In my Fighting Arts for Women classes the theme is always this:  Reverse the Predator/Prey Principle. Simply put, I advocate taking the attacker’s mind set and expectations and totally flipping the mentality upside down by invoking the Element of Surprise on our part!

In any “life or death fight” where one side is dramatically overmatched, I say, Surprise is probably the only thing that can change the game in the woman’s (or child or teen facing a predator, bully, etc) favor!  Think of this:  when a woman is attacked, more often than not, her attacker is larger, stronger, faster, armed, in the company of an accomplice, plus, is often prepared with an attack plan.  Not only that, the bad guy has often tracked his prey for minutes, hours, days, sometimes months.  He has given this attack a lot of thought, even to the point of waiting to assault you in an environment with poor lighting, poor footing, and in a space where his victim has little room to escape or fight.

OKAY, ALREADY.  WE GOT THE IDEA:  WE’RE SCREWED!  SO, WHAT THE HECK TO WE DO?

Good question.  A little tempremental, but, still, good question.  What you do – what you must do – is do the unexpected. Believe it or not, you have an edge.  Not a big one, but an edge nevertheless.  And what is that Edge you have?

The Bad Guy’s Expectations.

In 97 to 98% of the attack scenarios, the bad guy expects you to be meek, to surrender without a fight, to beg for your life.  He often gets off on your fear, on the look of terror in your eyes. That look of “recognition” that you are the prey about to be dragged into an isolated corner of the world so the predator can torment and torture you until he finally rapes, robs and murders you.

INVOKE S.N.E.A.K.!

Open up a big can of Whoop-Ass on the monster by using the element of surprise.  Sensei Michael Pace used the acronym “SNEAK” to describe the process.

Surprise is the first and most important element.  Surprise is activated by fulfilling the bad guy’s expectations initially, and, then, suddenly exploding in his face!

Non-Violent is the 2nd element.  Before counter-attacking, you must appear non-violent.

Explode is the 3rd element.  You must “explode” from non-violent to ultra-violent in a split second.  When you explode, go nuts, liberate the beast.  You are all over his ass!

Aggressive:  Incorporate an aggressive attitude.  No longer a nice girl.

Knock the Bad Guy out of the fight.

Okay, you might be saying, that’s nice, but how the hell do I do this? In the next few posts I will be going over a few strategems, but, how about trying this one on for size?

The Bad Guy approaches with that “look” in his eyes.  Despite your protests he steps into your space.  Your gut instincts are screaming at you to get the hell out of there, but when you try to move he blocks your exit.  You know for sure you are about to be attacked in some way.  Put both hands up in front of your face, palms facing the guy’s face – the universal “Compliance Stance” – and you even “beg” him to let you go.

Then, suddenly, you bend your knees for power and drive both hands hard and fast into his head, driving up as if trying to knock his head off of his shoulders.  Before he knows what is happening, his head snaps back and he is off-balance and all his Primary Targets are open for a follow-up strike!  There are no apologies or excuses in self defense:  Show No Mercy and hit those open targets with everything you have until it is safe for you to escape.

Even if the Bad Guy has one of your hands under control.  Use your free hand and go for his head.  No head can withstand the power of your entire body.

This will work.

Until the next post, stay safe.

The Hammer

HAUNTED BY YOSEMITE – A SURVIVAL LESSON FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN!

Woke up around Oh-Dark Hundred – Hammer for the middle of the night – and, like many, many nights preceding, couldn’t make myself fall back asleep. My brain, I have long suspected, works fine during the day, but, left on its own while I sleep, is a lonely and restless wolf that shambles through every dark recess, kicking over random dendrites, atoms and neurons until all Hell is unleashed and my mind is lit up by some eternal goddammed torch-fire. A Torch-fire that I can not even hope to extinguish until I get myself out of bed and reduce the flotsam my wolf-brain has kicked over to an issue, or a problem, and then solve the bastard. Then and only then can I fall back to sleep.

The issue today – and why I am writing this – has much to do with Survival Skills for Girls and Women. I awoke haunted by a 20/20 story about 4 women who had come to Yosemite National Park soak in the eternal beauty and serenity of the park, all of whom were murdered in the most grisly way by Kerry Stayner (sp?), a handyman employed at the park.

As you may already know, I teach several self defense and survival courses for girls and women, among other courses, throughout the year. Not too long ago I took a temporary leave from teaching these courses because I believed I was failing at getting my messages of survival through to my students.

