How to Defend Yourself – Managing Emerging Threats

When you consider how to defend yourself, do you understand the importance of identifying threats to your safety? Especially if you are in an argument with a stranger in the street. How do you know if this person is dangerous enough to pull a weapon on you? What happens if the person attacks you with empty hands, but then decides to escalate with a knife?

Well, this article will help you identify and manage the major immediate threat indicator to your personal safety. Make sure you watch the video for instruction on how to manage the risk of your attacker escalating to deadly force.

Never assume that Your Attacker is Not Armed

Just because your attacker has nothing in his hands, it doesn’t mean that he is not carrying a weapon. That’s why you have to fight to get control of your attacker’s arms in a self defence encounter. If you know where their arms are then at least you will be in a better position to survive a potentially deadly attack. More importantly seeing your attacker’s hands allows you to quickly identify threats to your safety.

You could say that: ‘Danger is in the hands of the threat’. There is a simple logic to identifying a threat. If someone wants to use a weapon against you, they have to hold the weapon in their hands. So, to identifying an immediate threat to your safety, you have to pay attention to the person’s hands to assess the risk. This should be one of the first things you do in how to defend yourself.

Pay Attention to Your Attackers Waist

You also need to pay attention to where weapons are commonly drawn, the belt line. Weapons are usually kept around the waist. The torso is a large area in which a person can hide multiple weapons.  This means that during a defensive encounter you have to deny the threat access to his belt line. Even if your attacker appears unarmed.

You can’t assume that an empty hand attacker will stop at punching you. They may start their attack with a simple push or punch, then pull a knife or a firearm as the fight progresses. So, controlling your attackers hands allows you to stop punches and later their ability to pull a weapon on you. Simply because you know where their hands are can help.

Learn to Hand Fight or Grapple for Safety

Martial arts such as Wing Chun and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are great for learning how to hand fight and grapple at close range. These martial arts particularly focus on controlling arms in order to reduce the attacker’s mobility.

Our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes focus on a range of self defence applications both stand up and ground. In fact, learning a combination of BJJ and Wing Chun will give you an all-round confidence for close quarter fighting. We teach people to be good at hand fighting. That’s why learning how to clinch into a standing grapple will help you spoil a potential attack before it escalates to weapons.

How to Defend Yourself

So, in this video I’m going to show some simple ways in which to control and spoil your attacker’s arms so eventually they can’t draw a weapon. I will show the key must do points to tie up punches, tire and exhaust your attacker, while making it hard for them to assess or draw their weapon. How to win the hand fight. If you like our unique approach then why not consider joining our academy.

Thanks for reading.