Unfortunately, there are instances when you have no choice but to fight and others where it is prudent to do so. If you’ve gotta fight, you need to know how to do it effectively. This section is about what actually happens during a violent encounter, helping you understand clever things you might want to try and dumb things you should attempt to avoid when things get rough.
If you do have to fight, you must avoid being injured long enough to give yourself a reasonable chance to strike back, so the awareness you have already learned about remains important. It’s pretty hard to battle effectively when you’re disoriented, bleeding, and reeling in agony. Further, to remain safe, your response must at least knock your adversary off his game plan, if not disable him straightaway. Having a variety of reliable techniques to draw from can give you a leg up if your initial response is thwarted by the other guy as it often will be. He’s not going to attack you unless he thinks he can win, so odds are good that he has at least a little experience at doing it right. He will be doing his damnedest to pound your face in, pulling out every dirty trick he can think of in an effort to mess you up.
While this book largely focuses on the principles of violence, we offer a variety of practical applications in this section that you can use to give yourself reasonable odds of surviving a violent encounter. Unfortunately, no book, no matter how well written, can substitute for professional hands-on training when it comes to handling violence. If you are interesting in learning how to defend yourself effectively, we suggest you seriously consider taking up martial arts classes. At the risk of making a crass, commercial statement, our book The Way to Black Belt: A Comprehensive Guide to Rapid, Rock-Solid Results is a great resource to get started along that path.
Fighting should never be your first choice, but sometimes it’s your only choice to keep yourself or someone you care about safe. In addition to learning some solid fighting techniques, you will discover some important principles that help you understand when you can legally get away with going physical. Unfortunately countervailing force is not a yes/no equation. What you can and cannot do under the eyes of the law can be highly nuanced. Consequently, this section identifies appropriate levels of force that you might be able to employ while keeping yourself out of jail whenever you have to get hands on.
Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
The first is to forestall him by attacking. This is called ken no sen (to set him up).
There is an old Chinese proverb that states, “He who strikes the first blow admits he’s lost the argument.” Throwing the first punch can put you on shaky ground legally speaking too. Consequently, most civilians are taught that striking first is a bad thing. If you are already a martial artist, you have undoubtedly heard that karate is first and foremost a defensive art. This tradition is best described by Gichin Funakoshi’s[18] famous saying, “karate ni sente nashi” which translates as “there is no first strike in karate.”
While this statement is true, it is also commonly misunderstood, often to the detriment of martial artists who find themselves in serious trouble the first time they take their dojo training to a real fight on the street. Following Funakoshi’s admonishment, they tend to wait until they have already been attacked and very possibly struck with force before taking any action. By then it is often too late. If a trained martial artist has this challenge, imagine how much more difficult it would be for an untrained civilian to survive a fight if he cedes initiative to the attacker.
To be clear, karateka, like most martial artists, are taught to avoid seeking conflict. This convention helps practitioners of potentially lethal arts behave in a manner appropriate to interaction within polite society; something we’d all agree is a positive thing indeed. This mindset is so important that it goes beyond mere words and is even reflected in the training methods and physical movements of the art. For example, every kata[19] in Goju Ryu karate (which Kane and Wilder practice) begins with a defensive technique.
The challenge is, then, to make that defensive move work to your advantage. What many don’t realize is that defensive techniques when executed properly are designed to be just as fight-stopping as offensive ones. Uke, in Japanese, means “receive” rather than “block,” an important distinction. Traditional fighting arts were developed long before the advent of modern medicine. In those days, almost any injury suffered in battle could ultimately prove fatal through infection or other collateral impact. Consequently, even the defensive tactics were nasty and highly effective.
The ancient masters understood that if they were to only block an adversary’s attack, he would continue to strike until they did something more effective to disable him, or they were beaten into a bloody pulp, or he decided to stop of his own volition. Consequently, all martial applications, including the defensive ones, were designed in such a manner that they could be used to end a confrontation as quickly as possible. Despite advancements in technology, the nature of hand-to-hand fighting remains much the same today as it was in ancient times.
Here is where the confusion lies. To many, “no first strike” implies waiting for an adversary to attack rather than trying to counter successfully when you are already injured or out of position from the force of your attacker’s initial blow. After all, once you block the first strike another is inevitably already on its way, so you are effectively behind the count before you begin. No one throws only a single punch in a fight. In order to decipher the true intent of Funakoshi’s statement, we must understand a bit about initiative and how it is used in a fight.
• Late initiative (go no sen in Japanese) means blocking and counterstriking after an adversary has already attacked. This is the method that new martial artists are initially taught. It means to receive or block a blow and then to strike back. It is a great learning method because it breaks advanced techniques down into small movements, but it is not practical on the street where you are likely to become overwhelmed by a determined aggressor. This is elementary stuff, abandoned quickly once any significant level of skill has been achieved.
Whenever you fight, you run the risk injuring, maiming, or killing another human being, even if only by accident. If you are seen as the aggressor in the eyes of the law, you will be facing serious jail time and/or crippling civil liability.
• Simultaneous initiative (sen no sen in Japanese) means intercepting the adversary’s blow just after it begins. This is an intermediate form of martial arts, using quickness and power to simultaneously attack and defend, cutting off the opponent’s strike before it makes contact. This is where we begin to find street-worthy application. With dedicated training and a bit of practice, this is very achievable.
• Preemptive initiative (sen-sen no sen in Japanese) means cutting off a blow before it even starts. Practitioners sense that an attack will be forthcoming and then cut it short before the aggressor has the chance to transform the mental desire to attack into the physical movement necessary to execute that desire. This is the ultimate goal of martial training insofar as self-defense is concerned, advanced martial arts. It’s also really tough to learn.
Preemptive initiative, or sen-sen no sen, cuts off an attack before it is fully in play, looking an awful lot like a first strike yet is still a defensive movement. This is what Funakoshi really meant: Striking to cut off an impending attack is okay while instigating unwarranted violence on your own volition is not. If you can walk away from a confrontation, you absolutely should do so. It is not only morally the right thing to do but it also allows you to avoid potentially serious repercussions as well. Most rational people would agree that picking fights on the street is a bad idea.
To clarify further, Funakoshi wrote, “When there are no avenues of escape or one is caught even before any attempt to escape can be made, then for the first time the use of self-defense techniques should be considered. Even at times like these, do not show any intention of attacking, but first let the attacker become careless. At that time attack him concentrating one’s whole strength in one blow to a vital point and in the moment of surprise, escape, and seek shelter and help.” Notice that he wrote, “at that time attack him” as opposed to “after he strikes launch your counterattack.” Preemptive initiative is fully consistent with this approach. He also talks about seeking “shelter and help.” Your intent should be to stop the assault so that you can escape to safety or otherwise remain safe until help arrives, not to beat down your adversary.
Clearly martial artists should only engage in physical violence if there is no other choice. Sometime around 506 B.C. Sun Tzu wrote, “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue an enemy without fighting is the highest skill.” There are many peaceful ways to settle a disagreement, any one of which is preferable to a physical confrontation. If you cannot escape from danger, however, that does not mean that you must stand around waiting to get hit before you can act in your own defense. This is especially important in multiple attacker and armed aggressor scenarios where hesitation will most likely get you mutilated or killed.
Never start a fight. If you can walk away from a confrontation, by all means do so. It is not only morally the right thing to do but it allows you to avoid serious repercussions as well. A preemptive strike as you sense an imminent threat, on the other hand, is a legitimate and street-worthy defensive technique so long as your intent is to stop the assault so that you can escape to safety or otherwise remain safe until help arrives rather than to beat down your adversary. You’ll need to be able to clearly articulate why you knew he was going to assault you before you clobbered him when you talk with the police though.
This same perspective is expressed in a famous quote from the Bible, though once again it is commonly misunderstood. A common translation of Matthew 5:39 reads: “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” A more accurate translation according to many biblical scholars would be, “But I say to you, do not resist evil with evil.”
There is a huge difference between a command to “not resist evil” and a command to “not resist with evil.” Turning the other cheek is a metaphor for not seeking vengeance for or responding violently to insults. While very sound advice, it is not a literal requirement to stand there and let someone beat you down without offering even token resistance. Evil must be resisted—evil impulses in yourself as well as evil actions from others.
Whoever is attacking you has almost certainly assaulted someone before. The more times he gets away with it, the more dangerous he is likely to become. If you successfully defend yourself against an assailant, you not only save your own life or well-being but likely that of the bad guy’s next victim as well.
While there truly is no first strike in karate (or any other martial art for that matter), there should be proactive defense in situations that warrant it. Good and moral people ignore insults and avoid seeking revenge, yet that does not mean that they should be passive and allow themselves or others to be slaughtered. If confronted with unavoidable danger, it is perfectly all right to offer a vigorous response. Your intent, however, must be to escape to safety, not to kill your attacker, humiliate him, or otherwise teach him a lesson. Throwing the first blow not only means that you’ve lost the argument, but also that you’re the bad guy as well… unless it’s preemptive initiative in your defense.
Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear.
There is the spirit of winning without a sword.
Countervailing force, or physical self-defense, is violence applied against an aggressor to keep him from hurting you. In the process, you may intentionally or unintentionally injure, maim, cripple, or even kill your adversary. Even if you give the other guy a bloody nose or a minor bruise, it can still have serious repercussions, such as a night in jail or nice fat, juicy lawsuit. Imagine what would happen if you killed him… As the old saying goes, “The bigger the crime, the bigger the time.” Because of this possibility, it is important to understand how your actions might be scrutinized under the law.
A legitimate case of self-defense and a good lawyer can get you off the hook most, but not all, of the time. Consequently, it is really important to know when you’re on solid legal ground. We’re martial artists, not attorneys, so nothing in this book constitutes a legal opinion nor should any of its contents be treated as such. While we have done our due diligence and believe these guidelines are true and correct, it is prudent to check with an attorney in your local jurisdiction to understand how the laws work where you live and frequently travel. The law is very nuanced, so such things are never universal.
The Doctrine of Competing Harms. The doctrine of competing harms, or doctrine of necessity, as it is often called, is a very important point of law when it comes to self-defense. This concept has been around a very long time. It stems from English Common Law. Here’s an example of that language from Maine’s Criminal Code:[20]
§103. Competing harms:
1. Conduct which the actor believes to be necessary to avoid imminent physical harm to himself or another is justifiable if the desirability and urgency of avoiding such harm outweigh, according to ordinary standards of reasonableness, the harm sought to be prevented by the statute defining the crime charged. The desirability and urgency of such conduct may not rest upon considerations pertaining to the morality and advisability of such statute.
2. When the actor was reckless or criminally negligent in bringing about the circumstances requiring a choice of harms or in appraising the necessity of his conduct, the justification provided in subsection 1 does not apply in a prosecution for any crime for which recklessness or criminal negligence, as the case may be, suffices to establish criminal liability.
In plain terms, this means that, under the right circumstances, you have a legitimate excuse for breaking the law and will not be held criminally liable for your actions. For example, while murder is clearly illegal, killing someone in self-defense is acceptable in certain conditions. In essence, you are not held accountable for your actions because your conduct was necessary to prevent some greater harm to yourself and/or your loved ones.
You’ve probably never had to kill someone in self-defense so it’s most likely a bit hard to wrap your head around what that truly entails. Sure, you’ve seen it on TV, but we’ve already pointed out the fallacy of relying on Hollywood when it comes to real violence. For the moment, let’s use a different example that most people can relate to since there is a good chance that you’ve either done something just like this or can easily imagine doing so yourself:
Pretend that you’re driving your car along a winding, two-lane road with a double yellow line down the center. Your entire family is riding along with you. It is raining heavily, you are traveling at a prudent pace somewhat below the regular speed limit, and there are no cars in the opposite lane.
Clearly, the law states that you cannot cross the center line, even to pass another vehicle. That’s why it’s marked with the double-yellow line. Most of the time it is prudent to follow that law, driving in your own lane for everyone’s safety. What happens, however, if as you round a corner the rain-soaked ground gives way and a tree suddenly falls into your path or a rockslide covers your lane?
You have microseconds to make a decision. There is a potentially lethal barrier looming right in front of you, so close that you know you would crash into it even if you slammed on your brakes the moment you saw it. The law, on the other hand, says you’ve got to stay in your lane. So, what would you do? Why, you’d temporarily break the law to cross the centerline and move out of harm’s way, right? Not a hard choice to make in this example. It’s perfectly acceptable to avoid the greater harm that a crash would cause by illegally changing lanes until you get around the obstacle.
The doctrine of competing harms is why police officers break the speed limit when racing to a crime scene too. If they were to travel at the posted speed, someone could very well die before they got there. More importantly, this same reasoning is why you can apply potentially lethal countervailing force to defend yourself from harm when you are attacked by a predator on the street.
Most jurisdictions recognize the doctrine of competing harms only under limited circumstances, however. It is usually considered an “affirmative” defense. That means that it shifts the burden of proof from the prosecutor to the defendant since you are admitting that you broke the law but arguing that you should not be held liable for doing so. Normally, it’s the prosecutor who has to prove his case, not the defendant. Consequently, you need a really good attorney on your side if you’re going to use this approach, someone who’s skilled at defending innocent parties in self-defense situations.[21] Generally, to prove your case successfully, you must show evidence that
1. The harm you sought to avoid outweighed the danger of the prohibited conduct you were charged with.
2. You had no reasonable alternative but to engage in the prohibited conduct in order to avoid that harm.
3. You stopped doing the prohibited conduct as soon as the danger passed.
4. You did not create the danger you sought to avoid.
Whenever you tee off on another person, you run the risk injuring, maiming, or potentially even killing him, even when you were not actively trying to do so. If you are seen as the aggressor in the eyes of the law, you will be faced with the very real possibility of spending time in jail and/or losing a ton of money in a civil lawsuit. Consequently, you need a way of knowing when it’s prudent to strike. If the four criteria—ability, opportunity, jeopardy, and preclusion (AOJP)—are all met, you have a pretty good legal case for taking action. If one or more of these conditions are absent, however, you are on shaky legal ground should you decide to fight with the other guy.
In our driving example, crossing the centerline was definitely less harmful than crashing into the potentially deadly obstacle so you’re good on the first criterion. You had no reasonable alternative (criterion number 2) and immediately moved back into your lane once you passed the danger (criterion number 3). You most certainly did not cause the danger (criterion number 4), so it’s all good. Were you pulled over by a police officer for a moving violation after crossing the centerline you’d have a near bulletproof defense in court (in the unlikely event that it ever got that far).
This same reasoning works in self-defense cases too, assuming that all four of these elements are in place. While taking a life is clearly illegal, the competing harm (or urgent necessity) of saving your own life outweighs the harm you did to your attacker since he initiated the confrontation. In other words, it can be your “stay out of jail free” card if you play it right.
While the doctrine of competing harms is the legal basis upon which you can make a case for killing someone in self-defense, in practical reality it’s not necessarily a clear enough guideline to use on the street. The challenge is that it can be tough to keep all these obscure points of law in your head when things get ugly. That’s why many defense combatives instructors teach the AOJP principle to their students instead of, or in addition to, the doctrine of competing harms. It’s relatively easy to remember, and an extraordinarily useful guideline to keep you out of trouble. Here’s how it works.
The AOJP principle is a good way to ascertain whether it makes sense to use physical force in self-defense situation. AOJP stands for Ability, Opportunity, Jeopardy, and Preclusion. If all four of these criteria are all met, you have a pretty good legal case for taking action. If one or more of these conditions are absent, however, you are on shaky legal ground. Clearly, you will want to speak with an attorney to understand the laws in your locale, but this principle is a useful, relatively easy to remember guideline.
Ability. Ability means that an attacker has both the physical as well as practical ability to seriously injure, maim, or kill you. This may include the use of fists and feet as well as the application of conventional or improvised weapons such as knives, guns, bottles, baseball bats, or similar instruments. It also includes the physical ability to wield said weapon (or fists or feet for that matter) in a manner that can actually injure you. A small child with a baseball bat does not have the same ability to cause you harm as a professional ball player swinging the same hunk of wood as a weapon. Similarly, unless there is a massive skill differential, a petite woman has less ability to hurt you with a punch or kick than a muscular man.
Opportunity. While your attacker may have the ability to harm you, his ability does not necessarily mean that he also has the immediate opportunity to do so. Your life and well-being must be in clear and present danger before you can legally respond with physical force. For example, a bad guy with a knife has the ability to kill you only so long as he is also within striking range of the weapon or can quickly move into the appropriate distance from which to initiate his attack. A physical barrier such as a chain link fence may protect you from a knife-wielder but not an assailant armed with a gun, so opportunity relates not only to the attacker and the weapon, but also to the environment within which they are deployed as well.
Jeopardy. Jeopardy or “imminent jeopardy” as the law sometimes requires, relates to the specifics of the situation. Any reasonable person in a similar situation should feel in fear for his life. This is a legal attempt to distinguish between a truly hazardous situation and one that is only potentially dangerous. While you are not expected to be able to read an aggressor’s mind, you certainly should be able to ascertain his intent from his outward appearance, demeanor, and actions. Someone shouting, “I’m going to kill you,” while walking away is probably not an immediate threat even though he may very well come back with a weapon or a group of friends later and become one should you stick around long enough. Someone shouting, “I love you,” while lunging toward you with a knife, on the other hand, most likely is an imminent threat.
Preclusion. Even when the ability, opportunity, and jeopardy criteria are satisfied, you must still have no other safe alternatives other than physical force before engaging an opponent in combat. If you can run or retreat from harm’s way without further endangering yourself these criteria have not been met. In some jurisdictions, there is no requirement to retreat when attacked in your home or, in some cases, your place of business. Regardless, it is prudent to retreat whenever you have the ability to do so safely. After all, it is impossible for the other guy to hurt you if you’re not there.
If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
Miyamoto Musashi made no comments regarding using only as much force as the situation required. He lived in a time when such things were, for the most part, unnecessary. In his day, nearly all fights were to the death yet there was little fear of legal repercussions.
During the escalation process, there are several force options available to help stave off violence: (1) presence, (2) voice, (3) empty-hand restraint, (4) non-lethal force, and, ultimately, (5) lethal force. This continuum is similar to the approach codified by many police departments. The first two levels can potentially prevent violence before it begins, the third may be used proactively as an opponent prepares to strike, and the last two take place after you have already been attacked.
This continuum of force should be applied sensibly to preserve your safety as the situation warrants. There are no absolutes in self-defense, but your ultimate goal should be to apply sufficient force to effectively control the situation and keep yourself from harm without overdoing it. In general, you may legally use reasonable force in defending yourself. “Reasonable force” is considered only that force reasonably necessary to repel the attacker’s force.
Exceeding a reasonable level of force may well turn a victim into a perpetrator in the eyes of the courts. Justifiable self-defense is a victim’s defense to a criminal and/or civil charge. The legal reasoning goes like this: If your intent was to defend yourself, than a reasonable person would only do so using reasonable force. Sounds a bit circular but it is very important. Using a higher level of force infers that you had intent to needlessly harm the other guy. This allows the perpetrator turned “victim” to use your defensive actions against you, the victim turned perpetrator. Even if a criminal prosecutor dismisses your actions, a civil court may not do so.
In other words, that means that if you overdo things, you’re in trouble. Bad guys sue their victims all the time. They even win too. It just isn’t right, yet it certainly happens in this litigious society. Clearly, if you under-do things you’ll lose the fight, which is trouble of a whole different kind. Your response needs to be “just right.”
1. Presence
If you are a trained martial artist or just a well-conditioned athlete, your presence alone can frequently de-escalate a dangerous situation. Carry yourself with confidence and be prepared to act. Predators who are good at sensing body language may back off simply because they can tell that you are prepared to act. In other words, presence can help you fail the victim interview. Bad guys don’t want to tangle with you if they think they are going to get hurt in the process.
2. Voice
Use your verbal skills and tone of voice to talk an aggressor out of attacking you or otherwise get him to back down. Even when you cannot de-escalate a pending conflict through verbal skills, you may still be able to use your words as a psychological weapon to momentarily confuse or disrupt an opponent, giving yourself an opportunity to act. Your voice is a very important weapon in your self-defense arsenal. Don’t forget to use it. Furthermore, be wary when the other guy tries to do the same thing back to you.
Many confrontations can be resolved without violence. Even when it becomes necessary to go hands on, it is important to exercise a judicious level of force sufficient to control the other guy without overreacting. An excessive response can make you the bad guy in the eyes of the law. Force options you might select from include (1) presence, (2) voice, (3) empty-hand restraint, (4) non-lethal force, and, ultimately, (5) lethal force. The first two options can prevent violence before it begins, the third may be used proactively as an opponent prepares to strike, and the last two take place after you have already been attacked.
3. Empty-hand restraint
Restraint, disarm, and control techniques can be employed to keep an aggressor from hurting you and/or themselves until law enforcement professionals arrive. You will generally want to respond with a slightly greater degree of force than is used against you. Pulling a weapon on an unarmed attacker, for example, almost always makes you the bad guy.
Beware of chokes and other violent-looking responses. Pins, locks, arm bars, and similar control techniques are preferable if you can apply them safely and effectively. Be very cautious of going to the ground unless you are absolutely sure that your attacker acted alone and does not have friends who might take advantage of your vulnerability to attack though.
Pinning or holding down the drunken uncle at a family gathering might work very effectively, while the same tactics used on an adversary in a crowded bar will almost certainly not. If you do use a restraint technique, try to hold the other guy face down so that he had less chance of fighting free. Sports like judo require that you pin your opponent face up, giving him a sporting chance, something that’s bound to go poorly on the street.
4. Non-lethal force
Non-lethal force is the next step up on the force continuum. This includes striking, kicking, and a whole bunch of other martial arts techniques that cause damage to your opponent. Such strikes should be aimed at non-vital areas of the body. An elbow or knee to the gut is unlikely to kill your adversary while the very same blow to his head could easily result in serious injuries, brain damage, or even death. Certain weapons such as kubaton, pepper spray, or Tasers can also be used for non-lethal force or restraint applications. Law enforcement and military professionals have an even wider array of non-lethal weapons (for example, water cannons, stun grenades, teargas) to choose from than civilians do.[22]
If restraint techniques do not work or will put you in danger because your assailant is armed, much bigger than you are, or there is more than one of them, you may have to escalate directly to this level should other options fail. Hit-and-run tactics such as kicking the knee or stomping the foot may slow your adversary down sufficiently to let you get away without needing to seriously damage him.
5. Lethal force
The final level is lethal force. This includes both martial arts applications applied to vital areas of the body that can cause significant damage such as strikes to the head or solar plexus. In some cases, chokes may be considered lethal force too. Similarly, deployment of various lethal weapons such as knives, guns, bludgeons, and the like may also be called for. This level should be avoided unless there is no other way to escape a violent encounter unscathed.
When lethal force is warranted your life is at stake. Consequently, all bets are off. Chances are good that someone won’t be walking away from these types of encounters so they must be taken very seriously. You must be mentally and physically prepared to do whatever it takes to survive (see “The Will to Kill” in Appendix C for more information).
Is it really better to be judged by twelve than carried by six? Some self-defense experts throw around the phrase, “It’s better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” We do not advocate that sentiment because we feel that it trivializes the seriousness of violent confrontations. Never forget that if you are found guilty in a jury trial, you will be spending a whole lot of quality time in a confined environment with unpredictable, dangerous neighbors who may be less than friendly when you interact with them. You may also suffer consequences with others in the community, facing challenges from family, friends, employers, and those you wish to interact positively with on a daily basis.
Bad things can happen when you fight for your life, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t fight for everything you’re worth if it gets to that point. Under no circumstances should you let fear of legal consequences keep you from living through a violent encounter, particularly against an armed assailant. If you don’t survive, everything else is meaningless.
To pass Taser certification, you must be zapped in training. The paramedics are laughing because she let out an uncharacteristically foul expletive before succumbing to the voltage.
Most confrontations can be resolved without violence. Even when it becomes necessary to go hands on, it is important to exercise a judicious level of force sufficient to control the other guy without overreacting. Use only as much force as the situation warrants.
Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
If his rhythm is disorganized, or if he has fallen into evasive or retreating attitudes, we must crush him straightaway.
Not all encounters are deadly. In fact, a few can even be downright comical. Wrangling drunks, for example, is typically light years apart from tangling with armed assailants. It is important to be able to respond appropriately across the entire continuum of violence as we have outlined in the previous section. Since many violent encounters are facilitated by alcohol-induced impairment, we’ll spend a little time examining how to deal with such situations.
Under no circumstances should you let fear of legal consequences keep you from living through a violent encounter, particularly against an armed assailant. If you don’t survive, everything else is meaningless.
