The Violent Assault Part 2

We all know that society has become a place where random acts of violence are occurring frequently.

Stabbings across the nation are becoming a daily occurrence. We used to take some comfort in thinking that the attacker and victim were know to each other, and while that is still the case with many assaults, the rise in living pressures combined with increasing substance abuse, has mean’t that the risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being randomly assaulted has increased dramatically.

HOW DO PEOPLE FEEL ABOUT THIS?

Most people are still of the attitude;”It won’t happen to me.” Without even thinking this they Don’t Think. They go about their daily lives with their head in the sand.

Now I’m not talking about become paranoid, or living in constant fear that we will inevitably be attacked, but just a subtle mind shift can help reduce the risk. It’s all about risk reduction. We can’t train to become like someone invincible in the movies. Jason Bourne for example. And an attack may take us completely by surprise and everything is in the attackers favour. ‘The Perfect Storm’ I suppose.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, reducing the risk by a subtle mind shift is the start. Plus some Basic self-defence training. And that self-defence training should most likely resemble nothing like you would have imagined, or maybe had some training in before.

I mentioned in The Violent Assault Part 1 that the brain is like a computer. When we are under stress it searches our hard drive for an answer, a response / defence to the assault.

There is a law called ‘Hick’s Law’. Hicks Law basically states that your reaction time is a factor of the number of choices you are presented with. The more choices the longer your reaction time. The less choices the faster your reaction time.

So in preparation to defending yourself against a violent assault, it is essential to train regularly on the basic solutions, the basic principles. Principles not techniques. Most techniques require complex motor skills which are slow to implement when we are under the effects of stress and adrenaline. Returning to Nicks Law; the more tools we have in our toolkit, I.e techniques, the slower our reaction time, as a reaction is always slower than an action.

When we train we must do so imitating as closely as possible the scenario we would face in a real life event, a real assault. If we don’t train this way, then under pressure, terrified with our adrenaline impacting our function, we risk not rapidly implementing what we have continuously trained to do. An example of this is from when I recently watched a video clip where an individual attacked people with a knife in a playground in America. People moved out of his way, they were stunned by what he was doing, and some might say they were frozen with fear. A more likely explanation would be they were not trained to run when they see someone brandishing a knife, so they did not run. They had not practiced running away from danger. They were unable to override their fear and adrenalised body to run from the area. So when we train, and in this example let’s refer to knife defence, we need to practice running away and yelling, as well as what we would do if ambushed or cornered by someone with a knife.

When we train to defend ourselves against an unarmed attacker we must not only practice the various strikes; palm strikes, elbows, hammer fists, coughing, kicks, biting etc, we must train to keep our balance at all times. To be fluid and adaptable, to go with the flow, with the utter randomness of the assault. To not be predictable. To be random and lightning fast. As Lee Morrison says to “Unleash Hell”.

Stay tuned for the next part.