Hurt or Injured? You Decide.

To Cause Pain or To Do Damage

Do I want to hurt my opponent or do I want to damage them? What is the difference? I have this conversation with my new students when we get into self-defense techniques and before we begin a more in depth study of kyusho-jutsu, (vital point striking). I want to get a sense of where their mind is before I begin to corrupt it with martial knowledge.

The dojo or training hall is the one place in the world where people can come and directly confront discomfort and fears. It is very simple. No one likes to get punched in the face or thrown to the ground. In martial arts training you will confront these obstacles routinely.

I love discussing with students what they are most afraid of, in regards to being attacked, and then working through it with them. Step one is finding out what ways they are most uncomfortable being attacked. Step two is to put them into that situation in a very controlled manner so they can see what it is really like. Of course there are safeties in place and we are playing with kid gloves. There is no point in getting fear instilled in you or sustaining damage in training. It is already dangerous enough.

I put them in a situation and first see how they would naturally defend themselves. Some are better than others but after some time you get the sense that there are a few techniques that nearly all untrained come up with. I blame television.

All of the techniques they suggest have one thing in common. They all are meant to cause pain. The reason for that is that is something they can identify with. They come to class because they don’t want to be hurt should they have the need to defend themselves. Unfortunately they usually come in with a misconception. They soon find out that pain is part of the training and not really a concern.

The common techniques are elbows to the ribs, kicks to the groin, throat strikes, and punches to the face. And though those are effective techniques, they cause a great deal of pain while doing little to no damage. Note: minus the throat strikes. Those are capable of killing but new students seldom know how to properly apply them.

They believe that if they hurt their opponent then that will deter them from further attack. I ask them if those strikes they come up with will hurt their opponent or injure them. They give me a puzzled look and ask me what is the difference. GREAT?! This is the question I am waiting for. Sometimes I will let them try the techniques on me. “Go ahead and hit me,” I will say. And sometimes they do. Then they see that the effects are not what they expected. I will admit most people have reservations about actually hitting their karate teacher so they tend to hold back.

So then the real class begins. What is the difference between hurt and injured? Well think about it. What hurts? A kick to the groin would probably hurt quite a bit. Getting punched in the face would be jarring and hurt. Having the wind knocked out of you by a front kick and almost throwing up hurts and is embarrassing. All of those things hurt but how many of them are injuries?

After sustaining one of these blow how combat effective would you be? Could you still fight with full effectiveness? Would you still be dangerous? Could you run away or give chase if you had the need? I imagine that you have answered that you would still be fully functional after sustaining one of these blows. In a fight you have two options. You can either run away or stand and fight. That decision is instinctual.

Ask martial artists we train to optimize our actions when that decision arises. If we have to run we are capable of running faster and longer than the average man. If we have to fight then we should be stronger and hit harder than the average man. So we train ourselves to be above average. Following this logic we should, at least in theory, be able to sustain greater damage than the average.

When my students think about using a technique for self defense I ask them if that technique would stop them if they were fighting for their lives. Then I ask them how. Then the punches to the face only become effective if it results in a knockout. The elbows to the ribs only become effective if the ribs break and puncture something internally. The kicks to the groin only become effective if it render them incapable of walking. Now they are getting the idea.

Injured means the opponent is debilitated somehow. They becomes less combat effective and are unable to continue their attack, or at least their attack capabilities have become lessened.

Imagine an opponent that did not feel pain. Everything else physiologically were the same only they suffer CIPA or have taken drugs, and not PCP because then they become superhuman and you have to hit them with a car. Barring they are a superhuman, how do you stop them?

You have to look at the body as a combination of systems. Now I do not want to get into the techniques that end life. As martial artists those techniques are last resorts and there are whole lists of techniques we should be able to use before we have to make that decision.

You can attack the circulation. The brain needs oxygenated blood. Without it it will stop working. If prolonged then the brain will die. So lateral vascular restraints are effective techniques. These may not cause pain but they will render someone unconscious. “But Ryu Ho, that's not an injury. That doesn't have any lasting effects. They just wake up and they are fine!” Wrong! Any time you co unconscious brain cells die. We cannot regenerate brain cells.

You can attack the electrical system. The body functions by the brain sending signals to the organs or systems to cause actions. There are techniques that can disrupt that signal and short circuit the system. You see it when someone gets knocked out. The nest time you are on YouTube look up a video on boxing knockouts and watch how their bodies respond when the system gets short circuit.

You can attack the structure. Everyone has a skeleton that supports and protects their internal organs. Your bones are very strong and flexible which makes them tough. The body is fragile but very resilient. Some of the long boned can shatter baseball bats and even stones. It takes a fair bit of training but it is possible. Where the bones meet is a different story. The joints are weak points that can be exploited. It would be hard for my opponent to run after me if he sustained a broken ankle or a dislocated knee. Even if he did not feel the pain the limb would not function properly.

You can attack the musculature. The body moves with muscles. Without muscles the body cannot move. Now muscles are spongy and tough. They can sustain massive amounts of abuse and actually get stronger for it. However, if you can manage to overload them beyond their limits they will tear, tendons will break, and ligaments will snap. When this happens it is like if the serpentine belt on your car engine snaps. The engine will still run but you will have a multitude of problems and will soon need to stop.

To hurt or to injure, that is the question. Remember hurting your opponent just causes them pain. Injuring your opponent means debilitating them in some fashion. Now enough reading. Get up and go train.