Defensive Grappling: Wrist Locks

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Andrew's joined me now in the training area and he's taken off his watch, jewelry. Any existing injuries or anything we need to worry about? Nope. Okay, so Andrew is ready to go. Now we're going to talk about the wrist lock. And of course, whenever we start training again we're going to start by trying to understand the area that we're going to be manipulating, and we're going to be attacking. This time we're going to be defending ourselves by applying pressure on both sides of the wrist. Again, trying to either extend the wrist further than it wants to go back or further than it wants to go forward and down. In this case, understanding that the wrist is much more mobile coming in than it is going back, We're going to start with a wrist lock that actually pushes the top of the hand back towards the top of the forearm. This creates a lot of pain very, very quickly and we're going to count on that pain to distract our attacker from wanting to hurt us. We also could apply enough pressure that this would actually disable our attacker and keep them from being able to hurt us anymore, at least with their hand. So in addition to distracting, we're also looking at something that could disable, and then of course we can control someone, moving them or immobilizing them and pinning them against something starting by using this wrist lock. Now, once again, it's important to stress that these wrist locks don't happen in isolation. There's going to be other things going on. It's going to be a dynamic situation that A, allows us to recognize the opportunity for a wrist lock and B, we need to follow on from the wrist lock to something else, unless this completely incapacitates, disables, dissuades the attack or pins the attacker in a place where they've stopped, which again ends the attack, we're going to have to be prepared to follow on with something else. We can't count on something like a wrist lock or any of our joint locks to truly stop us in the event of a motivated attacker that doesn't feel the pain or isn't disabled. So in this case, if Andrew were to reach up and grab my chest, holding like that maybe this hand was getting ready to punch me or he was getting ready to just grab me with that hand also, if I naturally could bring my hands up to defend myself from any of these situations and even if a punch was coming in. Now in this case we're going to isolate this hand, but let's imagine for a second real quick, that punch comes in, I'm ducking. My hands still here, his energy comes on top of me, I still have a good hold on his hand. It's just that I happened to be turned and ducked away from a punch. So we'll take that out and we'll just look at this in isolation, but again picture it happening in a realistic situation. I'm here, the hand is pinned against me. We can see naturally this bend has already started, it's already close to the area where we're going to complete our normal, natural extension or intuitive movement of the wrist and push beyond that, that's where we start the lock, that's where we start creating the pain. Now this is very natural, if somebody grabs us this way they're going to grab us either from the side, they're going to grab us on the shoulder. In this case he's grabbed me from the front, setting us up perfectly. If he had grabbed me sideways with his hand here and grabbed me on this side, that's fine. I'm on the hand, I'm still holding it here, and look, if we turn and isolate this let me just release it and take this over here. I still have the same exact position. So the position for training purposes, isn't important until we get to the context of the wrist lock. It's understanding how the hand needs to relate to the arm. That's what we're worried about. Whether we start here, we start here, we start here, or we start with this hand in front of us and just happened to get a hand on the hand and the hand on the wrist and then we can do this. We can create that situation or create this situation in this case, it doesn't matter. Again, from the grab we recognize that we're here, we're in that flinch, the hands come down, find the arm, notice that I'm putting pressure now on his forearm with my small fingers and my pinky fingers back down on the back of the wrist and my thumbs have ended up in front. So again, from the grab or the shove or the missed punch or whatever it was, I come in here, create that pressure, and by pushing back, we get that control over the wrist. By putting our hands so that we're actually controlling the wrist and keeping one hand controlling the hand, we can do even more with that. And you can see the natural inclination of the body to collapse. So again I'll have Andrew turn around and face me. Again, this hand is back in the mix and let's look at how that might play out from that control point. Watch what Andrew's body does is I fold that arm back. He'll release to come back from that and immediately try to pull away. As he tries to pull away that'll give me the opportunity to get into a position of advantage. So again, we start with a deescalation, he's pointing at me. He reaches out to shove me and ends up grabbing me. I duck from a punch, come in here, grab the wrist and immediately end up in a position here where even if his hand came over and he simulates that and turns into the punch, everything comes in, we ended up in a situation where I could come out on the other side, pushing this back down and