Action Against Violence

I ADMIT, there is a perverse and counter-intuitive relationship in all of my Fighting Arts (Self Defense For Women; Escape and Evasion For Children; COMET-Kids (for teens); Self Defense For Seniors and Bully-Be-Gone classes) programs I conduct out of the local community college and school sites.  By perverse and counter intuitive, I mean that I know for a fact that 98% of successful self defense for women, teens, children and seniors is prevention and awareness; yet in my classes about 98% is hands-on Fighting Arts , leaving almost no time for crucial Techniques Of Avoidance.  You could say, then, with little argument from me, that I am not really teaching the True Secrets To Survival.

WHY?  AVOIDANCE AINT SEXY.  Nobody, it is apparent, wants to waste his or her time sitting and listening to a litany of axioms about awareness, assessment, anticipation, avoidance and a Shakespearian drama full of other principles when they could be on their feet, blocking, punching and falling to the mat and grappling.  Women and children are the first to walk out of my trainings, which is ironic, really, since avoidance and prevention are their best bets for life preservation.

TECHNIQUES OF AVOIDANCE

INSTEAD of a litany of avoidance techniques and principles, I am going to limit my list of Avoidance Techniques to just a few critical skills and elements that can influence an attacker to eliminate you as a target and move on to another victim.  As cold and heartless as the concept of the Bad Guy moving on to another victim instead or yourself sounds, it is still Survival of the Fittest.  It has been for eons and will continue to be long after I am gone.

1. Look Like a Tough Target.  Get fit and stay fit.  See my previous two postings on a Fighting Arts-Specific Workout Program.  Develop confidence and/or act confident when you are in public.  Stride and look around.  Develop an appropriate Assertive Personality, which means to communicate to a potential attacker that you are aware of him without purposely antagonizing him with challenging and profane language.  Send he primary message that you are not a Free Lunch or easy mark!  Avoid the Passive and Aggressive Personalities.  Peruse some of my other postings for more tips on being a Tough Target.
2. EYE CONTACT is terribly important for successfully avoiding an attack.  I am going to move past this issue for now, but I will return to it at the end of this posting with some crucial details.
3. CONTROL YOUR SPACE.  A bad guy will test you by moving in and out of your PSZ (Personal Safe Zone).  A good rule of thumb is to never allow another person inside your PSZ without your permission.  Anyone violating your PSZ is showing Spatial Disrespect and it is hard for me to come up with a reason why a bad guy would do that unless it is a Prelim To An Attack.  Stop the BG with good verbal directions and by taking a diagonal step (J-Step) with your hands palms out and up near your chest and moving them back and forth (Compliance Position, but we are preparing for a Surprise Palm Heel Strike, if the need arises).
4. VERBAL DIRECTIONS.  What you say and how you say it are crucial.  Be firm yet relatively polite with an inflexible no at the onset of testing.  Upon his or her refusal (Spatial Disrespect), though, your hands go into a Fighting Position, your power leg drops back as you J-Step away.  “Get back. Get back now!”
5. BREATHE DON’T FREEZE!  Remember to inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth to initiate your Fight or Flight Response.  I actually teach a CAT Technique (Combat Adrenal Technique) where the person exaggerates his or her exhalations through the mouth so they are loud enough for any attacker in hiding to hear.  The dual benefit is that the Good Guy (student) adrenalizes him or herself instead of freezing with fear and the potential attacker doesn’t attack because attackers are basically cowards who would rather attack a meek, quiet, shy person than an individual who is pumped up, striding and making loud noises.

EYE CONTACT

FROM a Bad Guy’s prospective, the ideal victim is a girl, boy, man or woman who presents minimum eye contact. The less the better.  One might think, then, that, from the Good Guy’s prospective, the more direct eye contact the better.  Not quite.  The truth is  somewhere in between. 

Avoiding Eye Contact, or looking away triggers the predatory instinct in the Bad Guy.  Read Lt. Colonel David Grossman’s On Killing to learn more, but, the fact is, by trying to ignore the Bad Guy with the hopes he will simply go away, you will invoke this Predator Prey Principle and will actually invite a far more violent attack than you could have ever anticipated with “good” eye contact.  Direct Eye Contact, or staring down the potential attacker, is much better, but in too many instances direct eye contact was taken as a challenge and the Bad Guy (abductor, sexual predator, date rapist, criminal) responded by attacking.

MY PREFERRED EYE CONTACT training paradigm has always been the Triangle or Soft Eyes (Chinese Model) Approach.  I teach my Triangle Method to both law enforcement and civilians, advocating that they draw an imaginary triangle, the tip of which touches the potential attacker’s nose and the base of which extends from the person’s left bicep to his or her right bicep.  That way my students are not locked into the subject’s eyes, yet the student will be able to see any movements of the subject’s arms and hands.  A potential victim can become a real victim if he or she ignores the subject’s hands.  Remember:  a subject’s hands are what can kill or injure, not his or her eyes!

FINALLY, our eyes, or perceptual senses, are the origin of an amazing sensory cycle where we first perceive a threat, then analyze and evaluate that threat, before formulating a strategic response so we can initiate a motor response that can save our butts.  Avoiding eye contact, then, can have catastrophic consequences because, when the attack does come to us, we experience what is known as a Catastrophe Event, meaning simply that, because we were not able to perceive, analyze and formulate a strategy, more likely than not we will freeze in place, panic, go into shock, or any number of reactions that not only invite a violent and merciless attack, but, when the attack comes, disable us from fighting back effectively and saving ourselves.

By Hammer

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Action Against Violence Home Page, Safety and Survival, Sexual Violence, Strategies and Tactics, Violence Against Women, Violence Prevention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.