Toughen Up Self-Defense Training Tips

Self-defense instructors often encourage students to interrupt or discourage victimization by “pretending to be tough.”   Tiny, out-of-shape women, for example, are advised to stand tall, take an aggressive stance, sneer and blurt out insults and vulgarities in an attempt to intimidate a larger, stronger predator into backing off.

It makes sense on the surface.  “The Law Of The Jungle,” states that predators target their prey on the basis of their perception of their willingness or ability to fight back.  They are in search of the passive, weak and meak.  So, in theory, the “tougher” you come across the less likely a criminal will follow through on his attempts to victimize you.

In my self-defense program this is called “Defiance,” and it’s one of five response options available to you in a confrontation.  And SOMETIMES it IS the fight thing to do.  Projecting the image of a tough gal or tough guy CAN send a bully, mugger or rapist searching for a easier target.

But should you ALWAYS do the defiance thing?  Is it really that simple?  Do you think advice like this has the potential to backfire?

In reality people who “pretend to be tough” have to consider two factors of success:

1.  Will my”bluff” be convincing?

2.  What will I do if the my bluff only makes matters worse?

People who are confused or doubtful about their response options, no matter how convincingly they attempt to come across, will not project the signals that they need to discourage aggressive behavior.  Just like you can’t fake strength or endurance, it is also very difficult to fake the “non-victim” behaviors and body language that will send a potential assailant looking for someone else.

When you know EXACTLY what your response options are and you are confident in your ability to carry them out, you will project very different “signals” to the nutballs, retards and shitheads that get off on victimizing people.  The knowledge and experience you gain through the active study and ongoing practice of self-defense will have a significant impact on your “circle of influence” and your ability to defuse a volatile  situation.

Bottom line?… Defiance and de-escalation skills are not about bullshitting, bluffing or pretending.  They are skills to be learned.  They are enhanced only by a “legitimate” knowledge of your options and your ability to carry them out. 

Solution?  Keep studying the dynamics of self-defense and if you’re not already… get started on an intelligent, on-going combative training program.

There, I’ve said my piece… I feel better now.

What does morality have to do with self-defense?

Well a lot actually.  People’s behavior is directed and controlled by their beliefs and values.  There are a couple reasons why I think its important to clarify, and perhaps correct or modify your beliefs and values, if you want to develop an effective self-defense strategy.

First of all, you have to get clear on your belief in your god-given right to feel safe and secure in your life.  You have to be clear on your right to stand up and protect yourself even if it means challenging, confronting, injuring or even killing your attacker.

Believe it or not, some people have a hard time with that.  There are people who will allow themselves to be bullied, victimized and abused because they don’t feel that they are important or deserving enough to be protected.  That’s just plain wrong.

Violence, in and of itself is not necessarily, “BAD.”  Violence can actually be “GOOD.”  Its a matter or application and context.

Is it BAD for a child to fight off a pedophile trying to drag her into his vehicle?  Is it BAD for a woman to inflict a serious injury on a rapist or serial killer?  Is it bad for a good Samaritan to intervene on behalf of a weak, defenseless victim being pounded on by some dysfunctional piece of criminal shit on a street corner?  I DON’T THINK SO!  It’s good!

Violence is only either good or bad as a result of the context in which it’s applied.  If you don’t have a crystal clear sense of this “righteous application of violence,” your ability to successfully protect yourself and your loved ones is in jeopardy.

The second thing that you need to do is sit down and take a good, hard look at what is worth fighting for and what isn’t.  People have been killed trying to protect trivial possessions or fighting over issues that aren’t worth fighting for.

When a stressful incident activates our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response) our thinking and decision making skills deteriorate.  Sometimes, in a confrontation we panic and either fight for something that isn’t worth fighting for or fail to protect what IS significant and important in our lives.  Sometimes we lay down and give up and then spend the rest of our lives wishing we’d fought back.

For the purpose of our discussion, lets get clear on a couple of definitions:

Values are what we place great importance on in our lives.

Belief is our sense of certainty about the way thinks are.

Your efforts to think about this and figure it out BEFORE you find yourself in a threatening situation is crucial.  I encourage you to do some soul searching and examine your beliefs and values about self-defense by answering these questions:

1.  What do I believe about my right to protect myself from physical harm; even if it means hurting or killing another human being?

2.  What do I have in my life that’s worth fighting for, even if it means that I might be beaten and seriously injured trying to protect it?

3.  What do I have in my life that is NOT worth fighting for and running the risk of death or a serious injury if I do?

4.  What would I lose or miss out on if I was killed or seriously injured by the violent actions of another person?  What am I prepared to do, so that never happens to me?

5.  What am I prepared to do TODAY to prepare myself for a threatening encounter that may or may not happen to me in the future?

6.  What are the positive benefits I can gain in my life by investing time and energy into self-defense training even if I end up never having to defend myself?

People behave, whether deliberately or by default, on the basis of the values and belief’s.  You need to examine your values and belief’s and determine whether they are “empowering” in that they help you get what you want out of life or “disempowering” in that they prevent you from achieving it.

