Musings on the Reality of Street Violence
This is an article I did for Martial Arts Insider, a magazine that never apparently got off the ground. Its slant was about martial arts in the movies, as I recall, but I was asked to do a series of articles about the reality of fights and how real world stuff varies from what we see in the movies.
We all love the movies.
Well, some people don’t, but most of them aren’t reading this magazine. So hey, safe to say we all love the movies, okay? And most of us know that they aren’t real. (Honest!) We know that if you get hit over the head with a baseball bat or a humongous spanner you don’t pass out while the bad guys set fire to the building. No, your skull breaks and you die.
Some real fighting techniques are every bit as exciting as the movies; indeed, some are better than the movies! But few directors will portray a realistic fight. Why not? Because it’d be sickeningly brutal, and not much fun to watch, and most likely very, very short.
Movie directors give us what we want to see: spectacular moves, amazing stunts, heroes who get battered and bashed for ten minutes until someone kills their goldfish, insults their mother or foolishly asks the DJ to play their theme music. It’s a staple of action movies; that moment when the hero looks up (why always up?) and everything stops for a moment. And then… a 55-gallon drum of whup-ass and a side order of cheese, if you please….
But that’s not how it happens on the streets. Here’s what DOES happen...
The Opening Moves
There are basically 2 kinds of street encounter; the Altercation and the Ambush.
Altercations
An Altercation involves a certain amount of mutual consent. Usually altercations begin with some kind of disagreement, or with someone determined to pick a fight. There is plenty of time to see an altercation coming. It will begin with jostling, shouting, threats, insults, or maybe an invitation to go outside and settle the matter. Altercations also happen when someone is confronted with a threat – say, a robbery – and decides to resist.
Whatever the cause, there is plenty of warning, and both parties are pretty much ready to fight. Only an idiot can’t tell that a situation is sliding towards violence. Unless you’re cornered, it’s usually possible to avoid fighting with a few soothing words or a fast exit. Pride, ego, peer pressure and, well, “recreational chemicals” are often factors in persuading people that they “can’t back down”.
When it does happen, its sudden. There’s a bit of mutual pushing and shoving, some shouts and threats, and the suddenly someone hits a “trigger” and he (or she, let’s not be sexist now!) goes to Fight Mode. We’ll get to what happens when the fists start flying in just a moment.
Ambushes
The other sort of fight begins without mutual consent, when the victim is suddenly attacked. The obvious case is a sudden (stealthy) attack from behind – say to knock the victim down for robbery or abduction. However, some “street fighters” use a very different technique to ambush their victims – they walk right up and do it!
The frontal ambusher doesn’t lead with a fast left jab; he leads with deception. Either by just ambling up seeming not to notice his victim, or by engaging them in “disarming” conversation, he sneaks up close without setting off any alarm bells. Then, when he’s perfectly positioned, he launches his attack. This won’t be a probing jab – no need, he’s got a clear shot. He’ll throw a powerful one-shot fight-winner at his unsuspecting victim. Whatever he does after that is for his own amusement – he’s already won.
Fighting Techniques – or Lack Thereof
Most people can’t fight worth beans. Instinctive responses just aren’t good enough, and sometimes even trained martial artists forget what they’re doing and flail about in a way that would embarrass Frankenstein’s Monster. People who study street fights see the same stuff over again, and it’s neither scientific nor pretty.
Most street fights are won by whoever gets the first decent blow in, especially if it hits the head. Now, if the target is stood there unsuspecting, or even has their back to the attacker, then landing a good one isn’t so hard. That’s why the first punch is so important – whoever moves first has a chance of getting a strike in before the fight has started, catching the other guy off guard, and, well, WHAM!
If this first attack fails, then matters become more complicated. It is amazingly difficult to hit someone who is moving about, sticking their arms in the way, and generally trying not to be hit. If they’re throwing a few punches of their own, it’s even harder.
And even if those punches hit, it’s by no means certain that a clean, solid blow will be obtained. More likely there will be a series of glancing blows; painful but not the end of the matter. One reason for this that that in the adrenline-fulled panic of a street fight, people tend to just flail away at one another. Say bye-bye to good technique and hello to big, desperate swinging punches. One nice phrase for this technique is “head down and swim”.
The commonest fight-related injury of them all is a bruised or cracked cheekbone where an ill-aimed hook punch has struck the side of the head. Such a blow should really end the matter, if it were to hit cleanly and in a suitable spot – and if the target wasn’t so full of adrenaline that he barely felt the bone break! In this situation, it’s hardly surprising that people get desperate, and this is where the grabbing starts.
