Long one this week, something I feel strongly on. This hits the high points, as it would be 6 times as long otherwise. I will try to answer any reasonable questions in the comments.
This week, Wise Ass, who has Wise in his name for a very good reason, wrote a blog post on how to fight fair in a relationship. The same day, RP and I received the same question. He published first, so I added my take in the comments. Then Chic Geek belted out some cracking Female Empowerment songs. Far be it from me to deny Empowerment Week when it appears on the site and bites me in the nose.
But what can I bring to the table for your delectation? I ain't good on music or movies, I am a more hands on guy. Got it.
Hands up those of you who can actually handle yourselves in a sticky situation. OK, both of you can put your hands down again.
I don't fight often, it is a fool's game, but I also don't fight fair. Never have, since my first fight way back in Kindergarten. I don't believe in it. The few, very vague flickers of sportsmanlike behaviour I felt got snuffed out in boot, active service and aid work, where "do unto them before they do unto you" is the whole of the law.
Now, two evenings a week, I teach self defence classes to predominantly young women, and twice a month to abused women at the local shelter. That gets painful even with the padding. Some of those ladies have a lot of pain to work through, and I get the benefit of their rage.
Not formal martial arts, more street with several dashes of pure violence, nastiness and common sense. So, figured, why not expand my comment on the question and share some tips with you readers this week.
I am gonna be terribly sexist here, and assume your assailant is much stronger than you. If you are stronger, just punch him out and be done with it.
Stay Awake
It isn't fair, but a lot of muggings, assaults and violence can be prevented by simply paying attention to your surroundings. Situational awareness, they call it. Automatically making risk assessments every waking minute of your day. Even simple things, like knowing who is around you, an alternative route and walking past an alley after dark on the curb of the sidewalk rather than in the middle of the sidewalk can give you an extra second to react.
One of the common complaints about this idea is that you are somehow being asked to "live in fear." To which I say, spherical objects. You are being asked to actually pay attention, roughly the same amount of attention you pay to the road while driving in moderate traffic. That is it.
Being Held is Being Dead
You know how to kill a shark? Stop it moving. It dies. If that applies to the best designed predator on the planet, it certainly applies to you.
If you can't move, you can't fight. Simple. Someone tries to grab you or hit you, a good 99% of you will flinch back and throw your hands up in front of your face. Well done, you just offered a perfect hold on your wrists, instantly reducing two of your most effective weapons to complete uselessness. Keep one hand free no matter what. If it means taking a hit in the face, so be it.
Volume is Your Friend
You ever watched a bad martial arts movie? Is there any other kind of martial arts movie? One of the things they get right is to scream like an air raid siren who's virtue has been questioned. You should be audible 6 blocks away. It has two advantages. It may, if you are really lucky, call for help, or at least witnesses. It also dumps a gigantic amount of adrenaline into your system, getting you ready and giving you an extra power boost.
Anything is a Weapon
I am not talking concealed carry here. Most people who carry, according to both my cop friends and observation, don't know how to use and can't use if they need to. There is a huge difference between popping a few rounds off at the range and popping a few rounds into someone's body. They just feel invincible, until they get disarmed and shot by their own weapon.
Mace or pepper spray is good, but has to be readily accessable. Someone attacking you is not going to wait patiently while you dig through your purse looking for it.
Martial Arts are great, but you are not in a clean, well lit room with someone who obeys the rules, uses your style and respects the strict timing for bouts.
So lets look at basic force multipliers.
You carry a purse? Satisfy my curiousity, go and weigh it. If it comes in at under 5 pounds I will be shocked. Getting hit in the face with a fear swung 5 lb purse is roughly equivalent to being punched by a middleweight boxer.
You wearing thin heels? You know you got a pair of bayonets attached to the strongest muscles in your body, right?
Wearing a coat? Slip it off and hit him in the face with it. If he is grabbing a double handful of coat, he isn't grabbing you. Keep backing away while swinging so he can't use it to pull you to him.