In short, I am haunted a lot by knowing too much. Knowing that so many of my students, if ever confronted with a man like Kevin Stayner in the same situation, would open their door at 10:30 at night and once confronted with a weapon and the promise that, if you cooperate and do what I say, you will not be hurt, would cooperate, believe the unbelievable, and, of course, die in the most horrible way imaginable.

You see, Stayner looked the part of an All American woodsman. Handsome, articulate. Stayner had watched the women, marked them like a hunter would, and, as he told an interviewer months later, assessed them as “ideal victims – compliant.” At 10:30 P.M., Stayner knocked on the Sang’s (victims’ last names) cabin door and asked to enter in order to “fix something in the bathroom.” At first the women would not open the door, most likely because of common sense. There was no problem in the bathroom, first of all, and, secondly, more likely than not, their gut instincts were screaming out, warning them that the handyman was a stranger, basically, besides, gut instincts are hardly ever wrong!

But, here’s the thing. Nice women will all too often let their upbringing and their socialization override their Gut Instincts (read The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker). So, now, The Handyman was inside the cabin and he pulled out a gun and told the women that they would not be hurt if they did what he said and went along with the program. And, despite the fact that the gun was not loaded and there were three of them in different parts of the room, all three allowed themselves to be duct-taped, and all three watched as the oldest of the three was strangled to death and dragged into the trunk of a car; and then The Handyman returned and forced the next oldest to have sex with him before cutting her throat and tossing her body into the same trunk.
Strayner forced the 14-year old to have sex before gagging her and driving her a couple hours north before torturing the girl, then cutting her throat, too. The gagged girl had pointed at Strayner’s handgun, according to the Handyman, indicating that she wanted him to shoot her instead of using the knife. That’s when her killer informed her that the gun was not even loaded.

THERE ARE VALUABLE LIFE PRESERVING LESSONS HERE. Lessons I hope every reader takes to heart. They are basic and fundamental lessons, too. If any one of them would have been learned and acted upon, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

I ask you to re-read this post up to this point. Use your neo cortex – your Intelligent Brain – and I am sure you will know the lessons before I write them here:

• When traveling and staying at a hotel or lodge, always stay as close to population.
• Never open the door for anyone who is not in your staying party, unless in an emergency situation.
• Use Common Sense. If the person at your door identifies himself as anv employee, always get him to identify himself and verify the worker and the emergency by calling the main office. Takes less than a minute. And, think of this: If one of the victims would have simply said, “Sorry, Kevin, but just to be safe, I am going to call the office to verify you should be here at this hour—“ How long do you think Strayer would have stayed at the door, knowing the office would know he was stalking patrons of the lodge?
  If confronted by a Bad Guy who promises that you will not be harmed if you cooperate, always know that he is lying!v
  In the case of multiple “victims,” always understand that the Bad Guyv is outnumbered and cannot control two or more women by himself. An attack from different directions will most likely confuse him.
• A deadly weapon is reason for concern, but often a gun or knife is used to gain compliance and to instill fear. There is a chance that instant action on your part will be less dangerous than that weapon being used against you when you are stationery (like being tied up and choked or stabbed)

HERE IS A GREAT, LIFE PRESERVING SURVIVAL TIP. THE LASTv THING THE BAD GUY WANTS IS TO BE DELAYED AT THE INITIAL CRIME SCENE. HE WANTS YOU TO BE QUIET, COMPLIANT, AND EASY TO MOVE TO AN ISOLATED, SECONDARY CRIME SCENE (where, by the way, all 3 were found, over a month later). SO, MAKE AS MUCH NOISE AS POSSIBLE, SCREAM, YELL, DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT!! THROW FURNITURE THROUGH THE WINDOWS, RUSH HIM, HIDE FROM HIM, WHATEVER IT TAKES!!!!

Stay Safe.

Hammer

PREDICTING WORKPLACE VIOLENCE –

REFLECTING ON THE FORT HOOD TRAGEDY

VIOLENCE in the workplace  has been a major problem in the United States  for decades, but, now, since 9-11, actually, it is getting worse. Exponentially.  Every conceivable type of workplace has been and is impacted by the entire continuum of violence, ranging from verbal intimidation to mass murder.  But. in my opinion, though, since 0845 on 9/11, the dawn of the most pernicious act of workplace violence ever, safety in the workplace has never been so challenged, never been so shaky.  And, again in my opinion, since the world’s (and, of course, ours) economy tanked a few years ago,  injury and death occasioned by worker against worker is a dark, haunting and damn near imminent presence in almost every workplace.

