Self-Protection From Violence

[Buka]

Physically fighting -
I teach people to fight. I've always taught people to fight. Any kind of fight, all kinds of fight. I teach people to deal with violence. All kinds of people, women, men, kids, cops. All kinds of violence, bullying, assault, rape, gangs, crowds, stampedes, guns, knives and a partridge in a pear tree. I think anyone who trains in fighting and doesn't actually do a lot of fighting - is nuts. I also think that no contact training is pretty good for no contact violence. Fighting and defending yourself from violence are HARD. Training should be harder.

Target hardening? Yes, profiling, instinct, looking at it from a predator's view. You know who has the best instinct to pick up the presence of a predator? Somebody who has been picked on their whole life. They know everything about predators, they just don't know that they know.
Threat awareness and avoidance are part of the target hardening package.

De-escalation - yes. Keep your ego in check, use your verbal skills and body language, show no disrespect, but never allow yourself to be off guard or too much off stance. Repeat - keep that ego in check, young man.

Who is it suited for? Anyone who wants to learn. Anyone willing to put in the time and do the work.

Validate? To whom?
Confident? Oh, you betcha'.

Escape and evasion. Yes, there are some people who I have not been able to catch. Some have been evading me for years.

Dealing with emotional aspects of a violent confrontation is the most difficult to teach. I'm still effected by violence the same way I was a zillion years ago. If I ever get used to it, I'll quit. Violence is an ugly thing. Hurting people is an ugly thing, even when it is necessary. Thankfully, I've always had good resources.

 

[Juany118]

Dealing with emotional aspects of a violent confrontation is the most difficult to teach. I'm still effected by violence the same way I was a zillion years ago. If I ever get used to it, I'll quit. Violence is an ugly thing. Hurting people is an ugly thing, even when it is necessary. Thankfully, I've always had good resources.

Any person who can honestly say they are "used to it" is, imo a sociopath. You can, if properly trained, react in such a way that the emotion doesn't kick in until after. You can be unhealthy and then put the emotional responses into a bottle and not deal with them but again, unless a sociopath, the emotions are there.

As humans we are complicated creatures. Our genetics are made for aggression. We started as hunter gatherers in small groups. We had to hunt, fight off predators, other tribes, in some cultures even to prove a man's "right" to procreate etc. We are social animals but our social groups were small. Then agriculture came. We built cities, civilization was born. To survive in that kind of society we had to expand our concept of our social group into increasingly larger structures. The conflict between the two causes a lot of trauma. We can be easy to anger and if pushed far enough violence can actually feel "easy". Afterwards though the social person inside us should not only have issues with the violence visited upon us, or that which we visited up them but on just how easy, how quickly it happened.

 

[oftheherd1]

My point was that the original statement by Hoshin said a higher magnitude of violience was required. At best, each of the alternatives I presented is an equivalent violence (it would be very difficult to even argue that, given the attack was with a brick). Yes, violence (absent the odd outlier) is likely to only be stopped by some violence, but I do not accept that the response must necessarily be more violent to be effective.

OK, I understand, and agree.

 

[JR 137]

Hoped to get to this tonight. But after a day dealing with a faction of the U.S government telling me that where I live doesn't actually exist - and, of course, that I must rebut in triplicate....well, you know.

Tell them if it doesn't exist, you want all the property tax money you've been forced to pay refunded. And with interest.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Cant quote on the phone. But "that the skills needed to to be successful at sparring/combat sports consensual violence, something something. Are not the same skills needed for self defence"

All resisted drills. All thrown out the window of relevance. And replaced with?

Who knows. It could justify any training at that point.

It is a classic i dont know equals god argument.

What made the big bang?
I dont know.
Then god must have done it.

It doesn't actually work when you look at it closely.

The street in its convenient vaguery gets this treatment a bit.

At no point have I, nor anyone I've read on MT, said that we threw out "all resisted drills". Again, you're creating a strawman argument. If you want to challenge something I or someone else said, challenge what we actually said. Play the argument, not the strawman.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