Look around you - you see anything at all you can hit him with? Use it.
The Weak Points
So he's grabbed you anyway. What to do?
We are all the same. Same strengths and same weaknesses too.
You need to look at five places. Nose, lower lip, crotch, shins and feet. That is where the big pain is. Don't even think about trying for his eyes - it won't work, it'll just get you backhanded into semi conciousness. Ditto with hands. You can put someone in total, paralysing agony by twisting or bending their fingers - if you happen to be stronger than them. So don't try, all you are doing is offering your hands to him.
Nose and lower lip - Grab it, hit it, ram your fingers up the nostrils, twist it. If your hands are held, bite them hard. No guy can keep hold of you if you are hanging from his lip like a bulldog.
Crotch - fairly obvious and instantly devastating, but for Pete's sake, use your knee, not your foot. Hit a guy hard in the jewels and he will clamp his legs together and fall over hard enough to break your ankle, or at the very least trap you until he recovers.
Shins - Turn your foot sideways and rake your instep down his shin. It doesn't sound like much, does it? It hurts and puts him off balance. This one works no matter how you are being held.
Feet - finish your rake on his shins with a damn good stamp on his foot. Bonus points if you are wearing heels here. He'll not be able to chase you well after that. Which leads us to:
Running is not Cowardly
This is something that most women understand, but that has to be beaten (word intentional) into the guys in class. The entire aim of the above is to get you enough space to run and hopefully damaging him enough that he cannot run after you. We are not interested in giving the guy the beating of his life, we want you to get away. You aren't a cop or Paul Kersey, you are a normal person. The instant you get the chance, run like hell. That is your sole aim.
You. Will. Run.
Sometimes You Lose
You can have more than two assailants at once, though not often outside the cities. If you can drop one of them fast enough, you have the chance to walk away in the confusion - don't run. Normally they are after your money, just throw your purse or wallet at them and run. Cards and cash are replacable. So are skin and bone, but that takes longer.
And sometimes you will lose. You ain't Frank Castle either, and you definitely can't get away with bringing a knife to a gun fight. The standard advice for anyone, male or female, confronted with a gun is to give them what they want. Keep watching for a chance to escape, and spend the time memorising everything about them. The more detail you remember, the more chance the guy will get caught.
So there you are. Some of these points are from my general SD class, the more violent bits from the SD class for victims of domestic assault and violence. They do not make you invulnerable. They do not turn you into a super hero, out to dispense justice. They need a cool head and a little practice to apply properly. If you wanna walk in downtown Detroit at 2 AM after reading this, you will have serious problems of your own devising.
"But how does this post fit with the Empowerment theme?" I hear you ask. Empowered people are not victims. They take responsibility for themselves, including their own safety and security.
I'd encourage every last one of you to learn a Martial Art anyway, it is both useful and a much more fun way of keeping fit than going to the gym. It also gets you used to hitting people - something many find surprisingly hard to do. Most places offer self defense classes - look em up online or ask at your local police station (they have as much interest in you not becoming a statistic as you have) and take one or two.
And remember:
If you do have to fight, don't half ass it. The fight isn't over until your opponent is on the ground and in too much pain to chase you as you run. There is no such thing as compassion if someone attacks you.
This week, Wise Ass, who has Wise in his name for a very good reason, wrote a blog post on how to fight fair in a relationship. The same day, RP and I received the same question. He published first, so I added my take in the comments. Then Chic Geek belted out some cracking Female Empowerment songs. Far be it from me to deny Empowerment Week when it appears on the site and bites me in the nose.
But what can I bring to the table for your delectation? I ain't good on music or movies, I am a more hands on guy. Got it.
Hands up those of you who can actually handle yourselves in a sticky situation. OK, both of you can put your hands down again.
