Paranoid or Prepared

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 26th Feb 2018

There are those who, because of the job I do, think me paranoid; and I get why people may think this i.e. if I’m spending a lot of my waking hours researching and thinking about violence, that when I leave my desk or school, and come out into the world, I must be on the constant lookout for potential dangers and threats: that I must be the guy who always sits facing the door in a restaurant, that I’m constantly randomizing my movement like I’m on foot patrol in a warzone, and every time I hear a loud noise, I’m...Click To Read More

Peripheral Doubts

Gershon Ben Keren

Sun 18th Feb 2018

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article on several physical steps that can be taken in the Pre-Conflict Phase – in Socially/Spontaneously Violent Situations - to improve your chances, should things have to go physical (Working the Pre-Conflict Phase – February 5^th). In this article I want to look at how to manage, some of the psychological and emotional factors that may affect us, when having to deal with an aggressive individual, in the moments before it goes hands-on. Managing Disbelief: overcoming the surrealness/bizarreness of the situation. I have seen people laugh in disbelief just before they were punched;...Click To Read More

Using The Environment To Your Advantage

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 12th Feb 2018

A line that I use a lot when talking about real-life conflicts is, “violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum”. This is something that can easily get forgotten or lost in the training environment, where you might be practicing techniques and solutions in an open and unobstructed mat space e.g. will you have the space in a real-life confrontation to perform an armbar, or guard sweep, that works well in an open mat space? That’s not to say that such techniques aren’t appropriate or don’t have value, just that we need to understand the contexts in which such techniques and approaches...Click To Read More

Working The Pre-Conflict Phase

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 5th Feb 2018

From my experiences, and those of other security professionals I’ve worked with, and supported by the research I engage in, most fights and incidents of social/spontaneous violence start face-to-face, and are preceded by some form of verbal communication; this may involve direct threats, or involve dialogue where the harmful intent is hidden or disguised. What we do and say, along with how we act and behave, is crucial during this Pre-Conflict Phase. In this article, I want to talk about what to look for, with regards to warning signs and imminent Pre-Violence Indicators (PVI’s), along with how and where to...Click To Read More