Self-Defense

I'll try something different today: I've been thinking about self-defense, and I figured I'd jot down my current thoughts on it.

These thoughts have evolved over time, and I'm sure will continue to evolve as time goes on.

I make no guarantees about being right or wrong on any of these, or even to suggest what you should do about your own self-defense, particularly because self-defense is highly individualized.

So let's start there.

The need for self-defense

It's both obvious but hard for us to easily empathize with, so I'll start by stating it explicitly: the level of need for self-defense is highly contextual to the individual. There's no one-size-fits-all self-defense need or approach.

A large portion of my readers live in the US, while some of my readers live in developing countries where citizens are typically subject to more violence. Some of my readers live in even safer Western European countries, but a few of my readers live in countries that are literally at war. I happen to live in a country that supposedly has the largest number of bulletproof cars (300k+), for example.

Need for self-defense doesn't vary only by country, of course. The state, city, neighborhood, and street you live in, your demographic and ethnicity, your style, habits, and activities all influence your exposure to violence and potential need for self-defense.

While broad patterns exist, self-defense needs vary widely. If you feel your need for self-defense is minimal, it's worth remembering others may face very different risks.

Given there's no one-size-fits-all self-defense, let me talk a bit about how I personally think about it.

But first, let me give self-defense a quick definition.

Defining self-defense

Dear readers, at last we blog about a term that has a clear definition!! Let's check Wikipedia's:

Self-defense is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm.

Cool, that was easy. In short, to me self-defense is about neutralizing harm threats.

Now, our ease of defining terms didn't last long: I won't really get into the definition of harm, because 2 centuries of philosophical and ethical study of John Stuart Mill's "harm clause" have shown us that defining harm is not easy at all.

So, for my personal needs, I'm mostly considering violent physical harm, but you can have your own definition that works best for your own self-defense.

Personally, I have three broad categories of threats:

• Being outside and exposed to violence from strangers, such as in a brawl or fight, by otherwise "regular" people
• Being outside and being a victim of a robbery or kidnapping
• Being home and a victim of a break-in

These are all pretty realistic scenarios for me: brawls and fights can happen in places I go to, particularly concerts, robberies and kidnapping happen often in the city I live in, and there were a handful of break-ins in my neighborhood and street in as many years.

I'll cover a number of techniques as I think about them and their application. In summary, they are:

• Verbal judo
• Running
• Grappling
• Striking
• Knives
• Firearms

Verbal judo

I think I learned the term "verbal judo" from the internet many years ago, but it stuck with me. After a quick search, it seems like it's an actual technique and institute, but when I say verbal judo, I mean any type of violence neutralization through dialectic and debate.

The way I think about it, verbal judo can be a very effective technique when dealing with opportunistic threats of violence, that is, people who weren't originally planning to harm you, such as in road rage episodes, brawls, etc.

For the most part, if you're in a situation where you can disengage from a threat of violence by verbally de-escalating the situation and simply walking away, that's almost always the best way forward.

Remember: the goal of verbal judo is not to win the argument but to neutralize the threat of harm. That's the only win.

I don't believe verbal judo is an effective way to prevent premeditated threats of violence, such as those made by robbers and kidnappers. Complying to the extent that protects you from harm, such as by giving an assailant the money he's asking, can be effective if it encourages the robber to disengage, but trying to dissuade them verbally is almost certainly not (unless you're a professional). We have no way to properly practice the stress we'd run into in these situations.

In short, in a brawl or other opportunistic situation, I think the best tool is to use verbal judo and disengage, and ideally, that will suffice to neutralize most threats I'm exposed to.

If verbal judo is not enough, then I'll use the next best thing: running away.

Run away

Running away is far and away a better self-defense option than engaging in violence, if it's available to you.

There are so many real-life consequences of a physical altercation that are significantly negative and, dare I say, life-altering: serious injuries, lawsuits, reputational damage, etc. No good comes from physical altercations.

To be able to run away, two factors must be true:

• I must be on my own – no family or friends to protect
• Have a clear and unimpeded escape route

If you're even a hobbyist runner, your chances of outrunning opportunistic (regular people) or premeditated (robbers) assailants are so high as to be virtually guaranteed. After about 10 seconds, most non-runners will slow down significantly and go out of breath.

