Not long after early men hit each other with fists, they picked up the first weapon, a stick.

Typically when I talk about weapon use, it takes the logical progressing of selection, carry, deployment and use. For early man, the idea of selecting the perfect stick was more simplified than it is these days. They had the good fortune of not being subjected to tactical marketing.

I was lucky enough, at least in my opinion, to actually hit people with sticks early in my Law Enforcement career and see what worked and what didn’t. During my career, I carried the Koga Stick, PR-24, and several different size ASPS. Each stick had its pros and cons, mostly due to carry issues. I’ve continued to be a fan of the straight stick, a tool that in my honest opinion continues to be misunderstood, underutilized, and overlooked.

Selection and Carry

As you read this, please understand that it’s written from my point of view. I’m now retired from law enforcement and this information is for use by anyone, especially the citizen.

My favorite stick is your average plain jane 26 inch Rattan Escrima Stick, which are inexpensive, lightweight and durable. Many people like heavy sticks, not because of actual use, but for the simple reason that they just like them. The rattan is light and responsive and that fits into how I use them. I don’t count on one big strike to stop the action of an attacker, but rather a succession of strikes at specific targets based on human anatomy.

When it comes to carry, we obviously can’t walk around with a stick in our hand…or can we?  When my wife and I go for a walk around the neighborhood, I carry a stick. Where I live, this is more for protection from four legged threats than the two legged variety. In every vehicle I ride in, there is a stick next to both the driver and passenger seats. A stick also sits just inside both doors to my home. You can probably see where I am going with this.

Deployment

Image by Pho-Tac

Deploying the stick is pretty straight forward, you simply pick it up. If you give most people a stick and tell them to hold it so that they can hit somebody with it, they will usually hold it up over their head. This position attracts a lot of attention, appears threatening and limits your strikes to the front. Our ready position is with the stick at our side. Because of appearance, many people will totally dismiss this as a threat.

This position allows for a powerful backhand strike that allows you to strike a wide range of targets from your center line to your far right, as if you are confronted by more than one attacker.

Using Combative Anatomy, we attack the target like a machine, first doing damage to systems that stop the threat fast, not kill them eventually. With the stick, you focus on the Central Nervous System (comprised of the brain and spine) and the Structural System (comprised of the bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons.)  For our purposes, we’re going to narrow it down even more to the head, clavicle, elbows, knees, wrists, hands and the ball of the ankle. The idea is to combat failure with redundancy by attacking these targets in rapid succession.

Use

Image by Pho-Tac

Any strike to the face/head will cause thought pattern interruption. A faint to the groin will cause your attacker to bend forward and bring their hands down to block; this opens the door to a shot under the jaw or side of the head. The anatomical response to this will be their hands coming up to their face; this opens the door to a strike on the side of the knee, or ball of the ankle. This simple combination is likely to discontinue the threat.

Because of reach, the stick excels at defending against a knife. I found this out the hard way after a Taser failure during a SWAT call out. The woman with the knife was at a disadvantaged position (sitting in a closet). When the Taser failed to deploy, I dropped and transitioned to my ASP. Two strikes to her wrist caused her to drop the knife and saved her life.

Sadly, what is taught to most police in reference to stick work is a failure. That is why you have officers striking people over and over again. Police are taught to target large muscle groups. As a rule, edged weapons seek flesh, impact weapons seek bone. Changing this rule for liability purposes, does not change the fact that muscle strikes fail.

Notes

For the citizen, it’s important to understand that strikes to the areas previously mentioned are likely to save your life, no matter what stick you are using.

So in closing, I urge you to get yourself a friend and a couple of sticks and have some fun. You can make inexpensive trainers by sliding pipe insulation over the stick and wrapping it in a few spots with tape. By the way, everything discussed here can be done with the open hand using the same principles.

When it comes to martial arts, the arguments over which is best never seems to stop. Many people consider their art almost a religion. And like religions, loyalty to beliefs in martial arts can get out of control.

Similar to those who are secure in their spiritual beliefs, people who are secure in their martial beliefs should be able to consider others thoughts, ideas, and perceptions without necessarily accepting them as their own. You may learn something.

Commonality

Let’s take a look at some things that all martial arts have in common:

• They involve cultural aspects such as ethnicity, national origin, and even world views.
• They train the student to defend themselves against other human beings, with and without weapons.
• Originally, they were all open-handed. Later, some adopted impact weapons, edged weapons, and firearms.

What do all people have in common?

• We are bipedal and walk upright.
• We have opposing thumbs allowing us to grip tools.
• We have two arms that are only capable of three things: pushing, pulling, and swinging. What is in the hand can increase the range of an arm’s use.
• When we are startled by a loud noise, even as a newborn, our extremities contract. This is known as the Moro Reflex, and is the only innate fear. We are born with the fight or flight response.

