Let’s talk about the public environment we all live in, the threats that lurk there and compare them to the environment we enjoy within the kwoon and the “threats” we train against there.

Ladies, you’ll be glad to know that fewer women than men fall victim to assault. That’s not really a shocker. Men are more apt to get involved in physical altercations from childhood on—it starts on the playground. The percentage of people—both men and women—who experience physical violence in the form of a street assault is actually pretty small although certain urban centers in the US seem to be experiencing more street violence. When considering the US population of 330-some million, some studies show that along the lines of 1.6% of men and 1.1% of women are victims of physical assault. Some accounts indicate that trend is on an upswing with any given 24-hour news cycle seeming to back that up.

We know that some places are worse than others with several urban jurisdictions having a truly atrocious level of street violence borne out by their grisly body count statistics. It certainly appears to be a growing problem if the proliferation of online vids depicting street violence is any gauge. Whether assaults are on the upswing or not, martial artists are obligated to be prepared to meet evolving self-defense challenges. Martial artists are obliged to not only protect themselves, but their loved ones, as well. And, as good citizens, we are honor bound to protect the weak amongst us whenever the parameters of the law allow such benevolence. Along those lines, modern martial artists should be informed by the current trends in street violence.

Maybe it’s just the proliferation of 24/7 news that creates the image of growing mayhem, but there does appear, whether statistically supported or not, to be more and more of our fellow citizens who are obscenely narcissistic, profane, quick to temper and prone to unnecessary violence. Looking at the nightly news coverage of societal violence, many of the perpetrators of that violence appear to lack any sort of empathy for their fellow human beings and seem to be devoid of anything resembling a moral compass. Selfish, arrogant, and self-centered attitudes are clearly evident when viewing many of the social media videos of today’s street violence. Sheer unmitigated viciousness coupled with a wanton indifference to suffering seems to be on the rise. Is it? I don’t know, but it sure looks that way. Maybe it was always that way and we now are simply more aware of it due to the information age.  Certainly, one of the downsides to globe-spanning instant information is that we are inundated with a constant stream of violence via our smart devices.

In light of the mindless brutality that appears to be the hallmark of today’s violent street monsters, this author has dubbed them “the walking dead” for their total lack of honor, intellect and compassion in addition to their unprovoked, gratuitous maliciousness. Any sense of civic responsibility and civil decorum appears to be dead in these people. Martial artists must be prepared to deal with this “zombie” class of mindless street thug.

How does this “zombie” violence present? Well, for women victims of assault, common physical aggressions are the arm grab, bear hug from behind and the throat grab from the front. More recently, there have been recorded instances of the sucker punch to the face being applied to unsuspecting female victims resulting in immediate knockdowns.

Assaults on males seem to favor the lapel or collar grab, sucker punches, the side headlock and punch, charge and tackle, overhead strike with a weapon and the perennially favorite roundhouse punch. You see a lot of “windmill” punches out on the street. Kicking and stomping on victims when they’re on the ground seems to be popular, too.

Other commonly encountered street techniques include the hands-to-chest push followed by a punch to the head, front clothing grab followed by a head punch, front clothing grab with both hands followed by a knee to the groin and front clothing grab with both hands followed by a headbutt. Headlocks are very popular. The side headlock is something boys have been employing since elementary school and it is a common close range grappling technique in adult altercations.

Martial artists tend to train against many of the aggressions listed above. Defenses against arm grabs, bear hugs and throat grabs are commonplace in just about any martial arts studio. So why dwell on attacks defenses for which are already commonly trained? Operating space and terrain. Beside those factors, another element separates street combat dynamics from sport or studio practice and that’s the suddenness of the offensive delivery you, as the defender, will have to react to. If you aren’t already familiar with it, look up the OODA Loop—OODA stands for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. If you understand the OODA Loop, you’ll understand why suddenness of attack is critically important to you as the defender. You will also find the OODA Loop discussed in at least two of my previous KungFuMagazine.com articles, for it is an important concept to grasp.