If you have disempowering belief’s, that compromise your ability to successfully defending yourself,  you need to change them.  Belief’s are like habits, the best way to change a bad one is to replace it with a good one.  Once you do, seek out evidence to reinforce the validity that your chosen belief is true.

What do you believe about your ability to defend yourself?

Belief And Value Clarification Exercise

Grab a pen and paper, or fire up a blank document file on your computer and brainstorm a list of the beliefs that you have about your personal safety and your right to feel safe and secure.

Here’s a few examples to get you started:

• I have the right to be left alone, not be hassled, harassed, bullied or taken advantage of by others.
• I have the moral and legal right to protect myself and my family, even if it means injuring another person.
• My physical, mental and emotional well-being is important enough for me to take the necessary steps to protect it.
• My body is sacred and I have the right to maintain, condition and protect it.
• I am totally responsible for ensuring my own personal safety.
• My health and my family are my top priority and I will do anything to protect them.
• My religious beliefs are in harmony with my right and willingness to do what I have to protect myself.

… you get the idea.

Getting clear in your own head about your values and beliefs about self-defense and personal safety BEFORE something happens will have a significant impact on your performance in a confrontation.

Enff said.

In a self-defense encounter, there are essentially FIVE response strategies available to you in dealing with a violent or volatile situation.   Far too often, self-defense advice comes in the form of “tactics” or specific things that you should do to bring about a certain outcome.  The problem with a “tactical approach” is that the tactic may not necessesariliy produce the result you want. 

Any self-defense system should begin with a clear “doctrine” or an overall mission or philosophy about what you want to accomplish in a volatile situation.  Before you can select the most appropriate “tactics” to apply, you need a broader undstanding of the strategies you are trying to implement. 

I define a strategy as: a general game plan based on principles, rules and concepts that affect your ability to produce a desired result.

Before we get too deeply into the discussion of self-defense response strategies, it’s probably a good idea to give you an overview of what they are.

In one set of circumstances, a specific strategy might be your best bet at dealing effectively with a situation.  In other circumstances, that same stratey could backfire big time and make matters much worse.  Its important to know when and when not to apply a given strategy.

For now though, I’ll just give you a list to keep in mind when we’re exploring response options in more detail.

1. Compliance

Compliance is simply giving in or cooperating to the predatory demands of your assailant.  Some things in life aren’t worth fighting for. Property for example is seldom worth the risk of being killed or sustaining a serious injury trying to protect it.

2. Escape

Escape is simple putting as much distance between yourself and your assailant(s) as possible. Sometimes, the solution to a self-defense situation is a simple matter of running like you’ve never run before and keep running until you are out of harms way.

3. De-escalation

De-escalation is the use of communication to lower the intensity of a situation that has not yet turned violent.  It involves defusing an emotionally charged situation before it escalates to the point of a fight.

4. Defiance

Defiance is based on the fact that predators seek out a potential victim that they believe is unable or unwilling to resist.  They are looking for an “inferior victim” who they feel that they can dominate and control.  Defiance is the act of projecting a strong, defiant and even aggressive demeanor to call the assailant’s bluff and send him looking for a more cooperative victim.

5. Fighting

Fighting back is what most people think of when they think about self-defense.  In actuality, fighting is a small part of dealing with volatile situations but it is a very, very important part. The more competent you are at physically dealing with a violent situation the safer you will be.

It is important however that you realize that there are different degrees of physical response options to deal with a resistive of violent situation and bring it under control.  You need a range of physical response options from restraining someone, netralizing his ability to fight without inflicting a serious injury or, in worste case scenarios, resorting to methods that could seriously injure or even kill your attacker.

I’ll leave it at that for now.  Later, I will get into the circumstances that will point you in the direction of one response strategy over another. I’ll also tell you when each strategy is a bad idea that can backfire and make matters worse and provide you with guidelines and instructions to carry out each strategy for maximum effect.

Feel free to comment.

Every self-defense situation, every street fight, every act of interpersonal violence is not a life-or-death encounter.

Quite often self-defense instructors get a little carried away and “pretend” that every conflict in life that turns physical, or has the potential to, should be considered a life or death situation.

They argue that to respond in a manner that is less-than-lethal is to dilute your fighting skills, expose yourself to unnecessary risk and compromise your “survival” in a street encounter.”

My main response to that type of advice is… “BULLSHIT!”  Give your head a shake “ninja-boy” and take a good hard look at the real world.

Sure, I don’t deny that there are situations in the real world of interpersonal violence that need to be taken very, very seriously.  They may even require a response that is likely to cause the death or a serious injury to your assailant… but then again, there are also a lot of situations that don’t.

If you take such an over simplistic view of life and lump ALL self-defense scenarios into life-or-death, do-or-die, kill-or-be-killed responses, you are going to get yourself in a heap of trouble.

If you have some time on your hands, fire up Google or your favorite search engine and run a search on “street fight video clips.”

You’ll come up with a list of sites that offer short video clips and market DVD’s that contain thousands of “real world encounters caught on tape” depicting people involved in knock-down-drag-out scraps.  Girls on girls, guys on guys, girls fighting guys, multiple attackers etc.

