Self-defense: Down and Dirty - Rory Miller

[run974]

Je me permets de devancer Sergio dans la diffusion de cet excellent article ...  

http://ymaa.com/articles/self-defense-down-and-dirty

Let's start with one, very simple thing—power generation.

A traditional martial artist is taught how to hit hard. Different systems have different methods of power generation, but two of the most common involve a solid connection with the ground and good structure.

The solid connection with the ground allows you to put the power of your legs into a kick. Good structure keeps that power from being lost or bled off into space by excessive motion. You can add more to it by whipping action with the hips and rotational power transmitted through the spine… doesn't matter. If you've been training for any length of time, you should have been taught how to hit hard.


The Surprise Attack
Here's where it gets ugly. You get surprised.

"Not me! I have good situational awareness!"
Get over that. Assuming:
1) There is an experienced bad guy in the picture, and
2) you aren't creating the situation yourself, then you will be surprised. If the bad guy can't get surprise, he'll go hit someone else.

Got that? If you aren't surprised, you don't get to use your skills. If you use your mad martial arts skills, you were surprised.

You are surprised. It's not like the timing in sparring, with the closing distance and maintaining defense and some feints for you to read and interpret. Nope. The bad guy got close, got you distracted for a second and hit you. Not the half-power-hit-and-judge-for-effect that most inexperienced people do. Instead, it's a flurry attack, so many things coming at your face and body, so fast that your mind freezes. Crunching noises and pain coming from your face, your belly collapses with a blow, and you can't breathe and you're shoved, bent over into a wall with more hits coming in.

To get out of this, you need to take the fight to the bad guy. Most can't. Most freeze. Just for the sake of argument, let's say you break the freeze.


Power generation. How do you hit hard bent over, pushed into a wall, on a threat who is too close? When your connection with the ground is iffy, your structure is completely destroyed, and the blows coming at your head are making you flinch?

This is the natural environment of a sudden assault and if you don't have an answer for this situation, you don't have an answer at all. I'm not here to give you answers. The purpose of this article isn't to give answers, but to make sure you know the questions. Learning to hit hard when off-balance and with compromised structure isn't something you can learn by reading or watching videos anyway. It is a tactile skill, something you need to feel.

But even more, I don't want to give you answers, because you need to be able to think for yourself. You don't need some instructor spoon feeding you a list of what to do, when or if, something bad happens. You need to feel who you are, where you are, and find what to do. It doesn't matter if your instructor has been in a thousand encounters. He hasn't been in this one. You are. You need to be able to find your way.


High Level Force Self-defense
Power generation is easy, but the same gaps exist for timing and strategy and targeting. Even accessing and using a weapon. At the self-defense level the most critical skill in gun, knife, or stick fighting is turning it into a gun, knife, or stick fight at all.

You think someone beating the crap out of you isn't going to notice that you're reaching under your jacket when you should be protecting your face? Wouldn't you, if you were the bad guy?

There's more going on in an assault. Anything I write here will barely scratch the surface. But here's the bottom line: Using high level-force for self defense predicates on being in “immediate fear of death or serious physical injury.” Those are just words—boring words, too. Now add the context. What kind of person will do that to you? If you were going to cause death or serious injury to another human being (without getting hurt or caught, that's part of the dynamic as well) how would you do it?


Environment of a Fight
Quick, hard, and from surprise, right? In essence, you justify extreme force in self-defense, because you are losing and looking at crippling injury and death. You are losing, and it doesn't look or feel like any kind of sport.

It hurts and it is fast. The bad guy wants you feeling so much pain that you can't think to fight back.

It is not to dominate, but to injure. A sparring opponent wants you to lose. An assailant wants you incapable of struggling as he goes through your pockets or drags you to his van.

The smells and sounds are of unwashed bodies and things that really shouldn't come from a normal human body: blood and snot in your mouth, pistol crack of a ligament snapping, ocean roar of shock in your ears, grind of gravel and glass under your skull.