What does interpersonal open-hand and contact distance weapons have in common?

• The attacker must be able to touch you with the weapon to hurt you.
• To defend, you must be in contact with the attacker, inside the range of the weapon.
• Most combat of this type begins with some sort of verbalization.

Phases of Interpersonal Combat

Interpersonal Combat is broken down into three distinct phases:

1. Strikes and kicks
2. Take downs and throws
3. Ground control

Some say that most fights go to the ground, but many more start on your feet.

Trauma in Interpersonal Combat

During interpersonal combat, trauma is caused to the human body in two basic ways: cutting and crushing. Even a bullet is nothing more than a hybrid that both penetrates and crushes the body.

The most common trauma is crushing by way of personal weapons like fists, feet, elbows, knees, head, shoulders, and body. Crushing injuries are inflicted by movement into contact, such as a strike, or by squeezing, such as a choke.

Besides the teeth, a human needs handheld tools to puncture, rip, or cut human flesh.

Applicability of the Art

In closing, remember that you are training to fight humans who may or may not have handheld tools and firearms. Does the martial art that you are practicing provide you with the skills for dealing with these attacks, under various conditions? If not, you may want to consider supplementing your training to fill in what you feel is lacking.

Many people use the phrases “edged weapons” and “knife fighting” interchangeably. That is far from correct, or at least it is if you share the same definitions that I do.

Edged Weapons -Any tool that by design or improvisation can slash or penetrate human flesh.

Knife Fighting – Usually culturally inspired and traditionally taught interpersonal combat using fixed blade knives.

Regardless of which one you think of, lets look at the modern edged weapon threat and what you may encounter.

Selection

With the proliferation of folding knives, especially those with pocket clips, more and more people from every walk of life carry at least a small knife, this is true for the bad guys as well. Warehouse workers are notorious for always carrying box cutters and razor knives.

Not unlike the knives of many cultural martial arts, it makes sense to become proficient with the martial application of a tool you work with day in and day out. When fixed blades are encountered at the hands of offenders, there are of two major varieties. Screwdrivers (also burglary tools) and kitchen knives taken from home or restaurants. Most often found on offenders are heavy duty serrated steak knives with rounded tips, which allow safe carry without a sheath.

Carry and Deployment

For offenders on the outside, it’s easier to carry a cheap folder or box cutter out in the open than it is to conceal something that could be uncovered during a normal stop and frisk. Weapons will most often be carried between the waist and nipple line, allowing access from different positions.

However, we’re going to discuss actual attacks, not brandishing or menacing at a distance as with robbery attempts. Even though the same mechanics are at play we’re also not going to discuss “assassination” attacks. First, we deal with the highest probable threat to most of us.

Attack during verbal dispute

Attacks are usually preempted by a verbal discourse. When offenders attack at “chest bumping” distance, it is seldom a calculated assault. Liken it to when you are pissed off and start shaking, then all of a sudden you erupt and pound your fist on the table. The key here is being educated on preparatory and executions movements, often loosely defined as furtive movement. We are dealing with contact distance weapons which means that to defend against an attack you have to be within contact distance.

In-fight weapon deployment

You are already involved in a physical altercation and your attacker deploys a weapon. Since you’re already in physical contact, you’re likely not in a position to see the weapon. This is why many victims report that they didn’t know they were being cut or stabbed, simply thinking they were being punched until the smoke cleared.

Use

Research tells us that the average length of a designed or improvised edged weapon will be sub four inches and will primarily be a stabbing or cutting tool, seldom both. Even when they are, adrenaline dump, anatomy and the mammalian stress response leads to cyclic stabbing or slashing more often then cutting patterns or angles. The good part about this is that a consistent angle of attack provides you with more opportunity for defense. The bad part is that not having to slow down to change angles allows for more powerful attacks.

Edged Weapon Survival 101

Your initial defense, if armed, will most likely be open hand. Open hand combatives use the hands, feet, torso and head as impact weapons. To effectively use these weapons lets talk about Combative Anatomy.

Central Nervous System – Comprised of the brain and spinal cord, this is the power strip and computer of the human body. It’s most efficiently compromised with impact weapons.

Circulatory System – Comprised of arteries and veins, this is the human body’s plumbing. It’s most efficiently compromised with penetrating attacks. This is likely to cause eventual death, but can be slow to stop violent action.

Structural System – Comprised of bones, muscles and ligaments, it’s most effectively compromised by impact weapons. Structural damage is seldom fatal yet can immediately stop an attack.

