Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

In ‘groin strikes part one’ I described the most efective kind of strike to use in close quarters combat; in this second part I want to look at a medium / long range technique. This technique is a combined block and counter-strike which I learned years ago as a teenager when I was studying Ninjutsu, and which has the beautifully poetic name of ‘monkey steals the peach’.

There are two main scenarios in which this technique is highly effective: 1) If you are in a long range (further than arms reach) stand-off and your opponent charges forwards with a punch. The reason yI’m being so specific with this in specifying long range is because a punch from medium or short range will reach you too quickly for most block and counter strike techniques, including this one. (see Classic Street Fighter: Kiss the Fist for an effective short range defense). 2) If your attacker steps forwards to grab hold of you, either by the shirt or the throut.

The following description assumes that you are right-handed, and should be simply reversed if you are left-handed. As soon as your attacker moves towards you step forwards with your left foot, bending your right leg so that you drop down onto your right knee. At the same time bring your left arm upwards with your forearm parallel to the ground. You should be aiming to knock the attack upwards over your head using your forearm at the same time as dropping down underneath it as you go down on one knee. At exactly the same time your right arm should swing out and then up into your atacker’s groin. You are aiming to make contact for this strike with the palm of your hand, specifically the ‘heel’ of the hand at the base of your thumb. Immediately as you make contact with the strike close your hand into a fist, grabbing and squeezing the testicles as hard as you can, and then rise up again, bringing your left foot back in line with your right foot and yanking your grabing hand back towards you.

This grabbing and yanking movement makes this a much more devastating technique than a simple strike, and is guaranteed to finish any fight if you get it right. A sharp and powerful yank can actually tear the scrotum (hence the name ‘monkey steals the peach’), so it should only be used if you are in serious danger and need to end a confrontation immediately at all costs.

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When looking at the practical realities of street fighting one of the things that it is vital to recognise is that sometimes you have to fight dirty. This is emphatically not the case with modern sports oriented martial arts, and even many traditional martial arts have centuries old honour codes which forbid certain things. But if you are potentially fighting for your life in a street encounter you have to be ready to do anything, and likewise if you are an average build women trying to defend yourself against a larger man who is trying to rape you, then you should have absolutely no qualms about doing whatever it takes to incapacitate them, and often your only chance (other than knowledge and training) is to simply be more viscious than your attacker is prepared for.

One of the most effective ‘dirty fighting’ techniques, at least against a man, is the groin strike. This is so obvious that it is what most people would go for instinctively, but very few people know the best way to go about it. The classic example of a groin strike is, of course, to kick someone in the testicals, but this is actually one of the least effective attacks. There are two reasons for this: firstly it is very easy to miss in the chaos of a real fight (most kicks like this will end up banging into the inner thigh, or coming straight up and striking the perineum behind the testicals), and secondly, although a kick is likely to be very powerful, unless you are wearing steel toe-capped boots the striking surface of the foot will be softer and less damaging than a strike with the hand. So what I am going to do, over a couple of blog posts, is to look at a couple of different groin strikes, for use in different hand-to-hand fighting scenarios.

The first technique I will describe in this post is for use in very close range fighting. This means when you are basically ‘toe to toe’ with your opponent, within a few inches of one another. Perhaps they have grabbed hold of you, by the throut or by the front of your top, or perhaps you have fallen into each other during a messy scuffle. It can also work is you are on the floor and your attacker is on top of you. This strike is called (at least in some systems) a reverse hammer punch. Clenching your hand into an ordinary fist you should aim to make contact with the side of your hand, and the area running from the knuckle where your thumb joins your palm to the very base of your thumb bone where it meets your wrist. This area is small enough to concentrate the force of the strike, but large enough that you shouldn’t miss. Starting with your arm hanging down by your side, you can put extra force into the strike by generating as much of a swinging motion as you can, turning your upper body towards the opposite arm to add to this, whilst also bending your arm to lift your fist up into the groin. Although it sounds obvious it is worth mentioning that you should always look at where your aiming for, as many people neglect to do so with low strikes like this. If you have access to a heavy hanging bag then a bit of practice can really pay off with this technique in terms of power generation, but even without a great deal of power this should be enough to temporarily incapacitate your opponent.

In part two, which I’ll add at some point over the next week or so, I’ll describe a nasty little palm strike and grab starting from mid-range.

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Here is what I believe to be the most effective defense and disarming technique against someone trying to stab you in the torso. This post follows on from my earlier one ‘The Basics of Knife Defense‘ and assumes that you have adopted the defensive stance described there, so I suggest you read that one first if you haven’t read it already.

One of the most important thing in blocking a knife (or bottle or other sharp object) attack is that you need to use a solid, powerful and reliable block. The crossed arms of the knife defense stance come in useful here as it allows for a natural double arm block. Simultaneously bend over slighlty, moving your belly and side away from your attacker, whilst bringing both arms down hard onto the attacking arm or your opponent. Your arms should remain crossed, coming down is a scissors like movement so that when they hit they trap knife arm of the attacker between your hands. This is a very reliable block because it doesn’t require to much accuracy, it is an instinctive movement working with your natural reactions, and it has a lot of strength behind it.

But blocking a knife attack is not enough; you also need to disarm them and take away the knife to stop them coming straight back at you. Assuming that the attack is right handed you should grab hold of their wrist with your right hand. If they attack with the left you also grab with your left. You have to be quite quick to perform this disarm, so it is worth mentioning that if you don’t get a good grab straight away you need to back off and get out of their striking range as quickly as possible. When you make the grab you should be trying to place your thumb so that it runs down the back of their hand, while you fingers should be as close as possible to the wrist joint where the arm meets the hand, on the inside of the arm.

As soon as you have hold of them lean back and pull towards you to straighten their arm as much as possible, whilst simultaneously uncrossing your arms, bringing your holding arm round in a semi-circle and turning it over so that the back of your hand is facing the floor.  This movement should turn over their arm so that their elbow is pointing upwards. At this point you have a hold, and only need to apply pressure for a double lock. Pushing with your thumb on the back of their hand applies a writs lock, whilst using your other hand to push down on the elbow gives you a painful arm lock.

You must remember that the wrist and arm lock are not done for their own sake, but just to make them drop the knife. The second you have the lock, if they don’t drop the weapon automatically, you should shout at them to drop it, and the second they do you should let go of them and grab the weapon yourself.

As soon as I get the chance I will put together a video of this technique, as well as others for attacks to different areas of the body, and add it here, but for now hopefully this description has given you a clear enough picture for you to get a good feel for the technique.