For your amusement we’ll begin with the following true story that was contributed by our friend and fellow martial artist Dave Organ. This incident took place in June 2007. While it is positively humorous, at least in retrospect, there are important lessons that can be gleaned from the event too, which is, of course, why we have included it here.
While my diplomatic skills are good, I don’t have a lot of experience negotiating with ambassadors from planet Tequila. Drunks, even ones with all the power and grace of an anemic octopus, can be difficult to control without causing injury.
I work as the manager, bartender, and bouncer of a small restaurant and lounge in the little town of Westerose, Alberta (Canada). In my time, I’ve had to deal with my share of hostile encounters, but this particular incident ranks as probably the funniest one I’ve ever experienced.
First, some background. Shortly after our restaurant opened, I hired a new bartender named ‘Fred’ (all names have been changed to protect the idiotic; it is, after all, a small town). I fired him after the first day for drinking on the job. As it turns out, he’s the town drunk, which just goes to show what happens when you’re new to the area and don’t know people yet. Despite firing him, I liked the guy—he’s warm, friendly, and funny and really is a kick-ass bartender. I had no problems with having him and his friend Dean in the lounge for drinks virtually every night.
The thing is I worried about his heavy drinking. He’s one of those guys who seems perfectly normal for a certain amount of drinks, and then descends quickly into total inebriation. It’s awfully hard to determine a cutoff point for him. One moment he’s fine, the next he’s sliding down the walls.
Well, that night I’d had enough, so I cut him off and ordered his waitress not to serve him any more drinks. He became surly and abusive. I tolerated his attitude for a little while and tried to mollify him, but eventually I gave up, banned him from the bar, and ejected him. He began threatening me physically, but his buddy got him out the door and off the premises. End of story. Or so I thought.
Fred decided I had ‘called him out,’ so he lumbered around to the kitchen entrance to confront me. One problem: I wasn’t there. But, half the kitchen staff was. I had no interest at all in dealing with him, so I didn’t bother to go out. What would be the point? I knew that my presence would only inflame the situation so I let those guys deal with it. His buddy Dean finally wrangled him away from the door and led him back to the front entrance where they got into an argument about their treatment with Greg, the restaurant owner.
Greg was arguing right back… bad idea. You don’t argue with patrons, ever, especially not drunk patrons you’ve just kicked out. Finally, after a few minutes, I knew that I had to intervene. I went out into the lobby and said, “No more arguing. You were abusive. I banned you. This is your tab, you signed it. End of story.” Surprisingly, it was—they grumbled and left. Last I saw of Fred, he was winding his way through the nearly empty parking lot towards home.
Not all encounters are deadly. In fact, a few can even be downright comical. Wrangling drunks can often be a good example, though you still have to take such incidents seriously.
Once he was gone, I took a few minutes to calm everyone down. Ejecting Fred was high entertainment for the yahoos in the lounge. Things quickly returned to normal. After about half an hour, I stepped out the kitchen entrance for a smoke, lit up, looked up… and here comes Fred!!!
The bugger had waited by the corner of the Laundromat in order to ambush me. As soon as I stepped out the door, he charged…
And charged…
And charged…
Er… perhaps I’d better explain. It wasn’t exactly the best-planned ambush in the history of warfare. The Laundromat was over a hundred meters (328 feet) away from me. I looked up, saw him approach, said “Oh, for God’s sake!” and waited. And waited… I tried placating him as he approached; tried calming him down but no dice. Fred was on the warpath, the blood singing in his veins, screaming his terrible war chant, “Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…” Et cetera…
The mighty clash of two forces colliding sounded rather a lot like a feather pillow hitting a concrete wall which is… well… more or less what happened. He pushed his chest into me. I turned him around and pushed him away, hoping he’d get the idea. He came back flailing, but I held him at arms length so he couldn’t reach me.
Finally, he tried to kick me, which didn’t exactly have the desired outcome either. I pushed down on his shoulders and swept his supporting leg, dropping him gently enough that he wouldn’t get hurt on landing. He wound up upside down on his head, legs wrapped around my right leg, with me cradling his ankles with my right arm to keep him from kicking me.
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…”
We were against the stucco wall, unfortunately out of view of the windows, so I was forced to walk backwards about 3 meters (10 feet) to get help—step, drag Fred. Step, draaaaag Fred…
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…”
I tapped on the window until I got a response and one of the lounge patrons—ironically, one I’d already tossed in the past—wandered out to have a look. He stopped for a moment to stare at the ridiculous scene. Fred was still on his head, wriggling around like a worm on a hook and screaming bloody vengeance.
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…”
I calmly said, “James, do me a favour would you? Could you please go inside and get Greg and Dean? Thanks.”
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya,
I’ll do ya…”
“Oh, shut up.”
So, after a few more minutes Dean and Greg came out and they too had to stop to take in the weird tableau. By this time, I’d lit another cigarette with my free hand and was worrying about what Fred’s muddy work boots were doing to my nice black satin shirt. Finally using Greg’s strength and Dean’s persuasion, they unwrapped the mighty warrior from around my leg. I stepped back, and after a certain amount of struggling and cussing, they got him bundled into a car and drove him off home again.
At that moment, all I could do was shake my head and remark, “I think I just got attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man,” at which point everyone within earshot rolled over laughing. I shrugged, ordered my people back into the restaurant, poured myself a root beer, and began writing my incident report. End of story again.
Or not. Yup, he came back again. He walked the whole two kilometers (approximately 1¼ miles) from his house to visit more mighty destruction upon me. I just rolled my eyes and kept watching the basketball game on television.
Shortly after Fred arrived, his father, a frail-looking old man, came roaring up in his Dodge Caravan, jumped out, grabbed Fred, and gave him what I hadn’t at any point—a full-power clobber to the chin—much to the delight of all onlookers. Well, THAT finally took the fight out of him for real. He was bundled, again, into the car and taken away—this time for good.
While my diplomatic skills are good, I don’t have a lot of experience negotiating with ambassadors from planet Tequila. Drunks, even ones with all the power and grace of an anemic octopus, can be difficult to control without causing injury, at least to one with my limited experience. While I had all sorts of nasty ways of finishing the encounter earlier if I’d wished, all I wanted to do was hold him in one place until the ‘cavalry’ arrived. I didn’t want to take the chance and hurt him accidentally. All, in all, it turned out they way you want these things to, with little injury and peace quickly restored.
You will undoubtedly recognize several themes in this story that we’ve covered previously, such as using good situational awareness, avoiding ambushes, knowing that most attacks occur in fringe areas like parking lots, taking revenge, staking one’s territory, and so on. While it is a good refresher on these subjects, we’ll focus on handling drunks effectively rather than rehashing old material.
Let’s begin by describing some of the effects of alcohol. Alcohol is a drug that depresses your system. If you and/or the other guy imbibe, it will affect both your body and your behavior. It impairs your judgment, limits your inhibitions, and tends to exacerbate your moods. This can spell trouble in a confrontation.
Alcohol is a drug that depresses your system. It will affect both your body and your behavior. It impairs judgment, limits inhibitions, and tends to exacerbate your moods. This can spell trouble in a confrontation.
Interestingly enough, however, if two people consume the exact same amount of alcohol, the effects on each person may be quite different. How fast you drink, what type of beverage you consume, your weight, your body fat percentage, what you have or have not eaten, the presence of other drugs (for example, prescription medications, narcotic substances), the social situation, your mood, and why you have chosen to drink on a particular occasion can all determine how alcohol affects you. Prolonged drinking over time increases your tolerance, yet it can also cause you to become physically and psychologically dependant.
The type and concentration of alcohol consumed also affect your rate of intoxication. Most people can only metabolize about one drink per hour; that’s somewhere between one half and one ounce of alcohol. Consequently, the faster you drink, the greater the effect of the drug. One drink is generally considered to be 12 ounces of beer, five ounces of wine, or one ounce of hard liquor, so tossing back shots will hit you a lot harder than nursing a beer. While as little as one drink can affect certain individuals, anything more than one ounce of alcohol per hour will cause some level of impairment.
The Washington State Liquor Control Board advises that a typical 180-pound man can consume about three drinks in an hour before surpassing the legal limit of 0.08 Blood Alcohol Level (BAL). The level of impairment at this point can be quite severe. A 110-pound woman, on the other hand, can consume only one or two glasses of wine or beer in an hour and get the same adverse effects. The following table illustrates what different levels of drink can do to you. Since everyone is different, these can only be rough guidelines.
After you drink alcohol, it passes through three stages as it becomes metabolized: (1) absorbing, (2) transporting, and (3) changing.
• Absorbing: To begin this process, once the alcohol is consumed, it is absorbed into your system. This does not work quite like digesting regular food, however. A small amount of alcohol is absorbed directly into the bloodstream by the mucosal lining of the mouth while the rest is absorbed through the lining of the stomach and small intestine. Food, water, and fruit juice help to slow this process, while carbonation works to speed it up.
• Transporting: Next, once the alcohol has gotten into your bloodstream, it must circulate throughout your body, in order to affect all of your organs. In most people, this process only takes 90 seconds or so after absorption. That’s how fast blood circulates throughout your entire body.
• Changing: Once the alcohol hits your system, it must then be changed into a non-harmful substance so that you will not be poisoned by it. About ten percent of it is eliminated through sweat, breath, and urine. Your liver must detoxify the rest. The liver breaks down alcohol at a rate of about half an ounce per hour. Some people can detoxify more, others less. Regardless, nothing will speed the natural rate for any given individual. When the rate of alcohol consumed exceeds the liver’s detoxification rate, the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream begins to increase. That’s how you get drunk.
A typical 180-pound man can consume about three drinks in an hour before surpassing the legal limit. Violence and drinking go hand-in-hand—forty-one percent of violent offenders are intoxicated when they commit their crimes.
As you drink, alcohol impairs judgment, reduces inhibitions, and makes it much easier for you to commit violence. Impairment won’t cause you to do something you would never consider when sober, however. For example, in 2007 Dr. Peter Giancola, a psychology professor at U.K. in Lexington, conducted a study of male social drinkers aged 21 to 33 years old. He found that in hostile situations, drunks who were already inclined toward violence tended to focus on provocative, aggression-facilitating stimuli rather than on inhibitory cues, whereas drunks who were not inclined toward violence tended toward the opposite. “Alcohol doesn’t make you do different things,” he reported. “It just allows what is already inside you to come out. It takes the brakes off.”
Alcohol muddles your mind so that you don’t fully think things through. It also relaxes your inhibitions so that you’re more likely to act out while giving you a more-or-less socially acceptable excuse for your behavior (or at least portions of it). That’s a really dangerous mix. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 36 percent of all criminals and 41 percent of violent offenders are intoxicated with alcohol when they commit the crimes for which they are convicted. These numbers get even higher if you add drugs into the mix (we’ll address that more in a bit).
This was certainly the case in the drunk-wrangling story you just read. Although he was never charged with a crime, Fred was most certainly drunk off his ass. And he became very aggressive. Fortunately, Dave was not ever in any real danger during this encounter though he certainly could have been had Fred come back with some sort of weapon rather than using his fists.
Drunks can be unpredictable, violent, and very difficult to corral. Tangling with one when you’re sober gives you a significant advantage. When you’re drunk too, it only exacerbates the situation. Either way, you need to do your best to keep a cool head.
To begin, never argue with a drunk. As the old saying goes, “Reason goes into the bottle faster than the alcohol comes out of it.” If you can get away with it, just smile, nod, and say “Yes” or “No” as appropriate. Oftentimes, however, liquid courage will lead the other guy to take a swing at you. That’s when you’ll undoubtedly be tempted to strike back.
Never argue with a drunk. As the old saying goes, “Reason goes into the bottle faster than the alcohol comes out of it.” Drunks can be unpredictable, violent, and very difficult to corral. Tangling with one when you’re sober gives you a significant advantage, however. Unfortunately, when you’re drunk too, it only exacerbates the situation. Hitting a drunk really doesn’t work all that well most of the time. It’s not necessarily that they don’t feel pain, but rather that they don’t feel it as much or as immediately as sober people do. A better strategy is to either dodge his blows in order to let him overbalance himself and facilitate your escape or spin him to cause disorientation and make him fall. Once he’s down you can control him or move to safety.
Unfortunately, hitting a drunk doesn’t work nearly as well as you might think. It’s not necessarily that they don’t feel pain, but rather that they don’t feel it as much or as immediately as sober people do. Having run up against hundreds of rowdy, intoxicated fans at the stadium, Kane has a bit of practice wrangling drunks. In his experience, two strategies work the best: drunk dodging and drunk spinning.
Drunk dodging focuses on the goal of escape yet it is not quite as defensive as it sounds. For example, because stadium seats are built on tiers, many encounters occur in the stairway between the rows. On several occasions when a drunken fan has taken a swing at him, Kane has neatly sidestepped the blow and then calmly watched his overbalanced adversary tumble down the stairs. This is a nice strategy since he does not even have to lay hands on the other guy to put him out of the fight.
Even if the other guy is not on an uneven slope, any drunk’s reactions are impaired. It can be relatively simple to set him up to punch a wall or similar object by dancing out of the way at the last moment when he strikes. Similarly, you can simply dodge and dash to safety or even play “matador” until help arrives. Our main point here is that you don’t always have to fight a drunk; you may very well be able to use your unimpaired reflexes and better coordination to get away without throwing a blow.
If you do have to fight, the goal is generally control the other guy unless he’s got some sort of weapon or is exceedingly large and/or excessively violent. It may not be sufficient to simply get away in situations where the other guy is out of control and may hurt others if you do not intercede. Or, perhaps, you must fight in order to get away. Either way, in these circumstances spinning the other guy often works better than just about anything else. When a sober person spins around quickly it can be slightly disorienting, yet for a drunk it can often be debilitating, particularly when done unexpectedly with sufficient force.
Self-defense expert Marc “Animal” MacYoung postulates that the reason for this is that alcohol acts as a diuretic. As the person gets dehydrated, the fluid in his inner ear begins to dry out as well. This reduces his sense of balance and makes him more susceptible to being spun. Here’s how this works.
The vestibular system of the inner ear is responsible for our sensations of balance and motion. The inner ear is made up of a complex series of fluid-filled tubes that run through the temporal bone of the skull. This bony labyrinth is filled with a fluid called perilymph. Within this structure is a second series of tubes made out of delicate cellular material called the membranous labyrinth. The fluid inside these membranous structures is called endolymph. If the level or viscosity of these fluids is impaired through drink, the sense of balance is reduced. Further, as the head spins around, the fluid sloshes quickly thus increasing the sense of motion. This combination can be severely dizzying to the drunk, rendering him much easier to control. It works faster and easier than trying to beat him to a pulp, and plays much better in court afterward too.
It’s easiest to spin a person by using his head. While the neck is very strong front-to-back or side-to-side, it is rather weak when pulled both ways at once. Neck cranks take advantage of this fact by stretching and twisting simultaneously. If you can control the other guy’s head, his body has to follow. You can grab a hold of his hair, ears, jaw, or neck to pull and twist with. If you don’t get the opportunity to do that, you might also be able to arm whip or shoulder check the other guy to get him to spin.
You really don’t want a circular motion, however; it’s far better to corkscrew him in a downward spiral. That’s not only harder to ward off, but also much more effective in disorienting a foe. And it almost always dumps him onto the ground facilitating your ability to control him or get away.
Unfortunately, alcohol is not the only drug you might encounter. People who use drugs are roughly twice as likely to engage in violent behaviors as people who do not. In general, it is best to avoid tangling with anyone who is under the influence drugs because such confrontations can become extraordinarily ugly. Leave such things to law enforcement professionals whenever possible. For example, it can take as many as a dozen officers to restrain someone effectively in a drug-induced frenzy without accidentally killing him because non-lethal weapons such as pepper spray and Tasers can prove ineffective in such cases. There is a good chance that many, if not all, participants will be injured in the process when those types of situations occur.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of violent criminal offenders are under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol at the time of their offense for which they are subsequently convicted. The drugs of choice are most often marijuana, cocaine/crack, or heroine/opiates. Stimulants such as cocaine/crack are most linked to violence. Similarly, about 30 percent of victims are intoxicated with drugs at the time they are attacked.
It is useful to understand (at least in general) the effects that various drugs may have on a person’s nervous system. There are five main drug groupings: (1) narcotics, (2) depressants, (3) stimulants, (4) hallucinogens, and (5) cannabis.
1. Narcotics: Narcotics can include drugs such as heroin, methadone, opium, and morphine, which can cause euphoria, drowsiness, respiratory depression, and constricted pupils among other things. These drugs may be injected, snorted, or smoked. Symptoms of withdrawal include sweating, cramps, and nausea.
2. Depressants: Depressants include substances such as barbiturates, methaqualone, solvents, and alcohol, which cause disorientation, dizziness, slurred speech, delusions, hallucinations, and, of course, euphoria. Symptoms of withdrawal include tremors, delirium, and convulsions. These substances decrease dexterity and increase the users’ potential for accidental injury by five to fifty times.
3. Stimulants: Stimulants include drugs such as cocaine, crack, amphetamines, and methamphetamines, which can cause hyper-alertness, excitation, euphoria, and insomnia. Symptoms of withdrawal include irritability, depression, and disorientation. Crack, a popular street drug, frequently causes rapid, intense euphoria followed by a sharp crash, often accompanied by violent impulses. Methamphetamines, also popular on the street, can cause intense euphoria, tremendous energy, heightened sexual potency, paranoid impulses, and violent behavior. People in this condition frequently have decreased pain sensitivity and can be very difficult to restrain, much more so than people who are merely drunk.
4. Hallucinogens: Hallucinogens can include substances such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and phencyclidine, which can cause users to experience time dilation, delusions, and illusions that can be linked with suicide and self-mutilation as well as accidental trauma. Hallucinogens cause their effects by disrupting the interaction of nerve cells and the neurotransmitter serotonin. Distributed throughout the brain and spinal cord, the serotonin system is involved in the control of behavioral, perceptual, and regulatory systems, including mood, hunger, body temperature, sexual behavior, muscle control, and sensory perception. Some hallucinogens such as LSD can cause intense emotional swings.
5. Cannabis: Cannabis can include such drugs as marijuana and hashish, which can cause increased appetite, relaxed inhibitions, and euphoria. Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug, used either solo or in combination with other substances by about three-quarters of people who take drugs. Withdrawal symptoms include insomnia and hyperactivity.
Wrangling drunks is a unique, albeit quite common, form of fighting. It’s important to know how to do it well. It is also useful to be able to identify the presence of other types of drugs so that you can either avoid encounters with impaired individuals or be prepared to deal with them effectively.
Sun Tzu and Miyamoto Musashi made no distinctions regarding gender. To them all adversaries were defined as combatants. In today’s world, distinctions of gender are made by friends, family, police, and the courts. The role of combatant is, oftentimes, secondary.
While experienced bouncers, bodyguards, law enforcement officers, soldiers, jail guards, and martial artists know that women can be just as dangerous, or possibly even more so than men,[23] the courts don’t often see it that way. If the “big, burly man” strikes the “tiny helpless woman,” even in a case of legitimate self-defense, judges and juries will naturally see the size, gender, and strength differential, and take that into account. Stuff like that usually ends badly. Who goes to jail and/or loses the lawsuit, or whatever? Most often, it is the guy. Not always, of course, but commonly enough to be worrisome.
Gender differences can become particularly challenging if you are caught by surprise, reacting instinctively to the situation. Because of your “fight-or-flight” reflex, it can be normal to lash out responsively, yet plays poorly in the court of law as well as the court of public opinion. If you have an occupation that deals with violence on a regular basis, you may be somewhat better prepared from long experience. Regardless, excess caution in such instances is almost always prudent. Act as if you are on live television. Who knows, with all the camera phones, video cameras, closed circuit televisions, and recording technology out there—perhaps you are.
For example, Kane, who supervises security personnel at a football stadium, is much more careful when tangling with females at the games than he is with males. In the last few years, incidents of intoxicated, out-of-control female fans have been on the rise rather dramatically. While Kane and his team are not supposed to use countervailing force against the fans, as that is what the police are there for, in practical reality there are many times that law enforcement does not arrive in time to keep security personnel from needing to use hands-on contact for the safety of all involved.
In those instances, he does his best to verbally control the situation. Further, he tries to bring along enough other staff so that the aggressive individual will feel outnumbered and, hopefully, become more compliant. If that does not work, or if he does not have time to gather his crew, he does his best to use open-hand techniques—nothing that will draw blood or, hopefully, lead to visible or lasting injuries. Lawyers can wreak havoc with that sensational sort of stuff.
He does that with guys too, of course, but takes greater care with women due to the perceived inequities in size and strength. When you are operating in a public venue packed with witnesses, cameras, and various recording devices, you really have to watch your step. All in all, however, he’d much rather eat a punch from most women without responding with force than take a hit from most men. As a martial artist, he has a decent chance of controlling aggressive people without hurting them, but there really are no absolutes when it comes to self-defense. Simple things like pushing someone over can cause a fatal accident if his head hits something hard like a stair or a curb.
While women can be just as dangerous as men, the courts don’t often see it that way. When a big strong man strikes a small weak woman, even in a case of legitimate self-defense, judges and juries will naturally see the size, gender, and strength differential and take that into account. When you beat someone down, it is awfully hard to prove you acted reasonably if the other guy is a girl… unless she’s armed with some sort of weapon. Then all bets are off.
This is an important concept on the street too. As stated previously, a continuum of force should always be applied judiciously to preserve your safety as the situation warrants. Your ultimate goal should be to apply sufficient force to effectively control the situation and keep yourself from harm without overdoing anything. Reasonable force in legal terms is generally considered only that force reasonably necessary to repel an attacker’s force.
Unfortunately, “reasonably necessary” is a vague term usually associated with what a “reasonable person” would think necessary. This so-called reasonable person is a fictitious composite of all the reasonably prudent people in a given cross-section of life. Whether the ordinary person acted reasonably will likely be judged against the reasonably prudent, similarly situated ordinary person in the appropriate geographic area. Everyone starts out at this level, but other personal attributes may heighten their required standard of prudence. Trained martial artists, professional fighters (for example, MMA fighters, boxers, or wrestlers), military, and law enforcement personnel are almost always held to a higher standard than ordinary people.
While women can be just as dangerous as a man, the courts don’t often see it that way. Never hit a girl unless she’s armed.
The cornerstone of a legitimate claim of self-defense is the innocence of the claimant. You must be entirely without fault. If you initiate the conflict, you cannot claim self-defense. If you allow a conflict to escalate into a lethal situation when it could have been avoided, you share some degree of culpability and, once again, cannot claim self-defense.
Depending on the circumstances, almost any form of physical assault can be considered deadly force. In Washington State, deadly force is defined as “The intentional application of force through the use of firearms or any other means reasonably likely to cause death or serious physical injury.”[24] Other jurisdictions will have similar definitions. In general, any blow delivered powerfully and deliberately to a vital part of the body may be construed as deadly force so long as it can be shown that it was struck with the intention, or predictable likelihood, of killing. That means that simply smacking someone upside the head could conceivably be considered deadly force.
The courts are more likely to interpret a blow as deadly force if the person delivering it is physically much stronger than the victim, a professional fighter, a trained martial artist, or an assailant who attacks with extreme savagery.[25] Unfortunately that “physically stronger than the victim” part is rather hard to avoid if you are a male fighting a female unless you are fairly small or she is unusually large.
Equal force doctrines require law-abiding citizens to respond to an attack with little or no more force than that which he perceives is being used against him. In some places, the law clearly specifies that equal force must be exactly equal. The attacked can respond with no more force than that by which he is threatened—slap for slap, punch for punch, kick for kick, or deadly weapon for deadly weapon. Once again, that’s pretty tough if you’re a guy and your adversary is a girl. Whatever you do may easily be perceived as figurative or literal overkill. Everything changes when weapons are involved, however. An armed opponent clearly has the advantage, so you have much more leeway in your response.
Disparity of force between unarmed combatants is measured in one of two ways. It exists if (1) the victim is being attacked by someone who is physically much stronger or younger or (2) the victim is being attacked by two or more assailants of similar or equal size. In such cases, you may legitimately be able to exert potentially lethal force to defend yourself. Regardless, nowhere can a person legally respond to an assault of slight degree with deadly force.
A great majority of states, in fact, require that law-abiding citizens avoid conflict whenever possible. It is best to withdraw, leaving the scene entirely. It is always a good idea to retreat from a belligerent party who threatens you, unless the attack is so savage that there is not sufficient time to escape or unless withdrawing (or leaving cover in the case of a gunfight) would increase your vulnerability.
