The Tools For The Job

Last winter, my right front tire came off – I was driving in a snowstorm, against my better judgment. I managed to find what seemed to be a good spot to do the change. However, I was hit with two problems: my jack couldn’t get and real purchase on the snow/ice, despite clearing a spot, and the lug nuts were too tight for my wrench to loosen them – likely because the last time I’d had my tires changed/rotated at the garage they’d over-tightened them. This meant waiting for AAA to come and change it for me – a task that in normal conditions I’d have been able to do myself. Since this experience, I’ve changed both my jack and my wrench to be more suitable for difficult situations, so I’m prepared should this unlikely scenario, or one similar to it, repeat itself. The point is, I thought I was prepared i.e. I had the tools that had worked for me before in “normal” conditions and hadn’t really consider a scenario where they wouldn’t work, or where they’d have difficulty working. Fortunately, I wasn’t in a bad neighborhood or area, and there weren’t any serious consequences to deal with, however it was a straightforward situation that I should have been able to deal with, and couldn’t. There are many components in real life, which can make what we assumed in our training to be workable solutions, unworkable. We may think we have the adequate tools to do the job – and they may have served us well in the past – but then find ourselves at a loss e.g. I remember the first I did Redman training, against an assailant armed with a knife, and realized I couldn’t control the wrist properly because the padding made the arm too big; something that I I really hadn’t considered until it happened. In this article, I want to consider certain conditions that may impact our ability to do the things, that we believe we should be able to do, and how we might mitigate against these failings in our training.

You never have the room and space you think you do (or should have) when dealing with real world violence. There is a tendency when looking at violent altercations, to talk about what would work on the “street” i.e. in a street fight. However, unless you are a street fighter, is this going to be your reality? Most women are more likely to be attacked in their home, by someone they know, than in a public space, by a stranger, and unless you’re living in a palatial mansion, furniture will soon deny you space and room to maneuver. If you’re in a bar/club, not only are there likely to be chairs and tables, there are also going to be other people who will get in your way and restrict your movement. Fighting in such environments can quickly become claustrophobic. I teach a lot about controlling range and creating space in the pre-conflict phase of an aggressive interaction, because this is usually the only time you will have that opportunity. Maintaining range, in a crowded space, during a dynamic confrontation (and violence is dynamic) where your movement is restricted, is a challenge to say the least – especially if you’re not dealing with a cautious assailant/attacker, and in real life, most aren’t. I’ve been flattened against walls, pushed into seating, etc. and there aren’t specific techniques to deal with such scenarios, as they are to fluid. I teach all body striking i.e. the use of legs, hips and back etc. to deliver a strike, but I also advocate learning to strike/punch effectively when you’re not able to employ the body. Body shots are often neglected in self-defense training, but sometimes these are the only targets available, and we should learn to capitalize on them, because we may soon loose the room and space to deliver and generate power in the way(s) we are used to, and the attacker’s head may not be available to us.

Real fights have multiple phases. This is one where the MMA/Combat Sports people get it so right, and unfortunately a lot of self-defense training gets it wrong. I’ve been involved in teaching self-defense coming up for 30-years, I’ve practiced Judo for nearly 40. Judo doesn’t have techniques per-se, it has throws, locks, chokes, strangulations, etc. the Judoka is taught to be creative, and put all of these things together to counter and/or attack an opponent. A lot of self-defense training teaches a technique to apply when somebody makes a certain specific attack e.g. this is the technique to deal with a rear-strangle, or if somebody catches you in a side-headlock i.e. you do A-B-C and you’re out. I never learnt Judo this way – if a person was in a certain position, doing a certain something, and I was in a certain position doing a certain something, then that dictated the throw. Solutions were hinted at e.g. if they duck and you can see their belt, then it’s likely a Sumi-Gaeshi is possible, etc., but I was never taught that this throw, was THE response to somebody ducking the head, etc., as depending on all the moving parts, there may be something more effective to do. Often self-defense solutions reduce all of these to only the attack, and don’t prepare individuals for what to do when the attacker attacks us in the “wrong way”. The other issue with becoming technique-centric, is that most techniques are taught as being successful, and conclusively ending the fight/situation, and don’t factor in that the attacker can respond, and you’ll have to respond to that, etcetera, etcetera. Real violence, like combat sports, is made up of multiple phases, and techniques if taught in an A-B-C fashion, will only get us so far – at each stage in a technique we have to train the attacker’s potential and possible responses, if we are to start getting anywhere close to resembling real life conflicts.

Obviously, I’m generalizing and there are some great self-defense instructors who are training in ways, which best prepare their students for real life, however if “techniques” are being presented as complete solutions, and practiced, without considering all of the things that are denied you in real life, there is something missing in the training. If every technique ends successfully, without potential counters being shown, etc., there is a problem. If techniques never fail, there’s a problem – all techniques have certain weaknesses that can be exploited, and these needs to be factored into our training.