I don't fight often, it is a fool's game, but I also don't fight fair. Never have, since my first fight way back in Kindergarten. I don't believe in it. The few, very vague flickers of sportsmanlike behaviour I felt got snuffed out in boot, active service and aid work, where "do unto them before they do unto you" is the whole of the law.
Now, two evenings a week, I teach self defence classes to predominantly young women, and twice a month to abused women at the local shelter. That gets painful even with the padding. Some of those ladies have a lot of pain to work through, and I get the benefit of their rage.
Not formal martial arts, more street with several dashes of pure violence, nastiness and common sense. So, figured, why not expand my comment on the question and share some tips with you readers this week.
I am gonna be terribly sexist here, and assume your assailant is much stronger than you. If you are stronger, just punch him out and be done with it.
Stay Awake
It isn't fair, but a lot of muggings, assaults and violence can be prevented by simply paying attention to your surroundings. Situational awareness, they call it. Automatically making risk assessments every waking minute of your day. Even simple things, like knowing who is around you, an alternative route and walking past an alley after dark on the curb of the sidewalk rather than in the middle of the sidewalk can give you an extra second to react.
One of the common complaints about this idea is that you are somehow being asked to "live in fear." To which I say, spherical objects. You are being asked to actually pay attention, roughly the same amount of attention you pay to the road while driving in moderate traffic. That is it.
Being Held is Being Dead
You know how to kill a shark? Stop it moving. It dies. If that applies to the best designed predator on the planet, it certainly applies to you.
If you can't move, you can't fight. Simple. Someone tries to grab you or hit you, a good 99% of you will flinch back and throw your hands up in front of your face. Well done, you just offered a perfect hold on your wrists, instantly reducing two of your most effective weapons to complete uselessness. Keep one hand free no matter what. If it means taking a hit in the face, so be it.
Volume is Your Friend
You ever watched a bad martial arts movie? Is there any other kind of martial arts movie? One of the things they get right is to scream like an air raid siren who's virtue has been questioned. You should be audible 6 blocks away. It has two advantages. It may, if you are really lucky, call for help, or at least witnesses. It also dumps a gigantic amount of adrenaline into your system, getting you ready and giving you an extra power boost.
Anything is a Weapon
I am not talking concealed carry here. Most people who carry, according to both my cop friends and observation, don't know how to use and can't use if they need to. There is a huge difference between popping a few rounds off at the range and popping a few rounds into someone's body. They just feel invincible, until they get disarmed and shot by their own weapon.
Mace or pepper spray is good, but has to be readily accessable. Someone attacking you is not going to wait patiently while you dig through your purse looking for it.
Martial Arts are great, but you are not in a clean, well lit room with someone who obeys the rules, uses your style and respects the strict timing for bouts.
So lets look at basic force multipliers.
You carry a purse? Satisfy my curiousity, go and weigh it. If it comes in at under 5 pounds I will be shocked. Getting hit in the face with a fear swung 5 lb purse is roughly equivalent to being punched by a middleweight boxer.
You wearing thin heels? You know you got a pair of bayonets attached to the strongest muscles in your body, right?
Wearing a coat? Slip it off and hit him in the face with it. If he is grabbing a double handful of coat, he isn't grabbing you. Keep backing away while swinging so he can't use it to pull you to him.
Look around you - you see anything at all you can hit him with? Use it.
The Weak Points
So he's grabbed you anyway. What to do?
We are all the same. Same strengths and same weaknesses too.
You need to look at five places. Nose, lower lip, crotch, shins and feet. That is where the big pain is. Don't even think about trying for his eyes - it won't work, it'll just get you backhanded into semi conciousness. Ditto with hands. You can put someone in total, paralysing agony by twisting or bending their fingers - if you happen to be stronger than them. So don't try, all you are doing is offering your hands to him.
Nose and lower lip - Grab it, hit it, ram your fingers up the nostrils, twist it. If your hands are held, bite them hard. No guy can keep hold of you if you are hanging from his lip like a bulldog.
