Blackthorn Blog Post for 9-11-26 Part 2 - A Common Household Tool For Self Defense

It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple tool. You just have to hold it right.

 

And Another Milestone is Added To The Blackthorn Blog

 Sept 11 2026     The Blog Hits 900,000 Pageviews

And again I find myself saying Thank You to everybody who looks in at the Blackthorn Blog. 

I hope everybody continues, on any given day, to find the blog informative, and entertaining! 

 And don't worry, there will be a Part 2 before today is over!

Another Full Length UC Video Tutorial On Fear Management

 If you're not used to violence, it can come as a big shock when you're suddenly faced with it out of the blue. Someone walks up to you in the street, on a train station, or in bar and either they feel that you've disrespected them for some reason, or if they want your wallet and your phone, and you freeze up.

If you've trained in the martial arts any fighting you've done is in a controlled environment. This video goes to how you learn to control and use that fear.

The only negative to this video is the really bad music in the background of the opening segment. But it was typical for the early 2000's, so just try to ignore it.

 

Another Motivational Article From Gavin, The Guy with the Gym That Only Accepts 40+ Year Old Members

 Yeah, I know, you guys are thinking "What, another article for the old Guys here at the Blog?" Well yeah, that's right. Because nobody is getting younger, and if you don't look after your own fitness, some some health aide will in a nursing home.

 

 ********************

 Hey There,

Ten years of running my over 40 fitness studio in New Zealand, and there is one number that keeps turning up.

Two and a half.

That is the average number of sessions a week our people actually do. Not five. Not six.

Not the punishing schedule you see all over the internet every January.

Two and a half sessions a week, year after year.

I know. It is a terrible slogan. Nobody is putting THAT on a t-shirt.

But here is what I can tell you after watching it happen for a decade.

Every single person who holds that average gets phenomenally stronger than they were the day they started.

Their muscle tone changes.

Their range of movement opens back up.

And the things they had quietly stopped mentioning start coming back.

Getting off the floor. Standing up out of a low chair without pushing off the arms. Carrying the shopping in one trip. Going up the stairs and arriving at the top able to speak.

All of that, from two and a half sessions a week.

And notice it is two and a half, not two. Some weeks are three. Some weeks are one.

That matters, because people are so hard on themselves about this.

You have a rough week, you get to Friday having managed one session instead of two, and you write the whole week off as wasted. I hear it constantly.

That is not how muscle works.

The session is not where you get stronger.

The session is where you break the muscle down.

The getting stronger happens afterwards, while you are asleep, eating your dinner, puttering about doing nothing in particular.

The strength work is only one half of the equation. Recovery is the other half, and it is not the lazy half.

So one session in a week is not a failed week.

It is a session, plus a lot of repair time.

And a quiet week here and there, where life takes over and you do very little, will not undo you.

Quite often it is exactly what your joints were asking for.

So the odd week off is not the problem, the six months off is. And that is the only catch in the whole thing.

Imagine you trained hard for six months. Fifty sessions, roughly twice a week, genuinely good work.

Then you stopped for six months. Life got in the way, the weather turned, the shoulder played up....

At the end of that year you would be almost exactly where you started. All that effort, handed straight back.

Now imagine instead you did two sessions a week for fifty two weeks, worked around the injury, same effort in any given week.

No heroics, no six week blitz, nothing you would even tell anyone about.

Twelve months later you would not recognise yourself.

Same person. Same weekly workload. Completely different year.

Consistency is not the boring bit you put up with before the results turn up. Consistency IS the result. Everything else is decoration.

One thing I should clear up, because it lands in my inbox most weeks.

Nobody is asking you to turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger. There is no oiled posing routine at the end of this.

You will not wake up one morning unable to scratch your own back, do up your bra or having to go through doorways sideways.

Muscle on that scale takes years, a frankly upsetting amount of chicken out of plastic containers, and a level of dedication that ruins holidays for everybody involved.

We are not building. We are replacing.

From your thirties onwards, if you do nothing about it, you lose somewhere between three and eight percent of your muscle every decade, and it speeds up after sixty.

That is not a scare story, it is just accounting. Let that tick along quietly for three or four decades and one day you notice you are using two hands for a job you used to do with one.

Every session you do is a bit of that handed back. You are not building something new and ridiculous. You are going and collecting what was already yours.

So this week, do not plan five sessions. Plan two.

Then do the same next week. And the week after that. If one of those weeks turns into a single session, that still counts. That is the whole thing.

I just want you to be kind to yourself, and not put too much pressure on missing a session.

Normal people are doing amazing with just 2 and a half sessions a week. If they can, you can too.

Gavyn

Sunday With Blackthorn - (Armed) US Cops vs (Unarmed ) UK Cops

 This short news article is from 1966. And apparently, not much has changed as the Metropolitan Police in The UK are still predominantly unarmed.

