# What do you teach in your self-defense programs?



## Danny T (Mar 24, 2015)

In our self-defense programs we cover:

Legal and ethical aspects
Dynamics of Violence (power-who has it, why)

Avoidance, Escape & Evasion, and De-escalation (not fighting)
Counter-assault (operant conditioning)
The freeze and breaking it. (What just happened?, What do I do?, I can't believe it)

The Fight 

The Aftermath-- retaliation, medical, legal and psychological


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## Shai Hulud (Mar 24, 2015)

Combat Sambo and Systema parallel the military's approach to H2H/CQC. We don't touch so much on legalities (basic knowledge at most) as we do on levels of aggression and violence, which are broken down into levels and corresponded with appropriate courses of action to address them, ranging from restraining holds and locks to use of lethal force. The dynamic of a fight, circumstances leading up to it and the "point of no return" as it's called are then broken down and demystified.

From here, the instructor will introduce the student to evasive tactics and strategies she can use to prevent herself from being put in such a compromising situation in the first place, and how to perceive when violence is imminent. From there the core curricula of striking, grappling and armed combat (incl. improvising) are taught along with break-falling, escapes and tactics for fleeing and taking on numerous assailants at once. (there's usually a special module for people training to be in security)

Lessons are blocked into subject groups for more organized teaching, e.g. "Hand to Hand Combat", "Grappling Fundamentals", "Knife Fighting & Disarming", "Firearms & Disarming", "Joint Breaks", "Ballistics", and so forth. Pressure and stress tests are common ways of assessing progress. Breathing techniques included.

Auxiliary topics like anatomy, bio-mechanics, basic first aid, small group tactics, camouflage/stealth tactics are also taught depending on who your instructor is. The really good ones, usually former cops or military operators will more often than not touch on these subjects. Psychological warfare and "psyching" yourself or others up included. Meditation and health tips come up also, and consider yourself in good company if they do.


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## hoshin1600 (Mar 24, 2015)

Danny T said:


> In our self-defense programs we cover:
> 
> Legal and ethical aspects
> Dynamics of Violence (power-who has it, why)
> ...



This could turn out to be a good thread.
Danny I am curious about your definition and the differences between Counter-assault and the fight.


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## Danny T (Mar 24, 2015)

hoshin1600 said:


> This could turn out to be a good thread.
> Danny I am curious about your definition and the differences between Counter-assault and the fight.


Counter-assault is the operant conditioning aspect vs the actual violent fight. It is about learning to respond aggressively to an attack action by going slow and having fun with it slowly building up speed and force. The fight is pressure testing it, using it in real time.


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## Shajikfer (Mar 25, 2015)

Danny T said:


> In our self-defense programs we cover:
> 
> Legal and ethical aspects
> Dynamics of Violence (power-who has it, why)
> ...


 
It seems these days all martial artists in the U.S. must to a degree be a lawyer for their own safekeeping of wellbeing in protecting themselves from the legal system.

I am curious what you mean by 'having fun with it' in terms of a survival situation. That kind of enjoyment wouldn't cross my mind, and hasn't. They swing, I respond.

In what I teach I look to increase one's reflex time, and depending on what the other does, how to respond.

Are you referring though to when you are practicing for those kind of encounters outside the training hall? I may have misunderstood and want to make sure I'm getting it right.

We practice how to break the freeze in our way; mainly by having multiple opponents who are better at fighting press the practitioner into a corner. They push and push and push until the person breaks through, and if they can't we stop, do exercises to enable them to not freeze as much in the next practice session. It's kind of like breaking a person until they no longer allow themselves to be broken. It's quite interesting to see a person go from feeling defeated to actually becoming the black belt they are meant to be, and it can be an instantaneous mental shift that changes the person forever.


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## Touch Of Death (Mar 25, 2015)

Danny T said:


> In our self-defense programs we cover:
> 
> Legal and ethical aspects
> Dynamics of Violence (power-who has it, why)
> ...


Part of eliminating any freeze is to always have a plan to kill everyone in the room.


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## elder999 (Mar 25, 2015)

Touch Of Death said:


> Part of eliminating any freeze is to always have a plan to kill everyone in the room.


 
Especially if the room is an elevator, in my case.....


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## Danny T (Mar 25, 2015)

Shajikfer said:


> It seems these days all martial artists in the U.S. must to a degree be a lawyer for their own safekeeping of wellbeing in protecting themselves from the legal system.
> 
> I am curious what you mean by 'having fun with it' in terms of a survival situation. That kind of enjoyment wouldn't cross my mind, and hasn't. They swing, I respond.
> 
> ...


