If there was no means of escape...

At what point in a confrontation does the fence not work? If an assailant comes straight for you with no emotion on his face? Maybe he's not going to attack you and you knock him out anyway? What would stop an innocent getting smashed? If he's got no emotion, you decide he's no threat and you get knocked out/ killed?
Please pardon my naivety. Just some questions I need answering. Thanks in advance guys.

Hi Phil,

In await of Alan to answer the question I will explain as good as I can.

If we break a conflict up in different phases we have first the target selection or the origin of the conflict where the person decides to go for you. Then you have the interview stage where the guy gets in your face gobbing off and were you put up the fence to control your space and assertively try to talk the situation down. if you fail to talk him down then you have the posture, preemptive phase. Failing that he will attack you.

That's the theory behind it, some people will skip phases.

If you watch Geoff's 3 second fighter you see he also explains ambush fighting. That's when a guy goes from step one to step four. Also therse is match fight or lets sort it out outside thing. Also here will be no fence.

The fence is the situation where you meet a guy that comes up to you and you are uncertain about their intentions. You want to control your space.

Also the first sign of agression is an invasion of your intimate space. You want to keep everyone except your peers out of that space.

What would stop an innocent getting smashed? You assertively told him that you don't want any trouble and told him to back off. The fence is as said a disatnce controler so if he moves in after you told him to go away you fire your shot.

Kind Regards,

Nick Engelen

Hey Phil!

This is a question that gets asked alot and i think one of the best answers i could give is to read 'The gift of fear'

I have mentioned the book on the forum before!

What Gavin De Becker explains the attacks can always be seen!

There is no such thing as 'No one could have seen this coming'

The first thing i think is that 99% of the time attacks never just happen. Humans are animals and this means that we always show emotion and it is very rare that someone attacks you 'out if the blue'! There is always some kind of vocal attack first!

Some people just give you a look! Everyone has had that feeling when you catch someone's eye and there is a rush of adrenaline!

What Gavin de Becker says is to use your intuition/gut instinct! Ever had a bad feeling? Ever felt a bad atmosphere? That is your intuition and you should listen to it! Most of the time it is right!

You just need to seperate between your naturall intuition and fear! They are very similar feelings!

I think the main thing here is not to put yourself into a position where bad things happen! If you get drunk and go to a rough club then the likelyhood is that you will get into a fight!

If you walk down dark alleys and through parks at night you are more likely to get mugged! This is common sense!

You hear on the news 'A girl went missing last night. She was last seen by her friend taking a shortcut throught a local park' and then the parens are on TV saying 'We could not have seen this attack coming. It was completely random' If you walk through a park at night and get attacked it is not random. The attacker is there for one reason alone!

In conclusion if there is no escape you have already made too many mistakes! Read 'Gift Of Fear' or even 'Dead or alive'.

Hope this helps.

Louis

Nick Engelen wrote:

The fence is the situation where you meet a guy that comes up to you and you are uncertain about their intentions. You want to control your space.

Also the first sign of agression is an invasion of your intimate space. You want to keep everyone except your peers out of that space.

What would stop an innocent getting smashed? You assertively told him that you don't want any trouble and told him to back off. The fence is as said a disatnce controler so if he moves in after you told him to go away you fire your shot.

Kind Regards,

Nick Engelen

I think I needed the definition first, I think I've got that here

Nick Engelen wrote:



If you watch Geoff's 3 second fighter you see he also explains ambush fighting. That's when a guy goes from step one to step four. Also therse is match fight or lets sort it out outside thing. Also here will be no fence.


Kind Regards,

Nick Engelen

I think this is what I was trying to ask in my usual roundabout way. AMBUSH thats the word. I will indeed watch 3 second fighter.(writes note to self)

Thanks again guys.

Phil the whitebelt

Hi Phil,

Watch the fence as well. Alan Peasland has writen a book and made a DVD about it.

Kind Regards,

Nick Engelen

Will do mate. Thanks Nick. The guy who teaches me (Alban) is fantastic but I only train once a week because of work commitments(I'm a chef-funny hours) dad duties etc. So I reckon some home teaching might be in order. I'll probably go on amazon and get some dvds- any other recommendations please?
Thanks.

Phil

Hi Phil,

If I may jump in on this one - although I think it's already been answered pretty comprehensively anyway.

For me, self protection starts way before any physical confrontation. As Nick has already said, part of being aware is, not only being able to spot potential danger signs ahead of time, but also allows you to give out a subliminal "I'm switched on" attitude that will often be enough to remove us from the selection pool of any would-be attacker.
This is something we may never know has happened - but who cares, so long as we're less likely to be attacked in the first place, thats a bonus in my book.

Next, should someone get close enough to hurt you, then your level of awareness should have stepped up a gear. For example, if I'm walking around the shopping centre and there aren't too many people about then I would always try to walk with space around me. This means that anyway wanting to launch a surprised attack needs to get closer to me than anyone else around, which then begins to raise alarm bells.

If it's busier, then I will be more conscious of my personal space anyway, and will have more heightened state of awareness (if only slightly more heightened). I'm not talking here about walking around with your guard up or arms stretched out like a static zombie out of shaun of the dead. I just mean a little more alert mentally and more aware of everyone passing you by.

In the other extreme, when I'm in clubs where you're packed in like sardines, I would squeeze through crowds with at least one hand raised to my chin - which is this kind of space will go un-noticed, but means you already have a half guard and one arm raised closer to the jaw of anyone you may need to whack.

All I'm trying to say here is that, using you in-built self protection mechanism (intuition) and your conscious awareness techniques, it should be very difficult for someone to simply get to you without any warning whatsoever.

Even just walking towards someone you will see in their eyes, their body language, the walk, their breathing - what their intentions are. Even if they are consciously trying to hide the fact, they will be giving off tonnes of subliminal signals that your own intuition will pick up on. It's then your job to act on those intuitions rather than be the tough guy and over-ride them.

Having said all of that, it is still possible to get blind sides, jumped, etc. Whether that be the fact that we are so busy or pre-occupied with some other task or if we have simply let our guard/awareness down for a moment or two - we all make mistakes.

I've had several occasions where, working the door, I've been dealing with one incident and then been whacked or jumped on by other third parties.

When this happens, the only thing that will get you through this is your training. Sometimes there is no magic answer apart from being conditioned to take punches and instinctively fight back rather than cower with the shock.

My training, my animal days, my full out sparring with top people, is what has gotten me through all of these occasions. Someimtes there is simply no substitute for this.

The frequency of these occasions can be drastically reduced/albeit not completely eliminated, if you apply better awareness and avoidance strategies in the first place.

Awareness, Avoidance, Escape, Fence, Posture, Balloon, Aggression, Pre-emptive strike, Fight like F&*k - all are part of your self defence arsenal


Nice post by the way, good look with the training

Al

Cheers Al,
Can you recommend any dvd's I can put on my Christmas list? Self plugging allowed ?
Thanks again,
Phil

Well, obviously it goes without saying that my own Fence Concepts dvd would be an ideal choice
available at

http://www.CompleteSelfProtection.com

3-second fighter, or animal day dvd's from Geoff.

Certainly the Animal Day dvd's are showing their age a little now, but the premise is still very relevant - this is the stuff you need when the fight is on - because at that point you're simply back to fighting, forget your fence, you're now in the fight and need to get stuck in - which was what the Animal Day stuff was all about.

Any of Bob Spours fight secrets dvd's, not only for the physical techniques but for the mind set and general "attitude" that you need to be able to generate if you want to get through something like a random attack.

But, definitely buy mine first

Hope that helps mate

I will thanks mate