Self Protection Soft Skills

8/2/2019 Self Protection Soft Skills

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Neal Martin 2012/ www.onguardcombatsystems.com Page 1


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Introduction

Most of us as martial artists tend to spend a lot of time practicing and refiningthe hard skills of self protection, the physical techniques and tricks that arespecifically designed to damage an opponent in some way. And whilst I realisethat hard skills are vitally important to ones personal safety, I also believe thatthe so-called soft skills of self protection are just as important.

In some ways the hard skills are easier to learn. They are just gross motor skillsat the end of the day (and Im talking here about the very basic strikes thattend to be favoured in the self protection field, such as power punches andopen handed strikes). Aside from the emotional content fuelling their delivery,these techniques are purely physical and require no special physical traits for aperson to learn them. You could probably teach your grandmother topowerslap!

Soft SkillsSoft skills on the other hand, such as awareness (of oneself, of onessurroundings and of ones opponent), situational control and verbal de-escalation techniques are usually only taught in the self protection field andare rarely if ever acknowledged by most traditional martial arts styles. Even inthe field of self protection, they tend to be glossed over in order to get to themore interesting physical stuff. Yet I would argue that these soft skills are

just as essential to learn as the hard skills and are eminently more useful tosomeone who wants to avoid violence.

The point to remember about soft skills (or soft kills, since metaphoricallyspeaking you are killing your aggressor softly, without hitting them) is that theyare indeed skills, and need to be practiced as diligently as the hard physicalskills. The more thoroughly you familiarise yourself with them and the moreeffort you put into making them second nature, the more you will get out of them and the more useful you will find them, in daily life as well as when inaggressive and potentially violent situations. Conflict is conflict and the same


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techniques can just as easily be applied to an argument at work or with a lovedone, as with some guy who wants to knock your head off for spilling his pint.

All of the information I have gathered here is a product of my own experience,

or of the experience of other instructors I have trained with such as Geoff Thompson and Al Peasland, or of the experience of other excellent instructorssuch as Rory Miller, Lee Morrison and Richard Dimitri. I am indebted to themall for sharing their knowledge and experience. It is in this same spirit of givingthat I am sharing this information with you now. I hope you find it useful. If youdont you have my permission to hunt me down and kill mebut youll have toget past my Corgi first. Shes a real killer you know!

Section 1: Legal and EthicalConsiderations

Much of the following is based upon the excellent work and research done byRory Miller, author of Meditations on Violence and Facing Violence . What I willprovide here is the bare bones of the information surrounding the legal andethical concepts of violence, as well as some of my own observations. For amore detailed analysis of these concepts I strongly suggest you read the twobooks I just mentioned, both of which should be required reading for anymartial arts student.

To begin you need to know your own ethical beliefs on violence and you needto know the laws on use of force.

You need to know what your boundaries are when it comes to using violence.How far are you prepared to go? Are you prepared to kill another human beingif necessary? Are you prepared to maim someone to protect your own life? Itseasy to say yes to these questions without giving them much thought but Iguarantee you that if you had to make those decisions five minutes from nowyou would probably struggle and freeze in the face of extreme violence. Whenyou have never faced a situation before, its hard to predict how you will react


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so you need to know what lines you are prepared to cross or you will freeze.More on this later.

The Law and Force Justification

According to Miller, the first thing we must understand is that in court self defence is an affirmative defence . The implications of this are:

1.You are acknowledging the basic facts of what you did. Yes, I committedmurder, but it was justified because

2. It puts the burden of proof on the defence. You in otherwards. So youassaulted someone with a brick and this is exactly why you had to do so. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Force justification is the science of explaining what you did. The basic formulais this: You must use the minimum level of force that you readily believe isnecessary to safely resolve the situation .

This statement can be broken down and explained as follows:

may use You are not required to use force. You can and should walkaway.

minimum level of force You will be required, if your actions go to court,to explain not only why you chose your course of action, but why a lesser levelof force wouldnt have worked.

believe To claim self defence, you must not only have felt threatened butyou must also be able to explain why any another reasonable person wouldhave believed they were in danger also.

is necessary You must prove that force was the only option. Why didntyou leave? If you were verbally challenged and you stayed to confront, thenyou monkey danced. This was mutual fighting.

resolve Ending the situation is critical. Think less about stopping the badguy and more about getting to safety.

the situation Voluntarily placing yourself in the situation usually excludes

the affirmative defence of self defence.


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The ThreatYou must be able to articulate why you saw the person as a threat and howyou knew it. I had a feeling wont cut it in court. Practice analysing andexplaining what causes your feelings.

To be a valid Threat an individual must exhibit four things:

1. Intent: The Threat must indicate that they want to harm you. How did youknow?

2. Means: The means to carry out intent.

3. Opportunity: The Threat must be able to reach you with the means.

4. Preclusion: You must convince the court that you did not have any otherviable option. You couldnt leave, couldnt talk your way out, you couldnt callfor help. Articulate why force was the one option that would safely work.

Scaling ForceA force incident may change quickly. If IMO are lost then you are no longerdefending yourself and you are using excessive force. If you could safely leave

and you dont then you have shattered your affirmative defence.

If you happen to be ambushed then a high level of force is justified as youdont have time to gather enough information to gauge a proper response.

ArticulationYou must be able to explain each element of your defence: Intent, Means,Opportunity and Preclusion. You must also do so in a clear and logical fashion.

In other wards you must adopt a professional attitude and keep the emotionout of it. The bastard deserved what he got just wont do you any favoursin front of a judge and jury.

EthicsWhat are your personal ethics towards violence? Are there lines you just wontcross? Or will circumstances always dictate your response? Saying you will do


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something does not mean you will do it when it comes to the crunch.Understand that this isnt about how hard you are or anything macho like that.We all have parameters when it comes to things like violence. Some people arecapable of going beyond those parameters and others arent, no matter whatthe circumstances. The point is you have to know what your own parametersare and you would do and wouldnt do. It is imperative to work these thingsthrough in advance, otherwise you may find yourself in a situation where youdont know how to act because you havent squared it with your conscienceyet.