(we won’t even get into the adult-oriented “catfight stuff,” I’m just doing this to prove my point… bear with me)

Let me ask you this?  How many of those fights result in a death or serious injury?  How many of them end up with the loser being crippled or permanently disfigured?

Or, do  you notice that in most of these incidents, the combatants pick themselves up, dust themselves off and go their separate ways with not much more than a bruise ego, a fat lip, a shiner or a handful of hair missing?

How practical, moral or realistic would it have been if one of those combatants produced a knife and slashed their opponent’s throat?  Or perhaps gouged out an eye or slammed their opponent’s face into the curb?  Probably a bit excessive don’t you think?

Don’t get me wrong, there ARE some serious confrontations out there.  Threats so severe that if you don’t do something extreme and aggressive, somebody is going to get killed or seriously injured.  That too is a reality that you should include in your self-defense thinking and training.  The law allows for self-preservation and in those rare cases you are legally and morally justified to take a life to preserve your own or someone else’s.

Once again…  I’m NOT saying that deadly force is never appropriate or justified, because sometimes it is.

What I’m saying is…  if you want a realistic and functional self-defense skill set, you need to be able to respond to a variety of encounters.

Allow me to offer up three degree’s physical response for your consideration.  Which one you resort to will be dictated by your “Reasonably Perceived Vulnerability.” (I wrote an earlier post on this subject if you haven’t read it already)

Control and Restraint

This level of response involves subduing and controlling a resistive or aggressive individual who is not particularly threatening to you. Perhaps it is a drunken buddy or relative or a person smaller or weaker than you.

Control and restraint tactics include joint locks, holds and pinning methods that will restrain the individual for your safety and his (or hers) without busting them up or creating a serious injury.  You’d be surprised how often these types of scenarios occur.

Street Fighting

Although a street fight CAN be a life-or-death situation, in most cases they are not.  I consider a street fight to be a “scuffle or a scrap.”  It quite often takes the form of a punch-out or wrestling match but seldom escalates to something that is likely to result in death or a serious injury.

In cases such as these, you’ll probably find your most appropriate response is to neutralize your assailant with strikes, kicks, vascular chokes or submissions.  Hard strikes to nerve motor centers in the major muscles can cause cramps that will take the fight out of your assailant without a serious injury.  Stunning techniques can be applied to leave your opponent daze but uninjured.

Having response options that are suitable to the degree of vulnerability you perceive yourself to be in are safer because you will be less hesitant to bring the matter under control quickly and efficiently before it escalates to a more serous encounter.

Life or Death (Deadly Force Encounters)

Deadly force is justified when you reasonably perceive yourself or someone else to be in imminent danger or death or a serious, disfiguring or permanent injury.

As I said, sometimes, it is necessary to take a life to preserve one… but these cases are rare. I think “deadly force tactics” are an important part of a realistic approach to self-defense but you also need another skills.

Sometimes bones have to be broken, windpipes crushed, testicles “gripped and ripped.”  But ALL THE TIME?  Give me a break.

Note: If you’re interested in developing a strong foundation of “ballistic fighting skills,” I encourage you to check out my Toughen Up Training Guides at http://www.ToughenUp.com/

There is a balancing act between under-estimating and over-estimating the severity or threat potential of a physical encounter.  Responding appropriately will only happen as a preparation, common sense and a self-defense response suitable for the situation.

Please feel free to add your two cents (agree, disagree, challenge or call BS) in the comment section.

All self-defense techniques are NOT created equal!

Being a “skillful martial artist” does not necessary translate to effective performance in a street fight or self-defense encounter.  I get A LOT of email, even from experienced “fighters,” about the “fear of fear.”  They are concerned that despite their fitness or technical skill that the terror and chaos of a “real knock down drag out street fight” will cause them to “freeze up” or perform poorly.

They question whether their self-defense skills will stand up to the test of the full-blown chaos and confusion of a life or death street fight.

This is an important enough issue to take a serious look at so why don’t we?

How the heck do you “turn fear into strength?”

You’ve heard it before:  “make fear your friend,” “turn fear into power…” “FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real” and my favorite, “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Whats up with that?  Talk about skirting an issue!  Am I to believe that I can learn how to eliminate fear from combative or volatile situations?

Sounds like a bunch of new age bullshit don’t it? How can you “pretend” not to be afraid when you are?  How can you possibly benefit from being afraid of something? 

Well, for once there is some science behind the hype.

I’m going to tell you why fear and stress can actually make you stronger, faster and tougher if and only if you understand it, expect it, accept it and build it into your self-defense response system.

Fear creates anxiety which creates stress. Stress is a given in violent or volatile situatons.  And like it or not, it’s going to impact your performance.  It’s the way we’re wired.

That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how smart you were when selecting techniques to work on for self-defense.

Fight, Flight or Freeze?

When the sympathetic nervous system is activated, referred to as the “Fight or Flight Response,” a wide range of physical and biochemical changes take place.

If properly managed, your stress response is a powerful survival mechanism that will help you withstand, fight off or escape a violent situation.

