Street Fight Secrets Manual

This manual is for information purposes only.

Do not attempt anything you find in here without proper supervision.
Consult a physician before engaging in any physical activity.
You assume responsibility for your own safety, understanding and
accepting all risks involved with martial arts training.
By assuming this risk,
you completely absolve all authors, creators, and affiliates of this manual
from liability for any injury or misuse of the information contained herein.
This is not a tutorial on Criminal Law; it is your responsibility to do your
own research and to get a full understanding of how criminal law deals
with the issue of self defence in your state or country.
My personal advice is that, if you can, you should seek to EXHAUST EVERY
OTHER POSSIBILITY AT YOUR DISPOSAL to resolve a conflict. Physical
violence is a last resort to use only when you have no other choice.
Richard Grannon 2012

Contents
Objectives ........................................................................................... 3
Ego Protection Vs Self Protection........................................................ 4
Define the Context of Your Training First ............................................ 6
Thug Jitsu; A Useful Combative Paradigm .......................................... 11
Combative Ergonomics ....................................................................... 13
Principles ............................................................................................ 14
Core Game Plan .................................................................................. 16
Myths of Martial Arts ..........................................................................25
Training Priority Pyramid .....................................................................40
How to Beat Anyone:A Strategy .......................................................49

Part 1 .Objectives
The purpose of this manual is to:
1. To help to prepare the individual for the possibility of real world violence as closely as it is
objectively seen to exist, NOT according to any prejudicial perceptual lens.
2. Everyone can and should be seeking to develop their own style based on their individual
psychological and physical preferences and personal objectives. This manual will help you to begin to
find ways of doing that.
3. De-programme some of the cultural hypnosis regarding martial arts, fighting and real world
violence.
4. Deconstruct standard martial arts training and to incorporate a more scientific approach to find
what works and what doesnt and how to best train these skills.
5. To only focus on dealing with unarmed assault against one person, whilst being aware assault may
very well come in many forms, the best place to start and build a foundation is with tightly defined
objectives.
6. To assist the reader to rethink their training and their perspective on martial arts and real world
violence.
7. To give the practitioner the means to train themselves to be as
dangerous as possible to any would-be attacker.
What this manual is NOT:
1. NOT A presentation for a style, system or philosophy. You will be encouraged to challenge
everything and think for yourself.
2 .NOT An effort to preserve a culture, history or lineage.
3. NOT A training manual for thugs to be better thugs.
4. NOT A Panacea or cure all. Training for street violence is, in principle,no different to sportive,
industrial or military training. Work harder for longer and you will have more relevant skills to the
task.

Section 2: Ego Protection vs Self Protection

The guiding principle is simple : if you absolutely have to hit someone you have already lost.
Full scale, real world self protection is not about what might or might not happen up some dark
alley of the imagination for a few desperate seconds in some anxiety inducing horror version of a
potential (and statistically unlikely) future event largely inspired by films, books and the media.
This book is not a book about Self Protection in a larger sense. It is specifically about making our
mental and physical preparation for dealing with real world violence more effective.
Therefore Im not going to get deeply into what real Self Protection is all about, but I will say this.
The truth of real world Self Protection is that it is 99% applied psychology. If you are good you
should never find yourself forced into a position where you have to fight. There are three things I
teach when looking at the applied psychology elements. This is just a brief overview.
Allies, Awareness, Avoidance
Be aware of where and who is dangerous and avoid these places and these people. Dont do a
dangerous job, dont hang out with criminals or engage in criminal activity, dont drink or take
drugs or spend time in places where people drink and take drugs. Park your car in a well lit
populated area, wear a seatbelt, dont walk up dodgy dark allies with your laptop over your
shoulder whilst chatting on your expensive phone with your sleeve down exposing your Rolex etc
etc. Its common sense, give it some thought.
Consider looking and acting like the type of person it would be more hassle to mug than to leave
alone. This does not mean walking round with your chest out talking in a loud voice and being a
cartoon version of how you imagine a tough guy acts. Its in the posture, the way you move and
use your eyes (what you are focussing on in the environment) and your emotional and mental
state. Be in the moment, present, aware and engaged with what is happening right now. Not stuck
inside your head, out of and away from reality. Calm, assertive and switched on. Not aggressive
and posturing with swagger.
Learn to manage your state and make a habit of keeping yourself in a good one. People in good
states make good decisions. People in bad states make bad ones.
Be aware of how you come across, develop your social intelligence and get good at making friends,
allies. This has got me out of more serious trouble more times than anything else ever has or
will. Get to know the people around you.
Build rapport, build goodwill. Be a good, helpful, honest, unobtrusive, polite, decent,
compassionate human being. Dont close yourself off from people, dont be afraid to show
kindness and help out. Be genuine. People will like and respect you.
Your quality of life will improve and you will experience less violence and confrontation and people
are more likely to back you up and help you out. Remember its pointless learning self protection if
your living a life style that will get you killed. Its statistically far more likely you will encounter
issues like cancer, heart disease, mental health problems and stress related issues. So put this book
4

down, take up meditation and become a vegan. Only kidding. Just avoid dark alleys and make good
allies.
Consider this:
I've been a doorman (bouncer) on and off for more than 10 years now. I've worked worse clubs in
recent years but got into fewer fights. There is a reason why, I had a bit of a realisation a couple
of years ago. There was a doorman I used to work with in Liverpool, every thursday night he was
on with me on a club in Victoria Street. Older guy, maybe 55. He was a black cab driver who just
did a couple of nights a week. Really quiet, really polite.
I remember him telling me, proudly, that in 15 years of doorwork he hadnt had to hit anyone.
At the time, I didnt really believe him to be honest.
I realised a few years ago, that its not great to have too many young guys on a door. Too much
testosterone and hot headedness. The older guys would keep everyone balanced, take things less
personally and be way more patient. But Ive been thinking about this guy in particular, because he
made it a point of pride to go into work and never, ever hit anyone.
This then got me into a mindset of challenging myself to see just how much I could get people to
do just with verbal commands and the LEAST amount of physical contact possible. Its changed the
whole way I approach doorwork. We know in principle that psychologically you get more of what
you focus on and the questions you ask determine the quality of the answers you get and that
of course, the questions you ask yourself CONTROL and direct that mental focus.
If you are training for and engaging in situations asking the question WHEN will this go physical?
then the presupposition is that it WILL at some point go physical, unless the other person
capitulates and walks away or some other factor enters the situation.I have to sit back and wonder,
really, really how many times was I absolutely forced into a fight in my life? If instead of asking
myself WHEN should I hit this guy?, I was asking myself How much can I get done without ANY
physical contact whatsoever? Im 100% sure I would have been involved in less brawls.

"Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends."

Czech Proverb

Section 3: Define the CONTEXT

It really is pointless to try and find, develop and then practice solutions without having amply defined
the problem first. Be very careful that your training doesnt skip over the context in which the
violence you are training for is occurring. All too commonly we can see training halls filled with people
drilling solutions to a problem that is predefined and implied or just assumed without analysis.
Do some martial arts systems strategies depend on being able to define the Attack? Do they only work
within the context of a certain type of stylised Attack?

Do these Stylised Martial Arts Defences require Stylised Martial Arts Attacks to be functional? Look at the pictures
again. Look at the type of attack being defended. Is anyone likely to be attacked in this way?

How is the violence occurring? Where? Amongst whom? What is their objective?
Not every problem is a nail and not every solution is a hammer.
Does every fight involve two people squaring up against each other on a flat dry surface and having
what is basically a kickboxing match in the street?
No.
There is no way all violent assaults can be defined so narrowly.
Define the context of what you are training for as precisely as you can to get the best results possible.
The context and your objectives will determine the strategy.
The strategy and the capabilities you have at your disposal will determine the technique.
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Context determines strategy and techniques. Not the other way around.

Would changing the nature of the Attack and thereby altering part of the
context make some of these strategies redundant and unworkable?

If our method only functions when we get to define the exact nature of a stylised attack is it a nonfunctional method?
This is why some guys trained in martial arts can get beaten in the street by some aggressive idiot
with a positively neanderthal (but reliable) strategy delivered with huge amounts of aggression.
Working to the context is the opposite of forcing the techniques you already have to fit a multitude of
threats with no regard for the environment, the nature of the attack or your objectives and little
consideration of capability.

Use of verbal aggression, gripping the clothes and smashing repeatedly

with the fist into the face provides us with a different and more realistic
natured attack (part of the context) to fit a technical solution to.

Well stick with the example of punching. How do people punch when they punch from directly in
front of your face?
In reality if a punch has come from front on it will have been usually preceded by aggressive displays
and threats. Possibly some chest bumping, shoving and pulling. Plenty of posturing. Often the
untrained thug attacker will grip clothing to keep hold of where there intended victim is before
jackhammering punches repeatedly into their face. So if its going to be a verbally and physically
aggressive, grab and jackhammer in reality, to any doubters I would say : try and replicate that in
the gym.
Its a significantly different experience to working from stylised martial arts punches I can assure you!
Obviously only try this under qualified supervision using all necessary safety gear.

...if our priority is still how best to stop the punch we might choose
something that generically covers multiple (targets, face, neck, jaw and
eye line) whilst driving forward with the elbow into the opponents face
through the centerline...

