WEAPON DEFENSE VIDEOS and LESSONS

 

#1-GLASSINGS (SMASHING ATTACKS)

“Glassings” (as it is commonly referred to in the UK) or “Bottling” (as I heard it referred to growing up in Canada) are very common examples of a very large and general category of improvised weapon attacks falling under the broad heading of “fist loading”.

This category covers everything from the above beverage holders through the classic “roll of quarters” (or in Canada more likely a roll of “loonies”) in the hand to billiard balls and even actual “brass knuckles” (which are actual weapons but are seen far more on TV then in the real world).  This is by far the most likely kind of weapon assault you will face.

As we have discussed, the specific weapon is not nearly as important to our defense as how it is being wielded.  In this case the attacker swings his fist at you in a very similar way as he would swing some kind of punch but he is also holding something in that fist. Thus, he is “loading” (making heavier) his fist. As we have discussed, many times these kinds of weapon attacks would be very hard to distinguish from actual punches especially if we are “late” in perceiving the attack. Furthermore, if an attacker did have “brass knuckles” (which could functionally be simply several heavy rings on the fingers) then his method of attack would probably be identical to his ordinary punches.

 Therefore, the defenses against these attacks make a very natural transition from unarmed to armed defenses because of their similarity.This reinforces our approach to punches which you should take very seriously and not try to stay in range in order to punch back. While the top of your head and elbows are basically impervious to punches they can still be injured by the added weight of a “fist load” or badly lacerated by breaking glass from the beer bottle attack.

Thus, it becomes clear that the most important part of the defense is the moving closer and getting inside the arc of the swing. The less contact you have with the attacking limb, the better, so do not get in the habit of relying on the “shelling up “action of the arms.  This is an easy habit to get into because it works so well against actual punches. However, even against simple punches, if the attacker is large enough or the punches strong enough or because your feet are too close together, the impact of the punch can still knock you off balance or even to the ground despite them landing on your properly “shelled up” head. Remember, it is the space that is dangerous.

The “shelling up” defense against a “glassing” can certainly help but it is only a secondary part of the defense. The glass or bottle has less chance of breaking if it hits on the softer muscles of your forearm and before it reaches maximum velocity. Nonetheless, this is still risky and should not be your goal, (to let it make contact because you feel safe behind the “shell”), lacerations to the arm are generally better than to the face or neck but when broken glass if flying around it is still extremely dangerous. (For a graphic visual example to get you in the mood, check out the death of John Cusack’s character at the end of the 90s movie: “GRIFFTERS”.)

Ideally, if you use a level change as you “pounce in” there is a good chance the glass will miss you entirely as it goes over your head. This has happened to me personally and one small advantage of someone trying to “glass” you is that they may want all the velocity they can get or the glass may not break, particularly if they are holding a mug by the handle. Therefore, the swinging motion can be very wide and large giving you more time and space to react. (This is an example of “negative motion” which we will be exploring in detail in an upcoming section.)

Don’t count on it though, I grew up around one group of street toughs that were frequent “bottlers” and had a method borne of experience. To avoid any lacerations to their own hands they would not actually hold the beer bottle with their fingers but instead lay it along the palm and basically “slap” it into the head of the victim with a faster snappier motion that allowed them to pull their own hand off quickly.

This looser grip means the attacker may avoid any “wind up” motion that could pull the bottle out of his hand forcing him to be faster and stealthier. The angle may be more upward from the floor so that the hand supports the bottle from underneath with less chance of losing it. This can be a harder angle to see and can be used at quite close range so make sure you integrate it into your drilling and training. If those cretins could improvise this kind of thing then anyone could, so it is probably a common tactic the world over. The good news is that if the swing is jammed or misses the bottle is going to come out of the hand and the disarm is already accomplished.

These added considerations are going to help tighten up your punch defenses and optimize your “fist load” defenses as you train to react as early as possible. Your defensive goal is to get into body to body contact with the attacker-do not stop to see what is in his hand! His body and not his swinging arm should be your target and focus. Have the mindset that you are going to “run through” the target. Then on impact your focus can switch to dropping your arm over his weapon bearing limb. Slide your hand down to his elbow and hold it there at the triceps, at the same time squeeze you elbow tight against your side trapping his arm in your armpit. This is really important since he needs to get that arm free and make space if he wants to hit you with anything.