The only exception to this rule is within the confines of your own home (or in some places your place of business). In most cases if someone breaks into your home and assaults you, you do not legally need to attempt to retreat. In many cases, it may be prudent to do so anyway, however. This is not true in all jurisdictions, though, so check your local laws carefully. This statute is often called a “castle doctrine.”
The bottom line is that in the eyes of the court, you must also be in reasonable fear for your life or someone else’s prior to applying countervailing force. That’s awful hard to prove if the other guy is a girl, unless she’s armed with some sort of weapon. If you are cornered and have to fight, you clearly do whatever you have to in order to assure your safety and well-being. It is essential, however, to make a commitment to yourself to use physical force wisely. Never hit a girl… unless she’s armed.
When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.
“In One Timing” means, when you have closed with the enemy, to hit him as quickly and directly as possible, without moving your body or settling your spirit, while you see that he is still undecided. The timing of hitting before the enemy decides to withdraw, break or hit, is this “In One Timing”
There is a hilarious scene in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the legendary King Arthur battles the dreaded Black Knight. Wielding Excalibur, Arthur is an invincible warrior, easily cleaving off his adversary’s arm. Thinking the battle has been won, Arthur begins to celebrate his victory yet the Black Knight responds, “’Tis but a flesh wound,” and continues to battle. This continues until Arthur has hacked off both of the Black Knight’s arms as well as his legs and subsequently begins to ride away, leaving his defenseless adversary behind. Unwilling to yield, however, the Black Knight screams, “Come back! I’ll bite your knees off!” Clearly, this is a comedic fantasy yet it has some bearing in real life.
If one’s heart is truly in a fight, strikes to non-vital areas can have very little effect. Obviously, no one can fight without any arms or legs, yet it is very tough to stop a determined foe. Loren Christensen, a retired military policeman, civilian law enforcement officer, and martial artist who has survived numerous violent confrontations wrote, “I’ve had to fight guys even after they have been shot and they still fought like maniacs. I know of two occasions where suspects had been shot in their hearts and they fought the officers for several seconds before they crumpled dead to the ground… I saw two cases of people shot in the head—one person took five rounds—and they were still running around screaming and putting up a fuss.” In the heat of battle, it is very, very difficult to stop a determined, committed opponent.
Unless you are a master martial artist who can deliver hydrostatic shock that disrupts internal organs with each blow, something that takes a good ten to twenty years of dedicated training to learn let alone perfect, it is really hard to beat somebody down without resorting to a weapon. Either you need to shock the brainstem into shutting down with a knockout blow or you need to break darn near every bone in his body, delivering such extensive physiological damage that it is physically impossible for him to continue fighting. The vast majority of opponents, however, will give up long before you get to that point. Once they stop, you need to stop too. Remain wary in case the other guy changes his mind, of course, but break off your attack and move to a safer location.
One master of strategy, Sun Tzu, tells you to leave a way out for your enemy, saying, “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” This is sound advice because most people who find themselves with their back to the wall, faced with no options but to die or die fighting, will choose to fight and fight hard. You really don’t want to mess with a fully committed foe. It’s a good way to get hurt.
Another strategy master, Miyamoto Musashi, tells you to be swift and relentless, to “Hit him as quickly and directly as possible.” This is excellent advice on the battlefield, but in a civilian context, it can get you into serious legal trouble if you take it too far. Gratuitously reigning down blows on a fallen opponent, for example, makes you the bad guy. When he stops, you’ve got to stop too. When the clear and immediate threat to you or your loved one is over, it is no longer self-defense. That’s the law.
Here is the way it breaks down. If a punk decides to fight with you, whatever the reason, you have right to defend yourself—to a point. If you beat the punk down to the point where he has stopped fighting with you, you have to stop as well. Wilder knows a guy covered in tattoos, James, who wound up in that very situation. He didn’t stop and was subsequently charged with felony assault, and found himself facing serious prison time.
Wilder never found out how or why the fight started, but that is really not important here. Our tattooed friend beat the other guy down, the fight was over, sort of, yet the loser of the fight kept running his mouth. Lying on the floor spitting out blood, he continued to yell epithets at our tattooed friend who took offense to his words. The price for running his mouth was more beating.
Dominance had been established and he was clearly the loser, but he kept running his mouth. Unfortunately, James had a record; he had already done three years in a Texas prison. He wouldn’t put up with the verbal abuse so he applied more fists to the loser. You see, there were two different codes at work here—the prison code of dominance and submission on one side and the law on the other. As the song states, the law won. The courts decided that James needed to be put back in jail, while the other guy went into intensive care at Harborview hospital.
When they stop, you stop. The classic rule is that self-defense begins when deadly danger begins, ends when the danger ends, and revives again if the danger returns. Neither a killing nor a beating that takes place after a crime has already been committed, nor a proactive violent defense before an attack has taken place is legitimately self-defense in the eyes of the law.
The classic rule is that self-defense begins when deadly danger begins, ends when the danger ends, and revives again if the danger returns. Neither a killing nor a beating that takes place after a crime has already been committed, nor a proactive violent defense before an attack has taken place is legitimately self-defense in the eyes of the law.
You can only resort to deadly or potentially deadly force in order to escape imminent and unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm. An attacker must not merely have made a threat to attack you (by words and/or actions), but must also be in a position where he or she is obviously and immediately capable of carrying out that threat and/or has begun to do so. A common test is that the attacker must demonstrate intent to attack and have both the means and opportunity to do so. Once he breaks off his assault, you must stop yours too.
Hence, the skillful fighter puts himself into a position that makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.
Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike, or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement.
Hitting someone and then pausing to ask them, “How was that? Did it hurt?” is ridiculous, yet we do that sort of thing all the time on the practice floor. Tandem drills in the dojo are great learning tools when approached correctly, but you cannot forget that you are working with a partner rather than dueling with an opponent. Out on the street your question would sound a lot like, “How wa…” POW, as his fist slams into your face. Once you start fighting, you don’t stop until the other guy does. And then you keep your guard up until you’re sure he’s not faking it.
The classic rule is that self-defense begins when deadly danger begins, ends when the danger ends, and revives again if the danger returns. Stomping the other guy when he’s down is not generally considered self-defense.
Hollywood loves to show the bad guys who can take a full power shot to the face and keep on smiling. It proves how tough they are, foreshadowing a kick-ass fight that’ll take up five or ten minutes of screen time with the audience cheering enthusiastically all along the way. As we’ve stated previously, the movies portray a fantasyland. It’s fun but not realistic. In real life, there is no pause until he gives up or breaks off the fight. It is critical, however, that when he stops you stop. Even if he started it and you’re really pissed off that you got ambushed or sucker punched, you need to stop too.
Be mentally and physically prepared to fight or continue a fight at a moment’s notice, however, always keeping your opponent in sight until you can escape to safety. Even if your blow knocks an adversary to the ground, remain alert for a possible continuation of his attack. Remember that most fistfights end when one guy gives up rather than when he can no longer physically continue.
No matter what, you must be prepared to fight until it stops. For example, on January 1, 2008 Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate, managed to fend off both a knife and a baton attack, holding her own until her assailant tricked her into giving up. Gary Michael Hilton, a burly 61-year-old drifter, subsequently tied her up and carried her to a remote location where he raped and eventually killed her three days later.
Hilton reportedly told police interrogators that his petite victim nearly overpowered him when he first accosted her on an Appalachian hiking trail. According to published reports, Hilton stalked the 5 foot 4 inch tall, 120-pound woman on the trail but was unable to keep up so he laid in wait and intercepted her on her way back down. He pulled a military-style knife and demanded her ATM card. Emerson recognized the threat and immediately fought back.
“The bayonet is probably still up there,” Hilton told investigators. “I lost control, and she fought. And as I read in the paper, she’s a martial artist.” Emerson, who held middle kyu ranks (blue belt and green belt) in two different martial arts, ripped the knife out of his hands. He countered with a baton that she was also able to pull from his grasp. As the struggle continued, they fell down a steep slope, leaving both weapons behind.
“I had to hand-fight her,” Hilton said. “She wouldn’t stop fighting and yelling at the same time so I needed to both control her and silence her.” He kept punching her, blackening her eyes, fracturing her nose, and breaking his own hand in the process. He figured that he had worn her down as they moved farther off the trail, but suddenly she began fighting again. He finally got her to stop by telling her that all he wanted was her credit card and PIN number.
Once she relaxed her guard, he restrained her hands with a zip tie, took her to a remote location, and tied her to a tree. He kept her captive in the wilderness for three terrifying days before telling her that he was ready to let her go. Then he beat her to death with a car-jack handle and cut off her head.
Hilton made a plea deal with prosecutors, leading investigators to his victim’s remains so that they would not seek the death penalty for his crimes. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Never believe anything an assailant tells you. His actions have already demonstrated beyond any doubt that he’s a bad guy. Do not relax your guard and get caught by surprise; that is a good way to die. If the other guy thinks that he’s losing, he might be more inclined to play possum or pull out a weapon in order to cheat to win. Worse yet, street attacks often involve multiple assailants many of whom are seasoned fighters who know how to take a blow and shrug off the pain. Be mindful of additional assailants and be prepared to continue your defense as long as necessary. Once you have removed yourself from the danger and are absolutely certain that you are no longer under threat, you can safely begin to relax your guard.
Be mentally and physically prepared to fight or continue a fight at a moment’s notice, always keeping your opponent in sight until you can escape to safety.
Dealing with multiple attackers is extraordinarily challenging. Avoidance is obviously the best and most preferable alternative. If you are forced to fight, you can realistically engage only one opponent at a time. Once the first adversary has been defeated, you may have a chance to flee successfully or you may have to move on to defeat the next attacker, and then get away.
Unfortunately, despite what you may have seen in the movies, the other guys won’t line up and wait for you to attack each one in turn. They’re going to swarm and overrun, so you are very likely to get hit… a lot. Defense against a large group is generally handled by strategically engaging one person at a time in a manner that confounds the other’s ability to reach you. Without a lot of training that’s very tough to pull off effectively.
Your response is a form of triage, striking for the greatest impact or taking on the most dangerous threat first. If you can instantaneously and dramatically disable someone, blowing out his knee, shattering his nose, gouging out his eye, or otherwise leaving him huddled in a pool of his own blood, the psychological advantage will be enormous.
If you show no fear in the face of overwhelming odds, your attackers may hesitate giving you the few seconds you need to disengage and escape. If all your adversaries are equally dangerous, take out the easiest target first. This might be the nearest aggressor, smallest guy, or the person with no cover. Once you get away, do not relax your guard until you are absolutely sure you are safe. After all, they could easily change their minds and decide to come after you.
Remain vigilant until you are absolutely certain that your adversary is no longer a threat and that no one else is prepared to take up the battle on his behalf. Once you have escaped to safety, you can relax your guard. As the Chinese proverb states, “Dead tigers kill the most hunters.” Be prepared to fight until you are certain that it has stopped.
Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content… But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.
In my strategy, the training for killing enemies is by way of many contests, fighting for survival, discovering the meaning of life and death, learning the Way of the sword, judging the strength of attacks and understanding the Way of the “edge and ridge” of the sword.
When you stop, there is no guarantee that the other guy will too. You are taking a monumental risk if you roll up into a ball on the ground and assume that your submission will end the fight. This may be taken as nothing more than a green light for the other guy to stomp and kick you… a lot. In fact, you can pretty much count on it.
The only way you can stop a fight when you are losing is to escape. Run away as fast and as far as you can. Do not stop; do not look behind you, at least not right away, just run. It is really tough to capture someone who is bound and determined to get away. Use this to your advantage.
Breaking off your attack, in and of itself, is probably not going to end the fight, particularly if the other guy wants to be in control. His goal is complete and utter dominance over you, supremacy for all to see. You may agree with Musashi’s missive above that killing or beating down a person unnecessarily is not honorable, not “the way.” But, as Sun Tzu so aptly points out, once something has been destroyed it is over. What’s done is done.
You cannot count on honor, ethics, or mercy from an adversary. If you depend on his good nature, you are bound to lose the fight in a very bad way. It is smart to show honor yourself, yet prudent to expect none from your opponent.
If you are thinking “fight” and he is thinking “combat,” you are in for a world of hurt. A fight implies a rules-based event, something like a boxing match or mixed martial arts competition. In a fight you might punch, kick, and/or throw each other down, but you are not likely to kick the other guy’s head in or stomp on his throat once he has fallen. Combat, on the other hand, is a no-holds-barred struggle for survival. That’s where weapons come into play, eyes are gouged out, ears are bitten off, and serious, life-altering repercussions can be expected.
As the Chinese proverb states, “Dead tigers kill the most hunters.” Remain vigilant during any pause in the fight. You may be facing multiple assailants, an adversary who pulls a weapon in the middle of a fight, or an opponent who just won’t quit. Once you have removed yourself from the danger and are absolutely certain that you are no longer under threat you can safely begin to relax your guard.
It’s very hard to stop someone who is fully committed to combat. You must either knock him unconscious or cause enough physiological damage that he can no longer continue. Most folks, however, give up long before it gets to that point. No matter how much you are tempted to do so, don’t quit. Pain alone should not stop you. Remember Sgt. Young’s confrontation with Neal Beckman? His courage graphically demonstrated that if it hurts you are still alive. Deal with it and press on.
The best way to avoid getting beaten down is not to fight in the first place. If you cannot escape violence, however, you must fight with all your worth. Your goal does not necessarily need to be to win, but it must at least be to not lose. In other words, you don’t need to beat the other guy to a pulp but you do need to escape successfully. That is not going to happen if you give up the struggle. If you stop, there’s no guarantee that he will too.
If you cannot escape or avoid violence, you must be prepared to fight with all your worth. Your goal does not necessarily need to be to win, but it must at least be not to lose. You cannot afford to give up. Never forget that if it hurts, you are still alive. If you stop, however, there’s no guarantee that he will too. You cannot count on honor, ethics, or mercy from an adversary. Keep fighting until you can safely get away.
If in training soldiers commands are habitually enforced, the army will be well disciplined; if not, its discipline will be bad.
In single combat, we can confuse the enemy by attacking with varied techniques when the chance arises. Feint a thrust or cut, or make the enemy think you are going to close with him, and when he is confused you can easily win. This is the essence of fighting, and you must research it deeply.
If you are thinking “fight” and the other guy is thinking “combat” you are in for a world of hurt.
You don’t need to be a master martial artist, professional boxer, or seasoned combat veteran to survive a street fight. It helps, of course, but it’s not a requirement. You do, however, need to have a few solid techniques you can draw upon, stuff you can pull off when you’re surging with adrenaline, scared witless, and really need to stop or deflect the other guy so that you can escape to safety. So, how do you know what’s going to work and what’s going to fail in a real-life violent conflict? Well, you can never know for sure, since much depends upon your adversary. There are three important, yet very simple rules when it comes to self-defense that you can use as a guideline:[26]
1. Don’t get hit
2. Stop him from continuing to attack you
3. Always have a Plan B
The first rule we’ve already described to you. “Don’t get hit” is always sound advice. Previously we’ve discussed this rule from the context of awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation, but it’s true for fighting techniques as well. If whatever you do doesn’t keep you from getting hit, the rest simply doesn’t matter all that much. Once you’ve been hurt by the other guy, it gets progressively tougher and tougher to fight back. Consequently, you need to block, deflect, or evade his attack before you can do anything else. Sometimes that’s done by preemptively striking him first, though more often than not it’s by some sort of defensive movement. Not ideal, just reality…
The second rule, “Stop him from continuing to attack,” is just as important. You can block, deflect, or evade all you like but that won’t end the fight. You need to perform a technique or combination of movements that incapacitate the other guy outright, persuade him to leave you alone and break off his attack, and/or facilitate your escape. The goal is to ensure that he can no longer hurt you. The faster you can do that the better; conversely, the longer the fight the more likely you are to get hurt.
A solid blow or two to a vital area, a part of the body that will break relatively easily, can end a fight very quickly whereas blows to non-vital areas will have minimal effect. Consequently, it’s important to know where to aim. Appendix D lists the vital areas that you may want to target during a fight. Some may be struck (for example, punch or kick) while other targets must be manipulated (for example, joint lock).
Winston Churchill wrote, “No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in his plans, it is occasionally necessary to take the enemy into consideration.” In other words, no matter how crafty you are, whatever you try is not necessarily going to work. The other guy is trying his damnedest to pound your face in, pulling out every dirty trick he can think of in an effort to mess you up. It’s prudent to have a Plan B, some alternative you can move to without missing a beat when things go awry. Whatever you attempt may knock him on his ass straight away, of course, but oftentimes it just doesn’t work out that way. When things go wrong, there’s no time to stop and think in the heat of battle.
It’s intuitively obvious that if you can pummel the other guy into submission that you will win the fight, but that’s not your only option in a battle. If the other guy can’t get close enough to reach you in the first place, he will not be able to strike. Consequently controlling distance is important. It’s very tough to fight if he can’t see, so the eyes may be a viable target, at least in life-or-death encounters. If he is on the ground when you’re still standing, you have a much better chance of getting away. Of course, you can always hit him… a lot. To this end, we suggest six things that you may wish to try in a fight.
• Don’t let him get close enough to touch you.
• Throw debris to distract or injure him.
• Attack his eyes.
• Use neck cranks or chokes to put him down.
• Throw him to the ground with force.
• Strike with impetus.
You’ve probably noticed that, with the exception of controlling distance, these are offensive techniques rather than defensive ones. While it’s important to be able to block or deflect the other guy’s attack, it’s even more important to take him out of the fight as quickly as possible. Our goal here is not to turn you into the ultimate street fighter, but rather to give you a few options that you might be able to pull off without a whole lot of practice. If you really want to get good at the physical aspects of fighting, however, you are going to need to find a martial arts school and sign up for hands-on instruction.
Distance is crucial in a fight. If you are too far away, he can’t strike you. If you are too close, the range limits the available weapons your attacker and you can use to fight each other with. Distance plays out this way: Combat begins at about ten or more feet from you. Positioning is initiated, openings are looked for, reactions, and responses are judged. This entire process may take as little as 1/10,000 of a second, as that is how long it takes for the brain to process information. Or it could take the better part of an evening as you see with the prolonged interview process.
Letting somebody get close to you is an invitation for a fight. Think of it this way: The two of you have had a verbal altercation, and the other guy backed down, said, “Oh, okay pal, I was wrong, let’s shake.” No! That handshake is an opportunity for him to get close, control one of your weapons and your balance, and give you a sucker punch.
An arm around the shoulder is the same thing. Think about it, who do you let put their arm around your shoulder? You best mate, a drunken college buddy? Sure! An unknown guy who was about to kick your ass three-and-half minutes ago? Definitely not.
No matter what he asks, your answer should be “No.” If he is sincere in his attitude, he will shrug it off and go about his business. If not, he will take offense and escalate the situation again. His response tells you everything you need to know about how it was going to go down so either way you are ahead.
Here is an example of distance and perception. One night Wilder left a bar late with Sgt. Rory Miller and his wife. It was a weeknight so the streets were very calm with very few people out and about. Wilder crossed the street heading for his car. As he opened his car door, a twenty-five year old(ish) man jogged up to him and said, “Hey, I need some help.”
Wilder paused inside the doorjamb of his car and replied, “What’s up?” He assumed from the other guy’s frantic look that the problem he needed help with was something and the lines of a flat tire. Yet the unexpected response was, “I need some money for my wife and me.”
“Odd,” Wilder thought, suddenly realizing that he was blocked by somebody who was not who he thought they were.
Two cars down, Sgt. Miller was at the panhandler’s back. He had not gotten in his car and was watching the event. He slowly closed his car door so that nothing was between the guy’s back and himself.
Letting a hostile person get too close to you is an invitation for a fight.
That handshake was just a ploy to get you into position for a sucker punch.
“Okay,” Wilder said. Not usually inclined to give to panhandlers, he nevertheless reached into his pocket and pulled out some loose change hoping that compliance would make the guy go away and leave him alone. “Here,” he said handing over the money.
“I need more than that!,” the other guy growled. “This doesn’t help me one bit.”
As the other guy’s tone became increasingly agitated, Wilder realized that he was not dealing with a guy with a flat tire nor was he dealing with a panhandler. He had just let a mentally unbalanced person, some guy off his medications most likely, get too close to him. Miller knew it too. Watching intently, he shifted his weight a bit so that he could respond appropriately if things got violent.
“This does me crap!” the other guy shouted, throwing the coins to the ground and then reaching for Wilder.
“Don’t touch me and get back!,” Wilder commanded. He was blocked in, with his back to the open door of his car so he had no space to maneuver in. “Get back! Get away from me, now!,” he repeated.
Are you really going to let the guy who was about to kick your ass three-and-half minutes ago put his arm around your shoulder to make nice?
Not if you’re smart.
“I need real money!” the other guy snarled. This was clearly escalating. The other guy was too close and not responding to verbal commands. Wilder knew that if the other guy had a blade he was going to get cut. His mind flashed to the fireman who was stabbed to death some ten years earlier, randomly, by a mental patient after a Mariners baseball game in Seattle… “Crap,” Wilder thought.
Then, the other guy made his move. As abruptly as he had switched from a guy in trouble to a guy demanding more money, real money, he snapped, “Screw you!” He then turned and jogged back across the street and around the corner.
Wilder looked at Miller who had waited calmly the whole time. “So, see you later,” he said as he got into his car.
“Yeah,” Wilder replied, “See ya later.”
While driving home Wilder reviewed the entire event in his mind and started criticizing himself for letting the guy get so close. Finally, he relaxed a little, thinking, “These things happen. You can’t go through life all prickly at Condition Red. You assumed good will and that is not always a bad thing.” He told himself, “The context was all wrong for that kind of behavior. Would it have hurt me to keep my distance coming out of bar late on a weeknight with a guy jogging toward me? No! I wasn’t all prickly, or at Condition Red, but I did fail the distance test.”
There are no absolutes in self-defense. Every situation will be different and unique. In England and much of Europe, for example, you are likely at risk from a head butt in a fight whereas that type of attack is rarely seen in the United States where a punch to the face is more common. Either way, your adversary must get close in order to reach you. It is critical, therefore, to maintain sufficient distance between you and a potential assailant to give yourself time to respond to whatever he tries to do.
You may be in imminent danger from an unarmed attacker within about 10 feet. For an armed attacker, this range is extended to a bare minimum of 21 feet. The bad guy can close that distance shockingly fast. A second or two is all he needs to move in and strike.
While that may seem a rather lengthy separation, several tests, including the famous Tueller Drill, have been conducted that validate this assertion. This drill, named for Sergeant Dennis Tueller of the Salt Lake City Police Department, was first described in his 1983 S.W.A.T. Magazine article “How Close Is Too Close.”
In his drill, Tueller conducted a series of tests showing that people of various ages, weights, heights, and physical conditions could close a distance of 21 feet in an average time of 1.5 seconds, about as long at it takes a highly trained officer to draw a handgun and fire one or two aimed shots. Knowing that people who have been shot do not often fall down instantly, or otherwise stop dead in their tracks, Tueller concluded that a person armed with a blade or a blunt instrument at a range of 21 feet was a potentially lethal threat. A defensive handgun instructor whose class Kane took reiterated this point, stating that it takes a fatally wounded person between 10 and 120 seconds to drop, so you must fire and then move off-line while expecting your attacker to continue his assault even after your bullets have hit him.
In training as well as in real-life encounters, even highly trained police officers are frequently unable to draw their guns and fire a shot before being cut, sometimes fatally, by a knife-wielding opponent moving toward them from distances as great as 20 to 30 feet. It is reasonable to assert that the average civilian is somewhat less prepared for such encounters than the typical law enforcement professional.
While it’s intuitively obvious with fists, distance can even keep you safe from bullets. Most gunfights take place at a distance of less than ten feet. In fact, according to FBI statistics, 95 percent of officer-involved shootings occur at less than 21 feet, with approximately 75 percent taking place at less than 10 feet and a little over half at closer than five feet. The farther away the other guy is, the tougher it is for him to hit you. Further, you have a much better chance to escape to safety or dash toward some source of cover that can protect you.
Throwing debris is really an extension of distance. It is not a stand-alone technique, but rather a facilitator that can keep the other guy back and help you escape. You can kick dust, throw rocks, hurl trash, swing garbage cans, or otherwise chuck stuff at the other guy to distract or potentially injure him. Don’t throw your weapon if you have one though. You’re going to be giving up your best source of defense by throwing it away.
