Long Stick Defense Tactics

Here's another important video from the personal defense network. Let's take a look at some of the tactics for actually employing a medium length stick And self-defense. Now, one of the things you need to understand is before I get to the point where I'm swinging a stick at somebody else or they're swinging something at me, there's a lot of other opportunities that I should have had, a lot of things that I should have done before it got to this point. You need to think about everything else in personal security, awareness, avoidance, deescalation all the other things that you should be doing before it comes to the point that you're wielding a stick against somebody else. If you've already exhausted all those opportunities somebody's come up, you realize that they have some type of weapon that would force you to grab something in your own personal defense. You've tried everything else, you're finally facing off against him. That's kind of where this scenario leads. So we're not just magically ending up here. There's got to be a lot of stuff happening before we get to this point. Once this happens, we're gonna look first at the idea of an angle one coming in at us. So again, Craig is swinging at me. He's coming in. It's going to be the upper left-hand portion of my body. Anything in this zone here. What I want to do is get out of the way. He's swinging something at me, Darwin looms, large, I'm going to step back get out of the way of whatever he's swinging. And at the same time I'm going to mirror his action and I'm going to strike to his forearm. This could be literally anything from his elbow to his fingertips. For training safety, notice that he's wearing a forearm guard. I'm going to strike against this, this is protecting his forearm. Realistically in self-defense, one of my favorite shots is to hit him right on the fingers. Strike here in the fingers. In most cases, that's going to break these bones. It's going to compromise his grip, his weapons going to go flying, And I've pretty much accomplished my goal of keeping myself safe by disarming him. Again for safety sake, I'm going to strike here. Now, this is one of the defensive responses that we call a pass. What I'm going to do is I'm going to hit but I'm not going to try and stop his arm I'm going to let it go past. My strike is going to carry me across my body I'm gonna end up chambered for some type of a backhand either an angle four, or an angle two, depending upon the height of my hand. What I want to do is ride that motion from that chamber position follow up with my next strike. Now our next target priority is going to be going to the point of his elbow. If that didn't disarm him what I want to do is try to strike and break the elbow with my stick. I also want to make sure that arm isn't going to come back. So my motion of turning here is to hit the elbow and also check and monitor his arm. Now I'm back on my power side. I'm back on the forehand side. I'm gonna look for my third target priority which is that mobility kill. I want to strike him in the knee strike him in the shin, strike him in the ankle anywhere in the lower leg here, strike this, and this also can become my start of a sprint to safety. I don't want to hang around. I want to make sure that I could damage his mobility inhibit his ability to follow me and immediately seek escape. So let's take a look at this. We'll put it together in a flow and then we'll speed it up a little bit. Show it to you in a little bit more realistic speed. So he strikes I'll hit the hand hit the elbow and then come down and hit the leg. If any of the targets happens to fade away in the midst of it, doesn't matter. I'm going to continue my motion. Continue my plan. If the target is there, I'll hit it. If it's not, I'm just going to continue moving on and work down my priority list. So a little bit more quickly Again, that would be my start. As far as my sprint to safety that should have taken his hand out of the fight, should have taken a lot of steam out of his arm, as far as being able to wheel the weapon and also affected his mobility so that I can get away safely. We're going to look at another defense for an angle one attack. In this case it's the second of our defensive responses. It's called a follow. A follow is defined as there's a strike coming in I'm going to get out of the way. I'm going to let it cross my center line, And then I'm going to follow his arm by striking it in the same direction that his arm is moving. The reason that this is important it may be that in the midst of this dynamic my hand crossed the center line. He flanks me and comes up from the side or something of that nature where our center lines are not such that I can use the first technique which was the pass creating this collision here. I have to come in behind his hand, or I may just reflexively lean back my stick, cross the center line. It doesn't matter. Whatever happens where I cross where his hand crossed the center line I'm coming in from behind. I'm going to strike. Now, the great thing is I can accelerate the tip of my stick with a simple rotation of my wrist, which is another way to strike. In the Filipino martial arts they call it Abanico, means to fan. And it's just a quick rotation of my wrist. I can demonstrate this just against Craig's stick here. It's a way you can practice with your partner. You start with your tick step, your stick tip down. So with a quick flip of the wrist, that Abanico motion, you essentially have a short angle too. So if we put this back into context of our follow, Craig strikes. Whether you get that first shot or not, doesn't matter. I'm going to follow that up with the check, strike to his hand, again try to disarm and then go for that low line shot. Again, our targeting priorities are the same. Try to take away his grip. Make sure he can't come back. Whack him again to take away his grip on his weapon. And then we're going to go for that low line mobility shot. Take him out of the flight and we're on our way to safety. Let's take a look at a defense against an angle two attack. This is also going to introduce one of