DEFENDING YOURSELF
Weapons and Important Self-Defense Tactics
Bruce Lee, one of the most famous martial artists of all time, said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks one time, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Mastering self-defense tactics isn’t about knowing everything—it’s about being good at a few simple techniques, so that in the event you use them, you can execute them flawlessly. Many of the situations I’m going to describe in this chapter can be handled using very similar techniques. I highly recommend that you practice these techniques for two minutes each day. If you commit to practicing just two minutes a day, you’ll eventually find that you can execute these maneuvers without even thinking about it. Just pick one to start with and move onto a new one once you feel comfortable with it. While I hope you never encounter a dangerous situation, the skills you learn in this chapter could save your life or the life of a loved one.
Even though I’m a very capable guy—I train six days a week—I’m never going to put myself in a situation where I have to fight. I would always make a point to deescalate and would use these tactics only if I really had to. Also know that the goal is for you to create a situation in which you can escape and get help. While it could be necessary to keep throwing punches or stab someone, if the situation allows, it’s always better to escape and get help.
The acronym ETGS (escape to gain safety) will help you remember what to do if you are being attacked. These principles can be used in most of the scenarios I talk about in this chapter:
E escape = eyes: You can gouge or poke the attacker’s eyes.
T to = throat: You can strike the attacker in the throat, larynx, or voice box. A hit here will cause the person to stumble backward.
G gain = groin: If the attacker is in front of you, kick the person in the groin.
S safety = shin: You can kick the attacker repeatedly in the shin. If the person is wearing shorts, you can rub your foot hard against the skin.
I’m going to go over how to deal with some serious situations, should they ever come up. However, the most important things to remember are to get off the X, do not freeze, and as you’ll see, control the threat. Once you’ve accomplished this, your number one priority in any emergency situation is to get away and get help.
It is essential that you teach this tactic to your kids—everyone in your family should know what to do if someone grabs your arm and tries to drag you off somewhere. The first thing you need to do is fight. Although the natural reaction is to step back, stepping back is just going to put you in a tug of war with the attacker. Instead, you want to step in, abruptly bringing your elbow up and in toward the attacker’s face. Thrusting your elbow up will break the lock he’s got on your arm, and you can escape to safety. You can see a video of me demonstrating this at SpySecretsBook.com.
If we’re dealing with small children, or just a very strong attacker, there’s one added element that will break the hold. If you cannot bring your arm up to break the attacker’s hold, bring your opposite hand over to grab onto the arm the attacker is holding. The additional leverage from your opposite arm will help break the hold.
You’re jogging along your favorite path when someone jumps out of the bushes and grabs you in a bear hug. In this instance, instead of trying to run forward, take a large step backward to throw the attacker off balance. At the same time, you’re going to start peeling away fingers, potentially breaking them. Little ones are especially easy to damage. Eventually, after you’ve done enough damage to the hands, the attacker will let go. At this point, you can do an elbow to the neck, or reach back and hit the groin and then run to safety.
If your attacker tries to elevate you by leaning back and lifting you up, hook your leg behind his, which will keep him from getting a good grip on you. Then the technique is the same as if you get grabbed in a bear hug. Start breaking away at the fingers until the attacker lets go and you can escape.
While this is something women need to worry about more than men, just know that it’s still possible to grab someone by the hair even if it’s very short. If someone approaches you from the front and grabs your hair, know that he is actually placing himself in a good position for you to attack back. And because he’s in front of you, you know exactly what the attacker is doing. You also know that he can’t attack you with the hand that’s holding your hair. In this situation, you’re going to remember what we talked about in the beginning of the chapter: escape to gain safety. In this instance, the letters in the acronym give you the clues about what to do. Because the attacker is in front of you, you can attack back with a barrage of hits. Remember ETGS: eyes, throat, groin, and shins.
Once you’ve thrown a barrage of strikes at the attacker and have broken free, run to a populated area, making as much noise as you possibly can.
