FOREVER SEARCHING FOR THE SILVER BULLET
The great majority – if not all – of those who come to me for self defense training are men, women, boys and girls who, without actually saying it, are forever looking for what I have long called the Self Defense Silver Bullet. The Silver Bullet, in case you’re not a fan of the old werewolf movies where the hero, when all else failed, would kill the beast with a silver bullet. The Silver Bullet has become a law enforcement and self defense training metaphor for any one technique or concept seen or hoped to be a simple, easy and total solution to a threat or problem. Insecurity and a sense of vulnerability are key motivators for those coming to me. I rarely get those who feel secure and powerful, fearful of no predator, who come to my self defense classes.
So it makes sense that everyone is “seeking the bullet,” as I like to say. And I am not saying that is a bad thing, either. After all, most of my classes are only about 8 hours long, spread over 4 weeks. They are looking for something they can learn, something they can wield, in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort that will be The Great Equalizer against a bully, sexual predator or psychopathic and violent criminal who they perceive will almost always be much larger, stronger, combat-hardened and confident .
There are many Great Equalizers, to be sure. For instance, a firearm is probably the best. There are pros and cons to the gun, which I will go into in another post, but, with or without a gun, knife, bat or other real weapon, I have advocated the Element Of Surprise as my Great Equalizer/Silver Bullet For Prevailing in a Fight for years. Even if you are armed with a powerful weapon, real or improvised, in order to vanquish that hulking, feral and/or psychopathic attacker, you need to invoke the Element of Surprise.
Explosive Surprise as the Great Equalizer: The Formula.
- Distraction: Distractions weaken the Bad Guy’s motor actions by changing his mental process. Change his mental channel from channel 6 (what he intends to do, what he is attempting to do) to, say, channel 34 (what you are doing, which is totally unexpected). This fragments his physical being from his mental process, therefore weakening him. As a PPCT Instructor Trainer, I teach officers to distract the Bad Guy by focusing his attention to one’s upper body and then attacking him low. I call this Invoking Singularity of Focus by getting the subject to expect either no counterattack or to expect one high. When the low counterattack comes, then, the Bad Guy is more often stunned, weakened and even temporarily frozen in surprise!
- Preemptive Attack: I call this using the Principle of First Touch as a Trigger To Explode into the Attacker. The great Self Defense Guru Bob Pierce calls this principle the Preemptive Attack. Either way, combining the elements of Distraction with this Explosive Action is the Great Equalizer. As Pierce says, “Hitting first is the great equalizer for a weaker opponent—“
For years I have been teaching students to set the Bad Guy up with a series of meticulously contrived actions designed to give the weaker “victim” that temporary edge that can make the difference between getting bullied and humiliated, beaten, injured, raped or killed and ending the fight quickly and going on with your day. This reaction sequence basically consists of:: Being aware of oneself, one’s environment, etc.; threat recognition – assessing danger and cascading signs of an imminent attack; a pre-determined survival strategy – having a plan of action based on one’s assessment of the threat, distance, time available, etc. Breathe Don’t Freeze and Take an “Athletic Stance” and tell the Bad Guy to stop where he is.
Once a Bad Guy enters a “victim’s space and makes contact (First Touch), however, the “victim” invokes a distraction by doing what the Bad Guy expects (Channel 6), eg: pulls away and/or begs to be let go. This builds the confidence and feeds into the fantasies of the Bad Guy, who pulls the weaker victim toward him. This is when the “victim” attacks first, hopefully driving the attacker backwards and on his heels. Once this attack begins, the “victim” must not give up his or her edge. Attack Open and Vital Targets as they open up. Never Lock-In on only one or two targets. Create an Overwhelming and Continuous Attack, sustaining one’s counterassault to whatever level it requires to end the fight.
One of the key differences between a victim and a warrior-survivor (I profile these in my classes) is that the victim almost always harbors thoughts of injury, death, humiliation and of “paralyzing sorrow (they are frozen, in other words, in thoughts of their fear, their helplessness) but the Survivor (Warrior)
· Converts fear into determined action.
· Thinks only of how to survive and/or prevail against the attacker.
· Concerns self with hitting open targets and escaping.
And that brings me to my final points about the Silver Bullet. While there is no such thing is self defense against a larger, meaner and stronger attacker, there are Equalizers. If you distract the Bad Guy, change his channels, so to speak, and then explode into him when he least expects it, you will be following up with a sustained attack on vulnerable targets, one after the other, you will also be concentrating on hitting targets, one after the other as they open up, and you will not be focusing on what can be debilitating fear.
So, in a situation when your child is facing a much larger bully, or your daughter is facing a dangerous sexual predator think of this: Your son/daughter holds out both hands, palms out, in a “Surrender Posture.” “Please,” I don’t want any trouble,” he or she pleads, hands waving. As the attacker confidently strides forward and touches this “forward barrier,” the intended-victim drives a strong palm-heel strike into the attacker’s nose, and the other hand pistons forward and the predator is back on his heels and the intended victim takes the fight to the stunned bad Guy.
By Hammer