Fight
Sunday, May 18th, 2008
No matter how good your awareness is, no matter how good your avoidance and evasion skills are there will be times when a situation becomes physical, it would be a mistake to imagine that we can walk away from every encounter without a blow being thrown in anger.
The decision to fight back is one that must be made long before any confrontation occurs, if you wait until you find yourself squeezed between a rock and a hard place before deciding what course of action to take it will be too late as the attack will already have begun and you will be on the back foot possibly with no opportunity to retaliate.
Having made the decision to fight back you must train to embed some basic fighting skills, you must create a short list of striking techniques that you feel comfortable with, you must train these to become natural movements, testing them under pressure by increasing the intensity of attacks in training will often show up pitfalls and expose techniques that you thought were good as not very practical or applicable in a fight.
It’s worth mentioning here that any fight that you find yourself in will not be a gentlemanly fisticuffs affair, it will be very close, in your face and very messy, you are not likely to be in a ring or a training hall with plenty of room to manoeuvre, it is far more likely to be in a social surrounding with furniture and other obstacles in the way, quite possibly you will be bumping into doors and walls or other people so train for this type of environment.
You wont always have time and space to apply well placed strikes, you may find yourself in grappling range where the assailant is holding onto you to prevent you from escaping, they may be pushing and pulling you around or trying to strangle you, you should consider the use of some dirty tactics, biting, clawing and eye gouging are all legitimate defences against someone who is intent on raping, robbing or just inflicting violence on you because they happen to be drunk or had a bad day.
Alan Beckett