The Five Keys to Unlocking Self-Defense.

Five Keys to Success

A Self-Defense Road Map

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”- Mike Tyson. This is a great quote. It really couples one to the reality of a fight. Anyone that has ever fought on the street, in the ring, or in the dojo can relate to this quote. What is the quote really about though? Is it about getting punched in the face? Well sort of, yes. It is about responding to pressure and when your agenda is on the line. And let’s face it; everyone has an agenda when it comes to fighting weather it is survival, scoring, or be the last man standing at the ending bell. One trying like hell to impose their will on another while at the same time resisting their adversary’s will.

Have you ever been in a fight before, training or otherwise? Before the fight there are many preconceived notions about how you will come out on the other end. Will you win? What techniques will you use? You are going to punch them in the face and then…… Yeah that is usually about the time when you get hit and cannot remember what you were thinking about.

In this article I am going to give you a few things to think about while training. I am going to give you a plan, a road map as the subtitle says. These keys are principles you can implement into any and all parts of your self-defense training. There are five simple keys to doing effective self-defense. Stick to these principles and your chances of survival will be much better than average. Remember that truth is in the minor details.

Rule # 1: Move and Trap. This is where we will start. How much time have you spent on a piece of stationary strike training equipment like a heavy bag, muk yan jong, or makiwara? I am willing to be you have had some. These are easy to hit right? Of course they are. They stand still. Don’t be like your training equipment. Move around. It is much harder to hit a moving target than it is to hit one that is stationary.

Don’t believe me? Have a training partner run around the gym with a focus mitt on and try to hit it while he/she avoids you. That little pad will be jack rabbiting all over the place. You will not be able to lock on, plant, and strike it with a solid hit. Be like this when you are fighting. Do not stand still. Do not make the mistake of just wasting energy needlessly but move around and constantly improve your position.

At the same time you will want your opponent to stay right where you can tag them should you need to. Like the partner with the focus pad running all over the place, an opponent doing that will be a hard target. You will want to get a hold of them soon to keep them from evading your next steps.

Rule # 2: Stunning Strike. Fighting is a hitting game. So hit your opponent. This may indeed sound obvious but I have seen fighters fight with the intention of only dodging and blocking the attacks of their opponent. I have seen this end badly more times than I have seen it end well. Though broken ribs and a cracked sternum can be life threatening, broken arms or legs can be crippling and leave you unable to defend yourself. You must strike your opponent and I must either do damage or cause an effect other than pain.

Do not count on a kick to the groin or a single solid punch to the jaw to do the trick every time. There is a clear and distinct difference between hurting someone and damaging someone. In a fight your goal is to damage them, maybe not permanently, but neutralize the threat. Allow me to explain. Groin strikes, though painful sometimes, do nothing to your opponent’s ability to strike, kick, or beat you. You have not taken any of his fighting tools away, while a poke to the eyes may not be terribly painful it renders your opponent blind if only for the moment.

If a person cannot see you they cannot hit you. They will have a hard time catching you if they have a broken foot or a torn ACL. Strike your opponent to affect their ability to breath, their ability to see, or their ability to stand. This in turn will limit their mobility. Refer to rule one if you have already forgotten how important mobility is.

Rule # 3: Control. You must gain physical control over your opponent, grab the bull by the horns. This is where chin na seizing, pressure points, and joint locking come into play. If you are not familiar with this family of techniques I suggest you become acquainted and soon. You will not need a vast knowledge with degrees in anatomy and physiology but a few joint locks, an arm bar or two, and a couple of easy to get to pressure points can change your entire martial arts outlook.

Trust me. Apply a joint lock of some kind. You must manipulate your opponent’s skeleton to upset his balance. You need your opponent’s balance broken, direction does not matter. This does two things. It makes it so your opponent will be unable to effectively counter strike and it makes your opponent easier to take down.

Rule # 4: Take-down. You must take you opponent off of their feet and put them onto the deck. It is much more difficult to attack someone in a standing position while lying on the ground. Make no mistake though, it is quite possible. Maybe not in the movie sense where a guy kicks a man in the face with some magic telescoping leg, but a swift shot to the knee or well-timed sweep are very real possibilities. So be careful.

At this stage in the engagement your opponent should be a prime candidate for a take-down or a throw of some kind. The joint manipulation techniques you did on them or the pressure point strikes you utilized should have been enough to compromise his balance. Keep it simple. I am sure you have tripped on a rock or slipped on something wet at some point, right? How complicated was that? I am guessing not very. There you were just simply walking along without a care in the world and all of a sudden your world went all pear shaped, right?

You were focused on going in one direction and outside elements disrupted your natural gait to the point of epic failure. I hope you were not in front of your crush when that happened, looking all un-cool and everything. Sorry. Tangent. Back to it. One of two things happened. Either your feet stopped moving and the rest of your body didn’t or your feet ran out from under you. Taking this into consideration we know that we need the feet to be moving at one speed and the rest of the body to be moving at another speed, even if that speed is zero miles per hour.

When you apply a lock the body’s natural response is to move in a direction that lessens the pain. This is called self-preservation. Your body does not want to hurt and it wants to protect itself so is goes with the flow. This is a good thing. It is what keeps you from getting a broken wrist in class when you have a training partner that is a bit too overzealous. Oddly enough many people short circuit this natural self-defense tool. This is when broken wrists do happen.

Amateur students tense up at the wrong moment and snap, something has got to give. For training I hope it never happens but for self-defense this is what we are counting on. Because of mechanical advantages and a bit of knowledge about anatomy, we can bear down with a great deal of our force to our opponent’s weakest points. Once that balance has been disrupted you simply stop their feet and keep their upper body moving, or make their feet run right out from under them. Once you see they are going down help them along a little or a lot depending on the severity of the situation.

Rule # 5: Finish: There you have your opponent on the ground. Now what? Now you give him something to think about while he is down there. By that I mean a final attack. This coup de grace does two things. One, it buys you time to recover and escape the area. You are defending yourself and not fighting. You should not be using your skills to beat on another. Instead only use them in the preservation of life. Two, it is a psychological deterrent with the goal of dissuading your opponent from continuing his attack.

A bonus would be if you rendered your opponent unconscious. And before you hate me for being seemingly ruthless, answer me this. What shows more compassion, striking your opponent once and ending the engagement, or striking them repeatedly in hopes that they will leave you alone? We as martial artist have a greater degree of responsibility to ourselves, our families, and even to our enemies.

The ultimate self-defense is to never come to blows. But if you must come to laying hands on another do so with speed, precision, and complete control. If you do not have a plan of your own follow this road-map to safety. Gain a superior position and strike your opponent somewhere vital. Apply a joint lock or pressure point strike to upset their balance. Once their balance has been compromised then throw them to the ground. Strike them with a final blow to allow yourself time to disengage and run from danger. Sounds like a solid plan to me.

There is nothing set in stone. Ever! These steps are not hard rules to follow but well thought out and logical guidelines. If you don’t move when they try to hit you then you will likely take some damage no matter how little. If you do not get a hold of them they will be harder to apply your techniques on. If you do not stun them then their attack sequence goes uninterrupted and they will hurt you. If you do not take them down they are up and free to act against you without impediment. If you do not finish them somehow then they will just continue their attack.

Some steps, given the right opportunity, can be skipped, omitted, or circled back around to depending on what the situation calls for. Train yourself to keep moving onto the next step until you get to the end, the finishing blow. There you are. You have the road-map. Now turn your computer off, get up, and go train.