gaining a good amount of control. You feel that? Okay he feels that without a lot of pressure, obviously if I were to put more pressure into this that would turn back into a situation where we were actually disabling this wrist lock. Having this situation here is the start of our escape from an attack. This is the first thing we grabbed in this case, the backward wrist lock, top of the hand, back towards the top of the wrist or the top of the forearm. Now let's take a look at how a situation might develop that would allow us to go in the opposite direction with a wrist lock. We're actually gonna fold the hand down with the palm of the hand going towards the bottom of the wrist, damaging the back of the tissue that's connecting us here at the wrist, maybe disabling, and again, maybe immobilizing and again, seeing that this is a bridge, this is one more thing we can do in the middle of a fight if we recognize the opportunity to stop the attack or to hurt the attacker. So again, we're in this situation and we're trying to deescalate what was maybe a verbal confrontation and I'm getting gestures, and the person's clearly angry at me, and then a shove comes in and maybe a punch comes in. At some point, I ended up in a situation where I recognize the opportunity to put this kind of pressure on the wrist. And when I put that pressure on, of course what I'm hoping is that the attack stops. Now, if you notice here I've got upward pressure being put by my hand. And again, this is not a choreographed made up position. We didn't say, okay, throw this punch, throw this, I'm going to step back. This was me covering up realistically from my good bad guys realistic attacks and ending up in a situation where boom, here's a hand. By putting my hand right over the back of his and putting upward pressure on his wrist, I create the start of this wrist lock. My body creates the last point of leverage, which is actually right back here on the elbow. By coming in here this way, now not only can I have an upward pressure against my downward pressure, I also have a backward pressure against the arm, and that's really where a lot of the pain starts. So once again, if I put too much on Andrew will just tap, let me know that that's a little too much but as I feel that going in, I can already tell just with his body movements where that starting to be. This is five percent, maybe seven and a half percent, pressure on this hand. If I were to really apply a lot of pressure this would become agonizingly painful and or disabling to Andrew. And that doesn't mean that he couldn't do something else with that hand. One of the nice things about this type of wrist lock is as I slide down and grab the fingers this gives me a really good place to hold on to and then really crank that arm with my body, and I could actually take this hand, let's say this was a choke. Let's say this turned into a choke, or and of course Andrew would naturally turn around to face me at this point. If this turned into a choke I can apply a lot more pressure here., and again, continue to distract or start to control and move him around wherever I want, backwards or forwards using this pressure. This gives me this hand to deal with this situation to maybe turn this hand around and then look at this, when I grab a wrist this way, then I grab a hand this way, this gives me this natural wrist lock. So anytime someone grabs you and you can get your thumb on the back of their hand and you can get your fingers wrapped around the meat of their thumb, this gives you a really natural, great starting place for this kind of wrist lock. And if nothing else, by attacking the thumb we're much more likely to get someone's grip opened up. The thumb of course being the weak part of that grip, instead of trying to pry all their fingers off of our throat, if we reach in and grab that thumb in the process of breaking the grip and just remembering the pull against this joint, boom, we create that wrist lock. And if this hand were free, it could come up and help and hurt even more by creating exactly what we've been talking about, that arm bar. Now I'm using his own body weight as the other point of leverage on the elbow. I come in here and boom, I go into this situation. So we saw how putting the pressure here created a distraction. Let's say that this situation caused enough pain that Andrew reached over to grab my hand, well as he grabs my hand, I can do exactly the same thing, come in and attack here, and boom, go into a backwards wrist lock this way, where I'm just simply peeling the other way. So these wrist locks can be very powerful. Of course I could come around this way and do exactly the same thing, grab the fingers, bend in. Understanding where all these pressure points are, where these leverage opportunities are in a real fight is not going to be nearly this easy. This is going to be dynamic, moving, we could be rolling on the ground or flying through the air when I get my hand on his hand. But knowing that from this point, pressure back towards his body with his hands down becomes intuitive knowledge, if you spend enough time thinking about grappling. Now I'm not suggesting that you go into a fight thinking I'm going to get a wrist locker, I'm going to get an arm bar. But what I am suggesting is that if you find yourself blinded, pushed back, hurt, tired with an arm and a hand in contact, you remember a little pressure there can go a long way to helping you be safe. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.