Self Defense Tactics

The Top Seven Self Defense Tactics For People Who Are Sick and Tired of Being Victims

A self defense tactic is not to be confused with a technique or a style. In the words of General George Patton, "Use steamroller strategy -- that is to say, make up your mind on the course and direction of action, and stick to it. But in tactics, do not steamroller. Attack weakness. Hold them by the nose and kick them in the pants."

Self defense strategy should be single-minded: get away at all costs. That is the course and direction of your action, and it should be your single overwhelming goal whenever you are attacked. But in tactics -- when deciding moment-to-moment what actions will accomplish that goal most effectively -- you must frequently take steps that don't intuitively seem to further your strategic goal. That's what Patton meant when he said "in tactics, do not steamroller." You can't just mindlessly run and keep running no matter what your attacker does to you. That's steamroller tactics, and it's failure.

Instead, you have to attack weakness. If they're slow and unarmed, you can run. If they're fast and unarmed, but you have a weapon, use it! If you've taken the time to learn martial arts or military self defense -- and your opponent looks unskilled -- take a stand, incapacitate him, and then run knowing that he can't follow. In fact, you can make a simple checklist of self defense tactics to exploit that don't rely on a particular style or technique, but can be used by anyone.

1) RUN! Run fast, run straight, and try to outpace them. If you can, you've succeeded.
2) KEEP RUNNING! Run through crowds, around corners, anything to put a visual barrier between you and them. If you can move in a way they can't anticipate, you've succeeded.
3) HIDE! Even if they do anticipate your choice of avenues, you can still put yourself in a place they can't easily find you. If they give up and go home, you've succeeded.
4) SURPRISE! If they're about to find you, don't let them -- get the drop on them instead. Grab whatever you can find to use as a weapon, and attack like a banshee, screaming your anger and putting the 'fight' part of 'fight or flight' to good use. If you can break down their morale and scare them off, you've succeeded.
5) INJURE! If they don't run, then use whatever you've got on hand, and injure them as severely as you can in the shortest amount of time. This is the part where having taken the opportunity to learn martial arts earlier would be most helpful, but even if you haven't, just remember the shortlist of most vulnerable places on the body: eyes, throat, solar plexus, testicles, knees, fingers, and feet, in that order. Attack whichever you can reach as powerfully as you can, as fast as you can. If you can convince them that you're not worth pursuing, you've succeeded.
6) INJURE MORE! If they keep coming even after you've broken a finger or clawed an eye to bleeding, you have to double down, because by now, they're going to kill you if you fail. At this point, don't even think about anything except drawing as much blood -- literally -- as possible. Rip off their ears, find a sharp whatever and stab whatever body part you can reach, just be as bloodthirsty and vicious as you can. Before, you were trying to convince them that you weren't worth it -- now, you're trying to scare the HELL out of them. If they back off, chase them. Don't give them the chance to regroup. If they scatter completely, you've succeeded.
7) PLAY DEAD. If your attackers follow you even past the point of sanity and are willing to risk their lives to hurt you, the best thing you can do is take the first attack they offer, and go limp. Pretend to be unconscious. At that point, it's best to just let them do whatever they're going to do, and hope you survive. It's amazing how much pain and indignity you can fake unconsciousness through when it means making it back to your friends and family in the morning.

This simple list of military self defense tactics is essentially a tool to help you exploit the most common weaknesses of criminals. They don't like to chase, to get scared, or to get hurt. They want an easy victim, not one who has taken the time to learn self defense. If you're ever the victim of an attack, use the self defense tactics here, and you'll maximize your chance of living through the nightmare.

Self Defense DVD

Social Anxiety Disorder and the Self Defense DVD

Lots of so-called 'experts' are prone to disrespecting the process of learning to protect yourself from a self defense DVD, claiming that in-class martial arts training or military hand to hand combat training are the only 'real' ways to learn self defense. Of course, there are a lot of issues with self defense training from a DVD, but they have a distinct place.

Classes, unless you can find a master willing to teach you and you alone, lack privacy. For people with social anxiety disorder -- the kind of people who have mannerisms that make criminals prone to targeting them -- this can make learning in a class particularly difficult. Similarly, people who simply don't want to be judged by observers might not be able to develop the necessary self-assurance and discipline in a group environment. For these people, a self defense DVD can provide an appropriate level of martial arts training without the need for a crowd.