Using the above information we can logically see that open hand defense against edged weapons depends on compromising the Central Nervous and Structural Systems.

Law of Extension – States that for a person to attack you, they have to extend their arms, legs and head to you. This provides “hooks” and “touch points” for you to defend and control.

Principles of Defense

Move to the outside – Since 93% of people are right handed it is best to move to your left, their right. Get out from between their arms.

Controlling the arm – Focus on the mechanism of the attack, not the weapon. If you see one weapon, you’re dealing with one weapon. If you don’t see one you have to assume they haven’t deployed it yet. Control the leading arm by using your arms and body to maintain extension below the forearm and just above the elbow. This is best done with a push/pull movement, to hyper-extend/break the elbow. Also, train to keep your head up to increase power.

Find vertical surfaces or the ground – Once on the outside and working for control of the arm, do your best to put their head/face into a vertical surface or to the ground.

Strikes to the head – You will find that you’re now in a good position to use elbow strikes to the back and side of the head. Continue until the deadly threat is neutralized.

Training

In Modern Combative Systems classes we start off doing drills against the open hand, then training knives and then stun guns. The stun guns were added because when using training knives, people would get cut, quit, or fail to control their attacker until they were neutralized. Humans have a primal response to electricity. At the end of the day they have a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Their responses are pressure tested.

Task – Don’t get cut or stabbed, or get cut or stabbed as little as possible.
Standard – Defend as efficiently as possible, and control the attacker.
Condition – You name it.

George “mercop” Matheis is a retired municipal police officer with a background in SWAT, patrol and training. He currently runs Modern Combative Systems, LLC which provides training in open hand combatives, impact weapons, edged weapons and firearms to citizens, military and Law Enforcement.

If you remember a few months back, I wrote an article about Dealing with Violent Confrontations, which mentioned a new Ballistic Striking DVD Series that I was asked to participate in.

That DVD series has now been officially released and I’d encourage everyone to check it out. My recommendation has nothing to do with you seeing me get my ass handed to me by Val Riazanov in the Dealing with Armed Opponents DVD and everything to do with how effective his techniques are.

Whether you’re well versed in Systema, or you know absolutely nothing about it, you won’t be disappointed in the quality and effectiveness of Val’s teaching. He has a unique way of breaking down each movement into instruction that everyone can understand.

If you haven’t read it yet, take a few minutes to peruse the Dealing with Violent Confrontations article, and send in any questions you might have for Val, we’re still taking them.

I had a great time learning from Val during the filming of this DVD series and am grateful for the opportunity to work with him.

Dealing with Armed Opponents Vol 4 from Val Riazanov on Vimeo.

If you’ve been following our articles here at ITS Tactical, you’ve no doubt heard my good friend Jack of The Survival Podcast being mentioned.

I was invited by Jack on Monday, to take part in the filming of the Advanced Ballistic Striking DVD Series that he and his business partner Neil are producing. They flew Systema (Russian Martial Art) expert Val Riazanov in from the UAE to film the DVD’s, and I was asked to assist Val during the weapons disarming portion.

Assisting Val basically meant drawing weapons on him, getting disarmed and thrown to the floor. I’ve trained in Systema before, a few years back when I lived in California, but have never trained with anyone quite like Val.

I learned an incredible amount of information in just the few hours I spent with him Monday, and would like to take this opportunity to share some of that knowledge. I’m also going to heavily note the incredible Podcast that Jack put together that prompted me to write this article of the same headline.

I’d like to encourage every one of you to get over and listen to Jack’s Podcast from yesterday. I feel this is one of his best and most applicable podcast’s to what we do here at ITS.

Violence

I’m a strong believer that violence is inherent in human beings, we see it everyday in the news, we see it everyday on the streets, and most of us who commute on a regular basis see it daily.

Violence can be as small as the verbal altercation you got in with the guy who stole your parking space, and as large as genocide where millions are killed. The point I’m trying to make is that you have to recognize that violence surrounds us, and you have to be prepared to handle violent situations accordingly.

By handling them accordingly, I mean not having to handle them in the first place.

Recognition

Before we get into how to keep yourself out of these situations, let’s first talk about how to recognize that you’re in one. It’s not always going to be outwardly apparent that you’re even in a conflict until its too late, but by learning how use your situational awareness, trust your gut and learn what to look for, you’ll be that much more prepared.

The primary tool at your disposal for recognizing a conflict is your gut. I’ve always felt that if you can’t trust your gut, then you’ve got big problems. Trusting my gut has saved me from more than one dangerous situation in my life, and I truly believe that it’s the only thing you can truly 100% count on in your life. Your gut will tell you when its not a wise move to walk through that door, or start an argument with the guy who just cut you off in traffic. Ignoring this can never be a good thing.