...or reprioritise again from stop punch to end the fight quickly and
decisively and attack the attacker pre-emptively earlier in the timeline.

No right or wrong answers only options closer to or further away from your objectives.
The point here is not to criticise traditional martial arts training. Not at all.
Just that there are more efficient ways of getting certain tasks done depending on the context.
This includes, as mentioned above: the nature of the attack, the environment, your psychological
state, your objectives, your capabilities etc

If youre a psychiatric nurse being attacked by a not so threatening much lighter patient you might
choose just stopping the punches then restraining. If its a brawl in a bar you might ignore the punch
and c-grip the throat driving the opponent off balance and into a wall. The point is your technical
response must be dictated by the context.

If the Context dictates that real world violence is highly psychologically

stressful, depends heavily on intimidation, involves on a few crude but
effective techniques delivered with maximum aggression and is a highly
emotional experience then shouldnt we accept that as the context and
work backwards?

Its quite common for decent civilised people to go into denial when faced with raw aggression.
After all who wants to mix it up with an aggressive scumbag? However pretending its not happening
is not going to help. Pleading and being submissive can spur some criminal predators on. Once
someone is in your space and in your range its time to take decisive action. And quickly, the quicker
you move the safer you will be.

"Youve spent your whole life learning to be a good person.

Dont forget you are also a perfectly good animal."
Rory Miller

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Section 4. Thug-Jitsu - A Useful Combative Paradigm

Can the way most experienced street "thugs" fight actually be modelled usefully by street combative
practitioners? Lets be clear who I mean when Im talking about "thugs": in the UK when you say
"thug" you just mean someone who fights with not much finesse and bags of aggression. I believe
there is a lot to be learnt by "good people" from modelling criminal predators in their psychological
and physical approach to violence.
In a fight "thugs" tend to keep things
1. Simple
2. Brutal
3. Rooted in Pure Aggression
Seems to me that this would be a very good strategy for training for street violence.
When people decide that enough is enough and that they need to learn to street fight, to fight back
they often go to one of two main choices :
- Sportive Combat (muay thai, boxing, mma etc)
or
-Traditional Martial Arts (karate, ju-jitsu, judo etc)
Both certainly provide a training context that COULD, CAN and regularly DOES provide people who can
"handle themselves" but is it the best way, most direct way? Shouldn't we be modelling the "experts"
in street fight experience? The thugs themselves?

"Ask the experienced not the learned"

Old Arabic Proverb
The idea here is to get away from a sparring, tit for tat model of violence and focus on delivering
violence one way , asymmetrically using deception and surprise.
By stealing the initiative and then having stolen the initiative to keep going until the job is done.
Obviously, there is no such Martial Arts system as "Thug Jitsu" , I made it up.
It's a term I've used with mates over the years as a bit of an in-joke to determine the difference
between the "beautiful compliant dance moves" approach to learning how to fight and just getting in
there and delivering a beating.
Simple, brutal, rooted in aggression.

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What is a thugs strategy? We could break it down like this:

1. Steal it on your target with a surprise punch to the face whilst youre
talking to them or a head-butt
2. When they cover up, grab them and yank them with one had whilst repeatedly tonking them with
the other
3.Drag them to the floor
4. Deliver a kicking
From this we can learn in principle:
1. Set them up and surprise hit them whilst they are upright
2. When they fold and cover keep up the combative pressure and keep
hitting them
3. Drag them or shove them down to the ground
4. Kick to head is the most decisive (and potentially lethal, be warned)
fight finisher.
Remember in the real world a fight is not usually symmetrical as in two fighters equally matched
exchanging blows, it is usually asymmetrical as in one person is delivering a beating and the other is
receiving it.

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Section 5. Combative Ergonomics

Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with

the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a
system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and
methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall
system performance
The International Ergonomics Association

Whilst studying for my Psychology Degree I took some modules in Ergonomics and Industrial
Psychology. I have tried as far as possible to let that objectivity and striving for efficiency affect my
approach to martial arts and combatives training.
The only agenda ergonomics has is to create more efficiency and improve the health and safety of the
operator. It doesnt need to show loyalty to history or culture as the classical messof martial arts
does. It only shows loyalty to that which works.
There is a concept in ergonomics called skills transfer.
This is the way in which skills transfer from one task to another and the way they transfer from
training to real life application. Understand that everything you do in training is done in the hope that
the skills created there will transfer into the real world. Be aware of that and be clear on that point. If
you are doing a drill in class but dont know why, and dont have a clear objective, the likelihood is you
are wasting your time.
Combative Ergonomics is my effort to bring this approach to martial arts and combatives training. To
deconstruct a lot of the junk that is holds some students back. Please challenge everything and
please test everything I put forward in this book safely and intelligently.
I noticed over the years most of my traditional martial arts training was heavy on form and light on
function. With the Combative Ergonomics concept I want to get back to a purer training paradigm
that is all function with no adherence to form whatsoever.

"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to

change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum
amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the
minimum amount of time."
General George S. Patton, Jr.
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Section 6. Combative Principles

The purpose of this section is to give you an insight into some of the guiding principles I have adopted
to guide training and application.
Principles are more important techniques. Lots of systems and instructors will tell you they are
principles based but they get very shy when it comes time to pin them down to exactly what those
principles are and how they are used specifically.
There are many useful principles but I will give you what I feel to be the most important ones. I would
also just say to give you an honest guideline that the types of training schools I have looked at and
thought had good merit had certain common themes:
Usually they werent neglecting their strength training, pre-emptively and aggressively knocking
incoming attacks aside and rapidly pursuing good high yield targets like the eyes, throat, jaw, groin,
knees with solid weapons like palms, fists, knees, elbows and low line kicks.
Nothing too fancy, simple, brutal, accurate and with an asymmetric response.
A single attack is not met with a single defence or a single defence and counter and then a pause to
see what happens next; a single attack is met with a punishing maelstrom of multiple rapid fire
counter attacks or even fully pre emptive action, leaving the opponent steam- rollered into the
floor.
1. Deception should be incorporated into every aspect of your response, take any and every
advantage you can
2. Hit first, hit hard, hit fast
3. Hit accurately and decisively, seeking to cause unconsciousness or maximum injury with every
shot
4. The first thing you want to concern yourself hitting with is not a technique but raw, savage
aggression
5. Cultivate and use Violent Intent, the will to do damage. Let that attitude infuse all your training
and all your technical responses.
6. Develop your strength, fitness and other combatively relevant attributes
7. Having gained any advantage, press the advantage ruthlessly
8. Develop good body mechanics, you will never generate effect without learning to move
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9. Focus on EFFECT, what do you expect your strategy or technique to DO

10. Be aware of and use the environment
11. Integrate your psychological training into your physical training in every way
12. Commit to the attack, DRIVE FORWARD and Attack the Attacker
13. Equal emphasis on context as content of techniques ALWAYS
14. Be familiar with and destructive within all ranges
15. Where the head goes the body will follow
16. The way you train in the gym without pressure is the way you are likely to react in a fight when
under pressure
17. Just do it. Test it and work it out for yourself, dont wait to be told. Dont overthink anything.
18. Developing skills is always more important than acquiring techniques
19. Right tools to right targets, your close quarters skillset is your top priority
20. Train your mind and emotions and your body to the point where you can begin to feel
detached when you get into a fight: train hard, fight easy
21. The best defence is a good offense
22. Once youve got within a certain range you can disregard his attacks if you do this: FIXATE
SINGLE MINDEDLY ON THE TASK OF BRINGING YOUR OPPONENT DOWN
23. You will Learn most and fastest by Doing
24. Simulate reality as closely as possible as safely as possible
25. Manage your state: people in good states make good decisions
26. Overwhelm and crowd your attacker, use shock and awe tactics to put him into a state of
psychological and physical submission

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Section 7 : The Core Game Plan

This section is all about what to do when your hand is forced and you have no choice but to go
physical in a conflict. Either you have been suddenly attacked or you have entered a verbal
confrontation where it seems violence is inevitable.
Core Game Plan: a reliable, simple,procedural skillset that has multiple layers of redundancy. This is
mine, feel free to model it. Its not writ in stone, I created it as it seemed like the most sensible
solution at the time of writing it. Its details may change over time and with more experience.
It has 4 layers of redundancy; this means that if plan A fails there is a plan B, Plan C and a Plan D.

Dont do your best move, but rather, the worst move for your opponent.
Chess Maxim applied to Combatives via Coach Tony Blauer
The Core Game Plans Combative Priorities

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The 4 phase combative priorities above should be focused on in this way:

1. Firstly IF YOU CAN your primary objective should be to knock your opponent unconscious (no one is
dangerous whilst asleep)
2. IF you cant knock him out injure him or immobilise him (causing injury
is not an easy thing to do takes skill and precision)
3. IF you cant get the knock out or an injury keep him stressed out and
keep his head down with suppressive fire cause fear and pain (this
can only work so long before he gets used to this stimulus and fights
back, it also takes your energy but has little effect- bear this in mind)
4. IF you cant do any of the above try and control the opponents
position or move yourself to a better one.
The Core Game Plans 4 Phases

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1. Deception/ Surprise to the Opening Shot

Set them up, use verbal deception to distract, deliver devastating preemptive strike.

