Restraint

is often talked about in the martial arts fraternity.
Does it work? Doesn't it work? Many police instructors have
made a career out of teaching restraining techniques.
Personally I think the only kind of truly effective restraint is
unconsciousness. Knock them out and they're restrained.
The rest of the time any kind of restraining technique is at
best dodgy. The only time I have found restraints effective is
when the opponent lets me put the technique on (like they do
in so many police training schools), or if I am facing a very
weak opponent. The rest of the time it is just too risky.
Someone that wants to fight properly will not be restrained.
For those times when restraint might be an option we'll
explore one or two techniques, after all it is a part of fighting
without fighting.

This kind of ploy

is only useful in the
very early stages of the attacker's ritual and only if the locale
is right. If you have been abducted or are completely
detached from the herd it could be dangerous. Many
attackers kill their victims if they think that they have been
recognised. In all these cases your intention is to frighten the
adversary, via your portrayal, into bottling it. The common.
street term for this process is 'Psyching Out' .
Climbing inside the opponent and switching on/off his fight
or flight reaction to beat him with guile, as opposed to force,
is advanced play and needs a great understanding to employ
with conviction. Practice is of the essence if you want it to
work and not backfire on you. I go into greater detail on the
subject in my autobiographical books about my ten years as a
nightclub doorman Watch My Back - A Bouncers Story,
Bouncer and On The Door -Further Bouncer Adventures.

The bottom line was,

he had
no idea of how to do a 'square go' (a match fight)
I often teach people, as a pre-cursory action trigger to preemptiveness,
to ask their assailants a question to engage their
brain. The question can be relative to what is happening or
abstract, 'Is your mum's name Elsie?' or 'How's your mother/
family/brother, these days?' Many of my students have found
this effective. An excellent by-product of this is, the potential
attacker doesn't realise that it is an engaging ploy and often
thinks his chosen victim has recognised him, and really does
know his mother/brother/sister. Again they often beat a hasty
retreat before attack.

If he thinks

that you are blagging him, he
won't be psyched out. Personally I train in match fighting as
a part of the back up, support system so that I am ready to
take that challenge should it be accepted. Many people do
not and are completely flummoxed when their antagonist
says, 'Yeah, okay, I'll have some of that!' This causes an
adrenal rush in you and the whole process is reversed. So, if
this approach is employed be committed to follow it through
- just in case.
A friend of mine tried the veteran approach. He told his
antagonist in a very calm manner that if he wasn't happy that
they would have to 'Sort it out on the common', not really
expecting him to meet the challenge. All right,' came the
reply, 'let's do it now!' My mate dropped his bottle quicker
than a greasy palmed milkman.

I have used this type of approach dozens of time
successfully myself. However, there is a danger with
posturing: if it doesn't work and the assailant overrides his
natural instinct to run/ freeze then you could be in trouble.
You have certainly lost the element of surprise that's for
sure. If you throw a challenge it may be met and accepted. If
it is you had better be able to back it up or be able to back
pedal in a hurry. I never throw a challenge unless I am
totally committed to following that challenge through should
it be accepted. It is fair to say that if you don't believe in
what you are saying then your potential assailant won't
believe you either.

down a quiet suburban street on
his way home after his usual, evening teaching session. He
noticed three youths hovering, several yards away on the
opposite side of the street. When they approached him he
was ready. 'Give us your money, or you'll get hurt,' said the
leader of the three. Master Abbe looked at each one in turn,
then casually took his wallet out of his jacket pocket,
throwing it on the floor between himself and his antagonists.
He pointed to the wallet and said, 'I'm prepared to die for
that wallet. What about you?' The three would-be attackers
looked at the wallet on the floor, then at Abbe, then at each
other. Without further ado they all ran away, obviously not
prepared to die for the wallet. Master Abbe picked up his
wallet and calmly walked home.

I only use a positive adrenaline switch if I
see a chink in the opponent's armour. This perception has
come from many years of dealing with violence and violent
people. If you can't read an opponent then I wouldn't
recommend employing this tactic, better to stick with
submissiveness and use it as a negative adrenaline switch.
I remember hearing a great story about one of the old
Japanese Sensie, Master Abbe, a world renowned martial
arts teacher.

