The amount of times I read articles about local attacks,
stabbings and rapes people being beaten up for nothing. We generally live our lives hoping that it will never be us becoming the victim; that the pub fight will break out after we have gone home; or that we would never be a target for a kidnapping. But it happens. If you ask any victim if they were expecting to be singled out that day, they would never have thought it would be them.
So, what can you do about it?
The greatest self-defence tools we possess are our eyes and ears and common sense. Situational awareness is the key. If you can see some sort of violent situation occur either involving you or not why stand around and wait for it to happen.
Avoid the situation
you’ve won before it even starts. There is a System which is used in Conflict Communication called the traffic light system “fight flight and freeze”. The idea being that the different colours represent the level of danger in any situation in your home or outside. When you are at home, your mind is on green. You’re not constantly scared and looking out for dangers. Then, once you walk out your front door onto the street you switch from green to amber. At this point your heart rate is completely normal; however you are aware of what’s going on. The moment you turn a corner and there is a person yelling, or swearing, or a group of drunkards or groups of youths misbehaving, or any situation when you feel uncomfortable, this then becomes a red situation. Now your heart rate raises a little and you should become very conscious about what you will do next. At this point you should cross over to the other side of the street giving you a wider distance between yourself and the potential threat. Or you may even make the decision to walk away completely. Krav Maga then has one more colour: Black. This is when you switch into ‘fight for your life’ mode. Someone brings out a weapon, or just starts running towards you yelling abuse. Your heart rate sky rockets; adrenal surges through your veins; your vision narrows to become tunnel vision. This is not the time to think about learning self defence. That would be a tad late! Do not hope that you will rise to the situation, because in reality you sink to the training you have had. First Rule: Avoidance, Compliance and self defence all depending on the threat and other situations of course
However when the threat gets closer to you and you feel it’s time to take a certain action I also teach a procedure called fight flight or freeze, fight meaning that you have not seen the threat and it’s too late to evade the threat area or the situation, so you have to defend yourself the best way you can.
Flight meaning you have recognised there is some sort of violent confrontation about to happen involving you or not, so it’s time to leave the area etc
Freeze meaning you have been man handled by the aggressor either by your throat/clothing or may be by your wrist and or you don’t know how to defend yourself or your brain simply shuts down as it does in some situations even if you have had some form of martial art self defence training. So you just stand there and take the violence what is about to come to you. If you’re lucky the aggressor may stand there and shout abuse at you and hold your clothing or neck area tightly and leave it as that, or he may strike you a several times, or may throw you to the ground and you walk away with cuts and bruises, but the worse situation you die from the aggressors actions, which happens in some rape and mugging cases plus domestic violence
South West Krav Maga – Oxford Kennie Gould
