Tony Blauer

Personal Defense Readiness: Natural Tools

Tony Blauer
Duration:   6  mins

Description

What is your body’s natural response prior to any training? Does that have any protective or tactical application? If so, why aren’t we incorporating it into personal defense? Tony Blauer discusses these questions and more.

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Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. If you look at any real life picture of somebody flinching in the media and the news, you will always see open hand. So we try to build our tactics and PDR program around a simple thesis statement. What does your body want to do prior to any training? Does that have a protective or tactical application?

If so, why aren't we incorporating it in personal defense? So instead of learning something and hoping that it manifests itself in a confrontation we're using what we know your body will do. We know your body, if a threat jumps out at me from a distance we know my body's gonna push away danger and lowered its center of gravity. So in a lot of the conventional fighting systems you'll always see closed fist but you would never flinched like this. That's counterintuitive, your body's not gonna do it.

So we use, again, what is organic, what is present. And forensic studies have also supported this research by showing in many situations, let's think about a car accident where somebody didn't wear their seatbelt go through the windshield. There's always trauma on the hands and the forearms. In a knife attack where somebody was attacked from the front, there is almost always trauma on the hands and the forearm. So the speed of the flinch is incredible.

It always beats the initial onslaught, that ambush moment. So what we wanna do then is rethinking, okay, let's reverse engineer the system. If we know that the speed of this startle flinch is gonna intercept that punch, that knife, that bullet, that windshield, how can we use that kinetic energy in self-defense? So this is really the nucleus and rationale for it. Remember the spheres of reach to your next move.

And this is all part of the Personal Defense Program. The most important thing wanna remind everybody is that you already, you're sitting there, you're watching this, you already can do this. You don't need to practice flinching. What you need to learn is the outside 90 open hand rule, create that space and then transition to your next move. In this case we're gonna show you a couple of next moves.

When the hand is open, let's say it was a headbutt coming at you and your hands came up now your opponent's head is right here why would you then drop into a classical karate stance and start punching? That'd be ridiculous. Get your hands right there and you're thinking about a thumb in the eye, a finger in the eye, raking the face. Very, very simple movement. If you wanna demystify it you don't need some fancy oriental name, you don't need to train extensively.

Just, how would you scratch your arm? You've got a mosquito bite, you're scratching your arm. That's the raking motion. See a mosquito on your adversary space and rake at it. Just scratch that itch and it will create that startle flinch.

Another great move is again, elbows and forearms. The forearm movement, that forearm blast is really just if we're pushing away. So we went through the palm. If I'm pushing away I'm just thinking about engaging with my forearm. To practice this just visualize a crosscheck from hockey.

If you had a stick and you were driving it towards another player, if you let go of the stick on either side, the force and the resistance of the opponent in front of you would drive that stick back. So all you wanna remember when you're driving out with your forearm is to try and move your ulna bone and your elbow together simultaneously. So we don't hyper-extend the arm or don't flip the elbow up too short and miss the target. When you are gonna throw an elbow and your rotator cuffs are fantastic joints for personal defense, perhaps that's why they were designed this way, but you can throw an elbow at any angle if you have no rotator cuff issues. The way, the classic ones we practice are just a vertical elbow and a horizontal elbow, okay?

And a diagonal elbow to overcome an obstacle or we're coming across. You can practice them at home, real simple. If you've ever put a seatbelt on in your car you've done thousands of elbows already. Every time you reach across to grab your shoulder seatbelt you've already created that neuromuscular communication for that elbow rotation. You gotta scratch your back, elbow.

You've already done it. So the other angle, the diagonal elbow is just to overcome an obstacle. It's a blend of this position. So you'd come up and then come down and across. You could do this simple sequence at home.

Index palm, visualize somebody's encroaching you, get your hands up, do a checklist. Am I outside 90, are my hands open, okay? I'm physiologically in a good position. Index palm to push away the danger. Drive your hands out.

Just do that little step. Drive your hands out thinking the forearm. Think about a gouge right there. Look, if you're noticing there's minimal movement here. If that threat was in close and it encroached me and I had my hands up against the throat or the face and it was time to throw an elbow, all I would do is think, I gotta get my seatbelt on and that elbow would come across.

If the head were here and now we're were jammed and stuck here, all I'm thinking about here is okay, I gotta scratch my back. Bring that hand back and the elbow is gonna track right through there. These moves are so simple and when we show the good Samaritan, hey, look at a movement that replicates this personal defense tool and look at a movement you use in everyday life. Every time you've tied your shoe on a park bench you've worked the exact muscle group to drive a knee into somebody's leg or into their groin. If you brought your foot up and put it on a park bench to tie that movement's there.

So every one of you just sitting there on the couch already have this close-quarter toolbox already built in. Not only that you've done thousands of reps already you just have to apply closest weapon, closest target and make it work in your personal defense moment. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.

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