Effective Street Self Defence

What makes a martial art or self defence system effective? In order to answer the question we first have to establish what we mean by effective and what we mean by self defence.  

Effective can mean a lot of different things to different people. My personal belief is that the primary goal in any self defence situation should be to survive whilst sustaining the minimum amount of harm to oneself and your loved ones. Many people lose sight of this objective and get caught up on the amount of damage done to the assailant and /or the legal consequences, however if we focus solely on our objective we can see that the appropriate amount of damage to cause is exactly the amount required to ensure your survival. Excess violence is simply superfluous to our objective of achieving survival with the minimum of harm as is excessive concern for the welfare of the assailant. Effective self protection can therefore be something as simple as an apology for any wrong (or imagined wrong) that you may have caused, it might be running away at a full sprint faster than the assailant can follow or it might simply be calling the emergency services. When reason and none violent approaches have failed or are obviously not available is when a martial art or self defence system is tested for efficacy.

What is self defence? 

Self defence is also a term with many interpretations. For the purposes of this article it is important to draw a distinction between self defence and self protection. Self protection is, for me, a combination of awareness, preparation and confidence that allows an individual to avoid danger and confrontation before it develops. It is a hugely important area and often encompasses the narrower field of self defence. Self defence for the purpose of this article can be taken as the physical response to a violent assault after other self protection measures have failed. 

If you’re twenty-something stone of solid muscle with a naturally aggressive attitude and a high tolerance to pain then pretty much anything is going to work against most people (notwithstanding  the effects of recreational drugs), for the rest of us we need something that evens the odds a little bit. Without carrying weapons this means some form of training in a martial art or self defence system where we learn how to use techniques to protect ourselves from harm and deter or immobilise the assailant.  

There are two elements that need to be in place for training in a martial art or self defence system to be effective in a violent confrontation. Firstly the individual has to be able to perform the techniques learned and secondly the techniques when executed have to have the desired effect.

What stops martial arts from working?

There are a number of things that can stop a trained person being able to perform the techniques that they have been taught. Environmental constraints such as lack of space and slippery floors can make certain things impossible. Personal constraints such as tight clothing, high heels and stiff muscles can also impair an individual’s ability to perform selected actions. There are also psychological and physiological factors that come into play. 

In any given situation the brain controls our conscious responses. Taking input from the sensory organs, the brain interprets the information and based upon previous experience decides upon a course of action. When the information presented to the brain is new, unfamiliar or out of context in any way from previous experience, the thought process takes longer and is more involved than when processing familiar information.  Unfortunately in a violent confrontation the time available for deciding a response is usually very short indeed and for normal everyday folks not used to violence there are compounding factors at play. The fight or flight mechanism in built into our bodies since prehistoric times triggers in times of elevated stress dumping huge amounts of hormones into the blood stream. Designed to aid greater muscular exertion these hormones also reduce the capacity for complex thought, diminish dexterity and also reduce peripheral vision. For any trained response to work under these circumstances it must first be easy to remember and have been trained in a way that fits as closely as possible to the scenario at hand, and second be easy to perform without requiring dexterity. 

 It can easily be seen that repetitive training of simple mechanical actions against a range of possible attacks has the highest chance of producing a successful initial response however the response still has to have the desired effect. 

One of the side effects of the fight or flight hormonal dump is the reduction of sensitivity to pain, unfortunately in any violent confrontation it is highly likely that the assailant will be experiencing their own adrenalin rush and thus will have a heightened resistance to pain. Overlay onto this the pain numbing effects of alcohol and recreational drugs, and techniques designed to inflict pain upon an assailant as a means of control or method of dissuasion are unlikely to have much if any effect. For techniques to be effective they have to either immobilise the assailant or otherwise remove their ability to continue the assault, and for them to be equally effective against assailants of all sizes they have to be effective regardless of muscle mass or body fat. Whilst in today’s world of obesity and steroid use we have some truly gargantuan individuals amongst us there are still parts of the human body where it is impossible to grow muscle and where body fat does not accumulate. These areas are weak points on anybody regardless of size and it is these that must be targeted if self defence techniques are to be effective. Whilst targeting these areas can inflict huge amounts of damage (or even death) on an assailant the response should be in line with the original stated aim of survival with minimum harm to oneself. 

Of course the assailant most probably has other ideas and is unlikely to stand compliantly still whilst the defender fires off their best techniques, allowing them to take effect as planned. In reality, things very rarely go according to plan and it is here that many martial arts and self defence systems fall down, if plan A doesn’t work what happens next? It is imperative for a martial art or self defence system to be effective that they have a strategy for dealing with what happens when the initial response fails to have the desired effect. As with the initial response the impacts of the fight or flight syndrome have to be taken into account along with environmental and personal restrictions.

What makes Wing Chun work? 

In Wing Chun we employ simple mechanical responses that are drilled over and over again until they become instinctive and by selecting techniques based upon direction and point of attack rather than based upon the type of attack presented the brain has fewer choices to make in determining the initial response regardless of the attack faced. A Wing Chun practitioner doesn’t rely upon a single shot / technique for victory but rather applies a barrage of strikes to the vulnerable areas of the assailants body whilst anticipating a reaction from the assailant and using tactile sensitivity and reflexes honed through chi sau (sticking hands) to adapt and respond to the reaction in the same simple but effective way, relentlessly striking and controlling until the threat is removed.