The new self-defense crooks

       Those last few years, a new « tendancy/inclination » in the art of fighting appeared. Quite demonstrative in videos, they rouse the interest of practicioners without experience of fighting in reality. For my part, I found them inconsistent.

Let me explain…

Those different methods are based on softness and extreme relaxation, the « soft strenght ».As far as I am concerned, I would name it the « chewing-gul strenght » The theorie sums up into yielding to the assaults, being as relaxed as possible to absorb punches, and being also all that relaxed in executing your own punches Some very cute and nice theories as long as they stay… theorical. From my point of view, clearly unappropriate in real life defense.

 You can be admirative for those videos (very often filmed during a seminar), an incredible fighter hits totally free-of-tension/relaxed partners. An assistant is waiting gently to get the soft punch in his solar plexus. This same assistant still fully relaxed, keeps on waiting to get bullied in diagonal ways, totally unable to control his balance form his relaxed state. And what about those teachers avoiding knife hits, contorting like modern dancers with the speed of a snail under Prozc? 

At some other times, we can see smaller guys, quite fast, but demonstrating on static people only, that never honestly attack them.

  

The saddest part is that average people stay mouth-opened watching this, very sure they just entered a incredible fighter seminar.

Reality point of view. 

Always be sure to distinct hitting a relaxed body waiting to get hit, and an upset and aggressive opponent, thrown at you full speed, all his muscles tensed as a bow..

In a real fight, the impact power is fundamental.

Some situations allow you to dam up the fight with small punches linked to a loosened state, I name it « micro-bursts ». They work only in one case: when you surprise your opponent: if your potential opponent is taken by surprise, then his body will be relaxed. But in a real aggression, forget it. It won’t be enough.

To understand clearly what I am saying, please imagine the following : did you ever hit unintentionally your tibia when you are not fully awake in the morning? The pain is intense.  Now imagine the last time you fought in your martial art school. The same tibia got the same kind of blow (wich is painfull), but this blow would never have made you out of fight.

I am going to tell you now, for the first time, an anecdote picked up from my own experience. My goal here is not to set an apology of violence, and my anecdotes come for the most part from my job as a bouncer, that I am still working occasionally today in several night clubs.

The violence I had to display was not a choice, but a necessity.

 The story took place two years ago, while I wa visiting a friend of mine, physionomist in a local pub. A few minutes after I entered the pub, I could witness an altercation between the owner of the pub and a client. This client, certainly thinking the owner of the pub (64 years-old) had no valuable reason to ask him not to leave the place with his glass, found nothing better to do than punching him with a powerful right hand, the glass still in his hand. The owner got thrown on the ground, with his left cheek totally broken, as we discovered later, after his surgery and four days in the hospital. My friend and I caught the agressor that was trying to get away. Of course, he was very determined (and accessorly under cocain) and had no intention to let us stop him. From this moment, we both had the feeling to fight with a mad dog. Believe, nor my friend, nor I are young kids in this kind of confrontation. Finally we swipped the guy to the ground and punished him hard. I found myself on top of him, my fingers deep in his throat, holding his trachea. My opponent, his face bloodier than red meat, was shouting at me, promising that once he could stand up, he would kill me. Every time I was loosening my grip, he was trying to stand up, full of blood, leaving me with no choice than hitting him again and again. Finally I made a definitive but necessary solution, an ankle lock that I pushed to the breaking.

 Police took long to come this time, and the altercation lasted something like half-an-hour between the moment it started and the moment he left in ambulance.

We found out later that the unfortunate guy had been out of jail the week before, after five years there for murder attempt. He had attempted to cut the throat of another guy.

This anecdote, quite dark, is there to make you understand and get fully conscious of reality in an extreme situation, with a determined opponent, under drugs, that feels pain in its final form only. Do I expect to stop the action using flabby style? Of course not.

What I am blaming those new styles and their instructors for is that they are trying to sell to impossible as possible. Minimizing movements and lack of energy are two very different things they are trying to sell as one and only.

People entering those seminars show no trace of sweating, and thinking afterwards that it’s possible to train and defend themselves without effort.

And even if starting a fight can be a way to defend yourself, an aggressor really becomes an aggressor when he hits you. We can not build our defense strategy on attacking only. From a realistic point of view, this is too  reducing.

Please, keep this text in mind and always keep a critic eye with the new videos. Always remember that whatever looks too easy and simple hides something.

Now, it's time to practice!