Maglite 2 D Cell flashlight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today’s lesson was my second-in-a-row that introduced a client to weapon awareness. However, the context was different in this instance. My previous clients were planning to reside in a country with a strong gun culture and carried a high risk factor. Today’s client is a student who is living in a UK city. However, said client travels a lot, so I bore this in mind.
We began with a quick revision of basic self-defence tactics. This began with simple body movements to improve straight and round strikes. We then briefly went through pre-emptive striking, incidental combinations, recovery and anti-grappling. I then returned to striking and the offline strike, which brought in the use of an incidental weapon. In this case, I used the Maglite torch. This moved onto forehand and backhand striking with a weapon.
I brought up the misleading idea of an unarmed assault. Just about any attack can potentially become one that uses a weapon. Hard walls, floor and furniture have become deciding elements in many a real life fight or assault. Besides, before the physical element comes into play a targeted person rarely knows whether their assailant is armed. Often, when a person has been struck it is not the strike that causes the direct damage, but what the struck person hits after the initial impact.
Assumption that an assailant is armed will make you more prepared. However, we still looked at weapon recognition. We covered confirmation checks – when a would-be attacker pats a concealed weapon upon their approach – and various obvious behaviours. It is important to raise the alarm as soon as possible and to run to available exits. All weapon defence training should begin with a student recognizing their exit and do their best to get to it. Only after this is confirmed, should they move onto any activity where that involves engaging the attacker. This only happens when exits are blocked. We then moved onto finding and using incidental weapons. This is based on movements taught earlier when we used the Maglite.
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