Furthermore, actually running into the attacker’s body is an integral part of the defense. By plowing into him with as much momentum as you can you will knock him off balance and “destabilize” him, this was referred to as a “ballistic entry” in our first manual. This is a very simple use of momentum that does not take any complicated training and can give you good results.

Sound too easy? Well that is often the problem with martial arts that look for the “pretty” or “artistic” and miss the simple and efficient. Heavy momentum is not easy to deal with and can be very simple to apply. I learned that this is true even among very high level athletes. When I was in Europe in 2000 training with members of the British national Sambo team, I learned that one of the team members had very little formal Judo or Sambo training but was able to medal at a high level international tournament nonetheless. It turned out that while not trained in Judo/Sambo he was an experienced Rugby player who used his Rugby style tackles to knock his opponents down before they could use there gripping skills to thwart him. The moral of the story? Do not underestimate simple momentum, defensively or offensively.

 

COMBAT O-SOTO-GARI

If your impact gets the attacker rocking back on his heels, this is the perfect time to flatten him with the “O-soto-gari” throw or take down. We covered this throw in the first program but an important variation that should be added is the “street” or “combat” o-soto-gari. This is a more dangerous variation and it is this version that has the highest potential to cause severe injury to the attacker. In the case of a weapon assault you need to be able to put an attacker down as hard and with as much injury as possible to prevent him getting up and continuing his life threatening attack. This throw is designed to smash the back of the attacker’s head into the ground and if done optimally on a hard common surface like pavement or cement you are definitely approaching lethal force. Therefore, use this throw judiciously. This is no “deadly” martial arts mumbo jumbo like “pressure points”, such a takedown can easily cause severe injuries since the sport version routinely causes the wind to be knocked out of people or even unconsciousness and concussions when done on matts so imagine its potential for injury when done on a hard surface to someone with no idea how to fall. For example, Legendary old school judo/karate fighter Jim Harrison stated in a published article that he had seen a man killed with this throw because of the cement they were on; during his St. Louis policing days .(Harrison also claims to have killed a man with a turning side kick, so who knows, but what you can believe is this, as one of my jiu-jitsu instructors put it: “this flip is going to hit harder than any punch you are ever going to throw.”)

This throw is relatively simple and very effective so it can and should be used in all sorts of self defense situations but it is particularly useful in weapon defenses. This is because the attacker will usually be very focused on his weapon and when you grab or control is weapon bearing limb, his instinct will be to pull his arm free. This backwards pull to try and free the weapon arm will give you the rearward energy you need to throw him backwards and down in the same way as the “ballistic” entry can get him back on his heels. You must be very close to take full advantage of this situation that is why you must be chest to chest so you can use your body to push him back. This is often enough if he is “helping” you by pulling back and when you add the shove to the head you can upend him like a bowling pin. Going with his force is the key to throwing even a very large person and is a conceptual cornerstone of jiu-jitsu tactics that give smaller people the ability to defeat bigger more hostile people in the real world.

 #2-WHITE COLLAR SHANKS (PUNCTURING ATTACKS)

The next most statistically common category of real world weapon assault is by what we have termed “white collar shanks”. “Shank” is a common slag term popularized in correctional institutions and refers to the improvised, primarily stabbing, weapons that are often found in those violent but materially very restricted prison environments. This is an important distinction so we are going to use the term as well, because the most common category of what is usually referred to as “edged weapons” in the self-defense literature and industry; don’t actually have edges! Think of the ubiquitous table fork, it has no actual cutting edge but is very dangerous nonetheless, because it can be used to stab, poke and puncture.

However, as potentially dangerous and easy to find as the ordinary table fork is, there are even more prolific “shanks” out there in the real world that tend to be completely ignored by self-defense instructors, courses and experts. Once again, we are faced with the difference between the perception of real-world weapon attacks and the reality of it. While many people are overly worried about stuff they see on TV, like ninja throwing stars, Samurai swords or the commando K-bar knife; (not to mention, the misinformed outrage that often accompanies the discovery that some high school kid made a “fantasy movie” sword in shop class), they are oblivious to the real threat.

