Category Archives: Self Defense

May 13, 2013 · 9:40 pm

Violence and Conflict: Thinking of the children

Violence and Conflict

From our earliest days, humans have had to live a life of violence and conflict. Whether we were hunting for food, defending a tribe or village, or marching to war, violence and conflict were there. We are, as a species, adaptable and violent. And we always have been.

In our modern world, conflict comes in many different varieties. Sometimes we argue with words, or through digital devices we send hateful messages that we would be frightened to speak aloud in the presence of the person we wish to chastise. Violence and conflict are found in the person yelling at and demeaning their spouse, in the cyber bully who taunts a child ever closer to suicide, and the drunken Uncle who starts smacking his nephew
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March 13, 2013 · 8:45 pm

Self-Defense for Children: What to Teach and How much is too much?

There have been a series of emails coming in that have been asking questions along the same line of thinking. The main points being:

  • What should be included in a children’s self-defense class?
  • Where is the line regarding how much information the child needs to hear in a class, without crossing the line?

In other words; if the dangers a child faces are in many ways different from those an adult will face, what do we need to cover in a self-defense class for children, and how much is too much when we are telling the kids about the dangers they face?

I will start with the first: what should be covered.

In truth, the self-defense for a child needs to include Continue reading →

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March 4, 2013 · 7:59 pm

Kris Wilder Seminar in North Texas!

Kris Wilder 2013 Seminar Texas

KWilder

The above link will open a PDF form with the seminar and registration information.

Author and Co-Author of many books on the martial arts, Kris Wilder is also the leading authority on applied traditional martial arts in the U.S. He has expanded the knowledge and understanding of applied traditional martial arts through such work as The Way of Kata, and The Way of Sanchin Kata, as well as myth dispelling works such as The Little Black Book of Violence. A knowledgeable martial artist and a truly good human being, Kris Wilder brings a lot to offer. The seminar is not style specific, so regardless of your martial arts background, there is something here for you to learn.

Don’t miss this opportunity to train with Kris Wilder and learn to Hit Harder, Stand Stronger, Think Clearer.

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February 13, 2013 · 12:53 pm

Important and Ignored Self-Defense Topics

When we discuss self defense, there are a few things that must be kept in mind. In this article I am going to look at a few of these facts. A lot of what is sold as “self-defense” is not going to give most of this information more than a passing mention, but they are extremely important.

Awareness

First, you need to stay aware so that you are able to avoid most situations before anything turns violent. It is so easy to get distracted with all of the toys we have now. But if you are engrossed in your phone or have the earphones in listening to your music, you are ignorant of your surroundings. It is one level of dumb to be unaware, but using intentional distraction to be ignorant is practically suicidal. I don’t know how many times I have nearly run over someone when I was driving and they step out in front of me because they are more interested in their phone than they are in not getting killed. Put the distractions away. Alain Burrese has a free guide on this subject available here. There is also a ton of great reading on No Nonsense Self Defense website as well.

Don’t make things worse

Next, you need to understand ways to scale down the intensity of a situation when you see it heading toward violence. The industry term is de-escalation. When the other guy is puffing up and being a loudmouth, if you pay attention, you will find that you are doing the same thing. Calm down and don’t make things worse. You need to let the other guy have the win, let him have the last word, and do not give in to the urge to “one-up” anything he says for his parting comment. This is your safest road.

Legally defensible action

If you do act, anything you do must be legally defensible. If you bump into someone and cause them to spill their drink, and they take offense, and you don’t de-escalate, opting instead to act like a raving ding-dong and they take a swing at you, and you use the “redirect-the-punch-break-the-arm-take-out-the-knee-break-the-neck” self defense response that you are training in your RBSD school, you will be in jail. It isn’t “Self-Defense”. You stopped acting in self-defense when you participated in the verbal escalation of what could have been a minor mea culpa incident. “Sorry dude! That one was my fault. How about I buy your next round?” is a lot better than going to prison because something minor got out of hand and you played a big role in it getting out of hand out of nothing more than wanting to be macho.