Set them up at the verbal phase and deliver a preemptive strike looking for combative priority number 1
unconsciousness. Its the ideal way of dealing with physical violence, ending it decisively before it starts.

The concept of setting up a pre emptive strike means positioning your body and distracting your
attacker to keep him off guard. You do this in such a way as to most efficiently strike the attacker with
a precision shot looking for a knock out.
A pre emptive strike just means hitting the attacker before he is ready and before he attacks you.

There are no guarantees: you could hit with your preemptive strike and if it is not quite right (lacks follow through, or is
snatched at because of fear) it might just get you beaten more badly. You must train to immediately follow up a
preemptive strike with a BLITZ of attacks.

18

If your attacker attacks you without warning and you suddenly immediately and violently retaliate by
getting inside his space and attacking him savagely then you have the element of surprise on your
side. Its the last thing anyone blindsiding you will expect.

Getting punched from the side and the back are more common attacks.
Training your body and brain to respond to a sudden attack with immediate aggressive action is important,
finding ways to do that is our task.

Whether a follow up to a preemptive strike or a response to an ambush, your initial response must be
immediately followed by a blitz of combative pressure in which you relentlessly attack the attacker.
This is the next phase of the Core Game Plan.
2. Blitz
Get into the opponents space and ATTACK HIM! This doesnt have to be precise, deliver a savage
explosion of violence with maximum intent. Punch, gouge, head butt, kick, shove him over or into
things, choke him, whatever. Make him feel like he just put his whole body inside a blender
and unleashed a maelstrom of savagery. These are shock and awe tactics; the objective is to put the
attacker into a physical and mental state of submission.
Whether its an immediate follow up to a pre emptive strike or an aggressive response to a blindsiding
ambush you must follow through. It is impossible to show the explosivity and violent intent required
to make this strategy work in pictures.
However here are some suggestions for follow up tactics. Dont get caught up in individual technical
responses, the principle is to overwhelm your attacker, do this in the way that best fits your abilities
and preferences and objectives.

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1.Punches should only be delivered to the jaw, nowhere else on the head is an appropriate target and could break your
hand.
2.Gripping the trachea and driving the head back I have found to be very effective, can cause a knockout.
3. I dont like using absolutes but I do think everyone should learn how to head butt. Done with precision it is probably
the most devastating strike you can deliver in a street context.

1. keep applying forward pressure and pressing the head down 2. drive solid long knees into groin or dead centre
mass of the thigh muscles, aiming to penetrate through to the bone -only if the opportunity presents itself, knees to the
lower extremities can be wasteful and off balancing if forced. 3 kick deep into the front and side muscle s of the legs, or
into the knee joint itself

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Stay at the right range dont get excited and rush onto your opponent turning it into a grappling match and closing
down your striking options, dont bounce out from your opponent as you would in sportive combat looking for your
next shot this may give him time to recover. Stay in arms reach and KEEP THE PRESSURE UP UNTIL HE GOES DOWN.

1 learn how to hit into the body with the intent for deep penetration to put maximum pressure on internal organs
2 become proficient with standing chokes and cranks they can end a fight quickly, shown here is a
standard guillotine can be a blood or air choke depending and can be easily changed to a neck crank or grovit
downside is it commits both your hands, apply intelligently.
3 the use of palms tends to get overstated as safe for your hands unlike punches hitting a person with your hands
always comes at the risk of breaking the small bones in them and the wrists, its not what they were designed for. Hit
the jaw orears with precision strikes. Dont hit the skull. Your hands are delicate and the skull is hard.

21

NOTE: Dont fixate too much on any of the physical techniques shown here, use what you find useful
and discard the rest. The principle is what is important: to overwhelm your opponent with a
maelstrom of violence. Repeated attacks from multiple angles to multiple targets.

Eye gouges and gouging the soft tissue of the face can have unpredictable results, sometimes they can stop a fight,
sometimes it doesnt seems to register and sometimes it will make the opponent fight harder. Think of combining them
with a head control, driving the head offline, for maximum effect.

3.

Crush

This is a very tricky phase for some to grasp, most decent civilised people would be tempted to stop at
the point you have the opponent covering up, if he hasnt already dropped to the floor already.
But you must not stop here.
Having seized the initiative you must now press the advantage. Just because your attacker covers up
momentarily doesnt mean you should stop.

Drag his head to below (or level with) his centre of gravity and then yank his head forward and down dragging
him to the floor. If he is still resistant, fire some knees into his face first.

22

As I said earlier, this is my preferred strategy, use what you find useful, discard or alter the rest
according to your own experience and requirements.
You should not however, in my opinion, get halfway through neutralising a threat and then stop
because he seems to have had enough. Hes had enough when he is no longer a threat.

In combat to 'Hold Down a Pillow' means not allowing the enemy's head to rise.
In contests of strategy it is bad to be led about by the enemy. You must always be
able to lead the enemy about.
Miyamoto Musashi Book of Five Rings

4. Stamp
The most expedient fight finisher, that requires the least effort, the least commitment (that would
otherwise expose you to other attackers), is the most ergonomically efficient and the fastest. Stamp to
the head. Yes, its potentially lethal. Dont kid yourself: fighting is potentially lethal!

Do you want to let some scumbag get back up so he can draw a knife and stab you or phone his mates
to come and find you and leave you battered, paralysed or dead?
Do you think in a melee where you are struggling against several possibly armed opponents you are
going to have time to get down on the floor with him and arm lock him?
Stay upright and put the guy who attacked you out of the picture.
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People get killed and brain damaged all the time in civilised countries by getting knocked out and
landing loosely with their heads on concrete or getting mob rushed and their heads kicked in. Dont
use these techniques frivolously and dont have a frivolous attitude to violence.
There are other options where restraint is required but this is not a manual about restraint and
control. That is a separate skillset appropriate for doormen, policemen, psychiatric nurses and prison
officers. Not for civilians being attacked without provocation in potentially life threatening scenarios.
Dont get them confused.
Obviously you will be using reasonable force commensurate with the level of perceived threat. This
isnt a manual on criminal law. Do your own research and cover yourself. But do use your common
sense in the meantime.

Violence of Action Trumps Technique.

Deputy US Marshall J. Jones
(via Rory Millers book Meditations on Violence)

Violence of Action Trumps Technique: stop analysing, hesitating, thinking,

get in there, attack the attacker, unleash a savage maelstrom of aggression.

24

Section 8 : Myths of Martial Arts

If you are going to train you need to be aware of certain myths perpetuated by even the most well
meaning of instructors, these are the four most common and most dangerous.
1.

The Myth of Never

Im always wary of people using the word never in a training context as in this technique or this
system will never work in the street or you will never be attacked like that.
Firstly its very dangerous and presumptuous to say the word never. In a universe of infinite
possibilities the circumstances for any technique/ style/ movement to be appropriate may occur.
Secondly its NOT the technique or the system that does the fighting. Remember the map is not the
territory or put another way the way we encode reality into language is by necessity reductionist and
inaccurate. Put yet another way there is no such thing in the world as a technique is there? No
tangible object or tool. This wrist lock will not work has the same sentence structure as this
hammer will not work yet a wrist lock and hammer are very different.
One is a concept, one is an object. One has a size, weight, colour etc that can be objectively perceived
by the senses the other does not. It is not an object but a subjectively perceived phenomenon taking
place between two human beings.
Now Ive used wrist locks on occasion with good effect in violent situations and used perfectly good
hammers in simple DIY situations with ill effect.
Can I therefore not reasonably conclude it comes down also to the skill of the practitioner who is
using the tool?
It seems to me people would rather talk and act as though the system, technique is going to be
doing the fighting. I wonder if this is because perhaps it displaces responsibility from the resilience
and will of the individual to survive on to some external entity. Incidentally this effect
also makes selling systems, techniques and brands much easier. People want simple solutions to
complex problems, its just human nature.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and

not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.
George Henry Lewes
There are teachers who are better qualified and capable to prepare people for street violence via the
medium of boxing or karate, and teachers ofhardcore street combatives who are, in my humble
opinion, simply not qualified or capable to prepare people for street violence. So its NOT the system
or the technique. Not really.
25

My attitude is everyone should learn to crawl before they walk, and walk before they run. Therefore
you are more likely to hear me endorsing a good strength and fitness programme and some kind of
sportive combat (MMA, boxing, muay Thai etc) before I would advocate the local self defence class.
By a very, very wide margin.

SET CLEAR OBJECTIVES IN YOUR TRAINING.

If you love techniques for techniques sake, then attend your TMA class of choice with pride. If its
fitness or competition then Judo, boxing, MMA isall good (if you can avoid the injuries). But dont get
confused.
Training for a street fight is usually about delivering a burst of explosive aggression. The action will
usually be 6 to 10 seconds long. If you run across a club to a fight or away up the road after a fight
then I guess you can add maybe 15 seconds to that. But it wont always be that. No guarantees and no
rules, I know some people find that frustrating and I sympathise but thats just the nature of it.
So you must train your body and mind to deliver short bursts of extremely intense movement,
maximum strength in one go. And you really must appreciate how much of this is psychological and
emotional if you dont train your mind and your emotions to deliver the violence suddenly and
aggressively you might find yourself getting very weak and malcoordinated if the adrenaline gets you
in its grip. Only drilling and drilling and drilling the skills into unconsciousness can overcome the
psychological and physical effects of shock when exposed to raw violence.
Another reason to specify your objectives is you will get more satisfaction from your training.
So this issue of saying or implying this or that technique, style, system will NEVER work is actually a
psychological one. Its a belief and not a useful one.
Train your mind to seek possibilities and options wherever you look.
Never is a dangerous word, it presumes rather too much and its a word that implies an
UNBREAKABLE RULE.

