Pre-Emptive Strike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWsPPXwaoPo&t=75s

https://www.brixtonselfdefence.co.uk/blog/preemptive-strikes-in-self-defence

The Fence: Geoff Thompson

 

Chapter 1: The Premise

Most self-defense situations and attack scenarios issue rays of prior warning, if you are perceptive enough to spot the attacker. 

-If you are not alert or negligently put yourself in potentially dangerous situation, such walking down dark alley at night, then you may not get prior warning and have to deal with an ambush scenario.

Outside of the ambush scenario, there is often verbal communication that precedes an attack upon the person and the victim who is quite often disarmed or shocked rigid by it, The time lapse between the disarming, or scarifying verbal (which can be very short) and the attack itself is ‘your time’. During these seconds you may ‘seize the moment’, as it were, and be preemptive, 1) effecting attack or/and 2) escape. Alternatively you can elongate the verbal by replying to the aforementioned dialogue with 3) submissive or aggressive counter-verbal. These seconds before battle are absolutely pivotal. They must be managed
quickly and without demur; remember, hesitancy begets defeat. This arena is that of the 3 second fighter.

As I have just said pre-fight management is vital if you

want to survive intact, the winner and loser in most

situations is usually determined by what happens prefight

as opposed to in-fight.

Chapter 2

Reality of Criminal Assault - Craig Douglas - Notes

Episode 1: The Criminal Assault Paradigm

1. Unequal Initiative - rarely do we see people in the training environment people by surprise. 

2. Disproportionate Armament  - usually in the training environment each party is somewhat equally armed. (unarmed vs unarmed, knife vs knife, gun vs gun)

3. Extreme Close Range - Close Quarters (bad guys wants something from you they have to get close to take what they want)

4. More Than One Adversary - Generally more than one person (bad guy) is present

5. The Presence of Weapons (either actual weapon or improvised weapon like a bat or tire iron)

Are you training in a way to address these issues?

Episode 2: Range and Time

Criminal assault happens up close. 

If range were an equation we could say range equals time. More range equals more time. Less range equals less time. 

Demonstration

1) Craig stands an arms length with extended fingers away from his partner (average conversation distance). From there he quickly tries to touch his partner's chest. His partner tries to touch Craig's hand before Craig touches him. From that distance his partner isn't able to respond in time. 

2) Craig steps back a distance of his shoe size. They run the drill again. His partner is far more successful at responding in time. 

Episode 3: Practicing Awareness 

Craig describes awareness as a spectrum of a persons field of vision or awareness. Throughout the day a persons field of vision/awareness is in a constant state of flux. It is constantly expanding and narrowing. For self protection you would rather have the expanded/broad field of awareness. 

What causes the narrow field of vision/awareness? Generally it is task fixation. Task fixation (focusing on your phone while waling in a parking garage, A young mother focuses on a baby seat in a car, etc.)

You want to maintain a broad field of awareness to hopefully provide you with early detection of a potential problem thus giving you more range and time. 

Episode 4: Distinguishing Criminal Actors from Benign Strangers

What does a bad guy look like? Do you let some strangers get closer to you than others? What is it that effects that decision? Is it their gender? Their age? Is it how their dressed? Tattoos? Race? It's really hard to determine in this day and age with so much diversity what a person's intentions are based on how they look. So Craig suggests following the same rules that we teach our children. Namely, don't talk to strangers or stranger danger. Those are hacks, for consistency, which remove the judgement process based on observation. He teaches doing the same thing as adults. To interact with strangers consistently when approached by one in a place which would support a crime against someone such as a parking garage. He refers to strangers as unknowns. Unknowns contacts. 

Whatever strategy template developed to manage this unknown contact is probably the most important thing you can use to enhance your awareness or if a problem is confirmed, deselect your self out of that. What is deselection? Deselection would be a confirmed, in your mind, bad guy, evaluating you on his approach and thinking, "nope, not that guy" and moving on about his business. 

Episode 5: Managing Unknown Contacts

Verbal Interaction & Playlist

Scenario: You are in a parking garage. You have a broad field of awareness. You see a stranger approaching from a distance. Craig points out that he's not judging the persons intentions based on how he looks or how he's dressed. He does know, as previously pointed out, that if he allows this person to get within average conversation distance, and this person is hostile, the chances of successfully reacting defensively in time are very low. Therefore he would like to keep this person a little further away using verbal skills. 

If you say to a person approaching you something like, "what's up" or "how you doing" or "how can I help you" or "what do you need" you are essentially inviting a person to engage with you and get closer to you. Your goal should be to halt the persons movement toward you so you can maintain a safer distance. 

Is there anything you don't want to do? Certainly if this were a benign stranger with a benign request, then probably you wouldn't want to overreact, say something inappropriate and perhaps create a problem where one doesn't exist. 

Simply put, you are trying to halt the persons movement toward you and not anger them. 

I. Verbal Component

1. Asking

"Hey buddy can you hold up for just a second" Saying it in a way which is friendly but not inviting. Putting hands up in a fence. 

