Chapter One of Unarmed Combat for Dummies...?

Factual Questions
21

There is nothing you can do to defend yourself that doesn’t take practice. More than a bit, too.

A generic defense? Sure, but again, without practice you will probably not be able to bring it off.
[ul][li]Recognize that you are going to get hit.[/li][li]It will hurt.[/li][li]It will not disable you.[/ul]In a street fight, mental attitude is 50% of victory. [/li][ul][li]When you become aware that you are about to be attacked - not after - you go into a crouch. Your hands are open and high, left arm aimed at his face, right arm inside his left arm.[/li][li]Come forward, blocking both arms whether or not either is punching at you. Either push his right arm down and across you with your left, or up and out, also with your left. Same with his left and your right. The idea is to give his arms something to do besides hit you.[/li][li]Throw a series of open hand palm strikes to his face. Right-left-right-left, coming forward and into him to put your weight behind the strikes. Aim at his nose, but eye or cheekbone or jaw is fine. These are not slaps - you are trying to drive your hand about two inches into his face, with a snapping return to give power to the follow up with the other hand. [/li][li]Hook both hands benind his neck and pull downward, hard.[/li][li]He will often react either by crouching, or stepping back.[list][]If he crouches, bring your knee up into his face.[]If he steps back, head butt him in the face.[/ul][*]Either way, shove him hard to one side, and run like hell.[/list][/li]

Take a self defense class if you want to learn something that actually might work. Notice that I said “self defense” - not aikido or tae kwon do or judo - self defense. Most martial arts classes do not teach self-defense - they teach duelling, where you are always fighting one-on-one in a well lighted gym with a smooth floor, where you know ahead of time what’s going to happen and have time to prepare. Real fights aren’t like that.

It is possible to find an instructor with an old-school approach to martial arts training that will actually prepare you, but this is very rare in the strip mall dojang environment of today, where H2H combat training takes second place to automatic belt promotions every three months (at $100 a pop). There are some arts out there - krav maga, non-Brazilian jujitsu, combato, some other of the modern cognates - that have not made the transition from fighting to fun and fitness with a dollop of Eastern mysticism, but these are few and far between and 80-90% of what you will be told is hype and sales pitch.

My $.02 worth.

Regards,
Shodan

22

Hire a bodyguard.
Carry pepper spray.

23

Here’s the thing … unless you’re Muhammad “I’m hard” Bruce Lee, most of the advice one gets on technique and proper aiming methods go out the window faster than you’re teeth would fly out of your mouth if you stopped and tried to remember it all.

If you’re fighting for you’re life, you’re on adrenaline fueled, half-a-panic, instinct mode. I go with, strike first, strike hard, strike often and hope for the best.

24

There are some fundamental rules of thumb to think about here. First is this:

The first means, simply, don’t be there. Control your environment and don’t expose yourself to unnecessary danger. Run away when you suspect danger.

The second is closely related to the first and means that distance is your friend. The farther away you are, the better off. Run like hell.

The third means that if you can remove his ability to breathe, you’re much better off. This refers to a choke or a stunning shot to the diaphragm, or such intense pain that breathing seems secondary. In either case, he won’t be chasing you while you run away.

The last means, simply, take out a leg. A hard kick to a kneecap will probably accomplish this. He can’t stand up, he can’t chase you while you run away.

Note the common theme: run away. Don’t fight. Run to a place of safety.

The second rule of thumb is this:

Break the attacker’s focus away from the attack; get loose if he has his hands on you; do something to hurt him badly; haul ass in high gear.

I strongly recommend martial arts training. You will NOT learn this stuff overnight. You will NOT learn it from watching movies or reading books or posts on teh innerwebz. Nothing will substitute for training with a qualified instructor. If you will send me your zip code in a PM, I’ll see if there are any schools in my style near you, and I’ll be glad to make a recommendation if I can.

25

Keys are terrific stabby-things - clench them in your fist with one or two sticking out between each finger. Keys on the standard janitor’s-like wire retrieving device is great as well. Watch how you swing it though as you may have it turned against you. Pens are really good stabby-things as well.

And in the carefree days of my youth before I was trusted with a knife (say like 8) if caught in a tough neighborhood at the wrong time I would find a small store and pick up a bottle of Heinz ketchup. Tapped against a curb while holding the neck, the remaining part made a most amazing weapon. And all the red stuff flying off it didn’t hurt either. Now with so many bottles being plastic I’m not sure just whose is best as a weapon though.

Watch pepper spray, knives and stuff like that. Different jurisdictions have different rules and your mileage may vary

26

I agree with everyone who says “get out quick”.

If that’s not possible, my view is that every fight ends up on the ground, so start there.

Drop to the ground, kick them in the knee or ankle or both, trip them up, get them on the ground, then bounce their head on the pavement a couple of times.

Fight over, walk away.

27

Run away. If there was a reliable way for anyone, including someone with zero experience, to easily disable another person then your opponent would be using that on you first.