Among many other things it will help you:

• React faster,
• Become stronger
• Be more resilient to pain
• Bleed slower
• Run fast 

However, it will also:

• limit or distort your perceptions,
• make you less coordinated and
• make you “dumber” (less capable of logical or creative thinking)

If you ignore, deny or misunderstand the reality of stress performance when designing a self-defense response system and your training methods, you’re in for a whole lot of trouble in a street fight.

What Is “Self-Defense Stress?”

The fear of interpersonal violence is a “Universal Human Phobia.”  Unless you are ultra-ultra-confident (or have a screw loose), the thought of being victimized is frightening.  We NEED to feel safe and secure in the world before we can enjoy other aspects of our life.

Fear and stress are normal when we perceive a discrepancy between a threat and our ability to control it.  This is especially true under conditions where the outcome has the potential for death, injury, degradation, victimization, embarrassment etc.

Expect that you’ll be “shitting your pants” in a violent encounter because, like it or not, it’s going to happen.  Accept it, prepare for it and turn it to your advantage.

The Symptoms Of Stress

Stress causes a variety of psychological and physiological changes. Without getting into the specifics of those changes, the affects of intense stress on performance fall into three categories:

Perceptual Distortion - loss of peripheral vision and depth perception, hearing may be blocked or impaired, changes in pain sensitivity, etc.

Cognitive Impairment- the emotional centers in the brain become dominant and creative or logical thinking are impaired.   You may halucinate, experience time distortion (slow motion or fast motion), you may even forget what you did or “remember” something that didn’t happen.

Motor Skill Deterioration - the ability to perform certain physical actions is impaired by stress. Actions requiring eye-hand coordination, precision or coordination are likely to fail.  However, other actions will actually be enhanced by stress.

Each of these categories could form an article (or book) of their own.  However, for the purposes of this post, I’ll confine myself the selection and performance of physical skills.

The techniques built into the Toughen Up Combative Training programs are “gross motor skills.” Simple, large-muscle actions that will be stronger and more powerful in stressful, adrenaline-charged situations.

If you want to be effective in the stress and chaos of a street fight, here are some things to keep in mind. 

The KYSS Principle (Keep Your System Simple!)

Why is it that so many martial artists get beat up in street fights? I’m sorry to burst your bubble if you thought otherwise but the fact is that many people, even after years of training, have been thumped by “unskilled,” intoxicated adversaries. How can that be?

If you confuse sparring with fighting you’re in for a rude awakening.  If you train with a distorted mental map of what you can and can’t do in a real-life, knockdown, drag-out, anything-goes street fight you might be in for a surprise when the shit hits the fan.

The more clearly you understand the realities of a “fight” and the effects of being in one, the better you can prepare yourself for the demands and chaos of personal combat.

Motor Skills Classification

A “motor skill” is a fancy name for physical actions, tactics or techniques. They can be divided into three categories:

Fine Motor Skills - are actions involving small muscles, dexterity and eye-hand coordination. The ability to perform fine motor skills deteriorates at low to moderate levels of stress.

Complex Motor Skills - are actions that combine three or more steps or actions in a sequence requiring timing and coordination. At high levels of stress, the ability to perform these skills is also impaired. Many martial arts techniques are complex motor skills. This explains why techniques that may work fine in low-stress training sessions fail in a high-stress street-fight.

Gross motor skills- are simple, large-muscle group actions like squats, push-ups and push/pull-type movements.  Unlike fine and complex motor skills, gross motor skills DO NOT deteriorate under stress.  In fact, they are enhanced by the affects of fear and stress.

The strikes and kicks I’ve written about in the Toughen Up Training Guidesand this blog are gross motorskills.  They’ve been intentionally selected on that basis.

It makes total sense to rely predominantly on gross motor skills when designing a self-defense response system that you know will be applied in stressful circumstances.

So before you fill your “tool box” with a pile of fancy-schmancy-bullshit-fighting-techniques, think long and hard about what will stand up to the stress of a street fight.  Then use them as a foundation for your training and self-defense game plan.

Enuff said… (for now)

Take care, train smart and toughen up…

Randy

I’ve written that there are various degree’s of physical response to an effective self-defense response.  Some incidents might be minor in nature but serious enough to merit a physical response.

Others require an aggressive response, but without the need to injure your opponent in order to terminate the encounter and bring it under control before things get carried away and escalate to a more serious, more dangerous situation.

Then there are those times when it is crucial to quickly and decisively take that Mo-Fo out… Fast and hard.   ”Drop’m like a bag of shit!”  ”Thump’m and dump’m,” “Stun Till You’re Done,” “Bop’m and Drop’m” … uh, you get the point.

In serious situations you may need to inflict as much damage as possible in order to interrupt the attack and destroy your attacker’s willingness and ability to continue.  Then.. you need to get your ass outta there…

Often, in those types of scenarios, its not a matter of learning “killer techniques” or some secret “green-beret-death-touch“… It’s a matter of taking your “meat-and-potato” hitting skills, the same one’s you’ve mastered through daily training using my Toughen Up Training Guides and direct them to vulnerable parts of you’re assailant’s anatomy that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

The same punch can be delivered to the windpipe to kill, to the jaw for a knockout, to a nerve center for a muscle cramp or to the torso to knock your opponent back.

