The Street Hitter

The street hitter and the psychophysical requirements of the street fighter.

It is not enough to have attended a course of self-defense or martial arts to have a real chance of surviving an assault, especially when the thug in question is a strong and determined street beater.

In his life he has very clear dynamics and tricks to win a fight without rules while you have never tried, will use surprise,will use deception,will use a strong and sudden aggression,a weapon,etc.

Also consider that often those who do this type of aggression are helped with exciting substances such as cocaine, amphetamines, etc.

Personal defense courses

Most self-defense courses do not apply sparring that it is the only form of training that helps you understand the dynamics of a real fight with all the limitations derived from a different psychological state and rules that the road does not have, in addition the surprise effect becomes fundamental.

The sparring itself
must be “built” for self-defense
with important requirements and with different dynamics and conditions to develop a certain type of work that I do not want to list because it is necessary to do these kind of work together.

But now going back to the topic today, let’s pretend that you read all the messages of your attacker and you realized that there is nothing more to do, the de-escalation techniques are useless and you can not escape, you have to fight, but what are the features you need to survive?.

The characteristics you need to have to survive aggressions are the same for survival in the wild:

“First of all, a very strong will to survive, secondly, but not least, an animal-like aggression ready to unleash on your attacker without inhibitions or half measures.”

But what does it really take to get by in case of aggression?.

Absurdly, the people who ask this question are precisely those who have attended or attend a martial arts or self-defense course and ask themselves a little doubtful whether or not what they have learned works in reality,the question is complex and opens up many scenarios and variables.

Your effectiveness depends on the method by which you have been trained!.

Often martial arts and personal defense courses are pure theory and “cinema”, where the cooperation of the training partner makes everything unreal and above all a fundamental thing lacks the surprise and emotional factor, the psychological component and that’s why I spent time in the blog trying to explain the importance of the context and attention that you have to have inside to not be surprised but anticipate and consequently implement everything that is available to you for get out of that situation or be ready to survive.

Surely if you’ve never worked with a real industry professional they’ve probably made you work with an approach that in reality hardly works.

The ability to beat requires a work that goes beyond the simple technique that needs features and attributes that need to be developed to make it work.

Some absurd sports make you gain more confidence in your abilities than other arts and self-defense courses because you really try the techniques in a non-cooperative context and therefore you are more aware of your ability to hit and get away with it even if the personal defense environment is not sport and the variables at play are greater.

Personal defense is the real M.M.A.

Always consider that the study of the technique is the basis, but basic, basically when you learned the technique is there that the work begins,you are at the beginning but many stop right there.

Only sports combat allows you to explore techniques with all the limitations of the case, and with the use of protections to be able to make some dangerous techniques such as using elbows and hitting delicate areas, etc. but without going from a real fight where both you and your training partner work to strike without being hit they lack the basics to understand fundamental dynamics and your behavior would throw you doing the technique you saw in the gym hoping it’s okay, an approach that’s absolutely not good, especially because what’s at stake is the most important thing you have.

It also considers that often the attacker is armed and as a result the level rises considerably and the approach can’t be that of bare-handed combat but it must have a further evolution, often in gyms you give a lot of emphasis to bare-handed combat when then the robberies and assaults are armed.

There is aggression and aggression

One account is two insults you can have in the street for traffic reasons with one who woke up with the moon crooked, one account is to run into a habitual beater, a robber or a bunch of thugs made of cocaine in search of a victim to beat up.

That said, it should be reiterated that your luck to avoid trouble must be “helped”, and here come into play the personal characteristics of the attacker and the attention to the context.

It is undeniable that in dramatic cases such as aggression, there are people who have significantly greater chances of survival than others and we will therefore try to understand why.

Let’s say that the first and most important requirement would be a cold mind and capable of reasoning in a mature and responsible way, in order to try in all ways to avoid physical confrontation by implementing an appropriate de-escalation tactic or a quick escape.

But it’s clear that if the people you meet are determined to hurt you and you can’t do anything to change their minds, you have to go through the survival plan.

You have to defend yourself by attacking first and sell your skin dearly, immediately and without hesitation.

If you try to trace the identity of the predestined victim rather than the victorious fighter, after a while you quickly realize that psychological characteristics outweigh the physical and technical ones.

This goes in opposition to what common sense is led to believe, which is that “being tall and big” represents the advantage in combat.

Being a mountain of muscle is an undeniable advantage when fighting, having an important body mass allows you to strike with strength and effectiveness, but also to better absorb the blows of the opponent but an imposing physique is not a guarantee of victory in the event of combat.