Do you have any experience as to operant conditioning vs training/practice?
How many repetitions does it take to ingrain a new skill, how many to replace an old skill or a bad skill that has been ingrained? How much time does it take to teach and instill a new set of techniques that a previously untrained person can use tomorrow under stress?
OC is a very fast method for learning simple things.  It is much harder and more difficult to condition a complex series of actions, and you cannot condition if the stimulus must be interpreted. Also people learn faster and retain much more when they are having fun. Playing.
Stimulus-Response-Reward/Punishment
We give the bad guy a kicking/punching shield, We give the good guy an action, Bad guy gives a single attack action (stimulus), good guy performs the action we want (Response), it works and doesn't get hit or kicked we immediately praise with a good job (verbal reward positive and physically positive). Bad guy gives a different attack action, good guy performs the same response as before and the reward/punishment is again reinforced. This is done at a comfortable pace for 10 - 12 reps. This is the fun/play time. It allows the student to learn at their play pace. Then the stimuli is again performed at a faster more forcefully and the student continues to make the same responses at that faster stronger pace. We then add a counter assault as a response.That is operant conditioning. That is how people can be taught to perform self defense fight back actions in a very short amount of time.


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## Shajikfer (Mar 25, 2015)

Danny T said:


> Do you have any experience as to operant conditioning vs training/practice?
> How many repetitions does it take to ingrain a new skill, how many to replace an old skill or a bad skill that has been ingrained? How much time does it take to teach and instill a new set of techniques that a previously untrained person can use tomorrow under stress?
> OC is a very fast method for learning simple things.  It is much harder and more difficult to condition a complex series of actions, and you cannot condition if the stimulus must be interpreted. Also people learn faster and retain much more when they are having fun. Playing.
> Stimulus-Response-Reward/Punishment
> We give the bad guy a kicking/punching shield, We give the good guy an action, Bad guy gives a single attack action (stimulus), good guy performs the action we want (Response), it works and doesn't get hit or kicked we immediately praise with a good job (verbal reward positive and physically positive). Bad guy gives a different attack action, good guy performs the same response as before and the reward/punishment is again reinforced. This is done at a comfortable pace for 10 - 12 reps. This is the fun/play time. It allows the student to learn at their play pace. Then the stimuli is again performed at a faster more forcefully and the student continues to make the same responses at that faster stronger pace. We then add a counter assault as a response.That is operant conditioning. That is how people can be taught to perform self defense fight back actions in a very short amount of time.


 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by operant conditioning. Are you referring to responding in a real situation? Then yes, I have, and it was not pleasant. I ended up getting a small piece of my arm (flesh) cut off, and I ended up near fatally stabbing my agressor with his own knife. Neither of which were my objective, but I was much younger then and less experienced in the arts. There truly is a world of difference from what we do on the street and what we train in the hall. Sadly, no amount of approximations and training can be equivalent to the actual experience.

As to how many repetitions? It takes hundreds to thousands, depending on what you are trying to de-program. It depends on the person; people who naturally think faster take less repetitions. For example, on average I do about 200 kicks a day, and even after years of that, there is still work to be done and improvements I can make and am working toward. Within a month I will have done around 7 - 8,000. Once a month I do that many years of kendo strikes. So its 2015, so the first of the month I will 2,015 cuts.

It can take a few minutes, depending on the technique. I start with showing them how to make a fist. Depending on the person I may teach something different instead. For example, if someone only has a half hour with me, I would probably show them how to utilize pushing and how to step aside. Or perhaps I show them to just punch the person in the throat or below the sternum. It really depends on the individual. But it takes little time to show someone how to punch properly and how to do a front kick with the heel. But it can take much time for them to become proficient at it. Frankly, sticking your palm out can do the trick if you smack them on the nose. It depends on if you are trying to fix something they are doing or to teach them something entirely new.

The only critique I might have for the system of reps you described is the good guy should have experience getting hit. Pummeled and annihalated. Pain is a good learning mechanism, and unfortunately, a martial artist should be able to take a heavy blow and keep going. It's how I treat myself- if I'm against someone better than me I expect to go away hurting, but I also expect to keep working with that person and myself until I am on par with them.

I mean, by my standard, one should be able to end the fight with one well placed technique. You should be able to strike hard enough to shatter bone; breaking one inch cinder blocks slabs and working your way up to three is a good way to develop that.

When I kick and they hold a heavy target, say a roundhouse kick, if they can't feel it in their spine when I throw a kick I am honestly miffed at myself. And we all have different standards. Where do we draw the line for what is actually necessary for survival, and where you can turn survival into an artform.


