Can we train EVERY defensive scenario?

[Jenna]

I had thought the answer to this was a plain no, simply because there are infinite possibilities. And but are there really?

Revisiting the idea, I do not believe that for any one of us, there are in fact *that* many unique and separate dangerous locations, combinations of attack, and permutations of those things that we would potentially encounter.

Why am I asking? Well, I do not like impossible tasks that I have no hope of ever getting to the end of (defending myself against infinite possibilities). And but yet, I do not like to feel overwhelmed by my defensive shortcomings. Dividing and conquering those infinite possibilities makes our comprehensive defense more of a reality I think, no?

We can split scenarios into likely and unlikely depending upon our daily activities and where we are likely to find ourselves. For example, I do not imbibe so the "pub fight" / glass-type attack can be ruled out, and but I live in an area with high racial tensions where physical harassment is not unheard of, so I focus specifically on push-shove avoid and de-escalate maybe, etc.

Further to that, we can split complex attack situations into combinations of simply-handled ones. For example, I do not train multiple SIMULTANEOUS attack, having noticed how difficult it is for two regular, front-attacking opponents to use a strike on me at *exactly* the same moment. At striking distance, their strikes and body positioning interfere with each other's. I do not think that is ill-advised because in this case, both reactionary speed (dealing with each separate attack expediently) and good positioning (locking and leveraging opponent as shield) mitigate the danger and turn it from multiple simultaneous attack into rapid repeated attack - as might well happen with a fast, single opponent. In other words, it is I think possible to train a complex defensive situation as just an extension of one or more simple ones.

Do you think this goal is unnecessary or just chasing semantics? Do you ever try to rise to the idea of equipping yourself to defend every potential scenario? Is it a goal with merit or just stupid? I wonder would anyone have input, those of you who are senior belts in your art and/or train seniors freely, using more rigorous and thorough methodologies?

Hope this is not too stream-of-consciousness confusing
Thank you
Yr most obdt hmble srvt,
Jenna

 

[seasoned]

This is a very good question and I don't want to appear nonchalant about the answer, and I am sure there will be varied opinions. I personally feel that we can get taken up with situational circumstances that appear to require many many different self defense techniques, but I feel that we can waste a lot of time trying to fugue out all of them. Bottom line IMO is, that there are a few principles that we need to adhere to that cover a lot. Balance is important, work it, power is important, but where you hit supersedes it. If someone grabs your hands, feet take over, if someone grabs your legs, your hands and strikes take over. If you go down, get up as soon as possible. If they can't see, they can't hurt you, if they can't walk, they can't chase you. Eyes, ears, nose, throat, solar plexus, ribs, groin, knees, and insteps. Memorize them in this order, and in the heat of battle hit any or all, and run like hell. Jenna, I hope this helps the thread to get off the ground with the many rebuttals that follow. :asian: Wes

 

[Sukerkin]

Not much to rebut there my experienced friend :tup:.

My iaido sensei is very strong on teaching that what we learn in the arts should be principles. Multi-purpose 'tools' that we can apply as and when the situation demands it. I must have been lucky as my long ago Lau sifu taught me exactly the same way i.e. you are training your minds eye to recognise 'windows of opportunity' where the techniques you have learned can be applied.

I have only the one 'real' use of these principles to draw on so I hesitate to make a 'truism' out of the concept ... but it worked for me and frighteningly well.

 

[Archangel M]

Thats where you have to start considering "tactical elements" (weapons, deescalation, escape, environmental issues, cover and concealment, positioning and various other issues) vs. technical ones. You will drive yourself to distraction over training specific techniques for every single nuance that could arise.

IMO you are better off paring down your technical response to "fewer options" that can cover multiple scenarios vs. the other way around.

 

[tshadowchaser]

I believe that after we learn the basics of self defense, and that includes all that was said above , then we have what we need to basically survive. We in our infinite nature learn to adapt and all those basics can be adapted when needed. YES, we need to practice them and to understand the whys and why nots of using them but once we grasp these concepts we are able to use that knowledge to our benefit.
None of us will ever have enough time in our lives to go over every scenario possible but we do have the time to learn the basics and to practice using those ideas.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

This is where the difference between techniques and tactics becomes important.