Terrain is important in military engagements and also in street self-defense. Space and proximity are key environmental elements. Oftentimes, the bad guys get to pick the terrain. They have the choice of arena—the playing field. That is to their advantage, not yours. They will choose environments that favor their attack mechanism and make your defense more difficult. That said, attacks can occur at any time in commonplace settings such as grocery stores and restaurants because the “walking dead” zombies go to those places, too. Literally any locale where strangers come together can become volatile.

In a self-defense context, what are you used to? Some large commercial martial arts institutions have a massive amount of mat space where even large numbers of students can be easily accommodated without crowding. Even modest-sized studios may afford 76 square feet per every two students and have 800 square feet of floor space. Smaller studios with more restrictive space may meter their class sizes to avoid congestion. In other words, you are probably accustomed to having plenty of space in which to execute partner techniques, spar or run forms. I have been in some terribly crowded martial arts schools, but in the majority of the studios where I have trained there has been ample space to move freely. Most current day martial arts training halls have mats to soften falls, are well lit and have efficient HVAC systems to maintain a comfortable atmosphere. Note that where I train in Wisconsin is modest in size and has no A/C system. We have heat in the winter but utilize window fans in the warmer months. It is a 100-year-old former creamery without a modern HVAC system.

Martial artists universally wear nonrestrictive clothing during martial arts training classes—T-shirts and gym pants in many cases. Traditional Kung Fu and Taijiquan uniforms are loose-fitting and don’t hinder movement. Street clothes—jeans, collared shirts, business attire, dresses—do not permit the same ease and range of motion as your typical workout clothing. Hard soled and heeled shoes afford markedly different footing than the footwear commonly worn in martial arts studios.

Where do we go when we leave our dwellings? Well, lots of places—supermarkets, bakeries, movie theaters, offices, retail stores, fast food restaurants and department stores to name a few indoor spaces. We also frequent gas stations, park trails, boardwalks, city sidewalks and running paths. We typically aren’t attired in our martial arts uniforms when visiting those places.

Here are a few dimensions to think about and put into perspective regarding the spacial dimensions you are accustomed to training in at your martial arts school. A city sidewalk is 5 or 6 feet wide. In older parts of some municipalities, they could be smaller. If there are several people on the sidewalk, your personal space and your range of movement is further condensed. Retail aisles can be 60-72 inches in width or as narrow as 42 inches and still be in compliance with ADA minimums. The average human arm length is 25” and legs are, of course, considerably longer. Add multiple shoppers of average build to the aisle space and you have a significantly reduced operating space, especially if carts are involved.

Continuing with the random, but relevant numbers, escalators are either 24, 32 or 40 inches wide. Commercial elevators can be as small as 51 inches deep and 60 inches wide. Small retail stores can measure 50 feet deep and 20 feet wide and be crammed full of merchandise resulting in cramped aisle space. Movie theater aisles can legally be as narrow as 23 to 36 inches dependent on the configuration. Even if twice that wide, if you add in families jostling past each other carrying popcorn and sodas, things get close. In the seating areas of cinemas, there simply isn’t much room to maneuver. Fast food joints typically allow for about 11 to 14 square feet per customer. Maybe two feet of usable space exists between cars in crowded parking garages and surface lots—sometimes less.     

All the previously related numbers and descriptions point to one thing: you won’t be in your comfort zone when you are faced with a self-defense scenario. You will potentially be in bad lighting, cramped spaces, faced with uneven footing and will probably be wearing clothing not designed to maximize range of motion. You might be wearing a heavy, puffy winter parka and boots. Even if you are a Northern Shaolin specialist or Taekwondo competitor with excellent kicks, high arcing kicks likely aren’t going to work well if there’s (a) insufficient space to throw them and (b) you’re wearing tight jeans. It goes without saying that floor surfaces slick with spilled soda or beer are not optimal platforms for spinning techniques or anything that requires balancing on one foot. Those conditions are exacerbated if you happen to be wearing slick-soled shoes or heels.

If you’re a Chin Na practitioner, Aikidoka or Shuai Jiao stylist, any graceful wide-arc movements you have in your repertoire also won’t work too well in cramped spaces where there simply isn’t room to maneuver. If you’re a Sanda fighter used to sparring in refereed regulation spaces with unencumbered footing, cluttered, congested areas will be undesirable terrain. Even if you are a Wing Chun practitioner adept at compact, arm-length exchanges, fighting against an uncooperative opponent who launches a surprise attack in an unfamiliar setting will still present a definite challenge. Suddenness and Murphy. Murphy will be there. Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. All soldiers and police officers know Murphy personally. For martial artists, Murphy’s Law means that things will happen when you’re distracted, off balance with your hands at your side or in your pockets.

