3 hours of self defence

With todays fast life style everyone wants things as quickly as possible.If a student who has never done any form of martial art, boxing, etc, wanted to learn some practical skills and drills that he could take away and practice in his own time and you had only 3 hours to teach the student what would you include in it.

avoidence and awareness (color codes, commentry etc), fence, combative state, how to hit hard.
then give them bob's sas fight secrets dvd set on their way out.

just what i would recomend too rick!
mick x

I'd take him down my boozer, tell the locals he said that their mothers have sex with pigs, and watch him go to work...

Michael W Wright wrote:I'd take him down my boozer, tell the locals he said that their mothers have sex with pigs, and watch him go to work...

hahahahahahahaha
That goes hand in hand with Rick and Mick's response really.
I'd say the same though. Esential skills to keep you in control.

I'd first tell them that 3 hours won't be enough to cover and become proficient at street fighting etc.

But I do believe 3 hours is long enough to provide useful skills for self defence for the majority of situations likely to be faced buy the person. I'd be tailoring it to the reality of that person as opposed to trying to install a an entire system into them.

First I would would show them how to use their natural innate defence mechanisms, such as the startle flinch, reflexive cover, FoF etc

This would include a passive stance (aka Non-violent/aggressive/threatening posture, negotiation stance among other names), that allows these reflexive responses to be launched with the greatest of ease. it also incorporates GT's fence concepts.

Then we would move on to some basic pre-emptive strikes , mainly palms. we'd then look at turning the reflexive responses into more tactical responses (such as Tony Blauers SPEAR and other forward drive covers). I would show how to use the natural highly learned, gross motor actions that we all had developed prior to pre-school (grabbing, scratching, pushing, pulling, poking, pinching, hitting kicking etc) these are all things that your average four year old can demonstrate with out instruction.

Personally I would concentrate on acquiring the face (why?? because the face area contains a large concentration of perception and survival systems eg the eyes to see; ears to hear; nose to smell and breathe; mouth to communicate, feed and breathe; the throat for breathing, swallowing, vocalising and pivoting our head, getting blood to the brain; and so on)

Senshido's (Rich Dimitri) Shredder concept lends itself beautifully to the above techniques and targets.

Everything so far requires very little additional learning. I liken my initial approach to using established roads to get from A to B adding small sections where needed for detours, instead of building an entire new road between A and B. These existing roads are generally well maintained via everyday living and can be used whist and if the person wishes to build a new (better??) road at a later stage.

The other very important area I would cover is the Behavioural, Emotional and Psychological elements of real world violence, what I call BEP. This is an area that I believe is vitally important. The BEP of the Dojo, ring, cage, mat etc differers considerable from the street. Simply by showing how to recognise how and when the attacker/predator uses BEP to deliver violence and of course how to counter and use BEP as a delivery system themselves provides greater chances of survival/escape then any techniques by them selves.

Combine BEP with natural innate actions and tactics tailored to the individual and THEIR reality, will produce a significant increase in their ability to escape the majority of attacks, and for the average person this can be done in 3 hours (one on one) Being able to detect potential violence early (through awareness of environment, predatory behaviour, set ups and listening to intuition etc) will assist in avoiding violence altogether.

Practice makes perfect, so obviously I would encourage them to practice and /or attend further classes, but even if they are unable to, these 3 hours WILL greatly improve their chances.

In addition I would provide them with a selection of my published and unpublished articles that delve deeper into the "theory" of it all, ( 7 stages of violence, fear and FoF, awareness tools, deescalation, minimizing victim selection etc) ( all my students get these ), I'd provide some other sources for them to learn more but if they only have time for a 3 hour lesson they probably won't have much time to review other sources.

I think that would cover about 3 hours of face to face, depending on the student.

it took me 3 hours to read that

Okay here's my take on it, if I had a student for 3 hours I would instruct him/her in "Awareness Training", then "The Fence" and "pre-emptive strike" and some "grappling". There's a plethora of techniques and drills out and what I've learnt is keep things simple and basic .

Given the number of serious physical assaults and fatalities that currently involve edged weapons, I would allocate some key time to knife defence.

To be honest, I would pass on that and tell the guy that if he wanted to be good, he would have to invest some quality time in learning how to protect himself. Of course, this would be negotiated through a phone inquiry most commonly; the real evaluation begins when you see the guy move. There is no magic bullet; it's hard work spent in the gym, classroom and range that leads to your student's success!

Out

Joe