Adrenaline

Self defense that does not take into account the effect that adrenaline has is not realistic. Fine motor skills melt away when adrenaline hits the bloodstream. If your entire self-defense training is based on intricate techniques, and especially if you only practice these techniques on a compliant partner, you are going to be in serious trouble if violence ever looks into your life.

A few necessary items

Don’t fall for the hype. Real self-defense training is going to include things like self-defense law in the State or province where you live, there should be scenario training to help you learn to identify different types of violence you may face. The training will need to be something simple that can be learned quickly and drilled often. The there will need to be some lecture based lessons, not just warrior monk physical techniques. A good course is going to cover the different aspects that encompass the subject. I do not understand there even being a market for classes that only cover the fighting aspect and teach you how to overwhelm the opponent with a level of violence out of proportion to the level of threat you are under. It is not only foolishness on the part of the student who is entering the course, it is dishonest and irresponsible on the part of the instructor.

Be careful where you train and what advice you accept.

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February 12, 2013 · 1:02 pm

The OODA Loop and Self-Protection

Today I am going to take a look at the OODA Loop and the role that it plays in self-defense/self-protection.

For those who do not know, the OODA Loop is the name given to the decision-making process. The term itself comes from Colonel John Boyd who was researching the mental process used by fighter pilots in combat.

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The letters stand for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

Observe: As applied to our study, this stage is where an event is just beginning. We may observe a person stepping out of the shadows, a group that splits up when we come into their view, or a person seemingly following us. The process of decision-making cannot even begin until there is something observed. 

This does bring us right back to awareness. Awareness needs to be Self-Defense 101. The things listed above might go completely unnoticed if I am engrossed by my smart phone. And without awareness, you are no better off than the person sucker punched from behind.

Orient: Assuming we were aware enough to notice something beginning to happen, the next step in the process is the stage Colonel Boyd named orient. For our purposes, we can look at each of the above listed events. 

A person steps out of the shadows. Our brain would straight away determine whether or not we knew them, if they appear threatening, and other things such as our position relative to theirs, as well as whether or not we are about to bump into them. These are going to be determined by most healthy people without the need to consciously go through a list of questions. Someone properly trained may even instantly note whether or not the person stepping from the shadows has anything in their hands and if so; what? This level of training takes time, but it is very nice to have, and worth the effort to develop.

Decide: Once the information is processed, the actual decision must be made. Here, I am going to try to stay off of my soapbox, but will still interject that the “more and more technique” martial arts approach does a huge disservice to the person looking to develop the ability to defend themselves in an assault. The brain is going to decide what to do, but the more we clutter it with different choices, the longer this stage of our process will last. If we are able to keep it down to a few solid choices, we will be must better off in just getting through this stage quickly.

Act: At this point we will act based on all of the information we had and the options our experience or lack thereof left on the table.

To be clear, all of this happens incredibly fast. Unfortunately, so does assault. It is very easy to get stuck in a shortened loop of observe-observe-observe.

The OODA Loop is fascinating to me in that it isn’t all bad news. Yes, if you clutter your monkey brain with all kinds of nonsense it will slow the decision-making process considerably. But do you have to clutter? No! You have every faculty needed to simplify.

And understanding the OODA Loop will allow you to use it to your advantage. Make the other guy get stuck in the observe-observe-observe short-circuit. Easier said than done, I know, but it can add an interesting study to your training.

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February 8, 2013 · 8:00 am

Road Rage or The Stupidity of it All

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Yesterday I had a chance to see a road rage/traffic bully in action. In the photo above, you see the hood of my car and the black truck that tried to run me into the lane with on-coming traffic because he truly needed to be one car length further down the road than he would have been had he been unable to get to the space in front of me. He was also short on time to do so because the four lane road turned into one lane in each direction at the rapidly approaching intersection. The tactic he used is really simple, and it is one I used when my rambunctious late teen aged self was always in a hurry.

