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And I kid you not, Hammer fans.  Using these powerful combinations of two decisively and quickly can get you out of some nasty jams, be you a man, boy, woman or girl.  All you have to do is clear your mind, recognize some easy-to-spot open targets and hit them as easy as saying “one-two-buckle your shoe.”

HOW THINKING ”ONE-TWO” CAN GET YOU OUT OF SOME NASTY JAMS

1. ASSAILANT ATTACKS FROM THE FRONT.  GRABS YOUR NECK OR SHIRT OR PICKS YOU  UP TO SLAM YOU.  Not an uncommon attack, actually.  Could be a bully, home invader, sexual predator, or “Chicken Hawk” attempting to carry off a youngster.  In almost every scenario I know of here, the assailant’s hands are both on his (or her) victim’s person, leaving the face, ears and eyes vulnerable to counterattack.  “One – take both hands and violently & simultaneously clap each ear with the palm of each hand  & Tw0 - quickly follow up with either a Double Finger Gouge to each eye or a Palm Heel smash to the Bad Guy’s nose, depending upon the perceived severity of the attack.  Either way, guarantee you, I, the assailant will reflexively either loosen his grip or disengage completely.  Now, this is crucial, follow your One-Two Combination with a second set of “Terrible Twos,” like, for instance, an Ascending Knee Strike (to compliment the bad guy’s head reflexively dropping) into the breadbasket and a Descending Elbow Strike to the back of his head as he reacts to the knee.
2. THE ASSAILANT GRABS YOUR WRIST OR ARM FROM THE SIDE.  This is a very common “attack,” and, as benign as it may seem, it is often the preamble to some other nefarious crap.  My suggested first response would be a quick wrist or arm release, or, if you are feeling cocky, looking the nimrod in the eye and saying, “Ah, really?”  If you attain the release and the idiot goes on his way, fine.  If he regrabs you, he means some medieval business, so you got to TCB, like, now.  First Step, forget about his hand(s) that have forged around your wrist or arm – just one or two limbs he will not have to block your strike or punch you with.  ONE – Cant your foot a little counterclockwise and drive it hard, scraping along his shin as you drop all your weight on his instep, and TWO – as he shrinks reflexively inward, raise that same foot upward as if you were stepping in a marching band and, when your foot is at the right height, kick to the side and into the outside of his knee, making sure to step and extend in his direction.  Done correctly – and, believe me, the combination kicks are gross motor skills, and as such, dogshit simple – the bad guy will loosen his grip, or, more likely, let go completely.  Matter of fact, I would be surprised if he didn’t suffer either a dislocated knee or some fractured bones in his foot.

I think you get the picture.  There are upwards of 176 variegated Terrible-Two Combinations.  An endless number of different combinations mixed with open targets.  Virtually any attack a bad guy might try leaves the assailant open to quick and effective combinations.  After all, the bad guy has only two arms and hands with which to block, parry, grab and strike you with. 

You just need to be willing to use them.  The Bad Guy is counting on his belief that you don’t have the courage to do so.

Until the next post, stay safe.

Hammer

There are other Terrible Twos, but none as critical as the mind to body connection.  Call it The Psyche of Survival, or Mental Conditioning, or Spinal Tuning,  whatever you wish, but make no mistake, in order to activate your physical powers when you need them the most, you must first get your noggin into the fight.  So, you might be asking, how do we do that?

SPINAL TUNING YOUR MIND & BODY TO FIGHT WITH MAX EFFECTIVENESS

1. Be aware of your surroundings, of other people in the environment, and of subtle and not so subtle changes.
2. Assess yourself.  Assess others.  How are you feeling?  What are your gut feelings telling you?  Is there someone around you who shouldn’t be?  Who doesn’t “fit?”
3. Anticipate.  Ask yourself what you would do if such and such happened?  Have a plan of action.
4. Maintain a general state of (360 degree) awareness.
5. Visualization.  Every day or so sit in a relaxed state and visualize yourself in a critical, perhaps life or death situation and “see” yourself fighting an attacker and prevailing, or at least surviving the attack.  Visualization, believe it or not, is the same as experiencing a real situation.
6. Teach yourself to breathe.  In order for your mind and body to connect into real and dynamic action you must send oxygenated blood to the brain and throughout your system.  Teach yourself to breathe as the first step in any physical reaction to attack.
7. Positive Self Talk.  If you believe you cannot defend yourself, you are already outnumbered and overpowered.  Give yourself positive self talks with personal self messages such as:

•  ”I can breathe and empower myself if attacked.”
• “I will explode into action when first touched by the attacker.”
• “I have the ability and the skills to hit open and vulnerable targets on the attacker.”
• “I have the ability and the skills to do whatever it takes to defeat an attacker so I can go home to my loved ones.”
• Etc.

The Psyche of Survival is more than just a mind set.  It is a belief system that you can use to maximize your power against any bad guy.

In the next post:  The Terrible Twos, Part II (”Orbits Of Death”)

Until then, Stay Safe

Hammer

GO WITH THE BAD GUY, BUT—

But never give up your life.  Always stay alert for opportunities to escape.  Precious seconds or even minutes where the assailant will have to pause and lose physical control over you.  Like when he pauses to unlock or open a car door, or when he lets go of you or loses visual control to unzip or unbuckle his trousers. 

