Taking a step backwards

Nice. Can you write up what procedures to give a beginner to follow?

For example, a basic procedure for if your car breaks down on the road at night would be to call roadside assistance and stay in your vehicle locked. If window needs to be open, only keep it open enough to slip a piece of paper through it, not wide enough that someone can reach in. What to tell people that stop and ask if you need help. etc.

If roadside assistance is not available, then this requires step #3 (education) on the subject before further step 1 procedures make sense. For example, the local police educated folks on the dangers of a criminal impersonating policy officers on deserted highways. The was around them pulling over women and then getting them to drop their guard because they thought it was a real policy officer, then raping and possibly murdering the women. This education led into a pretty specific list of procedures to follow that made sense because of the education on the subject.

 

There is no catch-all procedure.

First you have to identify risks, then come up with strategies to minimise them.

 

Seems like a cop out to me

Why is it okay to tell children to not to talk to strangers or tell people not to walk in a bad neighborhood flashing wads of cash?

Seems like maybe there are procedures simple enough to apply to a beginner. To be fair, these are just common sense / best practices.

Once someone has further education, such as information on muggings, then procedures on how to assess the risks make more sense. They don't make sense until you learn how real muggings happen, IMHO.

 

How is that a cop out?

A wealthy middle-aged person living in rural Britain will not have the same risks to consider as a young person in urban America who likes to go out and party in dodgy neighbourhoods. Someone who works in a bank will not have the same risks to consider as a support worker for young offenders. An infirm person with care needs will not have the same risks to consider as a fit and active person.

Risk is contextual, as are strategies to minimise them, as well as tactics to extricate yourself from them.

 

Cop out was not meant to be a criticism. I meant that you didn't take the time to break down the problem into manageable pieces.

Pick any of the contexts you specified above. How about pick someone that works in a bank. Now what are the procedures they should follow for self-protection?

Now divide up the procedures into those that need course study (education/certification) in order to make sense, and those that make sense to the worker without needing more than a simple introduction and some practice.

 

That sounds entirely normal and healthy.

 

If you're into normal and healthy, get the heck out of martial arts!

 

I've never worked in a bank, so I would not presume to know the risks or how to deal with them. I would presume the bank worker to have the expertise in that, through their training with the bank. The best I could do is perhaps give a perspective that they may not have considered, but for the most part I would be the one doing the listening and learning.

 

Here's an example training for beginners:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baraOsRVS2A"]Aurora Police Self Defense for Children Class - YouTube[/ame]

An example of a Step 1 (procedure) is at 5:00 minutes with the big three.
The quiz at 6:43 is an example of Step 2 (practice).
The hands on at 11:42 is an example of Step 4 (simulation but at a very entry level... A note, if something is done hands on the first time under some pressure, it is Step 4, but if that same thing is repeated so that it no longer challenges the same, it is Step 2, practice. Something more challenging needs to happen for it to be Step 4.)

Step 3 (extensive knowledge) is only touched upon because of the audience. Only the knowledge needed for Step 1 procedures is really included in the training. Step 3 would have included case studies, video study of actual child abductions, etc. None of which is appropriate for the audience. About the closest to Step 3 is around 8:25 when the officer is talking about not getting close to cars with strangers in them.

 

Exposition followed by assessment is universal for education, and not specific to self defence in any way. Knowing that you don't assess somebody or get them into a simulation before you have equipped them with the knowledge and skills to learn anything from it tells you nothing about the specifics of what threats might be more likely to befall a person and what tactics might be most likely to prevent or escape them.

For example, I didn't watch the entire video you posted, but a couple of questions popped into my head from watching it: are strangers the biggest threat to children, and would a child be enticed into a car by someone claiming to have a new iPod? These things made me question how much the course authors or the police officer giving the lecture know their audience.

As with everything, it is intelligence led. You can have principles and generalities in mind, but risks are specific to location, profession and lifestyle, and optimum tactics are specific to an individual's training, temperament and physical abilities.

 

This is one of the things I was saying the whole time. Self-defense isn't different than other types of training methodologies.

Good critique. I think the one that happened around here that usually gets kids is a puppy in the car. The whole point is basically, don't go near a stranger's car.

To me these are best practices for all children to follow, but the specific details does change by culture and environment. It doesn't matter if it is the biggest threat, but it does matter that it is a prevalent threat (i.e., a persistent threat to all children, no matter how common it is in your neighborhood).