Techniques like a punch, a lock, a throw , drawing a weapon and so forth become secondary to the tactics which aid their use such as situational awareness, use of cover/concealment, tactical vs. emergency reloads, and so on.

A good example of this might be a segment of film footage I saw of infantry action during the current away match, involving a Taliban jihadist attempting to reload his empty AK in the midst of a firefight.

He had trained with his AK enough that he had the basic technique down of grabbing the spare mag with the right hand, grabbing the AK by the forestock with the left hand, "punching" the mag release lever with the spare mag, pushing /camming out the empty, camming in/slapping in the fresh mag with the right, using the same right hand to then rack the charging handle to chamber the first round.

Thing was:

Obviously nobody'd taught him the tactic of reloading behind cover , though there were a few vehicle engine blocks he could've hunkered down behind, and so instead he stood there, middle of the killzone, attention only on reloading, and was promptly cut down by a single 3 round burst center-of-mass.

Make sense?

 

[Sukerkin]

A good distinction to draw, Andy :tup:.

 

[seasoned]

This is where the difference between techniques and tactics becomes important.

Techniques like a punch, a lock, a throw , drawing a weapon and so forth become secondary to the tactics which aid their use such as situational awareness, use of cover/concealment, tactical vs. emergency reloads, and so on.

A good example of this might be a segment of film footage I saw of infantry action during the current away match, involving a Taliban jihadist attempting to reload his empty AK in the midst of a firefight.

He had trained with his AK enough that he had the basic technique down of grabbing the spare mag with the right hand, grabbing the AK by the forestock with the left hand, "punching" the mag release lever with the spare mag, pushing /camming out the empty, camming in/slapping in the fresh mag with the right, using the same right hand to then rack the charging handle to chamber the first round.

Thing was:

Obviously nobody'd taught him the tactic of reloading behind cover , though there were a few vehicle engine blocks he could've hunkered down behind, and so instead he stood there, middle of the killzone, attention only on reloading, and was promptly cut down by a single 3 round burst center-of-mass.

Make sense?

Not to him, I guess. Maybe next time he wil........... oops, well he was focused, right.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

Not to him, I guess. Maybe next time he wil........... oops, well he was focused, right.

The old joke does appear to be something of a truism after all, that went something to the effect that it is good that they are so very willing to die for their cause because they never did quite get the hang of how to fight for it.*shrug*.

 

[K-man]

It is often said that the best form of defence in offence. That is, get in first. Personally, I don't believe this is always possible. Hence my teaching is to develop a defence to enable you to survive the first few seconds of an attack. This defence has to be basically instinctive and, although I train Goju, I have cherry picked from elements of Systema and Aikido to further enhance my basic style. Once you have regained a semblance of composure after such an attack you can respond in an appropriate manner.
As Superkin put it succinctly:

you are training your minds eye to recognise 'windows of opportunity' where the techniques you have learned can be applied.

Available from several sources are lists of the most common street attack scenarios. From these I have developed what I consider to be instinctive responses. By this I mean utilising such concepts as the 'flinch response' by which your response is determined by reflex which bypasses the brain to protect you. This is totally different from muscle memory that cuts in in high stress adrenal situations but what is still directed by the brain.
What I am suggesting is that you develop a few instinct based defences, each one to counter a group of similar attacks.

We can split scenarios into likely and unlikely depending upon our daily activities and where we are likely to find ourselves. For example, I do not imbibe so the "pub fight" / glass-type attack can be ruled out, and but I live in an area with high racial tensions where physical harassment is not unheard of, so I focus specifically on push-shove avoid and de-escalate maybe, etc.

Now you might not frequent pubs but the same "pub fight/glassing" scenario could occur at your home or a friend's home in a party situation that is crashed or turns sour.
Consider to assault scenario. The first six most common assaults involve an attack to the head or upper torso. These include pushing, grabbing straight punch, hook punch, head butt, knee to groin*, glassing, and hitting with a stick or other object. These attacks probably cover upwards of 70% of non-weapon based attacks with left hand/right hand scenarios taken into account.
(* I know groin is lower torso but it is generally preceeded by a grab to the upper arms or shoulders.)
I teach just one defence against all of these (and it's not a gun

). Of course, SD is far more than one technique but the more you can simplify your response, the more effective it is likely to be under stress.
Multiple attacker is a much more demanding and frightening scenario. The same basic principle remains. Survive the first few seconds then try to pick them off one by one using appropriate response. Easy to say, not so easy to do, but the alternative is to do nothing and to that the outcome is certain! :asian:

 

[stickarts]

I think as with most things there are no true guarrantees and what we do is train to the best of our ability and make sure we cover all of the most probable scenarios. I like to think our art is not so much a defined curriculum as it is a defined thought process. for example evaluating what your environment is and what your attackers strength and weaknesses are as opposed to just focusing on a specific technique.

