a best-seller for that matter. My simple goal here is to share my first-hand experience with extreme criminal violence and violence preparedness in an introductory level text that is written so the average person can begin to understand how violence works in our society. My mission in this business is to teach people how to be professionals with the tools and knowledge of violence.

  WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT VIOLENCE ANYWAY?

  I have been in a few hundred fights. I have put close to 30 holes in other men, and I’ve had a few put into me. I endured more beatings before age 10 than most of you would ever receive in a lifetime. I was charged, at one point, with Attempted Aggravated Murder for stabbing a man 23 times...

  To receive the words that will follow in this book as viable information, you will need to have some belief in my legitimacy and knowledge. After all, the self-defense world is full of experts who have never actually done the thing they are experts in. That is, they have not actually participated in real, deadly violence. So, right out of the gate, let’s establish who I am and what it means when I think something is important in fighting or training. Before I descend into those dark pits of my memories, let me be clear that my sole motivation in life is to add value to the world through helping others. Therefore, I exist, it is what motivates me and brings me reward. Violence education is merely one expression of that. This book is not going to be a biography and there is an awful lot I will purposely leave out of my story, but it is important to understand why I come to the conclusions that I do about fighting and training. When I am writing, talking or on the range teaching about self-defense against the violent criminal, I know with confidence that I am firmly planted in my lane, having spent 25 years living and participating in the violent criminal underworld.

  The meat and potatoes of this work will be the training information contained in the following chapters. I built my training business and reputation completely off of my content and until the end of 2016 I never told any extensive personal story from my past in any class. I wanted my teaching and material to succeed on its own merit, not because students liked my war stories from the streets, or because they wanted to be attached to some badassery. I’ve attended classes where the instructors pretty much tell their own war stories for a good portion of the class, and it’s disappointing to say the least. Students aren’t paying for story-time; they’re paying for a solution to a problem. That problem is a need for advantages in the fight against the bad guy.

  As I reluctantly share a small piece of my history, please don’t lose sight of the fact that war stories can be a distraction from the material being taught. I can’t deny I have downplayed my past to a good degree. This book is part of my legacy, and I don’t want more than needs to be known immortalized in it. However, this groundwork is necessary before we move on to the purpose we are here for: training for the fight.

  I was born to a 16-year-old, single teenage mom. Her own mother had died 12 years before that, and my grandfather was raising his eight kids by himself. Since he worked in the steel mill and was gone all the time, the kids raised themselves. They didn’t do a very good job of it. My uncles were drug dealers, convicts, gang members and small-time mob guys. My aunts were drug addicts and alcoholics. The household was extremely violent. My young mother tried pretty hard and worked several jobs. Unfortunately, this left me to the mercy of the rest of the household. Sadly, she thought she was doing the right thing to get us out of there and to a better atmosphere, when in reality I was being conditioned in a way that would seal my fate, to a large degree, forever.

  Our house was a drug house. With so many aunts and uncles all under the age of 30, the house was a hangout for all of their friends. That was a lot of criminals under one roof every single day. Drugs and alcohol were daily props, and all of the bad that comes with that. This pretty much created the atmosphere I grew up in. Daily parties, sex, violence, friends and family dying or going to prison; I was never a fan of rap but looking back retrospectively, if you listen to any 2Pac song and just imagine a white version of that life and you pretty much have the correct mental image of what life was like in the late 80’s and early 90’s for some of us.

  To give just one example, I was 6 years old the first time I nearly became a murder victim. This is a question I often ask when someone begins to expound about how much they know about violence, “How old were you the first time you almost became a murder victim?” For me it was 6, and it was just the beginning. The memories of how it began are long gone, but I’ll never forget the moments of terror during the event. There was a drug-fueled knife attack in our house. My family members were being stabbed, but my aunt and mother had managed to get the three of us into grandpa’s bedroom and put his big blue tool chest in front of the door. Thank God it was an inward swinging door (push door!). What happened next is something I will never forget. The hollow core door began to split, and the knife blade was visibly stabbing through. The attacker was shouting, “I’m going to kill all of you motherfuckers! Especially that little bastard in there with you; I’m going to chop him up into little pieces!”

  He was referring to me. I’ll never forget that feeling of being convinced that I was about to die in the most horrendous way possible. Chopped into little pieces while still alive. Right about that time, one of my uncles came home and a vicious fight took place. Of course, it was a long time before I was allowed out of the bedroom, but I could hear it and I was scared senseless for my uncle. When they finally allowed us out of the bedroom, there was no sign of the attacker or my uncle. Blood was everywhere, and I distinctly remember it being all over the kitchen cupboards. No one ever spoke of that event again. To this day, I am the only one who spoke of it, and only now because the participants have all passed away.

  I know to most this sounds terribly traumatic and horrible. It was. What is different for me, and people who grow up like I did, is that it is just one of many, many experiences like this. It is worth mentioning that very early in life my young brain reached two very important conclusions:

  ● There are people who will kill the fuck out of you for no good reason.

  ● Violence DOES solve problems, specifically problems like that (and the worse it is, the more chance there is that violence is the only thing that will solve it.)

  Unfortunately, my orientation and paradigm would continually be shaped by events like this for the next 19 years. My uncle Rosco ended up doing time in the penitentiary in El Paso. My uncle Tom did federal time in Kentucky. My uncle Kenny, who rode with the largest 1% gang in the nation, was murdered in Los Angeles. They beat him at his home, as evidenced by the blood on his couch, and took him to an orchard where they dragged him with a vehicle and then shot him execution style three times in the head with a .38 Special. He was still alive when they found him, but he died a few hours later in the hospital. My grandfather was an incredibly strong and cursed man. He buried his wife and over half of his children before he passed from this earth.

  I also found my uncle Tom dead on the floor from OxyContin. I had saved this particular uncle more than once from an overdose, including one time that he aspirated vomit into his lungs after eating half of a pineapple turnover cake and overdosing on
opiates. Saving each other and patching up holes was something we got a lot of experience doing. That last time though, no one was there to save him. A man who I considered one of the toughest and strongest men ever to live, a former street fighter and very high-level martial artist, was on the floor in front of me purple and swollen. Lifeless. I had been sent into the apartment by my mother, and I had to go back out and give her the news that her last brother was now dead. She didn’t take it well and responded with denial, which of course I had to work her through amidst the screams and collapsing on the sidewalk in front of the apartments.

  This is a scene that we knew all too well in our family. It extended to my friends and their families as well. When we were teenagers, one of my best friends lost his dad to family violence. Apparently, his dad and his uncle were arguing about who was going to drive the truck to the store to get more beer. It ended with the uncle shooting his own brother with a rifle in the front yard. My friend lost his dad to domestic violence. Another friend’s mom shot his dad, but he lived. In another episode, one of my very closest friends, Patrick, was found floating in a local lake with a few bullet holes in his head. I was away when this happened, and no one was ever arrested for it.

  This was in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s in Youngstown, years remembered for their carnage and bloodletting. And we were right in the middle of all of it. Like most violence, if you were not involved in the drug trade or from that demographic you were pretty much safe and probably remember a different version. But for those of us kids born into it, we had no choice but to--one way or another--be a part of it.

  Around 10 years old, my mother married, and my dad adopted me. He turned out to be a drunk and a drug addict too. He had a terrible temper and gave me drunk beatings from time to time, often choking me until I thought I would die for sure. One day I had decided I would end that problem with the answer that I knew very well. I was waiting for him with an aluminum ball bat. He came into my room in a drunken rage and I rung his fucking bell like Reggie Jackson. He ended up deaf in his left ear for the rest of his life, and he never put a hand on me again.