You simply start acting like you are willing to smash into the car next to you several times. anyone in their right mind is going to hit their brakes if your intent to smash seems serious enough. If this doesn’t work, you simply move into the lane you wish to be in. The other driver will almost always hit the brakes, and, if they are anything like me, they will give you a thorough cursing-out that you won’t hear.

In addition to the cursing, I also did something else. As you can see I took some pictures. This one was from further back. I got a few pictures that were closer, but opted to use this one because with there being so much about technology that I don’t know, I was unsure if it is possible to undo any edit, so even if you remove the yellow “paint” from the license plate, you still will not be able to see the license plate number. But I did get a few with the plate number very clear.

Here is what I want to point out today.

With nothing more than a photo of his plate number and a quick search, I was able to get this guy’s name, home address, and DL number. With that information, I was able to find his Facebook, which in turn gave me his phone number, email address, and place of employment. From the website of his place of employment I was able to get his work phone number and work email address.

Before I continue, I do not recommend you do this and try to do anything with the information you find. I am bringing this up to illustrate a point. I retrieved all of this information, not to do anything with it, but rather to see if it could be done.

It can and it is disturbingly easy.

In our modern society, privacy is a thing of the past.

This leads us to self-protection. When you are driving, calm down! Everyone wants to get where they are going, and your destination is important only to you. The other people are concerned with where they are going.

With less than ten pictures on my phone, and less than ten minutes on the internet, I had enough information on this guy to really cause a ton of problems for him. If I were a bad person I could have gone to his house, or his place of employment, or sent harassing emails, or whatever!

Do you want to roll the dice that the guy you cut off in traffic isn’t going to be a nutcase who would take a few minutes to find all he needed to know about you to torment you just because he can?

Self defense/self protection starts with you. You have to be calm, you have to look to keep things from getting out of hand. If you let yourself act like a doofus, and refuse to see that you don’t own the road and nobody cares how long you sit in traffic every day because they have their own issues to deal with, you can end up with more problems than you can imagine.

To be truly safe, your first step is in not starting trouble.

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November 21, 2012 · 8:40 pm

Beware the Self-Defense Expert

I want to set some information out there, and while there are a few who will agree, and some who will rightfully express that this is something they have been saying for years, the information needs to be spread far and wide.

Misinformation abounds in the self defense industry. This is due mostly to self-appointed experts, and generations of people teaching what they had been taught without scrutiny and a mind for critical thinking. There is also the fact that violence is not really understood by very many people in the martial arts world, but there is some extra money to be made if you promote and teach garbage self-defense classes.

Real violence is ugly. The “attacker” who steps and grabs you by the wrist is not out there. They guy who steps up behind you, sucker punches you into unconsciousness and robs your motionless body is out there.

As the subject is huge, and very important, I am going to approach it from several angles, and hope something sticks in the mind of the beginner, and seems important enough to be passed on by the seasoned instructor.

For a start I am going to remind you of a quote I first hear attributed to Josh Billings,

“It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, its what he does know that ain’t so.”

Take for example the common claim that high kicks are not effective.

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I have knocked people out with head kicks in sparring, tournaments and even in physical conflicts. They do work. The issue is speed and timing, as well as minimizing the telegraph of your intent. In the photo above, my longtime student Jeff is attempting a kick to my knee. What was the situation? Was he trying to kick my knee and I responded by trying to kick his head? If so the kick to the head would likely arrive to late, if at all. Did I initiate my kick first and he attempted a shorter route kick to the knee as a counter-attack? If so, my chances for success rise dramatically. Also note the pivot of the base foot, so often taught as a balance aid, also minimizes the knee damage I take in the event his kick gets to me before the knock out.

Are head kicks the best technique for self-defense? Absolutely not!

The problem with discussing self-defense is that there is so much that people think they understand, have heard and taken as Gospel truth.

Here is a fact that must be understood at the deepest levels before you listen to anyone on the subject –

Violence and Self-Defense are subjects so big that no one person has all of the answers.

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The knee-jerk reaction to the first photo is the line about “low kicks are what you need.”