The Four N’s 

In serious situations where your life is on the line, consider “The Four “N’s” as your best-bet targets to get yourself out of a serious situation:

#1 The Neck

The most dangerous and vulnerable place to strike someone is in the neck.  At the front of the neck is the windpipe.  A solid strike here can cause pain, gagging, the inability to breath.  If struck forcefully enough, it can be deadly.

In less severe situations, a solid shot to the nerve centers on the side of the neck can overload your attacker’s brain with sensory stimulus and leave him unconscious or in a semi-conscious state.

#2 The Nuts  -

Ask any guy out there what a solid shot to the “family jewels” will do.  I think that you will get the consensus that it’ll take the fight out of most of us.  For maximum results,  strike upward into the groin with the foot, shin bone or knee to “crush” the testicles against the pelvis and create maximum injury. (sounds gross don’t it?)

#3 The Nose -

A solid shot to the nose will stun your attacker and cause closing, tearing and swelling of the eyes.  Forget about this notion of “driving the nose bone into your attacker’s brain.”  Its an urban myth.  The nose is comprised of bendy cartilage and the likelihood of it being used to impale the brain is highly unlikely.

Something you can expect though is profuse bleeding.  Normally, a bleeding opponent in a self-defense encounter is not an advantage. However, in a multiple attacker situation, the vision of their buddy spurting blood from both nostrils can create a significant psychological impact on the rest of your attackers and terminate the fight.  (I wrote an eBook on Multiple Assailant Street Fights.  You can check it out at http://www.ToughenUp.com/ )

#4 The kNees -

Although not officially an “N-word,” its close enough.  A solid strike to the knee joint, in particular from the side, can result in intense pain, a possible dislocation and can put your attacker down fast.  This is a great target to consider if you’ve determined that an escape attempt is in order.  Not too many people will be able to keep up to you if you apply a “stun and run” tactic with a solid stomp into your attacker knee joint.

Bottom line?  Lets keep in simple… I’ll leave it at that.

Note:  You noticed that I didn’t include the eyes as a primary target.  There are a couple reasons for that… First of all it doesn’t start with “N” so it didn’t fit the acronym! (just kidding)

But more importantly, vision is our predominant survival sense and as such, the nervous system is wired to flinch and defend against something coming at the eyes.  That’s as true for you as it is for your attacker and the likelihood of him blocking, turning away or avoiding an eye attack is high.

Also, when you’re under a lot of stress (which you will be), your ability to perform precise and accurate movement is impaired.  The ability to thrust your fingers out and hit something as small and mobile as an eyeball is highly unlikely.

When the eyes are attacked in a serious street encounter, it usually takes the form of a gouge or clawing action, not an eye jab.

There you have it.  Just remember, it’s not only how hard you hit but where you hit that affect’s your ability to incapacitate a violent attacker.

Previously, I wrote a post about “justified force” is.  You learned that the law grants people the right to use force to protect themselves or someone else from the violent actions of others.  However, it might grant the authority to use “some force,” it doesn’t provide specifics on how much force you can use in that process.

Often vague and subjective terms such as “as much as necessary,” or “ reasonable” are used to indicate how much force is “enough.”  Good luck finding an objective definition of these terms within the criminal statutes that apply in your jurisdiction.

What the law IS clear on, is that force that is “excessive” is illegal and exposes the person apply it to criminal liability and consequences for his or her actions.

Once again, legislation doesn’t provide a standard or guideline to help your determine exactly at what point justified force becomes excessive force.  There is no such guideline in law that I know of.  In order to narrow down a solution to this predicament you need to study case law (judges decisions from past cases) and credible policy and training programs designed around a logical “use-of-force” framework.

That being said, there ARE four evaluation criteria, drawn from American case law (and used in other countries) that can be used when evaluating whether or not force was justified or excessive.

Here is my interpretation of the Four Criteria Of Excessive Force

1.  Was the force necessary?

2.  Was the proportional to the threat or aggression encountered?

3.  What was the extent of injury inflicted in the self-defense attempt?

4.  Was the force applied in good faith or was it malicious or sadistic?

I won’t go into too much detail because the examples, scenarios and variations needed to fully grasp these issues are endless.  I leave it up to you to reflect on these points and incorporate them into your own self-defense education.  I will help you get the ball rolling though by turning that framework around and looking at it from a different angle.

#1 What the force necessary?  Force Could Be Deemed Excessive If… …it is unnecessary:

• you instigated or contributed the encounter that ultimately turned physical 
• you could have walked away, defused or prevented the situation from turning violent 
• if there was a less forceful resolution to the encounter but you didn’t take it

#2  Was the force used proportional to the danger posed by the threat?

Here’s another example of why I feel the need to explode the myth that ALL self-defense situations are “life-and-death” encounters and that you are free to use any or all means to defeat your adversary.