Early programming has a lot to do with our personally held ethics. We arebrought up to believe certain things about human behaviour and what way weshould act towards others. This is social conditioning. So you dont slam thedoor in someones face because you think doing so would be rude, eventhough you have a distinctly bad feeling about that person.

You may be capable of gouging out an eye, but do you have the capacity to doit? Think about that and apply it to other things.

In self defence, clarity adds speed. If youre not clear on what you should do

then you will loose valuable time trying to work out your next move. This iswhy you should get clear on as much as possible beforehand. Think about thelikely situations you may find yourself in if you had to use your self defenceskills and go from there. Work out your gut reactions to things.

Section 2: Violence Dynamics

Not all violence is the same. People are violent for different reasons; howeverthere are two main types of violence that you should be aware of:

1. Social Violence: Ritualised jockeying for territory or status; also includesacts to prove or increase group solidarity and violence to enforce the rules andmores of the group.


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2. Asocial Violence: Targets the victim, not as a person, but as a resource.Predator violence.

Social violence can be segregated into three main groups: Monkey Dance

(MD), Group Monkey Dance (GMD) and Status Seeking Show (SSS).

Monkey DanceAll animals have a form of ritualised combat between males, geneticallydesigned NOT to be life threatening. Your typical fight outside the chippy on aSaturday night is an example of this.

Almost all monkey dances follow the same set pattern, as follows:

1. Hard aggressive stare.

2. Verbal Challenge.

3. An approach with signs of high adrenaline: gross motor activity of armswinging or chest bobbing, a change colour, skin flushing etc.

4. Square of; contact is made by push or finger pointing.

5. Big over-hand punch.

No matter who initiated the MD there is no self defence here as there are justtoo many opportunities for preclusion (to exit the situation).

Group Monkey DanceSelf-explanatory. A show of group solidarity and tribal violence are examples of this.

Status Seeking ShowUsed to bolster a persons violent reputation.

Asocial ViolenceAsocial violence is the realm of predators and predators are able to ignore thehumanity of their victims, which makes them very good at what they do.


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Sociopaths fall into this category. Their tactics ensure they get what they wantin the surest, safest way (for them) as possible.

Predators fall into two categories:

1. Resource Predator: This person wants something and has decided toget it from you, like your car or your wallet.

2. Process Predator: This person enjoys violence, its the reason they dowhat they do. These predators, such as rapists and serial killers, require timeand privacy to do what they do, which means moving the victim to a secondarycrime scene.

Resource Predators want you to give up your stuff.

Process Predators want you to give up your self.

The main strategies of a predator are charm and blitz.

To blitz, they use speed, power and position to take control before the victimreacts. This isnt always physical. Sometimes intimidation can be enough to getthem what they want.

To charm, they use their social skills to get the victim into a vulnerableposition. They may talk their way into the victims home, for instance.

Section 3: Situational Awareness Skills

The martial arts have a lot to answer for when it comes to peoples perceptionsof what constitutes good self protection. For a long time martial artists (andnon-martial artists alike) considered good self protection as having the abilityto handle yourself well in a fight. Hence, for many years, we had peoplelearning the ins and outs of particular fighting systems (mostly traditionalJapanese systems) because they mistakenly thought thats all they would needto protect themselves against violent attack. The school of thought seemed tobe that because you knew martial arts you would therefore be able to take on


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all comers and dispatch them with relative ease. It didnt matter that youended up in situations were you had to get physical with people, whatmattered was that you beat them using the skills you had acquired in the dojo.Self protection therefore came down to how good you were at fighting.

This approach worked if you were a skilled fighter outside of the dojo but it stilldidnt protect you from the consequences of violence. For the average man orwoman on the street, putting themselves on the line like that when they dontalways have to is unacceptable, especially nowadays were the consequences of fighting are much more serious, especially from a legal standpoint were youcan quite possibly end up in jail just for defending yourself against an attack.

So fighting does not constitute good personal protection and any goodpersonal protection strategy will be built around the notion that fighting is thevery last thing you would want to do. And if fighting is the last thing you wantto do, then it stands to reason that you should have a strategy in place toprevent that from happening.

This is were having good situational awareness skills come in, skills that goslightly beyond the common sense preventive measures of avoiding dark alleys

and hanging around dodgy areas that attract trouble. Proper awareness skillshave to be taught and worked on in order for them to be in any way effectiveor useful to us. Such skills must be practiced by the individual until theybecome second nature, just like any technique you may learn in the dojo.

The basis for good situational awareness is the colour code system, which wewill take a look at now and which provides the basis for any good personalprotection strategy.

The Colour Code SystemThe colour codes are a risk evaluation guide originally designed by Americancombat pistol instructor Jeff Cooper for the benefit of police officers working inthe field so that they could assume a state of mind that was appropriate to thevarious stages of readiness they may need in certain situations.


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Many defence gurus across the world have now adopted Coopers awareness

system and with good reason because it represents one of the best preventive

measures available to anyone today.

Below you will see the diagram I created to show the different colour codesand what they mean.

As you can see there are four different colours: white, yellow, orange and red,

with each colour representing a different state of awareness. Depending on

your circumstances and lifestyle (where you live, your hobbies, your favouritenight spots etc) what triggers each one of these will differ from person to

person. So what sends one person into code orange may not affect another

person enough to move from code yellow.

The real value of such a system is that it all but eliminates the need for making

decisions. Having to make decisions in risky situations will only block action

and ultimately force you to hesitate when you can least afford to. Your safety

depends on how quick you can spot trouble and how quickly you act from


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there. The colour codes therefore act as action triggers, freeing you from theneed to make decisions.

Lets now look at each of the colours in turn and what they mean in terms of

awareness.

Code WhiteCode white represents no awareness at all, such as when you are sleeping orday dreaming. If you happen to be awake then code white is generally not agood state to be in. Walking the streets in such a state is just asking for troublebecause you wont notice anything happening around you and the first inkling

youll get of any trouble is when its on top of you and its too late. Mostpeople remain in condition white unless a situation is overtly threatening.

Code white is the awareness state that all attackers look for ina victim.

