Civilized people want a civilized response to violence – a solution that avoids harming or injuring their assailant, or at the most, causes their attacker just enough pain and discomfort that it dissuades them from continuing further. Such ideas come from the media’s presentation of violence, where assailants make singular, clearly identifiable attacks, which can be dealt with in a clean and crisp manner, using definable defenses that have been created with such specific attacks in mind. In reality, violent assaults are simply that; a continuous and often repetitive use of force, with each attack merging and flowing into the next e.g. a frenzied stabbing, where a knife wielding assailant simply stabs, recoils, stabs and recoils etc. at a target’s torso, so quickly that it is impossible to distinguish each stab from the next – this is how the uneducated and emotional assailant works. There is no civilized response to this: violence must be met with greater violence. This is the combative mindset.

This is a hard concept for people to grasp. It is not simply your technical ability that ups your survival chances but the mindset that the training of techniques – properly – brings. There are many people who walk through our doors that are searching for the “secret” techniques, and whenever you hear the word secret in the martial arts/self-defense worlds you should substitute it for “shortcuts”. These are the individuals that shun the hard work and the dedication that is necessary for them to progress. When I lived in the UK I did some DVD’s for a company that marketed to these individuals. I and other instructors were told that if a 250 lb, pizza eating, couch potato would question their ability to perform a certain technique we should drop it from our list. Their best-selling DVD’s was from a pressure point expert, who would teach you how to perform “killer” techniques in 10 minutes etc. simply by grabbing hold of someone in the right spot. The individuals who bought theses DVD’s believed that should they be attacked, simply touching meridian point G14, would bring an attacker to their knees. Whether this is true or not is immaterial: that a person can get close enough to a violent attacker to apply a pressure point is a ridiculous starting point from a self-defense perspective. These techniques did not train or work with the mindset necessary to survive a violent assault – although they appeared to promote extreme violence, they didn’t connect a person emotionally to the act they were performing.

Your training of techniques should incorporate the mindset element which encourages you to not simply attack your assailant but assault them with extreme violence. Your training should bring you to a point where you are so focused on performing a technique with maximum aggression that every other thought and idea leaves your mind. You should in any aggressive situation you face first claim the moral authority to act. If you have followed a path of de-escalation and disengagement and you are facing the prospect of being involved in a physical confrontation, the legal aspects of your situation will largely have taken care of themselves (or to the point where a good lawyer will be able to present a strong case in your favor) and so the “legal” doubt about acting should have been removed from your mind. It is the legal system that exists to ensure that we all behave in a civilized fashion, once this has been put aside, by your aggressor so must you. A Fight is a time for extreme focused violence.

If you meet violence, quickly, decisively and with greater violence – after first having exhausted your other non-physical paths, or having recognized the situation cannot be rectified through de-escalation and disengagement – the incident will be over quickly and with the reduced likelihood of injury to yourself. When you train, train with the concentrated mindset of delivering extreme violence (this doesn’t mean you have to hurt or injure your partner rather that you should not simply go through the motions of a technique but also reference your emotional side in your training).