That’s simply not true… if you kill, maim or seriously injure your opponent over a clash of ego’s or a relatively minor dispute or scuffle, you will have a very hard time justifying your actions and staying out of “the crow bar hotel.” (a.k.a. jail!)  Just think about all of the schoolyard scraps and bar room brawls that ended with a blood nose and a bruised ego.  In the vast majority of these situations the combatants throw a few punches, roll around on the ground for a while and then get up and go home.  Would you prefer it ended with an opponent dead or seriously injured instead?

Many self-defense instructors would be pissed off with me saying that ALL street fights are not life and death.  Yes, it’s true that many violent encounters are very serious and do pose a legitimate risk of death or serious injury.  But to thing that is always the case is pretty niave and defies common sense.

#3  What was the severity of the injuries inflicted as a result of your force?

Many self-defense techniques, including the one’s I teach, have the potential to inflict serious, permanent injuries on your assailant.  Some are lethal.  Any self-defense system that ignores the fact that you may have to kill someone to preserve your own life or someone else is incomplete.  Anyone, serious about self-defense training, should include deadly force techniques into their arsenal (as well as alternate non-lethal ones).

However, if you resort to these “killer techniques,” you’d better be able to justify that they were necessary and applied in response to an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily injury.  If not, then a less aggressive response would be more appropriate.

That’s why its so important to have an inventory of “control tactics” (safer, less destructive techniques) for dealing with lower-level, less threatening encounters.  What if the “scuffle” isn’t a particularly serious one, but you still need to gain control over it?  What if the “attacker” is a friend or relative who’s had too much to drink or a mental meltdown and has temporarily turned aggressive?

In my self-defense training I include nerve motor strikes, joint locks and stunning tactics that will gain control over an aggressive person but are medically proven to have a low probability of inflicting a serious injury.  Those types of tactics can not only provide you with a safe alternative to bringing lower-level encounters under control but it can save you immeasurable pain, money, anguish in the aftermath of having inflicted a serious injury or being criminally charged.

#4  Was the Force Applied In Good Faith Or Maliciously or Sadistically?

Once again, this is why its so important to weigh your self-defense options BEFORE you need them. My concept of “Reasonable Perceived Vulnerability” is crucial here.  When you acted, did you do so from the perspective that you were doing what was right and what you needed to do to protect yourself or someone else from harm?

If anything is said or done to create the perception that you “enjoyed” delving out the damage on your assailant, if you went overboard by applying more force than you needed to ward of his attack or your control efforts continued beyond the point when your assailant was attacking you or able to defend himself, then your are walking on thin ice run the risk of an assault charge.

This is why “hitting your man while he’s down,” something taught quite frequently taught in self-defense courses, is controversial.  That strategy CAN be justified, but you better be clear on the reasons why you’re doing it and what you were trying to achieve.

O.K. chew on that for a while and see how it “fits” it into your thinking about self-defense response options.

“Reasonalby Perceived Vulnerability”

Component #5 of my self-defense system, involves “Self-Defense Response Options”.  This aspect of the program addresses the fact that there is a range of response options available to you in a volatile situation.

The key is to be clear on your moral and legal rights to defend yourself and, after assessing the situation, selecting the response strategy that is most likely to produce the results you want.

Part of the “Situational Assessment” process is assessing your “Reasonably Perceived Vulnerability.” (R.P.V)

Contrary to what many self-defense instructors might tell you, ALL self-defense situations are not created equal.  Some might backfire and make matters worse.  Other’s might later be considered excessive and bail you out of the sitaution but into hot water with the authorities.  Not all encounters are life-and-death situations that you have to gouge, stomp or slash your way out of.

Some encounters are minor in nature and not particularly threatening (especially if you are confident and well-trained).  Others are serious “no win” situations where your best chance of survival is to comply and do exactly what you are told.  The vast majority of them are somewhere in the middle.

The RPV is an assessment process that allows you to assess the situation you are in, and point you in the right direction of the most effective response strategies with the highest probability of producing a favorable outcome.

First a quick definition of the terminology I’m using:

REASONABLY PERCEIVED VULNERABILITY

Reasonably:  The ultimate standard of justifying a forceful response to protect yourself or someone else is whether your actions were “reasonable.”  A reasonable act is one that is consistent with what someone else, with the same experience and abilities as you, would do if presented with the same situation that you are in.

If your actions are not “reasonable” then you will have a hard time justifying them after the fact.  You’ll also be more likely to over react or under react in a self-defense situation.

Perceived:  The reason I use the term “perceived” is because you can only base your response strategies on what you perceive to be the case at the time of your decision.  I should add that those perceptions need to be “reasonable.”

If an assailant jams a plastic gun in your ribs and you respond under the perception that its real, it doesn’t matter in the justification of your actions that it turns out to be a toy.

If your assailant is “bluffing” by telling you that he is more dangerous and skillful than he is, and you believe him, it doesn’t matter that he was bullshitting when you pound the living crap out of him. You respond based on your perceptions at the time of the encounter.  What you find out AFTER the fact, is irrelevant in justifying your decision.

Vulnerability: refers to how much danger you you consider yourself to be in at the time of your response decision.  The encounter could be an unfortunate misunderstanding unlikely to result in anything more than a bit of belly bumping and shoving.  Or the encounter might be extremely intense, dangerous or life threatening.

