OneOn guard! Hands high or low?As many people know an answer to such a question depends upon the ‘situation and environment’ that they might find themselves in. However, it goes without saying (even if I am saying it!) that if your sport is boxing or whatever you would enter into the bout/fight using the protocols and proven strategies of your chosen sport. For boxing it would generally be (especially when in striking range) hands held high to protect the head and elbows in to protect the ribs etc. (And no flapping of elbows when punching!)
When I first started training in Kyokushinkai karate in 1973 we were taught, in preparation for ‘dojo knock down fighting’, to fight one hand high and one hand low. Training under some of the Japanese, as well as, some top British instructors they all used one hand high and one hand low to pretty good effect. Yet by 1978 everybody, or so it seemed, were punching whilst at the same time using the opposite hand for a face cover. And with the advent of ‘knock down tournaments’ Kyokusinkai practitioners using both hands held high to protect the head were by the late 1970s training like western boxers with kicking and kneeing thrown into the mix as well. However, we still trained to fight at a particular distance, not as close as Judo and a little further apart than boxing…What is the primary distance of a street fight?
Bouncing and street fightingOne night in 1980 when I first started bouncing I was working at the back of a night club. Working on one side of a pair of fire escape doors, my job was to stop customers coming in and out through the fire exit. On the other side of the doors was a long flight of stairs that went from the third storey down to the car park and safety if a fire happened inside the club. Half way down the metal stairs was a landing. Around closing time a fight had gone off involving 5, 6 or maybe 7 people. They had fought by the fire doors and then down the stairs on to the landing. When I and a couple of other doorman got to them, we barged the lot down the remaining half flight of stairs and away from club. Very quickly it’s over for us and I am standing with my colleagues at the top of the stairs enjoying the fight of which I had no intention of trying to stop. I had now become a passive observer. However, what happened next forced me to re-evaluate certain aspects of my training.
The fighting and arguments had stopped and one of the combatants then casually walks over to a skip and discreetly picks up half a house brick. With his arms at his side he walks over to one of the other guys and without taking a fighting stance, a high guard or a split second pause to get his balance, he just hits this guy full in the face with the half house brick. The man got a quick glimpse of what was coming but the half house brick just ploughed through his attempted guard. He went down like a sack of shit and the fight had gone from a brawl between a group of squaddies (British soldiers) and civilians into something far more serious. Everybody stopped fighting and even though I was not involved my heartbeat went through the ceiling. The guy that used the brick took to heels and did a runner.
Quite simply what I had seen was as far as I was concerned an assassination attempt, which was also incredibly effective in its simplicity. Not long after that I saw a similar drama unfold in which the assailant used a claw hammer. In both cases nobody, not me nor any of the bouncers that I was working with thought the ‘armed man’ was at a disadvantage because he kept his hands low and slightly behind his back as he walked up to his victim! Nor did we take it upon ourselves to think that we could easily defend ourselves against such dangerous people. But what I saw that night (and on many other occasions over the years) was an effective pre-emptive strike. It was executed without a pause, without a stable static stance and interestingly quite a few of them started with a small leap-which covered distance very quickly-into the intended victim.
Driven by hate it seemed to me that the antagonist only had to satisfy two criteria:
• Full intention to use a weapon
• Full intention to carry out the attack.
Having made the decision none of them, so it seemed to me, were concerned about being able to adjust their game plan once the wheels of motion were brought into play-it really was a case of ‘I do what I want!’ From such experiences in the early 1980s I decided that I must ‘try’ and develop what is known in traditional karate jutsu as the one punch kill, but I’ll digress first.
Thugs, drunks, coke and pill headsWhen confronted say by two guys in a nightclub, pub (bar) or in the street it ‘should’ be obvious by the way they carry themselves, their language and demeanour that they have evil intentions towards you. You are forced, because you have no way of extracting yourself from the situation, to take the ‘first’ one out of the game. However, it has always struck me as being foolhardy to put your arms up into a guard position a moment before you launch your attack. Not only are you ‘arresting’ the momentum of your hand technique but you are also telegraphing your intentions ‘long’ before you execute the technique. And it is just as foolish to put your guard up if you have to walk a few yards towards an opponent and especially so in a crowd where, because you have identified your intentions, you could easily get sucker punched or bottled from the side or from behind by one of his mates! And anyway once a punch is on its way towards the offending face/head then by default there’s your high guard for you!