 

From Urban Combatives, A Video Tutorial On The Combative Use Of Improvised Weapons

 This video features a VERY young Lee Morrison early in his career  as a Combative Instructor. This is a full length video, not just a short clip.

 

Words Of Wisdom For A Friday Morning

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well preserved piece, but to slide across the finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and shouting GERONIMO!!!”
 

Bill McKenna 

Ever Wonder Just Who Karl Marx Really Was??

 The following short video should be entertainingly enlightening......

 Just Click the link;

 

 https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/awypG3x_460svvp9.webm

Sunday With Blackthorn - Adapt To Your Situation

 The short piece below comes from a fitness/strength instructor in New Zealand who runs a gym only for over 40 adults. I paid for a program what included a PDF and links to numerous videos. Nothing unusual, but solid material. One of the things he stresses in the weekly emails is that even if you have old chronic injuries, you can still maintain your strength and fitness. 

You just have to be smarter about it.

 

 Let me tell you the thing I am quietly best at, and it is probably not what you would guess.  It is not fancy programming. It is not clever workouts. It is modifications.

A modification is simply a standard exercise done slightly differently, so it fits the body you have today instead of the body you had at 25.

Here is what I mean. A younger person drops into a deep squat and thinks nothing of it. You go to do the same and your knees or hips say no. Most people take that as a signal to stop. I take it as a signal to adjust. We turn the toes out a touch, we raise the depth, we sit down to a chair and stand back up, and suddenly you are squatting again, building real strength, with zero pain.

That is the whole game after 40. Not gritting your teeth and pushing through pain, and not sitting on the sidelines either. It is finding the version of the movement that works for your body right now.

And I mean anybody. In my gym I have people training strong around knee replacements, spinal fusions, frozen shoulders, and hips that have seen better days. It genuinely does not matter what has happened to you. There is almost always a way to keep building strength with the ability you have, and finding that way is exactly what I do.

Three things I want you to take from this:

1. A modification is not the lesser version. It is the right version for your body today. Done well it builds the exact same strength, just without the pain tax.

2. Pain is information, not a stop sign. When something hurts, that is your body asking for a small adjustment, not telling you to quit. Adjust, and keep the strength coming.

3. You do not need a perfect, pain-free body to start. You need the right tweak. I have never met a body I could not work with, and yours is no different.


Keep moving,
Gavyn

Another Entertaining Piece For The Older Guys Here At The Blog

Apparently concert venues are having a hard
 time getting Generation X to fill the seats.
Well, hello. Generation X here. I think I can help. You're welcome.
(This also applies to the Baby Boomer generation)

DEAR CONCERT VENUES:
Decent ticket prices. I should not have to sell blood, the blood of my children, and take out a small personal loan to see someone I listened to on a cassette t

Earlier shows. No more 8 PM start times. Give me 6:30. I don’t like driving home in the dark anymore and by 10 PM my body has begun shutting down nonessential systems.

Comfortable seats. Yeah, I said it. And while we’re at it, STOP PACKING US IN LIKE SARDINES. I would like to sit down without becoming intimately acquainted with the stranger beside me.

 CUP HOLDERS. We have the technology. Please use it.

No general admission. I’m not standing for four hours protecting my spot like it’s beachfront property. Give me a seat with a number on it.

 Reasonable parking. Preferably somewhere in the same zip code as the venue.

Clean bathrooms. Enough of them. With toilet paper. We’re not asking for a spa. We’re asking for basic civilization.

Turn it down just a smidge. We still want it loud. We just don’t want our ears ringing for the next three business days.

DEAR ARTISTS:

Go on stage ON TIME. If you say 7:30, we have planned our entire evening around 7:30. Respect the schedule. We have dogs to let out.

 I came to hear YOU sing. I know the audience knows all the words. That’s wonderful. Let us have a chorus here and there. But please stop holding the microphone toward the audience for half the performance. I did not pay $200 to hear Brenda from Row G sing your greatest hits.

We get it. You’re proud of your new album and you’re probably bored to death with the old stuff. Sing a couple of your new favorites. We will listen. We will support you. We may even like them. But then go back to the oldies. That’s why we’re here.

Because every time you play something nobody knows, Bob decides that’s his opportunity to get another beer. Then Bob has to pee four times because he drank the beer. And every single time Bob leaves and comes back, the entire row has to stand up.
My knees cannot handle this much up and down. Please. For the sake of our joints. Play the hits.

And you know what? Throw in an intermission. We can pee, stretch our backs, check the dog camera and regroup.

We aren’t done going to concerts.

We’re just at an age where the experience has to be worth leaving the house.
You want Generation X back in those seats? We just no longer have the desire to suffer unnecessarily.