Here is a rough way to estimate your ability to throw an object and have a reasonable chance of hurting somebody: Wilder calls this the “baseball test.” It was developed through rigorous threshold testing while he was at college. To do the test, march off about a quarter of the dormitory hallway floor, turn and face the fire door at the end of the hall. Make sure no one else is around.
Using a baseball, not a softball, hurl the ball at the fire door at the end of the hall. If you can hit the door good for you. If you can dent the door, in theory you have thrown hard enough to injure the other guy in a fight. Both accuracy and force are required. We’re not actually advocating that you go out and damage someone else’s property, but hurling a baseball at a door hard enough to make a dent really does indicate the kind of speed and accuracy necessary to injure someone with a thrown object. Since it’s tough to actually injure, you’re most likely going to use this tactic to distract.
Before you employ this tactic, however, identify your escape route. You need to know that before you do anything else. It doesn’t do much good to throw things unless you can do it strategically to get away. Before you begin to run, it is very important to have a good escape path figured out. Be sure to note the location of any improvised weapons or obstacles you will have to pass along your route. These items could be employed for countervailing force, used for cover or concealment, or simply get in your way, barring your escape. In addition to your physical location (for example, building layout, street map, terrain), pay attention to any bystanders in your proximity. They may be a source of aid, additional threat, and/or witnesses to corroborate your claim of self-defense should things get ugly.
This information can help keep you safe not only during an armed confrontation but also during a fire, earthquake, or other emergency as well. In areas you frequent, such as your workplace or school, it is imperative that you know where fire extinguishers, first aid kits, Automated External Defibrillators, and other safety resources are located. Some of these items can be used as improvised weapons during armed attacks while others are lifesaving devices for more mundane emergencies.
Pay attention to available escape paths wherever you go. On an airplane, for example, know not only where the exit doors are located but also how many seats you must pass before you get there. That way if you need to navigate in smoke, darkness, or other adverse conditions you will know what to do. Similarly, in public places such as restaurants, bars, schools, and office buildings note the locations of all available exits. If a gunman enters from one side of the building, you will want to know how to escape out the other.
The Tueller Drill demonstrated that a person armed with a blade or a blunt instrument at a range of 21 feet can still be a lethal threat. Maintain sufficient distance between yourself and a potential assailant to give yourself time to respond to whatever he tries to do.
Too close. Any victory at this point would be Pyrrhic.
So not that you’ve got a way out, what debris can you use to help you get there? For our purposes, if it isn’t nailed down, it is debris. Look around the space you are in right now to see what is available to you. Are the chairs too heavy? What about a couch? Dresser drawers? How about a silverware drawer full of pointy objects? Pictures on the walls, stuff in your pockets, objects on your desk, or whatever is lying around that you can get to quickly that’s heavy enough be some sort of threat but light enough to throw with some accuracy will do the trick.
At what targets should you throw? Answer: the face. It’s the most distracting and potentially damaging target. Weight and size of the debris may affect your accuracy, but it’s important to target where you will get the most reaction. When you throw move to the escape route at the same time. The debris will only give you a second or two so you need to use it to your best advantage.
The basic way to explain this is this phrase: “Throw at the face and run away.” Sophistication isn’t really necessary for this technique. It’s as simple as determining your escape route, chucking something at the other guy’s face to make him flinch, and running away.
Throwing debris is an extension of distance; it can distract or injure an adversary, helping you escape.
It’s really tough to fight if you can’t see. Take a look at any kind of warfare through the course of history and you will see that blinding the opponent is one of the most significant actions taken. In fact blinding the opponent is often the first thing that is done. During WWII, pilots did their level best to have the sun at their backs during dogfights, attempting to blind the enemy with the glare. In modern warfare, one of the first things attacked is always the command, control, and communications infrastructure. It is jammed, blown up, or otherwise taken out of action so that the enemy will not know what’s coming. Any attack is more likely to succeed with this advantage.
The same thing applies in hand-to-hand combat. If he can’t see, it’s really tough for him to fight you. That makes the other guy’s eyes a very important target in a legitimate self-defense scenario. Compared to all our other senses, eyesight is dominant in its impotence. It’s not only how we view the outside world but also how we acquire targets and defend ourselves against assaults.
When you have an opportunity to attack the eyes during a fight, the chance will only be there for an instant. If you’re going to go for the shot, you’ve got to take advantage of that moment of opportunity. The thing about attacking the eyes is that it is similar to attacking the groin; there is a natural guarding reflex, even in unskilled fighters, that is difficult to get past.
Know where fire extinguishers, first aid kits, Automated External Defibrillators, and other safety resources are located. Some of these items can be used as improvised weapons for self-defense while others are lifesaving devices for more mundane emergencies.
Think back to the last time you were riding in a car and something hit the windshield. You instinctively flinched didn’t you? When the rock hit the windshield, your eyes closed, your shoulders lifted, your head went forward and down, and your hands came up. In essence, you tucked your head in like a turtle pulling its head into its shell. This reflex action protects the neck, eyes, and face. It gets as much flesh around the eyes as it can by squinting too, making them well defended.
Knowing that the other guy is going to have this natural protection for his eyes means that there is a good chance that you won’t be successful the first time you try to strike him there. You need to be fast, well-trained, and usually a little lucky to get his eyes on the first try. Assuming you are fast and/or lucky, but not highly trained, you will need to follow the shampoo rule—lather, rinse, and repeat. In other words, keep trying until it works.
Be cautious though, this is serious stuff. Not only can you cause horrific injuries with eye attacks, but also you let the other guy know that this is a very serious confrontation. If you attack his eyes and miss, you’re really going to piss him off in a primal way, becoming the target of a lot more anger and violence than you might expect. Anything goes from that point on.
It’s really tough to fight if you can’t see. Until the advent of modern missile technology, pilots did their best to keep the sun at their backs during dogfights in the hopes of blinding or disorienting their enemies with the glare. This same principle can apply in hand-to-hand combat as well.
Anybody who wears glasses can relate to this action. Have your glasses knocked off by another guy, even accidentally, and it pisses you off. It is personal, it is primal, and it’s instantaneous. Even in an accident, it takes a certain amount of effort to control the instinctive reaction. This gives you a glimpse of the type of response you will elicit from a person when you attack his eyes.
So, while attacking the eyes can incapacitate an adversary, it can inflame him too. Consequently you need to know how to do it right. The best techniques use either your thumbs or fingers. Here’s how to attack the eyes most effectively.
The thumb can be used as a wedge to displace the eyeball from the eye socket. This is done by placing your thumb against the inside of the bridge of his nose and pushing into the corner of his eye socket. Typically, you’ll use your fingers as a guide alongside the other guy’s face. It works much better if you can support the head with your other hand or block it with a solid object such as a wall or the ground so that he cannot move his head back or twist away.
When shoved forcefully into the eye socket, your thumb works much like a wood-splitting wedge, displacing the eyeball. This ultimate result is not a full removal of the eye from the socket, which is very challenging, but rather a stretching of the optic nerve that attaches the back of the eye and shoots excruciating pain into the brain. Stretching this nerve makes the eye short out, for lack of a better phrase. It can cause blurred vision, disorientation, shock, and in some cases blindness, more than enough trauma to let you escape to safety in most cases. If you actually displace the eyeball, the disabling affect is even more severe.
Raking the eyes is about damaging the cornea of the eye, the outer lens. Scratching the eye in this manner causes excessive tearing, light sensitivity, and pain. A vertical claw brought down the face from eyebrow to cheek will most likely fail. The brow above the eye and the cheek protect the eye, an imperfect and poor attack but an attack nonetheless. Moving your fingertips laterally across the eye, on the other hand, is likely to be much more successful.
Again, this attack is done powerfully, more than once, and with resolve. The chances of failure without these three points are high. Attempting to put the fingertips into the eye is a strike better left to the skilled martial artist. It is fast and effective but can hurt your hand if you do it incorrectly. Everyone else should follow this method of horizontal raking.
In this example, we will use the right hand. Palm thrust to the attacker’s cheekbone. This bone will serve as an anchor and guide. Thrust the finger tips into the eye (the number or which fingers is not important) and in a twisting motion, similar to tying to take the lid off a jar of pickles, twist away from attacker’s nose toward their ear. Keep trying until it works.
If you are a trained martial artist, you almost certainly know how to do an open-hand chest block (for example, hiki uke). After initially intercepting the opponent’s blow, you can bounce off his arm in a circular clawing motion to rake the eyes. Any time your open hand crosses in front of the other guy’s face, you may have the opportunity to scratch at his eyes. Even if you do not make contact, such movements can be very distracting, leaving the adversary open to a follow-on attack such as a low kick or a knee strike. If he wears prescription glasses (or in some circumstances sunglasses) and you can flip them off, it may be very disorienting. This same finger motion can catch the edge of the frame and jerk it free. Be cognizant of this if you wear glasses and keep an extra pair in your vehicle in case they get broken. It’s hard to drive when you can’t see.
When shoved forcefully into the eye socket, your thumb can stretch the optic nerve or displace the adversary’s eyeball, causing debilitating pain, shock, and disorientation.
The old dog-fighting trick with sun can be used in hand-to-hand fighting too. If you can get the sun to your back, particularly early in the morning or late in the afternoon when it’s low in the sky, you gain an additional advantage in a fight. The same thing goes for wind, hail, driving rain, and other inclement conditions. If something is blowing in the other guy’s face, it’s tougher for him to fight. Good footwork and body positioning can help protect against these things being used against you, though it is prudent to wear sunglasses and brimmed hats such as a baseball cap to protect your face from the weather too.
This classic chest block can be a set-up for a follow-on eye strike.
Bounce off his arm in a circular clawing motion to rake across the eyes.
It’s important to have both a “standing” game as well as a “ground” game, as you never know where a fight will lead. Chokes and neck cranks are very effective, particularly on the ground, but also very dangerous. Security guards generally don’t use these techniques. In many cases, the techniques are categorized by law enforcement as being at the same level as lethal force on the force continuum or banned outright by policy. The reason for this is the same reason that the guillotine made such an effective means of execution during the “Reign of Terror” that followed the French Revolution in the late 1700s. These are all methods of separating the control system (brain) from the supply system (heart/lungs) of the body, because they attack the neck, the “super highway” between these two systems.
There are different ways to choke someone effectively. You must either close off his carotid arteries or compress his trachea. The carotid arteries run down both sides of the neck. By restricting the blood flow in those arteries, you can impede the oxygen flow to the brain. After a short time in an oxygen-depressed state, the brain effectively goes to sleep. When that happens, it no longer has any control of the body. Brain goes to sleep, bad guy passes out, and you win. A carotid choke is relatively safe because if you let off shortly after the other guy loses consciousness, he should revive. You can see this kind of thing happen in martial arts tournaments all the time. Medical intervention is rarely necessary. However, if you continue to compress the carotid arteries after the other guy has passed out, you can cause brain damage or death.
Compression of the trachea or the windpipe is another way of doing a choke. The trachea is on the front of the neck directly underneath the chin. You can stop or restrict the flow of air to the lungs by compressing the trachea. This causes suffocation, a condition that if left untreated will rapidly lead to unconsciousness, brain damage, and death. This is a more dangerous technique than a carotid choke because you can damage the trachea in a manner that simply releasing the choke won’t often restart the flow of oxygen to the brain. Consequently, carotid chokes tend to be safer than tracheal chokes.
Architecture of the Neck. You can look at the neck as a pentagram. It has five points that are important for martial applications. The two trapezius muscles at the back of the neck form the first two points and the carotid arteries form the second two points. The carotid arteries are located along side the sternocleidomastoid and the trachea. The trachea forms the fifth point.
Choking Weapons—the Arms and Hands: We are only going to demonstrate chokes that utilize the forearms and hands in this book. While other parts of the arms, hands, and fingers can be used for choking, they require more study with a qualified instructor to pull off effectively on the street. The techniques listed here are those that we believe are the easiest to learn and apply.
• Arms: When using the arms it is helpful to think of them as propeller blades. Airplane propellers have a leading edge and a trailing edge. Look at the palm of your left hand. The edges of your arm, to the left and to the right are the leading and trailing edges that are used to perform the techniques. Those hard, bony edges give you solid leverage for performing chokes. The flat parts of your arms, directly in front of you and directly on the backside, are not used in these applications because they are softer and provide less mechanical leverage.
• Hands: The grips you use with your hands are very important. The interlacing of the fingers, as if in prayer, is never to be used. Your fingers can be crushed and/ or dislocated if you grip that way. Grabbing your own wrist can, at times, be a correct technique, but for our discussion here, it will not be used, as it is a bit more complicated to perform properly due to sweat and grime that can make a good grip go bad fast. The correct position is to clasp your hands together as if clapping, and then to grip a forefinger and thump around your opposite hand’s thumb.
Subtlety. Being subtle while attempting a choke is the beginning of a path to success. Both authors, having trained with champion judoka Kenji Yamada, can attest to the subtlety that he used while choking. Wilder says, “The first time Yamada Sensei choked me, I had no real concept of what was taking place. I wasn’t really able to feel his intention until he had the choke applied. I remember the technique too; it is called ‘The Hell Choke.’ By the time I realized what was happening it was too late.” Kane has had similar experiences. The first time he was choked-out in a judo tournament, he did not realize what the other guy was doing until he woke up afterward.
An attack to the neck is perceived as life threatening. While you might be choking to knock the other guy out, he is bound to think you are intent on killing him. Once he feels the choke, he is going to switch on his “fight or flight” reflex immediately and instinctively. You’ll be in for a wild ride. You need to be sneaky and subtle. Not showing your intent until it is too late is the key to getting a successful choke or crank begun. Once it’s on properly, an untrained opponent will very unlikely get away from your technique until you choose to release him.
An important ingredient in successful choking is control. In most cases, this means controlling your opponent’s hips with your legs. If you have a solid hold, he cannot buck you off of him or find some way to squirm away and break your chokehold. In a standing choke, this might simply mean dragging him backward so that he cannot get his feet under him or achieve any leverage to take the pressure off and continue the fight. In groundwork, that typically means controlling his hips with your legs.
Incorrect grip: interlaced fingers can be easily crushed or dislocated as you try to apply the technique.
Correct grip: clasp your hands together with interlocking thumbs.
The type of chokes and cranks discussed here are designed for the street. Several of them have been banned from judo competition because they are too dangerous for sport. Since they may result in life-threatening injuries to your opponent, you must only use chokes when the situation warrants a high level of countervailing force (see the section “Use Only as Much Force as the Situation Warrants” for more information). There are some fantastic neck-crank takedowns that can be executed from a standing position that we have not included here because they are far too dangerous to attempt without properly supervised instruction. Performed incorrectly, they can prove fatal. If you decide to take martial arts classes, you can learn such things there.
Attempting a choke on the street without practice is a poor choice for combat, one that is very likely to fail. Chokes require both subtlety and control. Supervised practice is essential. You will most likely learn these techniques by practicing with a uniform gi initially. This heavy clothing not only facilitates many chokes, but also does not tear easily. Once you get good, practice with a t-shirt too. Use an old one as it will quickly get trashed, but it is very important to be able to use these kinds of techniques in street clothes. Finally, practice against a shirtless opponent so that you will be prepared for every eventuality.
Successful chokes and neck cranks require that you control the other guy’s movement until he passes out or gives up. That’s easiest to do, and most commonly done, from the ground. If both you and your adversary are on the ground, you can hold him in place with your legs while choking him with your arms and/or hands. Never intentionally go to the ground in a real fight, however, unless you can do so safely. While you’re working on your opponent, paying attention to getting the choke in place, his friends may intervene and put the boots to you. Be wary of bystanders if you decide to try these techniques on the street (see “Six Things to Avoid in a Fight” for more information).
Once you have successfully choked an opponent unconscious, release the pressure while maintaining the architecture of your technique. You can never know for sure if he’s playing possum until you let up a little, so don’t relinquish control too quickly in case he begins to fight back. Conversely, you do not want to inadvertently choke him to death either, so loosening up is a happy medium that maintains your control but provides a window of safety.
This is done from the ‘mount’ position. When in the mount, you need to be straddling your opponent, sitting on his lower stomach to control his hips. Your knees are on each side, riding along by his floating ribs. With both hands, not necessarily at the same time, reach behind your opponent’s head and cup the back of his skull with the palms of your hands. Once both hands are behind his head, cover one with the other and place both of your elbows on his collarbones. Using the shoulder and collarbone area as a fulcrum, pull his skull forward, crushing your opponent’s chin into his sternum.
This is a reverse choke and neck crush. While the guillotine can be done from a standing position or a ground position, the ground is most common and generally the most effective. Consequently, we demonstrate how it works from the standing version. Gyaku hishigi often comes from an attempted tackle, or wrestler’s take down by your opponent.
The opponent’s head is pushed into your armpit, in this illustration the right armpit. The right arm wraps around his head placing the blade of your arm across his throat. As this arm wrap comes across the opponent’s throat, you drop to the ground, opening your legs so you can wrap them around his lower abdomen and hips. This leg wrap is very important, as without it you will not be able to maintain control of your adversary and the choke will fail.
You can grab your own hands, left to right, to apply the choke, or in this instance grab your own clothing with your right hand. This one-handed method is preferred, if possible, as it frees up the left hand for striking the opponent’s kidneys. Unlike a sports competition, you will want to augment your controlling techniques with striking techniques to help subdue your adversary. With the choke set, use your legs to push the opponent’s hips away from you so that you can stretch his spine. Arching your back can also create more stretch. This technique can be very fast, yet it can also work into it very slowly. Ratchet into position smoothly, getting each component in order or it is unlikely to work properly on the street.
A “naked” choke is one that does not require an opponent’s heavy clothing or uniform gi to be effective. It only requires your arms to execute properly. When untrained individuals and practitioners who focus on sports competition are thrown or fall to the ground, they frequently give up their back, landing on all fours with their face pointing toward the ground. This is a common wrestling position as well.
If your opponent gives you his back, it is relatively easy to perform a rear naked choke. It is important to get his hips secured by wrapping your legs around the waist first though. This assures that you will have adequate control. You may wish to lock your feet together at the ankles for additional support.
The choke itself is done with the inside (thumb side) of the arm, placing the ulna bone against your opponent’s trachea (or the carotid artery of your adversary’s throat). Grip your off-hand arm in the crook of the elbow and wrap that hand across the top of your adversary’s head. Cinch your arms together like a nutcracker with his neck in between them. Rotating your choking arm can change the technique dramatically, depending on the placement of your arm and hands. Cinch your grip while driving your arm bone into the other guy’s throat to secure the choke.
Gyaku juji jime is a reverse cross lock choke performed from the front with your fingers inside the lapel of your opponent’s jacket, shirt, or uniform gi, while nami juji jime is a front cross lock choke performed from the front with your thumb inside the lapel of your opponent’s clothing. These two applications are so similar that we’ll cover them together.
These techniques are very popular as they can be used from the guard (bottom) or the mount (top) when fighting on the ground. Each of these chokes requires a heavy piece of cloth (for example, coat, shirt, scarf, towel, belt) to execute successfully. The hands are placed differently in these two chokes yet they appear very similar.
Let’s begin with the hand positions: Gyaku juji jime places the fingers inside the opponent’s lapel. Your knuckles are placed across your opponent’s skin, gripping the collar in the palm of your hand as you are face to face. Nami juji jime uses the opposite grip with your thumb inside the lapel.
Whichever grip you choose, your hands must be placed deep alongside the neck in order to be effective. Grip deeply along the collar toward the back of your opponent’s neck, keep your elbows close to your ribs, and then pull downward. Yamada Sensei wanted us to actually touch the mat (or ground) with the knuckles of our hands to insure that the hands were deep enough around the opponent’s neck; this is a good rule to follow.
The legs are used once again to hold the opponent in check by immobilizing his hips as in the previous techniques. Not only can you control the hips, but you can also use your legs to once again stretch your opponent from head to hip. Often when the opponent has paused and has stopped fighting momentarily, you know that you have sunk the choke into their neck well. This may be followed by a sudden burst of frantic thrashing as he attempts to break free before his oxygen supply is cut off.
Unless you’re a very competent martial artist, the ground can hit a lot harder than your fists, particularly when you hurl the other guy onto it with force. The challenge is that many throws are commonly taught for sporting applications rather than for street combat, so the setups require you to turn your back on your foe or otherwise leave yourself open to a counterattack. Consequently, it’s good to know a few ways of dumping him on his butt without eating a fist while you do it. When executed properly these techniques can do much damage and facilitate your escape. When done poorly, however, throws can get you hurt so you need to choose the right distance and timing to pull them off.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the distance between you and your attacker has closed, closed fast and not by your choice. At very close range, your options become limited. You can shorten your weapon, for example, moving from using the fist up the arm to striking with the elbow. Similarly, you might be able to strike with your knee or forehead. Or, perhaps, you can turn your palm over and strike with an uppercut.
Another viable option at very close range, however, is a throw. If executed correctly, it can come out of your natural reflex response. When someone closes distance fast and aggressively, your natural tendency will be to lift up your hands in a warding-off motion. This reflex action can be turned into the opening you need to make a throw, using your closing attacker’s force against him.
To throw a person effectively, you need to not only be able to touch him but rather to seize him, grab hard, and control him with both of your hands. Some very skilled practitioners can throw with one hand, but in all likelihood, you can’t. The bottom line about throwing is that is takes practice, lots of it, to become good. If you throw a person and you use poor technique, you will either be counter-thrown or dragged to the ground. Not exactly your goal and most definitely a bad place to be.
The goal of your throw is to knock him down hard so that you can run away fast. Becoming entangled with your attacker is not a good thing. In close quarters combat, a throw can help you gain a superior position yet it should not be your primary technique useless you have years, and we mean yeeeaaaarrs of experience in the throwing arts like judo, jujitsu, Hapkido, Samozashchita Baez Oruzhiya (Sambo), western wresting, or shuai-jan (Chinese wrestling), to name a few. When you have years of experience, then the art becomes your primary form and you go with what you know.
If you have opportunity to train in a throwing art, it is suggested that you take advantage of it. You need not look for the best or the most expensive to gain an introduction to the throwing arts, just get on the mat, and go at it. You will soon learn just how overmatched you are when you come up to a skilled and experienced thrower because he will throw when and where he chooses to and you will be unable to stop him. Even when you think you are good enough to counter or block his chosen technique, you will discover he has more technique and more skill than you do. He will be slick, deceptive, tricky, and powerful when he wants to be and you will feel nothing but the mat as you hit it.
It works on the mat and it works in real life too. For example, 20-year-old Tyrone Jermain Hogan tried to carjack the wrong people when he went after the Florida International University judo club’s van. The judoka were in Los Angeles to teach a self-defense class when they had an opportunity to put their skills to the test on the street. They quickly threw him to the ground and held him there until police could arrive and make an arrest. Hogan pled guilty on February 7, 2003 and was sentenced to 11 years in prison for kidnapping, robbery, and carjacking.
Here are five throws that you can practice that don’t require a high level of skill to pull off. Further, only one requires you to turn your back on your adversary in order to throw him, a somewhat dangerous movement unless you have excellent timing. They are all judo throws, hence named in Japanese, yet you can find similar, if not identical, throws in other arts. If you choose to get some formal training as we recommend you will not necessarily learn these throws, nor learn them in this order, yet they are a good place to start. While we may show any given movement to one side (for example, right), it can just as easily be reversed to the other side (for example, left).
Basic throw:
Pull the attacker’s right arm with your left to make the attacker plant his right foot as he is pulled forward or stiffen his leg to maintain his balance. Either way this motion temporarily immobilizes the adversary.
Step forward with your left leg so that it is next to the attacker’s right foot. At the same time, you must swiftly place your right leg behind his right leg. Note: you are touching your attacker with your entire body from the leg up to your head. There must be virtually no space between you and your attacker to make this move successful.
Sweep your right leg backward in a cutting motion while driving your right shoulder downward to the ground. Pull with your left arm and push with your right simultaneously. If he resists strongly you can rotate your hips to the left a bit to facilitate the throw.
Street application:
During Step #1: Use the right fingers to the eyes.
During Step #2: Punch the attacker in the neck or jaw.
During Step #3: Stomp on the knee instead of sweeping with your leg.
Sasae tsurikomi ashi requires precise timing to be effective. You must execute Steps 2 and 3 in precise sequence to bring your adversary up onto his toes at the same time you sweep his leg.
Basic throw:
Close distance and grab the adversary.
Lift upward to shift his center of balance upward and bring him onto his toes.
Twist your hands, as if turning the steering wheel of the car, left hand down and right hand up, while simultaneously sweeping the attacker’s right leg.
