Grabs

[Deaf Smith]

Also due to the dynamic nature of self defense why not use their force against them. If a women is grabbed by the arms or wrists and is being dragged away why not resist like hell for a brief period which would result in the attacker pulling harder. Follow this by using their force against them, stop pulling and push them full force into a wall, some furniture or a window.

...and holding someone in a hold is extremely difficult and I defy anyone to be able to do it without performing any other techniques such as strikes or limb damage. If someone feels constant pain they will be highly resistant to being held as you are hurting them. The best way to hold someone id to hold them and when they resist to put the pain on and when they stop resisting to be able to keep the hold firm but reduce the pain. I am yet to meet anyone who can do this for any length of time (more than a minute or so).

True. I agree using their own foced against them is a good trick, and I know from experience that once you apply pain they can freek out and have amazing strength you didn't expect them to have.

We also must keep in mind they may be on drugs (and thus pain won't affect them much) or just crazy (same result.)

As for citizens arrest, two of us once held a purse snatcher we chased down in the Virgin Islands. We got chears, not jears. And I used a wrist lock that definatly hurt him alot!

Here in Texas, if you assist an LEO, and he asked you to assist, you are covered just as if you were an LEO (but only in his presence, he cannot ask you to go by your self and do things.) And if in such places as Wal-Mart, with lots of cameras, you can cover yourself if you decide to stop some one from attacking another and hold them for police.

Deaf

 

[chinto]

we are taught to grab and bring them in controlling them so that they have a much harder time striking or other wise injuring you while you do as much damage as you can fast as you can.
On the street its survival time, and I want to put this attacker down hard as i can fast so I can disengage from the combat and get clear! I must assume and act on the fact that the person who attacks me with violence on the street may very well have homicide as his or her intention! So I will protect my life and well being as much as I can and get clear. I will grab and push when they pull and pull when they push and brake their balance and strike and brake and throw as quickly as I can to make it safe to brake contact with the attacker... in a multiple attack situation you can do a lot of damage to the attacker while keeping him off balance and between you and the other attackers. If the damage is severe enough and very rapid while this is happening the other attackers may brake off not wanting to be next.

 

[Mark Lynn]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If you leave before it is safe to do so you can open yourself to a world of trouble like being dragged down from behind and having to do the fight all over again without the advantage of surprise. From the research I've seen and a good bit of anecdotal evidence a lot of people, women in particular, get in more trouble from stopping too soon than from stopping too late.

Good point. When someone runs away unless they have disabled their atttacker (in some manner) to keep them from running them down they can be in even more trouble. Turning your back and running away waving your arms trying to draw attention to yourself can also turn on the aggression of the attacker even more, kind of like in the animal world the predator and prey.

Hitting is a very useful tool, but it's only one tool. And playing knuckle-tag or footsie with someone who has you outweighed and outreached is a suicidally losing game. The old "Hit. Scream. Run away," is better than nothing. It is not a complete self defense strategy.

But it is a simple basic strategy that can be easily taught to a group of students for a quick self defense course.

You have to be prepared to fight in very close or when someone has a hold of you. You have to be able to fall without losing your ability to fight. You have to be able to handle yourself when you are on the ground whether it means finishing the fight from there or getting back up. You need to be able to put him on the ground in a way which puts you at the advantage. That means takedowns of one sort or another..

I agree for a full fledged self defense course to be taught these are areas that need to be covered. But for a battered womens course (if it is a short one, which most courses I have seen are) than I believe the time is better spent teaching striking skills and releases from common holds and getting away.

Police are not always the best sources for things like this. They are trained to close and arrest. Immobilization holds of various sorts and department-specific lawyer-vetted force progressions are appropriate for their job. It is not our job as regular people to take down dangerous criminals and disarm, restrain, handcuff, search and transport them. It's our job not to be killed, raped or wounded by them.

Excellent point.

A lot of police-sponsored self defense courses have trouble separating the two sets of concerns. They are also lawyer-driven. Anything the department teaches opens it up for financial liability. That's why they're light on things that can be used to disable or injure attackers and never, ever include recommendations about (legal) weapons use.

Excellent point. And this is what instructors really need to think about so we don't make the same mistakes. The courses should be designed with the student in mind not just what we think they need to learn.

The other thing you need to remember is that for women in particular the "hit and run away" strategy doesn't take the realities of their situations into account. Where do you run to if the husband or boyfriend who is hurting you lives in the same house?

Somebody elses house? A neighbor, a friend's, coworker's, Local Church, battered womens shelter, etc. etc.

It's at least 90% odds that the rapist knows who you are and where you live. In fact, the victim's home is the most likely site for sexual assaults.

I don't know if this is quite true or not. There is the rapist of opportunity who strikes whenever the opportunity arises beit in a parking lot, a park, your house (basically any place that is secluded and he feels he can commit the crime and not get caught. So it makes sense that he woould target homes since they meet the requirements.

However the stalker (stalker rapist) or the obsessive type of prevert criminal they would be the ones to know where their intended victim lives, works etc. etc. But they are different types of criminals who commit crimes with overlapping types of crime scenes.

 

[Mark Lynn]

Tellner brought up a good point about the objectives of the LEO in teaching restraint type holds to battered women. I'm not saying that there is any ill intent in teaching these types of techniques because of course these are the type of things they have been taught and have to rely on in doing their job, and they get more than enough OJT applying these types of techniques and putting them to good use.

