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Paul_L
Paul_L's picture
Attributes for successful self defence

I was looking at an old self defence manual the other day and the moves presented in the book just seemed to be quite ridiculous. While we do train self defence at our club I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any means. 

This has got to be my favourite from the book. Maybe it could work in some situations.

Supposedly an escape from a bear hug, but looks more like an escape from a gentle spooning at the bus stop to me. I call this one Assume The Position. When we have drilled bear hug escapes we realised that many techniques seem to rely on your attacker wrapping their arms around your upper arms. If this happens you have plenty of strength in the upper portion of your arms allowing you to drop your weight and throw your arms up. However, more often that not when we stepped it up a gear we naturally grabbed each other by wrapping our arms much lower, just above the defenders elbows. The only reliable way we found to escape was to distract with a foot stomp or some wild kicking while grabbing the attackers little finger and pulling it in a direction little fingers don't want to go in.

This has me wondering what would be effective in a real, very choatic situation. Would medicore or next to useless defences work if you applied them with enough outright aggression? Would good technique with less agression be better? If there were mutiple attackers would defending yourself in a more measured way be seen as a challenge to be accepted by the next attacker or would opening a can-o-whopass on the first guy be more of a deterrent? 

There was a news story a while back about a man who dragged a woman into an alley to attack her. The woman had no self defence training but she just flipped the switch and relentlessly punch, kicked, screamed and bit. She even got her keys out of her pocket and repeatedly stabbed him in the head and face with them until he let go and she could escape. It worked for her in that particular situation but would such a method be a good thing to suggest to other people?

Wastelander
Wastelander's picture

Relentless aggression makes up for a lot, when it comes to self defense. As to bear hugs, in particular, we generally have two approaches--one for the grip being above the elbows, and one for the grip being below the elbows. In both cases, you have to drop your center of gravity, because bear hugs are typically used to either pick you up and slam you, or drag you somewhere. Our techniques use mechanical escape methods (dropping center of gravity, using leverage to loosen the grip, etc.) as well as percussive techniques (stomps, elbows, etc.), because we would rather not rely on just one of the two.

Paul_L
Paul_L's picture

Thanks Noah,

I'm interested if without getting too one-size-fits-all is there general principles for if it came to physical confrontation? For example for a 5'4" 8 1/2 stone person being attacked by a 6'4" 18 stone person can you boil it down to a few simple things such as pre-emptively be agressive and target the eyes, testicals and little fingers, rather than thinking about techniques and reactions?

Wastelander
Wastelander's picture

Paul_L wrote:

Thanks Noah,

I'm interested if without getting too one-size-fits-all is there general principles for if it came to physical confrontation? For example for a 5'4" 8 1/2 stone person being attacked by a 6'4" 18 stone person can you boil it down to a few simple things such as pre-emptively be agressive and target the eyes, testicals and little fingers, rather than thinking about techniques and reactions?

Gross motor movements, getting off-line of the attack, and doing as much damage as you can to vulnerable targets (eyes, throat, groin, and knees are good go-tos for most), pre-emptively where appropriate. There are plenty of other principles that should be addressed, but they tend to be more context-specific. I find that appropriate training will allow you to react and adjust as necessary using the principles you have drilled without thinking about techniques.

Chikara Andrew
Chikara Andrew's picture

As with a lot of escapes from strangles and holds etc. accepting that you have somehow ended up in that position, ie. all other actions etc failed, then as in any self defence situation anything goes.

I always say to people that before attempting to "escape" some sort of loosener should be delivered, be it a foot stomp, groin kicks, elbows (against strangulations as opposed to bear hug), in fact any kind of strike that might break their grip or balance even slightly.

davidom
davidom's picture

The way I see this kind of attack is very similar to one comment that was made. It's a grab that's normally used against smaller people in order to lift them up or drag them somewhere. So I personally believe there is a main priority of acting against such action. One response that Krav Maga gives to this is to wrap or hook on of the legs around the agressor's legs, while using the hands and the other leg to stomp, elbow or otherwise hit the agressor. If the grab is performed under the arms then a turning motion and elbow to the face is most efective, if the arms are trapped then moving the hips slightly to the side opens up the opponent's groin to attack.

Similarly, I have seen Patrick McCarthy deal with this problem in a similar fashion, using a kind of envolving motion with one leg then hooking under our own leg, which most of the time thwarts the first lifting attemp which is just what we need to start hitting, stopming and so on. What is funny about that is that if you remove the agressor, then the position you end up is virtually a tsuru ashi dachi.

One key thing in my opinion about this is that it breaks the expectations of the agressor in that he or she expects to lift the victim and one natural reaction to this is try to reposition the hands or adjust the grab which gives us time to proceed with our attack, albeit just a fraction of a second.

The only situation where the kind of action you show in the pics might be of any use, in my humble opinion of course, is not a bear grab but an attack grabbing both wrists from behind. By moving backwards and throwing the hands in front of you, it may be possible to free from the grip, thus allowing further actions. However I am unsure whether that would be the best option in that situation. 

Sorry for the long comment! yes