When Sasae tsurikomi ashi is done traditionally and well by a skilled practitioner, it is beautiful and appears effortless. In the hands of an unskilled practitioner, it appears ugly and sloppy, yet it is still an effective throw nevertheless. Street Application:
During #1: Grab flesh, not clothing.
Basic throw:
Thrusting off of the right foot, drive your body into the attacker’s body while hooking behind the attacker’s right leg with your right leg. It is critical to pull downward on the attacker’s right shoulder/sleeve to shift his weight momentarily and pin his right foot to the ground so that he cannot step away.
Driving forward with your upper body, look over your attacker’s shoulder to the ground. You must pull with you left hand and push with your right as you do this.
Drive the attacker over your right leg onto the ground.
Street application:
During #1: Head butt the attacker.
During #2: Spin your upper body away (while driving downward) tearing the attacker’s right knee with your entangling leg.
Basic throw:
Grab the attacker’s right bicep with your left hand while reaching behind the attacker’s neck with your right. The deeper and further you reach around the neck with your right arm the better.
Turn your hips into the attacker. You must turn completely 180 degrees to your attacker with bent knees. As you do this, your hips must be below your attacker’s hips such that you are below his center of gravity.
Lift your attacker by extending your knees while simultaneously pulling leftward with both hands.
Street application:
During #1: Head butt the attacker.
During #3: Drive your right knee into the attacker’s groin as he lands on his back.
Basic throw:
Charge the attacker by stepping forward with your right foot.
Hook your left leg around the attacker’s right leg and drive your chest into the attacker’s chest, while simultaneously pulling the attacker’s right elbow downward.
Look downward and behind your attacker’s shoulder while driving backward and down.
Street Application:
During #2: Head butt the attacker.
During #3: Drive your right knee into the attackers groin as he lands on his back.
Try all five throws. Find the one that is easiest for you and train with that one throw, forgetting the rest. You are not trying to become good at these throws, but rather to develop apprentice-level skill with the one throw you can use in an extreme stress situation. Here are a few tips that will make your training safer and more effective.
Find a good instructor. Martial arts are dangerous and should not be attempted without competent instruction and oversight.
1. Have padded mats or use a mat room. Practicing without them is a sure path to injury.
2. Have plenty of space available to work in. Uncontrolled falls are just that, uncontrolled. Without an ample amount of room, a wall or other solid object can become very dangerous.
3. Go slow. As odd as it sounds if you go slowly, you will progress faster. This is because slow work forces you to develop solid body mechanics, good muscle control, and excellent balance.
4. Relax. If you relax, the technique will emerge. Using too much strength masks the working of the technique so it won’t work on larger, stronger foes.
5. Repeat the movement over and over again. Don’t throw your partner, but move in and set the technique, and then reset it. Your first fifty repetitions mean that you are just getting started. And we mean just getting started for that day and training session.
Sometimes hitting the other guy is your best tactic in a street fight. If you’re a skilled martial artist, for example, there are dozens of hand striking techniques that you might attempt including fore-fist punches, standing-fist punches, sword-hand strikes, palm-heel strikes, hammer fist blows, back fist strikes, wrist strikes, swing strikes, uppercuts, and single knuckle strikes, to name a few. Unless you have substantial skills, however, it is dangerous to hit a solid target with your closed fist. If your alignment is off, you will break your hand and/or damage your wrist. Wilder has broken his hand three times; it’s not all that hard to do in a fight.
If you want to become a skilled fighter, you will need to study a martial art. Despite what we will cover here, there’s really no substitute for hands-on experience. Since striking can be an excellent tactic, albeit one that takes a fair amount of skill to avoid hurting yourself while attempting to do it, we’ll cover a small number of strikes that are relatively safe to perform yet powerful enough to end a fight if you do them correctly.
Before we begin, however, it is important to cover a few overarching principles surrounding striking in general. No matter how skilled you are (or are not), strikes work best when you catch your opponent by surprise, control distance and direction of your blow, relax until the moment of contact, and strike ferociously and repeatedly until the conflict is over.
• Surprise. As with any fighting application, if the other guy doesn’t see it coming you’re much more likely to be successful. Be careful not to telegraph your blows; you give your adversary a huge advantage whenever you do. Each punch should suddenly explode from wherever your starting point is into your target as fast as possible with no warning. Avoid cocking your arm back, taking a sudden breath, tensing your neck, shoulders, or arms, widening your eyes, grinning, grimacing, or making any other inappropriate or unnecessary movement before each blow. The same thing applies to elbow strikes, kicks, and knee strikes as well. If you train in martial arts, practice in front of a mirror can help eliminate these tells. Videotaping training sessions can also be a great way to objectively evaluate your performance and look for areas for improvement.
• Distance. Ensure that you are close enough to strike before you throw a blow. That’s often closer than you’d naturally think. If you have to roll your shoulder or lean forward, you are too far away. Whenever you have to stretch to reach the other guy, your alignment will be off, your blow will be slower, and your power will be significantly reduced. Worse still, it will be easy for your adversary to disrupt your balance and drive you into the ground. Furthermore, if you lock your elbow to get a few extra inches of reach, you can damage the joint as well. Once you are in range, strike directly at the target covering the shortest distance possible. Keep your elbow pointed downward and your arm as close to your side as possible. Hook punches, haymakers, and other wide-swinging blows take longer to reach your target than straight punches. They are much easier to spot, hence easier to block or avoid as well. The same thing applies for kicks. Unless you are skilled enough to disguise your intent, roundhouse and hook kicks are easier to block than more direct applications such as front kicks or joint kicks.
Punch from incorrect range: overextending your reach dramatically reduces your power and leaves you vulnerable to counterattack.
Punch from correct range: proper body alignment focuses all of your strength and power.
• Relaxation. Controlling the mind is the difference between being good and being great. In Major League Baseball, a pitcher can have a ten million dollar arm, but paired with a $10 head he is worthless. It’s the same in fighting. If you are tense, letting your amped-up mind control your body, you will be slow and easy to block. It might sound counterintuitive, but it’s not. Try it for yourself. Make a tight fist, lock all your muscles down hard, and try to throw a fast punch. Now, try it again with an open hand. Flick your hand forward as fast as you can as if you’re trying to touch or poke someone. Which is faster? When you are relaxed, you can move much more swiftly. Experienced martial artists know that relaxation does not require you to sacrifice power. The trick is tensing at the moment of impact, not before. Here’s how it works: Fa jing means explosive or vibrating power. It is sort of like a sneeze, a sudden unexpected movement that is very difficult to anticipate or block, followed by an instant of tension at the moment of impact. Both speed and relaxation are necessary to achieve fa jing. All strikes should be performed in this fashion. If you are relaxed until the moment of impact your speed and power will be greatly increased. And, importantly, you will make it much harder for the other guy to defend himself from your blows.
• Ferocity. All things equal, the guy who attacks with the most ferocity wins. Even if the other guy is a bit stronger or more skilled than you are, he’s likely to disengage if he realizes he’s bitten off more than he can chew. If you have no other choice but to fight, do so wholeheartedly. Your adversary should feel like he’s run across a rabid wolverine wielding an industrial buzz saw. Strike fast, hard, and repeatedly until it’s over and you can escape to safety. Throwing a single blow or short combination and dancing aside to see if it had any effect may work well in the tournament ring, but it’s woefully inadequate on the street. Give it everything you’re worth and don’t stop until it’s over.
Now that the principles are out of the way, let’s talk about some common striking techniques that lesser skilled individuals can usually pull off successfully. These include hand strikes, forearm strikes, elbow strikes, knee strikes, foot strikes, and head butts.
Hand Strikes. The hand is a great weapon in a fight. We’ve already mentioned that you don’t want to hit a solid object with your knuckles unless you are very skillful, yet you don’t need to make a fist to hurt the other guy. Palm-heel strikes, for example, can be very powerful yet relatively safe if you contact something hard like the other guy’s jaw. You can thrust straight out with your open palm (for example, to the face) or slap sideways, for example, to the ear. When we teach children how to break boards for the first time, we have them strike with an open palm because they can generate much power with relative safety.
Rotate your hand upward and pull your fingers back so that you won’t tangle them on anything. Aim so that you will hit with the meaty heel of your palm at the bottom. You can improve your power if you can get your bodyweight behind the blow too. The easiest way to do that is to step forward as you strike. Begin with the hand movement and then follow with the step. Your opponent will undoubtedly see the blow coming if you step first and then strike. The goal, however, is to land the blow at the same time you complete your step, adding impetus to the strike.
Another way to strike with reduced chances of injury to your hand is with a hammer fist blow. While this is done using a closed fist, you hit with the bottom of your hand rather than with your knuckles. This softer striking surface protects the hand yet can deliver solid power in your blows. You can strike downward (for example, to the face or nose) or sideways (for example, to the side of the head or temple). The hammer fist is a smashing type of blow not a penetrating blow.
There are dozens of other effective hand strikes yet they require a fair amount of training to execute successfully and safely so we won’t go into detail here. If you do choose to punch with a closed fist, however, it’s critical that you straighten your wrist and strike primarily with your first and second knuckles so that the line of power passes directly through the knuckles, traveling up your arm and into your body. If you connect with something solid like the other guy’s jaw with a bent wrist or with your third and fourth knuckles you can hurt yourself severely.
Forearm Strikes. A forearm smash can be extraordinarily powerful, though you need to be relatively close to an opponent to make it work. It looks like a basic head block, if you have trained in a striking art such as karate, yet is designed to be offensive rather than primarily defensive in nature. Forearm blows work best when you rotate the hard ulna bone along the outside edge of your arm into the other guy, using the torque from your twisting movement to augment your upward force. Adding a forward step to magnify the blow with your bodyweight can be beneficial as well. Forearm strikes can also be executed sideways like a hammer fist blow, though that’s usually intended as a defensive technique to block or deflect an opponent’s punch.
Elbow Strikes. The elbow is a pretty hard bone, one of the hardest structures in the human body. Nature knows that you are very likely to land on your elbows in a fall, so the bone is very resilient. The elbow also serves as an excellent short-range weapon when you are too close to generate good power with your palm heel strike or punch. You can create enormously powerful blows at very short distances using your elbows, one of the reasons this type of strike is favored in martial arts such as muay Thai.
You can strike upward (for example, to the solar plexus), downward (for example to the head or neck if the other guy is bent over), or sideways (for example, to the ribs or head) with your elbow. You can strike directly behind you too (for example, forcefully pulling your fist into a traditional karate chamber at your side). It is a very versatile weapon. It is also important to note that only the most skilled practitioners have the forethought and skill to use their elbows as weapons in most cases. The majority of people default to their closed fists in a fight, even when the distance is better suited to a shorter-range weapon such as the elbow. Consequently, elbow strikes can have an additional element of surprise when you use them on the street.
Knee Strike. Your knee is much like your elbow. If you know how to joint-lock an arm, you know how to joint-lock a leg. If you know how to strike with your elbows, you also know how to use your knees. Once again, short range is key for knee strikes. If you are too far away, they do not work effectively. Obviously, the groin is a default target, one that is often taught in women’s self-defense classes (notice the authors yawning here). The challenge is that men are inherently good at protecting their genitals. Further, groin strikes do not always end a fight right away. Fortunately, there are alternatives you might choose.
There is an easily accessible nerve bundle along the side of your thigh, about where your fingers touch if your hands are hanging down at your sides. That’s a great place to hit with a knee strike if you’ve tangled up with a standing opponent. You can also knee-strike his chest or solar plexus if you are a skilled grappler or can find a way to off-balance or bend him over first. For example, you can hook the back of his head with your hand, or cross your arms behind him to strike the back of his neck, and then pull him downward into your blow. Trying to use this technique without training can be dangerous, however, as it is fairly easy to become unbalanced when you strike that high with your knee.
If your adversary is on the ground, your knee can be used to strike to his ribs too. This type of knee strike is often a precursor to grappling as it is intensely painful and can flip your opponent onto his back or side. You can also strike to the head if he’s down, of course, but that’s very dangerous and challenging to justify in court unless he’s armed with some type of weapon. The knee can generate extraordinary power so be cautious that you don’t overdo things if you strike with it.
Foot Strikes. While most martial artists train barefoot, in today’s world the foot is rarely bare in combat. That means your boot or shoe can become a weapon in its own right. Not only do certain types of footwear make great striking surfaces (for example, steel-toed boot), but they also protect your foot as well. Furthermore, proper foot positioning is not as critical when you’re wearing shoes as it is when you are barefoot. For example, a front kick should hit with the ball of the foot. If you don’t pull your toes back, you are likely to jam them when barefoot yet sturdy shoes can let you do this technique incorrectly without hurting yourself. The similarity between the boxing glove and the shoe should not be lost. The shoe protects the foot in the same way the boxing glove protects the hand. Similarly, it often cushions and softens the blow too such as running shoes would.
The top of the foot can be used to strike as well as the toe and the heel. The top of the foot is used anywhere on the opponent’s body. You will see the top of the foot and/ or toe used on the face, usually when the opponent is down. If you are the person on the ground, be prepared to have incoming blows aimed at your face. The heel, or stomp kick, is frequently used when the opponent is on the ground as well. It’s simply a matter of downward vs. sideways motion. Once again, be aware of the legal ramifications of utilizing such techniques.
Bare foot: strike with the ball of your foot, pulling the toes back so that they are not jammed by contact with the opponent.
Shod foot: when wearing boots or sturdy shoes the position of the toes doesn’t really matter all that much.
If you are going to kick the other guy in a fight, the safest place to aim is below his waist. Low kicks are faster, more direct, and harder to block than high ones. They also help you retain your balance. Front kicks, stomps, and sidekicks are generally the easiest kicks for beginners to learn. All of these kicks begin by forcefully lifting your knee as quickly as you can. The higher you lift your knee, within reason, the better. To do a front kick, swing your foot up and snap it forward. For a stomp kick, drive it back downward leading with your heel. To do a sidekick, rotate your hip and snap the kick out to the side. Good targets include the side of the knee, the middle of the thigh, the ankle, and the foot. You can also target the groin, though that’s often challenging.
Head Butts. Head butts are oddly a cultural artifact. While they are very common throughout most of Europe, they are rarely seen in America. Perhaps this has something to do with the popularity of soccer, yet it really doesn’t matter all that much why. What matters is that it works. Head butts can used in very close quarters combat. The goal of the head butt is simple, forcefully striking one of the stronger bone architectures of your body onto a weaker area of your opponent’s skull. This is usually done by driving your forehead into the occipital bone surrounding the other guy’s eye, into his temple, or into his nose.
While the forehead is the most common striking surface for head butts, you can attack with all four sides of your head, connecting with the area covered by your sweatband. Avoid hitting with “softer” areas such as your face, ear, or temple. It is imperative to note that the head butt is a body move not a head move, especially when butting with the back of the head. If you strike solely with your head/neck, like nodding, you are quite likely to injure yourself, particularly if you miss. Use your whole body. Loren Christensen likes to call it “bowing with prejudice,” an apt analogy.
Distance and surprise are critical for a successful head butt. Additionally, it’s also important to note that you are momentarily blind when you perform the technique. Like trying to keep your eyes open during a sneeze, it’s nearly impossible not to close your eyes on contact.
There are many ways to secure the other guy’s hands and arms to keep him from interfering with your head butt but that is not always necessary, particularly when you have the element of surprise on your side. An infamous example of this was when French soccer star Zinedine Zidane head-butted Italian Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup Final. The two players reportedly exchanged heated words before Zidane began to walk away. Materazzi said, “I prefer the whore that is your sister,” to Zidane, who turned around, made a run-up and head-butted Materazzi in the chest, knocking him to the ground. He was subsequently ejected from the game.
While all of these techniques can be used in isolation, they are more effective when combined together. The best combinations move along the body going high-low-high or low-high-low to create openings by disrupting the opponent. They work because your adversary’s head and hands will follow the pain when you strike him. His attention should shift to where he has been struck, particularly if he is not a trained fighter who has become desensitized against pain. Further, there is a natural physiological reaction that draws a person’s hands toward the body part that hurts. This gives you a momentary advantage to strike an unguarded area, providing that your combinations flow smoothly and quickly in concert with each other.
For example, let’s say that your adversary opens the fight with a punch to your midsection. One way to respond is by twisting to the side, evading, or shoulder blocking his punch and then immediately riposting with a palm-heel strike to his face. As he reels back from your hand strike, you can fairly easily stomp on his foot or ankle (or throw a low kick to his knee, depending on the angle of the opening). As his attention is drawn to the damaged limb, you can finish him off with a hammer fist blow to the face.
He who knows these things, and in fighting puts his knowledge into practice, will win his battles. He who knows them not, nor practices them, will surely be defeated.
Chase him towards awkward places, and try to keep him with his back to awkward places. When the enemy gets into an inconvenient position, do not let him look around, but conscientiously chase him around and pin him down.
If something works, keep using it until it stops working. This idea can be said many different ways. Examples would include the old farmer’s axiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” or the business phrase, “Go with what you know.”
Have you ever loaded a supposedly “new and improved” program onto your computer only to find that it crashed everything else you had installed? Maybe you had intra-program conflicts, ran out of disk space, or your processor chip was just too slow? Or you quickly discovered that you wanted to print out a short report and couldn’t even do that. Or you were forced to upgrade to a new operating system only to find that you needed a whole new computer as well.
The same thing happens in a fight. If you just hit the other guy with your hand, don’t try a jumping, back-spinning, split kick to follow it up. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Go with what just worked. Do it again and again and again until it doesn’t work anymore. Then go to plan B.
Standardization and simplicity are the hallmarks of a good fighter. Oh sure, there are the professionals who can do these wild techniques and make them work, but frankly that is not you. And for the most part it’s not us either. If you watch these guys, professional cage fighters, boxers, wrestlers, judo, or jujitsu players, they all have strong basic and non-complicated techniques. They go with what is simple and effective. They are professionals that stay with something that works until it doesn’t.
Street fighters, gang members, bouncers, bikers, law enforcement officers, and anybody else who settles things with violence has a set of favorite techniques that they will use over and over again. Why? Because they work. The cost of failure is far too high to attempt things that might not work.
Do not get fancy in any fight, but especially not against an armed assailant. On the street, there are no points for executing a technique with perfect form. Do whatever it takes to win no matter how messy or sloppy it becomes.
Once the fight begins, adrenaline will affect your fine motor skills so you have to keep things simple if you wish them to be effective. Use well-directed, efficient techniques—things you know you are good at and can rely on under extreme stress. There are techniques you know, techniques you can do, techniques you practice, and techniques you would be willing to bet your life on. Apply only the latter in a real fight. Use your favorite one again and again until it no longer works and then pull another one out of your bag of tricks.
Any mistake you make in a street fight could be your last, so stick with what you know. Hick’s[27] law states that response times increase in proportion to the logarithm of the number of potential stimulus-response alternatives. That is a fancy way of saying that the more choices you have to make, the longer it takes to make a decision. While you may know and even practice hundreds of techniques in your martial arts training, assuming you practice such things, a limited subset is required in self-defense situations. Choose your favorite and keep using it until it stops working.
If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him… Hence, though an obstinate fight may be made by a small force, in the end it must be captured by the larger force.
In single combat, we can confuse the enemy by attacking with varied techniques when the chance arises. Feint a thrust or cut, or make the enemy think you are going to close with him, and when he is confused you can easily win.
Real fighting on the street is nothing like practice in the dojo due to the fear factor, among other things. When it’s real, the consequences are real too. Your body knows this even if your mind does not. Adrenaline surges through your system, making you faster, tougher, and more resilient. It helps you survive, yet robs you of fine motor control and higher thought processes at the same time. Your animal brain (amygdala) rears up and takes control, making it hard to respond, plan, or think your actions through. Consequently, you need to keep things simple and straightforward in order to be effective.
You must employ techniques that do not require fine motor coordination or complicated thought. These applications must also cause serious damage if you want to stop a determined aggressor who, like yourself, is also hopped up on adrenaline. Last, but not least, the techniques you choose cannot take very long to execute. John Wayne-style roundhouse punches, high kicks, and the like take a circuitous route, hence don’t connect very quickly, at least not when compared to other techniques.
Because it is hard not to telegraph these types of big movements, they are easier for the other guy to see, hence easier for him to counter or block. This is not only bad because it doesn’t work very well, but also because the longer the fight lasts, the better the chances that you will get hurt in the process. It is much better to use low kicks, straight punches, and other applications that hit hard, fast, and immediately.
To this end, we suggest six things you should remember in a fight.
• Don’t kick above the waist.
• Don’t play “tank.”
• Don’t hit with a closed fist… unless you’ve got skills.
• Don’t forget to use your mouth too.
• Don’t play the other guy’s game.
• Don’t use the wrong technique for the situation.
Funny things happen when you work stadium security. Way back when Kane was a green belt in karate, he had occasion to attempt to throw a patron out of the stadium for rowdy behavior. That sort of thing happened incessantly, yet this particular occasion was somewhat unique. Kane didn’t know it at the time, but the other guy wasn’t just disruptive and annoying; he was also a black belt in taekwondo.
As they approached the gate, the rowdy suddenly wrapped his brain around what was happening and made up his mind that he wasn’t going to leave quietly. Without warning, he suddenly spun and launched a lightening-fast roundhouse kick at Kane’s head.
Street fighters, gang members, bikers, bouncers, law enforcement officers, and anybody else who settles things with violence has a set of favorite techniques that they will use over and over again. Standardization and simplicity are the hallmarks of a good fighter. These guys use simple, straightforward applications and uncomplicated techniques because they work well under extreme stress. When it works, keep on using it until it is no longer effective. The cost of failure is far too high to attempt complicated things that might not be effective.
Sensing movement, Kane shifted slightly, instinctively scoop blocking the kick. It’s not that he was better or faster than the other guy; he most certainly was not, yet the movement was so broad and telegraphed, and took so long to connect that he was able to intercept the kick successfully. We’re talking fractions of seconds here, yet it was enough, particularly since Kane had been practicing that technique over and over for a couple months prior to the incident while working on advancement requirements toward his next belt test. Since it was ingrained into his muscle memory, his body reacted without much conscious thought.
Once he had captured the other guy’s leg, it was no effort at all to clamp it down onto his shoulder with both hands, holding it in place. He then started walking backwards, dragging the other guy over to a police officer who was stationed at the gate nearby. The officer calmly watched Kane dragging the fan towards him, the former rowdy wincing in pain as his leg and groin were stretched, and hopping along in an attempt to keep up without falling over. As the pair approached, the officer sardonically stated, “Hey, I can come back in a while if you’d like to hurt him some more.” While Kane laughed, the other guy went a little pale.
The guy was underage, but he was not drunk so he was off the hook for that one, but worse things were yet to come. The officer examined the rowdy’s identification. Since he’d seen the kick and knew that most folks couldn’t pull something like that off without practice, it was a logical question to ask about his training. The other guy solemnly answered and that’s where things got ugly.
Given the guy’s black belt, he’d just committed aggravated assault. A kick to the head from a trained martial artist is reasonably likely to cause death or serious physical injury so he was in just as much trouble as he would have been had he pulled a knife or a gun. Fortunately, for everyone involved, the kick hadn’t connected with its intended target. The fan, suddenly contrite, was given a choice: He could tell the officer who his sifu (instructor) was so that his unseemly behavior could be reported to his instructor, or he could be arrested for the assault. Interestingly enough, he selected jail as the safer choice. That says something about the character of his instructor.
Let’s face it, high kicks look really cool. That’s why they are often seen in tournament competitions and movie choreography. Unfortunately, these techniques are simply not practical in most real-world self-defense situations. Unless you are vastly more skilled or a lot faster than your adversary is, high kicks are not going to work.
Self-defense entanglements typically happen fast, furious, and at very close range. Balance and unimpaired movement are paramount when you tie up with an opponent. If you are knocked to the ground, you could easily be injured from the fall. Further, you can get stomped, maimed, or squashed like a bug while lying there momentarily defenseless.
From very close range, you can often strike with your knee as muay Thai practitioners like to do, yet there is not even enough room for a full-on leg strike or kick much of the time. On the other hand, if you land a good shot from your knee and your opponent bends over from the impact you can easily follow through with a kick from the foot, but that is a secondary movement.
Even if there is enough room for a traditional high kick, you still should not attempt to perform it in a street fight. Whenever you raise your foot high into the air, you take more time to strike your opponent, weaken your balance, and very likely open yourself to counterattack. Low kicks to vital or painful areas such as the feet, ankles, or knees on the other hand, are much more effective. They are harder to see and avoid, hence more likely to connect. Further, they do not disrupt your balance very much and can easily be performed in most regular street clothing.
