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.

In my last post on the “Four Pillars Of Combative Conditioning ,” I identified four essential aspects of a comprehensive combative conditioning program.  In future months, I will be building the Toughen Up Training Programs around three elements:

Combative Training Methods
Using fighting techniques, like punching and kicking, as forms of exercise to improve health while developing self-defense skills.

Body-weight Exercise
Equipment-free methods to condition, strengthen and coordinate your body in ways that will improve your street fighting abilities, and of course…

Russian Kettlebells
Kettlebells are an affordable, efficient and enjoyable way to achieve your combative training goals much faster than with more traditional conditioning methods.

Kettlebell training is an excellent strength and conditioning supplement to a combative workout.  Here is a list of some of the benefits of a well-designed kettlebell program:

Generating Power From The Hips: 

In the martial arts, or any other sport that involves power generation, power comes from the hips.  Without mastering the ability to generate energy with your hips, knockout striking power is IMPOSSIBLE.  Ballistic kettlebell exercises strengthen your hips and program your nervous system in a way that will add tremendous power to your combative techniques.

Core Training: 

It is also impossible to generate hitting power without conditioning your “core.”  The core includes the muscles of the midsection: abs, obliques and lower back.  Without core strength you’ll never be able to “transfer” the power of your entire body into your fighting skills.  You will also be very susceptible to injuries.  The core strength developed through KB training will allow you to integrate your entire body into your actions.

Tendon & Joint Resilience: 

Joint and tendon problems are often considered a “natural consequence” of any intense training.  The accumulative “wear and tear” is thought to be a natural consequence of “abusing your body” in the pursuit of fighting skills and “tough guy” fitness programs. 

Eventually, especially in “mature athletes,” the aches and pains add up until we need medical intervention (pain killers or surgery) OR have to give up training all together when we get “too old or worn out” to do it any more.  WRONG! 

Kettlebell training is an awesome way not only to prevent these injuries but also to recover from them.  The unique shape and weight distribution of the KB strengthens the muscles that stabilize and protect the structures of the bodies and have worked wonders for people with long-term and chronic problems.  

I personally used kettlebells to “fix” and fully recover from chronic pain and mobility problems in my shoulder that I’d had for years!  Many back problems, shoulder and rotator cuff injuries, elbow pain can be remedied with KB training.

Energy Deceleration: 

Chances are, even if you’re well-read about working out and combative training, you didn’t come across this term before.  Even in my Toughen Up Training Manuals, I talk extensively about how to PRODUCE energy, how to TRANSFER it into the target and even how to WITHSTAND the consequence of that energy on your body.  I’d never read that much about decelerating energy.

Energy Deceleration is your ability control, re-direct, dissipate and and absorb kinetic energy.  In combative situations, this includes punching and kicking, rapid changes in direction, falling or being knocked to the ground without injury etc.  This aspect of “energy management” is often neglected in training.

With KB training you throw, drop, swing and lift a heavy, cast iron ball over your head, through you legs and around your waste.  You learn to produce AND control kinetic energy in a way that will improve performance and prevent injuries.

Kettlebell Training Is Time Efficient:

The “best way” to improve your performance at anything is to do it!  If you want to improve your fighting, spend more time fighting (punching, kicking etc.) and the less on non-fighting activities like jogging or lifting weights.  That being said, supplementary activities that strengthen and condition your body are essential to long-term, injury-free  training.

The beauty of kettelbell training is that you can work strength, flexibility and endurance all at the same time in short multi-purpose workouts.  This allows you to achieve your conditioning goals in less time than with conventional workout methods and spend more time refining your martial arts abilities. 

Kettlebells are excellent for full-body circuit and interval training that allows you to accomplish much more in much shorter workouts.

Grip Strength And Wrist Protection

The ability to grip hard and endure the impact of your own punches is essential to a street fighter or martial artist.  In proper punching you “have no wrist.”  You imagine that your fist is “welded” solidly to your forearms. 

As you develop more power in your punches, weak wrists will buckle on impact and the energy that should have gone INTO the target “spills” out or worse still results in an injury.

The “fat metal handle” on a kettlebell develops tremendous grip strength.  Some practitioners will even soap up the handle to make it that much harder to hold onto in order to activate grip involvement.  You’ll have to grip-your-brains-out just to keep the KB from flying out of your hand.  (make sure to do this one outside)

KB training also reinforces perfectly straight wrist alignment at all times.  When lifting KB’s you NEVER allow you wrist to buckle, bend or collapse.  As with punching, you have to maintain a straight line through your forearm to your fist.