What if the person continues toward you?

At some point you move from asking to telling.

2. Telling

Telling is getting the volume up. If your volume is normally a 2 you now go to a 10.

"Back up!"

What about profanity? Craig's guidelines on using profanity:1) if you don't normally use profanity, now is not the time to start (you'll come across as inauthentic and a street savvy person will pick up on that). 2) Try not to be insulting with your profanity. Use profanity to punctuate your statement (difference between "back the fuck up" and "back up mother fucker")

Playlist analogy

II. Movement

The goal is to maintain distance. Of course moving forward would decrease the distance between you so you don't want to do that. Moving backwards means you are stepping into a place you can't see and it also puts you on your heels diminishing forward drive. That leaves us with arcing. Imagine you are standing on the face of a clock at 6:00 and the person approaching you is at 12:00, you are going to move in an arc like manner to either 9:00 or 3:00. What's the purpose in doing so? It's to account for the possibility of a second person. A typical pincer assault may involve one person a talking to you and distracting you while their partner approaches you from behind and sticks a gun to your ribs. The idea behind arcing is to allow you to keep your eyes on the person approaching you and also allow you to scan what is going on behind you by changing your field of vision. Additionally it is more manageable to physically deal with two attaches more or less in front of you than on in front and one behind you. 

Episode 6: Managing Unknown Contacts (Continued)

III. Fence (Active Hands)

Hands are up, active and perhaps, somewhat of a barrier between you and the approaching person. Hands relatively high and relatively close to the body. Not extended, staggered or low. What you do with your hands may vary. Sometimes the palms may be turned outward to hep accentuate the verbal message that you want space. They may be clasped together, steepled together or maybe just moving around as you talk with your hands. Whatever you do, the hands must be held high. Why? It allows for a reduction in reaction time. Hands held high don't have to travel as far to protect your head as hands held low do. 

How to physically train managing unknown contacts

*They demonstrate some scenario training

*Expanding field of vision by pointing to the second guy once seen

Episode 7: Pre Assault Cues

It's hard to determine intention by the way people look. However, most people exhibit the same body language as they are ramping themselves up to assault. These are referred to pre assault cues. There are many of these but Craig goes over 7 primary cues.

1. Grooming Cue - Any kind of hand gesture around the head or the face. 

Examples include:

-The hand moving across the brow

-Pinching the nose

-Wiping the eye

-Finger in the ear

-Pinching the cheeks

-Hand on the back of the collar

-Hand on the collar bone

Nobody can say for sure why grooming cues happen before and assault. Craig has heard a variety of explanations both psychological and physiological.

Grooming, just like any pre-assault cue is not definitive. (a person wiping sweat from their brow doesn't mean you can point a gun at them). However, they help indicate (especially when coupled with other cues) the likelihood the person has ill intentions. 

2. Target Glance - When a person approaching you makes darting glances to their left, right or behind them. Any time you see someone evaluating the environment in relation to themselves and you as distance is closing you need to be concerned and wary. Often, grooming and target glancing clustered together.

3. Definitive Weight Shift - 

Fighting System

It seems to me that the most fundamental way of perceiving and categorizing a fighting system is in regards to the 1) positional relationship between you and your opponent(s), 2) the actions and reactions of each combatant, 3) the environment the combatants are in and 4) the context of the situation. 

Threat/Pre Fight Indicators

 

John Lovell of The Warrior Poet Society talks about Pre Fight Indicators

1) Scanning - When bad guys scan the area, their chin is down They tend to look around using quick, jerky movements. If you meet their eyes they will immediately avert their gaze. 

2) Clinched Fist

3) Fidgety 

4) A Bladed Stance

5) Target Fixation

6) Pretending To Look Busy

7) Change In Demeanor

8) Attempt To Cover Face

Any single threat indicator might not mean anything but when more than one is viewed together the likelihood you are dealing with someone out to cause you ill will goes up. 

Policemag: Pre-Attack Indicators

See:

Left of Bang

Personal Defense Resource List

Personal Defense Resource List

I. Preventing Attacks

A. Avoidance
B. Deterrence
-Victim Selection

-Confident Self Projection

C. Awareness/Identifying Potential Threats 

Left of Bang

- Why Awareness Is Important: OODA Loop

-Color Codes Of Awareness

-Intuition

The Gift of Fear

   

D. Managing Known & Unknown Contacts

The Fence

Managing Unknown Contacts Manual - Craig Douglas

-Types of Violence

-De-escalation

-Assertiveness (Boundary & Refusal Skills)

-Aggressiveness/Mindset

Meditations on Violence

E. Limiting Access/Target Hardening

  

II. Responding to Attacks
A. Unarmed Defense     

B. Armed Defense

C. Psychological & Physiological Effects of Combat
D. Legal Aspects of Personal Defense

The Law of Self Defense

III. The Aftermath of an Attack
A. Legal Considerations

B. Physical & Psychological Treatment

Types of Violence

Kinds of Violence: No Nonsense Self-Defense

Where does interpersonal violence fit in