Low kicks arrive at the target faster, and in many cases will end the fight. But in the world of self defense, nothing is 100%.

Nothing.

As soon as you think you have all of the answers, you are in trouble. When you know everything, some teen with a gun can take you completely out of your element and remove all of your confidence and skills from the equation by simply changing the question.

Violence is ugly. It is not the antiseptic version you find taught in most dojo around the world. A guy steps out of a shadow and caves your skull in with a baseball bat. A guy steps up behind you and opens your throat before you knew the guy or the knife even existed. A guy asks for directions and as you look to point out the right way he sucker-punches you into total confusion or unconsciousness.

The fact is so simple that most people miss it.

The physical techniques are what you need after you have done everything else wrong. Do not focus on the last resort! Focus on what is important.

Awareness

You need to be aware of your surroundings. You need to be aware when someone is staring at you. You need to be unafraid and see what is going on, but above all, you need to be here right now.

I love technology as much, if not more than most of the people I know, but there are things I see that baffle me. I have almost run over three people in the last two weeks who were more interested in their phone than paying attention to the cars driving near them. If I ever were to become a criminal, I know that the easiest victims would be those people absorbed in their tech devices. And if I know this, the criminal knows it even better because it is how they find resources, to me it is just speculation. You have to be able to tell if the situation is a monkey dance (social violence: hierarchal dominance) or the human predator (falls in the category of the very scary asocial violence). You have to know when you are in a situation where your normal is not normal here.

It is a huge subject, and it is not going to be fully understood in five easy lessons, or a two hour seminar. If you are interested in being safe, there are some people out there who know the subject and are teaching the truth. If they start with and get stuck on the physical, then you are wasting your  time and need to move on.

For a final word in this essay; be careful in who you trust. There are many people who claim to know the subject of violence inside and out, but have never been in a real conflict in their entire life. Sparring is not fighting and the Dojo is not the street. Remember, the physical is what you need after you have done everything else wrong. Learn first how to do the initial stuff right. Awareness and avoidance, de-escalation and recognition. These are more important by far than what to do if Johnny Badguy grabs your wrist.

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November 20, 2012 · 9:19 pm

Awareness revisited

In the attached article here you will find an article with a disturbing video of a 16 year old girl violently stuck from behind. The man was running up behind her but somehow his steps were not heard or noticed. I am working on a longer essay to address the subject, but this video is a sobering reminder to stay aware of your surroundings. No matter your physical prowess, if you are not aware of the attack until you are hit, you are taking damage, and in a case like the one here, you are unconscious and are at the mercy of the thug who just knocked you out with no provocation. This is never good. Keep an eye out for the detailed article on Awareness.

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March 5, 2012 · 1:35 pm

Overlooked Self-Defense Elements 6: Physical Skills

This is part six of a series of articles where I look at the elements needed for a self-defense or self-protection course to be of real use. In a previous article I listed the required elements as follows:

Physical Skills

The least important element is the most taught (and poorly taught at that).

The physical skills are what you need after everything else has gone wrong. This is where many people who sign up for self-defense classes make their first mistake. All that has been discussed on the previous articles, especially the first four, are the most important information. The information found there is going to be given only the most cursory treatment in a standard self-defense class. They may mention, for example, how important awareness is to personal safety. Then they just might discuss avoiding certain places (and classify that as avoidance), but there will not be much more than a scratching-the-surface type of treatment for either topic. De-escalation is so rarely considered that it is not even touched upon in most standard self-defense courses.

I feel so strongly about this that I am severely tempted to leave this article at that. A strong recommendation to go back and re-read the previous material and visit the recommended websites and books.

But I must give something. I do have people reading this who are not instructors, but are beginners in the martial arts, and they need a full treatment of the subject.

When we take all of the previous information into full consideration, we see that something other than the standard “what to do if someone grabs your wrist” is needed. That falls back on the “one response for one attack” list of techniques, and that will never do. We need to train in something a lot more practical.