Even when you are relaxing at home it isnt a good idea to remain in this stateof unawareness. You should always have at least some awareness about you.This doesnt mean you should be perked up like a meercat when youre

watching telly but it does mean that a small part of your mind should alwaysbe on alert.

Code YellowIn this state you are switched on and are completely aware of yoursurrounding environment so that you can pick up on any danger spots likesecluded areas and dark alleys. You should also be aware of the people in your

environment.Being in code yellow can be likened to the advanced driving technique of commentary driving were you describe everything around you as you drive-what lies in the road ahead, what turns you make, how fast you are going,what vehicles are in front or behind you, basically every part of the journey. Ina similar way you should have a running commentary in your head of whatsurrounds you as you walk. This is an excellent way to promote goodawareness skills and after a while it will all become completely subconscious soyou wont even have to think about it. Try this kind of commentary walking for


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two or three weeks, describing in your head every part of your journey as youwalk and who is around you, cultivating complete 360 degree awareness. Itmay feel odd at first, but eventually this running commentary will becomesubliminal and youll do it without even being conscious of it.

This isnt paranoia here, even though it may seem like it in the beginning if youhave never held this kind of awareness before. It is heightened observance andit will feel totally natural to you after a while.

I exist in this state of awareness almost all of the time. Its completely naturalto me now and has given me quite a lot of confidence when Im out and about,which is obvious in the way I carry myself. Carry yourself with confidence to

make yourself more of a hard target and attackers will think twice aboutmessing with you.

Remember, attackers look for easy targets and people who are switched off

to their environment.

Code OrangeCode orange is the state of threat evaluation and represents potential trouble.

When conditions change we go to code orange. As an example, you may noticea couple of drunken guys giving you a hard look from across the road. If theybegin to cross the road towards you and you sense incoming trouble then thisstate of awareness will give you the chance to evaluate the situation and weighup your options so you can decide on an appropriate course of action.

Code Red

This is the fight or flight stage of awareness. You have evaluated the situationin code orange and if a threat exists you must prepare now to either run orfight.

Always run if you have the chance. Never fight if you dont have to.

If no threat arises then drop back into code orange or yellow, but never intowhite.

After experiencing fight or flight many people completely loose theirawareness because they think the threat has passed but often times another


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threat will present itself just when you least expect it, so always stay switchedon.

Visualisation of the Colour CodesIt is most helpful to actually visualise the different colour codes in your mindwhen you move into each one. So for instance you may be walking home aloneone night and you will be in condition yellow, with a relaxed alertness, whenup ahead you spot a bunch guys, obviously drunk, rowdily coming towards you.A flash of orange would go off inside your mind, signalling the move intocondition orange so you can immediately begin to evaluate the threat. Havingdecided the gang may present potential trouble you decide to cross the road

away from them. As they near you on the other side of the road one of themshouts over at you in an aggressive manner. A flash of red goes off inside yourmind, triggering the move into code red and you quickly make the decision torun away from the group. Once youve put enough distance between you andthe group and you are sure they havent decided to follow you, a flash of yellow goes off in your mind and you drop back into a state of relaxedalertness, condition yellow.

Using visualisation methods in this way will help you override the need to thinktoo long and have to make decisions about what to do. The flash of colourinside your mind will automatically spur you into action and instinct will takeover.

Once again, this may seem a very strange practice to you at this point, butafter a short while of doing this, it will all become completely natural to youand such behaviour will become second nature, as any good self protection

technique must be to be truely effective under stressful conditions.

The Threat ThermometerThe use of the colour code system can be likened to a threat thermometer,with the mercury level rising and falling according to the level of threatpresented to you. Thats probably the simplest way to think about yourawareness levels. When the threat level is high the mercury will shoot to the

top of the thermometer and when the threat level recedes, the mercury willdrop back down again to normal level. [Use in a sidebar with diagram]


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For example, if a thug happens to spot a victim walking down the street he willobserve the victim and orient to the situation by noting that the victim lookslike easy prey because the victim is walking with head down and hands inpockets. The thug then makes the decision to act and acts on that decision byattacking the victim. The victims loop is way behind because they didnt noticethe attacker coming towards them. The victim still has to observe andorientate before they can act, at which point it is too late.

Now, if the victim had already observed the thug coming towards them (havingalready been coded up) and orientated themselves to the situation then thevictim would be in a position to make some kind of pre-emptive action thatwould completely disrupt the thugs attack and his OODA Loop, either bystriking first or running off. The thug would then be working of the back foot.

So the lesson here is to remain switched on at all times so firstly, you wont becaught unawares and secondly, so you can stay one step ahead of any attackerby getting inside their loop and disrupting their actions, thus forcing them tostart their loop again.

This is the real value of the OODA Loop because knowing how it works can

really help you keep an attacker on the back foot. By being first to act (beingpre-emptive) you are forcing an opponent to remain one step behind at alltimes. This is also why it is advantageous to have a forward drive mentality,which is something we shall discuss in detail later on in the book. For now, Ill

just say that having such a mentality means being assertive with youropponent as much as possible, which puts you in control and gives you theability to keep on disrupting your opponents loop.

When it comes to in-fight situations you can do the same thing just by hittingfirst and forcing your opponent to defend all the time, once again, gettinginside their loop and putting them on the back foot, which is what its allabout.

The OODA Loop is about information gathering and it makes sense that themore information you have, the more informed your decisions are going to be.You can quicken your own loop up by training yourself to act immediately on

certain stimuli (flinch reaction training, which well look at in anothersection)but then not every situation is the same. Not everybody who invades


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your personal space or puts a hand on you deserves a smack to the jaw.Sometimes, just by taking a little bit more time to gather information (toobserve and orient) violence can be avoided altogether.

Information OverloadCultivating good situational awareness skills is as much about learning to sortout what is relevant and what is not, what information is pertinent and what isnot. Although you should try to take in as much of your surroundings aspossible and assimilate as much information about certain situations aspossible, it is not necessary to consciously process every single detail. Let yoursubconscious do most of the work and alert you only to what is relevant and to

what is going to help you. Most of us do this anyway; learning to filter out a lotof the stuff that happens around us, otherwise our brains would collapse underthe strain of trying to process so much information at once. I say this becausewhen you start to use these skills there is a tendency to become hyper-vigilantand you feel like you have to notice everything. You dont. You only have tonotice the things that are out of place, that dont match up or the things thatmay present a possible threat. After a bit of time in using these skills your mindwill soon learn to filter out what is not relevant and alert you only to what isrelevant.

