GC-152 Experience in Violence with Varg Freeborn

Varg Freeborn is one of the most experienced men I have ever met in terms of observing violence and criminal behavior first-hand as well as being an active participant in violent encounters. His views, concepts, and ideas are straight to the point and well-articulated.
Varg Freeborn interview: Jump to timeline and some excerpts.

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20:00 Varg Freeborn: introduction

22:00 Harder to kill: qualifications to instruct

25:00 Violence: on the receiving and giving end…and going to prison

39:02 Violence and physical training

43:46 Reading the crowd, Avoidance, and the vibrations of a room

51:11 Human predatory skills and behavior for defense

01:11 What the training community gets wrong

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[I teach mostly] things that have to do with fighting up close and personal with a firearm or loan and that is more likely geared towards civilians or lone patrol officers, that type of situation. So I try to stay very clearly in my lane, of experience there.

I have a lot going on, but it all has to do with coaching and making people stronger, better, safer, healthier, and harder to kill.

Harder to kill: qualifications to instruct
I try to stay pretty humble, so I’m not gonna get grandiose with this, but the thing that I think would make me qualified is that I talk from experience. When I talk and I teach from experience. I’m passionate about it because these are often things that either kept me alive or mistakes that I’ve made that nearly cost me my life  ̶  or mistakes that I made that did cost me large pieces of my life that I can’t get back. So that makes it very important information to me.

So when I’ve passed that information on to other people, that information is coming from a very intense place. It’s not just something that was dreamed up in a dojo or on a range somewhere. It’s information that is driven by a personal experience that had a great cost.

Violence, on the giving and receiving end…and going to prison.
When I was 18, I was involved in a pretty serious fight… and I was cornered by three very intoxicated and high individuals that were in a very dangerous condition. I fought my way out of that and I ended up stabbing one of them a couple of dozen times. That led to me being charged, which also led to me, being locked up for five years in prison. So at 19, I began a prison stay that lasted for five years. So 19 to 24 I spent in the brutal world of the penitentiary.

That was a very enlightening experience…a very strong development in my life in terms of who I am…that shaped a lot of my views on violence, my views on fighting, and my views on criminal mindset…I was simultaneously one of them, and also an observer. A person who disliked the people I was around, which made me very tuned into what type of people they were, how they operated, watching every manipulative behavior, predatory behaviors, all of those things were necessary for survival. But also, I was driven by just my sheer dislike of these people. That made me have to understand how they operate.

Violence, true self-defense, and fitness.
You have to get a higher fitness level, but you can’t break yourself down and exercise so hard that you can’t move the next day. You have to be physically capable of fighting to protect yourself, your wife, and kids.

I was in prison during the “good old days”,