No matter how fast you are, it takes way too long to cover the distance required to execute such maneuvers efficiently. They are relatively easy to anticipate, block, and counter. And they leave you off balance far too long. Kicking below the waist, on the other hand, covers a lot less ground and is, therefore, much faster for you to use. In addition to the benefits of more speed and less distance, low kicks are considerably better at helping you maintain your balance when you throw them. Whenever your foot leaves the ground, you become vulnerable and temporarily rooted to the spot where your support foot rests.
Never try to kick a weapon. That’s another thing that looks great in the movies but that can cost you dearly in the real world. For example, if he’s got a knife it takes only a quick flick of the wrist and you impale yourself on his blade. Unless you’re some kind of super-evolved mutant life form, his hands are faster than your feet.
A great kicking tactic in such encounters is to chop away at your opponent’s knees, shins, ankles, and/or feet. Such attacks are quick and vicious. They are difficult to see, even harder to avoid, and cause significant physiological damage with minimal effort. Kane, who has had arthroscopic surgery to repair cartilage tears in both knees, will be among the first to tell you that damage to a knee is debilitating.
Unless you are vastly more skilled or a lot faster than your adversary is, high kicks are not going to work. Don’t kick above the waist in a real fight.
Once you have entangled an opponent’s feet with your low kicks, you will have a much better chance of landing upper body blows with your hand strikes. If you really want to kick him in the head, wait until you’ve knocked him to the ground first, and then do it. Watch your back legally though; such actions might have adverse repercussions.
When was the last time you had time to stretch out before a real fight? We certainly never have. No matter how flexible you are, it is fairly difficult to execute a high kick at full speed and power with cold muscles. Even if you can snap off a few high kicks, you’ll almost certainly pay for them later with strained muscles.
Further, you are not necessarily going to be wearing loose-fitting clothing such as a karate gi the next time you find yourself in a real-world life or death encounter. The constrictive street clothes that most people wear are simply not conducive to the extreme leg movements necessary to kick above someone’s waist. While that may be pretty obvious with dresses or long skirts, it often holds true for jeans and slacks as well.
Don’t kick about the waist in a street fight. It’s foolish, ineffectual, and tactically unsound.
Sadly, inexperienced fighters tend to stand in place while whaling away at each other without regard to evasive movement, stances, or mobility. You’re not a heavily armored tank. It hurts to get hit. Consequently, standing toe-to-toe and duking it out with your adversary is just plain dumb, particularly if he’s big, highly skilled, or armed with some type of weapon. Don’t forget that he’s attacking you for a reason, thinking he can win, so chances are good that he’s going to be big, nasty, and mean.
The only time Kane has ever been sucker-punched was at a college fraternity party in 1985. The guy who hit him was a 22-year-old, 310-pound Samoan football player, a guy twice his weight and strong as an ox. Although the football player’s blow caught him along the side of his jaw, knocking him to the ground, he was back on his feet doing his best Bruce Lee imitation seconds later.
Standing toe-to-toe with your adversary is just plain dumb, particularly if he’s big, highly skilled, or armed with some type of weapon. You’re not a tank, so don’t try to fight like one; keep moving, control the distance and the angles between yourself and the other guy, and you’ll have a good shot at taking him down.
The two flailed at each other for what seemed like several minutes trading blows, though it was probably much shorter than it seemed. While neither combatant realized it at that time, despite the Samoan’s strength and Kane’s agility neither of them could throw a decent punch. They didn’t move too well either. While Kane ultimately lost, he received only a sore jaw and a bloody nose. His opponent, who barely flinched under his best shot, wasn’t seriously injured either.
Closing is done by moving to the outside while blocking across the opponent’s body to tie up his limbs, forcing him to reposition before successfully counterattacking.
In retrospect, the thought of the two of them thumping on each other to no effect was pretty funny. By the time it was over, they held a grudging respect for each other’s ability to take a punch and even became friends after a fashion later on, yet not all fistfights end so sociably. Going toe-to-toe with a big Samoan was just plain dumb. Standing in place only exacerbated the stupidity.
If you don’t want to get hurt in a fight, you will need to move away from the strength of the other guy’s attack. It is imperative to not only get off line, but also keep your attacker from being able to reorient immediately at the same time. In a typical martial arts example, we often call this “closing.”
Closing is done by moving to the outside while blocking across the opponent’s body to tie up his limbs, forcing him to reposition before successfully counterattacking. Fighting down the centerline is advanced martial arts, very difficult to perfect, whereas moving off-line and closing is taught to beginners because it is relatively easy to learn. And it works pretty well too. It is even better if you can manage to get behind the other guy.
Punching his jaw with your closed fist is probably going to hurt you as much, if not more, than him. Strike hard to soft and soft to hard for best effect.
Use movement and distraction to imbalance and overcome. Stay balanced, upright, and mobile, keeping your weight centered over your feet. Body positioning and mobility not only keep you out of harm’s way but also afford opportunities to counterstrike, knock your adversary down, and escape. Good balance is also needed if you are to generate powerful, effective techniques.
Don’t let yourself get boxed in. Use mobility to control the distance and the angles between yourself and the other guy. While this is paramount for armed assaults, it is very important for unarmed ones too. You’re not a tank so don’t fight like one.
Unless you are an experienced martial artist, don’t punch using a closed fist in a street fight. The odds are good that you’ll damage yourself at least as much as you will hurt your adversary. Even former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, a guy who clearly knows how to hit, broke his hand in a street brawl when he hit fellow boxer Mitch Green incorrectly. The incident took place in Harlem during August 1988. Furthermore, striking with a closed fist looks bad for potential witnesses, as it is clearly an offensive movement.
Go ahead and test it for yourself, it is easy enough to do. Find a brick or cement wall, make a good fist, and give it a light tap with your knuckles. Now, slap it good and hard with your open hand. Which one hurts more? The closed fist, of course. If you really insist on hitting with a closed fist, avoid targeting the other guy’s face. Body shots are much less likely to damage your hand, though you can still mess up your wrists if you do it incorrectly. Incidentally, that’s why boxers tape their hands and wrists.
Look at any teenage boy who has his hand in a cast, especially his right hand. If you see the two smallest fingers curled up in the cast, he’s got what’s called a “boxer’s fracture.” That means that he threw a looping right to the head and broke his metacarpal bones at the ring and/or pinky finger knuckles.
This brings us to the concept of contouring, a very important component of fighting. It is also an aspect that is commonly overlooked since it becomes pretty much irrelevant in tournament competitions where safety gear and heavy gloves dramatically change the dynamics of the situation. Contouring helps you identify the best target for any given technique. In general, hard parts strike soft targets and vice versa.
Here’s how it works: If you have ever punched someone in the jaw with your closed fist you undoubtedly know how painful that can be for both parties. Hard fist to hard jaw is simply no good. We have seen quite a few broken knuckles resulting from such mistakes. A palm-heel strike to the jaw, on the other hand, can be quite effective. Soft palm to hard jaw is a good equation. It not only meets the contouring rule but it is far more painful for the other guy.
Law enforcement officers are highly trained, yet they are frequently accused of overreacting and abusing the criminals they arrest. How much more likely is the average civilian, who has no policy or procedure to follow, to be similarly accused of wrongdoing in a fight?
If you take a close look at all of your striking surfaces, your feet, hands, knees, and elbows, you can see how targeting works at a more granular level. For example, the blade edge of your foot aligns best with the other guy’s joints (for example, the knee), while the ball of your foot makes a good fit with his groin or midsection, particularly if you use an upward arc when you strike. As you can see, different types of kicks are best for different targets.
The same thing applies to punches too. A single knuckle or finger strike fits the solar plexus better than the whole fist, even when you make it properly by connecting solely with the first two knuckles. A hammer fist aligns much better with the temple or the forehead than it does with the base of the jaw or stomach where an uppercut or palm-up straight punch might better apply.
If you have to defend yourself on the street and don’t have much training, you are best off trying to knock his attack aside so that you can get away. Open hand slaps are great defensively, deflecting incoming blows with relative ease. If you are going to strike back, we recommend that you connect with you open hands, elbows, or knees in a fight. Stay away from most closed-fisted techniques, save for the hammer fist where you strike with the bottom of your hand rather than hitting with your knuckles.
Don’t hit with a closed fist unless you have sufficient training to do so without hurting yourself in the process. If you really want to strike with a closed fist, plan where you strike carefully, aiming for soft areas of the opponent’s body such as his kidneys or solar plexus.
If you have ever watched football, basketball, or other college or professional sports, you have, no doubt, seen instances where one player fouls another who subsequently retaliates. In the majority of those cases, it is the second player that the referee observes committing the infraction. His eye is drawn toward the initial motion, yet he only notices the retaliatory strike. Consequently, it is often the victim who is penalized rather than the guy who started the confrontation.
Unfortunately, it works that way on the street as well. Witnesses frequently see the reaction of the victim and think that his defense is the first blow. Consequently, the person who initiates a fight is perceived as the good guy. If witnesses misinterpret what actually occurred, that could be highly problematic for you when the police arrive or things get to court.
We recently did an online news search of the key words “police brutality,” which resulted in 918 stories reported within 30 days of our query. Law enforcement officers are highly trained, following specific policies and procedures as they conduct their business, yet they are frequently accused of overreacting and abusing the criminals they arrest regardless of whether or not they stay within procedural specifications. How much more likely is the average civilian, who has no policy or procedure to follow, to be similarly accused of wrongdoing?
If you really want to protect yourself, you need to make sure that everyone around you knows that you are the good guy when it comes to a fight. So, how can you create a witness who is likely to interpret your just actions favorably? You create witnesses by using your mouth as a weapon. It can be just as potent as your fists or feet in a fight and is often even more important in the long run.
Start by acting afraid—you probably are anyway—by verbally calling for help. There is an off chance that you can ward off your assailant or convince someone to intervene on your behalf simply by shouting for help. Even if you can’t, you might still convince others around that you are the good guy. Shouting something along the lines of, “Oh my God, don’t kill me with that knife!” is a pretty good indicator of peril. It clearly differentiates you from the other guy and should help justify your use of force in court if it gets that far.
“I don’t want to fight you,” “Please don’t hurt me,” “Put down the weapon,” and “Help, he’s got a gun” all put you in a much better light than “Go ahead, make my day!” or “I’m gonna kill you sucker!” Think about various scenarios ahead of time so that you will have a better chance of articulating strategically. It is pretty easy to shout something during a fight. The real challenge is finding words that put you in the best possible light and your assailant in the worst. In other words, it is easy to shout but hard to verbalize so you need to practice this. Many martial arts classes do role-playing and scenario drills that give you the opportunity to exercise your verbal skills while fighting.
What you say before, during, and after a confrontation holds much weight in convincing witnesses that you are the good guy in the fight. What you do has significant impact as well. Once you have evaded the initial attack and disarmed, disabled, or escaped your assailant, be wary of reengaging the enemy. It is not only dangerous physically but also puts you on dangerous ground perceptually as well.
If, for example, you knock your attacker to the ground then proceed to kick or pummel him, you will be seen as overreacting even in many cases where you are on sound tactical ground. A far better tactic in this example would be to precede any further action with verbal commands such as, “stay down,” “stop fighting me,” “drop the weapon,” or “don’t make me hurt you.”
Your mouth is an important weapon. Don’t forget to use it. There is a long list of phrases in Appendix B that you might choose to use.
Darrell, a burly 200-pound logger friend of Wilder’s, had a very near miss. His chain-saw tangled on a log, bucked up, and bounced toward his throat. The good news was that he saved his life by blocking the running saw blade with his hand, but the bad news was that it ripped open his palm and tore him up pretty good.
A week or so later, long before the injury had healed very much, he decided to go drinking with some friends, trying to unwind. Unfortunately, he ran afoul of another guy who was spoiling for a fight. The bully saw Darrell’s injury and hoped to take advantage of his weakness. This other guy was big, maybe even a bit bigger than Darrell, yet he wasn’t used to getting up at the crack of dawn, climbing up and down hills through the woods, and wrestling logs for a living. He came on strong, but the fight was short. Using his left, uninjured hand, Darrell picked the other guy up, carried him flailing in the air for half a dozen steps, and tossed him out the door down a flight of stairs.
As the bully found out, it doesn’t pay to play the other guy’s game. The bully was used to being the stronger guy, throwing his weight around to his best advantage. Unfortunately, he ran across a guy who was not only stronger, but sore, tired, and irritable as well. When you’re going to fight a big guy, it doesn’t make in sense to face him toe-to-toe. Moving off line, striking at his knees, or otherwise cutting him down to size is not only safer, but far more likely to succeed too.
Jeff, a nidan (2nd degree black belt) in karate was a big guy, about 6 feet 3 inches and built like a tank. He was not only skilled and strong, but in extremely good shape too. One day he got into a fender bender on the highway. Both he and the other guy got out of their cars to take a look at the damage. This dude was big too, a lineman who played a starting role on a nationally ranked college football team. Unfortunately, what could have been a civilized exchange was not. Tempers flared and things got physical.
As a karate expert, Jeff thought he could hold his own; after all, he was nearly the same size as the other guy. Much to his surprise, the football player simply grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the side of the car. And there was nothing that he could do about it. The fight was over almost as soon as it began. What went wrong? Well, the lineman was used to using his weight and his hands to move big, strong, highly skilled guys on the field. Pac-10 college football is a pretty elite group, and this guy could play with the best. Gross physicality was his game, and Jeff stumbled right into it and lost big time.
No matter how big you are, there’s always somebody bigger. No matter how strong, there’s always somebody stronger. If you’re used to playing the big guy game and that’s all you’ve got, you’re in for a nasty surprise when you find yourself the smaller or weaker man. If you’re going to train to fight, you need to understand both the big guy’s and the little guy’s role. There are different strategies for each and knowing how to fight in either role is key. While you cannot fight him down the middle if you’re overmatched, you can still break him down from the outside. If he’s big, fight like a small guy, and vice versa.
The size differential is but one aspect of disparity in a fight. The other has to do with your training and natural tendencies. Here’s how it works: Let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re a striker. Maybe you study karate. While the art of karate encompasses grappling, throwing, pressure points, and submission applications, it’s primarily a striking style, attacking with fists, elbows, and open-hand techniques. Maybe you’ve practiced boxing or are just plain good with your hands. If that’s your strength, use it. Karate and boxing are both very solid in-fighting styles. Get close, throw a lot of punches and maybe a short kick or two, and pound the other guy into submission so that you can escape to safety.
Taekwondo practitioners, on the other hand, are very good with their feet. If you’re a hand striker, tangling up in kicking range would be a recipe for disaster. That’s playing to the other guy’s strength. You’d need to get in close to take away his range advantage in order to do the most damage with your hand techniques. Similarly, judoka and jujitsu practitioners will want to go “ground and pound,” knocking you down and busting up your joints or choking you into submission. That’s their game, not yours. It’s very hard to throw an effective punch when you’re lying flat on your back with the wind knocked out of you. Watch just about any MMA match and you’ll see good examples of that.
No matter how big you are, there’s always somebody bigger. No matter how strong, there’s always somebody stronger. Play your game, not the other guy’s.
It’s foolhardy to think that you can overcome an adversary by doing what he’s best at. Play your game, not the other guy’s.
When Kane first began training in karate, he was frequently matched up with another practitioner named Mike. They took their training very seriously, often practicing late after class and/or on weekends. Working toward their green belt tests, they repeatedly performed a prearranged tandem sparring drill using techniques from one of the kata (forms) that they were supposed to know on the test. One of these sequences called for a front kick toward the groin from one partner, while the other guy turned his body to pull his family jewels off of the line of attack while simultaneously sweeping aside and deflecting the kick with his arm.
Kane and Mike worked this drill for several weeks, quickly reaching a point where they could perform it swiftly and well, or so they thought. One day in class, they had the opportunity to perform this drill with Scott, a visiting black belt. Kane went first. The first time Scott threw the front kick, Kane took a solid strike to the groin, a severely painful and thoroughly embarrassing incident.
He realized that during their friendly practice sessions, he and Mike had subconsciously aimed their kicks away from each other, eliminating the need to seriously block the techniques. Turning their bodies a little was all it took to avoid getting hit by these un-aimed strikes. Since the deflections were relatively unnecessary, they had not been training realistically even though they thought that they had been. The first properly aimed, full-speed blow clearly pointed out that shortcoming. Thankfully, it happened on the practice floor rather than in actual combat on the street.
Kane found out the hard way that there is a big difference between “honoring” your partner’s technique and simply letting him do what he wants to unhindered. You don’t want to squash your training partners yet if you are too nice you do just as great a disservice. Many martial artists, particularly newer ones, fall into this same trap of thinking that they are training realistically when they are not. Sadly, many discover their shortcomings for the first time when they try something out on the street—clearly not a good idea.
If you expect to do well in a fight, you must examine what you are doing through the lens of an opponent rather than a training partner. The other guy is going to be doing his damnedest to sabotage whatever it is that you want to do. And he wants to hurt you in the process.
Let’s say for a moment that you want to restrain him. You cannot just walk up to the other guy and apply a lock or a hold. Well, perhaps you can if he goes along with you, but certainly not if he is an unwilling adversary, so that’s the perspective you must take. Grappling techniques require very close proximity and a good set up. No matter how skilled you are, the other guy will smack you upside the head before you can get close enough to try your technique if you don’t have a good set-up first.
Throws work the same way. You must maneuver him into a position from which you can imbalance him and then apply the technique. Frequently that’s done by striking him to cause pain and disorientation. We oftentimes call this set-up the “blow before the throw,” borrowing from internationally renowned martial arts instructor Iain Abernethy who coined the term. This concept of striking to disrupt is critical to street-effective techniques. In fact, the goal ought to be to drop him with your initial blow, applying a lock or hold only when further control is required such as restraining the other guy until the police arrive.
Striking to disrupt and disrupting to strike is a very effective way of breaking through the other guy’s defenses in general, not just for facilitating control techniques. If you try to punch him in the face, for example, odds are pretty good that he will block it. Even untrained individuals are instinctively good at protecting their heads; it’s in the nature of the human beast. We cover up our “soft bits” instinctually. Stomping on his foot or kicking his ankle first, however, causes his head and hands to follow the pain. He involuntarily looks down and flinches inward. This usually opens up the head shot. So, you strike his foot, disrupting his stance and concentration, and then you use the disruption to gain the opportunity to attack his head.
In this fashion, you can work the other guy’s body—striking to disrupt, and then using the temporary disruption for an even better strike. Attacks to the feet, knees, or ankles; slaps to the ears; and assaults to the hands, wrists or elbows are all disruptive strikes that are much easier to achieve than starting off with the core where all his vital areas are. It’s really tough to get there directly. With a good disruption, you can follow up with shots to his eyes, throat, solar plexus, groin, and other painful, vital targets.
Notice that these are all striking techniques, the kind of stuff that boxers, taekwondo practitioners, and karateka like to employ. Hitting someone in a street fight is a good way to retain your mobility. When you are moving and striking, you are much safer than slugging it out in place or rolling around grappling. Although many locks and holds can be applied standing up if you have sufficient training, the majority are most effective when applied to an adversary on the ground. It is simply easier to control the guy’s movement or immobilize him that way. The problem is that if you go to the ground in a self-defense situation and your opponent has any friends around, you have put yourself in an extremely vulnerable position.
This means that locks, holds, and throws have limited utility in most street fights. They can certainly be used in the right situations, but by no means universally. Be very sure that the tactical situation warrants such applications before attempting them outside the tournament hall. It’s not just going to the ground or constricting your ability to move and escape that you need to worry about. If you have competed in tournaments, you undoubtedly know that many opponents will yield to submission techniques, tapping out before the lock damages their joint or the choke knocks them unconscious. Unfortunately, it rarely works that way on the street. Unlike the competitor who knows he’s going to be immediately revived if you choke him out, for example, the other guy will think that his life is on the line and fight for everything he’s worth. Consequently, if you attempt a strangulation technique on the street you need very good form and solid control. Expect a wild ride before he collapses or submits.
A black belt in judo, Wilder once tried to subdue a knife-wielding attacker using the classical hadaka jime technique from his sport. A so-called “naked” choke because it does not use the other guy’s uniform gi to strangle him with, this application can readily be applied on the street. While he was able to take the knife away from the bad guy, he simply couldn’t knock him out. As a black belt in karate too, he certainly could have pounded the guy yet he was trying to capture and hold him until the police could arrive.
Nevertheless, the bad guy fought like hell and was eventually able to wiggle free and get away. His determination to escape was probably fueled, in part, by an incident that occurred about a week earlier where a would-be car thief named Edward Zanassi was accidentally choked to death by the owner of the vehicle he was trying to steal when the good guy tried to restrain him. The guy Wilder fought may very well have had heard about Zanassi’s demise, since it was extensively covered in newspaper and television broadcasts. The news undoubtedly motivated him to fight even harder to break free.
Adrenaline robs you of fine motor coordination in a fight, so you have to keep things simple and direct. Finger locks, for example, are great parlor tricks. Imminently painful, you can latch onto a victim and really make him dance with one, yet they are virtually impossible to pull off in a real fight, particularly when sweat, blood, pepper spray, or other slippery substances are thrown into the mix. While precise grabbing movements are extraordinarily tough, even imprecise ones like grabbing a wrist or hooking a leg can be problematic unless you’re highly trained. If you try to get too fancy or precise, you will dramatically hurt your chances for success.
However, gross motor movements, especially those that target vital areas of the adversary’s body, work pretty well. Applications on the street just don’t work the same as they do in the training hall, in part because you are fighting an adversary who’s doing his all-out best to defeat you. It’s tough enough to get in a few solid blows without getting thumped yourself; don’t compound the mistake by trying the wrong thing.
Now an army is exposed to six several calamities, not arising from natural causes, but from faults for which the general is responsible. These are:…(3) collapse…
When the fight comes, always endeavor to chase the enemy around to your left side. Chase him towards awkward places and try to keep him with his back to awkward places. When the enemy gets into an inconvenient position, do not let him look around, but conscientiously chase him around and pin him down.
Avoid going to the ground in a fight. The ground is where you can easily get stomped, kicked, and maimed, if not outright killed. If you land on the ground, get up as fast as you can. Grapplers will tell you that submission techniques, or “ground and pound,” are great means to end a fight. They are absolutely correct, in the tournament ring. On the street however, they are flat-out wrong.
Going to the ground in a real fight puts you in a position where your adversary can easily stomp a mud-hole in you. Even if he chooses not to do so or drops down with you to grapple, his buddies will most likely put the boots to you. Or his girlfriend will. Either way, you are in dire straits; the ground is a very bad place to be.
Going to the ground in a real fight puts you in a position where your adversary and/or his friends can stomp a mud-hole in you. It’s a very precarious place to be.
Sitting in a bar one day Wilder watched a conversation between two men at an adjoining table grow in intensity. As they argued, these men sat side by side, turned slightly toward each other. One of them was wearing a white t-shirt. Without any telegraphing of his intensions, white t-shirt guy suddenly reached up behind the other man’s head and grabbed a wad of hair. Grip secured, he stood up and jerked the other guy down to the floor.
In the one deft motion, the other guy went down hard. Mr. T-shirt spread both hands out, supporting his weight between two tables, and swiftly kicked the other guy six or seven times in the face. Before anyone could react, he launched himself forward and ran from the bar.
The elapsed time for the entire fight was, perhaps, four or five seconds. By the time it was over, the other guy probably needed serious dental work and definitely needed stitches. This is a good example of the how going to the ground will get you stomped.
And if you think you want to be doing the stomping, like white t-shirt guy, listen up. One of our students came into the dojo one night and told us the story of a fight at his high school. When one student hit the ground, the other guy managed to remain standing. He used this advantage to kick his fallen opponent viciously several times in the head hard enough to dislocate the other kid’s eye. His kicks actually crushed the bone in the side of the other kid’s head, collapsed the eye socket, and popped out the eyeball.
The only people who can safely go to the ground in a real fight are police officers, security personnel, and other people who work in highly trained, well-coordinated teams. For most civilians, it’s an invitation to a boot party with you as the guest of honor.