Like I say, it may seem strange at first, but after a while being switched on allthe time will become a part of your everyday thinking, which is exactly thepoint. Everything has to be second nature for it work effectively

Section 4: Avoidance

If you are to avoid violent situations then you must understand the aboveviolence dynamics. What might discourage a predator might trigger a monkeydance. You must correctly read the situation.

There are three main strategies for not being assaulted: absence; escapeand evasion; de-escalation.


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It is better to avoid than to run, better to run than to de-escalate, better to de-escalate than to fight, better to fight thanto die.

The earlier you see confrontation the more options you have. The more clearlyyou see it, the less likely you are to make a mistake.

Absence : Shit happens in predictable places. Bars, parties, places werepeople get their minds altered by drugs and alcohol.

Also places that groups of young men hang-out. Their need to establish statusand bolster their reputation and membership of the group is what drives mostof social violence.

Avoid these places if at all possible. If you have to go there then keep yourawareness about you. If something doesnt feel righthave another drink! No,sorry, just leave and go somewhere else.

Escape and Evasion: If you spot a potential threat then carry out anassertive examination, not glowering at the person but scanning and noting hisstance, possible weapons and where their hands are. This discourages thethreat and seeing you do this will send a signal to him that you know the score.Scan for accomplices. Do all this with your peripheral vision. Normally after thisthey will take you out of the victim category.

Use your intuition as it is faster than conscious thought decision making.

If you are targeted by a threat then running will most likely draw a chase

response from them.

Just dont hesitate.

Run towards safety, not away from danger.

Running may put you in panic mode so avoid panic by staying focused on whatyou are doing. If possible, run towards light and people.


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De-EscalationFully understand the different types of violence to have a chance at de-escalation and be sure to create tactics that are in keeping with your nature,based upon correct principals.

De-Escalating the Monkey DanceLike I mentioned earlier, if you get in a fight over a monkey dance then you arenot defending yourself. Monkey dances can be walked away from, you justhave to put your ego to one side.

If someone comes up and says: What are you looking at? in a challengingmanner, most people react with, Nothing! which is effectively calling theother guy a liar. This will only exacerbate the situation and things will escalatefrom there. Better to say something like: Sorry mate, didnt realise I wasstaring there. Its been a long day. How you doing?

Drag the situation out a little if possible. The longer you continue with youreasy-going (and not sarcastic or condescending) conversation, the more likelythe situation will defuse. Any adrenalin build-up in the other person willquickly dissipate as it doesnt stay in the system for very long.

Another tactic to use here is one that Rory Miller calls the Big Dog. If you cansee yourself as significantly older or more mature than the other person thenyou can play on that without being patronizing.

What you looking at?!

Whats your goal here, son? Or mate if you are around the same age.

What do you mean, whats my goal?

I mean that you sound awful angry and that youre trying to pick a fight withme hereYou dont know me, so it cant be personal and you seem too smartto pick a fight with a stranger. So whats your goal?

This raises his ego slightly by complimenting his intelligence and giving him thesubtle power of being your teacher by explaining himself.


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If you are approached by a highly adrenalized person who is splaying his armswide and just itching for a fight, any verbal probably wont work as they aretoo far gone at this stage. Best just to break eye contact, look away and leave.

As a man, this can cause some degree of psychological pain as it will feel likeyou have been backed down or even walked over. Thats just your monkeybrain kicking in. Ignore it and do whats right.

De-Escalating the Resource PredatorThe keys to de-escalating a resource/blitz predator lie in what he wants:proximity; knowledge of you as a victim; distraction; and no witnesses.

Proximity: Be aware of anyone trying to get too close, especially if it seemsthey are trying to isolate you from the herd. Dont be afraid to be rude. Makefull eye contact, put your palms up and tell them to back off. This isnt up fordebate no matter what the comeback of the predator is. Just keep saying it:Back off!

Predators will also want to gather information about you as a victim. So theywill saddle up to you and invade your space just to see how you react, testing

how you control your space. If you act overly-polite and allow them to do thisthey will take this as a sign of weakness. The tactic we just mentioned of tellingthem to back off will work here, just as long as they are a predator. If its amonkey in your presence then this will only escalate the situation, which goesback to knowing who you are dealing with.

Predators will also employ distractions at this point, asking for a light or thetime or directions so they can hit you while your preoccupied. Be aware of this.

Scan them like I mentioned earlier. Give of the vibe that you know their gameand you will go physical if you have to.

Predators also dont want witnesses around. By drawing attention to thesituation using loud verbals you are ensuring that will not be the case andpeople will spot him.


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Section 5: Managing Fear andAdrenaline in Violent Confrontations

Real violence is scary. For me to pretend otherwise would just be lies on mypart. Real fights scare the shit out of me. You would need to be a sociopath notto feel any kind of fear when someone is in front of you screaming that theyare going to kill you in the most aggressive way possible.

When I was bouncing, especially in the beginning, I found it very difficult to

push through my own fear and keep a check on my bodys reactions to theadrenaline that coursed through it when things often kicked off. The first fewtimes I saw action on the door all I wanted to do was run away, which isnatural enough, but when its your job to confront these things you cant run,you have to turn and face the music no matter what. Constantly exposingmyself to fear and adrenaline at that time got me more and more used to itand I eventually learned to manage them both.

Now Im not suggesting that you should rush out and get a job as a bouncerany time soon. Although such a job is the ultimate baptism of fire there areother ways to learn how to handle fear and adrenaline. Without a doubt, twoof the best ways that I have found are visualisation practice and educatingyourself about your own body and mind and their natural reactions to stressfulsituations.

Education especially is vital. Primary education in the form of first hand

knowledge is best. This can be done by exposing yourself to stressful and highpressure situations in your everyday life. This doesnt necessarily mean fights.It could be anything that makes your adrenal pilot light come on, like publicspeaking or confronting some other lesser fear like spiders.

