Here’s an interesting clip of a typical street confrontation that one of my students Guy emailed me (many thanks Guy). It’s has many features of a typical street confrontation and I believe it can provide a lot of lessons for training for such situations. Both in terms of how you should behave in such a situation to defend yourself and how you should behave as someone who is playing the role of the attacker when training in the dojo.

Interesting Confrontation

I’m glad the incident resulted in the yob getting the humiliating knock down that he deserved, I have no sympathy for his plight.

Let’s take a look at the defender. In my opinion he was very lucky, there was a lot that he did wrong:

  • He let the yob get way too close to him. Once he became aware of the potential confrontation he should have maintained some distance between himself and the yob by putting up his fence. This would make it difficult for the yob to get close enough to grab him or to strike him.
  • He should have adopted a more staggered stance - keeping both his feet directly under his shoulders makes him less stable and vulnerable to being knocked to the ground. It also makes it more difficult for him to deliver a powerful strike.
  • The defender kept his hands clamped down by his waist. Even when the guy shoved him, or at one point grabbed his neck and gave him a mock head butt! He was like a rabbit in the headlights with his hands clamped together down by this waist. To be honest if that had happened 6 hours later in the evening when the yob had a few cans of Stella inside him he’d have been hit hard before he could’ve done anything about it. With his hands clamped together down there he couldn’t have stopped a head butt or a punch - not a chance.
  • That’s the downside of some school’s karate or jujitsu training - there’s no dealing with the way fights actually start. No dealing with aan attackers ballooning and posturing, swearing and tryingto psych you out.
  • The other bad thing from the way the majority of traditional karate schools train is seen when he finally does find his bottle - what this guy does is try to rely on a single shot to finish the fight. In karate the saying is to “finish with one blow”. But that is most likely a mistranslation. It should be “throw each blow with the intent or mind set to finish” - if the 1st one doesn’t do the job press forward and attack continually throwing high impact, high percentage fight stopping techniques. Do not give the aggressor time to regather himself for a more potent assault on you!
The one thing he did right though is that when he decided to act  he kept it simple - head shots. Not great technique in those punches but he got a telling blow in on the guy’s chin and it luckily stopped the fight. He was helped by the fact the yob was not expecting the tables to be turned and was vulnerable because of it.
 
When drilling in class play the role of the attacker realistically (swear, be aggressive, posture, balloon, swagger!) so that you are not caught like a rabbit in the headlights when it happens for real.
 
People commonly talk about the “fight or flight response”. In actual fact more accurate would be the “freeze, flight or fight response” to danger.  In our evolutionary past at the 1st hint of danger the limbic system’s response is to freeze. This would’ve made you less noticeable to a predator, who may move on and hone in on other prey that makes a movement (if like me you have pet cats you’ll know what i mean :-) …. ).
 
Sometimes though depending on the nature of the threat freezing is not going to help, it is too late for that particular response to be of benefit! The predator is close and moving towards you rapidly, flight is the next thing in the hierarchy that our limbic system is programmed to initiate. Unfortunately some people stay frozen and get caught with a big sucker punch that might have been sent by air mail and it still would’ve hit the mark! If you find yourself in a confrontation and you get that slighty euphoric, light headed rush you may well have frozen. DO SOMETHING, anything just to force you body to move and get you out of that almost hypnotic state. One of the benefits of putting up a fence and saying someting, even something simple, like “Back Off!” is that it forces you to act! It can help bypass the freeze response as well as buy you space and time to flee or fight if you need to.
 
Fighting is not to be taken lightly, do it if you have no choice because you cannot flee. The chap in this clip had no choice. If things go wrong you could incur a life changing injury or worse, so try to diffuse or leave if you can - always. If this is not possible attack with full force until the threat to your sfety is gone and then leave. Stay within the law. Keep it simple. You will be forced to make the decision to attack quickly, the change from a threat that seems manageable to one that rrequires physical aggression happens fast!You can loose the window of opportunity quickly, set your triggers for action in the dojo or training hall:
 
  • If  he moves forward aggressively and touches your fence - attack
  • If he makes a sudden, rapid change of direction towards you - burst in and attack.
  • If in the midst of delivering a torrent of abuse he suddenly stops, his lips tighten, his nostril flare to oxygenate his muscles for the act to come, and\or his shoulder drops or moves suddenly - attack.
If your fence is up and you fail to attack first the techniques we use for defending against attacks can still be used, you will have some time and space to play with. However you are now reacting and letting the bad guy go down the path he has practised for real, many times and made work. If you act quickly enough you can still prevail, you are better trained than most of his previous targets. But try not let it get to this stage if at all possible. Take control, reduce the risk to yourself -  better to act than react.
Once again thanks to Guy for the clip. It gave me some interesting stuff to watch over the weekend while out of action with a back injury, and a good topic for a blog post!
Feel free to comment, ask questions and discuss with each other by posting comments on the blog.
Regards,
Aasim