The kid who did the kicking, oh, he had been in trouble before, in and out of juvenile detention several times in his young life. This particular fight happened just after his eighteenth birthday, however, so his reality shifted a bit. Suddenly he faced aggravated assault charges; cooling his heels with other incarcerated adults until his trial. He enjoyed Thanks-giving, Christmas, and New Years in jail. He not only missed his high school graduation but also faced a five- to seven-year prison term. Try to get a decent job with no high school diploma, or rent an apartment after you have checked the yes box that is on every apartment rental application where it asks, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”
Working stadium security, Kane has helped break up hundreds of fights. In his experience, combatants tend to go to the ground about 30 percent of the time, not counting situations where one person falls and the other stands over him while continuing to attack like white t-shirt guy or felony student have done. The most severe injuries he has seen occurred when two guys became enjoined in a wrestling contest and then one or the other’s friends weighed into the battle. Kicks to the head are brutal. They are vicious, bloody, and extremely dangerous. You really do not want to be the recipient of one.
Ever seen the victim of a Berkeley stomp? That’s when a guy, usually someone who pops off verbally to the wrong person, is shoved up against a curb with his mouth wrapped around the cement. He is then kicked in the head, fracturing the jaw and knocking out his teeth. It’s ugly. Perhaps not quite as bad as having your eyeball popped out from the force of a blow, but ugly enough that it is clearly something you will want to avoid.
Submission grappling works great in the ring, but not so well on the street. If you are on the ground, you are vulnerable. You can easily get stomped, kicked, and seriously messed up by your adversary. If you become tied up while wrestling, your opponent’s friends might put the boots to you as well. Unless you are a skilled professional working with an experienced team, the ground is a dangerous place to be, one best avoided if at all possible.
The only people who can safely go to the ground in a real fight are police officers, security personnel, and other people who work in highly trained, well coordinated teams. As one or more officers take down, control, and restrain the subject, the rest secure the perimeter so that they will not be overly vulnerable during the process. Unless you are a skilled professional working with an experienced team, the ground is a dangerous place to be, one best avoided if at all possible.
When you leave your own country behind, and take your army across neighborhood territory, you find yourself on critical ground. When there are means of communication on all four sides, the ground is one of intersecting highways.
Stand in the sun; that is, take up an attitude with the sun behind you. If the situation does not allow this, you must try to keep the sun on your right side. In buildings, you must stand with the entrance behind you or to your right. Make sure that your rear is unobstructed, and that there is free space on your left, your right side being occupied with your sword attitude.
It was going to be a great night. Motorhead was in town and Wilder and his buddy James were going to the show. Of course, nobody expects a kindergarten game of hop-scotch at a heavy metal concert, but this was going to be different. You see the club that was hosting the band opened the bar at 7:00 P.M., yet Motorhead wouldn’t take the stage until about 11:00. You do the math; that’s a lot of drinking time. Oh, and to add to it, several bars were just across the street and down the block.
By the time the band started to play, the booze-fueled crowd was ready. There was slam dancing, puking, and so many ejections from the show that Wilder lost count. A flicked cigarette landed on Lemmy’s (the bass player and singer) set list and it caught on fire, the equipment was not sounding right, and the band left the stage until everything could be fixed. As you might expect, this interruption in the middle of the show added the proverbial fuel to the fire. By the time things got going again, the crowd was in a very rowdy mood.
The bartenders handed out Ziploc baggies of ice to bruised patrons. Down front against the rail was sheer combat, as Wilder quickly found out. The guy behind him suddenly decided that Wilder had his space and was ready to fight to get it back. Wilder, in turn, was not keen on giving up the spot. Nudges turned to pushes, to shoves, to blows. Wilder was sober, heavier, and had some martial arts skills. The other guy was drunk, stupid, and felt no pain. Sort of an even match in an odd way… Ultimately, however, Wilder was able to put enough hurt on the other guy to make him back down. He didn’t crush him because he wanted to watch the show rather than go to jail, yet he did make the other guy stop trying to fight and disappear back into the crowd.
At the end of the show, Wilder was confident that the pushy guy would be back, however, most likely with friends. Moving through the crowd at the end of the show would place him at risk, since he didn’t know what the other guy’s friends looked like. He didn’t like the idea of being exposed on all sides, so Wilder turned and put his back to the stage, leaning against the rail. He now only had to sweep 180 degrees to spot any potential danger, not try to look across a full 360.
As the crowd dwindled, a young guy broke from the throng and started toward Wilder. Wilder watched him warily and adjusted his stance. The younger guy stopped, held up his hands, and said, “Thanks man, that guy was an asshole. He was hitting everybody.”
“Oh, okay,” Wilder replied, “You seen him around?”
“No I think he left,” the kid said.
Assuming that would be a good time to leave, Wilder moved deliberately and swiftly through the residual crowd, heading for the door, up the stairs, and out to the street. Two separate fights were going on when he got outside. These altercations attracted a lot of attention as the bouncers dragged combatants apart and told them to get off their sidewalk.
Moving away from the fights, Wilder placed his back against the brick building near the band’s tour bus and waited for his buddy James to show up. The bus screened him from the street while the wall protected his back. Luckily, the pushy guy never showed up. Either he’d forgotten all about the confrontation, was scared off by Wilder’s preparedness, or lost track of his intended victim. Consequently, instead of having to fight as Wilder had feared, he got to meet Phil Campbell, the band’s guitarist instead. Campbell had to take his arm down from around one of the blonde groupies in order to shake Wilder’s hand, but that’s not really the point.
The point is that nothing bad happened as a result of the altercation because Wilder protected his back. Don’t let anybody get behind you if you can help it. That’s not entirely possible in a crowd, however, so in such settings you need to keep your awareness level high.
One of the best tactics you can use during a fight is to get behind your adversary. Humans are really good at perceiving and responding to danger that is in front of them. With a bit of training, we can become pretty good at defending against attacks from either side, yet we are really lousy at dealing with dangers coming from directly behind. If you are behind the other guy or tucked a bit to the side in behind his shoulder, it’s very hard for him to reach you, yet you can strike with impunity, delivering one or two solid blows before he can reposition himself to respond effectively.
In part, this is because humans cannot see directly behind themselves without adjusting to face the threat. It’s nearly impossible to block an attack from behind you either. Dodging is often the best option. Further, there are only a limited number of counterattacks that you can launch to the rear, stuff like back kicks, and reverse elbow strikes, and reverse head butts. It’s even tougher if someone manages to tuck himself behind your shoulder where your only option is an elbow strike.
Consequently, if you’re behind the other guy you’re very well positioned to strike and/or escape. Conversely, if he’s behind you, you’re in a lot of trouble. Don’t let the other guy get behind you in a fight. It’s a losing proposition.
All warfare is based on deception.
Always chase the enemy into bad footholds, obstacles at the side, and so on, using the virtues of the place to establish predominant positions from which to fight. You must research and train diligently in this.
Fighting is not a democratic process. There is no exchange of ideas here, no ‘I’m going to hit you first and then let you think about it a bit before it becomes your turn to hit me.’ Hopefully, there is no exchanging of strikes at all. Street fighting is about physically beating your opponent down as rapidly as possible and escaping the scene. No hanging out, no going back.
Modern warfare works pretty much that way too. When it comes to one-on-one aircraft dogfights, for example, they simply don’t exist in the modern world. The entangled maneuvering from World War I and II flying aces, or the tricky choreography from movies like Top Gun really don’t happen anymore. This is because the pilot that can identify an enemy first, from the farthest distance possible, is at the greatest advantage. Because modern technologies let pilots identify potential targets from miles away, there is no longer a need to spot an enemy up close or fight in visual range.
The modern strategy is to spot the enemy before he sees you, strike first, and kill him before he even knows you are there. It really is more of an assassination than a fight. There is no sizing each other up, maneuvering for position, and exchanging blows. In fact, it is a lot like the bad karate school in the movie The Karate Kid. They would yell their motto, “Strike first, strike hard, and show no mercy.” That pretty much sums up a real fight. Combatants gain advantage, use their lead, and unrelentingly attack until it’s over. Not very democratic at all.
Here’s a real life example: A high school football game went badly for Wilder’s team. The game started poorly and tempers escalated throughout the competition. The officiating was poor, the coaches got mad, and the fans in the stands were irate. By the end of the game, most everyone was furious.
Humans are really good at perceiving and responding to dangers in front of them and to a lesser degree from either side. Unfortunately, we are really lousy at dealing with dangers coming from directly behind. Consequently, if the other guy gets behind you he can strike with impunity, delivering at least one or two solid blows before you can reposition yourself to respond effectively.
Players began pushing and shoving each other. Name-calling escalated the tension to the point where the two teams stopped in the parking lot on the way back to their respective locker rooms. A fight was clearly about to begin. Before we describe what happened, it’s important to point out that if you have ever played football you know that taking your helmet off on the field is a foolish thing to do. With all the pads you wear (for example, shoulder, forearm, hip, knee), exposing your head by taking off your helmet is much like asking to get hit in the face. It’s the easiest unprotected area to strike.
You’d think the same rule would apply in the parking lot, but not so. Darren, Wilder’s team’s defensive captain, took off his helmet, held it by the facemask, and swung it right into the temple of another guy’s helmet. That blow buckled the other guy’s knees, sending him reeling. Suddenly the rest of the fight was on.
After a few minutes, the fight was broken up, ending everything but the name-calling, but Wilder learned an important lesson in the process. While everybody “knew” that taking your helmet off was an invitation to get hit, Darren saw his helmet as a weapon. He broke the rules as everyone else understood them. He came up with an unconventional approach, struck first, and did not allow a response from the other guy.
Most fights work this same way. When the other guy attacks, he will employ surprise and cheat to win, perhaps utilizing a weapon. He will bend the rules as much as possible to gain advantage. No, fighting is not a democratic process.
Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
Some of the world’s strategists are concerned only with sword fencing, and limit their training to flourishing the long sword and carriage of the body. But is dexterity alone sufficient to win? This is not the essence of the Way.
Wilder’s judo instructor, a two-time national grand champion back in the 1950s, had a simple mantra when it came to fighting. Kenji’s principle was, “If you have a position that is not the best or not the one you want, stay with it anyway until your opponent gives you something better. Don’t go looking for a better position. Wait until he gives you one.”
Keeping what you’ve got until something better comes along is sound advice not only for sport, but for street fighting as well. If, for example, you grasp the other guy’s arm, keep it. Use it to control him until he gives up something better, say, his head. Neck cranks are much better for takedowns and control techniques than arm locks or throws, yet they are also much harder to get without the other guy doing something stupid first. Sure, you can trick him, of course, but don’t force things you can’t naturally get.
If you meet a jet fighter pilot today and ask him if he has ever been in a dogfight like the movie Top Gun, the answer is most likely going to be “No.” With today’s technology, the real fight is about spotting and destroying the enemy before he even knows that you are there. Acquire the enemy first, strike first, and never let him know what hit him. It really is more of an assassination than a fight. Not a very democratic exchange of blows, now, is it? Well, aerial combat is not democratic and neither is street fighting.
Forcing techniques is dangerous. Your opponent will be doing his damnedest to beat you down, so do your best not to let him win. Keep things simple and straightforward and you won’t self-destruct. Don’t get stupid. Don’t get too smart for your own good, trying fancy or flashy techniques.
This is important whenever you practice martial arts. What gets trained gets done, so if you practice for a fight, you need to do so realistically. Sadly, many folks, even veteran police officers, fail to do so. In his outstanding book On Combat, Loren Christensen described what can happen when you bake in bad habits through repeated, unrealistic practice.
One police officer gave another example of learning to do the wrong thing. He took it upon himself to practice disarming an attacker. At every opportunity, he would have his wife, a friend, or a partner hold a pistol on him so he could practice snatching it away. He would snatch the gun, hand it back, and repeat several more times. One day he and his partner responded to an unwanted man in a convenience store. He went down one aisle, while his partner went down another. At the end of the first aisle, he was taken by surprise when the suspect stepped around the corner and pointed a revolver at him. In the blink of an eye, the officer snatched the gun away, shocking the gunman with his speed and finesse. No doubt this criminal was surprised and confused even more when the officer handed the gun right back to him, just as he had practiced hundreds of times before. Fortunately for this officer, his partner came around the corner and shot the subject.
Whatever is drilled in during training comes out the other end in combat. In one West Coast city, officers training in defensive tactics used to practice an exercise in such a manner that it could have eventually been disastrous in a real life-and-death situation. The trainee playing the arresting officer would simulate a gun by pointing his finger at the trainee playing the suspect, and give him verbal commands to turn around, place his hands on top of his head, and so on. This came to a screeching halt when officers began reporting to the training unit that they had pointed with their fingers in real arrest situations. They must have pantomimed their firearms with convincing authority because every suspect had obeyed their commands. Not wanting to push their luck, the training unit immediately ceased having officers simulate weapons with their fingers and ordered red-handled dummy guns to be used in training.
As you can see by these examples, it’s very easy to train yourself physically or mentally to self destruct. Visualization exercises can be an important aspect of your training. As with hands-on practice, you need to conduct your mental exercises realistically and with solid forethought. Plan to succeed and don’t hinder yourself with destructive practice.
If you use visualization exercises, be sure to only see perfection in your mind’s eye. If necessary, elongate the component movements of your techniques as you think about them, breaking things down into small enough pieces to imagine doing each one flawlessly, even it takes significantly longer than a real-life performance. It is okay to imagine doing things in slow motion until you feel comfortable that you have captured all the important nuances properly. Once you are confident that you have covered everything important, increase the speed at which you see yourself performing in your mind.
The other guy will be doing everything he can to win in a fight. Don’t make his job any easier. Don’t get too smart for your own good, trying fancy or flashy techniques. Keep things simple and direct so that you won’t self-destruct.
The other guy will be doing everything he can to win. Don’t make his job easier. Keep things simple and direct, using techniques you are good at and comfortable with. Practice realistically, both mentally and physically. Don’t self destruct!
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
You should not speak of strong and weak long swords. If you just wield the long sword in a strong spirit your cutting will become coarse, and if you use the sword coarsely you will have difficulty in winning.
Wilder and his friend Kim had gone down the hill toward the river to visit with a bum who had been camping out in the area. Wilder remembers standing there wide-eyed in wonderment as the old bum and intermittent jailbird explained how to put a sharpened screwdriver or toothbrush into an unsuspecting fellow inmate. “You stick ‘em in the butt, right about here,” he said. “That way the leg doesn’t work so well and he can’t run from you.”
You may be thinking fistfight but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the other guy is too. Knives, guns, bludgeons, beer bottles, and a host of other nasty tools may be in your adversary’s arsenal. Think about that old jailbird’s advice. It’s chilling to think that he was counseling eleven-year-olds how to ambush someone in a fashion that ensured that the victim couldn’t escape until they’d be able to kill him. Sadly, that attitude isn’t really all that uncommon.
Whenever you fight, you are almost certainly going to get hurt, even if you don’t run up against a psychotic foe. It’s unavoidable if the battle lasts more than a few seconds. The real question is how bad you will get hurt. If he’s armed and you’re not, the damage will almost certainly be severe. If he’s bigger, faster, or stronger than you are, or he’s got friends that join in, it’s all bad. Remember, if he’s attacking, he thinks he can win and is probably cheating in some way in order to do so.
Take this example: most young men carry pocketknives these days. Many are willing to use them on you, either because they don’t fully appreciate the consequences of their actions or, in some cases, because they are too furious to care. Then again, they may just be a sociopath like that old jailbird.
Knives are great tools, yet they automatically bump the encounter up from simple assault to aggravated assault or possibly even murder. Use one on another human being without just cause and you’ll undoubtedly spend a whole lot of quality time in prison, yet your average street punk isn’t thinking that far ahead. He’s reacting to the emotions of the situation, paying attention solely to the encounter he’s in, right here, right now. In other words, all he cares about is defeating you, no matter how he has to go about doing it.
The vast majority of people who carry a knife have never used it as anything other than a tool for slicing fruit, opening envelopes, cutting down boxes, or similar routine endeavors. They have never hurt another human being with their blade. They have never seen what the smallest amount of blood can do, how the smallest amount of blood can make them lose their grip on the knife, slip on the floor, or lose their lunch down the drain. Unfortunately, they don’t need any experience, special skills, or extraordinary intelligence to hurt someone bad with that knife. Heck, most any sharp object will do.
If all you got was a few bruises on your arms after the fight, you did just fine. Unfortunately, most street fights don’t end quite so pleasantly, even for the victor.
Think for a moment about the type of person it takes to truly want to stick you with his knife, the guy who looks forward to ambushing you with a blade. Premeditated attacks are even worse than unhampered rage. Here’s why: knives are very intimate weapons. That means that if you’re facing the pointy end, the guy holding it either hates you with a white-hot passion or is totally out of his mind with fury and/or terror.
There is no reasoning with someone who is fully prepared to become drenched in your blood and viscera, to smell your bowels as they release, and to hear your cries for help as they fade to whimpers of pain and finally to the rattling gurgle of your last breath. If you are facing someone like this, he is ready, willing, and able to cut you as many times as it takes, to stab you as deep and as often as necessary to finish the job he has in mind. That kind of guy is real damn scary, be he a big brawny biker or skinny little computer geek. The blade makes them both deadly.
Fighting should be avoided whenever possible because you simply cannot predict the chaos and mayhem that comes along with it. If a knife or other weapon enters the fight, experience says that you are not very likely to see it before you have already been hurt. You will get hurt and you may get hurt very, very badly.
It’s hard for many people to visualize dying in a fight. Because of this, the threat of death isn’t really much of a deterrent for most young men. Visualize instead spending the rest of your life maimed, crippled, or grossly disfigured, confined to a bed or a wheelchair. Think about all the things you’ll never do and the places you’ll never see in such a condition.
Although all violence is bad, armed assaults are far more dangerous to the victim than unarmed ones. Sadly, ordinary citizens are victimized an average of 1,773,000 times per year by weapon-wielding thugs in the United States alone. While crimes of non-lethal violence committed with or without weapons were about equally likely to result in victim injury, armed assaults are three-and-a-half times as likely as unarmed encounters to result in serious damage to the victim, such as broken bones, internal injuries, loss of consciousness, or similar trauma resulting in extended hospitalization. Worse still, 96 percent of all homicides involve some type of weapon.
Because you are going to get hurt, it is prudent to end the fight as quickly as possible to minimize the damage. This means that if you cannot avoid fighting altogether, your initial response needs to place you in control of the momentum. You need to keep from getting hit, stop the other guy from continuing to strike, and do it in as few moves as possible. Once you have dealt with the immediate threat, your next move needs to cross him up, destroy his balance, or knock him on his ass. If he’s got a weapon, your response should be, if not fatal, at least severely disabling.
When you fight, you are almost certainly going to get hurt. It’s unavoidable if the battle lasts more than a few seconds. The real question is how bad it will be. If he’s armed and you’re not, the damage will be quite severe. It’s in your enlightened self-interest, therefore, to avoid fighting when possible and when it’s not, end confrontations as quickly as possible. Your initial response needs to place you in control of the momentum. If he’s got a weapon, it should be severely disabling if not fatal.
He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others.
There was an amusing scene on The Drew Carey Show where the star was challenged to a fight in a bar. Always the comedian, Carey responded, “Okay I’ll fight you, but I am going to have to kill you quick since I’m out of shape.” That’s an entertaining response, yet it has some bearing in real life. It’s important to recognize your limitations and account for them as you strategize the way in which you will fight.
Limitation comes in two flavors: inherent and manufactured. Inherent limitations are then broken into two more categories: mental and physical. Physical limitations are a hard wall to hit. You can work out in the gym to become stronger, practice speed drills to become faster, or perform aerobic exercise to build your endurance, yet you cannot get around your natural genetic limitations. Some people, for example, are blessed with an abundance of fast-twitch muscles. If you are not that lucky, you will never be as fast as someone who is, yet you can train yourself to become as fast as your body is capable of being. Some people are tall while others are short. You cannot change how you are born; you can only make the most of what you’ve got.
The more you are involved in a physical activity, the more in touch you are going to be with your body. Physical activities like aerobics, weightlifting, yoga, or martial arts, or tough jobs like logging or construction give you a contact with your body that is beneficial. It helps you understand what you’re physically capable of.
The presence of a weapon changes everything. There is no reasoning with someone who is fully prepared to become drenched in your blood and viscera, to smell your bowels as they release, and to hear your cries for help as they fade to whimpers of pain and finally to the rattling gurgle of your last breath.
Following the completion of the physical aptitude test battery, Coach Garner stated firmly, “The vertical jump is the one single best test of athletic ability.” He looked at his clipboard, “Wilder, you better wrestle. Don’t even think about basketball.” That direct, blunt, and very honest comment set Wilder on the path of wresting, judo, and football, and has held his martial arts training in good stead. He simply doesn’t have the right body type to excel at certain other sports like basketball.
In some ways, the mental game is even tougher than the physical. There is a saying that goes “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” There are moments in all these sports where you want to say, “Get me off the mat.” You can choose to win or lose at that point, whatever it takes to get it over with. Then the limitation turns to mental.
Have you ever been hit so hard that you lost control of your body? Have you ever had to run away from something as fast as you could for as long as you could? Such things transcend the mere physical to become significant mental challenges. Surviving a fight is often more of a mental issue than a physical one.
Look at members of the military, especially specialists in their field. These guys are well-conditioned athletes yet they are not bodybuilders. They may not be exceptionally big or strong yet they simply do not quit. Quitting isn’t even in their vocabulary. It turns into a mental attitude of “I will never quit.” As an example of this attitude, here are some United States military groups and their mottos:
• The 2nd Battalion 7th Marines: Ready For All, Yielding To None
• The 1st Marine Division, USMC: Mors De Contactus (Death on Contact)
• The 1st Recon Battalion: Celer — Silens — Mortali (Swift-Silent-Deadly)
Wilder sat across from a former Army Supply Officer Joe one day. Joe told him how he had deep respect for the specialists in the military. Wilder asked, “They must be physical monsters, super soldiers, and weightlifters. Real tough, right?” “No,” Joe said. “They are not defined by that. They are defined by the fact that they don’t quit… ever. They never quit.” He went on to talk about a friend of his that really wanted to be in this special elite military group, but during the training session he fractured his leg, not badly, but enough to have him wash out. He was going to have to wait until next year to attempt to qualify again, or so the manual read. Joe’s friend was stopped trying to leave the medical center with his fractured leg. His intent was to rejoin the training session; he was not going to quit.
If you’d like to get a deeper appreciation of what elite force training is truly like, we suggest you pick up a copy of Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Lutrell (and Patrick Robinson). While much of the book focuses on a failed attempt to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader in 2005, it also delves into the rigorous training that helped Lutrell forge the mental and physical fortitude necessary to survive being blasted unconscious by a rocket-propelled grenade, blown over a cliff, and left for dead. He had to fight off a group of Taliban assassins who were sent to finish him and then crawl seven miles through sheer mountains with a broken back before he was taken in by Pashtun tribesmen who risked their lives to protect him from the encircling killers. It’s a true story and a thrilling read that gives you great appreciation for the kind of mental conditioning elite forces develop and what that makes them capable of enduring.
Many people are aware of their physical limitation, at least to some degree, yet few are truly aware of what they are mentally capable of until put to the test in a life-threatening struggle. We hope you will not have to take that test, yet a “never quit” attitude can pull you through nearly anything you are physically capable of handling.
For example, during a routine hike in 2003, Aaron Ralston suddenly found himself in dire straights when an 800-pound boulder shifted unexpectedly and pinned his wrist to a canyon wall in a remote area of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. After six days of captivity, he realized that desperate measures were needed for survival. Using a cheap, dull pocketknife, he managed to amputate his own arm, rappel one-handed down a hill, and then hike six miles through the wilderness before someone found and rescued him. This extraordinary tale of survival shows what a sufficiently motivated person is capable of doing.
Manufactured limitations are important too. It is good to know what you are wearing on your feet for example. Cowboy boots are not the same as a pair of running shoes when it comes to footing; poor traction limits you in a fight. Tight fitting jeans restrict your range of movement in ways that cargo pants do not. A heavy meal recently consumed can adversely affect your performance as can a steady diet of hamburgers, fries, and other unhealthy foods.
Knowing your physical limitations helps you find creative ways achieving your goals. Knowing your physical strengths gives you ways to resolve situations. Seek out your limits, and know them. Ask your closest friends to speak to you about your weaknesses and limitations, your boss, you family, just as Wilder’s high school coach did for him, and then audit yourself. Find the one thing you’d like to improve and work on it; drill it just as you would drill it in the weight room. Once you have progressed sufficiently, set it aside and work on another. Improvement is a continuous process.
Limitations can be mental or physical, inherent or manufactured. Knowing your limitations helps you find creative means for achieving your goals. Surviving a fight is often more of a mental issue than a physical one. Seek out your limits and know them.
To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands.
When it is difficult to cut an enemy down either one hand, you must use both hands.
