do the same to the mad Muslims, I am thankful that I had this kind of education and experience. I landed in Saigon after training in Taiwan and Thailand when I was 26 as a young and dumb civil engineer and pilot with a talent for language mayhem and intrigue! My Government instructors must have noticed something was different about me from the very first.
Ten of us were given a survival vest and told to run and hide and the chasers would try to find us after two hours. This was E&E training (escape and evasion). We had listened to our instructors in Bangkok droning on in the hot classrooms for hours about what to do if we were forced down over enemy territory. We were next to Vung Tao, an Australian air base about 50 miles from Saigon. I let the guys run far ahead of me. When they were out of sight along with the instructors behind me, I turned hard right and ran down the south perimeter road to the west side of the field.
I found a bunch of Aussie soldiers kicking back on the sunny beach. Sitting down beside them said I had a couple of days to kill and asked if they had a BOQ or someplace I could bunk. Two days later, rested well fed and tan, I trotted over to the east side where the old Marine sergeant had search parties combing the swamps looking for my sorry ass for 48 hours. I had a clean Aussie T shirt, a wide brimmed Aussie bush hat, sunglasses and a can of fosters in my hand.
The old guy was fit to be tied! (@#%&&@@XXX)- he screamed curses at me for 30 minutes in languages even I couldn't understand. He frothed and got red faced jumping up and down and carrying on terribly. I stood there quietly. When he finally ran out of air, I said, Look Sergeant, we were distinctly told in class to blend in with the locals if possible. That's exactly what I did, didn't I? What could he say? He was with our small bunch in Bangkok and heard the same thing! The others were dirty, mosquito bitten, covered with leach bites and look horrible- of course they hated me!! Too funny...
After that stunt, my life changed. I went through a dozen schools all over the world and learned things that no one in their right mind would believe! Being remarkably strong and fast, I excelled in personal defense and, within a few weeks could best any of my trainers. This, of course, royally pissed them off and I was constantly being challenged. This, I was, like any dumb show- off kid, quite fond of. Until I met Sergey! Sergey was smaller than me by a head but at least as strong as I was.
Let me explain here that self-defense has a hell of a lot to do with ones physicality. The ability to grab a person's wrist exerting enough force to crush flat the opponent's tendons, making the hand useless, is important. Then to hit the sternum with ones other hand or foot with enough force to incapacitate a horse is very useful- believe me, superior strength and speed is enormously important.
In out first match Sergey presented me with a smile followed by a totally unexpected brutal kick to my solar plexus. Why the solar plexus instead of trying to knock my head off? There are several good things about this strike. The first is that it is hard to see coming. If you keep your eyes on your opponent, they will probably be expecting you to swing for their face as this is more common. You can drop a solar plexus strike in without much range and under their eye line so they won't see it coming. I certainly didn't.
The second is that if you get it right it's extremely painful (it was) and stops the opponent in their tracks (it didn't in my case) as they won't be able to breathe. During this time, when they're doubled over, you can either hit them a few more times to finish them off, leg it, or do both. I managed to keep my breath and was hurt but not out.
Thirdly, you're not likely to cause any lasting damage to your hand or foot (important), or them (less important but still worth bearing in mind). Hands, fingers and knuckles break easily when you hit people on hard surfaces like their face. The solar plexus strike won't damage either hand or foot.
The nice thing about hitting the solar plexus is there a lot of nerves there and the diaphragm that helps you breathe is behind. He knew that and so did I. When you hit the diaphragm spasms, the person can't breathe and is in a lot of pain. Even muscular guys can get taken down with this easily as even if they're bodybuilders they can't develop muscle over that area. In fact if they're lean it's ideal as they won't have any fat there to protect them either. Since Sergey's demonstration, I've seen a 'muay thai' fighter get knocked out cold with a solar plexus strike- he had to be carried out of the ring unconscious, which was a good demonstration of its effectiveness.
I dropped to the deck with his leg trapped under my arm pulling him down beside me. He snapped a fist at my throat which I blocked and then, faster than the eye could see or I could react, he wrapped his arm around my neck from the back shutting off the blood to my head. When I woke up after a minute, he helped me up and showed me exactly what happened. Turned out he had been flown in to finish my training because the local instructors had shown me all they could.
I spent the next 4 weeks with Sergey working out three to five hours daily. To hit effectively you need to transfer your weight through the target. Let me tell you something about this kind of training. For one thing, you practice the same move hundreds of times. I learned the solar plexus strikes until it was just and automatic reflex whenever the opponent presented an opening. You can skip the following if this bores you but this is what such training is really like. You are there to learn to kill, incapacitate and kill- nothing more and certainly nothing less. Never leave the opponent alive- Why? because your life depends on it.
If you just hit the solar plexus without weight transfer, your strike will probably bounce off, maybe surprise them a bit, but nothing more. The best way to practice weight transfer is to practice the strike against a bag and then against someone, ideally a willing training partner. We did, over and over and then over again... The idea is to build instinctive muscle memory - you can't fight effectively if you have to think about what you're doing.
Get the opponent to stand there and start with a push on his solar plexus. The solar plexus is located at the top of the abs (or where the abs should be if you're not a sit-up person) and just below the centre point of your nipples. If you poke your finger onto the sternum (the breastbone) then go down a bit, then you'll find there is an area that's extremely unpleasant to poke. That's where you want to hit- hard!
Start with just stepping forward and pushing that area. The idea is that your bodyweight is transferred through the opponent, so keep your arm relaxed and push through as if you're pushing through to their spine. You want to do it so you step and your front foot hits the deck as you hit, so your body weight drops into your strike. This is extremely important so don't skip this step, make sure that you are stepping forward properly and pushing your body weight through, as if you leave your feet behind and try and extend your arm to hit, you're greatly limiting the power of your strike.
If you keep your arm relaxed, you'll hit harder and faster than if you try and tense up your muscles. This may sound counterintuitive, but it really works but- only if you're fast and strong enough
This kind of training goes on for weeks and then the relearning and practicing never stops. I learned fifty ways to kill my opponents silently and before they could even think to react. The idea here is never let them know they are under threat. Approach silently, best when they're sleeping, fucking or on the toilet. Incapacitate them with a silent gas so they can't possibly wake up and kill them. Over the last 40 years, I have learned and perfected hundreds of tried and true methods of dispatching my enemies. During that time I certainly invented several new tricks of the trade in this deadly game and taught them to the guys who work with me.
Sergey was older than me by fifteen or so years. I never learned his last name and later that year he disappeared and never said good-bye. I guess I did OK because after his departure I was subjected to six months of new training consisting of dozens of clandestine techniques which included the use of poisons, gas, and a wide variety of every day items that can and are used to kill.
So,