You need not look too far beyond the Fort Hood tragedy where a psychiatric fellow and co-employee turned his insane rage against innocent soldiers and civilians, killing 13 and injuring dozens of others.

Overlooked by many who have studied this and other heinous acts of senseless mayhem is the fact that over 88% of workplace violence could be prevented if warning signs would have been observed and recognized as dangerous, and over 90% could have been avoided if someone had not only observed the impending “Red Flags,” but had actually reported it or them to an (responsible) authority figure.  Course, the problem with statistics such as these fails to reveal why, more often than not, when presented with timely observations, fears and feelings about workers, supervisors, administrators  and suspicious family members (Domestic Violence Spillover is a cogent factor in many catastrophic acts of violence in the workplace) way too many “authority figures and responsible persons” refuse or fail to act decisively in such a way and in such a manner that could prevent acts of violence like we say at Fort Hood!

Now, we can debate and discuss some of the obvious nuances, including but not .limited to the effectiveness of reporting cascading aggression, et al., but what I need to focus on here are some of the Cogent Warning Signs of Impending Violence in the Workplace.

• CO-EMPLOYEE HAS BEEN VIOLENT IN THE WORKPLACE, OR OUTSIDE THE WORKPLACE IN THE PAST.
• WORKER IS FASCINATED WITH AND/OR IN POSSESSION OF FIREARMS (which the Fort Hood killer was).
• WORKER IS OR HAS BEEN A SUBSTANCE ABUSER.
• THE WORKER HAS KNOWN OR SUSPECTED GRIEVANCES WITH OTHER WORKERS OR THE SYSTEM (which the Fort Hood perpetrator certainly did).
• THE WORKER HAS A  RIGID, INFLEXIBLE PERSONALITY (which the perpetrator had).
• THE WORKER CAN OFTEN BE CHARACTERIZED AS HAVING A SAD AND HOPELESS OUTLOOK.
• WORKER IS CHRONICALLY ANGRY.
• WORKER MAKES STATEMENTS INDICATIVE OF DEPRESSION.
• THE WORKER SEEMS TO IDENTIFY WITH PAST SPECTACULAR ACTS OF WORKPLACE VIOLENCE (would the 9/11 attacks qualify?).
• SEVERAL OR MAN Y CO-WORKERS FEEL DISCOMFORT AROUND THIS WORKER!
• THIS WORKER DEMONSTRATES SIGNS OF PARANOIA.
• WORKER HAS BROUGHT WEAPON ON TO THE JOB SITE IN THE PAST.
• WORKER RECENTLY SHOWS SIGNS OF EXTREME CHANGES IN “NORMAL” BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDE.
• THE WORKER IS “HYPER-FOCUSED.”  SHE/HE IS HIGHLY FOCUSED ON THE CONDUCT, BEHAVIOR, COMINGS AND GOINGS OF OTHER WORKERS.  MAY EVEN KEEP A DOSSIER ON OTHERS.

Of course, there are other “signatures of danger” that a future perpetrator of workplace violence might display, but, for the time being, because of time and space constraints, these must suffice.  Allow me one caveat, though.  A civil and peaceful individual may display any one, two, or maybe even three of the above traits, but, in order to adequately “profile a perpetrator, one should look for a cluster of 3 or 4 of these traits.  Key Red Flags, however (I mean really red, red flags) should include:

• CHRONIC ANGER.
• CHRONIC DEPRESSION AND HOPELESSNESS.
• OTHER WORKERS FEEL DISCOMFORT AROUND HIM OR HER.
• FASCINATION WITH WEAPONS, AND
• FASCINATION WITH PAST SPECTACULAR ACTS OF WP VIOLENCE.

Stay Safe.

Hammer

Yesterday (May 27, 2009) a security officer at the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, NJ was shot down.  Killed instantly and suddenly right where he stood.  casino security, just like most of you and security staff at your workplace, are rarely armed, so I thought now would be a good time to revisit the life preserving survival skill of recognizing when an individual is carrying a concealed handgun.

One caveat.  Even if you become aware that an armed person is in your work site, that knowledge may not prevent him or her from unleashing Hellfire on you and others.  I will pass on some possible life preserving disarming tips in the next post.

