“My question was this: How do you go about vetting people who come to you to train? This includes kids to adults who come for knife, stick, and boxing training? My reason for asking is I recently had 3 wannabe hood rats who I was training in my gym beat up some kids and get arrested for robbery and I'm still equal parts pissed and leery of training others. “

-Sean

First let me start with how four of my seniors, all men who I have recently coached, or currently coach, under, approach this problem.

Sensei Steve primarily teaches children which permits him to run them through the long and rigorous process of mastering his hard style karate, giving him plenty of time to help the parents mold their character. It is notable that he sets himself up to work exclusively with children who have involved parents. His great challenge has been dealing with the occasional young man who seeks karate instruction. This has often put him in the position of being challenged by larger younger men who might not be of the character one would want to teach. Fortunately the conventions and learning curve in karate are such that the instructor has a vast advantage in sparring over the student. Those students who have been bad seeds have proven to be so in the context of the highly regimented class structure and have been chastised into improving their character or humiliated into quitting before becoming much more dangerous than they were when they walked through the door.

Sifu Clark interviews all prospective students and then works with them in a low stress teaching environment. He uses his son and their senior fighters to do stress training with men who could be a danger to other students. On those few occasions when he found himself teaching men of “bad character” he showed them the door politely. This is closer to a form of ostracism than the more militaristic process of hard style karate under Sensei Steve, and it must be because Sifu Clark is dealing with prospective prize fighters in many cases. He has a company size organization that he is cultivating to be a model of disciplined behavior in his working class community.

Gabriel has a tight knit “society” that is like a cross between what Sifu Clark has and a gang. He uses all of the tools he has to mold a troubled person into a better man through training. If the student is hard to reach Gabriel will reach out to someone like myself or one of my fighters to literally beat the guy down, so that Gabe can be there to talk sense with him, so that there is no heat between the teacher and student. Gabe pretty much takes everyone in except for people he knows to have been dishonorable at a martial arts event or to be unrepentant criminals.

Mister Frederick is only concerned about the character of the men who walk through his door, as the children are impressionable and have involved parents and the women are not dangerous. This man worked as a door man for years, has been teaching martial arts for 40 years, and has worked as a real estate agent. He takes one look at a guy and knows if he needs to be sent to me, to Gabe, or embraced in the Kenpo class. Troubled young men who want to be the next Bruce Lee are sent to Gabe. Assholes, felons, steroid eating monsters, etc., are sent to me.

The way Jim uses body language and introduces me to the man off the street tells me whether he wants them politely referred out of the facility to one of my boxing connections, whipped and washed for my club, or vetted for his kenpo class. In one case, a monstrous looking guy was soon discovered to be uncoordinated, not very dangerous at all, and to have a learning disability. I settled in as the remedial body mechanics coach and Jim slowly took him into the kenpo class as he improved. In another case Peanut [his real street name] came into the school the day he got out of prison. Jim took one look at this knucklehead and just pointed to me. As Peanut walked back to see me Jim gave me that, “Get this knucklehead away from my people” look, and I referred him to my boxing coach.

I have only declined to train a handful of men, and then only because they were irritating. I have often trained men of bad character who I do not trust. This was a selfish impulse to supply myself with fresh beatable meat for sparring. When I was younger a big maniac who just wanted to learn enough to hurt me and then go inflict his asshole self upon the world was like manna from heaven. I would limit their interaction to sparring with people who could handle them and would avoid showing them basic fundamentals that would save them from their much deserved ass whooping until that point where they broke down and did the “Asshole Confessional” and seriously pleaded with me to help them grow as a fighter.

Personally, I do not see it as my responsibility to protect society from assholes. I also see violence and predation as an objective good that helps properly form the man and have no problem with showing a illegal debt collector, gang member, or other criminals such as cops, how to hurt people more effectively. I have and will train my enemies, because, for me, the art is more important than all of us. If I had a choice of letting my combat arts die with me or imparting them to a Black Panther or Neo Nazi bent on genocide, I would train the murderous creep. This is a key aspect of me being what I call a Taboo Man. Since society is against me, and I against it, then reciprocal relationships with evil men are my stock in trade. To me this is not immoral. To me, putting myself into the debt of an evil man is immoral, as that sets me up for being honor bound to break my own moral standards. But with fight training, working with Banno, for instance, put a murderer in my debt. Society likes us to think that violent antisocial men have no morals. However, most abide by honor codes of some sort. I have no problem tapping into that while helping them become even more dangerous.

