Personal Defense Readiness - Techniques in Context

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. So we've just reviewed how the startle flinch triggers this outside 90 open hand. Now we're in the confrontation. We're trying to defend ourselves. We have an aggressor right in front of us and this can happen at a distance or it can happen in contact, as I demonstrated earlier, with a defense against a sucker punch. When your hands are up outside 90, what happens is you bring into play and remember this is the serendipity of the moment. The bad guy has triggered this, so Jason moves in, he encroaches me, my hands come up. I'm thinking maybe I'm gonna access a personal weapon, could be a firearm, could be a knife, it could be improvised weapon. If I don't have that, what are my personal weapons? At this position, I'm outside 90. What I have here... If we go back to the CWCT model, our fingers, palm, forearm, and elbow, what we never do in our system is reach. So I would never try to come across from this distance and telegraph and try to come in with an elbow, as cool as that looks on a bag or a pad, we wouldn't wanna engage our threat like that. We're always applying CWCT. I am a huge proponent of creating space not by moving backwards, but by moving my threat backwards the simplest thing, and the most primal instinctive movement you can do is to re-engage the spear tactic again which is using your forearms from to elbow and drive the bad guy away your opponent's the bad guy. So I'm in this position here, I'm gonna do this super slow. I'm gonna, from this position, I'm gonna bury in and I'm just using this primal instinct to drive away. I'm hitting and engaging the person from there. This would give me a moment to transition a weapon or to move in re-engage or disengage. Remember in a personal offense model, your first choice should be a stun and run. The choices then are dictated by the scenario. So if your family's home, you might wanna stay and engage. If you're free to move, you wanna disengage. Force should always parallel danger. So you wanna be able to get this opponent off you and make a valid threat discrimination right away. Are they armed or unarmed? Where am I gonna go from here? Jason, why don't I have you stand over here for a moment? As Jason encroaches, I'm reversing the side so you can see again, we showed you the bear hug drill in a very static demonstration. Let's show it dynamically. I've been encroached, so he's moved in a little bit. I'm telling the person, "Get back, leave me alone." All of a sudden, he lunges at me with a bear hug. He just tries to get on me, jump in and grab. I push away that danger, I'm outside 90. If this starts to happen... Get a little tighter. If I start to collapse, I need to remember I'm using gross motor strength here and a primal instinct here. So I'm not thinking complex motor scale. I'm gonna drive him away. Now for the purpose of the demo... Drop your right arm. For the purpose of the demo, I've now got this person locked out. I'm using the outside 90. One of the things, when you start to play with this at home with a training partner, you'll see these are called the flexor group and the extensor group. These flexors... Grab onto me again, hold me as tight as you can, stand up, drive in, pull tight, tight, tight, tight, tight tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, get lower, get into me, get into me. Jason is starting to breathe heavy, he's starting to moan. Let's turn your head here. Hold as tight as you can go, go, go, tighter, get low, get into me, lower, lower, waist tackle here, get under me, get under me. I can stay here, look at his face. He's not that good of an actor, okay? He's not breathing, he's being cardiovascularly taxed, there's pressure on him. Let's come back here again. This was the whole point of this. If I trust physiology, I will create space between me and my threat, allowing you to access a personal weapon or transition to a firearm or a knife. So grab on again, we've triggered this point here... Drop this arm for the purpose of the demo. Now from here, I could use that elbow. Now from here, I could come up and use that palm strike or that rake, okay? My favorite move, and it's so simple, it's right there. Remember this, every time somebody attacks you, with either some sort of grappling, a bear hug, haymaker they lead and always bring in part of their throat and part of their neck. Remember, legally, force must parallel danger, but if he slowly throws a haymaker over, he will bring in here this whole brachial region. And it's a huge nerve cluster. Very often just driving your forearm in there, will cause a stun which can allow you to disengage and get away from the danger or re-engage with a following up with either quick knee, a forearm or an elbow. Again, force must parallel danger. What's neat about again, this outside 90, open finger, is that it creates that wedge. And one of the moves I demoed, which is an awesome move on the inside for personal defense, is coming across and grabbing at the face. What I'm actually doing here is triggering a flinch in my adversary and this is a huge thing to remember. Very often we don't wanna get into this kind of sparring modality where we jump back and we wanna start striking each other. So if we were engaged like this and I finally got to this position, I fought to it, coming in and gouging the person, or getting a thumb in his eye or palming him in the face here is going to trigger that flinch. In this case, I probably have to hit Jason a little bit harder because he's kind of in demo mode to get his hands off me. But you could imagine that in a real confrontation, your opponent is not really thinking that you're gonna get your hands up and engage them with this tactic. So he encroaches me, throws a quick punch and this happens here. If I come across his face, you can see right away, his hand went up here. He's now off balance, if I rip another elbow up here, if I'm coming down. So really think about at that moment, I always tell people, pretend you're a monkey at that moment just climb at this adversaries face, they will flinch, they will move away, they will back away from the danger. It's a simple move, kids can do it, grandmothers can do it. Anybody could do it. Remember force must parallel danger. So this is a real serious altercation, you weren't able to detect and diffuse. And now you're in a personal defense moment. You've got to defend yourself. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.