• The 4 A’s.  Obviously, being observant is a key here.  Being alert is a key survival skill.  It may buy you the second or two you might need to prevent your death and that of others.
  1. AWARE.  Be aware of changes or anomalies in your environment.  We are talking about your workplace here,  so you should know what a safe and routine environment looks like.  Anyone or anything that causes ripples or changes by his or her presence, etc., should cause your Spidey Senses to throb.
• 1. ASSESS.  Evaluate and assess what you are seeing.  If something kicks off your gut feelings by the way he or she moves, looks at you, etc., take it seriously.
• 1. ANTICIPATE.  Always have an action plan.  Ask yourself what would I do if an intruder barged into my work site with a gun?  Have a Plan B, also.
• 1. ACTION.  Be willing and prepared to act when action is needed.

• TRUST YOUR GUT FEELINGS.  Millions of years of evolution is making the hair on the back of your neck stand up and screaming in your ear, “Get your ass out of here or take the gun away from him, now!

• BODY LANGUAGE IS 90% OF COMMUNICATIONS HERE:~

•  
  1. The gun or knife is in his waistband on his hip, so he will favor that side as he walks.
  2. He will short-step on the side where he is carrying the weapon when he goes up and down stairs (because the weapon is against his hip flexor).
  3. He will subconsciously turn away toward the side where the weapon is secreted when someone walks directly toward him.
  4. He will hold his jacket, shirt or coat closed as he walks.
  5. Every moment or so, he will touch or pat the area where his weapon is secreted, subconsciously reassuring himself.
  6. If the weapon is in his coat pocket, his collar will be unusually tight to his neck, and, if the weapon is heavy, the collar will also be twisted.
  7. He will hold the pocket where the gun is secreted when he walks or runs to keep the pocket from flying away from his body.
  8. He will also hold that side of his coat as he sits or rises.
  9. He will favor heavy coats, even in hot weather, to help him better secrete the weapon.
  10. He will often give himself away just before he liberates the weapon from its hiding place.

Ø       By opening and/or pushing back his coat.

Ø       By grabbing the bottom of the pocket with his non-gun hand to stabilize the coat as he extracts the firearm.

IN THE NEXT POST.  GETTING THE SHOOTER BEFORE HE GETS YOU!

Until then, Stay Safe,

Hammer

A Truism.  Ninety-seven to ninety-eight percent of all confrontations with disruptive or even violent people can be resolved quickly, safely and effectively with the use of professional communications, or Pro Com, emblematic of the Advanced De-Escalation Techniques Program or paradigm I offer teachers, security staff, Human Services and Health Care Professionals, law enforcement officers and others.

Take a peek at the next couple posts and maybe –if you think my Primary Principles of Defusing Others makes sense – consider trying these techniques, principles and skills the next time you are confronted by one or more aggressive workers. patients,students or inmates in seemingly untenable situations, and I believe you will find – like I have in soooo many confrontational and potentially dangerous situations – that they will work just as well for you.

THE DEFUSE FORMULA

Don’t Lose Your Cool.  Depersonalize.  Deflect instead of Absorb Verbal Attacks.  Depreciate the Verbal Icon.

Encourage the person to vent.  Ego Suspension.

Find out the Facts.

Understand Feelings.

Slow Everything Down.

End on a Positive Note.

THE “D” IN “DEFUSE.”

Likely, I could write a book on how adhering to my “D” tenets could aide in any campaign to minimize Workplace Violence.  Let’s take a look at each separate “D.”

Don’t Lose Your Cool.  This is so simple and obvious that I can almost hear the “No Duh’s” as I type.  And I can’t really count how many times people have commented to me, “Hammer, this is just Common Sense—“ but, here’s a fact:  The rarest commodity in a crisis is Common Sense.  And, so it is with Keeping Your Cool.  Losing one’s cool in a critical situation is far more common than the crucial skills of staying cool when everyone else is “hot.”  Here are a few salient Tips On Keeping Your Cool:

• Slow Everything Down.  Take the time to consciously think of what is happening.  Rushing triggers the Primitive Brain, which is dominant when we make critical and stupid statements that trigger violence.  Slow everything down and allow your Neo Cortex, or Intelligent Brain. To go to work.  Slow down your speech, the way you walk, your approach.  Everything.
• Breathe.  Try Tactical or Cycle Breathing to slow down your heart rate and eliminate or reduce the (survival) stress hormones flooding your system.  Without oxygenated blood flowing to your brain you can’t possibly think and act in such a way and in such a manner as to de-escalate a out of control subject.