KB Training Fixes “Energy Leaks.”

I write about energy leaks in the Power Punching Guide.  An energy leak is a physical flaw in your body position that allows kinetic energy to “spill out” of a striking or kicking technique. 

In a punch for example, energy is generated from the ground, through the hips and torso, into your arm and finally to the fist.  Every joint between your foot and your knuckles has the potential to leak energy.  That’s a bad thing obviously because it either means that you’ll hit “like a little girl”  OR that energy could cause an sprain or fracture.

KB training teaches you how to use your body as one efficient, well-coordinated unit.  NOTHING is left to chance.  Limb position, posture, breathing, balance, weight distribution and joint extension are all perfected as you increase awareness of your entire body.

Bad body position, sloppy joint alignment and haphazard technique often associated with sloppy punching mechanics, improper weight training etc. can not only be counter productive to your combative goals but down right dangerous.

 Tension/Relaxation Skills

If you are too tense you will be slow, clumsy and will tire quickly.  If you are too relaxed you will be weak and vulnerable.  To master your fighting skills you must be able to switch from being relaxed to tense to relaxed again in milliseconds. 

Kettlebell training is not like traditional weight lifting where you maintain tension in a muscle throughout a slow, controlled repetition.   With kettlebells, you learn when to relax and when to tense at the appropriate times for optimal performance and safety.

 Cardio Training/Mental Toughness

I eluded to this earlier but it deserves further mention.  In the “Four Pillars” post I talk about how important it is for a fighter to be able to produce efficient energy despite fatigue and be able to explode aggressively if and when an opportunity presents itself.  Kettlebell training combines high-repetition ballistic actions with slow, deliberate strength moves.  Kettlebell training more closely simulates a fight by integrating explosive bursts of activity with slow ones.

The kettlebell practitioner does not train to failure (which could be disastrous in a street fight) but instead learns how to balance exertion with recovery to maintain a high level of performance throughout the workout.

The intensity of certain KB drills develop mental toughness in ways like the “blitz training” does that I write about in the Toughen Up Guides.

Body Hardening

The final aspect of KB training that I’ll touch on is body hardening.  I am often asked not only how to generate tremendous hitting power but also how to withstand being hit when you are on the receiving end.  I don’t care how good you think you are… if you get yourself into a good knock-down-drag-out-street-fight YOU’RE GOING TO GET HIT. 

Whether that hit pisses you off or puts you on your ass is largely a result of your ability to absorb and withstand impact energy.  What can you do to reduce the likelihood of being knocked out, winded or seized up with a Charley horse?

KB training teaches you how to use proper breathing and muscle tension to protect your body and absorb energy.  For example the “pressurization method” used to protect the spine when lifting a KB is similar to the skill needed to withstand a hard blow to the midsection.  In some KB exercises, there is light contact of the metal ball with your muscles which will also improve your resilience.

Enuff Said.

If you’ve read this far, you might be getting the “hint” that I’m pretty high on Russian Kettlebell Training.  If that’s the conclusion you’ve drawn… You’re right.

I’ll leave it at that for now and decide how much deeper to get into the topic of Kettlebell Training by how much interest (or lack of it) you show after reading this.  If you’re interested in more info about kettlebells please add your comments to the blog or email me at Randy@ToughenUp.com .

If you’d like to do a bit of your own research, then go for it.  The best place to start is to check out Pavel Tsatsouline (the undisputed Kettlebell Guru) at: Russian Kettlebells , DragonDoor Publications , or Enter The Kettlebell .

Send me your thoughts.

The combative training advice offered by “Toughen Up” is NOT your average, run-of-the-mill approach to working out.

You will not see photo’s of someone doing “bodybuilding exercises” in a karate uniform or kickboxing shorts.  I wouldn’t insult your intelligence.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a hardcore, fight-for-a-living mixed martial arts marathon training program, then perhaps you need to keep looking.  If you have aspirations of making a living as a prizefighter, there are people much more qualified than I to show you the way.

I’m assuming that you are a lot like me:  A mere mortal, about average, maybe even a-bit-lazy guy or gal who wants the best results possible in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of wasted energy.

I’m almost 50 years old.  I like beer, my big screen TV and cruising around on my motorcycle. I’ve got better things to do with my time than sweat and toil for hours a day for low-return results.

My days of rock’m sock’m, 6-hour-a-day, push-til-you-puke self-defense training sessions are behind me. Been there, done that.

If only I knew then what I know know.  I would have avoided a lot of wasted time, unnecessary sweat and painful/nagging injuries.  I would have gotten a lot better, a lot fitter, a lot faster.