Crotch - fairly obvious and instantly devastating, but for Pete's sake, use your knee, not your foot. Hit a guy hard in the jewels and he will clamp his legs together and fall over hard enough to break your ankle, or at the very least trap you until he recovers.
Shins - Turn your foot sideways and rake your instep down his shin. It doesn't sound like much, does it? It hurts and puts him off balance. This one works no matter how you are being held.
Feet - finish your rake on his shins with a damn good stamp on his foot. Bonus points if you are wearing heels here. He'll not be able to chase you well after that. Which leads us to:
Running is not Cowardly
This is something that most women understand, but that has to be beaten (word intentional) into the guys in class. The entire aim of the above is to get you enough space to run and hopefully damaging him enough that he cannot run after you. We are not interested in giving the guy the beating of his life, we want you to get away. You aren't a cop or Paul Kersey, you are a normal person. The instant you get the chance, run like hell. That is your sole aim.
You. Will. Run.
Sometimes You Lose
You can have more than two assailants at once, though not often outside the cities. If you can drop one of them fast enough, you have the chance to walk away in the confusion - don't run. Normally they are after your money, just throw your purse or wallet at them and run. Cards and cash are replacable. So are skin and bone, but that takes longer.
And sometimes you will lose. You ain't Frank Castle either, and you definitely can't get away with bringing a knife to a gun fight. The standard advice for anyone, male or female, confronted with a gun is to give them what they want. Keep watching for a chance to escape, and spend the time memorising everything about them. The more detail you remember, the more chance the guy will get caught.
So there you are. Some of these points are from my general SD class, the more violent bits from the SD class for victims of domestic assault and violence. They do not make you invulnerable. They do not turn you into a super hero, out to dispense justice. They need a cool head and a little practice to apply properly. If you wanna walk in downtown Detroit at 2 AM after reading this, you will have serious problems of your own devising.
"But how does this post fit with the Empowerment theme?" I hear you ask. Empowered people are not victims. They take responsibility for themselves, including their own safety and security.
I'd encourage every last one of you to learn a Martial Art anyway, it is both useful and a much more fun way of keeping fit than going to the gym. It also gets you used to hitting people - something many find surprisingly hard to do. Most places offer self defense classes - look em up online or ask at your local police station (they have as much interest in you not becoming a statistic as you have) and take one or two.
And remember:
If you do have to fight, don't half ass it. The fight isn't over until your opponent is on the ground and in too much pain to chase you as you run. There is no such thing as compassion if someone attacks you.
Thanks, MM for this. I look delicate but have surprise on my side. My attitude is Kill or be killed.
If at all possible - head butt. If they have you from behind and pick you off your feet... Pick a knee to kick - that will put him out of commission if he can't run after you.
If someone has a gun on you and orders you into their vehicle, what do you do? You make a run for it - they could miss. If you get into the vehicle, you are most likely dead anyway, don't make it easy for them.
My dad is a cop, and when I was about 4 years old he gave me some advice that I'll never forget. He had the misfortune of being the officer to find the mutilated corpse of a 4 year old boy that had been reported missing. It was one of those freqk cases where it wasnt a family member but some randome psycho and I dont think my dad had ever been more scared by a case (not that I realised any of this at the time) He came home really late that night, paper work and stuff. That night he picks me up, still in his uniform, I'm about ready for bed, holds menclose, looks me straight in he eye and says, "If a bad man ever tries to take you away, I want you to try to rip his eyelids off or bite his ear off. The pain will make him drop you, and if there's blood in his eyes he might not be able to chase you. Then want you to run and scream for help. Can you do that for me?" All I could do was nod in response and he kissed me and sent me to bed. Despite being traumatizing enough for me to remember to this day, it was the most loving thing my dad new how to say. It taught me a couple things and made me grow up a lot in one moment. It was the first time I realized that there were people out there who would hurt and kill me for no reason I'd understand. I also realized what that I might have to fight to live, and in turn realized that death was an option, you know realizing your mortality at 4, lol. Finally I realized that fighting was squabbling with my little brother, and that you had to cause as much pain to bad men as possible in order to live.