While you can’t see your attacker in this situation, you still know exactly where he is. It’s important not to pull away from your attacker. Instead, reach up and grab his hands, holding him as tightly to you as possible. Begin to rotate, still holding him tightly, until you see that his arm is bent backward. At this point you can peel his hands off, strike using ETGS, and run away.
While someone trying to choke you is obviously a serious situation you’d need to get out of immediately, this technique will also work if someone is just grabbing onto your shirt in a threatening way. This technique is incredibly simple, but effective. To make sure you know how to execute this if you ever need it, note the space on your neck where there is an indentation. It’s very sensitive, and that’s where you’re going to hit your attacker. When the person’s hands hit your neck, simply jab two fingers quickly and firmly into the indentation in her neck. I guarantee you, the person is going to gag, her chin will go down, and she’ll step backward, giving you an opportunity to escape.
So what do you do if you encounter someone who looks like he’s going to hit you? I personally always keep my hands up whenever someone enters my personal space, just to stay aware and be ready. I’m not going to do this in a threatening way—I don’t want to escalate a situation by acting threatening. You’re basically putting up a barrier so you can react quickly if you need to. Let’s say some guy throws one of those big, roundhouse punches your way—like he’s trying to knock your head off. What you’re going to do is keep your arms bent upward, so that you can crash into his upper arm when he throws the punch. Now you’re in a good position to turn toward the attacker and hack him in the neck. At this point you can engage or run to safety. This technique puts you in a good position to hit your attacker at the occipital notch, or the spot at the back of the head where the spine meets the skull. It should be noted that a slap at the occipital notch is extremely disorienting.
The technique you’ll use if a punch comes straight at you is slightly different. If you feel threatened, you’ll want your arms up (again, don’t aggravate the situation by putting your arms up in a threatening way), elevated to about shoulder height. When the punch comes straight at you, you’ll bend your forearms up so that the punch lands right on the tip of your elbow.
Hitting your elbow hard is really going to hurt your attacker—this maneuver can easily end up breaking fingers. If you wanted to imagine what this feels like, think about how it would feel if you were to make a fist and punch the corner of your dining room table as hard as you could. Once the attacker has hit your elbow, or possibly broken fingers, you can use some of the moves from the ETGS principles or simply run to safety.
As I mentioned in Chapter 3, the tactical pen is one of my favorite things to carry. You can take it absolutely everywhere (including airplanes), and it’s a good option for those of you who don’t feel ready to carry a knife or a gun or who live somewhere where you are prohibited from doing so. The tactical pen I use looks harmless enough, but if you examine it more closely you’ll notice it has some features that your average pen doesn’t have. It’s much thicker and heavier than a regular pen (it’s made of aircraft-grade aluminum), but most important, the bottom end of the pen has a sharp point. Don’t worry, it’s not so sharp that you’ll be cut if you reach into your purse or laptop bag to get it—but you can do serious damage with that end of the pen. In the class I teach about defending yourself with a tactical pen, I always demonstrate how tough these pens are by hammering one into a block of ice. A regular pen just gets crushed—but with just a couple of hits with the hammer, the tactical pen I use actually splits a block of ice right in half. These pens are strong. Not only can you hurt an attacker by stabbing or jabbing at him with a pen, but you could also use it to break glass in an emergency.
I’ve tested out every tactical pen that’s out there, and my favorite costs $35.00 (they range from $10.00 to as much as $300). You can see the tactical pen I use at TacticalSpyPen.com. Whatever pen you decide to buy, make sure you consider the following:
The first thing you need to know about defending yourself with a tactical pen is how to grip the pen properly. It’s possible to use the underhand grip. Think of the underhand grip as if you were holding a sword and you were jabbing it at someone. However, you’ll see that with this grip, you don’t actually have a great deal of leverage. It’s going to be harder to do serious damage this way. Or you can use the icepick grip (also known as the reverse grip). The ice pick grip gives you more control over the pen and more power when striking. As I just mentioned, you want to have your thumb on top of the pen so that you have more support.