This is the reason for all that grabbing. Getting hold of someone might immobilize their weapons (fists!) or pin them to be punched or head-butted. There is a deep-seated instinct that makes us grab during a fight, and there’s another reason too. Fine motor control is rapidly lost under stress, but there are things you can always do until your heart rate is so high you have a stroke. Those things are simple movements like pushing, pulling, kneeing etc.
Once someone has a good grip on a limb or clothing, they won’t let go (they probably can’t, even if they would like to!). Punching becomes ineffective at such close quarters, so the inevitable wrestling match begins. The combatants start dragging one another about, knocking over furniture and trampling buildings like something in a Godzilla movie… and then at some point it goes to the ground.
It doesn’t matter how the fight gets to the floor. Sometimes one of the combatants takes the other down deliberately. Sometimes one or both fall over something or just lose their balance. Whatever the reason, down they go and the Great Groundfighting Lottery begins.
It’s a lottery because you can’t always predict who will end up on top in the initial scramble. But after the initial rolling and scrambling about is over, two very clear factors dominate a ground fight: who is stronger, and who is on top.
Assuming that nobody runs over and starts kicking one or both of the combatants, and nothing happens to break the fight up, then it’s all a bit one-sided after this. The scales steadily tip until one guy is helpless and the other is pummelling him. And once that starts, there’s no theme music or dramatic plot moment to save you – it’s over, dude!
All of this refers to untrained people, but the same things happen to trained fighters who lose their heads or who make a mistake and surrender control of the situation to a strong but untrained opponent. Or to anyone else for that matter – ANYONE can end up on the deck. In fact, a high proportion of fights that aren’t over in the first 3-6 seconds (!) go to the floor.
Trained People
You might think that trained martial artists should be able to avoid getting into a scruffy grapplefest. Most would like to; after all that time spent learning elegant and effective techniques it’s a bit of a shame not to be able to use them because you’re on the floor under some sweaty 18-stone psycho.
Trained people have a tremendous advantage when trying to stay. A good guard, tight evasion and an eye for the shot, all combined with the ability to punch hard and fast, will sometimes – SOMETIMES! – give a trained fighter the edge required to neatly demolish an assailant without ending up on the floor.
Of course, some people train hard for the floor arena; so hard that it’s their preferred battleground. End up on the deck with a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert, for example, and you’re in for it! But as a rule it’s a bad idea to go to the floor if you can possibly avoid it. It’s just too random. You can bang your head on a kerbstone or be kicked by a second attacker (or a random passer-by; it happens all the time!) and lose the fight despite your formidable groundfighting skills. So, even skilled groundfighters normally prefer to stay upright.
Every martial artist or person concerned with self-defense should learn some basic groundfighting, because a fight may well go to the floor despite their best efforts otherwise. The truth is that anyone who wants to get in close and grab or wrestle will almost certainly manage it.
A skilled “street” fighter will evade, fend off grabs, and make room for his (or her!) devastating punches and short kicks. Or he might allow the attacker to close in and use a throwing technique or a takedown. But the sad and sorry fact is that the longer it goes on, the more likely it is to go to the floor.
Streetfighting Distance
The point of all that stuff about groundfighting is that street fights start out at close range, and they just keep on getting closer. That means that the weapon of choice in a street battle is – hands! Hands are great. They’re positioned to defend your head and body, and attack his. They’re fast but hit hard (and yeah, you can grapple with them too. Or hold your beer…)
Hands are basically short-range weapons, which is fine because on the street, or in a bar, on the bus, supermarket, parking lot or any of the other places that a fight may break out, chances are you’ll be at “hands” range before you know it. It IS possible to kick at this distance, but kicks have to be short, fast and unspectacular as opposed to the big, crowd-pleasing variety.
If you want to use the big kicks, you’ll have to make the distance to use them. Big, powerful kicks take time to perform, and you need some room. Remember how everyone keeps on getting closer? That eats up your kicking range pretty damn quick. It’s kind of embarrassing to have someone run in and push you over or punch you as you spin for the big kick.
As to actually being any use, well. A good kick is a fight-winner, no doubt. But it’s also slow and makes you vulnerable. It isn’t enough to be an excellent kicker if you want to use them on the street. Being an excellent kicker is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM required to use kicks. You also need perfect timing, excellent tactics, good mobility and a bit of luck. On the one (ONE!) occasion I’ve landed my favorite spinning reverse hook kick on someone’s head, we had to go looking for his brain. It was in a pond two blocks over. The other six thousand attempts failed. Do the math…
The moral of the story is don't do flashy kicks on the street. Indeed don't kick at all. Hand strikes and some ability to grapple are essential. And don't get caught by surprise. Because unlike the movies, once you start to lose, you tend to go on losing until you're a pulp.
