Karate

Karate and Self Protection from John Titchen

violent

A world of behaviours

I recently saw a statement online that implied, possibly inadvertently, that there was a binary choice between behaviour that might incite aggression or violence by challenging the personal insecurities of affected (alpha) personalities and that which might invite approaches from those that prey on those they perceive as vulnerable.

I may have misinterpreted the statement, but the implication seemed to be that these were two sides of a coin. Acting in a way so as not to appear vulnerable would attract negative attention from those seeing it as a challenge to their imagined local social status, while seeking to avoid antagonising the latter would engage the interest of those looking for prey.

I prefer to see those points as distant (though not necessarily opposite) poles on a world of behaviours. As with the real world there are some places where the local physical or social environment may make it a very dangerous location to be without appropriate experience, training or support. But in common with the real world there are large hospitable zones where most people are very safe and supported most of the time.

Just as many people have the ability to travel or adjust their environment to make it less dangerous, most of us have the ability to move on our behavioural globe. Through our own agency or with the guidance of others (parents, peers, role models, teachers or counsellors) most people can adjust their self-perception and body language to the vast continents of calm confident behaviour that neither antagonises nor invites predatory activity. In fact, the infrequency of violent crime victimisation per person on average in most WIRED / WEIRD (Western Industrialised Rich Educated & Democratic) countries would indicate that most people manage this most of the time.

Personal behaviour is something that was alluded to by Gichin Funakoshi in his 20 precepts.

“When you leave home, think that you have numerous opponents waiting for you. It is your behaviour that invites trouble from them.”

Our behaviour and attitude to life determines much of our reality. Most abusive, aggressive or violent encounters can be avoided or negated through social awareness, respect for others, cognitive and/or emotional empathy, and confident behaviour. The thought of ‘numerous opponents’ is not an incitement to paranoia (which is the wrong mindset for safe and healthy living), rather a reminder that our behaviour has the potential to be an obstacle and can create opponents.

This is not the same as laying the responsibility for any victimisation at our own door.

Any individual has the potential to meet the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ‘prevention point’ for most domestic or familial abuse is both early behaviour pattern spotting to avoid entering into coercive and abusive relationships, and environment and behaviour shaping in youth to prevent people developing into abusers. As children we have little to no control over the environments and events that the adults around us shape for us or that we are born into.  These have the potential to fix us in behaviour patterns that can make us more vulnerable than others to different problems, just as others may react to poor environments and events by becoming embedded in behaviour patterns that make them cause issues for others in the future. Breaking such cyclical patterns requires multi-generational approaches because it’s not simply about preventing yourself from being victimised tomorrow, or deterring another person tomorrow, it’s also about helping the previous generation move on and working ‘early’ to prevent the next generation from repeating the cycle.

This rather neatly takes us full circle, because in attempting to expand on one over-simplification with regard to avoiding abusive aggressive and predatory behaviours, I’ve also moved to a gross simplification of some of the many complex factors that lead to people perpetrating or being the victims of such behaviours. It is human nature to want to simplify explanations, whether as advertising or teaching soundbites or as concepts to learn. As such I understand I understand the binary example given at the start, even though I believe the exceptions to its imagery are greater than the norm.


There is a truism that if you understand something complex you can explain it in simple terms, but such terms still remain simplifications. Everything that is complex is simple at its heart, and everything that is simple is complex.

Not seeing the wood for the trees

The techniques of karate kata have many possible interpretations. What each individual sees in the kata will vary according to their own experience and how skilled they are at identifying potential applications.

Not every application taught need be practical.

As a case in point in my Shotokan classes I teach a wrist grab defence using kata movements that isn’t the simplest or most effective method of escape, but is a very effective drill for teaching appropriate positioning, optimum biomechanics and principles of controlling and unbalancing. While doing so I always stress that it is drill about biomechanics and usually show the faster escape. In similar vein for my Heian / Pinan Sandan drills in both the older Heian Flow System and the more recent Pinan Flow System I included a spinning back elbow and back fist. While this has been successfully used in the UFC,  it is not the most practical of techniques, but its inclusion was to a large extent to illustrate that point by making it an opening for students to unpredictably encounter a number of different positions and attacks which would lead to spontaneously training other drills.