The only way to prepare yourself to counter the most common street assault techniques is to diligently train defending against them under conditions and circumstances that closely mimic the environment you’re probably going to have to fight in. You must account for Murphy, too, because he will absolutely be there. Think of all the places you routinely visit in any given week and that’ll give you a good picture of the environment you’ll potentially be forced to fight in. You may have to consider modifications of your favorite techniques so that you can execute them in confined spaces, on loose footing such as beach sand or gravel and while attired in restrictive clothing. You won’t know what modifications might be required if you never practice in confined spaces, poor lighting and on uneven surfaces while wearing normal street clothes.

If you must defend against an arm grab in a crowded retail space and you are accustomed to having clear space around you and perfect conditions in order to execute your defense, you will have to change things. Only trial and error in practice will allow you to create the response you will need. If you don’t pressure test your techniques, you will have no clear idea as to how they will fare in a real situation. Techniques that work reliably against a cooperative training partner might fail miserably against a dedicated and wholly uncooperative attacker. You need to experiment with your “tried and true” defensive moves under unconventional conditions. If you’re employing a joint locking maneuver in a confined area, you may find that a large circular movement doesn’t work, but a small circle does. If you routinely rely on expansive movements like we sometimes see in Aikido, you’ll likely have to reconfigure. Aikido is deep enough to allow that—so is Kung Fu. The tools are there, you just must retrieve them and make them your own.

Traditional martial disciplines have addressed these things well back in their history. You see Aikido practitioners train defenses from the sitting position and Southern Kung Fu practitioners employing compact hand forms borne of the congested environmental conditions the southern styles of Kung Fu originated in. It isn’t new. Many of us have simply become complacent, content to train in bright, clean studios in comfortable workout clothing against compliant training partners who “let” our techniques work. I am not knocking cooperative partner training—it is how we learn. After the techniques and concepts are learned, however, we need to experiment with them under varying conditions at combat or near combat speed.

Two winters ago, myself, a training colleague, and my instructor trained one day a week outside in the snow and frigid temperatures of Wisconsin. Tongue in cheek, we dubbed ourselves the Ice Dragons, but the training was serious. We had on heavy winter clothing, gloves, hats and boots and we practiced in a snow-covered parking lot. It was an eye-opener. Punches, parries, stances, and kicks all felt different with the bulky clothing. Footing was iffy. The cold wind made eyes water and noses run. Range of motion was lessened, and delivery speed was impacted. Taking one foot off the ground to throw a kick or deliver a knee strike required extra focus on balance and footing given the fall risk created by the icy surface we were standing on. Underneath the ice and snow was the gravel of the parking lot. It was a very informative exercise. Enough said—you are martial artists, so you get the point.

If you utilize Chin Na joint manipulations in your self-defense routines that require unobstructed space on your flank to maneuver an attacker’s grabbing hand and arm to the side in order to achieve the proper wrist, elbow and shoulder joint alignments to arrive in a lock so you can force the subject downward, you may find that there are self-defense scenarios where that clear space isn’t available. That doesn’t mean that that particular joint lock is not useful—the practitioner just must learn to arrive at, for example, the “gooseneck” or “bird’s wing” configuration and administer the locking procedure in a more compact fashion. Many expansive techniques can be changed to abbreviated, short-throw techniques and still work. Big arcs can be condensed, and big circles can become small circles. You can only learn to make workable modifications by experimenting with them during training with a partner.

Maybe some things can’t be condensed and still retain their functionality, but many things can. Here is an example…

A traditional means of grasping and rotating an opponent’s hand into a locked position utilizes both of the defender’s hands to manipulate the opponent’s wrist joint into the required configuration. However, to enhance the amount of force the defender can apply when executing the manipulation and to speed up the technique, one can grasp with one hand but utilize the forearm of the other arm with a torso rotation or fold to quickly apply the same locking technique with a field expedient gross motor movement instead of having to get both hands precisely placed on the target wrist.