You are alone. Social violence happens with an audience. When the violence is predatory, the audience magically becomes witnesses. You are alone. No ref to call it and not even a coach to yell advice from your corner.

It's not fair. If the bad guy has a weapon, it's already been used on you. If it's a pack, they will likely be putting the boot to you as soon as you hit the ground, and you likely won't figure out what is going on until after that.No weight classes. No outlawed techniques. No gender or age divisions. As a matter of fact, the ideal match up is three or four young men in the 180-pound range against a single sixty-five year old woman, or a thirteen-year-old girl.

There's stuff everywhere—things to trip over and be slammed into—sharp things and hard things. Terrible footing, and cars or walls in the way when you try to move. An experienced criminal sets up his attack with this in mind. He uses it. You should too.

You are being moved. Some of the stand-up grappling arts are prepared for this and revel in it, but for many trained people, being pushed, pulled and swung around by a bigger person, or body slammed like a football block are shocking and alien.

Everything mentioned above is simply the natural environment of a fight. That shouldn't take time to sink in. That definitely shouldn't be a revelation to anyone. This is the baseline. Water is wet. Fights are painful, unfair, dynamic, chaotic, cluttered, and you don't get into them, as a good guy, unless you start out losing.


Martial ArtsTraining vs. Self-defense
Can you train for that? Of course, but evaluate right now if you are training for it. If not, you may be doing many things, but you aren't practicing self-defense.

Every aspect of your training must be evaluated and practiced with the intent to make it work from extreme positions of disadvantage. There are ways to hit hard with compromised structure and there are ways to find pockets of structure in very screwed up positions. If you can't hit hard from here, you can't hit hard when you need it.

Inure yourself to the flurry. The blast coming in has to be shut down, not defended. It is an act of will to throw yourself through the incoming damage to do damage. Not a technique, an act of will… and your years of training at timing sparring will hamper you as you wait for an opening that doesn't come.

Learn to use the environment better than the bad guy. This goes for the crashing forces and slams as well. The ability to use what is normally seen as a hazard is the core skill for a small person getting away or destroying larger or more numerous opponents.

Feel pain in training. Get moved and slammed. If you can, and you really want an introduction to some core self-defense skills, spend at least a season playing rugby or American football. With a good coach you will learn more about how to knock down a bigger man than almost any martial artist can teach.

Practice blindfolded. Eyes are over-rated. Many bad things happen too close to see or from behind or both and sometimes in the dark. Learn to target, feel and control forces without visual cues. It's faster than vision anyway.

Get dirty. Right now, go outside and roll in the mud. Not one person in a hundred reading this will do it, but I have no worries about the one percent who will. Someone who will roll in the mud on a whim will do other dirty and unpleasant things to stay alive. People, who hesitate, hesitate more, not less, when the stakes are higher.

Last point: learn the self-defense laws. Read your state statutes. Take a course on force law. Many of our martial arts predate the concept of self-defense law. Practice hard, but don't practice to go to prison.

[Rod]

L'article est très intéressant...
Cela me rapelle certaines séances où à la fin on sortait soit la trousse de premiers soins, soit les formulaires d'assurances voir les deux...

L'article est plein de bon sens mais je pense surtout qu'il faut une certaine forme d'adaptation de l'entraînement au profil de l'élève... On n'entraînera pas de la même manière un gardien de prison, un agent de sécurité, un portier, un policier, un militaire ou un travailleur social (dédicace spéciale à Sharky ) et un étudiant, une personne agée, une mère de famille... Pas le même mindset, pas les mêmes risques, pas les mêmes motivations, pas les mêmes moyens...

Et ce même si tout le monde peut tomber dans un "tourbillon de violence" un jour dans sa vie...

[Thanos]

De fait, comme tu le soulignes Rod, l'exposition à la violence ne sera pas la même pour un étudiant, un cadre, une mère de famille que celle d'un gardien de prison, membre des forces de l'ordre, agent de sécu...

Mais il y'a quand même un point commun a tous et la dernière phrase de l'article le souligne bien :

Last point: learn the self-defense laws. Read your state statutes. Take a course on force law. Many of our martial arts predate the concept of self-defense law. Practice hard, but don't practice to go to prison.

