on the wall. Run for the door and yell for help in self-defense class.
Want to know one of the differences between rolling with your pals at the dojo and rolling with a tweaker (someone under the influence of methamphetamines) in an isolation cell? Hygiene. Your dojo pals don’t stink. Not like a tweaker.
Concept 6: Violence is a form of communication. So communicate
Cops often come into the job believing the Old West version of the gunfight and the quick draw. They pay lip service to the adage that “action beats reaction,” but they don’t really grasp it.
During “uncontrolled environment” training, officers participate with a full complement of safe weapons, including Simunitions (Sims are sub-caliber weapons, real guns that fire a marking pellet. The suckers sting, too. Ask to see the scars some time).
To demonstrate the action/reaction gap, I let two officers draw their weapons and point them at my chest with their fingers on the trigger. I have a Simunitions weapon in my hand dangling at my side. The officers are instructed to order me to drop the weapon, and should I make a threatening gesture, they are to fire. I consistently get off three shots before either officer can squeeze the trigger. If I sidestep with the action, they miss.
Then I have one of the students play the threat and I play the officer. The kid expects me to draw down and give commands. Instead, I scream, “Drop the weapon, do it now!” while leaping at him, grabbing his shoulder with my off hand, and spinning him to the ground. Not one trainee has fired a shot (except for the time I slipped like an idiot and fell). This demonstrates how action beats reaction, and the scream is key.
When you fight, scream and make it a sharp, loud, and simple command: “Stop!” “Get down!” “Drop it! Try to hurt his ears and shake the windows across the street.
Concept 7: This is not a game
There are no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a government organization that ensures safe and healthy working conditions) regulations for an assault. When a boxer isn’t wearing competition gloves and he hits a skull, he breaks his hand. If you hit a threat in the mouth out in the street, you risk getting blood poisoning when broken teeth puncture your skin and his blood and saliva get into your body. Even if it’s only the other guy who does the bleeding, you sometimes wait for weeks for blood tests to know if you were exposed to hepatitis or HIV.
Those are the winning options. The loser may be paralyzed, blinded or permanently brain damaged. It’s easy for some people to say that they would risk their life for X, but the question is would they risk becoming a paraplegic and having to wake up to the same nightmare every day? Would they risk spending years in prison? Losing their house as part of a civil suit?
These are just some of the things at risk. It’s not as clean as is the romantic fantasy about dying heroically for a good cause. The stakes are too high for it to be a game.
Get them talking
This is a trick I picked up yanking combative bad guys out of cells, a situation in which the prisoner is ready to fight and you have to go through a door to put him down without hurting him. He knows from what direction you will be coming and that you will be moving directly through his prime striking range.
I use a fast lead hand and lead-leg drop-step to grab just above his lead elbow. Then I spin him. The trick is to make the move while he is talking so that he freezes.
This has been so reliable that now when I know I have to take someone out of a cell and I have a few seconds of discretionary time, I try to get the person talking. Then I move.
In training, there’s an emphasis on good technique and doing things right. “Start over,” sensei says. But there aren’t any do-overs outside the dojo. Sometimes you screw up, sometimes it’s sloppy. Tough. You work from where you find yourself because that’s all you have. You need to practice recovering from a position of disadvantage; accept mistakes as something that happens and work from the flawed position.
Fighting is too damn sloppy to be a game.
There are also habits in every style that are based on safety or entertainment that have become the “right” way to do the technique. Officers and soldiers put prisoners face down for control, wrestlers and judoka put them face up because it makes for a more entertaining and challenging match. The follow-through for a judo hip throw is taught as a control maneuver to get an easy pin or arm-lock, but it was a safety modification from the older follow-throughs that put the thrown person’s falling weight directly on the point of his shoulder or bent neck. The pronated fist of karate was a Japanese innovation to decrease the training injuries common to the original Okinawan art. Over time these safety and entertainment changes have become the “right way” and “good technique.” Study your training for things that have been added to make it safer or “more fun.”
Breaking the turtle
The turtle is a defensive position common to most grappling styles. The opponent is on hands and knees, facing the floor, back rounded to use the abdominal muscles to best advantage in resisting being lifted or straightened. In styles where uniforms are worn, the turtler’s hands are often inside the collar so he can protect himself from strangles. This position isn’t a fight-winner, but it’s a solid defensive position where an opponent can rest and think.
I’ve spent hours learning different ways to break the turtle. I’m partial to a trailing arm flip over strangle, but truth is it’s a useless move. Imagine you’re in a bar brawl and someone turtles up. So what? A guy curled up and face down is not a threat. If he reaches for a weapon he becomes a threat, but you do not engage by grappling him. You leave. Or you use a weapon of your own. Or you apply your boots to him.
The exceptions are law enforcement and corrections officers who have to handcuff a threat from the turtle position. But even then there is usually time to bring more people or tools into play.
Concept 8: Intent, means and opportunity
For a person to be seen as a valid and immediate threat, he must exhibit three elements: intent, means, and opportunity.
Intent means that he wants to hurt you.Means is his ability to hurt you: fists, knife, or gun.Opportunity allows him to reach you with the means.
To claim self-defense, the threat must present all three of these elements and you must be able to explain clearly how you knew all were present.
If you can take one of these away, he ceases to be a threat. If you can physically beat him up you deny him his means. If you can get away, he is denied his opportunity. If you can change the threat’s mind, you have altered his intent. Altering intent is a broad and potent skill. You can do it by projecting calm, bluffing, using humor, emitting an ear splitting scream, and a number of other ways.
The art of fighting without fighting
Besides attacking a threat physically, you can attack him mentally. You can attack the relationship and you can attack the context.
Attack mentally This is a direct attempt to influence his mind. For example, loud and unexpected noises can freeze the mind for a second. So can non-sequiturs, odd phrases that make the threat reevaluate the situation.