• Mirror Calm.  Yep.  I am asking you to fake, or act calm irrespective of how uncalm you might feel.  Your body, Central Nervous System and Heart Rate can be fooled just as easily as the subject to whom your are modeling calm.  Calm, like anger and fear, is communicable. 

DEPERSONALIZE.  Simple.  Do not take anything the subject says or does personally.  This principle lies at the very heart of your ability to de-escalate a person and/or a scene.  Keep your ego out of the interaction.  Stay professional at all times.  De-escalation, you see, is more an attitude, maybe even a belief system, than a cluster of esoteric techniques.  Identify and untrigger all those buttons or triggers the subject can push to get you upset.

DEFELECT.  Don’t, by all means, absorb (take it personally and allow it to influence how you respond) VAPS (Verbal Attack Patterns).  Instead deflect them.  Think like a power hitter and knock each one of them out of the park.  In order to do that the attitude you need to bring with you into every confrontational scenario is that your are going to absolutely and unemotionally going to—

DEPRECIATE THE VERBAL ICON.  Which is an esoteric way of saying simply that you are going to strip the attacker’s words of all power to affect you in any way.  Think of it.  What the attacker wants you to do is to value or “worship” his/her verbal attack. To give each profane and personally insulting word significance or weight.  And to do this, he/she is going to string together a series of personally offensive words in order to elicit a prescribed response on your part (in other words, to influence you to abandon your professionalism, to lose your cool).  Instead, you are going to disempower (another “D”) the (attacking) words and the attacker him or herself through the Art of Depreciation.

In the Next Post:  The “E” and “F” of DEFUSE.  Until then, please Stay Safe.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

GASP is a simple training acronym.  Easy to remember, and, more importantly, quite east to do.  Simplicity and doability, don’t forget, are not to be taken lightly when it comes to the Fighting Arts.  After all, when you are under attack, especially a spontaneous, surprise attack undertaken by an evildoer at great speed and with malevolent determination, your ability to perform anything more complex than the act of flipping a light switch – no exaggeration – will be damn near impossible to do without literally hundreds of training reps and at least a minute or two mentally mapping out an escape and evasion strategy before the attack.

TRUTHFULLY, how many of you spend any time preparing yourself for avoiding and/or repelling an attack?  How many of you look at another person – be he or she an innocent-looking person or the kind of person you might think would spring an attack – and visualize targets you might hit if they opened up?  Visualized how exactly you would strike, or feint, or maybe what type of distraction move you would use to surprise him or her, to fragment his or her thought process?

WHAT I thought.  Warriors do.  And, for that matter, so do Bad Guys.  That’s how they think at all times.  Warriors and Bad Guys alike train themselves constantly – actually, it is called Spinal Tuning –  so they can be in the Attack Mode in order to gain the Fighter’s Edge over the victim.  And. Let me tell you, Hammer Fans – you can’t ever underestimate the Fighter’s Edge since an advantage of only 1 ½ seconds is all it takes to knock the other guy back on his heels and overwhelm his or her ability to think and act.  Unless your opponent has extraordinary recuperative powers and great determination and courage (a warrior who never gives up, in other words), the fight is over.

SO, WHAT IS GASP?

WHILE there are hundreds of techniques, tactics and/or strategies that I have seen advocated to develop Great Attacker (or, in some cases, Asshole) Stopping Power, I like to keep my Fighting Arts strategies down to a simple few, like:

Generate Power.  The difference between hitting an object with just an extended hand and a real powerful strike using hip rotation and extending through (sticking on) a target is immense.  Try this:  Stand with your feet together and imagine yourself in a complete body cast with only your arms free.  With someone holding a pad, strike that pad.  Now, spread your feet and drop your power foot back slightly and feel how freely you can rotate your hips.  Now, strike the pad and just feel how much more power you have.  Keep your toes pointed toward your target, keep your elbows close to your hips and, as you throw the punch, feel your forearms brush your hips.  Avoid Power Leaks that rob your strikes of power. All joint son the side of the strike should lock upon impact (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists are power joints).  When you hit imagine you are punching or kicking into and through that target.