the issue that i am trying to convey and maybe Paul as well is that the dialog and wording posters are using in this thread and in other threads gives the impression that fighting is fighting. i have mentioned before in an other thread that martial arts are a skill based combative form. what i am intending to convey is that if we look at violence as a problem, martial arts comes to the conclusion that the skill in punching, kicking, grappling, stance, ect ect...is the answer to that problem. skill is a component of the answer but not the total answer. it is the on going attitude of martial arts that if you fail to defend yourself then it must be because of a lack of skill and therefore must be again answered with more training in these skills. a lack of training in skill is not the problem. it happens often that well trained martial artists are over come by a sudden violent attack. there is no doubt that these martial artists have a good amount of skill. the next proposed answer from martial artists is..."well if he had been studying in my style, that wouldnt have happened". thus we get into the endless threads here on differences and effectiveness in styles.
all of this misses the actual reality of the problem. it is not skill or style. the problem is the brains inability to put the puzzle pieces together. the first hurdle is cognitive dissonance. this is the brains inability to fully grasp the situation quick enough to make a response. another symptom is denial. many people think "this cannot be happening". this lag in response time gives the assailant the upper hand and often a sufficient response from the victim never happens.
martial artists train in fighting skills but a violent encounter often does not resemble what is trained in the dojo. there is a gap between actual combat and dojo training. this gap leaves the brain to freeze while it searches thru known data looking for a response, in return because the two do not resemble each other the brain comes back with the answer..."sorry dude, i got nothing".
however if you are engaged in a bar room chest thumping ego driven "fight" it will more closely resemble dojo sparring and these skills can come into play. thus the reason to separate a fight and an assault.
so to partially answer Tony's original post, what aspects of SPFV do i train.... i use situational training that resembles what might be found in an assault and reality based role plays. both of these allow the mind to recreate real combat and how martial skill can fit into the equation. the most important part is for the brain to make connections.

I need to re-read the full post when I'm more focused, but I agree with the basic gist here, hoshin. Here's my summary, and please let me know if I'm not conveying it properly:

Skill at the physical "fighting" aspect is important, but is not the only factor. Being able to deal with (psychologically) the violence (not to be confused with the physical form of the attack) is what makes the difference between success and failure once enough skill exists.

Is that pretty close?

 

[drop bear]

At no point have I, nor anyone I've read on MT, said that we threw out "all resisted drills". Again, you're creating a strawman argument. If you want to challenge something I or someone else said, challenge what we actually said. Play the argument, not the strawman.

Ok then if you invalidate The skills needed to be successful in sparring combat sports and consentual violence.

What do you have left?

Or this exactly."


"The point is that by continuing to use the word fight we allow the opportunity for people to continue in their mistaken belief that sparring/combat sports/consensual street fights are the same as civilian violence and also that the skills needed to be successful at sparring/combat sports, consensual street fights are the same skills needed to be successful at protecting yourself from civilian violence."

 

[hoshin1600]

I need to re-read the full post when I'm more focused, but I agree with the basic gist here, hoshin. Here's my summary, and please let me know if I'm not conveying it properly:

Skill at the physical "fighting" aspect is important, but is not the only factor. Being able to deal with (psychologically) the violence (not to be confused with the physical form of the attack) is what makes the difference between success and failure once enough skill exists.

Is that pretty close?

yes you have it correct.
we can drill down into that simple explanation. i do not have exact data so dont quote me on this but i will take a guess... in the ambush assault type of attack martial skill will only improve your outcome by 10%. but in martial arts schools 90% of their time is spent on gaining and improving these martial skills. if i am anywhere close to being correct then it must be agreed that is not a good return on your time and effort. if we had the actual data we could make calculations on the percentages of outcome improvement for each segment that Tony mentioned in the OP as well as others.. it is my belief that training things like recognition of physical and verbal cues that the assailant gives off prior to an attack are much more important that martial skill. we could use the data and calculations to determine how much time to alot for any skill set.
it is my belief as do others that martial skills do not give enough of a return after a certain base line is achieved. at that point other areas need to be more important. it has been my experience that many martial art instructors fall short at this point because they are not themselves trained in anything other than basics, kata and bunkai. (other arts will have their own particulars. not every art is Japanese, i get that... no need to point it out)
also martial skills must be trained in a way that the brain will make the connection between dojo practice and actual combat. over dependence on martial skill paired with training that does not look anything like real life is a recipe for failure.

 

[hoshin1600]

Any person who can honestly say they are "used to it" is, imo a sociopath.

actually there is about 1 to 2 % of the population that in a violent and possibly deadly encounter are not effected by remorse. it gets more complicated but that is a general truth. and there are many who may fit your label of sociopath but lead normal productive lives.

 

[hoshin1600]

Ok then if you invalidate The skills needed to be successful in sparring combat sports and consentual violence.

What do you have left?

and..my point is proven.
you have lots of things left. they just happen to not be in the martial skill curriculum.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Ok then if you invalidate The skills needed to be successful in sparring combat sports and consentual violence.

What do you have left?

Or this exactly."


"The point is that by continuing to use the word fight we allow the opportunity for people to continue in their mistaken belief that sparring/combat sports/consensual street fights are the same as civilian violence and also that the skills needed to be successful at sparring/combat sports, consensual street fights are the same skills needed to be successful at protecting yourself from civilian violence."

