Self-Defense Techniques: Survival Posture

As we talked about with the hierarchy of intent, our first goal that we need to worry about is survive. To do that we can't just talk about it and just say, "Oh well do the best you can." We need a technique. We need a tactic. We need a position that can be consistent that we can go towards that we can do time after time after time that allows us to survive and defend and set up our escapes. I just refer to it as survival posture. It's the same consistent thing I want to do every single time. And there's three components to it. First thing. However I find myself here on the ground whether I've slipped, whether he's thrown me whether he's knocked me down whatever my initial reaction always has to be I need to address the threat. I always have to be facing my attacker. This is already a very bad situation as it is. The last thing I need to do is to lose sight of what he's doing to me. If he is standing here and I let him throw me this way and I'm trying to cover up, he's here, It's already bad, now I can't even see what he's trying to do. Yeah, maybe it's still tough, but if I see it I have a slightly better chance of dealing with that. So I always want to address my opponent. Plus it's easier. I'm going to be stronger and when he comes at me I'm going to be stronger at the ability to move, if I'm addressing him and my hips are square towards him. Second thing. I have been talking about four points in that touching the mat, both hips, both shoulders. Ideally for my opponent he wants all four of those points on the mat. He wants me flat. I have no leverage. It's very difficult to move. It's easier for him to control me. It's easier for him to move around and improve his position. My goal has to be as few of those points in contact with the ground as I possibly can. And that can be done as simple as driving off one of my feet. Just this alone now pulls up my hips. So now I have three points in contact and I have that much more movement. Whereas here it's not as much, especially if he's on top and driving into me. It's going to be hard. If I can just get to this and create that little bit of space that's more movement that I can then use to start my escape. If I can go further which is what I would ideally try to do is I try to drive up even more and bring that opposite shoulder up. So now I only have one hip one shoulder. Now I have a lot of freedom to start to initiate movement and to open up that escape. So, find myself in this position, address my opponent try to get as few points as possible on the ground. The third part is where I think a lot of people miss, including sometimes you see elite level fighters. Professional fighters sometimes forget this aspect. I want my forearms between my torso and my opponent at all times. No ifs, ands or buts. There's no maybes about that. If I get into this situation where I'm here, the arms are out. I'm holding on to him. He's on top of me on a holding on, that's not really accomplishing anything because I have no leverage. I have no ability to move. Now we get into this, I'm going to musk him off me. Whereas if I stay in tight and compressed my elbows to my rib cage, my hand somewhere along my head whether it's neck, chin, up on the head clasped together it doesn't really matter, but I'm in this position. So not only do I make it harder for him to completely control me with this leverage I can start to move without muscling him. I also protect myself from submission attacks. If I open up my arms, cause I'm going to try to hold him to keep him down from punching me, that's great. Except now I open up my neck to chokes open up both arms to arm attacks. Whereas here, it doesn't matter. I'm protecting my head. I'm protecting my neck. This is a really strong leverage point. It's very difficult for somebody just to start peeling your arm away. You have to use a lot of strength, especially if you do this trick and clasp your hands together this is very difficult for somebody to isolate your arm and to do damage to it. So, no matter what happens I always want to be in this position against my opponent. Now, as we do it, it's easy to say, "Hey, go to do this." It's another thing to do it when the pressure's on. We need to access this on the fly. So, we have to have a training method that allows us to ingrain this into us subconsciously so every time we find ourselves in that position we're going to that survival posture. So we'll demonstrate real quick. So if I can bring in, Rob who will help me out. This is a very simple drill. You don't need high level of mat skill. You don't need to spend hours and hours of doing this training. Anybody can do it. Just enough space to move around you. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to be on my knees, my partner he's going to try to knock me down. He's going to push me, pull me whatever. And again he doesn't have to go super hard. In the beginning we're just learning the basics of it. So he doesn't have to rush me. We can just easily knock me down. And then he's going to try to take a top control position. All my job is as fast as possible to get to that survival posture. Okay? So Rob, so do that few times. However many times it takes to get comfortable. Then you amp it up. You put on more pressure. He goes faster. He goes harder. He can circle around and kind of surprise you or another good one is that the guy doing the fall doing the survival posture, he can close his eyes. That changes a lot. It makes the pressure amps up without anything extra. So do the same thing. I'll just close my eyes and then Rob will do his thing when he feels like it. So, thanks Rob. So, you can do that in a lot of different variations. You can go harder. You can go easier. You can go faster. You can have multiple opponents do it to you. You can bring in weapons. You can do a lot of things. The main part, the main concern is that subconsciously we're working and ingraining that solution so that no matter what happens whether we slip, whether we've been knocked down whether we've been thrown down our body's going to go to that posture that we know we can survive and then start the next step.