You need to use the RPV process to get your head around the dynamics of the situation you’re in and select the most appropriate of the five response strategies available to you.

Your Reasonable Perceive Vulnerability will be affected by three categories of “Impact Factors.” Impact factors can make you either MORE or LESS vulnerable based on the totality of your situation.

1.  Differences between you and your assailant (s)

Differences compare your physical attributes against those of your adversary and how they will affect your ability to respond, control or escape from a situation. These differences include but are not limited to:

• Age - is the assailant younger or older than you are? 
• Gender - is your attacker a male or female?
• Size and strength - is your attacker bigger and stronger than  you?
• Numbers - are you outnumbered by your assailants, or is it a “lone wolf” confronting you and some friends?
• Fighting Skills (although you’ll know yours but probably not your assailant’s)

2.  Special Circumstances

Special circumstances are aspects about the encounter that affect your situation and the probability of success of various response strategies.  Once again, this is not an exhaustive list but should be enough to get you thinking. They include:

• isolation - are you alone or with friends or witnesses? 
• environment (escape routes, footing, lighting)
• access to weapons - does the assailant have a weapon?  Do you?
• physical position - maybe you’ve been knocked to the ground or grabbed from behind 
• someone in need of protection - are you in the company of someone that needs to be protected? 
• history or previous knowledge about the assailant?  Do you know this person to be violent? Do you suspect that he is willing and able to carry out his threats or is he bluffing?
• clothing - are you wearing a tight skirt, high heels or some other form of restrictive attire?

3.  Reaction or Assessment Time

A situation that is sudden and unexpected is perceivably more dangerous than something that you see unfolding or deteriorates over time.  As such, you will be less deliberate about spontaneous assaults than confrontations that escalate over time.

For example, you will probably consider being sucker punched or jumped from behind more threatening that being approached and confronted by a bully or accosted for some spare change by a panhandler.

I could provide you with a gazillion scenarios to drive home the importance of the RPV process. However, all you need to know for now is that this assessment process is a method of evaluating how much risk, threat or potential for harm you consider yourself to be in at the time of an encounter.

The bottom line is that how vulnerable you feel in a given scenario must be taken into consideration when assessing your responses options.

Chew on that for a while and we’ll expand on it in future posts.

What Is The “Less-Is-Best” Principle?

Some self-defense and martial arts instructors believe in the “More-Is-Better” philosophy. They think that learning a high number of techniques will increase the ability to respond effectively to a wider variety of situations.  They believe that an elaborate fighting system is more adaptable and effective in a wider variety of situations.

If you hold this philosophy yourself, please forgive my bluntness but…YOU’RE WRONG!!!

The More-Is-Better approach does not withstand scientific scrutiny.

Complex, elaborate techniques don’t work in a real fight. PERIOD.

In contrast, the “Less-Is-Best” approach is a more practical, realistic approach that’s consistent with what science tells us about the way we perform under stress.

Here are a few of the benefits of keeping the number of techniques to a minimum.

Faster Reaction Time

As far back as the 1800’s, researchers knew that the more responses you have to a stimulus, the longer it takes react. In 1952, a researcher named Hicks confirmed that for every response choice added, the amount of time required to react more than doubles!

This is widely known as “Hicks Law,” and has been repeatedly confirmed by subsequent research. In a self-defense situation, the longer you take to respond to a threatening action, the more likely you will be injured and defeated.

Fast Results With Minimal Training

Another issue that supports the idea of keeping your inventory of techniques to a minimum is the amount of time you have to practice and the time it takes to build technique competence. (remember: competence builds confidence which reduces stress!)

Imagine you work on 20 techniques and you train for an hour per session. That means you have 3 minutes to invest on each technique.

If however, you reduce the number of self-defense techniques to three (just an arbitrary number), you invest 20 minutes on each technique, conceivably investing 600% more time and repetition on each one. What technique wouldn’t be improved by six times more training?

The Brass Knuckle Effect (Cognitive Clarity)

Imagine you knew you were about to be attacked by a large, strong, psychopathic assailant. There is no way of avoiding the fight.

Let’s also say your self-defense system consists of 20 different techniques. In the stressful moments preceding the encounter your mind is reeling; trying to figure out the most appropriate course of action.

Keep in mind that your cognitive abilities are impaired by stress. Stress-related “brain damage” prevents you from forming a logical or creative solution to your predicament. What will you do?

Seeing your dilemma, a good friend (if he wasn’t before he is now!) discretely passes you a set of brass knuckles. What do you suppose has just happened to your thought process?

I’ll hazard a guess that the mental fog begins to lift, your stress decreases and your objective becomes clear. It’s now a simple matter of taking those brass knuckles and slamming them repeatedly into vulnerable parts of your opponent’s anatomy. Seems simple now doesn’t it?

The potential of you winning the encounter has been significantly enhanced. That same affect can be achieved without the brass knuckles by sticking to a limited, yet adaptable, inventory of dependable fighting skills.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but this is exactly why you won’t find elaborate or unecessary fighting technique is ANY of my Toughen Up Training Manuals.

