Eye Contact and Self Defense
THE PREDATOR PREY PRINCIPLE
EYE CONTACT is not an incidental element of the Fighting Arts. Often, eye contact can be the difference between being attacked and being passed over as a victim. Interview the potential predator who doesn’t select you as a victim, he will likely not be able to cite why he graded you as a Hard Target, but he might admit that deep down in his miscreant soul his instincts indeed were disquieted,
And this is the feeling you want to engender in any person who is thinking about attacking you. An uneasy feeling about you. Who cares if he or she can’t quite put their finger on the reason. Long as he goes on his way, seeking out an Easy Target.
Read Lt. Colonel David Grossman’s On Killing and you can read this combat expert’s treatise on eye contact. Soldiers in WWI and II were often want to fire their weapons when their enemy were charging directly at them. More likely than not, they would fire only when their enemy turned their back and tried to flee.
For my part, I have been teaching what I call the Predator-Prey-Principle for several decades to law enforcement officers. Relentless but Indirect Eye Contact, I insist, is a key to keeping one’s enemy at bay. I direct surgical training drills that encourage officers to maintain indirect eye contact down range until the threat is known to be over by virtue of overwhelming evidence!
Relentless, Indirect Eye Contact means that the officer never looks at his or her firearm or Intermediate Weapon when he/she draws or holsters it. Never looks away from down range until he knows for sure his foe has either been vanquished or disappeared.
WHY RELENTLESS AND INDIRECT?
If you have the guts, I challenge you to prove the Predator Prey Principle in real life. I have done this and it has worked every time. When I am running and I see a person walking his/her dog, I will run to within about 50-yards of the dog (as I am running toward the dog, there is no noticeable change in the dog’s pace). Suddenly I will turn my back on the dog and begin to run the other way – without changing my pace at all. Inevitable, without exception, the dog will begin chasing me despite the verbal admonitions of its owner, and will chase me until I turn around to face it again.
Best I can figure, Hammer Fans, is, by averting your eyes and/or showing your back to the dog you are actually triggering the Predator-Instinct in the dog! Same thing happens to the type of man who would physically and/or sexually assault you. When he is sizing you up, he is scanning for signs that you are an easy target. Among other victim-characteristics, he is looking for a man, woman, boy or girl who averts his or her eyes before or during the Testing Stage of the assault.
I say Relentless and Indirect Eye Contact because you don’t necessarily want to challenge the prospective attacker. Direct eye contact will often work to back a predator away. However, the same type of eye contact may also trigger an attack when one might not have happened. I advocate drawing an imaginary triangle from the bottom of the potential attacker’s eyes (the top point of an Isosceles Triangle) to the bottom of his mouth. I think that is the perfect area to concentrate on for ideal results.
HARD TARGET CHARACTERISTICS
- Contralateral Walking Stride – Swing your arms confidently in tandem with your legs.
- Alert Attitude – Keep your head up and scan the area as you walk. Inculcate the attitude of a king or queen who proudly scans his or her crowd of adorers as he or she strides through the crowd. Nobody attacks a king or queen!
- Relentless/Indirect Eye Contact.
- Make Noise. If an attacker is bold enough to bother you when you are obviously a Hard Target, never allow him or her to invade your personal space quietly. Make noise. Protest. Say something clever: “Hey, don’t I know your mother?” has been known to stop a knife wielding attacker in his tracks!
Until The Next Post. Stay Safe.
Hammer.