What causes an assailant to break off an attack?

What causes an assailant to break off an attack?

By Dr. David Harrison, KIDPOWER Vancouver Center Director

This is a Publication of KIDPOWER TEENPOWER FULLPOWER International.
Copyright 2005 All rights reserved. www.kidpower.org

This is an important question, the answer to which can guide your selection of self defense tools and tactics. Attackers are deterred from attacking for a number of reasons.

Anticipation of detection and apprehension
Anticipation of personal injury
Pain from physical injury
Incapacitation from physical injury
Unconsciousness

Anticipation of detection and apprehension

Most attackers do not want to get caught. This is why appearing to be aware of your environment, and capable of taking charge of it, will cause many opportunistic attackers to select other quarry. If an attack is initiated, making as much noise as possible is a good defensive tactic and may be enough to cause the attacker to flee.

Anticipation of personal injury

Most attackers would like to avoid personal injury, although a very determined attacker may accept some injury in order to achieve his goal. Awareness and confidence is once again important to make an assailant who fears that you may be able to fight back think twice about attacking. If an attack is initiated, an immediate, direct, and explosive physical defense will stop most attacks because it signals that you are not easy prey.

Pain from physical injury

An attacker may have to actually be injured before he will abort an attack. Pain is the universal signal that tells us we are injured. Inflicting as much pain as possible in defending against an attack is important. The fictitious “Five Hand Death Blow” that causes your attacker to drop dead after taking five steps away from you does not help you during an attack if it does not immediately signal to the assailant that he is injured. In the real world, a minor fingernail scratch on the cornea (clear part on the front of the eye), which causes immediate eye watering and temporary, reversible blindness, is a more effective self defense tool than a blow to the eye that causes no abrasion but may result in a permanent visual problem a few days down the road.

Pain compliance

This raises the issue of pain compliance techniques (techniques that rely on the controlled, steady application of pain to make to make a person cooperate). Examples include arm bars and wrist locks. Many of the sport oriented grappling martial arts, and some self defense oriented systems, rely on pain to convince a person to break off an attack or otherwise comply. This assumes that the assailant is not completely committed to the attack, and that he has normal pain perception.

There are certain circumstances in which an assailant may not feel pain in the normal way, for example under the influence of a large adrenaline surge or street drugs such as PCP, methamphetamine, or cocaine. This is why my personal bias is that pain compliance techniques may be effective self defense techniques in the hands of a highly skilled practitioner, provided that they easily extend into an incapacitating technique in the event that pain compliance is not achieved.

Pain compliance techniques are important for law enforcement and security professionals who may be required to restrain and detain someone. However, if you are restraining someone with a pain compliance technique you are not running away, which is what you should be doing at the first opportunity. So although we do rely on pain from our striking techniques to stop an attacker, we do not teach sophisticated pain compliance techniques in KIDPOWER.

Incapacitation from physical injury

Incapacitation from physical injury implies that the assailant is physically incapable of continuing the attack for involuntary mechanical or physiological reasons. Examples include involuntary eye closure, watering and temporary blindness from an eye strike; inability to stand up because of an ear strike causing severe dizziness; inability to stand up, run, grasp or strike because of a broken bone or dislocated joint. The ultimate form of temporary incapacitation is unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

Unconsciousness can be produced in several ways. The slowest way is through choking. Usually in self defense scenarios the assailant is the choker and the victim is the “chok-ee”. Choking is achieved by applying a force that blocks or otherwise damages the airway in the throat area, usually with the hands. The throat is a very sensitive area. Attacks to this area can be immediately incapacitating by causing gagging, nausea, coughing, and difficulty breathing (choking). That is why they are called …well…chokes.

From a self defense perspective strikes to the throat can be very effective because they do cause lots of pain, and may cause nearly complete and immediate incapacitation. However it takes at least 2 to 3 minutes before a choke will cause unconsciousness, because that is how long you can hold your breath.

Strangulation

People who lose consciousness immediately when grabbed by the throat have actually been strangled. Strangulation is what happens when the blood supply to the brain is blocked. This usually requires pressure to be applied to both sides of the neck, over the carotid arteries. This may result in loss of consciousness within seconds. Strangulation techniques can be very dangerous, causing damage to the carotid arteries and potential permanent brain damage, stroke or death.

At KIDPOWER Vancouver we do not teach how to perform chokes or strangles for obvious reasons. However, we do teach how to escape from them and how to strike to the throat.

Concussion

The fastest way to produce unconsciousness is by causing a concussion. A concussion is a temporary malfunction of the brain area responsible for wakefulness, caused when the head is struck. Often it involves a sudden rotation of the head. For this reason the most reliable way to produce a concussion is with a hard strike to the head, especially on the jaw or chin. KIDPOWER teaches how to strike the head with a variety of weapons including the hands, elbows, knees and, in ground fighting, with the feet.

A publication of KIDPOWER TEENPOWER FULLPOWER International