The idea that someone else is going to join you in a fight out of the goodness of his heart or because he simply doesn’t like the other guy too is about as dumb an idea as they come. Even in a clear-cut case of self-defense, an honest-to-God crisis that can affect everyone around you, you simply cannot count on others to get involved. People tend to act in their own self-interest. Why help you if they might get hurt, jailed, or killed too? Some people will, yet most won’t.
For example, there was a fairly dramatic incident on US Airways flight 78 from Phoenix to Seattle during the final approach in June 2007. An unruly passenger fought with flight attendants and tried to open an over-wing escape hatch, something that would have depressurized and crashed the plane had he been successful. At first, no one came forward to intervene. Then, despite pleas from his girlfriend not to, off-duty Benton County Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Stanley decided he needed to step into the situation. After trying unsuccessfully to calm the man down, Stanley then physically subdued and restrained him until the aircraft landed safely. By way of thanks, the airline awarded him two free tickets to anywhere he wanted to travel and a model airplane featuring an inscription that reads, “Our Hero.”
Let’s say for a moment that you get into a confrontation with some other guy at your favorite drinking hole, a far less significant incident than the one on the airplane. If a fight ensues, are you really going to trust someone else that you have never met before, some guy whose name you don’t even know to guard your back? You can’t and you shouldn’t.
Plan on being on your own if things get physical. If you’re not positive that you can handle the situation yourself, you had better look it over again. The idea of being on your own should make you think twice about fighting. Don’t trust others to help; don’t depend on them even if they are your longtime friends. Most people intuitively know that fighting has consequences. Some guys will join in so long as there is strength in numbers where others will bail out at the first sign of conflict.
Good Samaritans who may be drawn to your aid could just as easily be frightened away over concern for their own personal safety. You simply cannot count on receiving any help unless they are people whose job it is to act, such as emergency services personnel and law enforcement officers like Deputy Stanley. In fact, the presence of bystanders can be good, bad, or neutral. They may be inclined to help you but could just as easily ignore your plight.
For example, on September 23, 2002 at least ten people allegedly saw 18-year-old Rachel Burkheimer bound and gagged, lying on the floor of an Everett (Washington) garage shortly before she was taken out into the woods and murdered. None of them stopped to help. None of them even called the police. Legally, none of them had to. Many people simply will not get involved, even in cases of life or death.
Interestingly enough, the more bystanders present, the more likely it is that people will assume that someone else has called for help or that someone else will intervene. And the larger number of bystanders, the less obligated each is likely to feel that he has an imperative to do so. A person by himself cannot assume that someone else is responsible for taking action and do nothing.
Plan on being on your own if things get physical. If you’re not positive that you can handle the situation yourself, you had better look it over again. The idea of being on your own should make you think twice about fighting. Don’t trust others to help; don’t depend on them. People tend to act in their own self-interest. Why help you if they might get hurt, jailed, or killed in the process? Some people will, yet most won’t.
Anyone who did not see an incident from the beginning may also be unsure about what is going on. Who is the bad guy and who is the victim? To the extent that we are unsure about what is going on or the situation is ambiguous, we are more likely to look to others for help in defining whether intervention is appropriate or necessary. If others do not get involved, we may decide that whatever is happening does not require our assistance. That is one reason why first aid/CPR students are taught to look a specific person in the eye, describe the emergency, and tell that person to dial 9-1-1 for assistance.
An unruly passenger fought with flight attendants and tried to open an over-wing escape hatch to depressurize the plane. At first, no one came forward to intervene. Then, despite pleas from his girlfriend not to, off-duty Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Stanley decided he needed to step in to control the situation. You cannot expect others to help you in a fight, even where it makes sense that they should.
Many people try to avoid showing outward signs of worry or concern until they see that others are alarmed as well. After all it would be quite embarrassing to be worked up about something everyone considers a non-event. This sort of caution encourages bystanders to appear nonchalant about a potential emergency, inhibiting everyone’s urge to help. The larger the number of people who appear unconcerned about a situation, the stronger that inhibiting influence will be on everyone else, a cycle that feeds upon itself.
The converse of this is also true. The more people who appear alarmed the more likely that someone would decide to intervene. We saw that on United Airlines Flight 93 when passengers and crew banded together to fight back against the terrorist hijackers on September 11, 2001.
Bystanders may help, yet they may even be inclined to hurt you, especially if they are friends of your assailant. You cannot count on anyone else to help you out in a fight.
Amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.
As the enemy attacks, attack more strongly, taking advantage of the resulting disorder in his timing to win.
When adrenaline hits your system, your ability to think rationally gets reduced, you lose peripheral vision, and your ability to hear is reduced as well. You become tougher and more resilient, yet the downside is that you become a one-task, knuckle-dragging troglodyte.
When Kane took a defensive handgun course several years ago, he was taught to train for handling the survival stress reaction commonly associated with actual combat. To simulate this reaction, students had to do as many pushups as they could as fast as they could for one minute. Immediately after completing the pushups, they sprinted to the parking lot and raced around the building four times, as fast as they could go, covering close to a mile in the process. They then sprinted back into the building and attempted to accurately fire down range under the watchful eye of the instructors.
While Kane could normally hit the bulls-eye of a static paper target much of the time at 25 feet during shooting competitions and always put every shot in the black, the first time he attempted to do so after this “stress test” he missed the paper completely. It was an illuminating experience. Fortunately, he discovered this in training rather than on the street.
The New York Police department did a comprehensive analysis of police-involved shooting incidents, evaluating some 6,000 violent altercations that took place during the 1970s. They found that officers hit their targets roughly a quarter of the time while criminal assailants made about eleven percent of their shots. This study dramatically demonstrated the effects of adrenaline. To look at it another way, highly trained professionals who near universally hit their targets in practice missed 75 percent of their shots during live fire situations. Criminals who presumably had far less experience handling firearms missed 89 percent of the time. Ninety percent of those shootings took place at distances of less than 15 feet.
Not all hits were fatal, of course. During the period of 1970 through 1979, law enforcement officers inflicted ten casualties for every one suffered at the hands of their criminal assailants. In all of the cases investigated, the size, shape, configuration, composition, caliber, and velocity of the bullet was not the preeminent factor in determining who lived or died. Shot placement accuracy was the overarching cause of death (or an injury that was serious enough to end the confrontation), which is clear evidence that adrenal stress must be overcome to survive a street fight.
The more stressed you are through exertion, fear, or desperation, the harder it is to perform. In a violent encounter, your heart rate can jump from 60 or 70 beats per minute (BPM) to well over 200 BPM in less than half a second. Here is how accelerated heart rates can affect you.
• For people whose resting heart rate is around 60 to 70 BPM, at around 115 BPM many begin to lose fine motor skills such as finger dexterity, making it difficult to successfully dial a phone, open a lock, or aim a weapon.
• Around 145 BPM most people begin to lose their complex motor skills such as hand-eye coordination, precise tracking movements, or exact timing, making complicated techniques very challenging if not impossible.
• Around 175 BPM most people begin to lose depth perception, experience tunnel vision, and sometimes even suffer temporary memory loss.
• Around 185-220 BPM, many people experience hyper-vigilance, loss of rational thought, and inability to consciously move or react. Without prior training, the vast majority of people cannot function at this stress level.
When adrenaline hits your system, your ability to think rationally is greatly reduced. You will suffer degraded motor skills, experience tunnel vision, and may even suffer temporary memory loss too. In essence, you become a one-task, knuckle-dragging troglodyte. Combat breathing techniques can alleviate some, but not all of these symptoms. As stress goes up intelligence goes down.
Breath control techniques can help you recover from the effects of adrenaline to a large degree, though it takes much practice to control your breathing in an actual fight. The preferred breathing method is similar to ibuki breathing found in martial arts. Here’s how it works: Breathe in through your nose, let the air swirl around in your belly, and then breathe out through your mouth. Break the breath into three components, clearly inhaling, holding, and exhaling with a 4-count pause in between each step. In other words, each cycle of combat breathing includes:
• Inhale for a 4-count.
• Hold for a 4-count.
• Exhale for a 4-count.
This process helps you oxygenate your blood while psychologically calming you during extreme stress. Nevertheless, it’s important not to take unnecessary risks. Since it’s really tough to focus on more than one thing, escape should be your primary goal. As stress goes up, intelligence goes down.
The host thus forming a single united body is it impossible either for the brave to advance alone, or for the cowardly to retreat alone. This is the art of handling large masses of men.
It is better to use two swords rather than one when you are fighting a crowd and especially if you want to take a prisoner.
While most violence you need to worry about takes place one-on-one or among small groups, larger clashes can occur. Military engagements and conflicts between nations are beyond the scope of this discourse, yet you may find yourself caught up in a riot or tangling with members of a crowd some day, so we’ll briefly discuss how those sorts of things play out.
Mobs are dangerous. Highly emotional, unthinking, unreasonable, and quite likely to erupt into violence, you really don’t want to get caught up in one. Crowds can turn into mobs if members become indifferent to laws, choose to disregard authority, or take advantage of the perceived anonymity that a large group can provide and follow instigators into unlawful, disruptive, or violent acts such as a riot. Most riots explode out of an event, things like perceived racial incidents, jury verdicts, rallies, or protests, particularly if agitators stir things up, though they can certainly arise from other causes such as out-of-control celebrations, or even develop spontaneously as well.
Riots don’t happen every day though. While it is easy to plan a demonstration, it is somewhat harder to instigate a riot. Nevertheless, anarchists try to do so all the time. Even when they don’t, irrational exuberance can turn darn near any large gathering into a riotous mob too, leading to situations where people overturn cars, set fire to buildings, damage property, and harm people. Alcohol and other intoxicants play a critical role as well.
For example, on June 20, 2007 an angry crowd beat a 40-year-old man to death over a slow-speed accident in Austin, Texas. According to police reports, a driver inadvertently bumped a three- or four-year-old girl while driving through a car park near the site of the annual Juneteenth festival, a celebration that commemorates the freeing of American slaves. The driver stopped his car to check on her well-being, discovering that she was scared but not seriously injured.
The passenger, David Rivas Morales, also got out of the car but he was almost immediately set upon by a group of about 20 people and beaten severely. He collapsed to the ground and was subsequently pronounced dead from blunt force trauma upon arriving at the hospital shortly thereafter. While the girl was shaken up a bit, the man died.
Crowds can turn into mobs if members become indifferent to laws, choose to disregard authority, or take advantage of the perceived anonymity that a large group can provide and follow instigators into unlawful, disruptive, or violent acts such as a riot.
The crowd mindset of being one face among hundreds can be a very dangerous thing. It’s quite easy to get caught up in the fray, not truly thinking about what is going on. It can even be fun for those involved, particularly when they don’t consider the consequences, an adrenaline rush that rivals any amusement park ride. Consequently, things can get out of hand pretty quickly. When they do, they are very difficult to stop, even once law enforcement officers arrive to take control.
According to Loren Christensen, there are five psychological influences that affect rioters, their targets, and the police who try to break things up. These include (1) impersonality, (2) anonymity, (3) suggestion/imitation, (4) emotional contagion, and (5) discharge of repressed emotions. Here’s a brief summary of how these factors play out.
1. Impersonality — So-called “groupthink” is an impersonalizing factor that makes it easier for people to lash out. Rioters do not see their victims as individuals with families, hopes and dreams, but rather as objects on which to vent their rage. Impersonality makes it easier to attack victims because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion or any other factors that set them apart from the mob.
2. Anonymity — The large mass and short life of a mob tends to make many of its members feel anonymous and faceless. Participants can more easily convince themselves to act without conscience, believing that the moral responsibility for their behavior belongs to the entire group. Consequently, in their own minds they are not responsible for their actions.
3. Suggestion/imitation — The massiveness of a mob discourages many of its members to act as individuals, making them more susceptible to follow others like a bunch of lemmings diving over a cliff. There is a powerful instinct to follow the crowd. Only those with deeply ingrained convictions are strong enough to repulse this urge.
4. Emotional contagion — The size of the mob and its activities generates a building emotion that can be felt by each member of the mob. It is a powerful influence. Often called “collective emotion,” even bystanders can be caught up in this wave and soon find themselves involved with the mob.
5. Discharge of repressed emotions — As a result of the other four influences listed above, certain individuals feel a sense of freedom to discharge any repressed emotions they harbor. They are free to release pent-up rage, hate, revenge, or a need to destroy, acting out accordingly.
Mobs are dangerous. Highly emotional and unthinking, they often erupt into violence. Crowds can turn into mobs if members become indifferent to laws, choose to disregard authority, or take advantage of the perceived anonymity that a large group can provide and follow instigators into unlawful, disruptive, or violent acts. Five psychological influences—impersonality, anonymity, suggestion/imitation, emotional contagion, and discharge of repressed emotions—affect rioters, their targets, and the police who try to break things up. If you stumble across a violent crowd, your goal should be to escape to safety, remaining anonymous, and avoiding as much of the conflict as possible in the process.
The good news is that these psychological influences don’t impact everyone. The bad news is that the minority of those who are influenced can cause serious confusion, destruction, and injury for everyone else. Because riots can be hard to predict and even harder to stop, it is prudent to pay careful attention to what is going on around you whenever you are part of a large crowd. Even if you sense the mood change, catch a glimpse of the opening acts, and see what’s coming, it can be very hard to force your way through the press of bodies and escape to safety.
A panicked crowd is just a dangerous, if not more so, than a riotous mob. When someone believes that there is imminent danger and flees in panic, his actions can spark fear in others who act accordingly. This fear can be initiated by actions from others, such as setting off a bomb or discharging a firearm, and may be exacerbated by environmental factors, such as flooding, smoke, fire, or tear gas. It gets even worse if there are limited escape routes, blocked exits, or other factors that lead to desperation where people begin fighting each other to clear a path so that they can get away. Think about all the people who have been crushed to death at nightclubs, concerts, or sporting events when crowds got out of control.
In general, there are two divergent goals when it comes to dealing with riotous mobs. If you are a civilian concerned about self-defense, your goal will be to escape to safety, remaining anonymous, and avoiding as much of the conflict as possible in the process. You will move away from the danger. If you are a law enforcement officer or security professional, however, your goal will be to minimize injuries and prevent property damage by managing the crowd to the extent possible. Your job requires that you move toward the danger. Since this book is primarily aimed at civilians, we’ll address self-protection and tactics rather than crowd control techniques here. The following guidelines can help keep you safe in a crowd.
• Recognize that riots can materialize unexpectedly — Almost any incident involving people and emotion can trigger a violent disturbance, particularly when alcohol or other intoxicants are thrown into the mix. The situation may ignite suddenly with very little warning. Maintain a higher than normal level of situational awareness when navigating crowds, identifying and evading potential sources of trouble to the extent practicable. Diligent observation can protect you not only from violence but also from more mundane threats like pickpockets. Be constantly aware of cover, concealment, and potential escape routes as you move about in case you are forced to flee with little warning.
• Monitor warning signs — Like a rock thrown into a pond, you may not spot the initial impact, but you can readily detect the ripple effect that flows outward from the point of contact. Pay attention to the body language of people around you. They may be reacting to something important they noticed that you have missed. Any sudden change in the demeanor of the crowd, gathering of onlookers, agitators urging a confrontation, or people rapidly moving into your space may be warning signs of impending violence. Look and listen to what is going on around you; shouting, screaming, or other loud commotions also constitute danger signals.
• Watch everyone — Be especially alert for the presence of weapons. If a weapon is fired, the situation immediately escalates into a very serious tactical affair. You may be assaulted directly, caught in the crossfire as law enforcement officers move to restore order, or trampled by terrified bystanders who are trying to get out of the way. Everyone can become a threat, even the good guys. In addition to monitoring the crowd, pay attention to unattended vehicles parked where they shouldn’t be, packages left in high traffic areas, abandoned luggage, or anything else that appears suspicious. The sooner you spot potential dangers the better your chances of reacting appropriately.
Riots typically explode from specific events, things like jury verdicts, perceived racial injustices, rallies, or political protests, particularly if agitators actively stir things up.
• Evaluate your options before you act — Sometimes it is best to flee right away, but occasionally it may be more sensible to hunker down behind something and defend in place. Take a moment to evaluate your options and make a reasoned choice before embarking on any course of action. If you are inside a building look for alternate exits, particularly in a panicked crowd scenario where the main exit will almost certainly be blocked. In nightclubs, for example, windows are often blacked-out so they are easy to miss if you are not actively looking for them.
• Don’t enter an agitated crowd if other alternatives exist — There is a huge difference between a highly spirited crowd of shoppers, a restless throng teetering on the edge of violence, and a riotous mob, one that most anyone actively paying attention can sense. As things begin to turn ugly, don’t hang around to watch no matter how fascinating it might be. Leave as quickly and quietly as possible. Plan your exit route to minimize contact with others, even if it means taking the “long way” around the scene. Slip through gaps between others rather than shoving people out of your way to the extent practicable.
• Don’t fight unless you have no alternative — If you are forced to fight, you may attract undue attention and quickly find yourself facing multiple opponents who want to beat you down or law enforcement officers who don’t realize that you are the good guy. If you are knocked to the ground or stumble and fall, you may very well be trampled. If you have to fight, you will lose valuable time and there is no guarantee that you will survive the encounter, so rather than engaging opponents directly, attempt to deflect or redirect anyone who tries to slow your escape using open-hand techniques.
Crowds can also attract adverse criminal attention, such when pickpockets find a large pool of distracted victims that they can separate from their wealth. Worse yet, terrorists bombers may find the crowd a compelling target since they try to time attacks to inflict maximum casualties.
No matter how tough you are, you cannot knock bullets out of the air or deflect bombs with your “fists of death.” That only happens in the movies. As always, your best defense is awareness, spotting and avoiding dangerous situations before it is too late. In addition to monitoring the mood of the crowd, pay attention to unattended vehicles parked where they shouldn’t be, packages left in high traffic areas, abandoned luggage, or anything else that appears suspicious.
The following is a brief recap of the content you have read in this section.
• Never start a fight. If you can walk away from a confrontation, you can avoid all the serious repercussions that come with violence. A preemptive strike as you sense an imminent threat, however, can be a legitimate and street-worthy defensive technique when used properly. Preemptive initiative cuts off an attack before it is fully in play, looking an awful lot like a first strike yet is still a defensive movement.
• Sometimes you truly do need to fight in order to protect yourself and/or your loved ones from an immediate and unavoidable threat. Before you throw the first blow, however, it is critical to know that you have a good case for doing so. If the four criteria of ability, opportunity, jeopardy, and preclusion (AOJP) are all met, you have a pretty good legal case for countervailing force. If one or more of these conditions are absent, however, you are on shaky legal ground should you decide to tie up with the other guy.
• It is important to exercise a judicious level of force sufficient to control the other guy in a fight without overreacting. Force options you might select from include (1) presence, (2) voice, (3) empty-hand restraint, (4) non-lethal force, and, ultimately, (5) lethal force. The first two levels can prevent violence before it begins, the third may be used proactively as an opponent prepares to strike, and the last two take place after you have already been attacked.
• Alcohol can be a violence magnet. If you are sober and the other guy is not, you will have a significant advantage in a fight. Hitting a drunk really doesn’t work all that well most of the time, however. A better strategy is to either dodge his blows in order to let him overbalance himself and facilitate your escape or spin him to cause disorientation and make him fall. Once he’s down, you can more readily control him or move to safety.
• Reasonable force in legal terms is generally considered only that force reasonably necessary to repel an attacker’s force. You cannot overreact and expect to stay out of jail. While women can be just as dangerous as men, the courts don’t often see it that way, focusing on size, gender, and strength differences. Consequently, it is challenging to prove that you did not use excessive force if you wind up hitting a girl unless she’s armed with some type of weapon.
• The classic rule is that self-defense begins when deadly danger begins, ends when the danger ends, and revives again if the danger returns. Neither a killing nor a beating that takes place after a crime has already been committed, nor a proactive violent defense before an attack has taken place is a legitimate act of self-defense in the eyes of the law. Once the immediate threat has been dealt with, you can escape to safety. When he stops fighting, you need to stop too.
• Remain vigilant during any pause in the fight. You may be facing multiple assailants or an adversary who pulls a weapon in the middle of a fight or who just won’t quit. Once you have removed yourself from the danger and are absolutely certain that you are no longer under threat you can safely begin to relax your guard.
• If you cannot escape or avoid violence, you must be prepared to fight with all your worth. You cannot count on honor, ethics, or mercy from an adversary. Keep fighting until you can safely get away. If you stop, there’s no guarantee that he will too.
• There are six things that you may wish to try in a fight, (1) maintaining distance, (2) throwing debris, (3) attacking the eyes, (4) using chokes or neck cranks, (5) throwing him to the ground, and (6) striking with impetus. People who are good at settling things with violence develop a set of favorite techniques that they will use over and over again. Standardization and simplicity are the hallmarks of a good fighter. If it works, keep on using it until it is no longer effective.
• There are six things you should not try in a fight: (1) kicking above the waist, (2) playing “tank,” (3) hitting with a closed fist, (4) forgetting to use your mouth as a weapon, (5) playing the other guy’s game, and (6) using the wrong technique for the situation. If you let a fight go to the ground, you become vulnerable. You can easily get stomped, kicked, and seriously messed up by your adversary and/or his friends. Similarly, if the other guy gets behind you, he can strike with impunity. The other guy will be doing everything he can to win in a fight. Don’t make his job any easier. Keep things simple and direct so that you won’t self-destruct.
• When you fight, you are almost certainly going to get hurt. It’s unavoidable if the battle lasts more than a few seconds. The real question is how badly it will be. If you must fight, it is critical to end the confrontation as quickly as possible to minimize your injuries. Plan on being on your own if things get physical. You cannot trust or depend on others for help. You may think that your enemy’s enemy is your friend, but more often than not, it’s simply not true.
• When adrenaline hits your system, your ability to think rationally is greatly reduced. You will suffer degraded motor skills, experience tunnel vision, and may even suffer temporary memory loss too. In essence, you become a one-task, knuckle-dragging troglodyte. Combat breathing techniques can alleviate some, but not all of these symptoms. As stress goes up intelligence goes down.
• Mobs are dangerous. Highly emotional and unthinking, they often erupt into violence. Five psychological influences—(1) impersonality, (2) anonymity, (3) suggestion/imitation, (4) emotional contagion, and (5) discharge of repressed emotions—affect rioters, their targets, and the police who try to break things up. If you stumble across a violent crowd, your goal should be to escape to safety, remaining as anonymous as possible and avoiding as much of the conflict as possible in the process.
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Sosen (1694-1776) was a haiku poet. He died on June 28, 1776 at the age of eighty-two. Translation from the original Japanese reads:
David R. Organ is a retired soldier, peacekeeper, and unarmed combat instructor with the Canadian Armed Forces. After leaving the military, he drifted between a variety of jobs including security guard, private investigator, dishwasher, and bodyguard. He began working as a printer, eventually rising to become technical supervisor of his department. Laid off due to ‘restructuring,’ he took on the job of manager of a local U-Haul, a job that included tossing drunks, pacifying hostile ‘customers,’ repossessing stolen vehicles and collecting debts. He now works as the manager of the Creekside Restaurant and Lounge in Westerose, Alberta. Over the past 25 years, Dave has studied a variety of martial arts including karate, judo, and aikido, and now teaches aikido at his dojo, Great Wave Aikido, in Westerose, Alberta.
Gichin Funakoshi (1868-1957) was the founder of Shotokan karate, a style that is very popular around the world today.
Kata means “formal exercise,” a logical series of offensive and defensive movements performed in a particular order during solo training.
Title 17-A, Part 1, Chapter 5 (Defenses and affirmative defenses; justification).
The wrong legal strategy can blow your case. Many criminal defense attorneys are used to dealing primarily with guilty individuals whose cases may be handled differently from innocent ones. Guilt or innocence aside, self-defense cases typically offer unique challenges not found in other areas of law. You’ll need a specialist to guide you through.
Just because something is designed to be less then lethal does not mean that it cannot accidentally kill someone. Exercise caution when utilizing any type of weapon.
Such as instinctively going for the eyes during an attack.
Revised Code of Washington, RCW 9A.16.010.
An example of “extreme savagery” in the eyes of the law would be gratuitously raining blows upon a fallen opponent who has obviously given up the conflict, even if he started the fight in the first place.
The fourth rule not mentioned here is, “Don’t go to jail.” We’ve already covered judicious use of force previously so we won’t rehash it again in this section.
British psychologist William Edmund Hick (1912-1974) conducted reaction-time research to develop this model.