Anticipate.  Mental Conditioning is over 75% of the Fighting Arts.  Your mind and body must be Spinal Tuned together in order to respond immediately and effectively to a serious threat.

Spring into action.  Successful self defense cannot be spastic, as it often is.  By spastic I mean closing your eyes and flailing away.  If for no other reason, a spastic fighting effort burns energy quickly and can leave you standing there defenseless.  Take the fight instead to the attacker.  As soon as you identify that he or she is about to attack, go for it!  I will go into the dead-bang signs that you are under attack in another post.

Pinpoint Power Targets.  Hit targets with high dollar value.  In a boxing match or an MMA competition, kicking a Nerve Motor Point (femoral or Common Peroneal) several times in the course of a competition will eventually exhaust the lactic acid in that leg area and cause an involuntary collapse of that leg.  Fight over.  However, when you are involved in a life or death struggle, you might not have time for three uninterrupted straight or angle kicks to the inside and/or outside of a leg.  The average attack/counterattack self defense episode is over in 20 seconds.  Plus, here’s another tact:  The average person, even above average, can only fight at 100% maximum output for 10 to 15 seconds, tops.

·         Power Targets that have high dollar value include:

1.     Groin, Eyes and Throat.  The immediate startle response to even a superficial strike to these will be for the attacker to quickly move both hands to this area.  This will leave other targets open.  Power hits/gouges to any of these will take the Bad Guy out of the fight.

2.     Ears and Knees.  Although considered secondary targets, a kick to the inside of the knees will often stop the fight and/or open up other targets and I have ended several fights by slapping both ears and grabbing one of the ears and twisting down.

3.     Lower Shins:  Great because a nice Front Kick with the Instep and/or toe of shoe is virtually impossible to stop, if the person using it invokes singularity of focus on the Bad Guy’s part by looking at his face while delivering the strike.  Target acquisition (hitting the Superficial Peroneal Nerve Motor Point located behind and above the tongue of the shoe) is not a problem if you target the Bad Guy’s same-side shoulder.  The Superficial Peroneal is always below that.  A good strike or two will cause the Bad guy to drop his upper body, opening up so many targets.

Next Blog:  Strikes and other moves to make your attacker GASP.

Stay Safe

Hammer

I have seen this remarkable episode before.  Frankly, it is almost always a woman, once it was a male officer.  Gender aside, it is always someone who had never been in any kind of fight before.  More specifically – and here is my point – without exception, it is a student who never expected to get hit!

Now, Hammer Fans, this is always an interesting phenomenon when it happens at a training.  Actually, I like it.  Gives me a chance to make a point, which I always do.  I will get to that in a minute.  However, when a citizen or a law enforcement officer dies or is seriously injured in real life because of what I call A-Tactical Expectations, it is tragic.  Catastrophic because it could have easily been avoided. 

Inability to respond properly to surprise leads to debilitating shock, and this type of shock leads to a massive shutdown of one’s Autonomic Nervous System, activates Survival Stress (Sympathetic Nervous System Activation), virtually cutting one’s wires, a sniper’s term for icing a subject in his or her tracks.

So, here’s the lesson.  The primary psychological underpinning of a successful knife defense is expecting to be stabbed or cut when defending against a lethal edged weapon attack.  This psychological strategy is based upon the reality that a person, almost automatically, when he or she realizes that he or she is bleeding from even a superficial cut, will avert his or her attention from the attacker and his/her weapon.  The superficial cut is usually the result of a flick tactic of a smart edged weapon attacker who flicks the hands, wrists and/or forearms in order to cause superficial bleeding in order to distract the defender.  Once the victim is distracted, the merciless attacker slashes and thrusts vital targets to finish off the victim. 

A well trained civilian or officer, however, who is trained to expect to be cut, will be indifferent to any wound or bleeding that might distract him from defending his or her life.

If ever you have to defend yourself against a lethal gun, knife or empty hand attack, then, give yourself a fighting chance by psychologically accepting the reality that you will receive some sort of injury.  I ask you to think of this:  If you are still alive and you realize you have been shot, stabbed or struck with a blunt object, the wound is most likely not fatal.  Even if it is a serious injury, believe me, you are far better off concentrating your efforts on the task of fighting for your survival.

Research shows that military and law enforcement officers who give up the fight and believe they are about to die once wounded, usually do perish.  Those who breathe tactically and mentally and spiritually control themselves, more likely than not do survive.