Each one is built around simple, realisitic fighting skills that will:

• Minimize the number of techniques by including only the “best ones”
• Sticking with simple movements that will functional well in stressful circumstances.
• Maximize your training results but building fighting drills around a solid foundation of basic skills.
• Minimize training injuries by sticking with movements that are biomechanically durable and sound.

I’ve written this before:  If you want to be effective at self-defense get very good at a few things… not crappy at a whole bunch.

Take care, train smart and toughen up…

Randy
www.ToughenUp.com

There are Four Criteria Of  “Justified Force?”

The concept of “Justified Force” is something that should be on the mind of anyone who is preparing to protect themselves and deal with violent and volatile situations either personally or professionally.

Many self-defense instructors ignore this subject all together, which might be a good thing, since few of them have the knowledge, background or credentials to discuss such issues credibly or realistically.

The most common lip service given is to say that fighting is a “last resort” and should only be considered when all else fails.  That’s not bad for a generic rule of thumb but there’s more to it than that.

Knowing your right to defend yourself is crucial to your ability to take decisive action when it is needed and prevent a minor encounter from escalating into something much more serious.  It is also essential in explaining yourself after the fact and avoiding criminal and civil consequences for your actions.

The use of physical force against another person brings with it responsibilities and liabilities that can’t be taken lightly.

Ignorance of the concepts that I’m about to share with you could have very serious and very negative consequences.  It could lead to criminal charges and civil law suits even after encounters that you did not instigate or contribute to.

Just so you know where “I’m” coming from, I am a “use-of-force expert.”

I have studied, taught, written about, and analyzed justified force issues from all angles. I have applied and justified force myself on many occasions.

I’ve reviewed thousands of physical encounters and consulted with cops, investigators, judges and lawyers.  I’ve written polices, speeches and lesson plans on the subject and shared that information with thousands of people.

I’ve been interviewed by the media and have provided expert testimony on the subject in court proceedings, investigations and inquests.

I feel pretty safe to say that when it comes to justified force, I know what I’m talking about.

That being said, I can’t offer you “generic legal advise” about exactly what you can and cannot do to protect yourself.  No one can.

I can however, provide you with guidelines that you can use to prepare yourself for a street fight, direct your decisions at the time of the encounter and explain your actions after the fact.

I have to issue you a disclaimer of sorts and tell you that the law is very subjective process.  You can be confronted or attacked, defend yourself with the best of intentions and STILL be charged or sued by your assailant.  That’s just the way the world works.

That’s why even very skillful fighters, not particularly concerned about being beaten up will go out of their way avoid a confrontation if its at all possible.

“Winning or losing” is not an issue as much as avoiding the hassles created when you get involved in a street fight that could have been prevented.

What follows is the most concrete and well-established guidelines for justified force that there is.  Read it, learn it, think about it and if the need ever arises… use it.

It’ll go a long way in protecting you at the time of the encounter and afterwards if you have to justify your actions..

There are four criteria at work in ANY justified force encounter:

1.  You must have the lawful authority to use force.

The law in most civilized countries is pretty consistent about granting people the right to defend themselves.  It is also clear that when force becomes “excessive” it is illegal and places you in a position of criminal liability.

You should however, dig deeper and come up with some concrete purposes for the application of force to defend yourself or control another person.

Examples of those purposes include:

* Protect yourself from an unprovoked assault

* Protect another person from an assault

* Prevent an assault that is imminent

* Protect property (whether its worth fighting for is another matter)

* To affect a “citizen’s arrest” on someone you find committing a criminal offense.  You must immediately turn that person over to the authorities. (I’m not saying that this is what you should do, its just and example of a lawful application of force)

There ARE other purposes for the lawful application of force, but for the purposes of our discussion about self-defense, I prefer to keep it simple.

2. The need for and the amount of force is determined by the aggressor’s behavior.

You must believe that the need for and the amount of force is determined by your assailant(s).  In essence, there is a “finger of blame” to be pointed, and it must be pointed at your assailant for creating the situation that you had to respond to.

If you were not confronted, victimized or assaulted you would not have had to take the actions that you are forced to take.

3.  Your response to that aggression must be reasonable and proportional.

You must believe that the amount of force you apply is “reasonable” and “proportional” to the situation and anything less forceful was not, or would not have been, effective.

Your actions should be consistent with the situation and the degree of danger that you perceived yourself to be in at the time of your decision.

Note: This is where the over-simplified notion that EVERY self-defense encounter is a matter of life-or-death can get you into big trouble.  If you “over react” in your self-defense effort, you could find yourself on the receiving end of criminal charges or a civil law suit.

4.  You have adjust your response based the “totality of the circumstances” that existed at the time of the incident.

No two confrontations are the same.  Each brings with it unique variables that will make the situation either more or less “dangerous” or difficult to deal with and control.

I discussed this in my post on “Reasonably Perceived Vulnerability.”  Rather than going over it again, I encourage you to read or re-read it.

I have used this evaluation criteria when reviewing thousands of physical encounters.  Its solid, useful and adaptable to just about any encounter you could imagine.

The better you understand it and the more capable you are of applying it, the more successful you will be at justifying your actions in a self-defense situation.