 Most people are totally mystified to discover that by far the most common “weapon” or “shank” you are statistically likely to be stabbed with in North America is the ordinary pencil or pen! Of course, most people do not perceive pencils and pens as “weapons” and by definition they are not, but they certainly can be used as “shanks” and often are. So often in fact, that your odds of being attack by something like a pencil are many, many times greater than an assault by an actual knife; yet everyone including self-defense “experts” seem to be fixated on knifes and the “trained knife fighter” myth. Talking about the “deadly trained pencil fighter” takes a lot of the mystique away doesn’t it? (For more information on the “myth” of the trained knife fighter see my blog post: “Weapon Defenses a Conceptual Approach”)

Do not kid yourself though, an attack by any kind of improvised shank can be extremely vicious and could severely injure or even kill you. However, such an attack is also the hallmark of an enraged or emotionally berserk layperson spontaneously trying to injure you in a direct and rudimentary way, not the well planned and executed ambush by the mythical leader of the local Ninja clan or Renaissance Assassin’s guild. In other words, with good training, tactics and awareness you should be confident that you can vastly reduce the threat that these kinds of attacks pose to your personal safety.

When I say “white collar” shanks we are talking about non-metal shanks, very most commonly seen in the form of pencils and pens of course, but also including plastic cutlery that you find in almost any fast-food restaurant or perhaps even the wooden chop sticks standard to every shopping mall Sushi bar. The point being, is almost anything that is relatively sharp and easy to grab and hold can be used as a shank, it does not have to be metal to be dangerous.

I used the term “white collar” to further emphasize the idea that these potential shanks are so innocuous as to be nearly invisible and universally ignored or considered absolutely harmless; this is especially true in non-threatening environments. Offices where professionals work, up-scale stores and malls of every variety, universities, high security air ports and even elementary schools are littered with pens and pencils and when we are in these “white collar” affluent and/or non-threatening environments our defenses are naturally lowered. We feel very safe because such places seem to be “weapon free” zones, when in fact they are filled with the very most common “weapons”.

For example, I recently walked into the local court house to go to the “Small claims” registry. At the front entrance was a sign stating that you could not bring “knifes or other weapons” into the court house and were subject to search. Fair enough, since there are all kinds of violent offenders being tried in the court rooms but just a few feet away at the registrar  they were handing out pens to help people fill out forms.

The point being, is that people attack us with tools or implements we call “weapons”, the weapons do not do this by themselves and what really makes something a “weapon”, as I earlier pointed out, is the violent intent of another human being and his/her ability to get his/her hands on it. The idea that we label and easily recognize some things as “weapons” but not others, does not change this fact and may actually give us a false sense of security and a dangerously skewed perception about the nature of so many real life armed assaults.

This is why “white collar” shank attacks can be so surprising, hard to deal with and counter intuitively common; because they are so unexpected, fast and easy to improvise and not because of some incredibly high skill level of the attacker or superiority of the weapon. Quite the contrary, non-metal shank attacks tend to be very spontaneous and opportunistic and with the amounts of pens and pencils out there; that’s a lot of opportunity.

With this all put into perspective, lets take a look at some specific characteristics of “white collar” shank attacks. Firstly, these implements, because of their non-metal construction, do not have much size or weight and are relatively fragile compared to metal shanks. This can have a big influence on how the shank is going to be used and help us know what to expect; “Forewarned is for armed”.

Since there is no cutting edge the attacker really only has a stabbing type option and is much less likely to stab to the body because of the more fragile construction of a pen or pencil. The ribs or breast plate of the chest are natural defensive barriers and are generally much stronger than pencils and most pens. This is no great tactical insight on the part of some enraged thug directed by his little frog brain, we all grow up in North America handling pens and pencils from near infancy and intuitively sense their strength limitations. The attacker knows, at the least unconsciously, that the thing may very well break and wants to avoid this as much as possible or at least do maximum damage with the one good strike he is likely to get. This means stabbing into the most vulnerable soft targets. For similar reasons, the attacker may simply feel that he needs more power to get the most out of his crude weapon and grips it in the intuitively strongest way.  Any way you slice it (pun intended), you are very likely to have an attacker using an overhand or “ice pick” grip and targeting the soft and highly vulnerable regions of the face and neck when dealing with this kind of “shanking” scenario.

This is very important to properly prepare for. Firstly, the “ice pick” type attack is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented in all of self-defense training. So much so, that there has been a kind of back lash of sorts against it in recent years and many fairly credible sources have started to make claims that this kind of attack doesn’t really happen in the real world and that you only see it in movies and TV. Hence, this type of attack is often sarcastically referred to as the “Hollywood grip” or the “Hollywood attack”.