The bottom line… I’m sure you don’t want to spend hours and hours grinding away at inefficient activities only to NOT achieve the results that you’re after.   I’m with ya on that one.

I’ve spent a lot of money, logged a lot of training hours and done ton of research looking for the shortest path from where I am to where I want to be.

Three things that I want to achieve with my workouts:

Number 1:   Get in great shape quickly and stay healthy as long as possible.

Number 2:   Design workouts that improve health,  avoid injuries and enhance every-day-performance (a.k.a. functional fitness)

Number 3:   Develop the legitimate ability to fight my way out of bad situation should one ever come my way.

Self-defense is 80% mental and 20% physical.

Your ability to stay safe is very much a matter of preventing, avoiding and defusing a volatile situation BEFORE you find yourself so deep in the middle of it that the only solution is to fight your way out.

However, in that 20%… when the threshold of violence is crossed, your fitness and skill will determine the outcome 100% of the time.  As I have written many times… A fight is an athletic event.

The WRONG kind of workout program can be useless and even counter-productive to real-world performance. You could waste hours and hours doing shit that won’t do you a bit of good in a street fight and STILL get your ass kicked!

I don’t want that to happen to me and I think’n you don’t want it either.  So let’s both make sure our training addresses the…

Four Pillars Of Combative Conditioning.

1. Strength/Endurance

Strength OR Endurance doesn’t mean squat in a street fight. One without the other will leave you over-powered OR gasping for air.   In the self-defense biz we have a term for that.  We call it “NOT GOOD!”  A combative athlete must be able to exert high-intensity effort for as long as it takes to end an encounter.  There are no “rounds” or rest periods in a street fight.

By the same token, he or she must be strong enough to scuffle, push, pull and produce exploisve, bone-crushing power to end the encounter fast when an opportunity presents itself.

Combative conditioning must integrate a balance of strength and endurance with low rep strength training and high-rep conditioning.

2. Mental Toughness/Body Hardening

Mental toughness in a street fight is the ability persevere and keep fighting through fear, pain, injury and exhaustion.  The vast majority of “victims” who are seriously injured in a violent encounter, are injured after they give up and go defensive.  A “never-give-up” attitude can be developed through proper training and will save your life in a self-defense situation.

Body hardening is the physical equivalent to mental toughness.  It’s the ability to take a hit, deliver hit, and withstand a collision with the ground or another person without incapacitation or injury. This too can be developed.  If you don’t believe me, go clunk shinbones with a trained kick boxer!

3. Martial Specificity

Training to be a fighter can get you into phenomenal shape, but being in great shape doesn’t make you a fighter. 

Conditioning is specific to the activity that is trained.  Swimming won’t improve your running.  Running won’t improve your lifting.  You could be a phenomenal hockey player but brutal on the tennis court.  Your training must mimic the activity that you want to excel at.

The philosophy of Toughen Up (which you’re probably getting sick reading about) is to use combative training AND combat-compatible exercise to improve your health and your ability to fight.

There’s no sense building a healthy, beautiful body if some drunken piece of doo-doo can pound you out, steal your wallet, sexually defile you AND put your in the emergency room.  With all due respect, bodybuilding, jogging and aerobic dance won’t help you in a street fight.

Training must compliment and enhance your functional fitness and in particular your ability to physically defend yourself. 

4. Skill Aquisition

The foundation of a combative workout is the flawless exectuion of the techniques needed to generate destructive energy and transfer as much of it as possible into the intended target. 

Unless, you master the basic body mechanics of punching for example, don’t be wasting your time pounding on a heavy bag.  You’ll do nothing more than waste your time and injure yourself.  That’s why the “Power Punching Guide“ is the prerequisite of the heavy bag and focus pad workouts.

Technical Skill involves performing your combative technqiues… the strikes, kicks, throws, submissions etc. effectively.  It is getting the job done with the least amount of wasted effort possible.

Watch a high-level athlete and how he or she is able to perform amazing feats with apparent ease. No straining, no wasted action, no trying-too-hard.

You have to know when to conserve your energy and when to EXPLODE. I have seen extremely “fit” people try too hard and do very poorly in a combative situation.

Much of what you learn in your combative workouts teaches you how to optimize your movements, conserve energy and avoid excessive effort that will quickly deplete your resources and lead to bad habits and training injuries.

The training advice from Toughen Up is built around those 4 pillars. I get into the specifics of how to achieve them in my Training Manuals and subsequent posts.

Enuff said.