Secondary education in the form of training drills and information gathering ismost helpful also in this endeavour. Either way, the object of this kind of repeated exposure is so that you eventually grow used to the feelings and are

better able to manage them. If you know what to expect from your body and


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mind then you wont be so overwhelmed when they go into overdrive if youfind yourself in trouble sometime.

All the self defence techniques in the world will not help you in a confrontation

if you end up bottling it and letting fear get the better of you. I dont say thatas a putdown or anything. Weve all been there. Most of us know how it feelsto be completely panicked by our own sense of fear and the explosion of pureadrenalin. I certainly do. Ive froze enough times in the past but I eventuallylearned to control myself and my fear.

There is no point in having a killer right cross if you dont have the nerve to useit. So the sooner you begin to address these issues in some way, the more

confident you will become and the less fear will have a grip on you. And of course the nice side benefit of this is that you will become more confident inthe rest of your life also because the process of confronting and managing yourfear is the same in all situations. Thats what the Budo concept is all about.Perfect yourself on the battlefield, learn to control yourself there, and you willalso be able to perfect yourself off the battlefield.

So lets start by doing some educating and looking at the effects of adrenaline

on the body and mind.

Adrenaline and its EffectsWeve all felt the effects of adrenaline at one time or another. Perhaps you feltit on a rollercoaster ride as you careered down a massive dip at great speed;maybe you felt it at a public speaking engagement; or maybe you felt it whensome guy was throwing you daggers outside the chippy one night. It doesntmatter what the situation is. Adrenaline in the body and mind is always felt thesame. Its that rush of powerful energy that makes your nerve endings go madand your stomach turn over. Most people interpret this as fear. It isnt. Fear isin the mind. Your reasoning process just mistakes adrenaline for fear. Theadrenal response is just your bodys way of preparing you for flight or fight.The sooner you acknowledge this difference, the better you will be able tocope in stressful situations.

When I was bouncing in the beginning, what made a real difference to me inthe way that I coped was the fact that I knew what I was feeling was not really


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fear (although I did feel fear as well) but the physical effects of adrenaline onmy body. I realised that my body was trying to help me out by making mefaster and stronger and less sensitive to pain. It was doing me a favour, inother wards.

And thats how you should look at adrenaline- as a gift from your body to helpyou out in dangerous situations.

Of course not every situation is a dangerous one. We still get fight or flightfeelings even when there is no real threat, such as when we have to speak inpublic or go for a job interview or have a confrontation with the boss at work.The mind still interprets these situations the same thanks to the hard wiring in

our brains that was created millions of years ago when we lived in caves andhad to confront dangerous animals like woolly mammoths and sabre-toothedtigers on a daily basis. The brain hasnt really evolved much since then andconsequently we often get feelings of fight or flight even when we dont reallyneed them.

But thats another matter. What I want to concentrate on here is adrenalineand fear as they pertain to dealing with violent attack (the effects are just the

same though). Take a look at the picture below to get an idea of how the bodyresponds to fight or flight.

As can see, each and every response is calculated to make you a much moreefficient and effective running or fighting machine. Anything deemedsuperfluous to these two ends, like the digestive system and your fine motorskills are practically shut down.

Dry mouth, voice quiver, bodily shaking and that sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach are the effects that are commonly felt as fear and in violentconfrontations it these responses that often cause people to freeze in terror.Once again, this is not terror you are feeling but your bodys natural responseto a perceived threat. Your body is trying to help you out here and the sooneryou realise that fact the better.

You may still be afraid. This is natural but you just have to ignore that fear anddo what you have to do to get yourself to safety, whether by running away orfighting back. As hard as it sometimes feels to do (sometimes it feels like you


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are glued to the floor) you have to really force yourself into action. Its like aleap of faith almost. You need the confidence and the courage to just go for it.Thats it. Giving in to your weakness and reluctance to act in these situationsusually results in greater mental turmoil than if you had actually went aheadand did what had to be done. You just end up beating the hell out of yourself psychologically for ages because you didnt act. In contrast, crossing thethreshold, far from being the like crossing the line into hell, is actually lesspainful and you always grow after doing so. Use that as your motivation. Everytime you step into the unknown, every time you cross the line of fear, everytime you push yourself that bit further than last time, you grow as a person insome way, however small. And thats the point, to grow and to learn.

Things to Watch Out ForA few things you should be aware of when you find yourself in an attacksituation.

Firstly you will experience tunnel vision which will allow you to completelyfocus on whoever you are fighting with. This is useful if it is just one person butwhen there are multiple attackers then such target focus becomes a hindrance

because you wont notice if anyone is sneaking up from the side or behind. Myadvice if there are multiple attackers is to step back a bit so you can take thesituation in and also just be as switched on as possible.

Secondly, voice quiver is an unwelcome side effect of adrenaline, especiallywhen you have to appear calm and unafraid when you are talking to anywould-be attackers. Unfortunately there is no easy answer to this one. My onlysuggestion is to practice putting yourself in stressful situations and then

talking. Obviously public speaking is very good for this.

Thirdly, your fine motor skills will be pretty much useless when the adrenalresponse kicks in, so any physical response you make should be kept as simpleas possible. Pressure points, wrist locks etc. are all out. Big, direct strikes arewhat you should concentrate on because thats about all youll be capable off under such circumstances. Obviously, thats were your punching comes in. If that fails, fall back on things like basic throws and sweeps and also chokes and

strangles. These will all work under pressure.


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And finally, if you are worried about feeling pain, just remember that yourbody will shut of your pain response because feeling pain might get in the wayof your survival. As an example of this, consider this anecdote from DavidLivingstone, the nineteenth-century explorer, when he was attacked by a lionin Southern Africa. He described his reaction to being grabbed by the shoulderand mauled: The shock produced a stupor similar to that felt by a mouse afterthe first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess in which there was nopain, though I was quite conscious of what was happening. It was like patientspartially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation,but feel not the knife. When the lion let go for a moment, Livingstonemanaged to escape.