1. Before he tosses you into his car.  Up to me, I’m going to do whatever I can not to get inside the car.  Depening upon the time of day & your locale, bujt there is a better chance of a witness coming along and scaring off the attacker.  Look for your opportunity here to grab hold of an object, or for a slight drop in the tightnes of his grip on you as he opens the door.

•  Prop both feet against the doorjam or the seat and push hard, making it hard for the predator to toss you inside.  Grab hold of something.  Try to force him to lose his grip.
• Drop, Lock and Roll.  Ever try to hold on to a cat who didn’t want to be held?  Once you push against the seat and get your momentum started, squirm, kick, turn hard in his arms, and, when you are able dive headfirst toward the ground (speed & determination is crucial), grabbing hold of his waist and/or legs.  If and when you can work your way down, roll and hook onto his legs with arms and legs.
• Hang On & Play For Time.  This is not a great self defense move.  It is a delaying tactic that may cause your attacker to do one or more of 3 things:  (1)  Beat on you mercilessly to force you to give up.  Hang in there.  Self defense is not an injury-free activity & there is the chance he will just plain give up out of fear that someone will call the police. (2)  He will break off his attack.  (3)  Providence will break your way & you will have delayed your abduction long enough for help to arrive.

I know that the desperation-delaying tactics I have suggested don’t fill you with hope, but, trust me, they have worked in some situations.  Even in scenarios where the bad guy had brandished a deadly weapon.  Survivors have been injured, in several cases severely, but the victims returned to their loved ones.  Almost all the women and girls reported that at one point they were certain they were going to die but that they survived because they “saw” loved ones and mentally decided that they would do whatever they had to do to survive.

Until the next post, stay safe.

Hammer

You have to find a way to stay in the initial crime scene, dudettes.  That’s all there is to it.

Okay, dude, I can almost hear you asking, I got it.  I’m tracking you.  Really.  But how do I do that?  I mean, I say, “Hell, no, pervert, I aint going. I’m staying right here where you jumped me, ” but he’s twice my size, as strong as the economy in ‘92, and, on top of that, he’s hitting me and choking me and I got nothing left—-?

THE CHOICE IS ALWAYS YOURS!

I still insist you try everything you can to stop him from dragging you off to his car or van or into whatever ally or woods he has in mind.  Simply put, if you go, chances are you aint coming back.

Unless you Go With a Plan.  But that’s a subject for my next post.

The choice is always up to you.  If you believe you will only stay alive as long as you allow yourself to be moved toward the bad guy’s secondary scene, then allow yourself to be moved (once again, see the next exciting post), but there is no choice about this – never, ever give up; always look for an opening and escape route, a vulnerable target!

INITIAL CRIME SCENE TACTICS

Do whatever it takes to keep you butt where you are.  Accept the fact that you will be injured, maybe even seriously.  Self Defense is not an injury-free activity!  Even severely injured, if you stay where you want to be (and away from where he wants you to be), there is a good chance someone, including police and emergency medical help, will find you.

• BE OBSERVANT.  If you see a suspicious looking person eyeing you up and/or walking toward you more intently than you would prefer (trust your gut instincts), run or move away, using barricades in the environment to separate you from him.  Move toward other crowds, other safe-looking people.
• BE LOUD, A “JUMPING BEAN OF TROUBLE.”   Predators are not looking for a fight.  They are on the hunt for ”victims” only.  And victims are pretty damn easy to spot because they don’t move, don’t hardly say anything.  Victims can be moved easily and quickly and, even when there are other people close by, nodody notices ’cause the abduction is performed so quickly.  What the predator wants more than anything is to Strike and Fly.  Hit their target – you – paralyze that target with fear & indecision – and get the hell out of Dodge City as quickly as possible before a witness can interfere or take down a license number, before noise and screams can draw police intervention.   Acting like fricking Lady Gaga on stage – loud, obscene, profane, gaudy, full of unstoppable energy, attention grabbing – is a big step toward influencing the miscreant to break off his attack and seek out another victim.
• FIND SOMETHING TO GRAB ONTO.  You can turn a calamity into salvation by finding something in the environment to hold on to.  Women have save themselves by wrapping both arms and legs around a telephone pole as abductors were trying to drag her into a van.  The men beat on her for a while, but, after only a few minutes drove off in fear that the woman’s screams would somehow alert police or others on the scene.  Trees, bicylcles, bed posts, large garbage cans and other stationary or near-stationary objects can keep you from being dragged off for several minutes, perhaps buying you enough time to cause the attacker to give up the hunt.
• DROP, LOCK AND ROLL – GRAB ON TO THE ATTACKER.  By quickly and suddenly turning toward a (startled) attacker and diving toward his legs, head down, you can often force a bad guy to lose his grip on you.  Quickly latch on to his legs and ankles, wrap yourself tightly around him and hold on for dear life.  This is a last ditch tactic, for sure, but it can also cause precious seconds, maybe minutes to tick off the Bad Guy’s “internal clock,” cause panic because you not only are delaying the abduction – and delay can be fatal to him - but you are making it difficult for him to move you to that waiting isolated and secluded spot he has in mind.
• DROP & ROLL.  Another last ditch tactic – when all else fails, or, more likely, when you can think of nothing that works in your “conventional self defense arsenal,” try this unique surprise tactic.  As he has hold of your wrist or arms and is pulling you forcefully toward his car or another target area, go with the pull and allow the bad guy to build momentum and speed until you think the time is right then drop, quickly and suddenly and go straight down, creating a powerful shift in balance.  In some cases the bad guy has fallen and in some cases the sudden shift and fall has caused the bad guy injury.  If he is still standing and still has hold of you, drive a foot as hard as possible into his groin or into his knee.  Roll away as soon as he relinquishes his grip as if your shirt is on fire and you are trying to extinguish it.
• PULL AWAY AND DRIVE FORWARD.  There are literally hundreds of surprise moves you can make when the bad guy is trying to pull you into a car, bedroom, alley, but one I particularly like is to “feed into his expectations and then force him to throw them back up.”  What I mean by that is the bad guy is pulling you and he expects you to try to pull away, even though he knows there is no way you can win that battle.  Your first move, then, is to feed in to his expectations by pulling away, against his strength.  Then, now that he is overconfident that you are his, allow him to pull you violently toward him – which he will every time – and, then, relax your body and flow rapidly into his Center-Line Targets, and, before the surprised predator can do anything to defend himself you are kneeing or twisting his groin, driving a forehead into his nose, palm-heel striking his face, and you are mauling him and not stopping until the threat is oover!
• UP TO YOU.  I exaggerate not when I say there are hundreds of other ways you can stay in the Initial Crime Scene.  Your homework assignment:  Think about it & write as many Initial Crime Scene Strategies as you can think of.  Get your brain working on it so your body will do the rest, if the time ever comes.