Society is
not kind either
to the fellow that runs away from his antagonists. So the
contemporary enemy and peer pressure force the adrenal
syndrome into antiquity.
A person that understands this syndrome can use it to great
advantage if you use it as an attacking tool, especially against
an enemy that doesn't understand it. As I said we are
manipulating man's natural instinct to want to run as opposed
to fight. By triggering adrenaline in an opponent I am also
triggering his flight response. When he feels like running
away, because society looks poorly on a 'runner', it will cause
the opponent massive self-doubt and, hopefully cause him to
capitulate. Everything in life has its opposite and the danger
with any positive adrenaline switch is that it can backfire on
you. If the recipient overrides the urge to capitulate the
release may make him stronger and faster -a dangerous
adversary indeed.

The cat makes himself as big and

aggressive as possible to try and frighten the dog away.
I recommend that you take advantage of your opponent's
reaction to you posturing and make your get away as soon as
possible. We have already spoken about the adrenal
syndrome, how it can effect the human body and how the
reasoning process mistakes adrenaline for fear, thus
triggering the 'flight' response. By giving an opponent an
adrenal release, we trigger the natural instinct to either freeze
or run. Both of these would have been very natural defences
against prehistoric beasts that were too fearsome to stand and
fight or whose eyesight was poor and would not be able to
see a frozen enemy, only attacking when they sensed
movement. In this society 'freezing' or 'running' is not always
an option and may only get you battered by an antagonist
that will use a frozen adversary as a punch bag.

Back your ballooning

up with a physical fence, pointing, and
a verbal fence in the form of strong commands like, 'Keep
away from me, stay where you are!' If you make this loud
III!
and aggressive and splay your arms erratically this would be
classed as 'posturing'. Posturing is the art of fighting without
fighting. This is what animals do in nature, generally with
animals of their own species. Rather than fight and kill each
other and thus threaten the survival of their own species, they
posture by making themselves as big and as aggressive as
possible, thus triggering the flight response in their opponent,
defeating them without injury. Watch the cat when he faces
the dog, his back rises, his eyes glare, he hisses aggressively.
He looks ferocious.

After creating

the gap make yourself a hard target by
'ballooning', or 'stalking'. This is done by pacing left to right
without taking your eyes off the opponent, at the same time
you shout out verbal commands like, 'stay there, don't
move!' and point to the opponent, this acts as a secondary
back up fence to the verbal.
Interestingly the ballooning also triggers innate instincts
within the opponent that go right back to the dawn of
mammalian man, when we were not at the top of the food
chain and were prey to bigger animals. Your antagonist will
literally feel as though he is being 'stalked' before attack. The
thought that he is being hunted like a wild beast will serve to
increase his woe. If you watch the cheetah when it hunts the
antelope, he balloons (or stalks) just before the attack -in fact
most animals do, we are no exception. It can be used by us
as an attacking tool to trick the opponent into a flight
response, or against us -often inadvertently -to effect the
same 'freeze' or 'flight' tendencies.

The only way that he is going to be able to override this very
strong emotion is to consciously disregard all natural
instincts and move forward. Not an easy task, especially if
the adversary is not an experienced one. This very often
effects what I like to call the 'sticky feet syndrome'. The
attacker may very well want to move forward because peer
pressure
demands that he fight and not run away, but his feet appear
stuck to the floor, his body lurches forward as though trying
to move, but his feet stay stuck firmly to the ground. This is
because natural instinct is telling him to run for it.

His instincts

(which will have been in his genes through
many, many generations) will inform him that he is cornered
and that he should 'fight his way out'. (This is not a good
thing for obvious reasons.) If however you shove him out of
attack range you will trigger his 'flight' response and give
him the instinct to run or freeze because he is no longer a
cornered animal, so there is no longer a reason to fight. He
won't even know this on a conscious level, but thousands of
years of instinct will inform him that he is no longer
cornered and he should run for his very life. Even if he does
not run away, the fact that he feels like running away will
create confusion and self-doubt triggering more adrenaline
and a downward spiral to capitulation.
Once you have created a gap (and the confusion) the
opponent is forced out of attack mode and into escape mode.

The reasons

for the gap are manifold, not least because it
takes the opponent out of his striking range. What it also
does is take the opponent from a state of reaction to a state
of response -from 'fight' response to 'flight' response. Let
me explain: if you shove the opponent, but not out of range,
he may automatically react to the shove with a countershove,
or an attack, of his own. He'll do this without even
thinking because it is an automatic reaction. Whilst in fight
or flight mode we are in what is known as 'mid-brain', and in
midbrain we are hardly discernible from animals. Our prime
objective in mid-brain is survival, and if that means running
away that is what our instinct will get us to do. In effect, by
staying within strike range you are forcing the opponent into
a 'fight' response, and he will react like a cornered animal.