Also, catching someone who's running is much more difficult than just escaping, so I have an extra advantage over my chaser(s).

Even in the case your assailant(s) are armed, I think running away is the best choice. It's virtually impossible to throw a knife at a running person, and most robbers are actually very poor shots. Sure, if a robber has a firearm, there's still a big risk of you being shot while running away, but that's a lower risk than if you stay at close range.

One other advantage of running away is that it works well against any number of assailants: statistically speaking, there's a higher chance they'll outrun you the more people there are, but otherwise, facing one or several people is roughly the same.

The training here is, of course, learning to run. Any hobbyist runner will be much superior to the average person, regardless of height or build, on a 30-second or 1-minute run.

And the thing to be aware of, of course, is avoiding closed and small spaces. Running only works if you have a clear and unimpeded escape route, so try to have one when potentially under threat.

If I have friends or family around, though, I can't run (and leave them behind). Also, if I don't have a clear escape route, either I won't be able to, or I won't be successful at running away.

In some of those situations, I may be able to use grappling for self-defense.

Grapple – Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is both a sport and an effective grappling martial art for self-defense. Very effective.

One reason for its effectiveness is that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was shaped, through the Gracies' challenges for street brawls and then the UFC, to be effective in actual violence situations. While wrestling and judo try to put your opponent with their backs to the floor, BJJ tries to put your opponent with their backs to you!

If you haven't practiced BJJ before, I can't emphasize this enough: with just 6-12 months of BJJ practice, you'll beat pretty much any person who's currently untrained in martial arts in virtually any 1-1 self-defense situation.

When BJJ is put against someone untrained in BJJ (or any other full-contact martial art or sport like Boxing or Muay Thai), even a relative beginner will surely dominate the assailant.

Of course, if your assailant is well-trained in Muay Thai and you're a beginner BJJ practitioner, you're still likely to lose. If they know Muay Thai and Wrestling, you're certainly gonna lose and get beat up.

On the other hand, if both you and your assailant are skilled in BJJ, there's a good chance you can both realize "hey, we're both BJJ practictioners, why are we fighting?" – I haven't ever seen that, but I've seen instructors and practioners on YouTube mentioning this happens, so .. good to know, particularly if you get your butt handed to you every week by higher belts in BJJ training – which you probably do if you train BJJ.

Being a relatively skilled grappler in BJJ, I'm very confident in my ability to neutralize a threat against an unarmed assailant in a 1-1 confrontation, no matter how trained they are, as long as they're not more skilled in BJJ than I am. Although I wouldn't optimize for that, I suspect I could also do it without even hurting the other person, or by only causing them relatively minor injuries.

The reason for this confidence is that, in most cases, any altercation between two people will end up on the ground, particularly if one of them is an experienced grappler. And on the ground, the best BJJ (almost) always wins.

But there is a huge downside to grappling, though: It only works in a 1-1 situation.

You should never, never, never, engage in a grappling exchange against more than 1 person. Ever. Only bad things will come from that, as a cursory YouTube search will demonstrate.

In a 1-to-many situation, grappling is not only useless but detrimental, and you have to resort to striking.

Striking – Muay Thai and Boxing

I'm not a Muay Thai or Boxing practitioner, so personally, I'd be beat up if I had to rely on my striking to protect myself or loved ones, pretty much in all situations. Honestly, that kinda sucks.

But anyway, I want to talk about striking because it illustrates its importance: self-defense situations aren't fair: robbers will have the element of surprise, advantage in numbers, and any number of other unfair advantages.

Apparently, both boxing and Muay Thai are very effective in self-defense situations against untrained assailants, so you're good with either of them. Just practice the one you like the most.

But from what I've learned, Muay Thai carries a slight advantage given its kicks, since there are two kicks that are particularly effective in self-defense situations: the teep and the calf or leg kick.

The teep kick is one where you lift your leg and extend it against your assailant's center of mass to push them away, typically hitting their solar plexus or surrounding areas.

The leg kick typically hits your opponent's thigh. The calf kick, recently popularized in the UFC, hits your opponent's calf instead.

These kicks hurt.. a lot. There's a lack of air that hits your chest, or a shock that goes through your leg, that I don't wish on anyone. I've done a few MMA bonus rounds at my BJJ gym many years ago and, honestly, it's one of the main reasons I don't currently do any striking training (and may never do)! Ouch!

