The Four Basic Truths of Violent Assault

By Rory A. Miller

I responded to an incident between two inmates. The first inmate was brushing his teeth. The second inmate came up from behind and struck the first on the right side of his head. The tooth brusher tried to turn, but was pressed into the corner, punched again and again with hard rights until he eventually curled into a fetal ball. Blood splashed (not smeared) onto the wall at shoulder height. Do you train for this? Do you respect the power of a sudden attack and a constant barrage?

The attacker broke several bones in his hand and did not know it. Not just the metacarpals of a boxer's fracture either. Also, one of his fingers became deformed. Something he did not realize during the attack. He just kept hitting. He only started complaining of the pain several hours later. Do you ever teach that pain alone will stop a committed attacker? That if you break a bone, it is over? I told the attacker that he was lucky- if the other guy had fallen or hit his head on the wall and suffered more serious injury, he could be looking at some heavier charges. He said, "Nah, I held his head with my other hand so it wouldn't hit the wall. I know how you guys trump up charges and if I'd let him hit the wall you'd try to get me for attempted murder."

Do you and your students realize how rational and how planned a sudden assault can be? It is only sudden for the defender. For the attacker, far too often, it is part of his plan. Do you understand that there is a sub-group of human beings who can savagely beat another human being all the while coolly thinking of their eventual court case? Assaults happen closer, faster, more suddenly, and with more power than most people can understand.

Closer: Most self-defense drills are practiced at an optimum distance where the attacker must take at least a half step to contact. This gives techniques like blocks enough time to have an effect. You rarely have this time or this distance in an assault. Give some thought as to how your technique will work if there is no room to turn or step. Remember that the attacker always chooses the range and location and will pick a place and position that hampers your movements.

Faster: When your martial arts students spar, use a stop watch and count how many blows are thrown in a minute. Even in professional boxing the number is not that impressive. Use the stop watch again, this time counting how many blows you can land on a heavy bag in a single second. Six to eight times per second is reasonable for a decent martial artist. An assault is comparable to that number. Because the threat chooses a time when the victim is off-guard, he can attack all-out with no thought of defense. A competent martial artist, who is used to the more cautious timing of sparring, is completely unprepared for this kind of speed. You can strike ten times a second, but you can’t block ten times a second. More suddenly: An assault is based on the threat’s assessment of his chances. If he cannot use surprise, he often will not attack. Some experts say that there is always some intuitive warning. Possibly, but if the warning was noted and heeded, the attack would have been prevented. When the attack happens, it is always a surprise.

More power: There is a built-in problem with all training - you want to recycle your partners. If you or your students hit as hard as they can every time they hit, you will quickly run out of students. The average criminal does not hit as hard as a good boxer or karateka can hit, but they do hit harder than the average boxer (because of gloves) or karateka has ever felt. More often than not, the first strike in an ambush lands cleanly. Fighting with a concussion is much more different than sparring.

Responses to the Four Basic Truths

There are specific ways to train in order to deal with these truths about assault. You must get used to working from a position of disadvantage. Put yourself and your students in the worst positions you can imagine (face down, under a bench, blindfolded to simulate blood in the eyes or with one arm tied in your belt) and start the training from there. No do-overs. Work from the position you find yourself in. There is no “right” move anyway, just moves that did work or did not work that one time.

Contact-response training: Condition (as in operant conditioning) for a quick, effective response to any unexpected aggressive touch. When properly trained, a counter-attack will kick in before the chemical cocktail of stress hormones does. Contact-response training allows the expected victim to perform one technique at 100% and may give the initiative to the victim instead of the assailant. What is occuring is that through operant conditioning, you can get to near-reflex speed. If that occurs, and the student is trained to counter-attack, the first response will not have the 80% degradation caused by stress hormones therefore the first response can be at 100% skill which can turn the tables.

Train to “flip the switch.” Have your students practice going from friendly, distracted or any other emotion to full-on assault in an instant. Make them play music, converse, fold clothes, write or pour tea as an armored assailant attacks. The key is that the distraction must be natural and relaxed, not the jerky half-preparation of someone who expects an attack. When slow motion training, use realistic time-framing. Do not let the students pretend that “Monkey plucks jade lotus and presents to golden Buddha” is one move and do not let them pretend that a spinning kick is just as fast as a jab.

Get you and your students used to being hit and get used to being touched, especially on the face. For various reasons face contact between adults is loaded with connotations. Accidental face contact almost always results in both students freezing and can cause an outpouring of emotional sludge. Criminals use this by starting with an open-hand attack to the face (called a “bitch slap”) that has paralyzing psychological effects.

Teach common sensitivity. Students must respond to what is happening, not to their expectations or fears. The point is that students in self-defense training often pretend that things that are there (such as weapons on the wall or exits) aren't and that's a bad habit. This isn't about sparring, but about training for violent assault. It's one of the most important things to learn to keep from being stuck trying to make a "dojo solution" work.

Forbid giving up. Winning is a habit. Fighting is a habit. Put your students in positions where they are completely immobilized and helpless and set the expectation to keep fighting.

The Flaw in the Drill

In the end, a martial artist is training to injure, cripple or kill another human being. In any drill where students are not regularly hospitalized there is a DELIBERATE flaw, a deliberate break from the needs of reality introduced in the name of safety. In every drill you teach, you must consciously know what that flaw is and make your students aware of it.