the other defensive responses that we call a meet. If Craig swings an angle two at me, what I'm doing , I can use this to block his weapon or I can use this to strike his hand, either one. Here we're going stick against stick. It doesn't matter what he's swinging at me. You need to practice this various different ways. We're going to show it here as blocking the weapon. What I'm doing is I'm hitting with my own angle two, to stop his stick. And at the same time, I'm checking with the Palm of my left hand. What that allows me to do. If he strikes again, please, I can stop his hand dead. This also is going to chamber me for my angle one strike. That's going to be my strike against his arm. So if I've locked the weapon the first time around this actually winds that spring to cook off and hit that arm. Now I'm going to check here, take the leg. And then that's my sprint to safety. So let's look at the mechanics again. He strikes, I block and check. I'm pushing this away. This also gives me an index wherever my hand is at I'm going to hit toward that point in space. I strike here, check, hit his leg, and then go off from there. Do it a little bit more fluidly and then full speed. Once again, we're making sure that we stay safe. We're attacking his grip on the weapon. Hopefully disarming him, creating that mobility kill which also creates our opportunity for escape. One of the keys to this system of self-defense is keeping as many things common as possible. The more overlap you have in your technique the fewer things you have to think about the more effective you're going to be. So we talk about the idea of fingers up, fingers down. If we think about what we did against an angle one Slowly, If Craig was striking at me with an angle one I'd be hitting his arm. As this followed through, I come back, hit the elbow check that, struck the leg. If we look at the angle three the only difference is, I'm going fingers down. The tip of my stick is pointing downward because he's striking below the level of my elbows. Still gonna hit his forearm. His wrist that follows through on chamber to cross Bonnie. I hit his elbow monitor that if I can. And then I'm stepping through, swinging with power hitting him in the lower leg, shin, ankle whatever's handy to affect his mobility. Take that leg out of the fight and take me out of the fight as well. So let's put those together a little bit more smoothly. We'll build it up striking here, here to the leg and then moving on, you're starting to see lots of similar elements here. A little bit more quickly. And what you can see is those same mechanics we looked at as far as the body moving from side to side, combining your strikes, understanding that the end of every strike is the beginning of another. Once you understand those mechanics you start building your technique. You're going to get pretty good at this stuff pretty quickly. Now let's take a look at the angle four defense. Just as we did with the angle one and the three we had lots of overlap, lots of common ground. We're going to have the same thing between angle two and angle four, refresh your memory on the angle two when that strike came in we blocked and checked. We struck and then we struck low. Same thing is going to happen here. So as Craig strikes, the only difference now, notice fingers down. I have to check his arm here. My fingers are down in the tip of my stick is down as well. There's my block. I strike Strike low. And again, that's the beginning of my sprint to safety. Again, the concepts remain the same. We want to take away his grip on the weapon take away his ability to wield the weapon take away his mobility to deliver that weapon to us and then flee to safety. The more you reinforce those points the more you reinforce common technique and everything you do, the better off you're going to be. Now, when it comes to defending against an angle five attack coming straight along center line. If Craig were thrusting at me, I could try to move my body offline, but he's moving his arm. I'm trying to move my entire body. It's much more difficult for me to get offline than it is to simply change the relationship of his arm to my body. What we really want to end up with is the idea of his arm being shoved off in this direction, basically into my zone four. So I could look at this as an angle four. The easiest way to do that is to simply deflect his hand. Now I can either do that with my stick or I could do with my live hand. Doesn't really matter. We'll take a look at the use of my live hand. So when he goes to thrust, I'm simply knocking that aside. Notice it as I do that. I'm also, chambering my own stick. The rotation of my body. Wine's a spring. I now strike isn't his arm, come back take the elbow and then take the low line. So again, as he thrusts, I'm knocking this aside. Notice it as I do that, I'm drawing my hip back as well. So that if my deflection here is incomplete I'm also hollowing out my body, moving my body away from that knife thrust. This chambers my stick I strike the arm, come back take the elbow and again, take his leg. So if we put that together a little bit more fluidly he thrusts. Same mechanics, same basic motions, same targets. Against a high line, We're going to do basically the same thing. If you were thrusting high, I can deflect with my hand here. I can also use the stick as part of the deflection as well. Remember that Abanico, that fanning action to bring that in. So see thrust. I check. I'm now striking here, back down to the low line. A little more slowly. Striking here Check Strike and get the low line hit. A little more fluidly. So against an angle five attack the real key is deflecting his hand, forcing it into one of the other zones and then flowing into one of the techniques you've already got for that zone. Ideally getting to the outside. If I can move this across center line this way push it into his own two, push it into his own four and then deal with it like a zone two or zone four attack. Again, lots of commonality of technique fewer things to think about under stress. Check out more videos, just like this one at the personal defense network.