Until next time, stay safe.

Hammer

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.

1. 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!
2. 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

This I say boldly because I know the Chicken Hawk from too many years working the streets as a state parole agent.  The Chicken Hawk is cowardly on one hand but extremely dangerous on the other.  Dangerous because he chooses only prey who are smaller, weaker, and, if possible, more frightened than he.  He is deadly because he possesses no soul.  He is a total psychopath with absolutely no concern for the feelings, the safety, even the life of a small, beautiful child.  His only thought is of and for himself.

The Chicken Hawk is a cold blooded sociopath who chooses his prey methodically,.  calculatingly.  This is a game to him and he has the unnerving patience to play the game for months, tracking, profiling and abducting just one chosen victim.  Even when he attacks, it is rarely rash and impulsive.  Even then he has a set up where he can test his prey, set the prey up by gaining his or her trust, and, then and only then, when the child is ready, does he strike, catching the child off guard and hitting the kid with blinding speed, carrying him or her off before the child can make a move.

The moment that every Chicken Hawk lives for and prepares months for is that instant when he sees the shock hit the child, witnesses the paralysis that freezes the child’s entire body just before he tosses the child into his car or van and drives away from the initial crime scene and heads to the isolated secondary scene.  A house, apartment, section of woods or lonely grove minutes or hours away.

You might be thinking, Um, Thanks, Hammer.  Thanks for all the Bad News.  What can I possibly teach my child to stop this type of predator in his tracks?  To which I reply – Plenty.  You can teach them plenty.  And most of the strategies are based on the hated Chicken Hawk’s personality profile:

The Chicken Hawk

• He is not looking for a fight. 
• He is looking for a mild, meek, compliant child.
• He abducts through intimdation in most cases, not physical force.
• He does not want to physically harm, injure or kill the child in the initial crime scene. 
• He is a coward, an opportunist waiting for the moment the child is alone, weak, distracted.
• The Chicken Hawk has a pre-planned scenario or script.  The longer the script is allowed to play out by the child, the bolder, more confident he becomes.
• Speed and Invisibility are the Chicken Hawk’s greatest friends.  He needs to get the child out of that child’s milieu and into his as quickly as possible and with as little notice by witnesses as possible.
• The Ideal Abduction Scenario is:  A lone child in an isolated area who acts “normal,” is quiet, un-aggressive, who can be snatched quickly without drawing attention.
• The Worst Case Scenario (where the potential kidnapper will most likely break off his attack and go elsewhere) is:  The intended victim is with another child(ren).  When that child spots the Chicken Hawk he makes direct eye contact, moves to gain distance, screams or makes noise otherwise, points at the Bad Guy, demands to know “What do you want?  Get Back!” and uses barricades (tables, chairs, benches, garbage cans, trees, picnic tables, cars, et al.) to create distance as well as a barrier.
• The last type of child the abductor will profile and choose as a victim is a kid who Acts Crazy.  “Crazy” children can scare off a potential abductor for any one of a zillion reasons, but the fact is they are unpredictable, possibly dangerous, and have unlimited potential to screw up any kind of predetermined abduction plans (Note:  I am not saying your child has to BE crazy.  He/she just needs to ACT crazy, like rolling on the ground as if his/her shirt is on fire, screaming, pointing, grabbing a branch off the ground and wielkding it like a weapon).

Parents:  As your child’s Safety Coach, here is your assignment.  Accepting what I have written in the above passages, what can you teach your child in the way of preventive measures to maximize his or her chances of escaping and evading an abduction attempt?

In Part II I will delve specifically into several Escape and Evasion Strategies for your child, like:

• Improvised Weapons.
• The Element of Surprise.
• Waiting For the Best Time To Counterattack.
• Delaying the Bad Guy in the Initial Crime Scene.
• Simple, effective strikes and gouges against vulnerable, primary targets.
• Escape and Evasion tactics that REALLY WORK at the initial crime scene, just outside the Bad Guy’s Car and Inside the Car!

