Training with those who survived a real aggression

Training with those who have survived real aggression is a great possibility.

Fortunately most people will never be attacked and this often leads to a vision of their own safety and their own ability to defend themselves very imaginative to say the least.

Very often it is necessary through some preparatory exercises to bring people back to the real world and it is necessary precisely to avoid that this over-optimistic vision can expose them to a situation of greater danger.

Having the opportunity to talk and train with those who for work, or for bad luck had to live and survive real situations of violent aggression allows you to understand and see how their approach has differences and that their research goes precisely in the direction of a need to obtain the necessary ability to survive without too many special effects.

Often those who tell you about miraculous adventures of beater is a serial liar.

Over the years of practice and teaching, I’ve asked students, friends, security workers, acquaintances, etc. to tell me about their assaults in real life and how they got out of it and what and how they used what they learned in the gym to survive that assault.

I believe that in addition to direct experience, this approach in addition to continuous research and analysis is a way to always try to align what is the teaching and methodologies to make oriented to reality.

Invented tales and royal tales

Some stories are invented, some are exaggerated and others are the real.

Clearly the useful ones are the real ones and today thanks to the wide spread of surveillance cameras it is possible to have as well as the direct experience an idea of the real dynamics of an aggression.

Normally stories that contain too many details, e.g. I pulled a cross, then a right knee, and noticed that he bent to the left then I pulled a middle left kick and then I projected it when I saw that the weight of his right foot held the weight, and so on.

Remembering exactly in detail a sudden aggression is an impossible feat given the emotional and high-stress situation.

Same thing when someone seems to tell a story of a superhero who has stretched everyone out and blocking every shot, easily sending every attacker to the ground or making everyone flee.

Unless you’ve found “sleeping attackers” they’re rare dynamics and it’s extremely unlikely that a person who’s used to assault is so cunning and predictable.

Not being hit, not getting cut, etc. in a real aggression is rare unless you are the person who started the fight.

Reacting to an aggression

Reacting to a naked hand aggression of an attacker, multiple aggression, cutting weapon or firearm has different difficulties and complexities and considering that it is sudden and that already for a prepared person are complicated situations you can well understand that some situations need a high volume of specific training and training.

The real stories that I listen to and that are most reliable are those that have lessons from which I can learn, those that are told with an element of surprise, where time and dynamics are quick, somehow blurry and inexclusive.

They often don’t know exactly the exact sequence of what they did but it worked and eventually they survived.

A person who tells and that in the form indicates that she probably did not expect to be able to get out of it so but that she passed herself and survived.

This suggests that she is a normal person, who has recognized the extreme danger in which she found herself and that the chances of getting out were not many but she overcame them by bringing the skin home.

Simple people not fake super heroes.

Some of my friends survived a knife attack a few times ago and the incident contains some important lessons from which we can all learn and in addition to this in the team we constantly analyze hundreds of videos of naked hand assaults, with cutting weapons, firearms, improvised weapons.

Stories often don’t make the idea like a movie but have the advantage of being able to do a statistical analysis of the sensations you feel even if I advise you to read as already suggested in other posts the book On Combat by Dave Grossman

One of the key phrases that always comes out when you can see the aggression because it often happens that the victims are hit before realizing that they are victims of a real armed aggression with phrases like:

• “I heard something and when I saw the knife I tried to stop the attacker then security intervened”
• “I knew he wanted to attack me with the knife but I couldn’t move”
• “when I saw the knife coming towards me, I knew I had to make a decision, but I was stuck”
• Etc.

The key is to make the decision to act.

Acting means fighting or running away, the immobility often used even in nature is not always the solution that guarantees not to be affected but depends a lot on the type of aggression that is going on.

Another element often common in actual aggressions and not in fantasy or inflated tales is that the way they remember an event is very different from what happens in the event.

Often the videos of the assault do not exactly correspond with that of the assailant survivor and told by witnesses (if reliable) where many “frames” are often missing.

Drawing a knife and shaking it in space are extremely fast movements that are somehow faster than our conscious decision-making process, under stress becomes impossible.

Imagine the conscious decision-making process where you first have to get through denial (this is not happening to me), analysis (what should I do), then the decision (now I have to do this particular type of action) and then act.

Too long, for this reason training must take place first because it must generate automatic responses especially the first reactions that are crucial, not that the rest is not important indeed, but without a correct unconscious reaction the rest is no longer there…

The decision to react is not related to martial art practiced

The reality is that it doesn’t matter in a way whether this boy or girl is a student of JKD,of Eskrima, of Krav Maga,karate or another martial/self-defense system, or striking or fighting combat sports because this person decided that he would not be a victim and would do something to get out of that difficult winning situation (bring the skin home).

But what you need to understand is that this decision to act in the event of aggression was taken a long time before facing this armed attacker, when he decided to embark on a combat path.

The green light, the signal to suffer to undertake a path started long before the event, the choice of not wanting to be a victim.

Clearly some arts for training methodologies and educational themes covered are better suited to develop certain attributes in the field of personal defense but it is always the person who makes the difference, art can only be a help.

If it’s too simple, if you don’t make a mistake, if you always win it means you’re not learning

When some of you are interested in this project and start to understand its meaning and to train for the first time with a different awareness is a great satisfaction.

When some of you write to us and tell us that you have a new vision of what you do.

With the people with whom you train is a direct contact that already from many satisfactions but that also through this work you can help enthusiasts, students, teachers, even other arts to make their way of training more effective and aware is something important.

Case Study and Reality

When it is not sport but it is self-defense it is important not to limit yourself, but it is necessary to think through case studies, analysis of aggressions, etc. the possible consequences of a real assault and look for solutions to be able to manage the event and survive.