He doesn't invalidate all the skills of competition. He simply says the skill sets are not the same. That should be unarguable; ever context requires a shift in skills. There are things you need for competition that don't make as much sense on the street, and vice-versa.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

yes you have it correct.
we can drill down into that simple explanation. i do not have exact data so dont quote me on this but i will take a guess... in the ambush assault type of attack martial skill will only improve your outcome by 10%. but in martial arts schools 90% of their time is spent on gaining and improving these martial skills. if i am anywhere close to being correct then it must be agreed that is not a good return on your time and effort. if we had the actual data we could make calculations on the percentages of outcome improvement for each segment that Tony mentioned in the OP as well as others.. it is my belief that training things like recognition of physical and verbal cues that the assailant gives off prior to an attack are much more important that martial skill. we could use the data and calculations to determine how much time to alot for any skill set.
it is my belief as do others that martial skills do not give enough of a return after a certain base line is achieved. at that point other areas need to be more important. it has been my experience that many martial art instructors fall short at this point because they are not themselves trained in anything other than basics, kata and bunkai. (other arts will have their own particulars. not every art is Japanese, i get that... no need to point it out)
also martial skills must be trained in a way that the brain will make the connection between dojo practice and actual combat. over dependence on martial skill paired with training that does not look anything like real life is a recipe for failure.

I agree with the premise of diminishing returns, Hoshin. There are two factors that confound it a bit. First, physical skills need a lot of attention to stay sharp. Since most people get bored working the exact same bits over and over, most arts expand what they work on to work deeper and deeper areas of the art. That's what keeps most of us coming back. Plus, as you go deeper, you learn more options.

Secondly, I'm not sure how much time can effectively be spent on the recognition components, since the cues are mostly difficult to replicate accurately.

Put those together, and it's natural that a non-commensurate amount of time is spent on the physical techniques. That said, most of us can do a better job of talking about recognition, avoidance, hardening...you know, all those other areas Tony mentioned in the OP.

 

[drop bear]

and..my point is proven.
you have lots of things left. they just happen to not be in the martial skill curriculum.

There is a whole world of stuff worth learning that is not martial arts. I don't disagree there.

 

[drop bear]

He doesn't invalidate all the skills of competition. He simply says the skill sets are not the same. That should be unarguable; ever context requires a shift in skills. There are things you need for competition that don't make as much sense on the street, and vice-versa.

No mostly they don't. They may require a shift in tactics. I can prove this with anecdotes.

Do you think for example avoiding punches is a different skill set from sport to street?

If you are going to make a distinction it is a specific one for a specific circumstance. This vague generalisation has no real merit.

 

[hoshin1600]

I agree with the premise of diminishing returns, Hoshin. There are two factors that confound it a bit. First, physical skills need a lot of attention to stay sharp. Since most people get bored working the exact same bits over and over, most arts expand what they work on to work deeper and deeper areas of the art. That's what keeps most of us coming back. Plus, as you go deeper, you learn more options.

Secondly, I'm not sure how much time can effectively be spent on the recognition components, since the cues are mostly difficult to replicate accurately.

Put those together, and it's natural that a non-commensurate amount of time is spent on the physical techniques. That said, most of us can do a better job of talking about recognition, avoidance, hardening...you know, all those other areas Tony mentioned in the OP.

The factors that "confound" things as you say, while common in martial arts is not an absolute. They are failures in yours and others styles curriculum. It can be done it only needs to be looked at differently.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

No mostly they don't. They may require a shift in tactics. I can prove this with anecdotes.

Do you think for example avoiding punches is a different skill set from sport to street?

If you are going to make a distinction it is a specific one for a specific circumstance. This vague generalisation has no real merit.

I never said the skill sets were entirely different. Of course the methods for avoiding punches are similar (not exactly the same only because of a few strikes that shouldn't occur in competition, but that's a very minor difference IMO). But there are differences. They are not identical. What's the % overlap? Well, if we're talking Judo competition, it's probably 50%-ish. If we're talking MMA, it's probably a lot higher than that - I'd guess upwards of 80-90%, so long as we're only talking about the physical skills.

Mind you, there's one component we haven't talked about, and I'm not sure how different that is. That's pattern recognition. This is actually what makes us faster at responding to attacks as we get better, even though we're aging (so our response times and muscle speed are actually getting worse). We learn to recognize movement patterns and see what's coming very early. This is one of the hazards of the untrained attacker: they don't have consistent patterns like when we're looking at trained opponents. I haven't figured a way to test pattern recognition from excellent competitors, but we have some reasonable evidence of the issue in early mixed-art competitions. Folks who had trained solely in their own style often weren't beaten because they didn't know a counter to an attack, but more so because they didn't recognize the attack in time to use that counter. This has been the real value of MMA-style training, IMO.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The factors that "confound" things as you say, while common in martial arts is not an absolute. They are failures in yours and others styles curriculum. It can be done it only needs to be looked at differently.