Visualisation PracticeA very effective way to get yourself used to the effects of fear and adrenaline isto visualise situations that provoke them in your head. By employing yourimagination you can actually imprint your responses on to your brain just thesame as if you were actually there in real life. The mind makes no distinctionbetween what is real and what is imagined if the mental movie is vivid enough.

Visualisation has been proven time and again to work. I used to use it myself when I was bouncing, picturing scenarios in my head and then seeing myself dealing with effectively. The more you expose yourself to the feelings of fightor flight the more you will get used to them. If you imagine them vividlyenough then you will feel them just the same as if you were actually feelingthem in real life.

A Final WordWhat I hope I have impressed upon you here is the need to educate yourself asto how your body and mind reacts to violence and other stressful situations.Many people are caught unawares by their own adrenal response and areoften left in a state of shock and thus unable to act to save themselves.

Know what to expect from your body if you find yourself under threat and beaware that what you will feel will be completely natural, and that includes

feelings of fear.


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The adrenal response is a very useful gift to help us survive. Get to know it so

that it works with you instead of against you.

Section 6: The Fence Concept

Anyone with a passing interest in self defence either knows what the fence is

or has at least heard of it. The fence is one of simplest and most effective self

defence concepts there is but it is also the least understood, mainly because

you have to have used it for real or at least practiced it in the dojo to reallyunderstand how to employ it correctly. It also doesnt help that it is a difficult

thing to explain using just words, but Ill try- just for you!

What is the Fence?

The fence is a natural guard position that most of us have probably used at one

time or another (whether we realise it or not) to keep someone at bay or

communicate something with our hands. In basic terms, the fence is the act of assuming a small forty-five degree stance and stretching the arms out in frontof you so as to maintain a gap between you and whoever is standing in front of

you. From a physical point of view, thats it in a nutshell.

You may have seen bouncers or security workers like the police control people

in this way. Like I say, its a natural position to adopt when you dont want


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someone to invade your personal space and in that sense it is certainly nothingnew. Its just something most people do instinctively. Even talking with yourhands is a form of fence.

It was until the nineties, when Geoff Thompson took what most people donaturally and gave it a name, conceptualising and elaborating on it in theprocess, that the fence became a fully fledged self protection technique. Hemade it about more than just putting your arms out in front of you. He made ita psychological and physical defence system that could be used to subtlycontrol and manipulate any opponent.

Since then there is hardly a self defence practitioner in the world today that

doesnt use or practice the fence in one form or another. It is now widelyacknowledged as being one of the most useful and important self defencetechniques there is.

But as I mentioned before, sometimes the concept gets lost or muddled in thetranslation which has resulted in some people seeing the fence as just anotherkarate stance to fall into when someone tries to attack them. The fence is farmore than just a stance, as we shall now see.

Types of FenceAs Im now going to explain, there are actually four different variations on thefence. Which type of fence you use will depend on the circumstances you findyourself in or the type of person you are up against. So lets take a look at eachin turn.

The Passive FenceThe passive fence, as you can probably guess by its title, is not meant to beaggressive in any way. A passive fence is adopted when you are just talking tosomeone. In self protection terms, a passive fence position can be adoptedbefore things get really heated between you and a potential attacker. Like Isay, youre just talking calmly so you dont want to appear aggressive byputting your arms out in front of you because at this delicate stage of the gamethings could go either way so you wont want to antagonise whoever youre

talking too. So the hands are kept in front of the body in a natural position,


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perhaps as if you are playing with the ring on your finger or the calluses onyour palm as in the picture below. This is a non-threatening stance but it willstill allow you to act quickly if things suddenly take a turn for the worse.

The Controlling FenceThis fence is used when a would-be attacker tries to invade your personalspace and perhaps tries to have a go. You simply step back into a small forty-five degree stance and put your hands out in front of you to control the gapbetween you and the other person. Normally you would back this up withsome kind of verbal warning to stay back. The pictures below show thecontrolling fence in action.

When you step into this position it is make or break time and you must decideon a course of action that is going to put an end to the situation.

At this point, I would always recommend that you try and escape the situationif possible. You wont be doing yourself any favours by hanging around.However, I do realise that it is not always possible to escape a situation forwhatever reason, which means you have to take some other form of action, aswe shall see in a moment. Before we go any further though, a quick word online-ups.

The Line-UpThe line-up is when you line your opponent up for a pre-emptive strike andthere are two schools of thought on how you should do this. The first way is bystepping back into a small forty-five degree stance while placing the lead handout in front of you to control the gap, leaving the other hand free to strike. The

only problem with this is that if you are too obvious about it then youropponent will know that you are planning to strike and you will loose theelement of surprise. To prevent this from happening you combine yourmovements with some form of dialogue, for instance telling him you dontwant any trouble while surreptitiously stepping back at the same time. If youdistract him with your words in this way, he wont notice you getting intoposition.


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The other way to line up an opponent is to simply maintain your square-onstance, or your conversation stance as it is sometimes known. With nomovement to speak of you dont have to worry about alerting your opponentto your intentions. The only drawback here is that it is harder to strike fromthis position. However, this disadvantage can be overcome by learning to strikewith power from a square stance. This can be done in the dojo.

To my mind the square stance is better because it gives nothing away but youreally have to practice your strikes from this position in order to make themeffective enough to get a KO (knockout).

In both cases, always remember to keep your hands open in a submissive

position and dont try to move forward towards your opponent, otherwise hewill just try to grab your wrists because he thinks you are trying to control him.Having said that you may put your hands on someone if they are not yet fullyadrenalized. I do this all the time when Im bouncing, to lead people away orback them off. Sometimes they want you to back them away if it helps themsave face in front of their mates (if you broke up a fight).

If he moves towards you simply move back with him, giving him the impression

that he is in control. Move in a circular motion as this way you have less chanceof falling over something you cant see. Also, moving around your opponentgives you the chance to survey your background and check if he has any mateswho may pose a problem. It also takes away his grounding, forcing him tomove with you, which means he will find it harder to strike properly.

Having said that you may put your hands on someone if they are not yet fullyadrenalized. I do this all the time when Im bouncing, to lead people away or

back them off. Sometimes they want you to back them away if it helps themsave face in front of their mates (if you broke up a fight).

