Skills are more important than techniques, when it comes to surviving a violent altercation. A skillful person can get a sub-optimal – I don’t like using the term “bad” – technique to work, but an unskilled person cannot get the most efficient and effective technique (if such exists) to work, in a real-life encounter; without a massive amount of luck and incompetence on their attacker’s part. Some people don’t possess the skills to make certain techniques work, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad or inappropriate techniques e.g. there are a lot of great strikers who don’t have the skills to throw, and a lot of great grapplers who don’t have the greatest striking skills – this doesn’t mean throwing is bad, or striking is bad; both are good for those who have the skills to use them. There was a legendary British doormen and Karateka, who used to finish his real-life encounters when working the door, with high-kicks to the head, even though you’ll often hear the tired and cliched mantra of, “high kicks don’t work on the street”; if you don’t have the skills, they don’t. In the world of reality-based self-defense, there is often an over-focus on techniques, without a discussion on skills-development. In this article I want to focus on skills, and how we need to get constant feedback, on their development – and how we sometimes misinterpret that “feedback”.

Geoff Thompson, when asked what the philosophy behind his system was, replied by saying that it was about learning how to hit hard. That has always stayed with me. My elevator pitch self-defense lesson is: get a hand in the attacker’s face – to disrupt them – and then throw hard hammer-fists until you can disengage and run. I can teach that in the time it takes for the elevator to reach the 3rd floor, where my studio/dojo is; admittedly it’s a freight elevator that moves slowly. It’s a simple tactic, but it takes a lot of skills to get it to work under stress and duress. First, you must be prepared to strike first, and this means you need to develop threat recognition skills so you can understand when you are in danger. You need to be fully committed to your actions (that commitment is a skill that needs developing), you need to be fully aware of your legal rights as to when you are entitled to act preemptively (that’s not a technique, it’s a skill), and you need to be able to hit hard, etc. What looks and seems easy on paper, is something else when you try it in the real-world. I remember a guy who joined a team that I’d worked several years with on the door. After working with us a few weeks, he asked me to show him how to do a wrist control that he’d seen me use several times. When I demonstrated it, he remarked that it seemed really simple and that he’d use it the next time he was involved in an altercation. A few nights later, he told me that it was a stupid technique, that didn’t work – he’d tried it, and not surprisingly it had failed. He knew the technique but didn’t have the skills to get it to work, and/or the understanding of when and when not to use it. Not a problem with the technique, just a lack of skills.

When people train striking and punching, there is a danger that they think they are developing good skills, when really, they are just reinforcing bad ones, as they misinterpret the “feedback” they are getting. When I lift weights, my body gets feedback as to the effort I am putting in and the power I am generating. The tension in my muscles tells me whether it was a hard or an easy lift, etc. When people bend at the waist to touch their toes, in order to stretch their hamstrings, they are not actually stretching: a muscle has to be relaxed, in order for it to be stretched. What they are feeling/experiencing is an eccentric contraction of the muscle, that is supporting the weight of the hanging torso, and misinterpreting the tension in their hamstrings as a stretch. Is being able to touch your toes a demonstration of flexibility? Yes. Is it a good stretching exercise? No. It feels like a great stretch, but really it’s a misinterpretation of what the body is telling you. One of the biggest problems I have with students who are punching and striking with tensed arms when doing pad-work, is convincing them that they are not generating the maximum power that they can. They can “feel” the power they are generating; the tension in their arms lets them “feel” it, and they don’t get the same feedback when they try striking relaxed, so the logic follows that when they’re relaxed they’re not generating as much power. When the pad-holder is asked for their feedback, they’ll say that the relaxed strike/punch is more powerful than the tensed one. The problem is that every time they punch with the tense arm, they get “feedback” as to the perceived power they are generating, whereas the student holding the pads for them only gives feedback sporadically and often not at all.

One of the great things about throwing, is that when you get it right, you feel nothing – it is effortless. When a person’s balance is properly taken, you don’t feel a thing, because they become weightless to you. The problem is, how do you develop something that you can’t feel; when the only feedback is your opponent/assailant falling. The effectiveness of a good punch, or a good throw, can only be judged by the response that it causes; a tense arm, or a heavy lift, only tells you that you are doing it wrong. If the pad moves back, or the person goes flying, then you know that you’ve got it right. It’s not about what you feel, it’s about what you make happen. A sharp knife will cut through things effortlessly, whilst a dull blade will make you work for it. Our job is to develop fighting skills, and to do this we must take the right feedback from our training, and not misinterpret what our body is telling us.