Actually, the first is not a flaw in anyone's curriculum. It's a fact of physical skill. Even for an expert, physical skills (and their pattern-recognition component) degrade sharply after 30 days of disuse. This need to repeat and revisit means that the physical skills, while a small percentage of what is needed, will occupy a fairly large portion of any complete, ongoing curriculum. If you add the need to keep people learning something new (to keep students from stopping training, at which point the skills begin to degrade), then the physical training takes an even larger percentage of the time. Remember that we're talking about maintenance time, not just acquisition time.

As for the second, that may be a flaw in curriculum if you're asserting that the cues are easily replicated in a realistic fashion. It has been my experience that most folks are not good at accurately replicating warning cues. And the recognition learning here doesn't typically take as long as developing pattern recognition for attacks and learning the physical skills. Percentage of important doesn't equate to time to learn.

That said, I'm agreeing with your overall premise. Many of us (myself included) could do a better job of teaching the non-physical skills. It's something I've been meaning to improve in my class curriculum (I do a higher percentage of it in seminars), but haven't yet gotten around to completing.

 

[Buka]

yes you have it correct.
we can drill down into that simple explanation. i do not have exact data so dont quote me on this but i will take a guess... in the ambush assault type of attack martial skill will only improve your outcome by 10%. but in martial arts schools 90% of their time is spent on gaining and improving these martial skills. if i am anywhere close to being correct then it must be agreed that is not a good return on your time and effort. if we had the actual data we could make calculations on the percentages of outcome improvement for each segment that Tony mentioned in the OP as well as others.. it is my belief that training things like recognition of physical and verbal cues that the assailant gives off prior to an attack are much more important that martial skill. we could use the data and calculations to determine how much time to alot for any skill set.
it is my belief as do others that martial skills do not give enough of a return after a certain base line is achieved. at that point other areas need to be more important. it has been my experience that many martial art instructors fall short at this point because they are not themselves trained in anything other than basics, kata and bunkai. (other arts will have their own particulars. not every art is Japanese, i get that... no need to point it out)
also martial skills must be trained in a way that the brain will make the connection between dojo practice and actual combat. over dependence on martial skill paired with training that does not look anything like real life is a recipe for failure.

I see it differently. In the ambush type of attack, well trained martial skill will improve your outcome by 90%.

I'm speaking of, let's say, an intermediate level of a few years, not a green rookie.

 

[hoshin1600]

Actually, the first is not a flaw in anyone's curriculum. It's a fact of physical skill. Even for an expert, physical skills (and their pattern-recognition component) degrade sharply after 30 days of disuse. This need to repeat and revisit means that the physical skills, while a small percentage of what is needed, will occupy a fairly large portion of any complete, ongoing curriculum. If you add the need to keep people learning something new (to keep students from stopping training, at which point the skills begin to degrade), then the physical training takes an even larger percentage of the time. Remember that we're talking about maintenance time, not just acquisition time.

As for the second, that may be a flaw in curriculum if you're asserting that the cues are easily replicated in a realistic fashion. It has been my experience that most folks are not good at accurately replicating warning cues. And the recognition learning here doesn't typically take as long as developing pattern recognition for attacks and learning the physical skills. Percentage of important doesn't equate to time to learn.

That said, I'm agreeing with your overall premise. Many of us (myself included) could do a better job of teaching the non-physical skills. It's something I've been meaning to improve in my class curriculum (I do a higher percentage of it in seminars), but haven't yet gotten around to completing.

i understand and agree with what you are saying about degrading skills. what i believe is that you can kill two birds with one stone. your previous post, i believe implied that there just isnt enough time to do more.
many schools spend time on focus mitts and striking pads. once a base line of skill is reached why not keep those skills refined by replacing the pads with an impact suit like a red man, now your working on targeting, timing, distancing then you can give a stick to the guy in the red suit and have him start to use verbal intimidation, now your working stress inoculation.. then advance that one step more and your working scenario training with roles working on de-escalation and the drill has become much more than punching a pad. your working many street effective skills on top of the martial skill of static punching and kicking.

this is what i mean by a curriculum failure many schools do not do these kinds of drills and only hit static pads over and over by the count.

i cant give away all the answers over the internet feel free to call the business number or send an email to set up a seminar and help me stay employed... lol

 

[hoshin1600]

I see it differently. In the ambush type of attack, well trained martial skill will improve your outcome by 90%.

I'm speaking of, let's say, an intermediate level of a few years, not a green rookie.

i cant debate how we each see it. but from my experience i have seen and heard to many stories of martial artists getting there butt kicked in the real world. it is far and few between that i hear a success story.