Adrenaline Switches

Depending on the situation and the type of person you think you are upagainst you may choose to manipulate your opponent by turning hisadrenaline either on or off. Or in other terms, you may choose to psych himout or knock him out.


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Switching Adrenaline OnIf you sense that it might be possible to psych out your attacker, maybebecause he seems nervous or unsure of himself and you sense you can get himto loose his bottle and abort the attack, then you have switch his adrenalineon. I say switch it on, what I really mean is that you will give a second or thirdkick of adrenaline because he will already be feeling adrenaline. What we wantto do is give him a big adrenal dump that his reasoning process will mistake forfear and will cause him to freeze up.

There are three main ways of switching on an opponents adrenalin. The firstway is by touching them, usually by shoving them back slightly. As soon as youtouch him his brain will signal danger and send a message to his adrenal glandwhich will cause him to feel fear and then the freeze syndrome.

The second way is by staring him down and grimacing. Hold him in a hard stareand he will know that you mean business which will only add to his fear. It ispossible to switch someones adrenaline on just by staring alone. A few timeswhen I was working the door Id be inside the club and Id get an adrenalinerush because someone was staring me down from a distance. They effectivelyswitched on my adrenaline from across the room.

The third way is by using the voice. So you would say to him, You wanna gothen, do you? or Right, shift now or you are down!. The more malice andaggression you have in your voice the better.

Of course the best way to switch your opponents adrenaline on and make himloose his bottle is by combining all three of the methods just mentioned. Shovehim back, talk aggressively to him and stare him down. Your whole demeanour

should scream that you mean business and that you are too much to handlefor him. The more intense you can come across the better. He should feel likehe has bitten of more than he can chew and the adrenaline that he is mistakingfor fear should make him back off away from you.

Sometimes this method of switching on an opponents adrenaline is known asthe aggressive fence technique. It can also be backed up by a technique calledballooning, were you stalk back and forth in front of your opponent, giving him

the impression that he is being stalked by a wild animal. This particular fear isdeeply subconscious and is a left over from the days when we used to get


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stalked by wild animals millions of years ago. It still exists in the reptilian partof our brains. Ballooning just plays on that.

A further tactic we can adopt is by being demonstrative. A good example of

this tactic is the story of the old Japanese master who, when confronted bythree thugs who demanded his wallet, threw the wallet on the ground in frontof him and said, Im prepared to die for that wallet. Are you? The three thugsran off.

The whole point of trying to psych out an opponent is so you dont have tofight and to give both of you an honourable exit. In order for it to work,however, you really have to act it and be convincing in your role. Even then,

this strategy will not always work. A lot of time you will be up against someonewho is a skilled street fighter and isnt easily backed down or youll be upagainst someone who is full of drink or drugs and all the posturing in the worldwont matter to them, in which case you will have adopt a different strategy,that of taking a submissive stance and switching his adrenaline off.

Switching Adrenaline OffIf you decide to switch your opponents adrenaline on its because you dontwant to fight. If you decide to switch it off however, taking the disarmingapproach, its because you have decided to fight for whatever reason, maybebecause you have two or three opponents in front of you.

Whatever the reason for doing it, the method is always the same: appear assubmissive as possible to trick your opponent into thinking that he has backedyou down and thus won the fight before it has even begun. His brain will tellhim that there is no danger and it will send a message to his adrenal gland tokill the response.

His adrenaline is a big edge for him, so you want to take thatedge away from him.

By constantly telling him that you dont want any trouble and by appearingsubmissive and willing to bend to his will, you are leading him into a false senseof security. If its someone after your wallet then make a show of asking him

how much he wants. The point of all this is to give him loads of confidence. The


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more confident he feels the more switched off he will become. Again, youreally have to act the role fully in order to be convincing.

Once youve made a show of being submissive and youve switched off his

adrenaline, you then have to line him up for a pre-emptive strike. Itsimportant to remember that he isnt going to walk away from you once hethinks he has you, so you have to put him down before he attacks you first.

A great way to distract an opponent before you strike them is to ask them aquestion to engage their brain. Ask him a question that he has to answer. Askhim why he is picking on you. Or even better, ask him something more leftfieldlike how did United do in the football today. He wont be expecting this type of

question and it will automatically engage his brain will he tries to think of answer. Even if he doesnt answer you, the effect is the same because its aninvoluntary process. Once youve asked the question, the time to strike is asplit second later because you want to give it time for the question to sink in.Striking straight away is too soon because his brain wont be fully engaged yet.Give it a split second and then strike. He wont even see it coming.

The Psychological FenceThe impression I dont want you to get here is that the fence is just a matter of sticking your arms out to keep somebody back. There are also importantpsychological aspects to consider as well.

Your psychological fence should be up at all times and this is done by staying ina code yellow state of awareness, like we talked about in an earlier chapter.

If you happen to run into a threat then your psychological fence should be

intensified and you should draw a line and determine that when that line iscrossed, it is time to take action. It is up to you to determine were that lineshould be drawn. If for instance, you adopt a controlling fence against anattacker, how long are you going to wait before taking some kind of decisiveaction? You must decide were the line is drawn and when it is crossed. Oncethat line is crossed then you dont hesitate- you give your attacker all youvegot. If you have the right mindset, like we talked about in a previous section,then this shouldnt be a problem.


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Further to that, I always maintain when Im teaching the fence to people thatin a psychological sense, you are effectively asserting yourself when you standup to an aggressor. Most predators have set behaviour patterns when it comesto violence and intimidation. When they do their thing on their victims theyexpect their victim to act in a certain way, to cower and be afraid. By taking aconfident stance and gait you are breaking that pattern and doing the exactopposite of what the Threat expects you to do. This will throw the Threatsomewhat and sometimes this is enough to diffuse the situation. The Threatwill see you as too much trouble and move on to someone who is easierhandled.

So when you adopt the fence position, be sure to fully project your intentions.Your behaviour should communicate to the Threat that you dont want anytrouble, but if you have to, you will do him serious damage.

Further Thoughts on the FenceAfter reading all of that you would be forgiven for thinking that the fence hasto be done a certain way in order for it to be effective, which is true to anextent. But you also have to realise that there are no hard and fast rules here.

