Self Defense - What Is the 'Best' Move?
I was recently asked by a black belt martial artist who attended one of our group classes for the first time "What is the best move for self defence
?" Immediately I realised I was talking to someone who had no idea about self defence at all, which is not unusual. My reply was "Assuming that you can't avoid it, defuse it or de-escalate it, if the situation has to go physical the best 'move' is the one that does the job and gets your butt home".
He did not understand and replied "Yeah, but what is THE BEST move, can you show it to me?" Quite simply, there is no such thing. Anyone peddling the "best self defence move" is generally someone to be ignored. It just does not work that way.
I once read a quote from a famous chess champion which brilliantly illustrated our philosophy on this point. He said "The height of strategy is not in doing your best move, it is in doing the worst move for your opponent". This is so true and so relevant.
From a purely physical perspective, all self defence is, is tool and target development. We develop the tools, understand how to apply those to their relevant targets in a non-telegraphic way using good economy of motion and then work on how to apply these against a resistant attacker in any situation and environment.
But the tools used must be relevant to the situation. You may have the best side kick in the world but you will find it of very little use if you are king-hit and then tackled to the ground. If you are intoxicated, physically impaired, standing on an uneven surface, wearing restricting clothing, seated, lying down, in your car etc... Your "Best move" is whatever is relevant, applicable and will cause the desired result in your opponent in any given situation or scenario.
The physical delivery of your tool(s) needs to follow several principles to ensure maximum effectiveness against a non-compliant attacker. A couple of these principles are as follows:
Good Economy of Motion - Quite simply this principle states that you should do nothing that is not directly required for the execution of your objective. That is, take the shortest and easiest route to land your strikes without any superfluous, exaggerated, flashy or expanded movement. In the martial arts there is a lot of inefficient economy of motion, often the reason for this is to develop other important attributes, or simply for aesthetics but when it comes to self defence application often times we need to "trim back" what we do to ensure efficient delivery. A simple example of this is a forefist punch in most martial arts. When it is practised in the dojo in patterns, line work, one step, three step etc the hand is drawn back to the hip before execution but as soon as sparring takes place it vanishes and takes on more of a boxing type movement. Why? Because drawing the hand back develops important and necessary attributes, but delivery of the technique needs to be adapted to ensure the weapon reaches its target.
This links directly into the next principle, which is:
Non-Telegraphic Movement - The shot you don't see coming is the one that hurts the most. So it is important to ensure that your movements are non-telegraphic to ensure maximum shock value and eliminate the chance of the person's reflexive response stopping you from landing your shot.
Simple principles apply to ensure this. Firstly, the correct understanding and use of the 6 combat ranges. We consider these ranges as 1) Lunging 2) Kicking 3) Striking 4) Trapping 5) Grappling 6) Ground fighting. Most martial artists are proficient in only one or two of these ranges. We call this being a "Partial artist". Real attacks are dynamic and move fluidly between ranges at a very rapid pace and although there are a couple which are the most common it is still important to have an understanding and skill set to handle them all. When you do have that understanding, you will instinctively use the correct tools for the different ranges and not do what I call "forcing a range" simply because you feel more comfortable there. What you are comfortable with is irrelevant. The attacker will use what he is comfortable with and if that is different to what you expect you will find yourself in a very bad place. For enthusiasts of the UFC, we saw this demonstrated perfectly in the 90's (albeit from a sports perspective). From the UFC's inception 'strikers' had dominated the ring. That was until the Gracie's arrived with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and annihilated the competition overnight. Why? Because for a striker's tools to have effect they must have three things; distance, grounding and torque. Because the Gracie's grappling art completely eliminated these three factors by working at a very close range and in a large part from the ground, the strikers found themselves virtually helpless. They simply did not have the tools to deal with an opponent at this new range.
Correct use of the relevant tool for the given range is vitally important to delivering non telegraphic movement. The next is to understand and work on eliminating the 'Pre Contact Indicators' of every tool/weapon. When delivering the 'move' the first thing that should move is the intended tool, the body and everything else follows, not the other way around. Sure, a correction of weight distribution, torquing of the hips, loading of the hand to the hip etc will add power to a hand strike, but all that is of little use if you cannot land it on your target because you have made it so telegraphic in its delivery that your opponent has "seen it coming a mile away" and reacted accordingly.
As important as an understanding of our opponent's Pre Contact Indicators is to us as the 'defender' to help us intercept their intention-to-action and develop heightened perception speed, it is also important to understand how they apply to ourselves in the delivery of each individual tool so that we can work on reducing or eliminating them. These are the keys to non telegraphic movement.
Delivery of your tools from both a defensive and/or offensive aspect also needs to include continuous defensive positioning to allow for your opponents' multiple possible reactions to your strikes. Something as simple as a flailing arm from your opponent can cause significant damage if you are not protected from this possibility. Keeping a strong defensive position throughout your attack/response cannot be over stated in its importance.
As with everything we do in our training, all physical defences and offences must assume that the person is carrying a weapon on them somewhere. So often people train 'techniques' which may work well against an empty handed opponent, but put a blade, broken bottle, syringe etc in their hand and suddenly their technique becomes suicidal. All physical self defence training must include this possibility as well as the possibility of multiple attackers.
One other consideration when training physical self defence is to understand the possible outcome of certain strikes or strategies. An example is strikes to the throat, which we see trained all of the time, often without any context to them whatsoever. A potentially lethal strike, practiced and trained without thought of the consequences and aftermath or of the appropriate timing of its delivery is negligent and dangerous.
The physical aspect of defending ourselves is obviously a broad and multi-dimensional topic and I have only touched on a couple of points here. The thing to remember if the situation must go physical is to do whatever the situation justifiably calls for in the most efficient means possible to allow you to protect yourself and your family and to escape to safety. Do not worry about making the 'moves' look good or fit into your system, it will never happen in reality. As soon as you start to worry yourself with aesthetics you lose focus on the actual goal, which is to cause reasonable damage to your opponent as fast and efficiently as possible.
Remember, the goal here is to survive, not to 'win'. No-one ever 'wins' a real fight. They are hell. Do what it takes to get yourself out of the situation, analyse the confrontation and situation and learn from it to help you avoid it ever happening again. If you achieve that, then your self-defence training has served you perfectly.
As always I welcome all comments and questions. Feel free to email me through our website at
http://www.protectselfdefence.co.nz
Take Care
Phil
Self Defense - What Is the 'Best' Move?
By: Phil Thompson
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