Since I am all about the “myth busting” in the “pseudo-profession” of self-defense, I at one time made a classic “untested assumption” that these people must know what they are talking about because they were trying to dispel  a “myth”. As I have discovered, one of the most common features of the “pseudo-self defense instructor” is to routinely refer to any point of view they don’t like as: “A myth”. Yes, you guessed it, the only “myth” is that the “pseudo-self defense” instructors actually know what a “myth” is.

Initially, I thought “fine” maybe “ice pick” type attacks don’t happen in the real world (violating my own guideline of “based on what evidence”) but i still needed to know what kind of attacks did. I could not find any reliable objective data on what kind of grips where being used in real life knife attacks. Hence I had to begin to accumulate data myself.

One simple way is to use the modern video sharing repositories exemplified by YouTube, to find real world knife attacks captured on video. This project is still ongoing so I don’t want to make any final conclusions, but I found it very revealing that at the very start of this research project The first 4 authentic knife attacks(including one very detailed news story) where all overhand “ice pick” type attacks! These where all found completely randomly and vetted as best I could. I could not believe my eyes, “ice pick” type attacks appeared to be happening all the time  and once again I realized that the worst place to get self defense advice is usually the self-defense industry.

Early Over-head “Shank”/“Ice Pick” Attacks

Therefore, we have conflicting opinions and data regarding how common this form of attack is with a “shank”, when it comes in the form of a very high and lifted back and up style overhead attack. These kinds of attacks certainly do exist in the real world and I came across at least one documented case where the attacker even used a two handed grip to try to get enough power to be able to drive a pencil through the top of the head of his victim who was turned away from him. Once again, we need to be reminded that real world weapon attacks are overwhelmingly examples of brutal simplicity and not the fantasy of the knife twirling “unconquerable trained weapon fighter” and his indefensible secret method. Surprise and sheer bloody aggression have killed more people than all the methods of training throughout the world combined. Hence, to reiterate and hopefully dispel once and for all one of the more dangerous myths about defenses against armed attacks: statistically, violent people do not need sophisticated attack methods to injure or kill you… so they are not likely to know or use them.

To return to a very high overhead attack that we are able to perceive “early”(which probably would be as the attack is lifting his arms back.) it is probably a mistake to wait until the weapon is coming back down and try to block it. If you are early than it is tactically wiser and a use of the interchangeability concept to take advantage of the weaker position the attacker is putting himself in during the “negative motion” movement.

First, if you are able to move in early enough and catch the attacker’s arm up high you can use the same “web of the hand” position as we used in the unarmed attack program for “pushes”. If you block behind his elbow with the “web” of your hand, in the same way as you do with the “shoulder push”(palm out type web hand control)then you can have a lot of leverage and it becomes very difficult for the attacker to bring his arm down.

Obviously this has to be done very early and only against a very highly raised arm that is back far enough that the attacker’s elbow  is very far back and  much closer to you than his hand/wrist and the weapon it holds. Study the arc of the downward plunge and you can see that as you get further into the stroke the elbow pulls in and down and the hand comes out further. This is when the wrist and weapon are closest to you and why you would block at the wrist-because you are “late” not because this is the best method to use, Furthermore, as we will be looking at a little later, in the case of less telegraphed and closer downward stabs, the elbow is not lifted high so you cant jam it in the same way and have to work against the wrist.

Secondly, if you are a little later and the swing back down has already started but the arms are still up very high than you can treat this like a two handed “chopping” type motion that we will be exploring in detail in that up-coming section. If you did not see the initial wind-up motion then you very well may not be able to recognize what the attacker is holding. This arm position may trigger fear of an over head impact attack so it is useful to treat it as one.

In fact, the 90 degree angle of the weapon to the attacker’s hand in this “ice pick” scenario presents some of the same problems as the 90 degree angle of the “heads” or blades of the “extrusion weapons”(like axes and shovels). Therefore, for similar reasons it is tactically preferable to defend on the outside of the arm. Furthermore even when “later” you can still make a shorter/tighter outside sliding (this would be similar to a Thai boxing style double out side parry) block motion. In other words, you do not have to fully extend your arms straight out( as you would want to do against a farther away two handed axe like swing) in order to use the two handed sliding block defense, against a faster attack you can use a faster motion.