The intention

of the shove (or whatever device you use) is to
trigger adrenaline in your opponent, thus hopefully
triggering his 'flight response', making him feel the urge to
want to run away. By triggering the adrenaline you
automatically trigger the 95% Rule. So, if the situation has
reached an impasse and you think it is going to become
physical, but you do not want to attack him for whatever
reason, then shove him hard in the chest, knocking him
backwards and out of immediate attacking range. This
minimal physical contact will cause an adrenal release in the
opponent. Back the shove up with a very aggressive verbal
fence, 'Stay there, don't fucking move!' Use expletives to add
intent and aggression. I feel that this is important because it
is the 'speak' of the street. If you were to say 'Damn well stay
there you cad!' it would be devoid of weight and the attacker
would probably laugh you off the planet. Speak in his
language or he won't understand you.

The fence

will be crushed and you attacked as a consequence.
It is important with the conscious fence to create a gap about
5 feet would be good -between you and the assailant. You
can do this by stepping back (or pushing him back if you
can't step back for some reason) away from the attacker,
whilst simultaneously using your lead hand to shove the
attacker so that he also goes back. You can also create a gap
by using a slap and step back, a two handed shove or a Thai
leg kick. Any approach will do, as long as after the contact
you create a gap between you and he.

The Fence

So, back to the script. If, for whatever reason, you find
yourself in front of a potential attacker who is constantly
touching the fence and giving you signs that an attack is
imminent and you can't bring yourself to attack preemptively,
then you need to create a gap between you and
him and take the fence to a conscious level. That means that
he will realise that you are taking control. If he is trying to
bridge the gap and take down the fence, but you are not
prepared to attack then you MUST take the fence to a
conscious level or you are facing grave danger.

Let me explain:

you take your stress out on a family member, perhaps your
wife, she gets in a mood with you and doesn't speak for two
days. What does that do? It creates more stress because there
is contention in the home. I could go on all day about this but
I am already aware that I have slipped outside the context of
this book. So for more details on this please refer to my
books Fear The Friend of Exceptional People and The Other
Side of Fear.

Moving jobs, moving

house, changing partners, confronting the boss etc. may
cause us enough worry to fool the brain into thinking that the
intangible threat is in fact a sabre-toothed tiger, releasing
adrenaline that is not utilised behaviourally. Of course these
things are not life and death scenarios, but our senses think
that they are and still give us the instinct to run away, which
a greater majority do and so never achieve their life's
dreams. People often don't take chances in their life, career,
relationship or hobby because they feel this mammalian
instinct to run for their lives. Fear is what keeps people
ordinary. Humans, as a species, do not realise their potential,
because fear acts as a barrier between them and their
dreams. We are also left with the very corrosive effect of
Cortisol remaining in the blood stream when behavioural
fight or flight was not actuated.

Instinct

Our 'ancestral Instinct', Is badly outdated and has gone crazy
in a society where we have more neurological stressors than
ever before. The fight or flight instinct works off the senses
and triggers adrenaline and other stress hormones, such as
Cortisol, when it feels that danger is imminent. In theory this
seems fine, it prepares us for a life or death battles with
contemporary aggressors. In reality though this is not the
case because our senses are constantly being attacked by
stimuli that 'might' be aggressive but most often are not.
Even the aggressive horn of a car can trigger 'fight or flight',
releasing a cocktail of stress hormones into the blood for a
behavioural release that never occurs.

During the Vietnam

War the soldiers were taught to override
natural instinct and, as a consequence, the 95% rule was
reversed -95% of the soldiers did kill. This reversal was due
to the psychological training that the soldiers were put
through. The American soldiers went through a period of
desensitisation and dehumanisation: they watched video
footage of the Viet Cong acting out atrocities -killing,
butchering, raping women and children -until they no longer
saw their enemy as human beings, rather they viewed them
as animals. When they shot at the Vet Cong they were
merely shooting rats on a river bank. It is slightly peripheral
to this book, but I have to say that dehumanisation, in my
opinion is not a good thing, it is used here only to give
example to my point.