A drunken relative who insists on driving is a different threat than a mob trying to flip and burn your car. A date-rape is a different threat than a bar fight. Next to surprise, the chaos and variability of real life is the hardest factor to train for.
When you bow into your dojo or shake hands at the start of a match, you know where you are, what the goals are, what to expect, and what it takes to win. In this sense, martial arts training is unitary. Whether you study arnis, judo or mixed martial arts (MMA), you’re studying to a single context.
It can get really messed up when what you’re training for (say, winning the next submission grappling tournament) doesn’t match what you think you’re training for (“I’m learnin’ to fight.”) Believing that you already have the answer to a problem not only limits your adaptability in seeking other answers but can prevent you from clearly seeing what the problem really is.
There will be tons of good advice and hard-won lessons in this book about the street: things to do, things to notice, and mistakes to avoid. The goal of this chapter is to look at your training and see it a little differently.
Concept 1: the tactical matrix and complexity
There are four ways a fight can happen:
1) You’re surprised: you’re the victim of an ambush.2) You were suspicious: you knew something was happening but you weren’t sure what.3) It was mutual combat: you knew there was going to be a fight and you were ready.4) You attack with complete surprise
There are three levels of force available that may be appropriate:
1) It’s not okay for you to cause damage.2) It’s okay for you to damage but not to kill.3) It’s justified for you to kill.
A matrix is a way of looking at how several elements can combine to change a situation. If you look objectively at your training, you can plug everything into the matrix and see where it’s appropriate and where it’s useless. Each technique, each tactic and each strategy fits somewhere in this simple box.
SURPRISED
ALERTED
MUTUAL
ATTACKING
NO INJURY
INJURY
LETHAL
Placing just these two variables, “level of surprise” in the horizontal column and “acceptable force” in the vertical column, creates a 3x4 matrix with 12 possible combinations.
SURPRISED
ALERTED
MUTUAL
ATTACKING
NO INJURY
INJURY
LETHAL
Fencing
I fenced in college. As it was taught, fencing (without the safety equipment) would only be appropriate in the Mutual/Lethal box. Can you modify this? Sure, I could always stab someone from the shadows with my epee, expanding to the lethal/attacking box, but that wasn’t how it was taught.
Strategy can also be placed on the matrix. For example, the essence of karate is to close the distance and do damage. We can argue about the lethality of the fist, but in general, striking is about damage. We can also argue whether or not strategy can be useful under surprise, but for sure if it’s not practiced under conditions of surprise, it won’t be.
Sosuishitsu-ryu jujutsu was designed for a last ditch effort to survive an assassination attempt, or when a combatant’s weapon was broken on a battlefield. It’s a brutal fighting system, one designed specifically around dealing with situations of surprise and disadvantage. But it generally sucks for mutual combat or attacking; that’s what swords and spears were for.
The defensive tactics (DT) I was taught at the police academy were based on taking a threat down and handcuffing him without injury. We were also trained in firearms, the Big Equalizer.
Comparative strategy matrix:
SURPRISED
ALERTED
MUTUAL
ATTACKING
NO INJURY
DT
DT
INJURY
Sosuishitsu
Karate
Karate
Karate
LETHAL
Sosuishitsu
Sosuishitsu Handgun
Handgun
Handgun
Notice that there are few or no strategies for surviving an ambush without causing injury. That is a simple fact that is hard for some people to stomach. Surviving an ambush is difficult. When you’re hampered with restrictions on how you’re allowed to survive it becomes even harder.
When you consider your training, look to see where it fits in the matrix. Can you execute a trap when you’re surprised? Can you justify using your reverse punch to get a senile grandparent to quit swinging his cane at the nurse?
Dojo training is much, much simpler than real violence. The matrix is a way to show that. In a simple list of 12 possible contexts for violence, it’s rare to find a style, strategy or technique that is appropriate for more than three. This is just a taste, because this matrix is far too simple. You could add an entire dimension with any variable you choose to consider.
Consider weapons. There are four ways weapons can come into a fight:
The defender has a weapon.The attacker has a weapon.Neither has a weapon.Both have weapons.
These four possibilities quadruple the size of the matrix. It would now contain 48 boxes in three dimensions.
Each uncontrolled element of the context of the fight expands the skills and knowledge needed and removes it farther from the unity of training.
Concept 2: Know what is going on and make a decision
Self-defense situations develop quickly. One key skill is the ability to decide what to do in an instant - then do it. If you’re ambushed, you will probably take damage before you’re even aware that you’re in a fight. Planning takes time and on the receiving end of an ambush, time is damage. All possible solutions involve moving: either running or fighting. You will make that decision in a fraction of a second with only partial information. Each second you spend gathering information to make a better decision is a second of injury to you. Damage makes it harder to implement your plan.
If you’re going to run, run. If you’re going to fight, fight. If you’re going to talk, talk. Keep your decision simple. If you decide to fight, then fight. Don’t think: “I must pass-parry the probable overhand right, side step to his dead zone and apply pressure to his chin and grab his shoulder, then pirouette …” Detailed plans fall apart under chaos. Simple plans don’t. Not as much.
Make a decision, make it fast, and act.
Concept 3: Discretionary time
How a person uses discretionary time is the defining difference between a professional and an amateur. To put it as simply as possible: if you have time to think, think. If you don’t have time to think, move.
The people who get stomped are the ones who felt something hit them from behind, and then they froze for a second to either figure out what was going on or to make a plan. Should this happen to you, the fact that you’re under attack is all the ‘what’ you need to know. Each second of planning or thinking is one more second of damage.
Conversely, if something is about to go bad but hasn’t yet you have time to