It's becoming common for modern colleges to offer online courses to provide for the people who cannot handle the interpersonal pressure of being in class. In much the same way, a self defense DVD can be used in the privacy of your living room, giving people with social anxiety disorder and similar diseases the opportunity to practice potentially life-saving skills that have the added benefit of boosting their confidence.

By creating an engaging atmosphere within a comfortable space, a self defense DVD removes all of the distractions that public classes are prone to, from taunting peers to laughing onlookers. And with the ability to skip back and forth to any part of the martial arts training that you feel you need to review, a DVD really offers a lot of course customization that you can't get from a group class.

There are two things you need if you're learning from a self defense DVD: good discipline and a partner. Your partner can be someone that you are already comfortable with, who won't trigger your anxiety, as long as they're interested in practicing with you. The discipline is necessary because unless you create it, there is no schedule -- no mandatory time that you must set aside to train. That can lead to a rapid breakdown of training, making it almost impossible to get started once the slacking has set in.

The partner is necessary because there's simply no substitute for a target that has the weight and feel of a real human being. Of course, you don't want to actually hurt your partner, so practicing full-speed and full-force is out -- but even at half-speed and almost no power, the simple presence of someone actually receiving your attacks amplifies the effect of training a hundredfold; it's practically the only way to really learn self defense.

It's a curious thing that can happen when someone with social anxiety disorder has the discipline (and a willing enough partner) to follow through with martial arts techniques from a self defense DVD. It doesn't happen for everyone, but there are those people who gain such a sensation of confidence -- even competence -- from pursuing such training that they learn how little of an actual threat most other people pose to them. It can help someone that is already undergoing therapy to have a new and powerful tool to overcome the disease.

So, if the thought of going to a group self defense class gives you the willies, be secure in the knowledge that a self defense DVD can offer you a perfectly valid and functional alternative that might even help you in more ways than one.

Self Defence Training

What is Your Self Defense Training Missing?

The first thing that anyone notices when they start to look into self defense training is that there are so many different schools, styles, and techniques that it's almost impossible to pick one on any kind of a knowledgeable basis. You might feel an intuitive draw to something like the martial arts styles of Aikido or the hand to hand combat training of MCMAP, but you can't learn enough to make the choice from a place of understanding.

Most people just go to whatever class is closest, cheapest, or has the flashiest-sounding name.

The truth is very disappointing to many would-be ninja: no matter what they say, there is no comprehensive self defense system. No one teacher -- in fact, no set of teachers, no matter how large, can teach you everything you need to know about self defense.

There are a lot of ways of categorizing the various kind of self defense training as well. Some people who learn martial arts break them into the classic Eastern set (hard, hard/soft, and soft), but even that primarily addresses only the striking arts. A better way to break them down might be into a two-by-two grid with striking and grappling as the columns and aggressive and receptive as the rows.

That gives you a very basic but essentially complete framework for your hand to hand combat training: you should learn a little bit about each section. Hard striking like boxing or Thai kickboxing, soft striking like T'ai Chi Chuan or Xingyiquan, hard grappling like Krav Maga or Sabmo, and soft grappling like Judo or Aikido -- each has a relevant application to self defense training. Whatever training you're currently taking, it is almost certainly not covering all four bases.

However, there is an even more basic, and very rarely used, method of classifying self defense techniques, based not on what actions you take to subdue the enemy, but how you respond to the enemy's actions. In any scenario in which you are the defender, before you take action yourself, you must first react to an attack. There are only four basic ways to do this.

• You can block, rather than evade, the attack. This puts you into a "taking charge" stance, and you must respond with aggression against his vulnerabilities to capitalize on your situation.
• You can back away, reducing his attacking options but also reducing yours as well. Unless you have a significant reach advantage, your only option is to attack the limb or weapon that you just evaded -- but that's often a good strategy regardless.
• You can move 'inside' the attack, stepping toward your opponent on the inner side of his attacking limb. This can open up a myriad of attack options, but it can also leave you vulnerable if your opponent is skilled in zero-range combat.
• You can move 'outside' of the attack, stepping at a 45-degree angle along the outside of your opponent's attacking limb. This opens up fewer striking options, but is an excellent technique for grapplers and leaves him very few options for a follow-up attack.

Few if any self defense training courses really capitalize on these split-seconds, right as you react to an attack. Pay careful attention to which are the most common in your own self defense training, and you might find a profound insight into what your training is missing.

Self Defense

The Very Different Purposes of Self Defense and the Martial Arts Styles of the East

There are two very different styles of combat taught across America -- the straightforward self defense schools that teach focus under pressure and incapacitation maneuvers, and the more spiritually advanced martial arts styles that teach philosophy and self-control in addition to complex physical techniques. Not that either one is definitively superior to the other, just that they're used for different things.