By Hammer

Under The Influence

According to George Thompson, founder of Verbal Judo, Inc., it is axiomatic that the person you are dealing with is under the influence of elements and conditions you may or may not be aware of.  These conditions create a condition of temporary mental in-balance, that, if I wished to deescalate that person, I really needed to take into consideration.  My philosophy was that I needed to think and act for that person as if it were 12-hours in the future and that person was no longer under the influence of:

• Humiliation (Humiliation is the only one of these influences that cross every single culture).
• Embarrassment
• Shame.
• Guilt.
• Hatred of Authority.
• Misinformation.
• Drugs and/or alcohol.
• Rage.
• Anger.
• Fear.
• Cultural Insensitivity.
• Racism.
• Ignorance.
• Pain.
• Suicidal ideation.
• Disrespect ( A Trigger For Many People from many variegated cultures)
• Peer Pressure.
• The Audience.

There are many more influences, but in this limited posting, I need to move on.  The important thing about the other person being under the influence is what may trigger an attack in one person (who is brain damaged and takes your neutral words and interprets them as racist or humiliating, for example) may have no impact on another person, or vice versa.  Understanding this should influence you to treat others with respect (we need to show respect whether we feel respect or not), to empathize, and to keep our body language non-threatening.

JACA

Gavin DeBecker proposed in his seminal work The Gift Of Fear that the factors within this acronym spelled out the reason most people attack other people.  My experience bears this out.  When I teach my Advanced De-Escalation Techniques course I use JACA as a paradigm for not only learning why others might attack us, but as a model on how to prevent being attacked.

Justification.

Alternatives.

Consequences, and

Ability.

Briefly put, DeBecker proposed that a person needed one or all of the above conditions to attack.  The more of the conditions that exist is any situation, the more the chance of an attack.  So it goes that, if you really piss someone off by humiliating him in front of an audience, from whom he hopes to maintain a semblance of respect, you have presented that individual with massive justification to open up a can of Whup Ass on you.

Add to that the fact that the temporarily brain damaged person perceives that he has no options or alternatives to a violent attack, and I guarantee aggression is what is coming.  Unless, of course, the person perceives that the consequences for an assault would be greater than the rush he would get from kicking you ass.  For many people, the fear of the consequences will delay or stop an immediate assault. However, my thought is that once a person feels he is justified and he has exhausted all alternatives to violence, any fears of consequences dissolve, especially if the final factor exists.  Ability.

If the temporarily brain damaged stranger, co-worker, student, patient, supervisor, or whoever has been triggered by the sense of justification, the exhaustion of all pro-social alternatives to violence, has begun to disregard the consequences of an assault, the only thing that can stop him is the perception that he does not have the ability to successfully carry out this attack!  Of course, this is why I think it is important to have at least a fundamental set of skills or abilities that you can attain through one of my Violent Patient Management, Disruptive Student Management, Sexual Harassment Assault and Rape Prevention programs.

THE 3 P’S

The great Tony Blauer,  of SPEAR System fame, offers that all attacks have the Three P’s in common:  All attacks occur in the Present, they are all Passionate, and, when it comes down to it, they are all Personal.  “Tell me something I don’t know,” you might be muttering as you read that, but it does have significance relative to understanding how to deter or delay any kind of physical attack.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE 3-P’S AND JACA

• Be Nice.  De-escalating a Bad Guy, I always say, is an unnatural act.  The more angry you feel, the nicer you must become.  The other person may be trying to trigger you into justifying an assault.  Especially in front of an audience, Refuse To Justify.
• Give Good Alternatives To Violence:  All people like to be in control of their own fate.  Nine out of 10 aggressive people will become cooperative if you explain to them what it is you wish them to do, ask instead of demand, and if you give them viable alternatives.  That is a fact.
• Remind the person about the consequences of violence.
• Make the person believe you have the ability to ward off any attack.  How do you do that?
  1. Mirror Calm.
  2. Mirror Confidence.
  3. Control Your Personal Space.
  4. Establish Command Presence (more on how you can create and establish Command Presence and garner the other person’s respect by how you deport yourself in a future Blog).
• Redirect the person’s anger “out of the present.”
• Use the “Rule Of Minus-One” to reduce tension.  Often, by simply talking slower, using “softer” terms, and lowering the intensity of your (body language and spoken language) presence at least one degree below that of the other person/environment, etc., you can reverse the aggression in the environment.  Another element of “Minus-1″ is that you allow time to elapse, also a huge reductive factor.
• Professional Over Personal Face.  Do not take verbal attacks personally. Hard to do, but, believe me, necessary.  If you are an authority figure, deflect the verbal arrows, take a deep breath and follow-up only with professional language and actions.

By Hammer