So, if you're a trained striker and you hit your untrained opponent with a few teep and leg or calf kicks, that's all you really need to neutralize them. And depending on the situation, you may be able to hold your own against several untrained assailants.

But of course, literally none of that matters if they're armed.

Knives

Unlike in the movies, if there's a fight between an unarmed person and a person armed with a knife, the person with the knife will always win. No amount of "self-defense knife disarming" training will fix that. That's just make-believe.

So never engage somebody armed with a knife if you're unarmed, no matter how trained you are. Never engage. You won't win.

Knife attack simulations are typically in one of two kinds: the grossly rehearsed "I do this, you do that" kind and the "here's a training marking knife that will paint red whenever it touches you, try to avoid it. Go!" The latter is never pretty.

Rather interestingly, some hashguards draw your organs in them, so you can see which organs the marking knife has marked in red when it touched you before you disarmed your opponent (or you gave up trying). Try this, and you will most definitely come out all marked in red.

The legislation for carrying knives varies widely by country, and by state in countries with state legislation, such as the US, so I'm literally making no recommendation about possession or carrying of knives here.

But I'll leave with three statements:

• If a person has a knife and the other doesn't, the person with the knife will always win.
• If two people have knives, one will go to the hospital, and the other will go to the cemetery.
• Knives are always bad, bad, bad news. Avoid at all costs. Use verbal judo or run away if you can.

There's only one thing that's worse news than knives in a self-defense situation, and that's firearms.

Firearms

Firearm legislation also varies significantly by country and state, and ethical and personal opinions vary widely about firearms, so I'll make no recommendations about the possession or carrying of firearms here either.

But Google tells me there are over 1 billion (with a B!) firearms distributed globally, with approx. 857 million of those in the hands of civilians. Firearms are a reality you may need to consider for self-defense, whether you believe they're ethically right or not.

Here are some of my current beliefs about firearms in a self-defense context:

First, most robbers are actually terrible shots and overall relatively poor users of firearms. High accuracy, dexterity handling firearms, and doing it in high-stress situations requires training that most are unable or unwilling to undergo.

Unfortunately, an assailant doesn't need much skill to fatally wound others with a firearm at close range, particularly an unresisting victim. So in many robbery and kidnapping scenarios, an armed assailant is terrible news, even if they're unskilled, often even more so.

Finally, most gun-range training doesn't prepare people for actual self-defense situations. Ranges are often focused on precision shooting, and in high-stress situations, you're gonna use your muscle memory, which most likely doesn't match precision shooting constraints.

The political, ethical, and legal complexity of firearms makes accurate information and proper training hard to come by, and that can be a serious obstacle in a self-defense situation involving a gun.

In summary, guns are a real part of self-defense scenarios, but they're difficult to navigate, no matter where you live or what you believe.

Summary

The need for self-defense varies widely and is highly individualized. It's hard to make assumptions about others based on our beliefs and needs, and vice versa.

While we can get philosophically complex quickly, the definition of self-defense is simple: the ability to neutralize harm threats.

There are a number of self-defense techniques, and the first is verbal judo: neutralizing a harm threat through debate and dialectics. Winning means neutralizing the threat, not winning the debate.

If verbal judo doesn't work, your next best option is to run away. If you're a trained runner and you have a clear escape route, you're almost guaranteed to escape, but this won't help you defend others.

If you can't run away, a skilled grappler is almost guaranteed to effectively neutralize an untrained assailant in a 1-1 setting. BJJ will allow you to do this relatively quickly, in 6-12 months of training, but you should never engage more than one assailant at a time in grappling.

If you know Boxe or Muay Thai, there's a chance you can neutralize threats from multiple assailants. Teep, leg, and calf Muay Thai kicks can often incapacitate untrained assailants.

Never, ever, ever engage an assailant with a knife if you can avoid it. If you're unarmed, you are certain to lose no matter how well-trained you are.

Firearms are complicated, but they're a reality of the study of self-defense, and ignoring them puts you at a disadvantage in any self-defense situation involving guns.

As with many things in life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so I avoid harm threats whenever I can.

But if I can't – especially when it comes to protecting myself or my loved ones – that's where self-defense matters most.