Secondary in your toolbox is situational awareness, which is paying attention to everything around you at all times and keeping your head on a swivel. This means being aware of absolutely everything. Who poses the biggest threat when you’re sitting down to eat in a restaurant, where the exits are, where can you take cover if something goes down, and especially who’s behind you. I almost never sit with my back towards the ingress of traffic anywhere I go, and if I do wind up in that situation, I’m always checking my six. It’s something my wife gripes at me about, but I always want to put myself in the best position to see a threat coming at me.

Situational awareness also means being aware of ALL potential threats. Does this guy that’s running his mouth in front of me have buddies that are moving up to join him? To quote my friend Dion from SCG International, you should be thinking about three things. Buddies, weapons and options. Where are your buddies and where are your opponent’s? What can you use as a weapon if needed, and what’s in your opponent’s hands? And lastly, what are your options for escape as you’re always looking for the door.

Finally we get to body position, which Val mentioned was something that everyone knows how to assess for a threat. He’s absolutely right, I’ve known how to recognize a threat by looking at a person’s body position for a long time now. He was able to relate this extremely well as we were filming, by demonstrating different body positions and asking me what my natural reaction was to these.

During a violent situation, the aggressor will roll their shoulders up and forward, most likely tighten their fists, and their demeanor will shift. We’ve all seen this first hand, and these telltale signs are some of the first things that occur during a violent situation. As Val also mentioned, the absence of these telltale signs, can produce some of the most scary situations. Someone that approaches you with a smile and a handshake can just as easily be the person who draws a knife with their other hand and plunges it into your liver.

By recognizing these signs before there’s a chance for violence, you’ll be better prepared to not only avoid them for yourself, but for all those around you as well.

Avoidance

Avoidance is not putting your head in the sand and pretending that you can will away violent situations. They can and will happen to every one of us at some point in our lives. It’s how you handle those situations that is important.

During my filming with Val, he made some tremendous points about not only avoiding conflicts, but defusing a violent situation. Let’s take a shopping mall, you’re walking through the mall with your family when a rough looking gang-banger shoulders you while you’re walking past.

Do you turn around, tighten your fists and scream some obscenities at him? If I would have been asked that question 10 years ago, I would have said “Damn right!” That’s just how I was raised, not by my parents, but by my own code. I never wanted to allow myself to appear weak, scared or incapable of defense.

This had a lot to do with how I was treated as a youngster. I had a lot of so-called friends in my pre-teen years and while I wasn’t beat up on physically, I was beat up on emotionally. Constantly picked on by friends and stolen from as well. I had friends that even broke into my house while I wasn’t home to steal my things.

It wasn’t until I got to be around 12 or so that I finally distanced myself from these people, who knows why it went on as long as it did, but the important thing is that I recognized it and moved on. As I grew up I chose my friends very carefully and developed a real innate sense of trust recognition. I still feel to this day that my experiences as a kid really helped to allow me to recognize a trustworthy person and who I choose to associate with.

My point behind this tangent is that I grew up feeling like I had to prove something. Constantly looking for an altercation, I definitely found them in my teens and early 20s. I don’t necessarily mean fist fights or even violent situations, but I’m a firm believer in the vibe that you send out, comes back to you. My buddy Mil-Spec Monkey has a patch that sums this up pretty well “Shit Magnet.”

I’m actually really lucky that nothing happened to me during that time in my life, because I wasn’t trained to deal with it. It wasn’t until I went into the Military that I realized the error of my ways. As I became empowered from my training in the Military, coupled with a good friend who introduced me to Systema, I began to realize the need to be discreet with what I knew. To never outwardly appear as though I knew what I was doing, unless absolutely necessary.

The goal is to stay relaxed and appear harmless. To quote Teddy Roosevelt, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” Speaking softly means just that, not raising your voice, not appearing agressive, etc. That big stick Roosevelt refers to is your training, having the means to inflict damage only when necessary. It doesn’t mean you wear that training on your sleeve or expose it at the wrong time.

You also have to keep in mind that it’s not always just you in these situations. What I mean by that is that you have to take into consideration that your actions affect the loved ones that may be with you when your confronted with violence, or the friends of yours who aren’t trained to defend themselves. These people depend on you to be the stronger person, and will look to you for guidance.

Defusing

Defusing a situation doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re truly even in a conflict yet, but can mean the difference between one escalating to that level. So for instance, take the gang-banger that just ran into your shoulder in the mall. If your situational awareness was less than optimal and you never saw it coming, a simple “I’m sorry about that, I didn’t see you” is all you need to say. Be the quiet professional and don’t get hung up on your ego.