Il sera même plus difficile de justifier la violence pour un professionnel de la sécurité (à prendre au sens large) que pour le citoyen lambda !

Sans conter un autre "effet pervers" pour ces derniers : l'exposition quotidienne à des situations pouvant déboucher sur un acte de "self-defense" a souvent tendance à endormir la vigilance de ces derniers.

[Bomby]

Oui, très intéressant en effet...

Je me permets de souligner un point en particulier, que j'ai rarement vu évoquer aussi explicitement, même ici, à savoir l'importance de la détermination pour attaquer, ou plutôt contre-attaquer, même en l'absence "d'ouverture" dans la posture de l'agresseur:

"(...) Inure yourself to the flurry. The blast coming in has to be shut down, not defended. It is an act of will to throw yourself through the incoming damage to do damage. Not a technique, an act of will… and your years of training at timing sparring will hamper you as you wait for an opening that doesn't come. (...)"

Ca me semble vraiment important... Et à mon humble avis, ça renvoie notamment au fait, à l'entraînement, de travailler à développer l'utilisation du choc et de la surprise subis comme stimulus de contre-attaque immédiate d'une totale détermination (et sans renoncer au discernement immédiat, c'est là que ça devient très délicat)...

Surtout si l'on ajoute à ça le fait que, sur certaines frappes encaissées (typiquement, un coup aux parties ou un bon low-kick, même si à travers ces exemples on s'éloigne un peu de l'attaque de prédation décrite ici par Rory Miller, qui logiquement se focalisera plus sur le visage), on peut bénéficier de quelques secondes pour riposter avant de ressentir pleinement les effets du coup reçu...

Dans le même ordre d'idées, attention à ne pas se tromper de cible dans la riposte : puisqu'on doit, comme le dit Rory Miller, passer à travers l'attaque qu'on subit, sans attendre d'ouverture, pour contre-attaquer, c'est vraiment à la tête qu'il faut viser (comme pour les serpents, qui contrôle la tête contrôle le corps, comme mon instructeur aime à le répéter). Dans l'acronyme VRM (Vision-Respiration-Mobilité), c'est vraiment V et R qu'il faut viser en premier... Le M, c'est plutôt pour la finalisation une fois que V et R sont affectés...

Cordialement,

Bomby

[** Serge **]

Je me permets de souligner un point en particulier, que j'ai rarement vu évoquer aussi explicitement, même ici, à savoir l'importance de la détermination pour attaquer, ou plutôt contre-attaquer, même en l'absence "d'ouverture" dans la posture de l'agresseur:

"(...) Inure yourself to the flurry. The blast coming in has to be shut down, not defended. It is an act of will to throw yourself through the incoming damage to do damage. Not a technique, an act of will… and your years of training at timing sparring will hamper you as you wait for an opening that doesn't come. (...)"

L'évocation, ici, n'est pas rare.
Ce principe étant la base des courants combatives anglo saxons souvent cités et mentionnés.

Shock & vehemence.

                    

http://www.urbancombatives.com/fairbairns_concepts.htm

http://www.davidmanise.com/forum/index.php/topic,7519.msg395769.html#msg395769

Synchronicité, décidément : le dernier article de Bradley Steiner

PRACTICAL self-defense cannot depend upon such things as the individual practitioner’s being young, strong, in top shape, and in hard training. Nor can the body of technical doctrine encompassing the curriculum of skills that are studied assume such things as —

• The defender having to contend with but a single opponent.

• The defender being inevitably confronted by that lone adversary in a face-off type of “squaring off” — as opposed to being attacked without warning, from behind.

• The attacker (or attackers) being unarmed.

• The attack occurring in any particular type of  environment, or on any special kind of favorable terrain.

• The attack occurring in a context where the defender will not be accompanied by a loved one whom he will need to protect — as well as defend himself.

• The attack occurring when the defender is feeling well, as opposed to having some minor illness, or having just gotten over some sickness or recovered from some — perhaps serious — injury.

