This week’s scenario will be…
Self-Defense and Fighting in
Snazzy Everyday Attire.
We won’t be doing anything overly strenuous, so don’t worry about getting your satin cummerbund all sweaty. You needn’t wear your finest JC Penney tuxedo, just something that’s not comfortable training attire. Whatever you wear to work is fine—unless you day-trade from home in your underwear.
Saturday, 1/19, 8:30AM
Post requests for future scenarios to the comments below!
Don’t forget–tennis shoes only on the mats. But, if you want to work in other shoes, just to see what it’s like to groin kick in heels, we can go into the waiting room.
Hey guys,
I can’t make it to your classes, but one scenario that troubles me is the punch you can’t see.
Here’s a news story about a Pittsburgh teacher who got cold-cocked by one sucker punch. He face-planted on the curb, which did even more damage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE8kTWGzbxU
This attack is one example (and a mild one at that) of the “knockout game” contagion. (Google it.) Packs of youths pick one victim at random for a surprise attack and take them out with one punch. Many victims are less lucky than the teacher above. Once they are laid out by the sucker punch, they are set upon by the rest of the gang. Robbery isn’t the motive; random violence is.
Obviously, you can’t defend a punch you can’t see and don’t know is coming. But can you be aware of the phenomenon and at least mentally prepared to respond? Can you come up with a curriculum based around how to have eyes in the back of your head? How to keep a safe distance from a group of people who might appear threatening? How to flinch in the nick of time? I can imagine that scratching a pretend scalp itch at would least shield the head from a possible punch, without necessarily provoking a hostile reaction. Watching the video, what else could the man above have done to protect himself?
NB: there’s an unfortunate racial element to the “knockout game”. The victims tend to be white, the perpetrators black. That was the case here, and that is the case in other instances mentioned in the news. (Again, you’ll see by Googling.) I feel awkward and apologetic for mentioning that, but even the Rev. Jesse Jackson once said:
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…. After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.”
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson)
Maybe it’s not racial profiling if it’s for your own personal protection.
Josh
PS: Such an observation on the eve of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Stay classy, Josh. (Sorry!!!)
Great questions and suggestions, Josh. We’ll try to come up with something.