An argument has been put forward where ‘leaping in’ and hitting a pad with an elbow technique (YouTube clip (3:18) is impractical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iRmv1LEk5E&feature=related ‘Using the “wrong technique” because of how far I am away from the targets’ has in my opinion not been full understood. Irrespective of where I am as I launch my attack, or even if I am 10 yards away from my intended target and I have to walk up and then launch my attack, it is obvious that at the point of contact I am just an elbow distance away from my target. If that were not so I would miss or hit the opponent with both my shoulder and body weight! As one strategy amongst a number of strategies I have ‘jumped in’ [It was executed without a pause, without a stable static stance and interestingly quite a few of them started with a small leap-which covered distance very quickly-into the intended victim.] on many occasions in a nightclub/bar fight to good effect.
In a fight or even a brawl balance is always dynamic-it is on the move. Good balance or even bad balance changes from split second to second and in a nightclub in close proximity to numerous other people with some trying to grab and punch you, being stable in a static position could prove highly uncomfortable even if you maintain a high guard. Keep on the move and constantly change position and preferable to your own advantage so that in the melee you set your opponent/s up. It should be noted though, that even running away requires ‘your’ dynamic balance to be successful!
Irrespective of what martial art you practice it is not common for anybody whilst fighting in their chosen discipline to end up on a life support machine or even dead. The risk on the street or in a nightclub can be far greater and scarier than many people care to consider. It is not about punching a few drunks to get a name. Doing that is easy but even that can be more dangerous than you think-who is their brother, their dad or their friends? It’s only mug bouncers that do that sort of thing. Yet, on the other hand try imagining what it’s like to fight a drunk that’s trying to shove a broken bottle in your face! Alcohol is one thing but the biggest problem since the early 1990s is drugs especially cocaine, now imagine fighting one or two guys out of their faces on cocaine. Immune to pain, having no fear, full of hate because of their fucked up minds…Flesh and blood cannot fight numbers or weapons ‘that well’, and as a bouncer I have learnt to live with that reality for 26 years.
PunchingIn the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TYI3ClpP9c&feature=relatedthe leather bag weighs around 94 lb, the bottom half has the density of Granulated silver spoon sugar. Prior to this I had spent many years punching a makiware and had also spent around 3 years punching a concrete post and about the same time on a sand filled Wing Chun wall (3) pads. I also spent many years, on and off, training on boxing pads as well as light and heavy punch bags. At the time of this training session (1993) I was working on correct body alignment for delivering maximum power through two knuckles (seiken). I had been working as a bouncer for 13 years and had by then been in many fights. (Experience-what looks like me doing body shots on the bag are in the main head shots. People bending over-it happens a lot in street fighting!) For me it was obvious, I needed to have as much impact in my punches as I could possible generate from ALL MY BODY-tendons, muscles, nerve connections and connective tissue and also my full body weight (approx 200 lbs). My knuckles had to be tough and hard to take the tremendous stress, and the bones in my arms had be in perfect (punching) alignment so that I could use my body weight, both in sliding and jumping, to its best effect.
I have never considered myself the hardest hitter around but I know that there ain’t that many people who could hit that bag bare knuckles as hard as I could. I never grazed the skin on my knuckles nor broke my hand which on that bag was a very easy thing to do especially punching the bag without bandage wraps and bag mitts. In reference to grazing the skin, I rarely skimmed the bag with a punch either left or right hand. My seiken would dig into it feeling as if the two knuckles were reaching into the middle of the bag. Although I worked on other ‘stuff’ like wrestling, grabbing, locks, kicks etc., my martial art for self defence has always centred on hand techniques. In 1973 I was taught a basic karate punch and following the traditional precept of continual training, practice and tempering with experience, I have, some millions of punches later-1000 punches a day for three years started me off-evolved into what I am. I don’t swing my punches-they come off tangent from a sphere, and have proven very effective on many occasions over the years. My karate is as simple as walking up to somebody and hitting them, something I saw some 29 years ago. In my younger days I wanted to be just as lethal as the man with the brick, but be able to do it unarmed. In my journey I have learnt a few things yet one thing that does stand out in every fight that I have ever seen or been involved in:
There are no rules in a street fight except your own morality.
And as I got older I have learnt that there is more to martial arts than fighting.
Regards Dennis Jones
Home
[/img]