Nothing is forbidden. Everything is permitted

Hassan-I-Sabbah
No one is saying that there arent more task specific, more intelligent, more proactive ways of training
for specific elements of street violence. Just that completely writing off training practises is foolish and
bigoted.
Look beyond the system, the brand, the veneer. What is it that works well across all systems?
Pre-emptive aggressive action rather than reaction?
Incorporating psychological training and mental preparation and communication skills of dissuasion
and distraction with physical tactics?
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Right tools to right targets?

Good shot placement?
Effective body mechanics?
Violent Intent?
Strength and fitness training?
There are so many variables and possibilities, be careful of using the word never and be wary of
instructors who use it frequently too.
2. The Myth of Always
The implication of always is a favourite amongst instructors who would have you believe they have
some kind of reliable formula for violence all figured out.
However inconvenient to the dogma they are proselytising it may be the simple truth is real world
violence is chaotic, there are no reliable rules to that peculiar social phenomena called a fight.
There can be no absolutes.
Is a police officer wrestling a crack head for control of his weapon the same as a kickboxing match?
Obviously not, so why are the skills classed as being the same or similar. Are they? Which specific
skills? To what extent? Are they both the same as a woman being attacked in her home during a
rape attempt? Which of the skills applicable in the above scenario are applicable to a drunken brawl in
a fast food joint?
Our job is to DEFINE THE PROBLEM FIRST. We get so stuck into the solutions we lose sight of that.
These are different situations requiring a multitude of different skillsets.
There is no way anyone can present you with a cure all for all these things and say or imply this will
ALWAYS work because its based on physics or based on ergonomics or based on what the
(insert name of elite military unit that for some reason fight wars unarmed) do and have
done.
Use whatever justification you like, show me a combative physical solution from any style, system or
instructor and I will come up with a COMMON scenario, perhaps even one Ive experienced myself,
within seconds, that will make that particular proposed combative physical solution redundant
and unworkable.
You might think Im being obtuse, but Ive had to train my mind to think this way. Its the only way to
stay clear about what is worth training and teaching and what is not. We really cant afford to be self
indulgent or sloppy in our thinking. Critical thought and rigorous questioning MUST be imposed if we
dont want variety greed to set it in.
I know how seductive the idea of a hold all solution is. I fervently and genuinely do WISH that some
of the more fascinating and exotic solutions put forward by people DID WORK the way they say they
will but I KNOW that they dont and wont.
CERTAINLY not Always.
And not even most of the time.
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Nothing always works. There are in self protection terms movements and attitudes that have a
higher chance of working should the circumstances allow and depending on the objectives of that
scenario.
One of my favourite moves is a looping right cross to the jaw, because Ive had a good success rate
with it in the fights Ive been in.
Does that make it a good technique for everyone to learn? What if Ive only ever used it successfully in
one type of fight but over and over again? Would this count as empirical evidence of its usefulness.
A bit of critical thought tells us to a limited extent yes, but with some very large limitations and yet
instructors are touting techniques and systems as battle tested cure alls.
Lets think of just a few situations where my favourite technique, the looping right cross WILL NOT
WORK:
1. The floor is wet poor footing can ruin pretty much any strike you want to make
with your hands (no footing)
2. Youre sat down (no hip movement, leg movement)
3. Youre crushed in and having your centre of gravity unpredictably affected by a
crowd of people jostling you (no room/ no balance)
4. The first you know youre in a fight is when you get punched in the back of the
head (no time)
5. Its dark or there are strobe lights flashing or dry ice from smoke machines (no
decent visuals needed for the accuracy of the strike)
These are 5 things that immediately spring to mind that would ruin my precious move.
And yet arent they PRECISELY the 5 conditions that you encounter immediately on walking into pretty
much any night club anywhere in the world? Isn't that a high risk environment for fights?
There is no always.

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

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We dont get to determine how we will be attacked. Look at how much training is given to the
assumed scenario of attacks by just one person coming from the front on a flat dry surface with no
other people involved or objects in the way.
But think about it how many fights have you been in or seen that actually happened like that?
So why train like that?
My experience of real violence, a real genuine struggle where there was a possibility of getting
seriously hurt is that it is a chaotic, surging mess. Its not neat, its very, very ugly.
Its not formulaic, you arent presented with a clear definable problem with a clear definable neat
solution. You are presented usually with a mess, a melee; a maelstrom and you TRY and make order
and sense of it.
And you TRY not to get sucker punched out or dragged down and stamped on.
Also be very careful of anything that claims to be proven.
I could write an entire chapter on misuse of the word proven in martial arts circles, but it would only
deteriorate into a rant. Suffice to say that the fact that very large numbers of people buy into a
myth does NOT equate to scientifically verifiable proof of anything other than some rather depressing
revelations about human nature interesting and useful only to sociologists, not martial artists.
Misleading people about how watertight your system or training always is, is frankly,
ludicrous and dangerous. What we should be saying is: train these techniques hard, with diligence,
think in terms of months and years not hours and days, commit to train to be stronger and fitter than
the average person you are likely to fight and we can elevate your chances of survival should you be
attacked. There is no place for always here. Be very wary of any system implying this false
assumption.
3. The Myth of Options
Let me give you a simple principle that Ive devised over years of training, experience and
experimentation
As combative pressure increases options decrease.
What this means is that what a person CAN or COULD do when attacked diminishes the more pressure
they are placed under.
For example lets say you can do a nice turning back kick to the head that you got from kickboxing or
tae kwon do. You have performed this successfully in sparring.
Sparring against another skilled martial artist is surely combative pressure enough to know that this
29

works right?
Unfortunately combative pressure also includes the context and the environment.
Now imagine you have been drinking, you lost your phone so youre in a phone box, or youre
slumped in the corner of a bus shelter, there is fast food thrown on the floor making the ground
slippery and you are facing 3 attackers... does the turning spinning back kick seem like a sensible
option now that your balance is off, the footing is bad, you have no space and three opponents not
one?
Its a simple and brutal formula for crushing delusions.
Remember this principle:
As Combative Pressure so Options
It will stop you from kidding yourself about what is workable, there are many things you can do when
you arent under pressure.
Have you done any sparring or rolling? If you have then you will know when boxing against someone
not as fit as you, lighter, shorter or slower that suddenly things get a lot easier. Combinations you
wouldnt dare throw normally are easily dealt and they land.
When rolling with someone not as skilled as you, you might find submissions that are way too fancy
when facing someone at the same level as you or higher to be used suddenly becoming
applicable. Im nothing special when it comes to ground work but Ive submitted people who were out
of shape and out of practise with wrist locks. Does this mean wristlocks work in groundwork. No.
This would be a false conclusion. There is a reason you very rarely see wins by wristlocks in MMA
matches. This option is only available when you totally outclass your opponent.
Does the Ive used it so it must be good yardstick have any merit?
Yes, but remember the converse of the principle above:
When Combative Pressure goes then Options
If you are faced with very little combative pressure of course your options of response will increase.
Please remember this when you see an instructor demonstrating self defence or street
applications of what they could do or would do. Against a compliant partner anything will work. I
have to smile when I see an instructor excitedly showing all the amazing things they fantasise they
could do in a fight. Beautiful flowing exhibitions of combative brutality, elbows to the body becoming
hammerfists to the jaw, becoming gouging, fancy head controls, into leg to leg folding takedowns and
armlocks on the floor; the instructor standing, the student lying down in submission wriggling in pain.
Some instructors will ACTUALLY say as they demonstrate:
I can do this, and then from here Ive got this, and youll notice, whats available here? Ah this is
available here. Now Ive got this here or I could go for here...
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Give a brand new student off the street just one 16 oz glove for their dominant hand, have the
instructor put a gum shield in and tell the student to grip onto the instructors t shirt with one hand
whilst tonking him in the head with full force haymakers with the gloved one.
Lets see what options become available then.
Against a weak enough attack, ANY defence is applicable,
If you arent sure: TEST IT.
Think of something that you like doing but you know in your heart might not really work.
Simple Combative Pressure Test Number 1:
Have a training partner put both hands on your chest and push you 3 to 4 metres backwards into a
wall.
If by the time you have hit the wall you havent been able to perform the movement, question it. Im
not saying he should slam you backwards full force into the wall. Just a consistent push over 3 to 4
metres until your back touches the wall. Should give you about 3 to 4 seconds. Experiment with the
level of force as you feel safe. If you arent sure seek the supervision of a qualified instructor. You are
responsible for your own safety.
I love the simplicity of this drill. I love the fact that this shove backwards is a VERY COMMON attack
and that it completely ruins a VERY LARGE spectrum of martial arts techniques and combative
responses. Think about it: he is using gross motor movements and ergonomic efficiency to virtually
incapacitate your upper limbs, move your torso over your centre of gravity, keep you off balance and
force you into skipping backwards fighting to not fall over, all your limbs are either immobilised or
occupied, your off balance and if you dont respond you go to the ground.
And in the event that you do succeed in staying upright you get slammed into a wall and pinned.
Its a great, simple test that makes some excellent points.

