How to Face Fear and Intimidation in a Fight

Imagine someone standing in front of your face threatening you with violence, what would you do? What would you say? Or where would you look? Here are 3 simple self defence techniques taken from Wing Chun that could make a difference to your personal safety. Watch our video to see the 3 things that you must do to fight fear and intimidation in self defence.

How to fight fear and intimidation in self defence depends on your ability to control space both physically and psychologically. However, there are a number of key Wing Chun concepts that may help manage an extreme situation in which someone has invaded your personal space to threaten you.

How Do You Stand when Someone is in Your Face?

It is natural to want to stand side on when someone has invaded your personal space to threaten you. Standing side on makes sense as you present less of target to attack. While this may be true it also presents a number of other problems that need to be resolved. The primary problem is that in adopting a sideways posture you are limiting your perception and creating an opportunity in which to telegraph your movement.

We suggest that you stand square allowing you to reach out comfortably with both arms in order to control your personal space and keep your attacker off you. There is a concept in Wing Chun referred to as ‘Facing’ the idea being that you should face your attacker with all of your body weapons. This way you can move more efficiently and directly against a sudden attack. This relates to second most important thing to do.

You MUST Control Your Position Relative to Your Attacker

Part 2: What Position Should You Adopt: How to make the fight predictable?

We believe that you should, if possible move to one side of the person who is threatening or intimidating you. Firstly, you need to hold your ground and secondly you then need to move towards one side of the person who is threatening you. This way you are facing them with your various body weapons, but they are facing away from you. In simple Wing Chun terms you are facing their centre line but they are not facing yours.

If possible it is always better to position yourself in a manner that is awkward for your attacker. Perhaps then they will turn to follow you, thereby opening or exposing their centre to your counter attack (please see video above for full explanation). This will limit their ability to punch properly with one side of their body, in particular the jammed side making their movement more predictable.

Where do you Look: Do you look into their eyes?

This is an old question that many people have different opinions about. From our perspective we believe that you should not put too much emphasis on staring into your attackers eyes. This only creates tunnelled vision and distracts you from reacting to fast punches. Although it may help you better detect a headbut attack, it will distract you from lower body attacks.

The eyes pay an important part in the process of intimidation. Controlling someone’s stare may give you a psychological edge, but you must also be capable of responding to a range of potential attacks. With this in mind we suggest that you scan the shoulders and try to use your peripheral vision. Please see video for explanation.

Overall, the best method to control a situation in which someone is threatening you is to use a combination of all of these factors.