How to Use Expandable Batons for Self-Defense

A light-weight expandable baton may be a great intermediate force level defensive tool for you to have in a public environment if it's legal or to have staged in your workplace or around your home for a personal defense situation. Now, obviously this is a very compact, and trust me it's a very light-weight version of an expandable baton. Of course you might've seen police officers with much larger and even heavier expandable batons, or you might think of the old billy club or nightstick type defensive tool or in an escrima of stick, something like that, if you're used to a martial arts setting. And that's really what this is. Its a lighter weight, obviously not as strong, not as heavy, not as potent version of that tool, but its one that can be carried with you virtually anywhere. You can hook it on a pocket, you can put it on a cargo pocket, you can put it in your back pocket. You could even carry it in center line. Somewhere inside of your waistline. And it would be completely concealed under an untucked shirt or you could just carry it around like this with just a little bit of your shirt overlapping. And it probably wouldn't even get noticed. And of course center line means it can be reached by either hand. Now, most people are going to use a defensive baton or any type of defensive stick in their strong hand. You're gonna be more coordinated. Obviously you'll have more strength for applied force as well. Now, this, as I said is an intermediate level force tool. It's obviously not a firearm, although certainly strikes to the head or to the throat area could be lethal with a heavy baton or with a hard enough strike. So you wanna keep that in mind. Depending on how you use this tool, it could create a death situation. It could be considered a use of lethal force and you always wanna make sure that you're justified in whatever level of force you need to use. Now I've been trained as an expandable baton instructor. Of course I've received a lot of training as a student with an expandable baton and other types of sticks. And we are often taught to strike areas that are not going to be lethal. Things like the major muscle groups up the top of the arm, hands if someone's reaching out towards you, maybe leg strikes to disable or to cause enough discomfort or pain to keep someone from being interested in hurting you. But we wanna try to avoid areas like the head and the throat or the groin where permanent damage can be caused and including, up to and including death. If you think about how to use an expandable baton, one of the things you're gonna have to be aware of is, you're gonna need some space. You're gonna wanna have a very quick, a very flagrant action as you deploy this baton to get it to expand. Now, if it's short like this, I can still use it to jab. I could use it as a hammer fist kind of extended to hit into someone to cause more pain. I could use it as a cue baton on pressure points but ultimately if I want the advantage that I get from the leverage of a true baton and the extended reach of a true baton, then when I pull it, let's say out of my back pocket, I wanna understand how to deploy it quickly with a flip of the wrist so that it comes open and then I can stage it here next to my head so that I can strike either quick, short blows or I can expand out and get longer strikes with more power as I come in towards the bad guy. Of course I can strike across this way. I bring it back here and I can come back across the front and strike. I could also use this baton to block. I could use it to block a strike. I could use it to defend myself as well. I could reverse it down along my forearm and use it to accentuate any kind of a strike with my forearm or again, use this as a blocking surface if someone were trying to hurt me. So the expandable baton, especially a light-weight one that you can carry everywhere, should be considered as an intermediate level force option. When and where legal. You may also consider this as an alternative force to a firearm. So in other words, if you carry a firearm, many instructors advocate that you also carry some other tool that you might be able to bring out to deal with a situation that doesn't warrant escalating immediately to something that is only a lethal force option like a firearm. This may give you an option against a threat that you couldn't handle without anything and empty hands skillset maybe that you don't have. You may be able to bring this into play to extend your strength and extend your reach and defend yourself in a way that doesn't require you to go to a firearm. Whereas if you didn't have this option and unarmed wasn't gonna work for you, you might need to immediately go to a gun. So consider the light-weight expandable baton as a reasonable defensive tool. If its appropriate for your body type, your size, your weight and you're willing to put the time, effort and energy in to learn how to use a stick effectively and efficiently in a worst case scenario.