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Simple Combative Pressure Test Number 2:

Have your partner clinch you (muay thai neck and arm clinch, freestyle wrestling over under clinch, or
just a thugs bear hug, whatever) and turn you 180 degrees. Then have him change the clinch and turn
you again. Have him do this at half force and half speed. Can you perform the movement
/technique /principle you are testing or not?

Try it. Disillusioning isnt it? But you are better off knowing now in training and discarding it than
learning the truth after an assault!

Experience is something you get, shortly after you need it

Coach Tony Blauer

Simple Combative Pressure Test Number 3:

Have him simply stand in a natural stance and not respond or be compliant. This means if you strike
him (you are responsible for your partners safety and how an opponent will react to a blow is the
subject of some confusion as I will get into in the next chapter) he simply doesnt move or react. He
just remains in his position without attacking you. If you grapple with him he just tries to break free
and return to a natural upright position.

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No counterattacking, just breaking free and returning.

The point of this test is to see if your strategy IMPLICITLY relies on the opponent reacting in
a certain way. I cant emphasise the following point enough:
Its very dangerous to rely on a strategy that COUNTS on these assumptions :
A. That the opponent will react to a given move at all.
B. That you can reliably predict that reaction.
C. That the opponent wont resist pressure like any normal human
being (i.e. if you push his head he will push back with his head
against your hand) or protect the most obvious vulnerable targets
(soft tissue of face and groin for starters)
Run your chosen technique through these 3 simple, painless and non injury inducing tests.
How does your strategy of choice fare?
These 3 simple tests ruin some of the major combatively flavoured and street themed concept
based systems out there. Fancy fast hand strikes, limb destructions and multiple precision targets?
Ruined. Ruined by you being grabbed, shoved backwards or simply having an opponent who
doesnt react the way youve been shown he would in the dojo.

Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.
Bruce Lee
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If you have been in a fight or watched one at close quarters you will notice something lacking in all
three of the above tests: violent intent, the will to do harm and raw aggression. Test number 3
doesnt even have any offensive movements in it whatsoever!
Now if your strategy falls apart under even these low level combative conditions how is it going to do
if someone is trying to repeatedly bury their fist a couple of inches deep into the side of your face full
force and full speed?
Can you in all honesty imagine applying the strategy you chose earlier against such an explosion of
savage violence?
4.

The Myth of Compliance

Its a particular pet hate of mine:

What happens is the instructor takes a student who is either as still as a mannequin or at least drilled
to be just as compliant and responsive as is exactly required for the instructors map of reality to be
allowed to be superimposed onto reality itself.
This sounds complicated but its what children do when they are at play: enforce their fantasy onto
reality and then ACT AS THOUGH it were real. Its potentially disastrous to allow this fantasy into
reality role play to roll along without control.
Now bear in mind what we are training for is a fight.
What is implied by the word fight is that it is a clash of wills, a struggle for dominance. It IS however
human contact. And this is where people seem to get a bit confused.
Dance is human contact, massage is human contact, kickboxing is human contact and being dragged
to the ground stabbed and stamped on is human contact.
All are human contact so all are equally relevant right?
A punch at slow speed is the same as being punched at full speed right? Just a bit slower?
A reasonable enough conclusion but unfortunately totally and dangerously wrong.
If it is TRULY NON COMPLIANT, comparing one to the other or thinking that a compliant
demonstration has anything to do with preparing anyone for a real world assault truly is an apples to
oranges comparison. Im talking specifically about compliant demonstrations here, there are some
great fully compliant shot placement drills that I highly recommend , but lets make sure we are clear
about what this is and IS NOT.
They all have human contact in them so it would be tempting to think that compliant contact is like
combative contact, just that it is a little harder and faster.
This would lead to the ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION of an overlapping map of compliant to combative
human contact that would look like this:

34

This must be understood in order to USE compliant drills effectively without getting into some
DELUSION OF CONTROL weird fantasy whereby you start thinking a drill to develop attributes is a
pressure test/sparring session to test skills.

A Drill to Develop Attributes is NOT a Test of Skills.

Also avoid the false assumption that a compliant drill designed to developspecific attributes is ample
preparation for the real world. Compliant drills are just one important part of the structure of your
training, they do not represent reality except in the most abstract of ways and are a necessary evil
when training in a skillset to deliver the most amount of damage and injury to an opponent as
possible in as short a period of time as possible. We must train with compliance or we would all
get injured quickly. A compliant drill is just a simulation and only prepares the student for what a full
force attack will be like in the most abstract of ways. As a tool of psychological preparation its pretty
useless, as a tool of skill development its essential.
The trap I would like everyone to avoid is the one most traditional martial arts schools fall into of
thinking that a compliant drill is like how it is in the street, just a bit slower. No. No it is not.
The body in motion, at full speed, at full effort, when fully adrenalised and motivated by genuine
violent intent is NOT the same body when in a soft compliant state, it is a very different animal.
Think of a simple example like a punch. When an object moves it actually changes its
measurable weight. That means a slow punch is a an observably, quantifably different phenomenon
35

to one delivered with speed and violent intent.

A punch delivered at speed with intent is literally, physically a different phenomenon in an observable
quantifiable way. The force exerted by the punch increases dramatically. The punch changes weight.
Force = Mass Acceleration
Anyone who has received a slow punch with no violent intent and full compliance versus a fast punch
with full violent intent and zero compliance will tell you they create a completely different subjective
experience.
This is important because of the principle:
THE WAY YOU TRAIN IS THE WAY YOU ARE HIGHLY LIKELY TO RESPOND IN A FIGHT.
What is going to happen to you if you only ever trained against slow telegraphed punches and you get
into a fight where someone is smashing you repeatedly with full force? The gap between training and
reality will be too great for skills transfer to make the leap. Your training will not have prepared you
for the level of force you are experiencing. This is without touching on what speed and aggression will
do to the physiology of an attacker, the difference in how the body moves, which muscles of the arm,
back, legs will be tensed and which must be relaxed in order for the punch to be thrown with force.
In short everything changes when you add truly non compliant, truly combative, violent intent fuelled
contact.
How the punch will come in, the pre strike cues, distancing, timing, defensive options, the attackers
body, the weight/ force of the strike, what he will and wont respond to... all of it changes.
EVERYTHING IS CHANGED by the application of force and the addition of Violent Intent.
A simple combative experiment to illustrate this point:
Obviously every peice of advice here is for information purposes only and
you are soley responsible for your own safety.
1. Have your partner throw slow compliant punches at you, work
through some simple defenses and counter strikes. Do this for a
couple of minutes.
2. Put in a gum sheild and have your partner wear some heavy
gloves. Have them attack you at random with SINGLE PUNCHES
(the more punches they throw the harder the drill gets and more
likely you are to get clocked, a principle we can use to our
advantage and a useful drill for getting used to dealing with a
flurry of punches but not necessary to make this single point).
3. Have him start from a particular mark on the floor, with you
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standing on a particular mark on the floor arms length with a

short step would be ideal- and have him only attack you with one
predecided punch. He should be in guard, you can have your
hands where you want. Experiment with different positions. The
important thing is he should decide when to GO and when he
does move he should do it with full intent to smack you in the
face.
4. Now compare the two experiences Compliant and Combative
from a purely subjective point of view. Both you and your partner
should try each of these drills for say a couple of minutes each.
You want to really determine how the addition of speed and
force changes how you think, feel and move.
5. Experiment with a few defenses you have been taught, does
moving at full speed make them redundant? Which defenses
survive this new context, this new attack, this new level of combative pressure?
One of our jobs is to spend time clearing the junk of our presuppositions, prejudices and cultural
hypnosis in order to develop real reliable skills.
Not to add more and more compliance just to MAKE pre-existing techniques workable.
Street fight training must endeavour to get as closely to the reality of an actual fight as possible, as
safely as possible.
5. The Myth of The Ease of Inflicting Injury.
The human ANIMAL is tough.
There is a belief not often touted nowadays, we are constantly hit with indoctrination that makes us
think of ourselves as weak, sickly, needy, fragile consumers who need to BUY things to be whole.
But lets step back a minute and remember a few key facts here :we are the number one predator on
the planet. We are the result of millenia of evolution. We tore our way here. We killed our way here.
We carved our niche here with our bare hands in a resource limited, dangerous, harsh environment
for thousands of years.
Ok we have unimpressive teeth and claws, no body armour or other natural weapons to speak of but
we came to where we are now through the millennia surviving some very harsh, dangerous
natural environments. We are not weak or sickly or fragile, we are tough, adaptable and cunning.
The human body can look fragile. Another persons body can feel fragile. If you put your hand on
37

