the drill area must be cordoned off, cleared of anything truly dangerous, and everyone must be checked to assure that no live weapons enter the arena or come into reach of the participants. There can be no exceptions to this.
Every drill introduces a known “flaw” to assure participant safety. In this case it’s twofold, equipment and speed. Equipment first: Each participant should bring the safe training equivalent of what they carry every day. With proper equipment and oversight, this could include real firearms with Simunition®, inert pepper spray, and Shocknife™ training knives, among other tools. More often than not, however, practitioners wind up using rubber training weapons instead. Alternatively, training instruments can be strewn around the practice area where anyone can have access to them. Either way, the environment around you is as much in play as the other guy, hence the focus on safety.
Now on to speed: The drill is performed as a tandem exercise done in slow motion with each partner taking turns and multiple participants working together at the same time. This is commonly called a “one-step” training exercise. One partner initiates a move and the other partner matches his or her speed making a single motion to respond. You each get only one movement before it becomes the other person’s turn. The drill continues without resetting until the allotted time expires, or you end up in a position from which you cannot continue and have to reset.
Even though you move slowly, it is vital to use proper body mechanics and targeting as well as to move at equal speed. It’s okay to speed things up a bit so long as you are both doing it, in control, and safely. Keep things slow enough that you have time to evaluate and take advantage of the “best” opening available. In this fashion you are training to habituate good techniques. You can do the exact same things on the street, only faster. This drill is not about winning or losing; it’s about refining your situational awareness during a fight. Nevertheless, you should react to the opponent’s blows so that the ebb and flow of the fight is more-or-less realistic. You don’t need to stop moving even if you’re “killed.” It is important to talk to each other so that you will learn what you are doing well in addition to discovering opportunities you may have missed during the exercise.
The basic one-step drill is not so hard, but here’s the twist: you can use your hands and feet along with everything else you find in the training area except what you brought into the game. If you can draw your opponent’s weapon in one motion, do so, but you cannot draw your own. It’s rare, but sometimes creative participants will draw a weapon from someone else in the room who is not their opponent. This kind of creativity is encouraged.
This is not a competition, but rather a cooperative endeavor, which incorporates several related skills and concepts:
• It makes people stay alert for opportunities and openings.
• It forces people who carry weapons to consider and practice weapons retention.
• It gives a (very mild) introduction to fighting in an armed world.
• It rewards an educated sense of touch—often you feel the weapon before you see it.
• It brings an elevated awareness of the environment and the people around you.
In order to truly benefit from this drill, it is critical that each person makes only one motion during their turn. Not one block and one strike but only one action. This encourages strategic movement and angles of attack, economy of motion, and techniques that simultaneously attack and defend in one movement. The habits you learn in this type of training can make a huge difference on the street where you will often be trying to recover the initiative once the threat has already attacked you.
Identifying the threat’s “tell”
The Halloween crowd was rockin’. Spinnakers offered a thousand dollars for the best costume and there were over a hundred contestants. Encased in over 115 pounds of 16-gauge steel, I chatted up the “mermaid” next to me while waiting my turn to show off my outfit, a stunning replica suit of medieval white-harness plate armor. The girl was hot, but her boyfriend was hotter when he saw us laughing together. I headed over to grab a drink when he confronted me.
“Stay the fuck away from my girlfriend asshole,” he spat.
“We were just talking dickhead. Get over it!”
Okay, that wasn’t the smartest thing to say, but I was 22, a little drunk, and hadn’t gotten over that whole raging hormone thing yet. Nevertheless, his reaction was by no means unexpected. His nostrils flared. His face turned red. He snarled. And threw a punch at my head.
Normally I’m not one to favor blocking with my face, but in that instance I just grinned at him as he broke his hand on my steel helmet. Unfortunately when the bouncers tossed him out, the girl left with him. Can’t win ‘em all…
While it often seems that way to victims, violence does not happen in a vacuum. There is always some type of escalation process beforehand. While it may be a long, drawn-out confrontation that builds up to the point of attack, it could just as easily appear to be a sudden ambush. In such situations, the escalation may have taken place within the mind of the aggressor. Either way, an astute observer can identify and react to cues, such as an adversary’s adrenal twitch that precedes his attack. Unfortunately, if you do not spot these indicators or “tells” in common self-defense parlance, you are bound to get hurt.
Spotting an adversary’s tell directly requires you to notice very small physical movements and signals of the other guy’s intent to attack. These indicators are often subtle, hence easy to miss, particularly when you are distracted or mentally unfocused. For example, the tell might be a slight drop of the shoulder, a tensing of the neck, a flaring of the nostrils, or even a puckering of the lips. On the other hand, changes in an opponent’s energy are much easier to spot then any specific physical sign. You are simply looking for change. Any change of energy should be treated as a danger signal. Here are some examples that you can recognize and act on during a confrontation:
• A person who was standing still moves slightly. A weight shift is far subtler than a step, but this change is a possible preparation for attack.
• There is a change in the rate, tone, pitch, or volume of a person’s voice. An overt example is when someone who is shouting becomes suddenly quiet or, conversely, one who has been quiet suddenly raises his voice.
• A person who was looking at you suddenly looks away or, conversely, a person who was looking away suddenly makes eye contact. Watch this one. As humans we focus on eyes/face to gauge attention, which we think is important, but often turning the head away, especially with an experienced fighter, loads and clears the shoulders for a strike.
• There is a sudden change in the person’s breathing. Untrained adversaries will begin to breathe shallow and fast in the upper chest while trained opponents will breathe slow and deep from their abdomen.
• A person develops a sudden pallor or flushing of his face (paling is adrenaline-induced vasoconstriction, reddening is vasodilation).
• There is a change in the person’s posture. Untrained adversaries tend to “puff up,” opening their chest and arching their spine, while trained opponents tend to close down their chest, straighten their spine, and lower their center of gravity.
These seem to be contradictory—look away or lock on, puff up or compress, pale
