How to defend yourself from a violent attack
People in the martial arts world talk about what works "in the street" so much it's become something of a cliche.
But as a martial arts or self defence instructor its really important to step away from the dojo sometimes and look at the reality of street violence today so you can re-evaluate how realistic what you are teaching is, and ensure that you are preparing your students to face reality and not old fashioned or unrealistic scenarios.
This is even more of a problem in traditional martial arts where the techniques and concepts were developed for a completely different time and situation e.g. fighting men on horseback for example, and have been passed down through the years mostly unchanged.
The video below shows an, unfortunately, common situation where a young girl is approached by a gang of youths. She is distracted by the group whilst one of them approaches her from her blind side and then, without saying anything, launches a vicious and completely unprovoked attack leaving the girl helplessly curled up in a ball of pain to be hit further and kicked in the face.
It's a horrible situation very similar to the one that we broke down and covered in detail in our last self defence seminar.
The key lessons are:
1. Distance - In a heated situation NEVER allow someone you don't know or trust approach you and get close enough to hit you without getting your hands between you and them to control the distance.
- In class we avoid this using our Fence position that allows us to control the distance and establish a boundary keeping attackers outside striking range.
2. Vision and awareness - When approached by a group like this it's really important to position yourself so that all the individuals remain in view. The temptation is to focus on the one that's talking to you, and demanding your attention, but the threat normally comes from the quiet one in the group whose intention is to attack not talk.
You can clearly see in the video the attacker edging into striking range on the victim's blindside, angling off to throw the punch and even pulling her hand all the way back behind her to get as much power as she can in the strike before she throws it.
In street situations the strike is often telegraphed like this giving you time to react if your attacker is in a position where you can see them and you have the proper training.
- We cover awareness of these situations in class, along with maintaining a view of the potential attackers both before and after the attack begins, defence against a surprise haymaker and lining your attackers up restricting their ability to surround you.
3. Proactive defence - After being hit the girl collapses into a kneeling foetal position right in front of her attacker which allows the attacker to kick her in her mostly unprotected face doing even more damage.
In these kind of situations the first strike is rarely the last and not knowing how to protect your face and head on the ground puts you in an extremely dangerous predicament unless you understand how to attack and defend from this position.
- In class we drill defence from both sitting and kneeling positions as well as from being completely flat on your back. This kind of scenario is unfortunately much more common than most martial arts, that don't train you for these things, will admit and knowing how to survive and recover this position can be the difference between winning the fight and a trip to the hospital.
Have a look at the video below and check out clips from our self defence seminar covering some of the learning points above.