an efficient and effective self-defense stance and practice good defensive tactics. Once you’ve got your feet moving in the right direction pretty consistently, you’ll only need to repeat this drill for a few minutes a month—to reinforce your good street-combat movements.
I do this drill often with cadets, as well as in-service personnel, and it greatly enhances their ability to move efficiently in the combat scenarios in which we train them.
5
Hand Strikes
Strikes Versus Holds
The trend in law enforcement these days is for police administrators to stress the importance of physical restraint techniques in dealing with a combative suspect. My experience—in working on the street and in custodial environments (like county jails and prisons) and in training law enforcement officers for the last eight years—has taught me that restraint techniques are extremely hard to apply in police work. Compared to striking techniques, they require countless hours of practice before an officer will be effective enough to use them in real world policing situations. Aikido, for example, is a Japanese martial art that includes many restraining techniques. Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, would practice his techniques thousands of times before he ever used them in combat.
In the modern world of law enforcement, the majority of officers simply do not train enough to be able to apply restraint techniques effectively. Through my experience in training thousands of law enforcement personnel in both restraint and striking techniques, I have come to the conclusion that striking techniques can be taught more quickly than restraint techniques, and that striking techniques, when combined with assertive verbal commands and other techniques, can achieve the same desired result—to subdue a suspect or attacker—as restraining techniques.
I don’t say that we shouldn’t teach restraining techniques. They certainly have their time and place, but given the short amount of training time we typically have, I believe that striking techniques are a better choice for most training programs because trainees can learn to be effective much more quickly.
The Jab
The first strike you should learn is the basic jab. I would choose the jab over any other strike because it’s carried out with the nongun hand. If the jab doesn’t work, you still have the option of quickly drawing your firearm, impact weapon, or o/c (pepper) spray to subdue a suspect or stop the threat.
Fist Versus Palm
In learning the jab, you must make a basic decision about what type of striking method you want to use—a palm heel or fist strike (see Figs. 25 and 26). I’ll explain both methods, since they’re both very effective. However, you should be aware that there will always be some controversy over which is better.
Let me point out the pros and cons of each—then you can decide which one you’d like to use.
When I start to teach law enforcement personnel how to strike, one of the first questions I ask is whether any of them have ever broken their hand in a fight. Usually at least 15 to 20 percent of the officers raise their hands. At least 95 percent of the officers who broke their hands broke them on duty while punching a suspect with a closed fist. While the fist is a natural weapon, one that’s formed almost unconsciously while fighting, it is easily broken in a fight.
I interviewed many of the officers who had broken their hands to see what had gone wrong. The majority of them said that the assault happened so fast that they didn’t have time to make a proper fist. Many of the officers also complained that they had never been taught formally how to make a fist.
Remember that boxers wear heavy gloves when they punch with their fists. Under the gloves, their hands have been professionally wrapped and are protected by yards of gauze and tape. Even with this kind of padding, a professional boxer will occasionally break his hand in a fight.
Your hands are made up of many tiny bones that are easily broken. If you don’t know how to punch correctly, you need to learn the proper technique so that you will not break your hand in a fight on the street. I’ve been lucky; I’ve never broken the bones of my hand in a fight—but I’ve been working on my punching technique for over thirty years.
The majority of the time, if I have to strike, I strike with a palm heel strike. With this strike you make contact with (obviously) the heel of your palm. Your fingers should be tightly held together and your thumb tucked in. (If your thumb sticks out during a strike, it runs the risk of getting damaged. I speak from experience in this department!) The heel of your palm should be thrust out, and your fingers are pulled back—both for maximum impact with the heel of your palm and so that your fingers don’t get in the way (see Fig. 27).
One thing I’ve noticed while training law enforcement officers is that they tend to deliver the palm heel strike with their fingers facing at an approximately 45-degree angle toward their target (see Fig. 28).
I have found that when you do this, your fingers will strike the suspect’s head before the heel of the palm. Although this partial touch with the fingers is momentary, it offers an attacker enough time to prepare to absorb the strike—making it more likely he’ll be able to withstand it (see Fig. 29).
Therefore, when executing a palm heel strike, your fingers should be at an almost 90-degree angle to your forearm—so that you get the maximum impact with the heel of your palm (see Fig. 30).
If your wrist is not flexible enough to strike with your fingers at this angle, bend your elbow back slightly, which will allow the heel of your palm to strike the area correctly (see Fig. 31: bent-elbow palm strike).
You must choose which form of the basic hand strikes you want to use. Most men seem to prefer to use their fists. This is probably how they learned to strike while growing up, and what they have grown to depend on as an adult. Once the shortcomings of the fist strike have been demonstrated, most officers are willing to try
