Options In Context

Not all points in a violent confrontation, are the same or “equal”; and this effects the options we have. If you can recognize a developing situation early on, you will have a lot of potential options e.g. you could disengage, you could look for an improvised weapon, or make ready your own personal carry weapon, such as your OC/Pepper spray, etc. If you are reacting/responding to a physical attack, these options aren’t going to be as readily available to you, as your focus and concentration will be on dealing with the attack that is underway. The same attack in the midst of a fight will be experienced differently to that at the start; you will be less surprised by a punch thrown during a fight, than a punch that initiates it, etc. However, there is a tendency to simply treat a punch as a punch, a strangle as a strangle, etc., when the way these are experienced can be very different – this doesn’t necessarily mean that we require/need different techniques or solutions to deal with them, as they are the same attack, but rather that we need to train them in the many different contexts in which they can be experienced. However, it may also be that we require a different response; if I can control the range at the beginning of a fight, I can use blocks to deal with punches, as I have the time and distance to make these work, however in the middle of a fight, where/when I have lost this control, and my aggressor is much closer to me, I may be forced to cover and ride their punches and strikes, rather than intercept and block them. If we can understand that the same attack may be experienced differently at different points a violent confrontation, and train to deal with these attacks in different contexts, then we will be better prepared for reality.

Dealing with a push at range is very different to dealing with a push when an aggressor is standing nose-to-nose with you; same attack experienced very, very differently. If somebody attempts to push you (and from my own experiences observing violence, this is a remarkably common fight initiator), from distance there is much less pressure to deal with this attack than if it were performed up close; in fact, they might as well have hired a marching band to walk in front of them signaling their intent. In reality a person isn’t going to come towards you with their arms already outstretched, as they will have no power with which to push you. Instead, their hands will already be on your chest, with the elbows bent, ready to drive you back. It is a completely different experience to identify an attack, and respond to it, purely by feel, without any visual cues to help and guide you. The problem is, such attacks are often not trained in this way because it is difficult to perform a complete and definitive solution, and instead all we can do in the moment is limit the effect of the attack; such as not being driven directly back and/or ending up on the ground, etc. This message of limiting the effects of an attack, rather than dealing with it, and in the same moment extricating ourselves completely from the fight can be a difficult one to sell to those who believe and put all the power in the effectiveness of their techniques –we are not always able to perform our techniques (even if we believe they are the best ones) in an optimal way. This doesn’t mean they are bad techniques, just that due to context, they may only be capable of restricting and limiting the effects of an attack, and so we need to be prepared for this; rather than always expecting them to work to a rigid, fixed and expected outcome.

There are many ways that you can get guillotined e.g. you can have your head pulled down, you can be pushed or slip, so that your head passes your shoulders and hips, etc. It may be that as you slip out of a clinch, an assailant is able to trap and control your head. The potential contexts, in which this attack can be experienced, are almost limitless, yet often it is only trained in one or two ways – I have even seen several clips of people running/stepping towards training partners with their heads down, so that they can be guillotined in order to practice an escape, etc. This is not just neglecting to practice the attack in a particular context, it is creating an entirely new one, which has no basis in reality. The problem is that we often have a focus on training the solution to an attack, rather than looking at the nature of it i.e. identifying the conditions that need to be met for a guillotine choke to be applied and setting up realistic scenarios that replicate these. If all we are interested in is acquiring the head knowledge concerning how to escape a guillotine choke, then we should start with the choke already being applied; if we want to practice it in such a way that we have a chance of dealing with it in a real-life confrontation, we must experience the application of the choke, as it is being applied. We must go through the process of its application, in the different positions and scenarios in which we are likely to find ourselves being choked in this way. To complicate/confuse matters, there are also many different ways to apply guillotine chokes, and we need to find out if our techniques/solutions work universally or whether we must be prepared to make certain adaptations, etc.

Training to defend ourselves shouldn’t take a one-size-fits-all approach, where we train our techniques in one context believing that this prepares ourselves for every scenario and situation we may experience. We need to practice defenses against the same attack at different ranges, and in different phases of the fight, as well as in different positions and contexts, etc. Presenting violence in the same way, every time, is too simplistic and we need to recognize the dynamic nature of physical confrontations that can change how we experience the same attack.