If you're worried that someone is after you, or that you're likely to get mugged, you want to study self defense, not martial arts techniques. The flying kicks of Tae Kwon Do won't serve you in a narrow alley, and the do-no-harm philosophy of Aikido won't keep a persistent attacker down for very long. Moreover, martial arts styles tend toward complex movements that require a very clear head -- in battle, the focus that serves so well in the dojo is likely to be completely absent, making those complex movements a distant memory.

On the other hand, if what you want is a fitness regimen that will lead you to a better understanding of yourself and the way you interact with other people and the world, martial arts excel. Krav Maga cannot teach you how to push yourself beyond your own limits through extraordinary training techniques, and there is little in Sambo that will lead you down a path of meditative introspection. Self defense classes, whether life on on a self defense video, will rarely encourage you to become flexible or develop excellent cardiovascular health -- they're all about what works, not what's best for you as a person.

Self defense instructors -- especially the ultra-aggressive types you see on a self defense DVD -- always fall back to the euphemism of 'the street'. If it doesn't work on 'the street', who cares? Simple, classic motions that are easy to pull off under stress and have maximum impact on the opponent are the name of the game. The attackers on 'the street' don't follow rules -- they're bigger than you, meaner than you, better armed than you, and there are more of them than there are of you. If you can't put them down in one or two seconds apiece, you're going to get stabbed.

Martial arts instructors consistently stress that your biggest competition is 'the self'. You must constantly push yourself to outperform your previous best. You have to strive to do your best not just in the dojo, but in every aspect of your life. Everything you do is a form of competition, even if only to compete with your own last performance of the same act. It doesn't matter if you win a kumite -- what matters is if you really gave it everything you have.

The wisdom of studying both at once is questionable, as you run the risk of 'confusing' your muscle memory -- but most certainly, once you've mastered the basics of one, it's well worth your time to start the other. In short, there are excellent reasons to study both self defense and one of the many martial arts styles -- whichever fits your personality the best.

Self Defense Techniques

When Self Defense Techniques Are Appropriate

The improper or ill-timed use of self defense techniques have resulted in thousands of lawsuits across the US and the UK. 'Self defense' is actually something of a misnomer, because in reality any technique that can be used to defend yourself can also be used as an attack. Because of that, it's often up to a jury to decide whether a given strike or lock was actually self defense or was, in reality, an unnecessary aggressive action.

Legal definitions of justifiable self defense exist in every culture and every country, but they vary widely between those cultures and countries. In general, you must be able to prove that your physical actions were strictly intended to save you or another person from death, serious injury, or grievous property damage. If you can't prove that -- and there have been cases of people attacking robbers in their own home who couldn't -- your actions might be interpreted as a crime .

Learning self defense consists of three areas: self defense techniques, self defense tactics, and self defense training. Techniques are movements such as strikes and locks and throws. Tactics are mental activities such as sitting with your back to a wall that are designed to minimize the chance of an attack. Training is the method with which you make techniques and tactics an innate and everyday part of your life.

In order to be fully prepared for a physical attack, you have to implement all three areas in balance. Knowing the techniques and tactics without training them into your muscle memory is a waste of time. Knowing the tactics and training your mind to use them is good, but it's pointless to be aware of an attack if you can't do anything about it. And training endlessly in techniques is perfectly silly if you're unaware and get caught off guard and taken out before you can implement them.

There is something of a desire to prove your abilities once you start learning self defense tactics. 'How will I know if this is actually working if I don't get attacked,' the trainee thinks. This is especially true of those who choose to learn from a martial arts DVD rather than a live teacher. That can lead to improper use of self defense techniques, as the trainee becomes belligerent, attempting to provoke a fight in order to test themselves and the martial arts DVD.

That is the first step down a long slope that can easily end in jail time or million-dollar lawsuits. It is imperative to always keep in mind that the first goal of any system of self defense is to avoid combat, not win fights. The chief difference between self defense and asskicking is in intent and awareness.

As mentioned, they can be legally very difficult to discern, but in essence, if your goal is to incapacitate someone and thus keep them from harming someone or some property, you're in the right. The instant you cross over and let emotions get the best of you -- the moment you strike an unnecessary blow out of anger or fear -- you are no longer defending yourself. That's why mental training is just as much a part of self defense as physical self defense techniques are.