EMERGENCY DEFENSE PREP #1: PROTECTION

Hey everyone!  Years ago – like 35 years ago – I took a class in women’s self-defense.  And while it was immensely helpful, unfortunately, it’s not something I have stayed up to date on.  Happily for us, Nick Card, the author of this current blog post series, has a great deal more recent experience than I do on this topic.

I sometimes find that as women there are certain things we just ‘leave to the men’ whether or not we should.  Self-defense tends to be one of those topics easily relegated to the guys.  I would love to encourage you to not only dig into this series but to take some time and practice the moves that Nick suggests – if you have daughters, maybe bring them into this too and learn together.

So join Nick and I during this five-part series where Nick will teach you practical ways to protect yourself.

— Karen

Disclaimer: This post contains graphic content focusing on defending oneself in an emergency, aspects of which may be triggering for some people, and considered adult in nature.  Defense situations can vary and no one technique will work for every situation.  Technique and weapons use are subject to local laws governing self-defense and personal protection.  Please consult local and national laws as part of your defense prep.  These laws may also vary depending on whether you’re at home, in our car, at work, or out in public.

It’s been a long, busy week.  We are stressed about a project we are working on.  That’s when we look out and see just how beautiful of a day it is in here in Fresno, Texas (near Houston).  Let’s take a walk.  There’s a lovely little trail next to a pond nearby that we can walk around.  We head out and get to the pond.  Once we get there, we start walking.  We are surprised by a man who, sitting on a bench, jumps up.  He starts running straight for us.  The next thing we know is that we have been knocked to the ground.

Sometimes emergency defense situations happen during our daily life, as just highlighted.  They can also happen during a disaster too.

The first thing that happens during a disaster is emergency personnel are swamped with calls.  This can slow response times.  When disaster hits, worry can also set in.  And mixing a worried population with swamped emergency personnel can lead to people taking things into their own hands and often in less than legal, ethical, or moral ways.  For example, recent news has reported fights breaking out for supplies, wide-spread looting, rioting, world-wide social unrest, and dangerous police free zones.

EMERGENCY DEFENSE PREP: PROTECTION & WEAPONS

This blog series will introduce fundamental defense prep ideas (post 1), then it will discuss defense against weapons (post 2), and specifically against a gun threat or active shooter (post 3), knife (post 4), or rope or cord used to choke (post 5).  We will follow that up with using a weapon, for survival-sake, to defend ourselves (coming soon).

PROTECTION #1: STREET VS SPORT FIGHTING

This is an important concept so let’s start here.  People learn a lot about fighting, defense, and personal protection by what they see on movies and in TV shows.  Often, we think of fighting as a boxing match, a Tae Kwon Do class, a mixed martial arts match or MMA (like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC), grappling (also seen in MMA and UFC), or even high school wrestling matches.  These can include very useful skills to know if we must defend ourselves.

The difference between fighting and fighting for our survival, mainly comes down to mindset.  The skills we listed above are a good start point, but it’s how we use them that is important.

It’s Not a Competition

The common characteristic of all of those situations above is they all involve competition.  Competition has rules!  For example, no groin strikes, no eye gauges, no kicking to the spine, tap out when it hurts too bad, we only need to last a few minutes before the match is over, no weapons are allowed, no team attacks, etc.

Let’s look at some other examples.  Will an attacker:

• Bow at the beginning and end of the fight to show respect?
• Ensure you are armed equitably?
• Fight solo (no friends getting their back)?

Additionally, will:

• A referee declare you a winner?
• A referee stop the fight if a medical need arises?
• The fight stop when a pre-agreed-upon timeframe has passed?

Survive With Intensity

All this to say, we need an intensity mindset to overcome.  An attacker can spar with us (sport fighting) by boxing, kicking, or pinning us to the ground, but if we defend by kicking their groin, gouging their eye out, and biting their arm we are fighting with intensity (street fighting).  They may try to knock us out, but we are trying to break their knee/ankle, kick their feet out from under them, or do something else that allows us to escape.  They are trying to beat us in a fair fight (sport fighting), we are making it an unfair fight and trying to decisively drive them to the ground so we can survive (street fighting).

Keep in mind, in real-life they can also use street fighting strategy.  This is where we need to stack the odds in our favor by being better prepared, better trained, and having better fitness.

PROTECTION #2: FITNESS

Fitness is vital to emergency prep, emergency defense prep, and personal protection!  It allows us to walk or run away from harm, carry belongings to our car for an evacuation, go down ladders or stairs during fires, get to a safe room during a shelter-in-place, defend ourselves against attackers, as well as respond quickly and effectively under stressful situations.  In terms of defending ourselves against attackers, our fitness may mean the difference between surviving or not.

We want to eat healthy meals with healthy portions.  Focus on fruits and veggies, getting enough protein, and for most eating or drinking less carbs (especially simple carbs, such as sugary drinks, refined breads, fruit juices, etc.).  Whenever possible chose complex carbs such as whole grain or whole wheat (look at the first ingredient on the label).