Sean, as you are working with minors out of a facility you own, you cannot follow this course. I have three recommendations, based on my own experience:

1. Do not accept boys that come to you in a group. These guys are pussies to begin with and have had to seek you out in the way that women pack up to locate a restroom in a shopping mall. Always turn the group away and see if one of the guys comes back, then start the vetting process. The others are just going to distract him if he’s worth the time and obscure his bad character if he is not. Assess your perspective fighters one at a time.

2. Speak with him long enough to ascertain how you should place him in your program. The recommended vetting process is outlined below.

3. Keep in mind, that although martial arts instruction [which is where you came from] is concerned primarily with imparting a skill set, that fight training is mostly about the development of character. In this way the very process can be redemptive, if you take your fighters slowly, seriously, and excruciatingly through the proper process. My boxing coach hardly teaches technique at all. He’s a working class psychologist—a shaman of brutality.

Okay Sean, let me give you a scenario. I am put into a room—my fat busted up 52 year old ass, with 10 gang bangers who come to me for instruction. If I train them to box eight of them are gone in a week and only one is left after six weeks, and he is probably the best man of the bunch. Unless the guy is a genetic freak he cannot learn to box effectively without improving his character. If he is a genetic freak—a Mike Tyson—then I prefer stick fighting for the vetting process.

Sean I am serious when I say this. If you put me in a gym with an NFL team, and had me spar them in boxing, I would probably get hurt by the very first guy and barely manage to make him look bad before having to sit out. If I led them in round robin knife fighting I would beat them all, but barely, and within a week they’d all be kicking my ass. If we were doing a stick-fighting clinic I could line them all up and beat them into submission simply because the ranging and specific conditioning for the stick is so specialized, and, at the end of the week, it would just be me and the linebackers on the other side of that wall of pain.

For this reason I recommend washing out pretty obvious assholes through stick fighting, improving character and boring undisciplined minds into quitting through boxing, and giving non-combatant self-defense types an accessible entry into combat training through knife sparring.

A well trained experienced B-list stick fighter such as Charles and I can totally dominate any first time stick fighter no matter how athletic they are. This is quite a clean vetting opportunity. The prospective stick-fighter will soon discover that long training, pain, and hours of humiliation wait him if he wishes to advance from bruised to bruiser.

Bore the bad character into quitting with the ceaseless drills required to learn boxing correctly.

Work the ill-disciplined into quitting doing bag work and puking in buckets in between rounds.

Beat the weak-willed into quitting. This is why you need a cool headed badass in the gym. When Mister Frank would walk over to Tony Cygan before he sparred with a new guy, he would give him directions on one of three tiers:

1. “He’s a good kid, just work with him.”

2. “This guy looks like something. Let’s see what he’s made of.”

3. “Do what you have to do,” which translates into, “I think this guy is an asshole. If you also think he’s an asshole, drop him.”

I once met a young heavyweight that Tony had “dropped.” He was dating the daughter of a friend of mine. When he met me and found out that I trained with Tony he made himself scarce. He knew immediately that I knew—or would soon know—that he was a punk and would inform the mother of the young lady he was wooing. This dude knew that boxing people knew what he was and vetted himself out of a non-boxing situation to avoid the silent castigation of the mangina-seeing eye.

Females, children, geeks, nerds, research scientists, Andy Nowicki, bookworms, sissies, all of the people you would not want with you in a ditch when the enemy comes for you, start them out on the knife. The knife has a short steep learning curve, is fun and teaches contact and leverage with light impact and maximum motion.

Do not let a man or youth of bad character or questionable morals pick up this easiest to master skill set. For younger studs of unknown character, make stick and boxing mandatory entry level activities.

Most of all, Sean, trust and ever continue to develop your measure of a man’s character. And do not forget that those youths you train, are asking to be judged on a man’s scale, so do so.