The Jack-in-the-Box Lesson
Here’s how to get out of a headlock….
Here’s how to do a gun disarm…
Here’s how to block a punch…
Here’s how to stop a tackle…
If you’ve studied any type of self-defense or martial art, these phrases should sound familiar to you. They're pretty much how every self-defense demo starts.
The problem here is that most people are taught what to do after something bad has already started.
So what's the solution?
PSA: Real-world violence doesn’t start with the punch.
Violence starts with a bad feeling.
To help my students understand the bigger picture, I created this graphic:
This is the Timeline of Violence, a cornerstone of the SPEAR System®.
It teaches my students how to think about violence differently, so they can spot danger early, manage it intelligently, and only fight when there’s no other option.
The three critical phases are:
D1 – DETECT: Trust your gut. Tune into the threat. Recognize the energy shift. Detect and Avoid.
D2 – DEFUSE: Use your words, body language, and tactics to de-escalate the situation. Defuse to Deescalate.
D3 – DEFEND: If necessary, convert fear, and take decisive action.
By training across the full timeline of violence, you develop true situational awareness, fear management skills, and the ability to move before violence explodes.
Breakdowns like these are what separates SPEAR from everything else.
Today’s article explains why failing to train D1 & D2 can compromise your safety. And more importantly, not understanding how your nervous system is wired for survival can also impact your ability to protect yourself in a true surprise.
We’ll dive deeper into this in the next newsletter.
PART 1: The Jack-in-the-Box Is Your First Clue
Why You’re Still Training Too Late — and How to Fix That
Most self-defense systems are built backward.
They start where the attack starts.
They train people to respond to the punch, the tackle, the grab — D3 — the moment of physical contact.
And that’s the problem.
If your training doesn’t address the moment before the movement — the tension, the energy, the gut feeling — you’re already behind. You’re hoping to solve violence from the wrong end of the equation.
I’ve been teaching this for over 40 years. And I’ve been using the same metaphor for just as long: The Jack-in-the-Box.
Violence Has a Soundtrack
You remember the Jack-in-the-Box toy.
Turn the crank.
The song starts:
“All around the mulberry bush…”
And even though everyone knows what’s coming — when that clown pops, we still flinch.
In this self-defense metaphor, the music is the energetic pre-contact cue, the bad feeling we get before the attack. This is the first warning.
The music is D1.
It’s the intuitive spike in your nervous system that tells you something is off.
This is what I mean by an energetic pre-contact cue.
And if you don’t train to recognize this feeling — you'll always move late — that's the same as cranking the Jack-in-the-Box, listening to the creepy music, waiting for the clown to pop.
With the Jack-in-the-Box, we flinch and giggle.
If this were real life... it wouldn't be so funny.
(This is physics: Action is faster than reaction. During sudden violence, the aggressor is always Action!)
How can we improve our re-action time?
Inaction vs. In-Action
This is one of our trademark concepts. It’s subtle, but critical.
As we covered earlier in the Timeline of Violence breakdown, when you don’t train for D1 and D2, your nervous system has no neural tags for those moments.
No map. No “energetic” pre-contact cues.
So what happens?
Maybe you freeze. You definitely flinch and hesitate. (No one beats the clown.)
Training from D3 creates a default where students are unconsciously conditioned to wait for the attack — even though almost every scenario has a D1 + D2 phase. Ignoring them in training means the brain doesn’t have a strategic or tactical solution. Eg: nothing to do.
That’s inaction. No hyphen. And usually, nothing happens. This is why people freeze.
But if you’ve trained realistic and relevant scenarios, built the awareness, rehearsed the cues — your nervous system recognizes the shift, and your awareness sharpens. Your mind is already tracking problems and preparing to take action.
That’s in-action. Hyphenated.
You’re ahead of the physical attack. You’re not reacting — you’re pre-acting to contact!
If ACTION beats REACTION,
then IN-ACTION beats ACTION.
Most Systems Start Too Late
This isn’t a jab at styles or systems. It’s just an observation:
Most programs are built on the stimulus-response logic.
“If he does this, I’ll do that.”
But violence doesn’t work that way.
Really dangerous attacks are sudden and vicious — a real-life jack-in-the-box moment.
Reverse Engineering Your Safety — Scientifically
What makes the SPEAR System® so unique is that it wasn’t reverse-engineered from a sport or a style.
It was built around human behavior under real threat.
Danger is detected by the limbic system, and the response happens before cognition.
The system is based on an 80,000-year-old genetic survival response — the startle-flinch — a protective reflex from the reptilian brain that prioritizes one thing: survival.
It’s protective by nature, tactical by design.
It's also the fastest human response.
In the SPEAR System®, we train the brain through scenario-based simulations that activate anticipatory cells, improving recognition speed and creating real-time readiness.
What we’ve done is harness the flinch and convert it into a tactical counter.
You’re not just stronger or tougher —
You’re safer, sooner.
Final Thought: Listen for the Music
The jack-in-the-box metaphor has layers.
Yes, the clown always pops first.
Yes, action is faster than reaction.
But the real lesson?
The music is your first clue.
It represents those uncomfortable moments before contact when something feels off — that’s D1.
That’s when you choose safety.
That’s when you create space and begin to de-escalate.
And if it goes physical, your mind is already in-action.
If your self-defense system doesn’t train you to recognize and act at each phase and for every pre-contact cue — sorry, but you’re not actually training for real-world violence…
In fact, you might just be learning to spar in a street attack — and that’s even more dangerous.
— Coach B
Four Options to Go Deep into SPEAR:
1. Bring it home: Get certified to teach my system at your martial arts school, your company, or to your family — click this link now.
2. Enhance your Self-Defense IQ: Subscribe to my Tactical Library and get full-length classes for less than $1 a class — click here.
3. Train with me personally: Apply to our Elite Training Retreat here.
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Wanna watch the class that inspired this article? Class 810 from the Tactical Garage Gym covers this and so much more. If this letter fired you up, made you think, inspired you to train, invest $5 and watch the class. Experience some of the training and be ringside for the rants and psychology. Grab it here.