Fitness also means focusing on a variety of types of exercises, not just one.  For example, some people really love weightlifting, while others really love cardio.  If a weightlifter doesn’t do cardio, he won’t be able to use strength for long durations or during higher intensity periods (such as after sprinting).  Similarly, someone who loves cardio may be able to exert for long periods or during higher intensity but lack the body strength to push an attacker off, resist being taken to the ground, carry a weapon, or even perform essential tasks like carrying belongings to a car, hiking a distance with belongings, or carrying small children and belongings.

Other important exercise considerations are coordination (like going up and down stairs quickly, or moving along uneven or cluttered paths), balance (keeping our footing while doing work under stress), and flexibility (using our bodies throughout a range of different motions).

PROTECTION #3: HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT

Using personal protection or self-defense in an emergency means learning how to use our body as a weapon.  It is easy to focus on the hands or feet as the only weapons we have.  This is not fully true!

We also have elbows, knees, shoulders, and heads.  There are a variety of strikes we can do with each of these body parts.  We can make our elbow pointed and use our hips to rotate the pointed elbow aggressively in towards the attacker’s neck or face.  If an attacker is close to us, it may be harder to punch or kick so we can jam a knee into their groin, inner thigh, or lower ribs.  We do want to avoid bringing knees or kicks to their head because it makes it easy for an attacker to grab our leg and take us to the ground.  Then our situation is grave!

Maims

As part of hand-to-hand combat, we use intensity (see above) to overcome.  We don’t want to throw a punch and wait to see what happens because the next thing we do is eat their punch.  Instead, we want to aggress until we stop the threat.  One way we know we have stopped the threat is when the attacker is flat on the ground, which allows us to exit the situation safely and quickly.  The two exceptions to this are 1) if they have a gun (because they can still shoot from the ground), or 2) if they have friends.  In either case, we still seek to stop the threat.

When we use intensity, we don’t attack randomly, we try to cause damage that hurts their ability to fight.  For example, breaking an ankle or knee to limit their movement.  Attacking their throat or striking (using any body part) or grabbing and ripping (with the hand) at the groin so they have a hard time breathing.  Gouging an eye so they have a hard time seeing.  Breaking the wrist or elbow so they can’t grab, hold, or use a weapon.  Even biting them, so they bleed a lot.

PROTECTION #4: GROUND FIGHTING

Sometimes, during a fight, we can end up on the ground.  DO NOT GO TO THE GROUND ON PURPOSE!  However, this can happen.  If we do not prepare, we may not survive it.

Again, it is almost always better to fight standing.  Being on the ground has several disadvantages that, as the victim, will always work against us.

• We cannot see as well on the ground. So we may miss a second attacker, a weapon, or a kick to the head.
• We cannot get away as easily on the ground. It takes longer to get up, more skill and energy to get up quickly while fighting, and even if we manage to get up successfully, an attacker likely has enough time to recoup and attack again by the time we are back to standing.
• We’re more vulnerable to the environment when on the ground. This means glass, rocks, sticks, sprinklers, metal shards, and any other objects on the ground will have first class tickets to jab our spine.  Also, falling to the ground (pavement, concrete, wood, etc.) or worse falling on an object can be very painful and end the entire fight.

Suggestions for surviving a ground fight:

• Get to our feet fast (our situation is grave when we’re on the ground)
• If on the ground, being the person on top is better than on the bottom (apply our weight into their ribs and make them work to breath)
• If on the ground, keep control of their hips by keeping our legs outside of theirs (if they have jiu jitsu or wrestling training they will use their control against us). Control means we can do stuff to hurt them while they will be limited to do stuff to hurt us.

WRAPPING UP: PROTECTION

Finishing the story above, in March of 2022 a woman was attacked in Fresno while walking near a pond.  The attacker tackled her to the ground and sexually assaulted her before running off.  Police are still looking for him.

Scary and dangerous situations are not uncommon.  One woman’s intuition peaked after seeing a man acting oddly in a grocery store parking lot.  She saw the man later in the store again acting odd.  Not knowing the man’s intentions, she walked out with a family for safety and left.

In another situation, my wife (with two young children) noticed a man acting oddly at the park, then another somewhere else.  The park was empty with only one entrance/exit.  After spotting a third man surrounding her and the kids, she followed her intuition and immediately got in the car and left.  While leaving, a fourth man began to follow her, by car.  My wife called me, after which that man turned off into another parking lot.

Separately, our home and family suddenly became front row for a large civil unrest demonstration (ending with four police injured, businesses vandalized, and a shelter-in-place called).

Some situations are scary, others are dangerous.  In Nevada, a woman was kidnapped from a Walmart parking lot and later found dead.  We do not know always know how odd behavior will end.

I highly recommend Krav Maga (Israeli Martial Arts) training as it is the most real-world training system that is widely available to help us prepare to defend ourselves.

Check out the other posts in this blog series:

• Fundamental defense prep ideas (post 1),
• Defense against weapons (post 2),
  • Gun threat or active shooter (post 3)
  • Knife (post 4)
  • Rope or cord used to choke (post 5)
• Using a defense weapon to survive (coming soon).

What About You?

What situation have you found yourself in that you that felt odd, and you got yourself out before things went badly?  Share with us below in the comments so that we can all be better prepared.