You need to train for the common ways that a person will probably attack you. As stated quite clearly by Marc MacYoung, “If you train for what happens most, you’ll be able to handle most of what happens.”

In our current era, everyone and their brother thinks that they are the UFC champ. If you watch a lot of MMA, then you will see most of what they think they can do to you. Speaking in simple terms, they will try to kick you or punch you (or both), they will get close and grab or tackle you. From there they will strike, choke or attempt to joint lock you.  

Put simply, the physical techniques you need to train for are as follows (from Marc MacYoung)

  1. Straight line attacks
  2. Circular Attacks
  3. Take-downs
  4. Chokes and locks

When approached honestly, the list doesn’t need to be any more complicated than this.

In truth, there is no need to separate kicks from hand strikes when they both so easily fit into the categories of straight and circular striking attacks. So if you train to handle straight and circular attacks, you are training against kicks and hand strikes. Take-downs come in many varieties, but most of what you will see is a double-leg takedown (a “spear” for you pro wrestling fans), and a run of the mill football tackle. It would not be necessary in a self-protection class to learn the takedowns, as that turns you into the aggressor, and so you are not at that point acting in self-defense. You do need to train to identify the takedown as early in its initiation as possible, and how to stop it from happening (you don’t want to roll on the ground with the attacker). And we cannot leave chokes off of the list. You need to know how to use them, as they are a relatively safe way to end a fight, and you need to be familiar with the ways to get out of the chokes as well. Locks are not as easy to use as a lot of people seem to think. They take a ton of practice and a lot of time before you can use them the way you imagine.

But to stay on topic, when we are speaking in terms of self-defense and self-protection, you need to remember that choking and locking the other person may not be classified as “self-defense” where you live. You should be looking to

  1. Not get hurt or killed
  2. Extricate yourself from the conflict
  3. Don’t go to jail

Whatever you train needs to address these three needs. Obviously, it isn’t self-protection if you get hurt or killed. But you do need to consider that when the guy attacks you, and through “superior skill and training” you overwhelm his offense and destroy him, in most areas of the U.S. you will be going to jail. In our overly litigious society, you will also probably get sued by the guy you hurt.

This is almost never discussed in the standard self-defense class, but it is terribly important. One self-defense instructor was asked in an interview how he would feel if he found out that someone had used what he taught and actually killed a person, and he matter-of-factly replied, “I’d be okay with it.” This is a blatant disregard for his students. He is okay with them killing a person, when we all know that if you kill someone you will be going to jail. This is far outside of the definition of self-protection.

In closing, I just want to beat an old dead horse a little more. When we speak of self-defense and self-protection, the most important lessons are going to be found in Awareness, Avoidance and De-Escalation. The entire set of “what to do if someone grabs your wrist thusly” is asinine and a complete waste of time.

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March 2, 2012 · 6:43 pm

Overlooked Self-Defense Elements 5: Adrenaline Effects

This is part five of a series of articles where I look at the elements needed for a self-defense or self-protection course to be of real use. In a previous article I listed the required elements as follows:

  • Awareness
  • Avoidance
  • Pre fight indicators (pre-fight rituals)
  • De-escalation
  • Adrenaline effects
  • And last, actual physical skills

Adrenaline Effects

Most people don’t have a clue as to how much the effects of adrenalin will change everything in a given situation. Changes to vision, hearing, memory, visual perception, and motor skills all occur once adrenalin is in the blood. Adrenaline causes many reaction within the body, and the first and most noticeable is the change in heart rate.

In their work The Psychological Effects of Combat (Grossman and Siddle, 1999), they list the following information:

60-80 BPM (Beats Per Minute) – Normal resting heart rate.

115 BPM – Fine motor skill begins to deteriorate.

115 -145 BPM – Optimal Complex motor skills, Visual reaction time, cognitive reaction time.

145 BPM – Complex motor skills deteriorate.

175 BPM – Cognitive processing deteriorates, loss of peripheral vision, loss of depth perception, loss of near vision, auditory exclusion

175 + BPM – Irrational fighting or fleeing, freezing, submissive behavior, vasoconstriction (reduced bleeding), voiding of bladder and bowels, gross motor skills at highest performance levels (Running, charging, etc.)

