Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

You can learn a lot about how to defend yourself in a street fight by watching videos of people actually doing that. OnlineFightVideo.com have just added a street fighting videos section to its regularly updated blog featuring the best fight videos. Unlike many other sites that have this kind of thing the videos which get included are all hand picked for quality, and all of the videos in this new section feature demonstrations of real martial arts and self defense skill rather than just clueless thugs going at each other, so you really should be able to learn somthing from them. Its still new so there aren’t many videos there yet, but the site is still well worth a look

This post follows on from The Basics on Knife Defense, and you should read that one first or you probably won’t follow this one.

From the knife defense ready stance if someone goes for you with a stabbing attack to the head or neck area here is what you should do. Firstly, as with the previous midsection attack I explained, you should block with both forearms by pushing them upwards. Assuming that they have attacked with their right arm you then turn your right hand and grab their wrist whilst uncrossing your arms. You should therefore be holding them so that the back of their hand is facing your palm. Step towards them and simply bring their attacking arm up behind their back whilst using your left arm to grab hold of their neck or shoulder so that they can’t easily step forwards or turn out of the arm lock.

Obviously the best way to not get knocked out is not to get hit in the head, but refining this just a little bit getting hit in the back of the head or with a hook punch to the back of the head are both more likely to lead to you getting knocked out so you should take extra effort to avoid these.

Getting hit when your not looking is the one thing that is most likely to knock you out, so being aware and watching your opponent closely at all times is the main thing that you should do.

Going beyond this, you can also train yourself so that you are more able to take a hit without getting knocked out. The thing that actually causes the k.o. is the sharp jerking of the head when you are hit, so the main factor in why some people go down easier than others is neck strength. If you have the strength to hold your head steady when you are hit then you are much less likely to lose consciousness.

One great all round neck strengthening exercise is just to do a head stand up against a wall and hold it. But the best neck strength exercise is to take a chair and rest just your head on it, and then straighten up your whole body to make it like a rigid board. You are then holding yourself up in this position with the neck muscles. At first this is quite tough, and you may not be able to hold it for very long. But when you can do this for a few minutes you can then add a second chair to rest your feet on to make it even harder. At this stage it is important to resist the temptation to cheat by placing your shoulders on the chair to take some of the weight. This advanced stage is called ‘iron board’ training in kung fu, and is great for the back and torso muscles as well as the neck.

On a relates subject, you may like to take a look at this article on How To Knock Someone Out

I decided to start a new series of posts today, giving you my pick of all of the deadliest street fighting techniques I can find from any martial art.

I am kicking things of with something very simple, but very deadly - the stomp. Stamping on the head of a person who is on the ground causes serious damage and can often actually be fatal, so it is something you should never do except in the most desperate possible circumstances (like if you are being attacked by more than one person who you know wants to do you serious harm, and you need to make sure that if you knock someone down they won’t just get straight back up and come at you again).

So here is the technique for performing a powerful stomp. Raise your knee up as high and as close to your body as you can without losing your balance - it doesn’t matter how high your foot is lifted from the ground, it is the height of the knee that will determine how much power you can put into the technique. As you raise your knee you should also raise both hands in front of your body and cross them over. As you stomp down simultaneously throw your arms down and uncross them with as much force as you can. This arm movement serves 2 functions. Firstly it helps you to put all of the weight of your body into the stomp, and it also generates extra momentum from the muscles of the upper body an focusses it downwards into the stomp.

More of the deadly martial arts fighting techniques coming soon!

In part two of this series of three posts I finnished off by describing the principles relating to how you use your opponents own power against them. That is fine in certain situations, but this third and final post is about going one step further than this to manipulate your opponent into providing the force that you require.

Actually the basic principle is deceptively simple: All you have to do is to try and force them to do the opposite the thing you actually want them to do, and then le go quickly. So if you want your opponent to move to the right, then try to push them to the left. when you do this they will resist by pushing back to the right, and if you stop pushing suddenly they will fall to the right before they can react to the abscence of resistance.

As with most things the best way to explain how this principle can actually be applied to street fighting is to describe an actual technique in which it is used:

Imagine that there are two men, one on either side of you, and they have grabbed hold of your arms. Perhaps they are trying to drag you off somewhere, or maybe they are holding you so that a third person can give you a beating. This is a dangerous situation, and unless you are much, much larger and stronger than them it will be virtually impossible to throw them off and escape. In any kind of scenario like this, in which you are likely to have at least a couple of seconds to think things through, your first thought should be to identify their weak points. With your arms restrained you can only attack with your legs, so the obvious weak point is the knees of your attackers inside legs. But just kicking their legs won’t do you much good. What you need is for them both to have all of their weight on their inside legs, so that a swift kick to he back of the knees will knock them both down to the ground. But again, unless you are some kind of hercules and they are 8 stone weaklings you will find it very difficult to pull two people around like this. So what do you do? The answer is simple. Rather than pull them into you, start off by trying to push them away from you. They respond by pushing back towards you. You then make a sudden switch to pull your arms inwards, they will add their strength to your puling them ont their inside legs, and you push your knee into the back of the knee of one attacker (effectively kneeling down on the back of their leg) whilst kicking the same area on the other attacker. Both of them will go down from this, and you can ten break their grip and get away with a simple backwards roll.

There are, of course, other specific techniques for using this principle in street fighting situations, and I may describe some of them in later posts, but then best fighters will use the general principle and adapt it to whatever situation they find themselves in, rather than sticking purely to preset techniques.