As a side note, to all the people out there that hate cops, try to remember that they have to see the worst side of humanity, and then go back to their families. They're flawed like anyone, and some abuse their power, and some choose it because they're not smart enough or motivated enough to go to college (but that's changing with so many departments requiring degrees now) but whatever their flaws try to remember that for every thousand tickets, there's the corpse of a little child or a woman beaten to a bloody pulp refusing to press charges.
*real fighting WASN'T squabbling with my brother.
Very good advice Myst….
My dad was an airborne army ranger and has been teaching me self defense since I was about three. because he was always so much bigger than me I didn't feel bad about hitting hard or playing dirty because in knew it didn't really hurt him. Which had always made me feel a little more confident if I ever should find myself in that situation. But just to add onto MM, KNEES and ELBOWS. They hurt more than your hands. He literally beat this into me KNEES and ELBOWS. They are your best friend in a situation like this
My dad was an airborne army ranger and has been teaching me self defense since I was about three. because he was always so much bigger than me I didn't feel bad about hitting hard or playing dirty because in knew it didn't really hurt him. Which had always made me feel a little more confident if I ever should find myself in that situation. But just to add onto MM, KNEES and ELBOWS. They hurt more than your hands. He literally beat this into me KNEES and ELBOWS. They are your best friend in a situation like this
A school teacher who had been in the army once told us of a last resort strategy: keys. Along the lines of "anything can be a weapon," and assuming your first impulse will be to throw a punch (getting used to using your knees and elbows can take some training), wrap your fingers around a set of keys so that the keys come out between your fingers.
I've never been in a situation where I've had to use such a tactic, so I can't vouch for its effectiveness (maybe Mystery Man could give his opinion on it?). I read once that muggers are least likely to approach women who have anything with long reach (like an umbrella, or a heavy purse that can be easily swung from a distance). So, whenever I'm a bit paranoid (like if a dodgy guy looks at me too much in the bus and gets up to get out behind me) I'll make sure to have my umbrella in hand. It's one of those umbrellas that pops out at the push of a button. I figure I would at least have the element of surprise on my hand, plus, if he makes a grab I can always just let go off of the umbrella and make a run (not possible if he grabs my hands, for instance).
Again, it's never actually come to that point. The one time I was pretty sure I'd be mugged I managed to cross the street and run away before the guy got near me.
Keys are one of those things that sound like a great idea, but need a fair amount of fumbling to actually pull off correctly.
Yes, a couple of keys poking through your fingers as you hit are an effective force multiplier - in both directions. Punch someone with keys poking out and the thin backs of the keys drive into your hand with just as much force as the tips drive into your opponent.
You are far better off using keys as either claws - go for a scratching attack, not a punch - or laid lengthways in your fist to increase the heft and resistance, like a punching weight does.
The easiest way to use keys is to slip your finger through the key ring and use them as a flail.
By far the best advice I've had the opportunity to read on this site to date.
great article. l loved the Detroit comment (it must be a "yes it's a shithole, but it's our shithole" thing).
One of the biggest things points that stuck with me is something my Grandmaster said, "self defense means not getting yourself into a situation where you need to defend yourself." There is a reason that a version of this is MM's first point. Be aware of your situation, think through details like route plans (being late because you avoided the dark alleyway is always acceptable), walk upright with your eyes up and when in doubt walk with someone else. If you look like you are alert and confident, you make a less appealing target.
And if you are attacked just remember - "winning" in this instance is making it out alive and in one piece, that end will justify any means
i agree, it is really good advice, thanks MM. i'm kind of a contingency planner tho lol what do you do in the event the person you are against already knows all of these tricks?
You fight anyway.