This is a reality in the struggle between humans but in nature it is even more evident.

You may have seen small animals, driven by desperation and survival instinct to flee, injure or kill predators far larger than them, “simply” for their fierce, angry, determined reaction.

A mix of anger and ferocity, this would seem to be the key to surviving

However, these are attributes that most people have lost, living in the shelter of the relative tranquility of civil society.

Let’s be clear that it’s better this way but it’s obvious that the more your aggression and murderous instinct is repressed under the weight of your civil education, the more the aggression and murderous instinct of your attacker will have easy game.

It is useless to have attended a Karate/Krav Maga/ecc. course for years, when at the moment of truth you hesitate to smash your executioner’s nose for fear of hurting him or because the sight of blood disturbs you.

The most effective personal defense techniques are dirty and creepy, it’s about hollowing eyes, biting, tearing cheeks, wringing at knees, hitting repeatedly and wildly using even if you can objects common to primary targets.

A ferocious violence, to be made to shudder capable only to those who are and angry like an animal.

The fact of reacting fiercely and without hesitation is what in technical jargon is called “And instinctit’s one of the toughest challenges of psychological preparation for combat, this theme has been treated a lot in the past where instructors like Paul Vunak or Geoff Thompson have devoted ample space.

In practice, it is not a question of regressing the student to a primordial evolutionary state, but of training him to operate a switch and turn it off immediately after.

It is an extremely delicate task, because it is easy to turn someone into a ferocious animal (After all, it is an instinct already present in allof us), but it is also easy to lose control of this learning process, leaving too often the switch on ON and forever losing a person to civil society and creating further social misfits.

I always had the problem of quickly identifying the personal characteristics of my students so that I could understand well for everyone what kind of work to do because everyone has different physical and psychological characteristics.

The features that can help in deadly combat, are the same demands for survival in nature.

Imagine falling into the desert or into a hostile jungle and imagine what you would do to get out alive.

It would be a matter of doing things, starting with the struggle for food and against the elements that you would never do in life, and the determination to do so would only come from your desire to survive, at any cost.

If you start by saying “I wouldn’t be able to eat bugs, drink my urine” it means you’re on the wrong track.

Any means are used to survive. That’s the rule.

There are people who need more technical than psychological knowledge and vice versa, not at all it is enough to teach them the techniques of combat because probably for their psychology they would never put them into practice unless they were put in an extreme condition, but the problem is that the passage must be ON/OFF cannot be gradual because you would give an important advantage to your attacker and you could no longer have the time to react with the violence necessary to survive.

How do you distinguish a person with a low chance of survival from someone with any chance of getting by?

But even better as you know if you have the characteristics to make it.

The diagram below can give you some self-assessment:

If you have recognized yourself in all or almost the attributes of the right column, it means that:

1. you’re “Rambo“, or
2. you’ve unrealistically mounted your head but you don’t know yourself(Dunning Kruger Effect).
   

In fact, most people will recognize themselves in various ways and with various percentages in both lists, but at this point you know what they have to work on to make things better.

With regard to physical requirements, above all, a clear ability is to withstand anaerobic efforts and to produce a particular type of“explosive”physical force, a mix of strength and speed that can concentrate maximum effort in a fraction of a second.

So if you do not practice combat sports the training you have to do is more related to an interval training, in this sense, weight training is of little use and indeed, if you exaggerate, it can be counterproductive because of the burden that the increase in muscle mass entails and the fact that you never work on the coordination of movements.

Now the technique to have the best chance of survival is to run away,if you can of course, but never seek the fulfillment of your ego by going to the fight, if you have the chance escapes.

“Fight only if you are unable to escape.

Training leg movement, footwork is an important requirement to be a moving target.

It’s harder to hit something that’s fast and moving,plus you’re more responsive in attacking.

Physical training is an important requirement both to run and run and to be mobile in the event of a fight.

Conclusions

Now if you have habits and characteristics that are in the risk survival column you have to work to jump the other side because only you can do this job even if I’m here to help you.

Although the characteristics of the left side of the table are admirable and legitimate, in a low-level context such as violence and self-defense, they are not characteristics that help you and therefore depending on the context you have to have the ability to change your psychological approach,whereas instead the physical one isa constant work, you can not “switch” in an instant because it needs application, adaptation and conditioning as well as having to work to acquire skills.

Consider that a violent man tends to have no scruples, not give him that advantage!!

Strike without fear because he will never make scruples with you!!

Stay Tuned! Self Defence is not a game!

Street Fight mentality & Fight Sport

Andrea