We all love the movies.
Well, some people don’t, but most of them aren’t reading this magazine. So hey, safe to say we all love the movies, okay? And most of us know that they aren’t real. (Honest!) We know that if you get hit over the head with a baseball bat or a humongous spanner you don’t pass out while the bad guys set fire to the building. No, your skull breaks and you die.
Some real fighting techniques are every bit as exciting as the movies; indeed, some are better than the movies! But few directors will portray a realistic fight. Why not? Because it’d be sickeningly brutal, and not much fun to watch, and most likely very, very short.
Movie directors give us what we want to see: spectacular moves, amazing stunts, heroes who get battered and bashed for ten minutes until someone kills their goldfish, insults their mother or foolishly asks the DJ to play their theme music. It’s a staple of action movies; that moment when the hero looks up (why always up?) and everything stops for a moment. And then… a 55-gallon drum of whup-ass and a side order of cheese, if you please….
But that’s not how it happens on the streets. Here’s what DOES happen...
The Opening Moves
There are basically 2 kinds of street encounter; the Altercation and the Ambush.
Altercations
An Altercation involves a certain amount of mutual consent. Usually altercations begin with some kind of disagreement, or with someone determined to pick a fight. There is plenty of time to see an altercation coming. It will begin with jostling, shouting, threats, insults, or maybe an invitation to go outside and settle the matter. Altercations also happen when someone is confronted with a threat – say, a robbery – and decides to resist.
Whatever the cause, there is plenty of warning, and both parties are pretty much ready to fight. Only an idiot can’t tell that a situation is sliding towards violence. Unless you’re cornered, it’s usually possible to avoid fighting with a few soothing words or a fast exit. Pride, ego, peer pressure and, well, “recreational chemicals” are often factors in persuading people that they “can’t back down”.
When it does happen, its sudden. There’s a bit of mutual pushing and shoving, some shouts and threats, and the suddenly someone hits a “trigger” and he (or she, let’s not be sexist now!) goes to Fight Mode. We’ll get to what happens when the fists start flying in just a moment.
Ambushes
The other sort of fight begins without mutual consent, when the victim is suddenly attacked. The obvious case is a sudden (stealthy) attack from behind – say to knock the victim down for robbery or abduction. However, some “street fighters” use a very different technique to ambush their victims – they walk right up and do it!
The frontal ambusher doesn’t lead with a fast left jab; he leads with deception. Either by just ambling up seeming not to notice his victim, or by engaging them in “disarming” conversation, he sneaks up close without setting off any alarm bells. Then, when he’s perfectly positioned, he launches his attack. This won’t be a probing jab – no need, he’s got a clear shot. He’ll throw a powerful one-shot fight-winner at his unsuspecting victim. Whatever he does after that is for his own amusement – he’s already won.
Fighting Techniques – or Lack Thereof
Most people can’t fight worth beans. Instinctive responses just aren’t good enough, and sometimes even trained martial artists forget what they’re doing and flail about in a way that would embarrass Frankenstein’s Monster. People who study street fights see the same stuff over again, and it’s neither scientific nor pretty.
Most street fights are won by whoever gets the first decent blow in, especially if it hits the head. Now, if the target is stood there unsuspecting, or even has their back to the attacker, then landing a good one isn’t so hard. That’s why the first punch is so important – whoever moves first has a chance of getting a strike in before the fight has started, catching the other guy off guard, and, well, WHAM!
If this first attack fails, then matters become more complicated. It is amazingly difficult to hit someone who is moving about, sticking their arms in the way, and generally trying not to be hit. If they’re throwing a few punches of their own, it’s even harder.
And even if those punches hit, it’s by no means certain that a clean, solid blow will be obtained. More likely there will be a series of glancing blows; painful but not the end of the matter. One reason for this that that in the adrenline-fulled panic of a street fight, people tend to just flail away at one another. Say bye-bye to good technique and hello to big, desperate swinging punches. One nice phrase for this technique is “head down and swim”.
The commonest fight-related injury of them all is a bruised or cracked cheekbone where an ill-aimed hook punch has struck the side of the head. Such a blow should really end the matter, if it were to hit cleanly and in a suitable spot – and if the target wasn’t so full of adrenaline that he barely felt the bone break! In this situation, it’s hardly surprising that people get desperate, and this is where the grabbing starts.