It is like getting vaccinated against tetanus. Is stepping on rusty nails the biggest threat to humans? Would you say, don't get vaccinated because tetanus is low percentage? Maybe having tetanus vaccinations makes it low percentage.

How does self-defense training lower the incidents of crime, etc.

I thinking we agree more than not agree, again

Intelligence led is very much the key to most training as the materials to cover are too vast to cover everything.

Where I went off on the subject was when you posted:

"First you have to identify risks, then come up with strategies to minimise them."

I think I misread or didn't understand your point. I particularly was caught about who identifies the risks. I don't think in self-defense you really identify risks yourself. I think other people identify the risks so that you know them. So I would say, "know the risks". I think that knowing the risks is the first most important lesson to start with.

I think the next stage is identifying the risks or generally risk assessment. Risk assessment takes time. So procedures for assessing the risks need to start with buying time to be able to assess the situation properly.

So there is a framework for procedures that start at an entry level of first knowing the risks, buying time, assessing the situation, etc. The buying time is the part that differs a lot with everyone having their own ideas of how to buy time best. IMHO.

 

On a physical level ,there is no special method or way or secret.You have to be able to fight back at an intensity that matches or is higher than the person attacking with more violence than them, if possible, and be able to go from 0 to 100 in a split second. Be able to anaerobically keep going until you can get away, be able to rapidly strike from all angles with power over and over ,clinch, grapple. if need be..use whatever is available in the environment and be able to make it up on the spot, go with it, not care how you look as it will be chaotic and do everything that needs doing within the time frames of this chaos.

No one can say what actual technique will be needed or what exactly will be needed to be done because no one can know until it's happening, which means knowing as many ways as possible to do things is essential and adapting those on the spot,being imaginative and wise to what's happening around.

 

On a psychological level being aware and accepting this could actually happen at any time without being a paranoid loon and have it effect your everyday life means a person is less surprised and more ready for it to actually happen.

Which is why its funny to me that those saying soft skills and awareness are important on one hand, then dismiss the likely hood of something happening on the other, which means they will be more surprised if it does happen because that thing you least expect is the thing that surprises you.

 

The STATISTICAL likelihood of something being negligible does NOT mean it is ignored or not considered - it forms part of the environmental interaction protocols

 

Nicely put.

I would add that statistical likelihood of something happening is influenced by the protocols.

What's the likelihood for all children to be abducted (pretty low). We have protocols passed on through education that help to keep the likelihood lower.

Back to the video in the OP and taking a step back. Distancing from a threat is part of a basic protocol/procedure. Taking a step back is one way to follow the protocol. We can debate whether the step back is a good or bad thing, because at that level it comes down to the details in implementation, not whether or not the principle is sound.

 

A step back at the right time is fine - this is an already engaged assailant and it is not so much wrong as it is a tactically inferior choice

 

I feel the same way about it.

The author of the video has a few other videos that I feel the same way about. He has one using clinching for self-defense. Clinching is a great skill set, it isn't the best tactical choice in many situations.

Going back to protocols, his videos could be much improved if he just considered the possibility of weapons. IMHO.

 

All your points I agree with.

I was more trying to point out what I saw as a consistent theme in his videos, and that was lack of considering weapons. I would reword in that I see the use of sparring tactics instead of dueling tactics in his videos.

The difference between sparring tactics and dueling is in the consequences. In dueling it is widely accepted that you and your opponent can both die (mutual slaying) as the probably outcome. I won't get into a bunch of talk here, but an example in the video of stepping back, he is actually taking more than one step back, he said he likes to take two. Presumably the third step back is a fake and is really an attack forward, much like something Bruce Lee wrote about in tactics (go back twice, get the opponent to think you are going back a third time but instead move forward and attack... or something like that).

I can summarize the difference in dueling and sparring tactics. In sparring, you may be willing to trade blows in order to win. In dueling, trading blows is how a lesser skilled opponent can defeat a more skilled opponent, so the more skilled opponent avoids trading blows.

Sorry to get off topic, but I think it is relevant to what mindset is when stepping in any direction in combat.

 

I disagree. I believe that it is best considered as a dialogue. Why would you discount the knowledge and experience of the person being trained?