Until the next post, stay safe.

Hammer

Do you still read comic books?  What about when you were a kid?  If so, you may remember the Bizarro World Superman episodes where everything was flip-flopped or reversed from reality.  Whether you do or do not, what I am going to ask you to do, especially if you are a girl or woman, is suspend disbelief for a few minutes and seriously consider what I am about to post about what might be a crucial and primal secret to defending yourself against a deadly, spontaneous (surprise, close quarter assault) assault by a stronger, quicker, larger, and likely armed man.

I believe, if you commit yourself to the tactic(s) I advocate, you will screw with the attacker’s belief system.   And it is that Belief System that guides him like an internal gyroscope and has probably even drove him to select you as his victim.  And it is that Belief System (and experience as a predator) that instills in him The Truth that assures him, that, upon First Touch, you will:

• Ignore your natural instincts to fight or fly.
• Freeze.
• Hold Your Breath.
• Go Mute.
• Commit to no effective fight plan, but, if you fight, commit only a vertical resistance path
• Commit to Zero Resistance when ordered to or led to a Secondary Crime Scene.

In other words, you become the Ideal Victim.  Quiet, passive, inert.

COMMIT YOURSELF TO TRUE, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL, MULTILATERAL SELF DEFENSE

So, what is the self defense plan that flip-flops reality?  I call it The Fighting Arts.  It is doing exactly what, deeeep down in your soul you were created to do to survive.  In this case, doing what you were created to do – before society got hold of you and fouled you all up – is exactly the opposite of what the predator expects.  Actually, when you think of it, it is likely the opposite of what you and so many of our esteemed self defense experts would suggest you do in this instance, which is:

1. Trust Your Gut Instincts.  You have wonderful, natural instincts, which will warn you when danger lurks.  Yet I know case after case where a victim rejected this warning & ignored the chance to escape or evade what turned out to be a fatal assault.
2. Always be Aware.  Maintain a 360 degree awareness of what is around you, subtle changes in the environment & others, escape routes, etc.
3. Always Control & Protect Your Personal Space.
4. Use the Attacker’s “First Touch” as a Trigger To Explode Into Action.
5. Do Whatever It Takes To Stay in the Initial Crime Scene.  Over 95% of victims who allow themselves to be taken to an isolated secondary scene never return!

•  Use The Element of Surprise (see my last two posts).
• Employ Target Focused Counterattacks.  If and when the Bad Guy grabs you, be aware he is exposing at least one primary target and several secondary targets (I will expand on this in the next two posts).
• Scream, Yell, Drop to the Ground.  To prevent being carried off to a waiting car, dark alley, etc., use the ground as your ally.  Wrap both legs around his ankles, keep your head down.  Suddenly dropping to the ground as a bad guy is dragging you to a car, etc., can throw him off balance, and now, on your back you can use your feet while rotating on your hip to keep him away.  I am not saying use this as your only counter attack, but do not dismiss this as an option.  As soon as you can get to your feet and go!
• Grab and Turn Into Him.  When grabbed from behind, or even from the front, the conventional thought would be to always turn in the opposite direction, which, by the way, usually plays into the bad guy’s strength.  Instead, here are a few possible tactics:

In the next post, “Staying in the Initial Crime Scene.”

Until then, Stay Safe

hammer