 

[Deaf Smith]

What we can train for is tactics and techniques that work in most scenarios. Since 'every' might include a car bomb parked right outside where you are (and just how do you defend against that?) no one can train for every possibility.

But, that does not mean you cannot train to pretty much take care of anything that is likely to come your way.

Deaf

 

[Bravissimo]

Am I the only one who thought of monty python training against banana attacks when reading the heading of this thread?

 

[Andy Moynihan]

"NOW--the first thing you do, when being stalked by an angry mob armed with raspberries is to.......RELEASE THE TIGER!"

 

[Big Don]

Of course we can't.

 

[jarrod]

can so.

i've trained every scenario like, 400 times. that's why i'm grandmaster soke pimp daddy of jarrod jitsu.

WAAA!

jf

 

[Big Don]

I believe that is spelled WHAAA!

 

[MJS]

I had thought the answer to this was a plain no, simply because there are infinite possibilities. And but are there really?

Revisiting the idea, I do not believe that for any one of us, there are in fact *that* many unique and separate dangerous locations, combinations of attack, and permutations of those things that we would potentially encounter.

Why am I asking? Well, I do not like impossible tasks that I have no hope of ever getting to the end of (defending myself against infinite possibilities). And but yet, I do not like to feel overwhelmed by my defensive shortcomings. Dividing and conquering those infinite possibilities makes our comprehensive defense more of a reality I think, no?

We can split scenarios into likely and unlikely depending upon our daily activities and where we are likely to find ourselves. For example, I do not imbibe so the "pub fight" / glass-type attack can be ruled out, and but I live in an area with high racial tensions where physical harassment is not unheard of, so I focus specifically on push-shove avoid and de-escalate maybe, etc.

Further to that, we can split complex attack situations into combinations of simply-handled ones. For example, I do not train multiple SIMULTANEOUS attack, having noticed how difficult it is for two regular, front-attacking opponents to use a strike on me at *exactly* the same moment. At striking distance, their strikes and body positioning interfere with each other's. I do not think that is ill-advised because in this case, both reactionary speed (dealing with each separate attack expediently) and good positioning (locking and leveraging opponent as shield) mitigate the danger and turn it from multiple simultaneous attack into rapid repeated attack - as might well happen with a fast, single opponent. In other words, it is I think possible to train a complex defensive situation as just an extension of one or more simple ones.

Do you think this goal is unnecessary or just chasing semantics? Do you ever try to rise to the idea of equipping yourself to defend every potential scenario? Is it a goal with merit or just stupid? I wonder would anyone have input, those of you who are senior belts in your art and/or train seniors freely, using more rigorous and thorough methodologies?

Hope this is not too stream-of-consciousness confusing
Thank you
Yr most obdt hmble srvt,
Jenna

Well, as always Jenna, you manage to always come up with some good, thought provoking threads.

Will we be able to train for every possible scenario? Probably not. I am an advocate though, of gearing the training to what we want to get out of it. I think that alot of times, just like with our techniques, we can use a scenario drill to build off of. In other words, I have many techs. for a right punch. Will I fall back on any of those when I need to? Probably not, but I will use the ideas, concepts and principles that they teach.

We'd need to spend 8+ hrs. a day if we thought that we could go through every multi man attack. However, as I said, use the basic strategy and apply it to each one. Things such as positioning, attempting to stack the attackers so as to deal with one at a time, trying to keep one in front of you, while at the same time, using him to interfere with whatever the 2nd guy is trying to do. This would include actually grabbing the first guy and using him as a shield.

 

[jarrod]

I believe that is spelled WHAAA!

no, i was crying. i dropped a steak knife on my foot.

jf

 

[Big Don]

no, i was crying. i dropped a steak knife on my foot.

jf

Apparently, you had not properly trained for that...