Its all about what you feel comfortable doing. Use the fence in the way thatmost suits you. Do what feels natural to you while trying to stick to the basicprinciples.

Remember that the fence is about controlling that gap and doing so in a waythat comes across as non-threatening and still allows you to get into a goodattack position. Maintain those three elements and you should fine.

Section 7: Self Protection and NLP

NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming is something that I have had a long-

standing interest in because it is essentially, the science of personaldevelopment and it contains many useful ideas and workable techniques for to


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improve oneself in any area you can think of. Excellence is the goal of NLP,excellence in everything from work, to sport, to relationships to personaldevelopment and this is done by means of changing essentially how we think,or more specifically, the way we think and interpret information. It is reallyabout optimising our thought processes to achieve optimum results, oroutcomes to use the NLP term. The vast majority of the work done on NLP hascome from a therapy standpoint (i.e. teaching people how to improvethemselves etc.) and so you would be hard pushed to find any material thatrelates specifically to martial arts or self protection.

Like any new technology however, the military were not long in getting in onthe act to see what it could do for them (NLP creator Richard Bandler actuallyworked with them on this, along with Tony Robbins) and they quickly foundthat it was very useful for training in operatives to work in the field. Using NLP,instructors were able to vastly improve the rate of learning in things like pistolshooting (were results were most startling). It also enabled them to model thethinking processes of the top operatives and use the information gained tohelp other less talented operatives get the same results in super-quick time.They called this project the Jedi Project after George Lucass legendary Jedi

from the movie Star Wars .

Although there is still no widely published material pertaining to NLP and self protection/martial arts, certain figures within the self protection/security field,specifically Marcus Wynne and Dennis Martin, have worked for many years ondesigning techniques to improve performance in these areas and it is fromthere work that Ill now be drawing from.

What follows is pretty bleeding edge stuff and goes far beyond anyconventional training methods currently practiced by most self protectionpractitioners at the present time. It is easy to dismiss these techniques as beingtoo fantastic to be true because of how effective they are and because of howquickly they actually work. A lot of testing has been done on these techniqueshowever, and a lot of time, money and effort have been put into doing so, withthe results well quantified. Dont forget that these techniques have beentested by military and security personnel, people whose very lives depend on

effective training, so the techniques would not be used if they didnt work. Ivealso started to road test these techniques myself and so far the results have


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been very positive. There is still a lot of work that I need to do in order to makethe most of the techniques but Im happy with the results Ive gotten so far.Try them out for yourself and see what you think. When you get some results,let me know. Id be very interested to hear about them.

Emotional ContentAnyone who has seen Enter the Dragon will remember Bruce Lee lecturing hisstudent at the beginning of the movie about striking with emotional content.Well thats one of the things the Jedi Project worked on with NLP, bringingemotional content- or the optimum state for combat- into training. Thetechniques of NLP enabled those on the project to anchor that so that they had

access to the desired mental state at any time. The anchoring technique addsmore emotional content which gives more focus to the effectiveness andintensity of a given technique.

What NLP can specifically provide to the martial artist and the self protectionist is a more effective tool for that person to re-create, emotionallyanchor, and to access those powerful emotional states in a self-defence, or,fighting scenario. So rather than have to go through years of training or years

of meditation before finding this state, NLP enables one to install that statevery quickly and easily. It is a shortcut to effective and immediate results interms of combat congruence; that ability to bring all of your resources,physical, emotional, spiritual and mental to bear on the resolution of yourcombative problem.

The following is a technique taken directly from the Jedi Project and it isdesigned to accelerate performance and increase the retention of your fighting

skills by putting you into the optimum combative state while you train. In astudy of five thousand students after completing a particular training course itwas found that he retention of the skills learned (without any subsequentpractice!) was almost as high after five years as immediately after the trainingcourse. This was then compared to traditional martial arts instruction, wherethere was a rapid fall-off in the skill retention when regular training ceased.The key element here was anchoring those skills to the appropriate state,which is what we are going to do now.


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The Combat AnchorStrike a Thai pad or heavy bag in the way you normally would in training. Nowstop.

Take a moment and visualize something that would make you fighting mad-maybe someone hurting your partner or child.

Make that picture big and bright; add the sounds of someone you love in painor fear. Take the feeling that arouses in you and double it. Then double itagain.

Now hit that pad as though it is the person you visualize hurting your lovedones.

Did you notice a difference in the power of your strike and how you feelstriking?

You can anchor that state by clenching your fist and visualising something inyour head that represents the state to you just before it reaches peak

intensity. Also say the word combat ( or any other relevant word) to yourself.All three things will anchor the state to you so that when you need to access itagain you just clench your fist while at the same time seeing the picture in yourhead and saying the word combat to yourself. You may need to repeat thiswhole process several times so the anchor takes hold.

This technique will radically increase the intensity of your workouts and you

will probably find yourself becoming fatigued and exhausted much quickerthan before because you are putting more of yourself into the training. Icertainly found this to be the case. Time will tell if the technique aids in skillretention, though it is my feeling at this time that it does, simply because theintense state in which the techniques are applied will naturally make more of an impression on the brain and the neural pathways will be cut deeper thanthey would be in just a normal state. Try it for yourself and see what you think.

I must point out here that you cant have any doubt or uncertainty in yourmind as to whether the technique will work or not. If you do, then you will just


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end up anchoring these feelings and the power of the technique will be lost. Sowhen you anchor the state, make sure you believe it.

Section 9: Further Resources

Books

Mediations on Violence by Rory Miller

Facing Violence by Rory Miller

Dead or Alive by Geoff Thompson

Websites

On Guard Combat Systems ( www.onguardcombatsystems.com )

Urban Combatives ( www.urbancombatives.com )

Chiron Training-Rory Miller ( www.chirontraining.com )

Senshido ( www.senshido.com )

Complete Self Protection ( www.completeselfprotection.com )

Street Fight Secrets ( www.streetfightsecrets.com )

Marc McYoung ( www.nononsenseselfdefense.com )


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Documents

Self Protection Soft Skills