Nonverbal Precursors to Violence: How to Make Real Time Threat Assessments via Body Language (Live Webinar)

It's not "what do I do." It's "when do I do it."

If you train, you have thousands of reps of what to do. That part's handled. If you don't, you've still had the moment where something about a person felt off and you talked yourself out of it.

Either way, the question that causes the delay is the same one.

Good people don't decide to throw the first punch. We give bad actors the benefit of the doubt, over and over, because that's what decent people do. Is this really an attack, or is he just moving his arm? By the time that question settles you're behind the curve, and you're behind it for one reason. You didn't know you were in a fight yet.

That's not a flaw in your training. Every rep you've ever done started when somebody decided it started: a bell, a coach saying GO, a partner feeding the attack you already know is coming. Even good scenario training has a moment where it begins, and everyone in the room knows when that moment is.

Real violence doesn't have a bell.

What the body does before the person decides

When a brain thinks violence might be coming, it signals the glands, and the glands put cortisol and adrenaline into the bloodstream. Powerful drugs, with visible side effects.

Blood pulls out of the hands and into the big muscles. The fingers go stiff and cold, and his hands start working on the problem without him. Digestion shuts down and saliva stops, so he sucks his teeth and takes small sips of a drink he isn't thirsty for. Hair stands up, sweat starts, and everything he's wearing begins to irritate him. The body limbers up on its own: neck, hips, shoulders, chest, back.

He isn't choosing any of it, and mostly he doesn't know he's doing it.

One behavior on its own means nothing. The skill is reading clusters, above a baseline you established first, and that's the difference between this seminar and the cheap body language nonsense on the internet. James demonstrates it live, and the whole seminar is built around real footage.

Once you see it, you can't stop seeing it

James walked into a restaurant with Shannon and some out-of-town friends and paused at the door to scan the room, the way they both always do. Out of sixty or seventy people, his eye kept going back to one man. A few tells on him, but also something else: tells from the people around him. Exclusion behavior. Averted gaze.

He leaned over to Shannon: "Ten minutes before that guy is either in a fight, getting thrown out, or buying everyone drinks."

Ten minutes later the man walked up to their table, chatted for a bit, and bought the table a round.

Shannon: "You called it... and with a timer."

James couldn't predict which of the three it would be, and he doesn't claim to. What he could do was narrow it to three and have a plan ready for each. And Shannon spotted it too, the second he pointed the man out. That's the part that matters for you, because it means this is a skill you can learn, not a gift you're born with.

"James has an incredible way of putting you at ease, while simultaneously opening your eyes to things you never noticed before... James doesn't just present information. He teaches you how to see things differently." - Wholistic I., on this seminar

If you've never trained a day in your life

You don't need to. Your brain already runs half of this for you. That "something's off about that guy" feeling is your subconscious picking up these exact signals and flagging them. What it can't do is tell you what it saw, so most people explain it away.

This seminar is the other half. You'll know what your gut noticed, which means you can trust it early and step away early, long before physical skills ever come into it. Be prepared, not paranoid.

If you teach

This isn't a replacement for anything in your curriculum, it's the glue between awareness and action. You'll leave with a way to tie awareness and preparedness to action, the vocabulary for it, and the reasoning under each piece, which is what you need to answer your students' follow-up questions. James has spent years training instructors to weave this material into any defensive tactics system.

About the footage

It's real: interrogation rooms, a traffic stop, a shoplifter, a news interview. You get the context before each clip, what to look for, and why. It's chosen to teach, not to shock.

"He uses videos and examples that make his points, but are not too gory or scary... He takes you right to the edge to teach the idea or skill, but not enough to make people shut down." - Terry S., after James trained 85 code enforcement officers from Colorado and Wyoming

Two parts, one week apart

• Part 1, Friday, November 13: What the body does. Cortisol and adrenaline hit the bloodstream and cause symptoms the person tries to relieve without knowing it. Those relief behaviors are the tells. You'll also learn how to set a baseline so they mean something.
• Part 2, Friday, November 20: What the brain decides. While the body gets ready, the subconscious works out a plan: fight, flee or comply. Exit glances, target glances, numb face and the committal sigh are what that planning looks like from the outside. You'll also learn how to spot someone carrying a concealed weapon, and the signs they're getting ready to reach for it.

The week in between is the point. Expect to spend it noticing things in the grocery store line you'd never have seen before Part 1, and bring them to Part 2. Each session runs 45 minutes, with time for your questions at the end.

Who's teaching it

James has been teaching Krav Maga since 1997, among the very first instructors in the United States, and is a Senior Instructor certified by Israel's Wingate Institute. He serves as a Subject Matter Expert on Colorado POST's [Arrest Control Tactics] committee and helps set the standards Colorado's police academies train to. He's contracted by one of Colorado's largest hospital systems, the region's code enforcement association, and local law enforcement agencies.

That's the same material, taught the same way, to people whose jobs depend on reading it right. He's the one teaching this seminar, live.