When an application is specifically designed for practical use I notice that some people often fail to see the wood for the trees.

It is easy to over-focus on mimicking the techniques or sequences of the form but forget the overall context. If you need to strike, control or escape from another person then they will also have an agenda.

This means that they are unlikely to be holding you limply, are likely to be prepared to hit you, or may continuously be trying to hit you or get to a position where they can hit you unless you take steps to prevent that. Always protect your head and as much of your body as you can.

Unanticipated aggressive and violent confrontations tend to cause a significant adrenaline release unless you are very familiar with them and a non consensual or unpredictable event will cause different reactions to a predictable or fully consensual one. In such situations even very well trained people have difficulty utilising fine motor skills or targeting accurately and this should be reflected in applications. The same hormonal cascade (along with other substances) may render pain compliant / dependent techniques ineffective.

The context of the drill should be realistic if the drill is supposed to be for self defence. Appropriate habitual acts of violence (HAOV) rather than style or rule format specific attacks, and not over-skilling or under-skilling attackers / training partners. In similar vein you need to be clear whether what you are doing is legal for the envisioned circumstances  if you are training it for practical purposes rather than historical curiosity.

Hitting or striking a resisting person isn’t as easy as working with a compliant training partner. As a general rule at close quarters (where most violent incidents occur and remain) you will need to strike to control and control to strike.

When people get hit, they move, even when you are holding them. Combinations should take this into account. This quickly becomes apparent when you are making contact or receiving contact in training.

The potential of practical karate kata application is incredibly vast, but when interpreting kata for such purposes the ‘trees’ of the individual skill sets should always be seen within the context of the wood that represents the nature of actual violent confrontations.

Headlines, knives and kneejerk reactions

Last week the Office for National Statistics in the UK published its latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). This regular publication does not normally merit much public comment in the media unless a politician seizes upon it to argue that crime is continuing to fall, but the July 16 2015 release made the headlines because of an apparent increase in offences involving sharp weapons.

First Knife Crime Rise in four years proclaimed the BBC.

The Daily Mail let us know that Dramatic rise in knife crime is down to a fall in stop and search, says Met chief Hogan-Howe 

Knife crime in England and Wales up for first time in four years cried the Guardian.

The question I’ve been asked is that with this frightening increase in knife crime, should we change our training to focus more on edged weapon awareness and blade defences?

Actually that’s not true, no-one’s asked me if they should do more edged weapon awareness, they just want blade defences.

 

Reality check.

Have there been more recorded offences involving edged weapons? Yes. According to the CSEW

“In the year ending March 2015, the police recorded 26,370 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, a 2% increase compared with the previous year (25,974, Table 9a). This is the first year in which these figures have increased since 2010/11 (the earliest period for which data are directly comparable).”

Knife crime 1415

However, before we panic we should bear in mind two things. Firstly the low numbers involved mean that they are susceptible to high percentage changes. The CSEW itself notes that
“For some offence types, such as rape and sexual assault, the relatively low number of offences, that involve the use of a knife or sharp instrument means the volume of these offences are subject to apparent large percentage changes, and should be interpreted with caution. For example, in the year ending March 2015, the number of sexual assaults involving a knife or sharp instrument increased by 28% (an additional 28 offences compared to the 101 recorded in the previous year) and the number of rapes involving knife or sharp instrument increased by 21% (an additional 55 offences compared to the 267 recorded in the previous year).”

Secondly, although we have yet to get fully comparable data, the evidence from hospital admission data indicates that this rise in use has not been mirrored with a rise in injuries. The CSEW records that

“An additional source of information about incidents involving knives and sharp instruments is provided by provisional National Health Service (NHS) hospital admission statistics5. Admissions for assault with a sharp instrument peaked at 5,720 in 2006/07. Admissions have declined since that year; the latest data available, for the year ending March 2014, showed that there were 3,654 admissions, a 5% decrease on the previous year. Admissions for assault with a sharp instrument in 2013/14 were the lowest since 2002/03.”

Knife crime is up, slightly. Deaths from blade usage is down. So have the general populace of England and Wales suddenly become better at defending themselves against knives? No. Defending against a knife is not easy. Training to defend against a knife can have validity, but it is not a simple process.

If a person intends to use a knife, as opposed to using it as an effective tool for coercion and intimidation in robbery or sexual assault, the odds are you won’t even see it.