The matter of self-defense is a serious one, and the discipline of preparing for any contingency requires full-time study, research, training, and professional commitment. You cannot have “a sport, a classical system, a fitness program, and a practical method of self-protection” in one and the same art. All you end up with if you attempt it, is a watered down, so-so approach to close combat that might be effective in some cases, but that certainly cannot be relied upon across the board to manage physical combat under any conditions, anywhere.

Over the years some people have chosen to misrepresent that which has been my adamant stand for many decades: Namely, that combat and competition or classicism are not the same, and that one cannot properly prepare for one by training in another. Misconstruing my position  as being “against” sport or “against” classical/traditional arts, some critics have insisted that I am opposed to schools and teachers that advocate these most popular forms of martial arts studies. That is most assuredly not true.

I am no more against sporting/competitive martial arts than is an electrical engineer against aeronautical engineering. I am merely insistent upon the fact that a difference exists between the two disciplines. And, I further insist, that anyone whose goal is to excel in one of those areas of martial practice should find a school and teacher whose total focus is upon that specific area.

I respect sporting/competitive and classical/traditional studies. They offer immense benefits to those who participate in them, and they are both deservedly popular. However, the art of self-defense and close combat is a separate and specific study, and anyone wishing to become fully confident and physically adept in real world combative skills needs to find a teacher whose total emphasis is on that subject.

“But were not all of the classical/traditional arts — in their origins — intended 100% for actual combat?” one might wish to ask.

The answer is “Yes. In their origins all of the martial arts were, in fact, martial in their design, organization, spirit, and intention. However, the classical/traditional arts were formulated many hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. Cultural idiosyncrasies, manners of dress, levels of sophistication regarding combat techniques amongst the general populace, weapons commonly used and carried, and traditions governing how individuals fought when they met in battle, all influenced and greatly affected what the arts contained and how they were taught. Many of those things that made sense 1,000 years ago, or several hundred years ago, make no sense today, and are absolutely inapplicable to the modern fighting man, or to the private citizen who requires an effective means of self-defense. Because of this, the classical/traditional arts, worthwhile as they are as arts, offer at best only a partial adaptability of that which they teach for practical close combat and personal protection in the modern world. And this is true only of those who have applied themselves to a serious study of these arts for many years. These arts do not offer the person who wants and who needs a fully functional, no-nonsense readily learnable and retainable method of individual combat that which he seeks.”

IT BEGINS WITH MINDSET

THE mental conditioning required for personal combat bears no relation to the mental conditioning required for sport or for classical training. Frankly and bluntly, what a person who wishes to be fully prepared to defend himself requires is the ability to shift to a war footing, and to do so instantly and without a fraction of a second’s hesitation. He must be able to turn vicious, destructive, aggressive, violent, offensive, and relentlessly determined to destroy his enemy. People may not like to hear it put that way, but that is the way it is. Speak to any military man who has been in a close combat situation. Or speak to a police officer who has had to fight for his life against a violent felon. Or — speak to anyone who has been victimized by violent criminals.

The art of training and conditioning the mind is one that a professional close combat and self-defense teacher must possess. He must know exactly what a properly combat-conditioned mind requires, and he must be able to impart that to his students. I am not at all shy about proclaiming that I have pioneered this field, and as a professional teacher and hypnotherapist have developed definite and very effective ways to bring any serious and willing student to the right frame of mind for dealing with deadly violence. American Combato is the premier art to recognize this need, and the first to have established doctrine by which the need can be reliably satisfied through training.

AND DEPENDS UPON DANGEROUS

OFFENSIVE SKILLS

THE purpose of a quality self-defense system is to enable the user to save his life, protect anyone dear to him, and to do so with the most reliable and efficient techniques and tactics possible.

