Distratction, "Live" Hand, Root Yourself...

[bushido_man96]

These are the three initial concepts I learned when I started training in Combat Hapkido. They are the three things you do at the start of a technique response or "defense." It would go like this for, lets say, a same side wrist grab:

When your wrist is grabbed, you root yourself by basically getting into an athletic stance; good base with knees bent/flexed so you are ready to move. "Live" hand is basically opening the hand of the grabbed wrist as far and as wide as you can, spreading the fingers out and spreading all that bone structure out in order to open the attacker's grip if that is possible, and to get your hand and arm ready for engagement. Finally, the distraction technique is what you do with either a kick, knee strike, or a strike with your free hand to "soften up" and distract the attacker, with the goal of causing them to shift their focus and loosen the grip of the attacking hand.

Ideally, these three things happen pretty close to simultaneously, and then the defense technique is executed.

I'd love to hear any thoughts and feelings on these concepts, and what kind of similar concepts others might have involving the ever so important first seconds of self-defense.

Just on a personal note here, I don't like the term "distraction" technique, because I don't want a technique to be just a distraction. That term makes it sound like you are not supposed to commit the technique completely, as it is just to soften them up enough to do the next technique. In my opinion, the idea is to get them to stop, so instead of a "distraction" technique, I like to refer to it as a "disabling" technique.

All other thoughts welcome and appreciated!

[MasterPain]

I've never heard of the spreading the fingers thing. I've always just taught to break the grip toward their thumb. Something for me to check out.

Here's my thing with wrist grabs. They're part of threat display behavior. What we refer to as the "monkey dance." At least in the way you're talking about. It is possible that someone would grab you out of nowhere and be about to hit you with the other hand. In which case, yes take a solid stance and strike. But generally it's part of an escalating argument. You should have been in a decent stance already. Nothing obvious, but knees bent, one leg forward, and hands up and gesturing as you speak. You should appear to be appealing to reason, and you should be appealing to reason as well. If they try to grab you, tell them in no uncertain terms not to touch you, while refusing to let them get a grip. If in a crowd, start yelling for someone to call the cops. This can end a conflict and can help you in court if it does not. After this if they are still being grabby, it should be justifiable to make the first strike.

Our formula is evade, stun, unbalance, and control. Tallgeese has a great article on it called principle based training.

[bushido_man96]

I've never heard of the spreading the fingers thing. I've always just taught to break the grip toward their thumb. Something for me to check out.

Yeah, we do that, too. Always towards the thumb for the weak link. The GM described the spreading of the hand as spreading out the bone structure of the hand and wrist, to get the grabber's grip to spread apart just that much more. How much it adds, I'm not for certain.

Here's my thing with wrist grabs. They're part of threat display behavior. What we refer to as the "monkey dance." At least in the way you're talking about. It is possible that someone would grab you out of nowhere and be about to hit you with the other hand. In which case, yes take a solid stance and strike. But generally it's part of an escalating argument. You should have been in a decent stance already. Nothing obvious, but knees bent, one leg forward, and hands up and gesturing as you speak. You should appear to be appealing to reason, and you should be appealing to reason as well. If they try to grab you, tell them in no uncertain terms not to touch you, while refusing to let them get a grip. If in a crowd, start yelling for someone to call the cops. This can end a conflict and can help you in court if it does not. After this if they are still being grabby, it should be justifiable to make the first strike.

I do understand what you are talking about here. Something I've also questioned in the past about wrist grab defenses is the likelyhood of actually having your wrist grabbed. It is not as likely, but what the wrist grab does in practice is give the students a starting point to apply the techniques. It likely goes back to the time of hand-to-hand weapons combat when the weapon hand's wrist was grabbed.

As for the rest of what you have here, I recognize it as using the "fence" and trying to de-escalate the situation.

As far as actually being grabbed goes, I agree that at that point, you are justified in striking, and my personal preference would be to strike until they let go.

Our formula is evade, stun, unbalance, and control. Tallgeese has a great article on it called principle based training.

I've read it. It is a great article. In actuality, Combat Hapkido would flow well within that framework, too. In a broad sense, it would be easy to use CH techniques within that framework, using many of the simple basics. And in a more technical sense, it would work for the most part when it came to the curriculum that we test on in Combat Hapkido. Sometimes, though, the idea of applying a curriuclum gets in the way of applying the tactics and strategies, as I'm sure you've seen before.

As for the distraction, "live" hand, root yourself concepts, they aren't supposed to be the overall concepts to making the system work, but rather they are supposed to be sound concepts to apply in every situation presented to us.

I also agree that being ready and prepared at all times is a good idea, and being in a good stance before things get bad is the best plan. Like you say, with knees flexed, feet spread a bit, and hands up in a fence, ready to ward when necessary.

[MasterPain]

The grab is a good starting point. I've taken a lot of more traditional things like this and modified them to my liking. Some of the old one step type things became stop hits or simply reach out, grab their arm and pull them into a strike as opposed to block, grab, strike.

That, and everything is modified for my being built like Gimli.

[bushido_man96]

That, and everything is modified for my being built like Gimli.

I'm with you there. I'm only 5'8" myself, on a good day. I also run about 250 lbs thanks to my voratious appetite and an inability to turn any free food down. But hey, its just rude to not eat what's offered to you.

[bushido_man96]

I've never heard of the spreading the fingers thing. I've always just taught to break the grip toward their thumb. Something for me to check out.

Yeah, we do that, too. Always towards the thumb for the weak link. The GM described the spreading of the hand as spreading out the bone structure of the hand and wrist, to get the grabber's grip to spread apart just that much more. How much it adds, I'm not for certain.

Sorry to bring this one back, but had been goofing around like I do and it brought my attention back to this.

Try this, MP. Holding your hand in up in front of you, grab your wrist with your other hand so you can see where your thumb and middle finger are on your wrist. Now, do "live hand" with the grabbed wrist, and watch how the thumb and middle finger of the grabbing hand spread out just slightly more. That may help for visualization purposes.

[Lee M]

Take out the man and not the weapon.

I would use this strategy - focusing on the wrist second but attacking the attacker first to break the grip.