of your neck, start looking for weapons, escape routes and threats before you try to figure out what is causing the reaction. If you don’t trust someone, think about how to get away or what you will do if they lunge at you before you try to rationalize your distrust.Make a habit of studying your surroundings. Always look for good escape routes, obstacles, and available weapons. Practice looking for subtle reflective surfaces and shadows until it becomes second nature.Learn all you can about how violence really happens and how criminals really work. Choose your sources wisely - there is a lot of bad information available.
In a mutual fight, you have great discretion to set the terms of the conflict. There is a predictable build up with easily recognizable steps. I call it the “Monkey Dance,” the human dominance display. The Dance can usually be averted by showing submissive body language (eyes down and an apology), or it can be circumvented by jumping steps, such as taking the threat down as he approaches, instead of waiting for the chest push.
More important is to realize that if you’re aware that something is building to a fight, you don’t have to agree to take it there.
Threat: “I’m gonna kick your ass.”
Me: “No.”
Threat: “What do you mean, ‘No?’ ?”
Me: “Just no.”
Threat: (hyperventilates a little) “What are you gonna do about it?”
Me: (sigh or yawn [I’ve done both]) “Look, it’s late and I’m tired. You already sound upset. Fighting would wake me up a little but I don’t see what you’d get out of it. What’s your goal here?”
Threat: “My goal? You’re a weird cat, Miller.”
Me: “I hear that a lot.”
The Monkey Dance
Animals do not fight within their own species the same way they attack prey or defend themselves from predators. Big horn sheep slam the hardest parts of their heads together in dominance games, but fight off coyotes mostly by kicking. Coyotes, on the other hand, snarl, posture and wrestle to get a grip on an exposed throat of another coyote, but they prefer to run a deer or sheep to exhaustion, slashing at its hamstrings and belly with their teeth.
Though it looks like a fight, the dominance game played within a species is nothing like predatory violence. The same is true for humans. Like any other animal, humans have a ritual combat they play with other humans to establish dominance.
The steps may differ by culture but in general the Monkey Dance follows:
1) Eye contact with a hard, challenging stare.2) Verbal challenge: “What you lookin’ at?!”3) The person closes the distance with a strut, his chest stuck out. Sometimes they actually bounce up and down like a rooster.4) A push or finger poke, usually to the chest. A finger poke on the nose will almost always result in an immediate swing.5) A hard overhand swinging punch.
It’s rare for someone to be seriously injured in the Monkey Dance. Injuries that do occur happen when one or both of the participants fall and hit their heads.
The Monkey Dance may start with a clear aggressor or a bully, but as soon as the other person responds, both are involved in the dance. When challenged in this manner, most people will respond following the same steps as the aggressor unless they are aware of it and disciplined not to do so.
Concept 4: Fight to the goal
In a martial arts tournament, you know exactly what constitutes a win: a throw for ippon (point), a knockout, or a tap out. What determines a win is decided before the battle and is predictable enough that you can train toward it.
It’s rarely that predictable in real life. The tactical matrix illustrates that fighting at different levels of force – restraint, damage, lethal - changes everything. A situation that requires you to restrain without hurting is completely different in presentation, options and goals than one that requires you to break a limb or to kill. It’s incumbent on you to recognize as early as possible which situation you’re in, and fight to that goal.
It would be easy if those were the only three possible goals. They aren’t. What you need to prevail (your goal) in each given situation may be wildly different.
You may need to fight your way past someone or several people to escape, which is different than standing and fighting. You may need to get your daughter or pregnant wife to safety. You may need to get the attention of near-by help. While curled into a ball being kicked from all sides, you need to stay calm and conscious long enough to poke 9-1-1 on your cell phone. During the ensuing battle, you might need to get one hand free to access a weapon. Whatever the goal in that instant, you must fight toward it and it must be the right one.
Example of an inappropriate goal
Several years ago, I debriefed a corrections officer after a use-of-force incident in which he had been attacked by a single inmate in a large open jail room with 64 other inmates watching. He was several minutes into the fight before he realized the inmate was trying to kill him: biting, striking and gouging the officer’s eyes. But the officer was only trying to go for a pin! He had been a competitive wrestler and his training had taken over. He had fought to an inappropriate goal and it could have cost him his sight or his life.
Concept 5: Use your environment
Most martial arts are practiced in an incredibly sterile environment: the floor is even and often padded, and sharp edges and corners have been removed. There’s no furniture to trip over, much less puke to slip in, or needles to roll over. The practitioners are stripped down to similar uniforms with sensible (or no) footwear.
The real world is full of curbs, doorknobs, furniture, and sharp-cornered concrete buildings.
It’s possible to drag someone off balance by their hoody, or blind them by pulling it over their eyes. You can immobilize a person lying on the ground by standing on their baggy pants. There are slopes and slippery places, and places where there isn’t enough room to turn around. There’s bad lighting, loud noises, shadows, and reflections everywhere. All the while traffic whizzes by.
The difference between a hazard and an opportunity is determined by who recognizes and exploits it first. A curb is a hazard if the threat makes you trip over it; it’s an opportunity if you push him over it. The list of potential opportunities is endless.
Reading about this isn’t enough. Thinking and visualizing isn’t enough. You need to practice your art in a variety of surroundings and deliberately use the environment in conjunction with your art. It takes a good amount of skill and a teacher who understands safety, but you need to practice recognizing when walls, corners, tables, electrical cords, random liquids, the threat’s clothes, and traffic can be used to your advantage. This can be dangerous. Even training in armor won’t help much should you throw someone into the corner of a table.
There is a big difference between this blood-smeared jail cell where officers had to fight a combative prisoner and that of the clean, sterile, and wide-open training area of a martial arts school.
Don’t let the sterility of
