Remove your personal combat inhibiter before you need to fight

Don't wait until it's too late to decide just how far you'll go to prevent serious injury...

Statistically, many victims of violence had the ability to fight, but refused to because they were afraid of hurting the attacker. Some have a natural reluctance to hurt another human being, even when that person is hurting them, whilst others were afraid of hurting the attacker in case it made the attacker even more angry.

7^th dan sensei Steve Rowe says, “Cowardice promotes violence,” and he’s right. As a child, I was a loner, and I was often bullied. I was terrified of being hurt, and the more I tried to appease the bullies, the more of a target I seemed to become. Of course, I was too young to realise that the emotional damage I suffered as a passive victim, was far longer lasting than the physical damage of childhood violence. It wasn’t until I was just entering puberty – perhaps 11-13, that I finally snapped on a few memorable occasions.

On one occasion I was being picked on outside Boy’s Brigade, and I went into a berserk frenzy and tried to whack the bully’s head off with a lump of wood. On another occasion, I went crazy outside junior school and threw a low-level bully to the floor and beat the crap out of him. On two other occasions, I physically hurled bullies 5 feet or more away from me in blind rages. On each occasion, I was totally at the end of my tether, and out of control. I literally lost all conscious awareness and descended into a furious red mist, only realising the extent of my actions afterwards. Of course, that lack of control is a terrible state to be in, but, none of those people ever came anywhere near to me again, and the bullying stopped around that time.

The point is, you don’t necessarily have to go into a berserker killing frenzy like I did to achieve the same result. When I finally snapped and flipped out, my actions made me such a terrifying target that no-one ever dared to risk it again. You can achieve that same effect without losing control, but you need a game plan. There’s no point waiting until violence seeks you out to develop that plan; you need to think about it now.

The first thing that you need to decide is how far you are prepared to go to defend yourself. I’ve already made that decision. I love kumite and karate, but I’m a very peaceable person who wants nothing but a quiet life filled with harmony and friendship. If violence seeks me out, the bearer will be determined to hurt me, because I will have done my utmost to avoid it. Now in this day and age, if I, as an adult male, get attacked, I have to presume the likelihood that the end result could be death or at least a serious maiming. I have a little karate training, but that doesn’t make me some kind of superman. Therefore, if I do get attacked in a committed way (and I’m not talking about a party drunk), I’m more than prepared to break knees, poke eyes, rupture testicles, and crush throats. I’ve already made that decision now, so that if it comes to the actual event, I don’t have to waste time moralising about it.

We spend ages training so that our karate is automatic, but if you haven’t made these decisions in advance, you’ll find yourself stifling your proper response whilst you umm and ahh over the ramifications of your actions.

The other important point here is that if you do get attacked, you have to be prepared to throw dignity and restraint to the wind, and behave like a mixture between Taz, Jackie Chan, and a banshee! That’s to say that you need to be prepared to scream like a demented maniac, attack multiple targets whilst avoiding being grabbed or hit yourself, and all the time still perform good karate.

We kiai because it creates fear in the opponent, as well as building strength and confidence within us. It’s a primal instinct to be afraid of loud noises because they’re never the bearer of glad tidings. In the past a loud noise meant a volcano was erupting, or a sabre-toothed tiger was about to bite you, or lightning was striking, or the wife didn’t appreciate being dragged from the cave by the hair! Even now, apart from football matches and music concerts, loud noises are rarely a sign of anything good.

So if you shout and scream, it will make your attacker wary. Even if they overcome their instinctive response to the volume, they will probably dislike the attention that your howling will draw, whether you’re in a pub, or on the street.

If your attacker tries to grab you, and you suddenly turn into a whirling tornado of scratching fingernails, stamping feet, thrashing elbows, crushing knees, and biting teeth, is that any encouragement to them to hold onto you? Of course not!

Having assured your space (or not, depending upon the attacker's determination), the most important thing, is to retain your composure so that you can perform the karate that you’ve learned. Even attackers who are not afraid of you, are still unlikely to be combat trained, and as a result, your karate gives you an advantage. Big as they are, a broken nose still hurts, and it’s still hard to walk with no knees or a brutal dead leg! So you need to perform those techniques that will incapacitate your opponent as quickly as possible with an appropriate level of violence.