If a conflict does make a turn for the worse, the best thing you can do is to continue to defuse the situation. If mere words aren’t slowing down this gang-banger, and he’s downright pissed that you were walking too close to him, taking a non-threatening stance is imperative. Again, staying relaxed and appearing harmless, which is also a fighting stance in many combative programs and Systema.

For example, if I was a passerby to the situation of the gang-banger getting in your face and I saw him clenching his fists, raising his shoulders and taking a traditional fighting stance, I’d assume he was the aggressor. Especially if I saw you holding your hands up in front of you, open-palmed, telling him to calm down or down by your side backing away from him. Both of these are the fighting stances I mentioned.

Going on the offensive might not always be the best course of action though, sometimes compliance can be the best option. Let me sum up the kind of compliance I’m talking about with this quote from Sun Tzu:

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence when able to attack, we must seem unable, when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away we must make the enemy believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Fein disorder, and crush him.”

With compliance, you’re using deception to gain the tactical advantage. For instance, in a kidnapping scenario your captor has already managed to bind you in zip ties. Knowing the techniques we’ve taught here at ITS, you know that these things are no match for you and you’ll easily be able to escape. What you don’t want to do though is to expose your tell before you have the best opportunity to break free. In other words you don’t start maneuvering the zip tie’s locking mechanism to the optimal place to break it while your kidnapper is looking.

Jack made a very good point in his show, in that our western world athletes train to win. The russian philosophy is to train to survive. By being merely surviving and being patient your opponent will present a weakness, and in that weakness you find the opportunity for victory.

Lethal Force

Everything goes out the window when you’re confronted with lethal force such as a knife or in particular, a gun. As Val puts it, you no longer have a choice on whether to defend yourself or not, and I definitely agree. Even if you comply with your aggressor’s demands you could still wind up dead.

Are there situations where complying could allow you to fight again another day? Sure, but my opinion, and this again is my opinion, why risk it? If that mugger that’s demanding your wallet with a gun pointed towards you has nothing to loose, what makes you think that he won’t just kill you after he gets what he wants? It happens all the time.

We’ve mentioned the use of a giveaway wallet before to add into your EDC (every day carry), and this is one of the few options for compliance that could benefit you in this situation. There’s not a high likelyhood that the mugger is going to shoot you before he gets what he wants, and depending on the situation, could give you the advantage you need to decrease the distance to disarm him or go to your own weapon. This of course is with proper training, which I hope I’ve made a strong case for by now.

Speaking on decreasing the distance, let me take this opportunity to mention what Val refers to as the “Critical Distance.” This is a range of 4 to 6 feet, or beyond arm’s reach. Why this is referred to as the critical distance, is that anything closer than this, and there’s an opportunity to disarm an attacker with a gun. Further than this distance and there’s a chance to move out of the line of fire or get off the X. You may even get shot at this further distance, but you’re less likely to take a lethal shot.

When we were filming disarms with a gun, I was amazed at how quickly Val could move out of the line of fire at this greater distance. Before I brought the weapon up to shoot he was off the X. Within the critical distance though, even an untrained individual with a gun can do damage to a professional before they can react.

Speaking of disarms, we had a Remington 870 shotgun that Val was using to demonstrate buttstock strikes after takeaways on a heavy bag, and let me just say this. An 870 stock will break during a strike. Jack wasn’t too happy to see his stock break in two, and all Val could say is “That doesn’t happen with AKs.”

Closing Notes

This should have been mentioned with avoidance, but always remember that as soon as you draw any weapon you’ve now put yourself in the position to deal with Law Enforcement and any potential concealed carry holders that could be observing the altercation you’re in. You have to take that into consideration and the potential to be mistaken as the aggressor in the situation.

I’d also like to reiterate some things Jack mentioned in his show, that I really feel everyone needs to understand. If you’re a concealed carry holder, or even if you carry a knife for a weapon, you have to be 100% ready to use deadly force without hesitation if required. The odds are also against you unless you’re properly trained.

You have to assume that the person posing an imminent threat to you has no morals, and will take everything up to and including your life. The law requires us to think twice before using deadly force, and while you should, it could mean your life.

Q&A

We’re going to do a Q&A with Val via email, and I’d like you guys to send in any questions you might have for him about Systema or anything else for that matter. I’ll submit the 10 best questions to him to be answered in an upcoming post.

Also, let’s get some conversation going in the comments, let me know your thoughts to this article and what your take is on the topics I’ve mentioned.

Update: The Advanced Ballistic Striking DVD Set has now been released!