Self Defence
Most people believe that good self defence means good fighting skills. This is misguided!
Good self defence skills should give you the ability to completely avoid fighting at all in most cases.
The most effective form of Self Defence is using awareness and common sense.
Common sense will help you avoid placing yourself in potentially dangerous situations to start with and awareness will alert you to the potential dangers, thus giving you the opportunity to avoid them.
General Awareness
Attackers generally rely on a mixture of shock, surprise, intimidation and eventually violence to make there attacks successful. Being aware of your environment and its occupants will allow you to locate potential threats well in advance of the actual attack. Thus neutralising the surprise and shock elements from the would-be attackers strategy and potentially avoiding it altogether.
By awareness, I am not suggesting we spend every waking moment in a constant state of vigilance for fear of attacks.
The Colour codes system devised by Jeff Cooper (an American combat pistol instructor) is a brilliant way to keep your awareness at the correct level at any given time and allows you to live your life without appearing paranoid to all your friends and family.
The codes of awareness consists of five colours:
- Code White: Completely unaware of environment and inhabitants. The perfect target for attack.
- Code Yellow: The ideal state of awareness for everyday life. A state of perception which simply monitors your surroundings and the inhabitants of it for any potential vulnerability.
- Code Orange: You have perceived a potential threat. This state allows you to orientate yourself to this threat and evaluate the risk it poses to you.
- Code Red: The threat is real! Fight and/or flight are your only remaining options.
- Code Black: You were unable to orientate yourself to the threat and you have entered a state of sheer panic.
Common sense and the Human Bodies senses
The common sense aspect is basically, don't take un-necessary risks with regard to your safety!
The human body has a huge array of danger senses, and instinctively knows when it is in potential danger. With these danger signals acting on a sub-conscious level we cannot rationally explain these feelings of vulnerability and we therefore over-rule our instincts as silliness. In these circumstances, we should we should escalate our awareness levels rather than ignoring the warning signals.
- Warning signals would typically include:
- Sweating
- A feeling trepidation
- Your knees turning to jelly
These are caused by the body’s danger senses alerting us to potential danger and releasing adrenaline into our system in the event it is required.
Threat Assessment
Determining the intentions of a perceived threat can be a tricky business. Are you sure the person before you means to harm you?
There are several warning signals they will display to help determine whether you are about to be attacked.
- Colour draining from face
- Intense staring or eye contact
- Staring at a specific part of your body (targeting)
- Fists tightly clenched
- One word responses
- Removing clothes
- If the words don't confirm what the persons body is telling you, believe the body!
At this stage it is not to late to talk your way out.
- By displaying a calm and confident demeanour
- Keep comfortable distance
- Hold your hands up in a no threatening manner (ready to serve as a guard should it be required).
- Try and be friendly or complimentary about something obscure (nice jacket etc.. but don't be patronising)
- Ask them to respect your personal space
You will now have either deemed the person to be friend or foe.
If you still believe they intend you harm, you need to evaluate the threat they pose to formulate a strategy.
The easiest way is to ask yourself questions and look for answers.
- How many potential threats are there?
- Are there hands visible? Any potential weapons?
- Evaluate the physical shape and condition of the threat. Can you outrun them for example
- You should also allow time to assess the environment you are faced with.
- Where are the nearest exits? Is escaping an option?
- Am I being herded into a corner or an area of increased potential danger?
- Is there anyone I can call too for help?
Formulating a strategy before the actual violence erupts will minimise the surprise and shock elements to the attack giving you a greater chance of success.
Fight or Flight
The time for niceties is over! You are now faced with one question. Fight or flee?
If the escape option is available, only a fool would refuse it. Don't let pride come before your fall!
If escape is not an option, then you have no other alternative. You have observed the threat, orientated your self to it and now you have decided on a course of action.
You must fight! Do so be inflicting a swift and devastating attack, do not necessarily wait to be hit first. Your attack should do only enough damage to your attacker that allows you the opportunity to safely escape.
The Law
The UK Self Defence Law allows you to defend yourself, your property and other individuals from harm using "reasonable force". Reasonable force is described as the action taken by a rational individual faced by the same threat.
This basically boils down to a jury would believe that you, the defendant, acted under provocation and used the minimum amount of force as you believed required at the moment you were faced by the threat and that any reasonable person would have responded in a similar manner.
Interestingly, the Law makes no discrimination for those trained in martial arts as opposed to those who are not. We are all equal in the eyes of the law.
As you can see above, there are a lot more factors to self defence than good fighting skills. Good fighting skills will obviously increase your chances of success, but most people find violence unpleasant and best avoided where possible. Hopefully the points above will help you avoid having to use your fighting skills.
References
Sixth Sense
Phil Wright
Ritualised Combat
Darren Laur
Disclaimer
Dave Toward takes no responsibility in anyway for any errors in spelling, grammar or content.
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