This is the reason for all that grabbing. Getting hold of someone might immobilize their weapons (fists!) or pin them to be punched or head-butted. There is a deep-seated instinct that makes us grab during a fight, and there’s another reason too. Fine motor control is rapidly lost under stress, but there are things you can always do until your heart rate is so high you have a stroke. Those things are simple movements like pushing, pulling, kneeing etc.
Once someone has a good grip on a limb or clothing, they won’t let go (they probably can’t, even if they would like to!). Punching becomes ineffective at such close quarters, so the inevitable wrestling match begins. The combatants start dragging one another about, knocking over furniture and trampling buildings like something in a Godzilla movie… and then at some point it goes to the ground.
It doesn’t matter how the fight gets to the floor. Sometimes one of the combatants takes the other down deliberately. Sometimes one or both fall over something or just lose their balance. Whatever the reason, down they go and the Great Groundfighting Lottery begins.
It’s a lottery because you can’t always predict who will end up on top in the initial scramble. But after the initial rolling and scrambling about is over, two very clear factors dominate a ground fight: who is stronger, and who is on top.
Assuming that nobody runs over and starts kicking one or both of the combatants, and nothing happens to break the fight up, then it’s all a bit one-sided after this. The scales steadily tip until one guy is helpless and the other is pummelling him. And once that starts, there’s no theme music or dramatic plot moment to save you – it’s over, dude!
All of this refers to untrained people, but the same things happen to trained fighters who lose their heads or who make a mistake and surrender control of the situation to a strong but untrained opponent. Or to anyone else for that matter – ANYONE can end up on the deck. In fact, a high proportion of fights that aren’t over in the first 3-6 seconds (!) go to the floor.
Trained People
You might think that trained martial artists should be able to avoid getting into a scruffy grapplefest. Most would like to; after all that time spent learning elegant and effective techniques it’s a bit of a shame not to be able to use them because you’re on the floor under some sweaty 18-stone psycho.
Trained people have a tremendous advantage when trying to stay. A good guard, tight evasion and an eye for the shot, all combined with the ability to punch hard and fast, will sometimes – SOMETIMES! – give a trained fighter the edge required to neatly demolish an assailant without ending up on the floor.
Of course, some people train hard for the floor arena; so hard that it’s their preferred battleground. End up on the deck with a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert, for example, and you’re in for it! But as a rule it’s a bad idea to go to the floor if you can possibly avoid it. It’s just too random. You can bang your head on a kerbstone or be kicked by a second attacker (or a random passer-by; it happens all the time!) and lose the fight despite your formidable groundfighting skills. So, even skilled groundfighters normally prefer to stay upright.
Every martial artist or person concerned with self-defense should learn some basic groundfighting, because a fight may well go to the floor despite their best efforts otherwise. The truth is that anyone who wants to get in close and grab or wrestle will almost certainly manage it.
A skilled “street” fighter will evade, fend off grabs, and make room for his (or her!) devastating punches and short kicks. Or he might allow the attacker to close in and use a throwing technique or a takedown. But the sad and sorry fact is that the longer it goes on, the more likely it is to go to the floor.
Streetfighting Distance
The point of all that stuff about groundfighting is that street fights start out at close range, and they just keep on getting closer. That means that the weapon of choice in a street battle is – hands! Hands are great. They’re positioned to defend your head and body, and attack his. They’re fast but hit hard (and yeah, you can grapple with them too. Or hold your beer…)
Hands are basically short-range weapons, which is fine because on the street, or in a bar, on the bus, supermarket, parking lot or any of the other places that a fight may break out, chances are you’ll be at “hands” range before you know it. It IS possible to kick at this distance, but kicks have to be short, fast and unspectacular as opposed to the big, crowd-pleasing variety.
If you want to use the big kicks, you’ll have to make the distance to use them. Big, powerful kicks take time to perform, and you need some room. Remember how everyone keeps on getting closer? That eats up your kicking range pretty damn quick. It’s kind of embarrassing to have someone run in and push you over or punch you as you spin for the big kick.
As to actually being any use, well. A good kick is a fight-winner, no doubt. But it’s also slow and makes you vulnerable. It isn’t enough to be an excellent kicker if you want to use them on the street. Being an excellent kicker is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM required to use kicks. You also need perfect timing, excellent tactics, good mobility and a bit of luck. On the one (ONE!) occasion I’ve landed my favorite spinning reverse hook kick on someone’s head, we had to go looking for his brain. It was in a pond two blocks over. The other six thousand attempts failed. Do the math…
The moral of the story is don't do flashy kicks on the street. Indeed don't kick at all. Hand strikes and some ability to grapple are essential. And don't get caught by surprise. Because unlike the movies, once you start to lose, you tend to go on losing until you're a pulp.