someones collar bone, or grab their little finger or ear you might wonder at the damage you MIGHT
be able to do should you choose.
Your body might feel vulnerable when gouged, grabbed, chopped and struck at in this way too.
But it really isnt that vulnerable.
Have you ever heard an instructor say this as he demonstrates?
...and I kick his knee and its broken, now his elbow... slapped and
popped... from here I take his fingers and break them... chopping into the
neck to crush the trachea, then I rip off the ear, whip out his eye and break
his neck.... like so...
Lets get real, this isnt a zombie movie: peoples ears dont just pop off by being tugged on and throats
dont just crush at the contact of your hand and a flicking toe kick to the knee or a slap to the elbow
hardly represents a break.
So why does this stuff get out there?
My theory:
- People repeat it frequently and often and it gets passed around without challenging the source.
- Instructors say it because it gives their teaching a super secret deadly veneer and makes the
students feel like dangerous badass assassins who if they chose could cripple anyone with their little
finger.
- Students repeat it because they are frightened and wish it was true. When they think about bigger
people coming to attack them, they can sweatily fantasise that their secret knowledge about smashing
the nose up into the brain or pressure point X or whatever will save them. It will not. They
know this which is why some people get so uptight when you push them on these points. The louder
the shout the deeper the fissure of insecurity.
-Blame hollywood. How many times have we seen someone get shot with one bullet and fall down
dead. A knife run across the throat once, leaving a thin red line causes instant death. Choking with the
hands causes death within about 5 seconds. Necks are broken with swift grace. Hollywood isnt trying
to give us a lesson in physiology, trauma and hand to hand combat, its trying to entertain us. People
die quickly and quietly to keep the pace of the narrative going and because it would mess with the
moral ambiguity / perceived amazingness of a character if everytime he cut somones throat he had to
saw through inches of flesh and cartilage leaving them to bubble and choke for a few minutes or shot
someone only to have them lie there screaming in agony for the rest of the scene. We wouldnt be
able to hear the pithy dialogue.
Its the silliest, most childish element of the modern street fight/ combatives scene.
The human body is not cobbled together with blu tac and toothpics. It is not a jenga tower waiting to
38

crumble at the casual pluck of a ninjas hand. Go and read some of the police reports on injuries
suspects have sustained and survived. Without body armour or drugs. You will be amazed.
The 1986 Miami FBI Shootout oft studied in LEO circles:
On April 11 1986, 8 FBI agents became involved in what was to be known as one of the most
brutal gunfights in LEO history. Even though it was a non-typical gunfight
and it involved FBI agents, we can learn a lot from the incident. This is a general
overview of the events leading up to and including the final incident:
For several months before the incident, two armed men (Platt and Matix) committed
a string of successful bank and armored car robberies. All of the robberies were
at locations along the same highway, and were all committed on the same day about
the same time. After noticing the pattern, the FBI decided to stake out positions
along the highway and try to apprehend the two men. One day prior to the incident
the robbers came across a young man in the everglades shooting a pistol at tin cans.
Using a .357 magnum, they shot him twice in the body. After a brief struggle, they
asked him if he was a cop. He replied 'no,' and then they shot him once in the head
and took his car and gun. The young man then crawled three miles to the highway for
help. The morning of the incident, the agents were staked out along the highway and
they did in fact spot the robbers in the vehicle stolen the previous day. After a
pursuit and an attempt at a felony stop, the agents became involved in a shootout
that lasted several minutes.
After the smoke cleared, both assailants and two of the federal agents were dead,
and all but two of the remaining agents were wounded. Most of the agents shot
their pistols dry and most of the agents had been shot in the hand. All of the
agents had shotguns and/or body armor available to them, but only a couple of them
had either with them during the fight. The others' equipment was locked up in
either the backseat or the trunk of their respective vehicles. In the end, one
agent was able to get to his shotgun and finally brought an end to the rampage by
shooting the assailants with multiple shots of buckshot, and six final rounds from
his service revolver.

Michelle Funk stayed under water for an hour, survived, without brain damage.
Shannon Malloy, had her head all but completely severed in a car crash, survived. Avoided full
paralysis.
The human body is tougher than we generally think. Having a self concept as being weak and injury
prone is not conducive to self protection. Something to consider next time you neck a pain killer for
the mildest headache.

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Section 9:Training Priority Pyramid

These are my training priorities based on what I think most impacts the outcome of real world
violence. The things at the bottom are the least important; the top is the most important. These are
my recommendations, they wont suit every ones pre existing capacities and needs. Use this as a
model to build your own priority pyramid.

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Fitness Training :
most street fights dont last very long so you dont need to be thinking too much in terms of
endurance long slow distance training. Unless you are obese or very heavily muscled. In which case
you need to change your body shape to get to a point of having even basic mobility. Can you do 10
burpees in under 30 seconds? What state does that leave you in? Some people reading this will find
that challenge ridiculously easy. Some will find it ridiculously hard. What does that tell us? Not
everyone comes to the training with the same attributes and capabilities. There is no one size fits all.
You must develop your own methodology suited to you individually.
Neglect fitness at your peril. You are training for a short and very intense burst of activity.
Scenarios/ Role Play:
I dont emphasise these too much because I think they can create false confidence and a sense of
expectation about how violence will play out based on the role players experience, capabilities
and pre-judgments.
Scenarios rely heavily on the skills of the role players at being good bad guys (to paraphrase
instructor Tony Blauer)- they make the drill what it is. And with respect, having watched many videos
of people doing street scenarios I can tell that, frequently, what the role players know about
violence is third hand information delivered through someone elses lens.
Still its important to get an inexperienced student into at least some basic role plays. But these should
stay basic and tightly defined before the practitioner starts adapting their skills TOO MUCH to the
needs and requirements of the simulated environment.
Dont give in to the temptation of threat greed. Creative energy and effort can be easily dissipated
by constantly asking what if? and adding new layers and new threats to the drill. Keep it simple,
keep the objectives conservative and tight and keep the practitioner on a short fuse to taking action.
I.e. if the scenario has a person walking into their space aggressively and threatening them, they
shouldnt step backwards more than twice or let it go longer than 3 seconds before pre-emptively
striking and working the Core Game Plan with violent intent.
Why?
This is probably too big a topic to get into here, but understand that everything you do in the gym is
training you to respond in a certain way. We are always learning.
Waiting and waiting when confronted with raw aggression, and backing up and backing up when
someone steps forward will lead to waiting and backing up in the real world. Youre patterning a
response to a stimulus into your neurology that will be hard to override in reality. Its basic
behavioural conditioning.
You must condition yourself and your students to respond to threats IMMEDIATELY with assertiveness,
tenacious resolve and decisive action. Imagine its your sister or mother being trained. A man walks
into her space screaming and swearing threats. You want her to wait and wait till he actually swings
for her or presents a weapon? You want her to keep backing up allowing the attacker to select where
41

and how he will attack? Every second he steps forward and she backs off her chances go down. His
confidence grows, whilst hers will diminish and the advantage of surprise will be lost.
Wouldnt you rather she got stuck in at the first sign of a serious threat?
Someone walking into your space shouting and threatening is a serious threat in my book, weapon
or no, raised fist or no its still assault. If you have reason to believe they have the genuine intent to
do you harm, pre emptive striking is always completely legal if its justified and uses
reasonable force. Excessive force is never legal in any state or country.
This must be researched and understood well. Seek qualified sources of good quality information on
the subject. (Of which I am not).
LEGALITY OF PREEMPTIVE STRIKING/ USE OF FORCE IN SELF DEFENSE
this comes from the Crown Prosecution Service Website
It is important to bear in mind when assessing whether the force used was reasonable the words of Lord Morris in (Palmer
v R 1971 AC 814);
"If there has been an attack so that self defence is reasonably necessary, it will be recognised that a person
defending himself cannot weigh to a nicety the exact measure of his defensive action. If the jury thought that
in a moment of unexpected anguish a person attacked had only done what he honestly and instinctively
thought necessary, that would be the most potent evidence that only reasonable defensive action had been
taken ..."
The fact that an act was considered necessary does not mean that the resulting action was reasonable: (R v Clegg 1995 1
AC 482 HL). Where it is alleged that a person acted to defend himself/herself from violence, the extent to which the action
taken was necessary will, of course, be integral to the reasonableness of the force used.

You are not expected to weigh to a nicety how much force you use, it is understood that if attacked
you must take action and that you will be anguished.
But where is the line? Instructors often get this totally wrong because it requires a bit of thought and
students want nice simple answers.
So you will get people (idiots) claiming that certain techniques or moves are in themselves illegal.
Oh you cant bite, head butt and eye gouge its illegal, instant GBH charge
Bullshit. Total nonsense. What gets you the charge is not the technique but the circumstances, your
intent and your lawful or unlawful behaviour.
Outside of UK readers note that GBH = grevious bodily harm. Otherwise known as a section 18.
Section 18 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 reads:

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Whosoever shall unlawfully and maliciously by any means whatsoever wound or cause any grievous bodily harm to any
person, . . . with intent, . . . to do some . . . grievous bodily harm to any person, or with intent to resist or prevent the lawful
apprehension or detainer of any person, shall be guilty of felony

