The Default/Flinch Response
Here’s an outstanding video by Tony Blauer that every self defense practitioner should see:
Although we use our own default response, the crash, rather than “the spear”, the concept is the same. Both techniques are a bridge that utilize natural physiological reactions instead of an attempt to unnaturally react to an attack with a complex response.
His points on the “jack in the box” effect, not knowing which particular attack is coming, etc., are all excellent. They explain why so many self defense and martial arts techniques will fail in a real assault. The majority of attacks on the street are going to be surprising, violent forward pressure assaults. You need a simple default response to deal with such an attack, and the spear is another great option.
See the follow up post: Default Response Clarification.
6 Comments
The video had been removed, but I completely agree with your assertion that having a simple, gross-motor-movement-based reactive “bridge” technique that reliably gets you into the fight is a must.
Most martial arts systems teach self defense techniques that give the student way too many choices… and are often geared to ritualized combat, not self defense.
And your assertion about awareness first in the follow up post was right on target (no pun intended). Good stuff.
Thanks Mike!
I’ve been training chinese kung fu for 20 years now. I literally have hundreds of moves and applications for any number of potential attacks. Whenever I demonstrate to my students, I often find myself responding differently each time to the same stimuli, as many as five times in a row.
This is fine theoretically, and works because 1.) my students are a lot slower than I am, and 2.) the level of violence in a class is minimal.
As the speed, uncertainty and violence of an attack increases though, it becomes more difficult to gauge the attack accurately and respond with a specific technique – unlike the choreographed scenes in the movie, you just don’t know what’s coming, and the consequences of failure can be very serious.
As a result, I’ve found that a few large movements, which utilise the body’s natural flinch mechanism seem to work quite well in a large number of scenarios. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to practise these with any real level of violence. Your experience and skills support what I’ve been doing. I add my support to the concept.
Thanks Brett. Over the years, training various systems, I’ve also been able to do what you describe with students. But as you mentioned, speed, uncertainty, and the violence of a real attack are VERY different than asking a student to attack and responding to that in a classroom setting.
If you take a look at what I call the crash, I think you’ll find that you can train that with full power, as long as you don’t do the follow ups all out. Although I don’t teach it as a default response, I also find the low jab (as shown here) works extremely well as an opening technique against the majority of high line attacks…as does a sidekick/stop kick to the knee, etc. So I think there are a number (not huge) of decent options for default responses. Each person just needs to try a few and pick the one they like most based on their skill, size, and temperament.
Great stuff. Am a big fan of Tony’s stuff. If I lived in the US I would seek him out for training for sure. Any training regime that does not utilise the bodies natural phyisiological reactions to a violent attack is really a case of malpractise as that information is out there in the public domain nowadays. Perhaps some instructors are concerned about losing students??
Love your blog too. Only found it today
Thanks Adam! Glad you like it.