This approach that does not limit but rather increases the difficulties and explores them in the same situations and variables shows that this person understands the world around them, that they are in touch with reality and accept that reality.

You’re not here to find excuses or compromises or negotiate discounts in aggression, you have to train for the worst hoping you never have to meet him.

You see and feel when people do not have the desire to succeed, to really learn, to seek a solution to a problem but they are more oriented to resignation, to give up the struggle.

Training in general requires commitment but on some issues there beyond commitment, we talk about insisting even when you do not see an exit, a light that indicates the way, but you must always be there and continue but for many, beyond the 80s it is easier to return to denial, resignation, to do the attitudes of the so much you can not do, so it does not work , etc., this is not the attitude of those who improve, or those who succeed in any field, in any sport or sector.

A typical attitude of many people when they see an obstacle too great to overcome is to pretend to immediately overcome that obstacle when you need to train to do so, improving the technique, their fitness, their skills, while instead most just see that it is very difficult to start immediately limiting beliefs and to build the overwhelming evidence against them that is impossible then useless.

Knives move fast, it is impossible to defend yourself, it is impossible to block one, let alone control it, or disarm it which is a hotly discussed issue where I want to emphasize that disarmament is all that takes the weapon away from your attacker.

Example

• the gunshots on his hand is a disarmament,
• you use a stick is a disarming,
• or you use a fucking Doc Johnson gum and it’s a disarmer,
• Etc.

The often debated concept of naked hand disarmament and defined by many as impossible disarmament is a didactic and limiting vision told by fat masters who do not want to deal with the problem with concrete and real solutions.

The concept of disarmament has always been mistold when it is included in the idea of seeking disarmament. because no one seeks disarmament as a solution but it is a condition that you have to study because if you happen you have to know what to do, if you have “the smash of the tennis player you have to point” for this you study them not to try to grab the knife by bare hand as the primary choice.

You have to create the time space to extract your weapon, to protect your limbs (jacket, backpack, sweater), to procure an object to defend yourself (stick, bottle, screwdriver, chair, belt, etc.)

The fact that disarming is complicated does not mean not studying techniques because the study is preparatory.

Clearly disarming a stick is not like disarming a knife and therefore the concept of a naked hand is just to indicate that you do not have another weapon but it is a concept that those who take it literally did not understand the meaning.

If you look at many knife attacks you may see that the attacker is unarmed during the struggle but the question is:

• do you get hit?
• you cut it?

Of course you do, you cut yourself but you’re fighting for your life, you’re struggling to survive it’s not a game!

But your choice is to fight or suffer without a fight?

That is why it is good to understand the difficulties of reality but also to know that there are also successes of those who have survived and this is important because it makes you abandon doubts and have more confidence in what you are trained and taught.

There are no other roads, how many hours have you trained the “naked-handed” disarmers? and I repeat your bare hand and when you leave not when you arrive, then disarmament repeat is all that takes the weapon away from your attacker.

Now I bet you’ve trained seconds and not hundreds of hours in disarmament strategies, so what strategies have you used?

• Escape
• Hit
• pull out the knife you have in your pocket
• pull out a firearm
• search for an object
• throw everything you had around
• use your vest as a shield
• take off a shoe, the belt,
• Etc.

You’ve never done it but you want to say yours and as you see just the rhetoric of the naked hand, but there is the concept of adapting and using what you have on you and the environment and that’s why extractions are important, improvising to find objects is important, understanding how to escape is important, etc.

The defense has bare hand against a cutting weapon is to be able to create a time space to do actions through tools.

Consider that if you haven’t noticed the assault and get hit it’s easy for your reaction to try to stop the armed hand trying to hit you repeatedly by grabbing it!

They are common instincts but it is not always the best strategy.

It depends who has the knife, the height, the weight, for this you can not exclude a priori what you can do or can not do but it depends on the context, the type of attacker, how he handles the weapon.

The concept of adaptation that must be trained with partners and types of aggressions and strategies different attacks are important.

Example: you are good at high kicks and you are 1.70 meters but your opponent is 2 meters high it is not like pulling it at an opponent of 1.70 like you, it means that you have to change strategy and the same thing applies to the knife, if one is a wrist like a leg and you have a hand like a dwarf you can not even try to dare to try to block it!

Ps. The one that “doesn’t pull the high kicks”in self-defense but is an example to explain, a simple concept and stop. (I am obliged to make these clarifications for the phenomena of the web).

Never think in absolutist terms because it is a static and flat view of combat where it is never considered who you are and who is the aggressor.

I always remember that if you’re attacked with a knife you’re fighting for life so you cut yourself to survive, what matters is to survive.

There are few of you

I want to tell you with sincerity, those who continue to insist and try and try again and engage in training, they are a small percentage and they are the people who really understand the reality and accept the process necessary to impose themselves on it, increase the chances of succeeding, of overcoming the obstacle they have to overcome and yet they believe they can do it.

For example, a theme like cutting weapons requires a tremendous humility and if you are not willing to do this, to make mistakes and start again, thousands of times then you will always be part of those who talk about what you can do or can not do but without doing anything, so your opinion does not matter except on social media among keyboard bullets.

You decide which side you want to be on!

Conclusions

When you’re in the gym and you’re training, the next time you come in or you’re on the tatami, look at the person you train with, your training partner and try to understand why he’s there, and at the same time get busy with the focus that day on you to make the choice to learn self-defense and train.

When you’re in class, look around and try to figure out who he is and who the people around you are and you’re in front of you, behind you or on the side, because he might be a person who survived an armed or naked assault and if he’s there it’s to continue to survive in case he faces one.

Focus and understand that this person could also be you and that what you are studying is not a game, it takes seriousness, dedication, responsibility, realism and who is there because he survived in his gaze does not have the game but a precise goal, increase the chances of survival.

Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport

Andrea