The key words here are intent and lawful. A court will deliberate over your intent and decide
whether or not your actions were lawful. The intent to defend yourself or others using reasonable
force is lawful. The intent to inflict punishment in a vigilante style act is not lawful. Its actually very
simple.
A 10 year old girl fighting off a rapist would me more likely lauded for her bravery than charged with
GBH for using headbutts, bites and gouges. And rightly so.
A 30 year old man-child fighting in a kebab shop over someone who stepped on his shoe who bites,
head butts and eye gouges can expect a lengthy sentence. And rightly so.
It is NOT the technique that is legal or illegal.
Reasonable force COULD be stabbing your attacker repeatedly with a screwdriver, biting half his face
off and mashing his skull in with a brick, stabbing him with a broken bottle in the neck and chucking
him out of a 5 storey window.
IF it is proportionate to the threat. IF you have no other choice. IF by failing to do so you or someone
else will be injured or killed.
If whilst all this was being done he had hold of me with one hand and was shanking me with the other,
I could stand in front of judge and jury and say the man was stabbing me, I presumed he wanted to
kill me, in fear for my life I acted out of desperation, when biting him didnt work, I moved to hitting
him with a blunt object, when that didnt work I moved to...
Guys who work in the security industry know that the phrase in fear for my safety or in fear for my
colleagues/ staff/ customers safety is VERY useful in statements. After all why would you take any
kind of violent or even physically restraining action against someone who was not a definite threat? To
do so would be unlawful.
So, if you just witnessed the man with the axe kill someone and then turn to you and say youre next
the law does NOT require you to try and restrain and control him.
Because you are anguished and because you dont have to weight to a nicety the extent of your
defensive action.
However if it can be proved that you COULD have restrained him but instead beat him, stabbed him
and threw him out of a windows you would be in a world of digested waste.
Bear these words in mind if it can be proved that - this is what courts do.
So answer all questions of legality this way:
Sensei, can I bite someones throat out or is that illegal?
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Well, if it can be proved that you had reason to believe that not doing so would lead to you being
hurt or killed then no it is not illegal. If it can be proved you had no other options at that moment,
then no it is not illegal. If however it can be proved that you did so unnecessarily and with malicious
intent for no other reason than that you wanted to inflict harm then it would be judged as unlawful
and you could be punished for it.
If it can be proved that you have decided you will deliver punishment or give someone a lesson or
generally do anything that the police and the justice system are there to do you can expect stiff
penalties.
Do what you need to do as a law abiding citizen to make yourself or those around you safe. Avoid
conflict altogether if you can, but dont leave people stranded if you can help. If you cannot avoid
violence (leaving someone to be beaten is not avoiding violence but mere cowardice and in some
countries, like France, is a criminal offence) then do what you must.
If you can justify in front of a jury of your peers what you have done then you have nothing to worry
about. So dont do anything you cant justify. This is something you must study.
This is why I emphasise that you must EXHAUST EVERY OTHER POSSIBILITY BEFORE ENGAGING
PHYSICALLY WITH SOMEONE. If you train these principles properly you will have the capability to do
someone very serious harm. Be careful.
My rule of thumb is always : Have I exhausted every other possibility and made it very very clear to
the other person and witnesses that I do NOT want to fight? Am I using the minimum amount of force
necessary to stop the attack?
Section 18 or GBH requires a wound. No matter what country you are in they will have some
variation of this rule. A wound requires breaking of the skin or bones.
Here is where self protection and ego protection MUST very clearly split. In a mere bar room brawl,
where your life is not directly at risk, where you have NOT in all honest exhausted every other
possibility other than violence and are in effect engaging in ego protection NOT self protection:

When someone goes down, NEVER kick them in the head.

Nobody who is facing a home invasion at 3 am by armed men is worried about the legality of their
defensive actions believe me.
If you want a rule of thumb for the legality of street fights, peacocking, chest flexing ego battles,:
never, never, never kick anyone in the head.
If they are standing and you head kick them you can go to jail for a long time. It shows martial arts
ability and prior training and can almost NEVER be justified in a brawl. Its like choking someone
out. A head kick or choke is a skilful and deliberate act NOT the act of a person desperate to defend
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themselves and escape so they can call the authorities. In the eyes of the law, that is; you and I may
know different.
Similarly if they are lying down after you have beaten them to the floor and you kick them in the head
you will inflict massive wounds (see above for legal definition) quickly and you will struggle to
justify it. Plus you have to consider what a jury would consider thug like behaviour, to the
uninitiated, the average man or woman who has never been in a fight in their adult lives or been the
victim of a viscious assault themselves, a kick to the head will seem like the most uncalled for
brutality.

Never choke anyone out.

I know from bitter personal experience, chokes and kicking someone in the head CAN be spun as
attempted murder. How brave would you feel walking into court for that?
I'll say it again: The techniques presented in this manual are for self protection objectives only.
This implies a DESPERATE struggle for survival, where all other options have been exhausted and you
are in fear for your or someone elses safety or life. Frivolous use will result in jail time and criminal
records. Ending up in prison or getting a criminal record is poor self protection by anyones measure.
For ego protection, learn to box, lift weights and maybe do the stand up grappling and throws section
of a good MMA school. Never kick, never choke, never hit anyone on the deck. You can act like a tough
guy and not get locked up. I dont teach ego protection and when I get people who come to me who
are looking to extend their egoic reach I simply show them the door.
Back to the training pyramid.
Muay Thai Pads and Sportive Grappling:
I believe strongly in training ATTRIBUTES. There are great attributes you can get from full force pad
work and grappling like fitness, functional combative contact strength, competitiveness, healthy
aggression, proprioception (your bodies sense of itself in space), that hard to define thing
calledathleticism or physicality as well as mental toughness and confidence.
The beauty of Sportive Combat training is that it is self defined and the skills are easily testable and it
gets you down to earth and out of the potentially neurotic mindset of self protection. The downside
is it can train you to develop habits of movement that are truly useless in real world application. So it
must be used alongside your other training and measures have to be taken to make sure your
neurology doesnt try and skills transfer from the mat to the street.
Beyond the hype, I think (good, intelligent, skilfull, warm spirited and with right intent) MMA training
has to be one of the fastest and strongest ways to build confidence in a student. Its particularly useful
for younger students who need this kind of rite of passage and test of skills.
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It teaches the student, (and reminds the experienced practitioner) they arent made of glass nor do
they have super powers. Toughening and humbling all at once. Whats not to like?
Street Focused Pad Drills:
You might have noticed Ive tied it into the shot placement drills section above on the pyramid. You
may well ask : How can shot placement drills be more important than hitting pads hard?
Street Focused Pad drills are done on pads/bags/other impact equipment which are designed for
sportive combat, boxing and muay Thai These pads drills and bags are a good enough representation
of an opponents body and how a trained individual will react in the ring, but are a weak
representations of the feel on bone on bone techniques and the kinds of reactions they can induce in
real life. This is a huge topic, let me cover it briefly here:
If you are using pads, please remember that whilst very useful and a fundamental part of training,
pads are actually a highly inaccurate and highly symbolic representation of the human body. When
training for the street therefore pad drills are an adjunct and are only to be trained in combination
with shot placement drills or else not at all. This is of course only my approach.
Getting caught in the power trap of endlessly seeking to hit pads harder and harder, whilst it
might be gratifying and give a student a sense of progress is also a useless waste of your time in
pure Self Protection terms. People are not pads.
Beyond a certain point and having learnt to deliver a good solid well placed shot, how hard you are
hitting is hardly going to be the deciding factor in how well you fare in a violent assault. How hard you
can hit a pad is not going to matter much if you cant actually reach your target on the human
attacking you, if you miss, if you use the wrong tool or if you cant move.
Remember: the things you use to train with end up training you.
Meaning that as with the scenario drills discussed above, you will end up adapting to the intrinsic
limitations of the simulation. Scenarios and pad drills are simulations designed to create transferable
skills, keep this at the forefront of your mind. The intrinsic limitations of pads and bags are things like:
they arent human shaped, they dont respond like humans will, they dont hit back, they feel
different, they look different, they move different and so on.
Does it matter that they look different. Yes, to a limited degree it does. Anything in training that
takes us further away from the reality we will face is to be treated with a suspicion. We have to close
the gap between the training simulation and reality as much as we can.
Not to say they are useless they clearly are not. Just recognize the limitations.
You will find with more pad drills you start performing to the needs of the new environmental context
which is now hitting pads- and ever so subtly your priorities will change and your objectives will
get lost. Do you want to be an expert at hitting bags and pads really, really hard or do you want to be
an expert at hitting people and generate maximum effect with minimum effort?
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Shot Placement Drills:

At their most basic a shot placement drill is every single thing you would do in a street fight just
without the speed. This is why I love them: you can train in the right clothes, in the specific
environment, with no expensive equipment, no gloves or protective gear (dont want to be getting
psychologically dependent on wearing MMA gloves, shorts and a rash guard, if you are going to fight
bare handed, in a bulky jacket with trousers on it matters), same weapons to the same targets, skin
on skin, bone on bone contact, with the correct shot placement, body mechanics, follow through
EVERYTHING.
But just the speed taken out to prevent injury.
If you use the pads intelligently as an addition to this shot placement training you can get great
results. A shot placement drill could be as simple as drilling a right cross as a pre- emptive strike.
Opponent stands still, you practice the correct tool to target, with good body mechanics,
appropriate violent intent, with pin point accuracy. Force yourself to be pin point accuracy in the gym,
then with skills deterioration under stress you may be able to maintain a degree of that accuracy. How
complex the shot placement drill becomes depends on your imagination, objectives and current
capabilities.
Strength Training:
Why do I rank this so highly? My experience is that size and strength DO matter a hell of a lot. If you
have time to train and are serious about protecting yourself, get stronger.
Solo Drills:
These will fall into 3 categories: purely psychological, purely physical and partly physical (using micro
movements to reference the moves in your neurology symbolically) and physical with a strongly
psychological component. Preparing your body and mind on your own to deliver a savage burst of
violence asymmetrically when you have been caught off guard is hugely important.
Mental Training:
If you cant do level 1 of the pyramid, keep up with level 2. If for some reason you cant do any of level
1 or 2 you have no excuse to not be doing level 3. Requires no equipment or partners and, fortunately
in that respect, is the most important element of training. Mental training and solo drills are a deep
and complicated subject that I will break down elsewhere.
Suffice to say if you are injured or out of shape but you still keep that fire burning, that violent
intent, that sheer bloody minded will to survive channeled outward as aggression and decisive
action, you still have a chance.

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If you dont have that violent intent and the sheer will to survive, all the other factors will be
meaningless.
Final thought:
Combative Psychology
You need to be drilled in the Streetfightsecrets Supra Sates and Core Visualisation courses.
This is the ONE KEY FACTOR to your training and it should be your number one priority. It is after all
the primary methodology by which totally untrained people fight back against and sometimes defeat
experienced criminal predators.
What we do is not what most street courses do : karate in jeans a bit of swearing and shouting to
show we understand adrenaline and aggression and a tiny nod to the psychological elements with
some cursory half -digested, misunderstood, mainly plagiarised psychobabble.
What we do is physically applied psychology. This is a psychology course that manifests with physical
elements. Please understand this difference.
On the subject of psychology and the will to survive, often you will read in accounts of normal folk
surviving attacks they had a moment where they said something to themselves like I will not let you
kill me or I will not die here today or how dare you do this to me you piece of *** and valiantly
fought back. This is worth modelling.
I read a recent account of a 6 year old fighting off a kidnapping attempt on his sister. He shouted, bit
and scratched and kicked the grown man and the would-be kidnapper eventually fled the scene. The
boy told the police I just could NOT let him take my sister.
A belligerent decision was made.
Even though he is a little boy told to respect adults and to obey their natural authority his instincts
and the extremity of the circumstances allowed him to override his primary programming.
Look at the sentence structure:
I just it was simple could NOT it was forbidden, a rule let him stand by and idly allow take my
sister an action which went passed an unconscious boundary.
Consider this deeply.
Despite fear, social conditioning, sense of self preservation or any other limitation or excuse you could
come up with he had drawn his line in the sand and decided to take action come what may.
We must overcome our social taboos to aggression and violence this is part of our training.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present
moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If
one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do,
and nothing else to pursue.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
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Section 10. How to Use these Principles To Beat Anyone

I'm not saying I could train you to beat anyone with a cast iron guarantee, but this strategy will give
you the best chance that you do have. And I can cast iron guarantee that if anyone beats anyone in a
fight they will do so using this strategy. At no point may common sense or basic human decency be
abandoned. That being said:
How? It's a methodology solely and purely for delivering violence one way. This is a how to beat
someone up strategy. This strategy is rarely taught anywhere, its very dangerous.
Why? The best combat sports fighters have enviable physical attributes, reactions and athleticism, the
best traditional martial artists have great skills and technical ability (some guys are greedy and have
the best of both) but very few people are properly and thoroughly trained to deal with the following
strategy. To an extent it is IMPOSSIBLE to train a defense for this strategy other than simply not being
present.
1. Deception Psychological set up.
This would ideally be done over time. Some call this friending someone up in modern parlance.
Pretending to be friendly to lull the target into a false sense of security to sell them something/mug
them/ exploit them. Get them to drop their defences. If you can get them to have a few drinks as well
so much the better. This isnt going to work if you dont have the time and opportunity to build
rapport, so you can be deceptive in other ways. Verbally engage the target with dissuasive
communication. Feign fear or submission, back away, raising your hands in a stereotypically pleading
gesture, using a submissive tone of voice and body language. Deceive the target into thinking you
represent no threat whatsoever, in order to set him up and get him to drop those all important
defences. The LAST thing you want to do is give him a fair fight. Allow him to play it his way and he will
beat you at his game. You must set the context.
2. Steal it on him pre-emptively.
Stealing it is modern vernacular for taking an unfair opportunity over your target, stealing the
opportunity, otherwise called a judas or sucker punch. It doesnt have to be a punch it could be a
glass in the face, a good hard headbutt, a huge punt in the groin delivered with the intent to not just
burst the guys bollock sack but to crack his pelvis. It's all about intent.
The actual technique isnt as important, you must understand the notion of striking them when they
are not ready and where they are not ready to be struck.
The shot you dont see is the one that hurts the most.
Your intent should be to end the fight with one move.
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If it doesn't, ok, keep going. Use steps one and two, lure him into a range and position that most suits
your strategy and smash him with a devastating shot when he is not looking first and 90% of the fight
can be over in one move.
LISTEN: If you don't do 1 and 2 properly, the rest of the strategy will fall apart.
The following chains in the strategy are entirely dependent on part 1 and 2.
3. Pick weak targets use reliable, high percentage techniques.
Having made a strong opening move using maximum surprise and being as asymmetric in your
strategy as possible, you now want to pull him into a nightmarish maelstrom of violence.
Targets with maximum effect : eyes, throat, groin, knees, jaw.
This can vary depending on the circumstances, the context and the individual.
When thinking unarmed the jaw is good because it offers the possibility of an instant knock out as
does the throat area (not as well known, not quite as reliable but still a good target).
Take what is available. Target the weakest points you can see and hit them as hard and as accurately
as you possibly can. Be EXPLOSIVE, violent, primal.
Give him the impression of being savaged by a rabid animal.
Don't actually lose control, go berserk and start flapping, that would be counter productive and
could give him a chance to weather your initial attack gather himself and fight back.
You want to physically and psychologically overwhelm him and keep picking available targets with
precision.
4. Maximise shock and awe.
If you can't knock him out straight away, follow your initial shot with a barrage of assault that will keep
him in a state of shock and awe - if he is trained the last thing you want to do is let him come to his
senses and gather a response. KEEP HIM ON THE BACK FOOT physically and defensively.
Keep pressuring him, keep him on the back foot, covering up and bent over and/or turning away to
protect his face/throat/jaw/eyes.
Use any foul or unsportsmanlike tactics you like ; he probably hasn't trained for them and they are
fouls for a reason (they can induce injury even on trained fighters even by untrained slobs).
Keep it simple and above all keep it very, very aggressive. If you are not sure focus attacks into his
eyes, throat, and face. This will psychologically overwhelm most people, even if they are trained its
unlikely they will have trained for this kind of savagery.
Keep him stressed, unable to see, unable to breathe and if you keep ragging his head whilst
alternating between gouging his eyes, scragging the soft, nerve-dense tissue of his face (nose, eyelids,
lips, cheeks, ears) and clamping your fingers as hard as you can into his trachea and vagus nerve whilst
yanking his head forcefully down and forward (making him fight for balance, breath, sight) he is
unlikely to be able to get his bearings. But you MUST keep going with your strategy to the next
concussing strike or takedown that has some fight changing effect or injury in the chain or he will
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eventually acclimatise to the pressure and start fighting back.

Your intention at this point is to do him maximum damage, you must get into an aggressive emotional
state where the will to do harm is all pervasive and you become totally fixated with all your mental
and physical faculties on inflicting injury.
5. Press the advantage ruthlessly until he is done.
Having stolen the initiative, PRESS the advantage, your attack should be relentless and you need to
keep going mercilessly until he is Out of the game - on the floor knocked out or at least unable to
get back up. Most sport players are used to being given space, their opponent will probe and move
away, probe and move away.
Under pressure they can verbally or physically tap.
Or a ref will step in.
Similarly most martial artists will be used to a tit for tat you-go-then-I-go-then-you-go model of
fighting so stealing all the opportunity, unloading a tonne of abuse towards the opponents most
vulnerably targets and dictating the entire flow of the conversation will stress them out. The idea is
to (hopefully) put them into a state of panic, flick the switch that induces a desire for flight rather
than fight, mess with their unconscious programming and render their skill sets inaccessible and
unusable.
This is why parts one and two in the strategy are SO crucial.
Above all, never try and play them at their own game. You will not win. You must dictate the when,
where and how of this targeted assault. This is not a fight, it is you delivering a beating. The flow of
violence being one way and completely asymmetric. Everything in this strategy represents about 3 to
5 seconds of action.

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Final thought:

All you have just read represents a philosophy and way of training that is more streamlined and
objectives focussed than the majority of material out there. However it would be a false assumption
to think that it represents a short cut or cheat guide. Its faster and more suited to your goals than
going for a black belt in a traditional martial art or getting your first amateur MMA fight, but that does
NOT mean it is instant or effortless. You must study and train diligently and repetitively. Submit to
the process, it will take time, it will be boring, uncomfortable and sometimes painful. It will take
discipline. Without this disciplined patient practise NOTHING you have read or learned will be usable.
Work hard.

Wake early if you want another man's life or land. No lamb for the lazy wolf.
No battle's won in bed
The Havermal (Viking Book of Wisdom)
Recommended reading:
Anything by Tony Blauer
Anything by Richard Bandler
Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller
The Book of 5 Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
The Hagakure, The Havermal
Written by Richard Grannon 2012 www.streetfightsecrets.com

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