If you absolutely have no other option than to get in a fight, I would recommend not trying to punch. You don’t need a broken wrist or hand in the middle of a fight. And kicks require practice before they are effective. So, if you can’t run away and have no experience: Flailing elbows and screams is my recommendation. I seriously doubt I could bring myself to jam a key into someone’s eye, even under the worst of circumstances. So if that’s your plan you better be sure you can and will do it.

Take a self defense course. A class that talks about situational awareness and simple actions that can break an assailant’s grip in certain situaition. Avoid classes that promise to teach you the Flying Dragon scissor kick or anything that sounds similarly magical.

28
  1. Run away screaming
  2. If you can’t run away, pull your gun and shoot them.
29

Stomp on his foot and then run like the wind. :wink:

Seriously, foot stomps are quite useful when someone grabs you.

30

This.

I’ve never been in a fight (I’m 54). I’m a big guy, and that may be part of it I guess. But always de-escalate. The best way to win a ‘fight’ is to not get in one in the first place. The best way to do that is to always be aware of your surroundings. Just like driving a car (driving well).

If you have to protect someone else, that’s a whole different ball game.

31

Hahahee on self defense, I grew up in a bad neighborhood immersed in the good old style Texas gang fight culture of the 50’s and 60’s, my big brother and his friends were brutal angry men and if you looked at one of them wrong they’d break your nose and then pound you into the parking lot. I’ve never been in a fight in my life because I don’t want to. The chances of getting into a fight are so small in everyday life you’re wasting time worrying about it. Karate is for idiots, judo is useful, cops love the choke hold, the choke hold is good but all UFC fights look pretty gay with everybody writhing around going for it…
I also exist in the macho anglo Texan gun culture, my friends can’t believe I don’t own a firearm. Shit, if I lived where I needed one I’d move.
Peace out, be compassionate, don’t hang out in bad neighborhoods, worry about how you can help people not hurt them and you’ll enjoy a much healthier life.

32

What **slowlearner **said.

Seriously I haven’t been in a physical confrontation since my teenage years, despite being a male with a propensity to drink too much in rough environments from time to time. Unless you’re actively looking for trouble or are foolish enough to wander around sketchy neighbourhoods after dark you’re highly unlikely to be physically assaulted by anyone. If you are robbed, well a wallet and a phone are all replaceable and aren’t worth fighting over IMHO.

33

There is no concise answer for this question. There is no “right” answer for this question. One thing to get out of the way is that martial arts does not equal self defense. I say this as someone who has been doing martial arts for over half my life. Self defense is mostly mental. The best defense is not to be in a fight. Anticipate, avoid, preempt, disrupt, or escape the attack. Engagement is a last resort, when everything else has failed. In other words, if you have to fight, you either already fucked up multiple times, or someone seriously motivated wants to hurt you.

If I had only a few hours of training to make someone a tiny bit safer in a violent confrontation, I would have to distill what I’ve learned over years into a very few extremely specific tactics, and I would have to drill them into the person’s muscle memory. That handful of movements and principles will not even begin to cover more than a tiny fraction of the possibilities they might face. That’s not to say limited training is useless, but you need someone who knows exactly what they’re doing, can accurately assess your limitations and capabilities, and is capable of transmitting the skills and knowledge you need.

Unless you are willing and able to commit a decent amount of time to this endeavor, group classes will not work very well for you. If you’re serious, you probably need individual training. If you’re just thinking it would be nice if … then you should probably forget about it entirely and just remember that statistically, given the lifestyle you laid out, you are extremely unlikely to ever face serious violence. Rely on paying attention to your surroundings and avoiding trouble, and the legal system and law enforcement if that fails.

You’re almost certainly not going to come out on top in a violent confrontation, no matter what training you do. If you’re lucky, you might get away from an attacker with only minor injuries. I would give myself only slightly better than even odds on not going to the hospital if I were attacked by someone serious, because despite my training I don’t go out and get into altercations. I don’t actively want to hurt people.

Violent criminals do. They have a predatory mindset. They systematically test their tactics, and are willing to trade pain for knowledge about how to better hurt people. The thinking is completely different. They want to hurt you badly and end your resistance to getting what they want, and that’s all they think about in a fight. They don’t consider getting hurt themselves at all. Everything is focused on disabling their target.

That’s why you want to avoid ever having to fight someone like that. Not being there is the best possible defense.

There are a couple of sites I can point you to that will probably be of value.

Barry Eisler (yes, the novelist) has a very clear layman-level explanation of self defense, which is probably better than anything I could write. No surprise that over half of his recommended reading on that page parallels the reading list I would make up if someone asked me this question. Luckily, he did the work so I don’t have to.

No Nonsense Self Defense is a huge website built up over time by the MacYoungs. You’ll notice that the articles are long, and that they don’t talk a lot about actual fighting techniques. That’s because, like I said earlier, self defense is mostly everything that happens before you have to fight. There’s a lot of good information there. Read it, research it, explore it.