The history of combat throughout man’s existence on earth has demonstrated without question what works in real hand-to-hand and close quarters battle: The most ruthlessly foul, vicious, underhanded, and dangerously destructive techniques. When the battle is a sporting contest grappling often tends to prevail over methods of hitting. However, when the fight is for real, the opposite is true; and while some very few grappling methods are a part of serious hand-to-hand combat, fully 90-95% of the curriculum consists of blows, gouges, jabs, smashes, butts, stomps, biting, kicking, kneeing, clawing, grasping and tearing. These actions are fastest in a real affray, and they cause instant disorientation when applied . . . permitting the user to followup and to follow through with savage fury.

Attacking is critical in self-defense. This does not mean starting fights or initiating trouble. It does mean carrying the war into the enemy’s camp and becoming the aggressor once you have been attacked. So long as you are “defending” you are losing; so long as you are attacking, you are winning!

The close combat and self-defense specialist emphasizes supreme aggressiveness — “attack mindedness” as it was referred to during WWII — and if he is a real pro he will train you to seize the initiative, surprise your attacker, and wreck him completely before he even realizes what is happening.

Quality self-defense training instills the ability to attack by surprise, giving nothing away by assuming any “fighting stance” or posture. Severe injury, speedily inflicted . . . that’s the watchword when dealing with an unavoidable, violent offender. Great followup and continuous attack is emphasized in a quality program, and the trainee is taught to expect to get hurt, to anticipate weapons, multiple attackers, murderous intent on the part of his assailant, and his assailant’s superior physical ability. No mention of  “secrets”, “hidden techniques”, “mystical powers”, or the possibility of acquiring “guaranteed methods”. Just heavy, heavy doses of reality, and techniques that has been proven in war to really work, comprise the last of learning, when studying with a true self-defense specialist.

BACKED UP WITH GOOD COUNTERATTACKING

METHODS

A quality program of close combat and self-defense will include methods of handling attacks that have caught the defender off guard. In many systems of classical/traditional training these are referred to as “self-defense techniques”. Almost without exception they are complex, impractical (though visually impressive) and impossible to rely upon in a real emergency. However, in a quality combat system these techniques are exceedingly simple, practical, and very destructive. What characterizes the counterattacks in American Combato, for example, is that there are relatively few of them, they enable the student to apply them in a myriad of situations and varying circumstances, and once they have been acquired, they offeR the speediest and most destructive way to deal with an infinite variety of situations. The traditional “one technique for each specific position/situation” is not what we teach. We teach a hardcore curriculum of widely adaptable skills.

AND INCLUDING WEAPONS

WEAPONS are tools. The use of modern weaponry is not only a mandatory part of any practical, realistic system of close combat and self-defense, it is also critical that, in addition to being able to use these weapons, a student acquires the ability to understand and defend against them. Antiquated weapons are fascinating, and those who enjoy training with them are perfectly entitled to do so. But for modern, practical, real world use, modern weapons are the required subject.

Because techniques designed for actual combat are, necessarily, dangerous, they cannot be practiced in any “contest” or “freestyle sparring” mode. Nor is it ever desirable to modify combat techniques so that such competitive training is possible. The watering down that takes place when arranging skills for competitive application makes their practice hazardous for emergency use. The student who, for instance, attempts to train on the one hand by working on serious techniques for combat and doing so without sparring, while on the other hand training in sparring and moderating that which he does, only succeeds in short-circuiting his capacity to react quickly and instinctively in a crisis. He has required of himself two different sets of commands: One for sport, one for combat. NO GOOD!

Close combat and defense requires a simple, clear, specific, one-pointed method of conditioning: A mindset geared for war, and a repertoire of skills intended to win the war. Period.

I make no claim that combatives oriented martial arts are “better than” the other forms or versions of martial study. However, make no mistake about it: Preparation for actual combat is a unique, specific, demanding, and very, very critical matter. If it is your desire to receive such preparation the go to a real professional whose life’s work, specialty, and entire focus in teaching is on that, and nothing else.



© - Bradley Steiner - http://seattlecombatives.com/?cat=1


http://www.davidmanise.com/forum/index.php?topic=44269.0

[crotale]

Shock & vehemence.

J'irai même jusqu'à dire que c'est l'essentiel, avec une once de détermination