This is very important. Your tactical pen must be accessible if it’s going to be useful. You don’t want to be digging around for it if you find yourself in a dangerous situation. I like to carry my tactical pen clipped to the inside of my right front pants pocket. It works for me, and I always know where to reach for it should I need to use it. Wherever you decide to carry it, keep it consistent. You need to develop muscle memory so that you automatically know where to reach for it. Some places you can clip your pen and still have it be accessible are a pants pocket, a T-shirt collar, a purse strap, or the inside of your pants.
This is a simple three-step process:
It’s good to practice deploying your tactical pen as if you were in a variety of threatening situations. Practice drawing your pen quickly in a variety of simulated situations—standing, on your back, while walking, while stepping off line (or off the X), if someone has you in a bear hug, or if there’s a person walking up to you. If you can’t get your pen up and out from any of these positions, you need to find a different place to carry your pen. A great way to practice is by having a friend or family member hold up a used pizza box. Practice drawing your pen up and out, and striking the box.
We’ve already gone over how to defend yourself if someone throws a punch at you, but the tactical pen adds an additional element. Should you be in a place where you feel uncomfortable—you’re walking through a rough neighborhood or you’re in a bar or restaurant and someone’s looking at you funny—get out your tactical pen. Since you always want to deescalate a situation, you don’t want to be holding it in a threatening manner. You should hold it discreetly in your hand, letting it rest on your forearm so the potential attacker can’t see it. If the attacker throws a big roundhouse punch at you, use the technique I described earlier, raising your arm up to block the punch. However, use your other hand—the one holding the tactical pen—to reach out and firmly jab your attacker in the armpit or pectoral muscles. This is going to hurt.
Again, you’ll use the same technique as you would if someone were throwing a punch straight at you. In this case, however, you’ll rotate the hand with the tactical pen upward, so that the attacker’s punch lands right on the tip of your pen. As you might imagine, this is not going to feel good.
As always, you need to be familiar with what’s legal to carry in your state. Make sure you investigate the legality of carrying a knife where you live before you start carrying one. As with most things, you need to find out what works for you. There are a few things you’ll want to consider before you buy a knife:
It’s important that you select a knife that you are comfortable carrying with you every day. Be consistent. In an emergency situation, you don’t want to have to pause and think, “What knife am I carrying today?” You want to know what you have on you at all times and how to deploy it.
We’re going to look at some basic footwork that moves you off the X should you be attacked by someone with a knife. Good knife defense training is based on triangles; it’s all angular movements. The only time you would ever move straight forward in an engagement is if you are pushing someone back very hard in a knife attack.
If you want to practice this move, you can place electrical tape on your floor. You’ll want to make a big letter X, with a horizontal line through the middle. It’s like you’re taping a huge asterisk onto the ground. This provides some guidance for when you’re practicing stepping off the X for all of the following movements, whether you are advancing, retreating, or sidestepping.
The forward triangle opens you up because you are stepping off the line to one side while you’re advancing forward. You’re taking a forty-five-degree step in relation to the oncoming threat. This move is very simple. If you want to move left, your left leg is going to step off the line first. If moving to the right, your right leg moves first. You would step to the side that is zoning you away from the threat. This move is putting you in a position to avoid incoming damage from the attacker. Your footwork brings you in, to where you can do damage, and then back out, to avoid damage. An added benefit to this movement is that it puts you in a position to use your hips for more power if you need to hit your attacker hard. Just keep in mind that you want to remain in balance as you move back and forth in this fashion.
You can also move backward from the center in the same forty-five-degree angle to keep yourself away from the threat. You just need to practice moving your body comfortably forward and backward, getting used to the way the movements feel. Should you encounter a threat, you won’t have time to think about which way to go.
You can also move from side to side if the threat is coming at you directly from the front. Step to the side and pivot, rotating your body quickly to the back.
Learning to defend yourself with a knife is serious business that requires skill and practice. I highly recommend that if you’d like to learn more about knife skills, that you check out my training at TwoSecondSurvival.com and find a reputable training center in your area. This training can provide serious peace of mind—as you’ll know exactly what to do in the event that you find a knife at your back while at the ATM or a knife at your throat while someone is trying to steal your car. Proper knife training will also teach you how to do the following: