At its root, martial arts and reality-based self-defense training is about intent; recognizing our partner’s, or aggressor’s intent whilst disguising/masking our own. Before I started training in Krav Maga I was – and still am - a Judoka (Judo Practitioner). A large part of Judo, is recognizing your partner’s intent i.e. what are they thinking about, and preparing to do, etc., and then formulating a response. At the same time, you want to prevent your partner from recognizing your intent, as this will allow them to formulate a strategy/response to prevent you succeeding, and possibly countering you. The earlier you can discern and recognize their intent, the better prepared you will be to deal with their attack e.g. you will have time to create space, position yourself, and generally get yourself ready to meet their attack. The better you are at hiding or masking your intent, the less time you will give your partner to formulate a response, and their only recourse will be to react – with training and the appropriate skills and attributes this may be enough, but their chances of making a better/more effective response would have increased had they been able to recognize your intent sooner. In a real-life encounter, the sooner you can recognize the intent of an aggressor (who may be trying to disguise it), the better your survival chances. If you can also disguise your response/intent then you will be equipping yourself with the advantage of surprise.

The martial arts are full of tales and stories about the great masters, recognizing an attack before it occurs. There is a scene in The Seven Samurai, where one of the swordsmen who is being recruited refuses to enter a room, because he believes he is about to be ambushed as part of his test, as to whether he is good enough to be considered part of the group. In the film, it is portrayed that he has a 6th sense for danger. If we unwrap the idea and the mystery of such a “6th Sense”, and look at what it actually is, we’re left with a high-level ability to discern intent. In a real-life scenario, it may be that the person who is about to enter a room where another person is concealed, may see the person opening the door glance towards someone/something in the room, and/or “feel” their anticipation and nervousness, or simply hear the other person’s movement, etc. All of these things are signals of a person’s intent. There isn’t any mystical power at play, just the experiences and abilities of a highly-tuned individual, who is able to read the intent in a situation.

We are naturally equipped with an ability to discern intent. Most of us have had the experience of walking into a bar/pub, or a social gathering where things have not seemed right or have felt out of place, etc. At the time – or even afterwards – we may not have been able to identify the cause of our unease, but we have picked up on the harmful intent within our environment; at base, this is what situational awareness actually is – the recognition of harmful intent in our environment. It may be that our fear system subconsciously picks up on a number of factors, such as someone (or a group) in the room looking at us a fraction of a second longer than would be normal, or a brief pause in conversation whilst those in the room size us up. If we were to consciously pick up on these signals, we would be identifying “target glancing” (occasional glances in our direction), scanning (predator(s) looking around, for cameras, to see if others might intervene with them/against them, etc.), synchronizations of movement (movement that puts an attacker in a position to make/launch their attack), “conspiratorial planning” (different attackers within the group, assigning roles and discussing their attack – possibly signaling to others of the group if they are spread out), etc. All of these things during the “Conflict Aware” phase of an assault – especially when combined – signal harmful intent within the environment, and should be signals to disengage, and/or not enter room, etc.

During the Pre-Conflict phase of a violent encounter, when an assailant has put themselves, or is in the process of putting themselves into a position where they can cause you harm, and you have discerned that they have harmful intent towards you, you have one of two engagement options: you can wait for them to launch their assault (having prepared yourself, possibly moving, changing your stance to limit their attacking options), or you can pre-emptively attack them. If your decision/strategy is to go pre-emptive, you will need to hide/disguise your intent, or your assault will lack the element of surprise – this may give your assailant the opportunity to counter it, or at the least turn on their pain management systems so that they can prepare themselves to deal with the pain. If you decide to wait to respond to their attack, your assailant may still try to hide their intent to physically assault you, however there are certain clues and indicators that demonstrate a person’s intention to punch/strike you. One of the most common is turning away and loading weight onto the rear leg; this preparatory shift in weight identifies their intent to bring it forward to add power to their punch/strike, and looking away can be an attempt to not show you the emotional change/intent in their face as they get ready to act violently towards you. Turning away can also make it look like they have lost interest in the confrontation, as well as giving them a chance to quickly scan for others, security, etc, before they launch their attack.     

Once the physical fight is underway, you will need to understand the intent behind your attacker’s movements and attacks e.g. are they moving forward into space that would make your kick or punch more effective i.e. they are walking on to it, etc., are they moving away, and is this disengagement genuine or is their intent to get you to move forward onto their punch or kick? Discerning their intent, and hiding/disguising yours now becomes a physical thing.

Our survival in any confrontation is about discerning and recognizing a person’s intent. Often, predatory individuals will try to mask it however few individuals are truly skilled at hiding the intent behind all of their actions and behaviors. There are times when part of the intent is obvious, such as the anger and high emotion that an individual who you have spilt a drink over demonstrates as they stand there, shouting and making threats towards you – now it is a matter of discerning the intent behind the threats e.g. are they preparing to attack, or simply sounding off? Again, if we know what to look for, the intent becomes obvious and apparent. Once the physical fight begins, we must try to identify the intent behind an assailant’s movement, and how we can take advantage of it – whilst hiding our own intentions. Distilled down, reality-based self-defense, and the martial arts, are lessons in and demonstrations of intent.