And granted the LEOs are at least trying to help solve a problem that they see more reguarly than most of us do. So everybody should be thankful that someone has taken the incentive to teach this material.

But should grabs (locks, restraint techniques) be taught as a basic type of self defense tool for women? I disagree with the officers here.

Genreally I think locks should be taught as a transition technique after I have first hit the person to distract them and to cause them pain. Then I could release their hold on me (hopefully) and in so doing if I wrenched a joint, bent a finger back, hit a locked out elbow, etc. etc. as I released their grab, then all of the power to it. Now while they are distracted by the pain if I stomp on their foot, raked their shin, kneed their thigh, kneed their groin, and basically reduced their ability to come after me then all of the better. After any of the above I am not going to drop to the floor and put an arm bar lock on them to submit them and wait for the police. Nope, I'm getting the heck out of there.

Also we need to keep in mind that generally we are lulled into a false belief on the training room floor that the stuff we teach isn't quite painfull enough in real life. It is. Remember we teach restraint in the technique so we can practice it again with our partner, and besides it is their turn next to apply the technique to us right?

This was brought home to me in several ways over the years. I once asked GM Remy Presas if he could show me a over the shoulder takedown with the two finger lock. When he applied the lock and took me down he did it with control and intention and my fingers where in extreme pain (I never knew they coould bend that far back). Another time a student at another school that I taught at (once a month) confided in me that when I showed a strike to the elbow to the class the month before that I had connected with his elbow and it bothered him several days after the class. I wasn't demostrating a strike to the elbow, in fact I was demostrating an arm bar and just in passing showing that "in real" you could strike there. I thought I lightly tapped it.

So I believe with adrenaline flowing through your body if you hit the person and rip their arm/hand away from you, you'll be doing it with intention behind it and it can work.

But this is a different mindset than one of control and restraint.

 

[tellner]

But it is a simple basic strategy that can be easily taught to a group of students for a quick self defense course.

It certainly is. A good teacher can do better even in a short course. One of the things we really liked about AWSDA's approach was that it stressed a winning mindset. Even in their four hour rape prevention course the whole idea was to take control of the situation and prevail according to your own goals and standards.

I agree for a full fledged self defense course to be taught these are areas that need to be covered. But for a battered womens course (if it is a short one, which most courses I have seen are) than I believe the time is better spent teaching striking skills and releases from common holds and getting away.

How long a course are you talking about? You can do quite a bit in a twenty hour course. You can set the seeds in a four hour introduction. And honestly that's all anyone can do in that short a time.

Somebody elses house? A neighbor, a friend's, coworker's, Local Church, battered womens shelter, etc. etc.

I'm always leery of dependence-based self defense. The social scientists' experiments have confirmed the anecdotal wisdom: You can't count on anyone saving you. People will just stand there and watch you die. c.f. Kitty Genovese. The shelters are under-funded, over-booked and have waiting lists. The last two times we intervened the victim was banging on doors, and nobody would help. The fact that we did was nice, but we're a pretty strange couple who have made a conscious decision to put ourselves at potential risk for people we don't know. That's pretty darned rare. Is anyone at the church? Do you know? How much time are you willing to waste standing out there? What happens if they don't help?

And so on.

If someone helps, that's nice; the fundamental principle is Your safety and survival begin and end with you. I wish it weren't that way. But I've seen no evidence to the contrary.

I don't know if this is quite true or not. There is the rapist of opportunity who strikes whenever the opportunity arises beit in a parking lot, a park, your house (basically any place that is secluded and he feels he can commit the crime and not get caught. So it makes sense that he woould target homes since they meet the requirements.

However the stalker (stalker rapist) or the obsessive type of prevert criminal they would be the ones to know where their intended victim lives, works etc. etc. But they are different types of criminals who commit crimes with overlapping types of crime scenes.

That whole constellation of rapist types was a fad from the 1970s. There were all sorts of different scenarios and sets of strategies that were supposed to work depending on whether it was the Compulsive Rapist, the Confused Rapist, the Sadistic Rapist, the Obsessed Rapist, the Opportunistic Rapist, the Psychotic Rapist and so on. There was never any real data to support the typology. And the psychiatrists who had the criminals on the couch for years in prison can't tell which category the convicts fall into. A woman who's trying to avoid being forcibly sodomized can not be expected to do a field diagnosis. The only sort she should be worried about is Unsuccessful Rapist. And for my money Dead Rapist is the absolute best sort.

As to the 90% figure, it's probably actually a little conservative. It's generally accepted in criminology that rape by acquaintances is under-reported. Prosecutors are reluctant to pursue it. Police are often leery and not sure who the criminal is or whether there's been a crime at all. Judges and juries are not likely to convict. Even so, and even with the old laws that put the victim on trial more than the rapist about 80-85% of founded rape reports involve acquaintances according to the best research I was aware of when I studied the subject in depth.

Stalkers are a whole different subject that deserves its own treatment.

 

[chinto]

look folks, the cops have to bring them in for trial.. that is their duty and mandate.
A private citizen has no such duty, their duty is to be alive and as unhurt as possible.
If anything a cop should be held to a much higher standard of conduct then a private individual! you as a non Law Enforcement Officer should have only one duty, be as uninjured and survive by what ever means possible. if the attacker does not survive, so sad.. to bad! worry about the cops and law after you are not dead or in ICU or other wise crippled for life!!
so if you grab the attacker, do not go for control, go for put the attacker down hard so you can brake contact and get clear unhurt and healthy!