If we need to do anything ‘new’ as a result of this year’s fresh statistics it is to improve our behaviour. Prevention is better than cure. Some events are so random that they cannot be avoided, but good awareness and good behaviour go a long way to avoiding becoming a crime statistic. As Gichin Funakoshi wrote in his 20 precepts

When you leave home, think that you have numerous opponents waiting for you. It is your behaviour that invites trouble from them.

Six things you should do in your training

1. Train against attacks to the head

The head is an obvious target.  Not only can we be knocked unconscious through strikes to the head, our ability to hear, see, shout and even our balance can be damaged. We do have natural reflexes to protect the head which will be activated should our eyes receive a stimulus once it is too late to access and execute a trained protective action, but these reflexes are not always effective.  The best way to become skilled at protecting the head is to have to defend against attacks to that target on a regular basis.  It does not matter whether those attacks are intended to make contact or not, all that is required is the incentive to continuously protect our head from impact and to learn carry the arms in such a way that we can do so speedily with ease.

2. Train against HAOV

Pushes, shoves, grabs, wild haymakers, head butts, headlocks, shoulder barges, tackles, clinches, stomps… the use of habitual acts of violence in training can be controversial.  From a self defence perspective they are essential training tools, for in a violent situation you are far more likely to be attacked using haov than any more precise form of attack, even if your attacker is themselves a skilled martial artist.  The downside of training against haov is that it means that a proportion of the training time is spent delivering a skillset in which you do not want or need to become proficient at employing.  How much time you spend on training against haov should be weighted according to your primary skill development aims.

3. Train at Close range

By close range I’m referring to tactile contact and working at a distance where you are generally within at most ¾ of the arm reach of your training partner.  Most violent confrontations quickly close to this distance no matter how skilled a ‘long distance’ fighter one participant may be, and this infighting range is one at which it is important to be comfortable.

4. Make Contact (actually hit people and pads)

Contact in training is tremendously important.  I’ve written about it in Volume Three of the Pinan Flow System.  Both making and receiving contact is important.  Experiencing contact in training so that real shoves or knocks don’t faze you or affect your will to continue is invaluable, and it doesn’t have to be knockdown or dangerous/damaging to do so under the supervision of a good teacher.

5. Use verbal abuse and distraction

Verbal abuse, whether by one person or a group, can freeze a person unused to personally experiencing it more effectively than the shock of contact.  Exposure to bad language at a distance, or on the screen is not the same. There is a big difference between facing a silent focused training partner, enduring the kiai of a confident partner, and having one or more people swearing and shouting directly in your face.

6. Train against multiple opponents

Dealing with multiple opponents isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty.  There are lots of different ways that this can be done: some that genuinely put the trainee under gradually increasing pressure, others that are frankly ridiculous either because they are always so intense that they offer no chance for progression or learning outcomes, or because they are so spaced apart that there is no added pressure or learning gained. There’s no guarantee that training against multiple opponents is going to enable you to fight more than one person (and you should try to avoid even fighting just one person), but this form of training will make you aware of the difficulty, give you indications as to things that definitely don’t work, and possibly provide a more appropriate focus for your one on one strategies.

I haven’t picked these six training paradigms at random.  From the experience of observing many trained and untrained people from a range of backgrounds in hundreds of simulated aggressive and violent confrontations, these are the six factors that determine how easily a person is able to access their combative skill set.  The more of these a person deals with in regular training the easier it will be to access their skill set, the fewer of these they work regularly or have experienced the harder it will be to access that skill set.  This model helps explain why personality, upbringing, martial arts styles and training regimes all have an effect on how successfully people can physically defend themselves.

Not everyone is able to meet all six of these criteria in their regular training, but that doesn’t matter.  I have seen people who meet only three criteria in their martial arts class (attacks to the head, contact and close range) do exceptionally well because in their work as LEO (Law Enforcement Officers) they have encountered verbal abuse, haov, and dealing with multiple opponents.  The more you meet the easier it will be. If you identify a gap in your class, and if you are not in a position to fill it (or your instructor doesn’t want to) then it is usually easy to gain experience and have fun by cross training at a seminar, or inviting an instructor to teach at your club or workplace.

Have fun and train safely!