What does this entire list have to do with what is missing from a standard “Self-Defense “class?

Everything!

Take a look at a standard class teaching something they classify as self-defense. You will see unrealistic attacks (which I will discuss in-depth in a later article), and absurd responses to these attacks. I do not intend to bust any bubbles, but even if the tired old line about “you need to drill these defenses until they are second nature” came into play, the information put forward by Grossman and Siddle will give lie to all of the defenses and the excuse for why it “doesn’t work most of the time”

First off, you need to understand that you are going to cruise right past the 115 BPM rate before you know it. This is important because once fine motor skill begins to deteriorate; your fancy four and five step “self-defense” wrist locks and such are no longer available to you. Then you are in danger of tactical fixation, where you see that your trained response to a crisis is not working, so your monkey brain tries the same response, only harder.

The more scared or surprised you are, the faster the heart rate goes, and just look at what is lost in the range at 175 BPM. Things are falling apart rapidly at this point, and you are in more and more trouble with each passing moment.

Why is this not mentioned in a self-defense class?

The only time adrenaline effects are even mentioned at all are when the class is told in passing that adrenaline is tied to the fight or flight response, neglecting that the fight or flight response is a very complicated field of study!

Dr. Alexis Artwohl, the author of Deadly Force Encounters listed the following statistics for Police Officers who were involved in situations where deadly force was used:

84% experienced diminished sound (auditory exclusion)

 79% experienced tunnel vision (peripheral narrowing)

 74% experienced “automatic pilot” with little or no conscious thought

 71% experienced visual clarity

 62% experienced slow motion time

 52% experienced memory loss for part of the event

 46% experienced memory loss for some of their own behavior

 39% experienced dissociation; sense of detachment or unreality

 26% experienced intrusive distracting thoughts

 21% experienced saw, heard, or experienced memory distortion

 17% experienced fast motion time

 07% experienced temporary paralysis

 Do you think this sort of information has a place in a civilian self-defense class? If you answer “no”, I am sorry, but I must disagree with you.

 Granted, these are trained police officers, and as such, they are going to react differently from most people. After all, they run toward the sound of gunfire, where most rational humans would run away.

 Where I must disagree is in the fact that this information affects the ability of the trainee to actually use what their instructor is selling them as “self-defense”. When violence happens, most people are going to freeze. They don’t want to freeze, so they seek out training in self-protection. Some guy offers a self-defense class and they sign up, pay the fee and get taught how to kill a guy if he grabs their wrist, kill a guy if he puts a hand on their shoulder, how to take a knife away from a person in nineteen simple steps, and then filet him with his own knife,  and how to disarm a gunman when he has a gun pressed against their spine (somehow managing to turn around and execute the disarm before he can move his finger back ½ and inch.

 None of this is practical. And once adrenaline hits the fan, none of it will work. AND even if it did work, you will need a good lawyer to have any hope whatsoever of not going to prison.

To be able to factor in adrenaline and how it affects the body, the self-defense techniques are going to need to use gross body movement. This will overcome one issue, but what can be done about the impairment in the cognitive area? There are some who train and engage the class in a very high stress setting, and this does seem to have some merit. Obviously, there is only so much that can be done to closely simulate an actual assault or rape, and bring the stress levels to a fairly high range. There is always that last step and that last range in stress that cannot be crossed. We cannot teach a student to defend from an assault by assaulting them. There will always be that grey area that the student will wonder about, and remain less than 100% sure that they are fully trained. We have to wonder as well.

 As an instructor, I have to understand that when I teach a self-defense class, the students are placing their hope for safety in my hands, and it is my job to be as sure as possible that I am giving them every possible advantage. When adrenaline hits, it hits hard.

 The biggest point behind this is simple; you need to do all you can to stop a situation from getting to this point. By the time the adrenaline is flowing, you are on rotten ice, and sliding fast.

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