Self defence principals

I have been doing a lot of reading these last few weeks on martial arts principals from a few sources. It's been really good but now I'm a bit lost on what to blog.

So after much humming and harring this blog is on the main principals of self defence. Note that these are principals, not techniques, if you want techniques that demonstrate the principals look at the stuff your class does first and if you don't see them ask your teacher, I am more then happy to answer any questions or confusions as well.

Isolating the threat, someone grabbing you, making sure they don't have control of your balance or are restricting your airway. Punches, making sure you are in a safer position off line of the attack as you cover before countering.

Taking balance, this means two things, taking back your balance by lowering your centre and making sure you bring your body to the place where it works (in front of you). The place where you read your book and drink your coffee and type on the computer. And lets face it when you walk down the street you don't walk doing crescent stepping in horse stance, and there is a reason for that. The movement is hard. So have your feet comfortably underneath your body (even when you're on the ground). The second meaning is to take the attacker out of their naturally strong place. So everything I just said in reverse. Extend them so that if they have hold of you that you take their arm out of their central position and have their shoulders not in line with their knees and feet not comfortably underneath their body.

Remove the foundation, my teacher always says that to attack without good foundation is to push a car while wearing roller skates. So after you have made yourself strong and them weak by taking balance the next step is to take away their foundation. Humans are naturally unbalanced since we only have two points of contact with the ground (our feet) therefore there are two approaches to removing foundation, take out the supporting structure (maybe with a kick to the knee) or move the center of gravity to a place where there is no support, hip throws use this principal. Or after slapping them around a bit just yank their arm down and out on a 45 degree angle.

Lastly, if at any point you can escape relatively safely then by all means do. Do not obsess about taking someone to the ground if they are trying to run away from you because of the unexpected fight you put up.

Always have your car or house key in your hand ready to open the door before you leave the office, don't rummage for them in the car park like a bad horror film. And please, please don't use them in between your knuckles, not only will you just hurt a perfectly good hand that would do more damage slapping the guy around a few times and still have the use of your fingers to call the police, but you might wreck your key that you could of used to open the door to your car and drive away or the door to your house and get the fire poker.

Understanding that the best form of self defence is to not get into those situations and common sense has always kept me safe at least in a place like New Zealand.

I hope this helps but there is no beating good training, as some of the old samurai would say after writing down their knowledge. "Take what I have said and make your own understanding by testing it". Please don't pick fights on the street, I don't mean that.

Jory