If your Kung Fu practice includes joint manipulations, you already understand the principles. Forget the orthodox and practice applying the principles instead of individual techniques. You won’t have forewarning and won’t be able to “set up” to execute—you need to be able to identify and capitalize on joint locking opportunities off the cuff from a casual stance with your hands down. Shuai Jiao practitioners learn this spontaneity in free sparring just like Judo players do. Make freeform part of your art, too. It’ll burn in new neural pathways that will serve you well in the ultimate arena of unorthodoxy—combat.

Another good practice is to familiarize yourself with using varying hand configurations besides the closed or clenched fist. Learn to strike with very short trajectories using the back of the hand, both inside and outer edges of the open hand, the palm heel, the wrist (ox jaw), flat palm and bent knuckle long fist. Learn to use your elbows, finger pokes and thumb jabs, too. Individually, these may not be fight enders, but they can win the moment and by winning enough consecutive moments, you can prevail overall.

Using any heavy bag equipment you choose, stand in front of the equipment in a casual manner as you would be if, say, in line at a movie theater, hands to your side. Relaxed. Pedestrian. Practice hitting the bag in as many ways as you can. What is comfortable? Don’t overthink it and make it complex. Simply reach up and hit the bag and continue hitting it with short, quick hand strikes using whatever configurations flow for you…back of the hand, palm, ridge-hand, etc. Let your feet assume whatever stance feels stable and comfortable to you. Don’t focus on assuming a classical stance or posture. Forget style.

Your objective is to hit as quickly and as continuously as you can. These freeform, short-throw strikes aren’t fight stoppers, just snapshots in time where you win the moment, then the next, then the next. The first to hit typically has the advantage. Be that person—at least don’t let it be your assailant.

Don’t try to muscle it. Flow. Remember, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. A flick in the eyes and a slap to the trachea will have considerable effect, winning the moment so you can land a more telling blow followed by another. Those two strikes can be landed with one hand in a very small sphere of space. Imagine holding a cantaloupe out in front of you at your opponent’s face level; you should be able to maneuver your striking hand within the spatial limits of that imaginary cantaloupe and strike both the eyes and the throat. If you can touch a person, you can hurt them enough to earn you the ability to strike again. That’s what you’re doing—earning the right to throw the next technique.

Most everyone in martial arts has heard the phrase ‘protect your centerline.’ Maintaining the integrity of your sphere—your power, posture stability and balance—is critical. If you are off-balanced because the ferocity of the attack forced you into a negative posture, you are in serious trouble from the get-go. Gravity doesn’t give a damn about your wellbeing. Learn to protect your core stability. Once uprooted, you’re at a disadvantage from which you might not recover. Your sphere is your personal spatial dimension where you can project your power defensively and offensively—a harmonious integration of mind and body where your energies are balanced, poised and ready. You want to draw the opponent into your power and not allow him to force you into his. Nothing new here, right? This takes practice so that it becomes a trained response when rushed by an assailant in close proximity.

So, how do you train to maintain your sphere? If you free spar, you are already practicing maintaining the integrity of your ‘sphere.’ Let me offer two visual examples that you can pull up on YouTube. If you have ever watched a Kendo match, you likely saw the fencers clash and slam into each other in something akin to a violent chest bump. You probably also noticed that the Kendo players didn’t crash to the floor but absorbed the impact while maintaining their stance and balance—their “sphere” remained intact in spite of the opponent’s incursion.

For the second example, pull up vids of Taijiquan push hands competitors. These folks have essentially perfected maintaining their structural and energetic integrity—they are rooted when they need to be and mobile when they need to be. They absorb when they need to absorb and project when they need to project. They are masters at redirecting energy and at projecting it.

These are excellent examples of what you must perfect. You must be able to absorb and channel the energy of a rush. If you are tackled and wind up on the ground, things can really go downhill unless you are a competent ground fighter and weren’t incapacitated by the impact of the fall.     

Everyone who practices martial arts understands that the conditions within the kwoon are not representative of the conditions on the outside where we might have to defend ourselves. We know that, but don’t always act on what we know by pressure testing our techniques to determine real world efficacy.

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” – Bruce Lee