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## Danny T (Mar 25, 2015)

How do you teach and get 100 someones to have the ability to do of that in only a few hours of training?
Most self-defense programs are but a few hours long? Police defensive tactics are only 8 hours. Military defensive tactics are again only a few hours of training unless assigned to specialized units. Operant Conditioning not 1000's of reps.


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## Shajikfer (Mar 25, 2015)

Danny T said:


> How do you teach and get 100 someones to have the ability to do of that in only a few hours of training?
> Most self-defense programs are but a few hours long? Police defensive tactics are only 8 hours. Military defensive tactics are again only a few hours of training unless assigned to specialized units. Operant Conditioning not 1000's of reps.


 
Well as I said there is no way to turn someone into an expert in a few hours. All I can do in a limited amount of time is show them what to do as simply as possible, and how to train that. It's up to them to make themselves proficient with it when the time is THAT limited.

Different places have different durations of teaching times. My favorite was a kendo school which had 3 hour long classes four times a week. But it's hard to find that; most TKD classes are 45-50 minutes. And to improve in the martial arts even marginally, you need 2-3 of training per week.

I'd say you need about 5,000 repetitions of any given technique to consider oneself 'able' at using it, but even then we aren't even talking about reprogramming the mind for how to respond when someone walking by you randomly attacks you. That's programming reflex.

To put it simply, one session of operant conditioning is not enough time to engrain someone to reliably use those techniques on the street. Multiple sessions per week for years is what is necessary for me to be satisfied at someone being able to utilize those techniques at the drop of a hat.

And we aren't even touching on how to teach people to be accurate and the possibility that what we are training or teaching may actually be incorrect. And when that does happen, all repetitions will do at that point is instill the wrong way to do something, which could lead to injury or worse.


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## Danny T (Mar 25, 2015)

Our U.S. Military standard rifle and hand gun training (which by way takes fine motor skills) is only a few hours of training. Or, my was until I got to a specialized unit. Thousands of men and women are taught the skills of using a firearm and are able to do so under extreme stress after only a few hours of training. Basic H2H combat and close quarter fighting is again only a few hours unless assigned to specialized units. With proper operant conditioning many people can be trained and have a relatively strong ability to respond well in a self-defense situation utilizing gross motor vs fine motor moves. Can these persons step into a ring and fight with a highly trained fighter no. But with the other aspects of self-defense combined with the operant conditioning responses they can quickly be able to defend themselves against most attackers/muggers. Surviving an attack vs winning a fight are completely different things.


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## Shajikfer (Mar 25, 2015)

Danny T said:


> Our U.S. Military standard rifle and hand gun training (which by way takes fine motor skills) is only a few hours of training. Or, my was until I got to a specialized unit. Thousands of men and women are taught the skills of using a firearm and are able to do so under extreme stress after only a few hours of training. Basic H2H combat and close quarter fighting is again only a few hours unless assigned to specialized units. With proper operant conditioning many people can be trained and have a relatively strong ability to respond well in a self-defense situation utilizing gross motor vs fine motor moves. Can these persons step into a ring and fight with a highly trained fighter no. But with the other aspects of self-defense combined with the operant conditioning responses they can quickly be able to defend themselves against most attackers/muggers. Surviving an attack vs winning a fight are completely different things.


 
That is what is nice about a gun and more case in point a knife- they are very easy to wield under many different situations.

I agree entirely; 'winning' doesn't really have a place when it comes to survival. Survival is well, survival.

I suppose that is where I am coming from, becoming an 'expert' in self-defense is essentially raising one's ability to a level of artistry, and in survival that isn't necessary at all.


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## hoshin1600 (Mar 25, 2015)

One facet that I incorporate is called "modes of operation".  There are five but to simplify for an example is anger and fear.  Are you operating from a mode of anger or fear?  Keep in mind this is for civilian based training. Many tactics work off forward movement and rely on aggressive striking but if you are operating out of fear these tactics will often fall apart.  "My training says to move forward but my mind is saying get the heck out".  Another example is with women's self defense many systems  may teach a women to gouge the attackers eyes during an attempted rape but she may not have the will to do so. The goal of modes of operation is to work with the person's mental and emotional state rather then against it.  Note: part of the training is to foster and develop the correct "mind set"  and the ability to do damage to another human being. It is not left up to chance or to be developed so called naturally but fostered on purpose by design  and not just given lip service.


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## marques (Jun 8, 2015)

Danny T said:


> In our self-defense programs we cover:
> 
> Legal and ethical aspects
> Dynamics of Violence (power-who has it, why)
> ...


That is a great Rory Miller's book, and I would love to train within this context.


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