The Moment Before The Attack

[doejohn]

I thought this was a good read:


http://www.selfdefenseblog.net/

The Moment Before The Attack
Gershon Ben Keren : 01/11/2007


Violence rarely erupts in a truly spontaneous manner. Individuals who have experienced true and real violence may at the time have felt that there were no warning signs given but when asked to re-live their experience will start to mention key indicators or red alert signals that they dismissed or ignored. For those of us who have not had to live, up close and personal with violent people or situations these warning signs are ‘survival instincts’ etched into our DNA rather than recognised behavioural activities of potentially violent individuals (and situations).

Those of us who have lived our lives next-door to violence know how violent and aggressive people behave and can easily recognise the pre-cursors to physically violent behaviour.

Possibly, the number one question I’m asked, as a self defence instructor is, ‘how can I tell when he – or she – is going to attack me?’ Anyone who has studied a martial art/self defence system knows how difficult it is to block/evade a punch, at close range, when it’s not expected. I’m not talking about a ‘sparring’ situation where both combatants are prepared and expecting to have to defend themselves (starting at a medium range) but when someone finds them self at a close/conversational distance when their mind is being engaged in some form of argument or in answering a distracting question e.g. have you got the time? Can you spare some cash?

This is the range and the way that real violence occurs. Forget the idea of an individual, ‘calling you outside’ for a fair fight or ‘square-go’. This may have happened in the schoolyard but it’s not the way that violence is conducted on the street today. Aggressors look for victims not fair-fights. If your idea of a fight is two individuals, both prepared and ready, starting off at over arms length distance from each other, similar to traditional martial arts sparring then you’re sorely mistaken. The reality? Someone asking you for the time, nice and close to you and then slashing you with a Stanley Knife; someone, spitting and shouting at you, right in your face. This is reality. This is how violence occurs. Whilst you’re answering a question, whilst you’re arguing, whilst you’re trying to understand what’s going on, that’s when the attack will be made.

Trusting in reaction time and determining the correct response i.e. recognising the type of attack and choosing the correct block, counter etc, when under stress is to put all your trust in your athletic ability. You have to be faster then your aggressor both in decision making (choosing what to do) and executing that decision (implementing your block or counter). All the impetus is with the attacker: they’ve already made their decision e.g. they’re going to hit you and they’ve already started to put their plan into action, by throwing the punch. You have to recognise the movement and respond correctly, plus you may be being distracted by a question or argument. The odds are stacked against you. You need to reduce these odds, quickly, if you can over-turn them, even better.

Recognising and being able to identify the warning signs, increases your reaction time. This allows you to stop relying solely on athletic ability (natural reaction and physical speed) to deal with an attack. There have been times that I have literally stopped a punch as it’s been thrown; in fact, almost before it’s been thrown. This isn’t magic and it isn’t the result of training in any hidden/secret, oriental technique. It’s due to understanding when a person has made up their mind to attack and acting at that moment before they make the attack itself. I am not gifted with the fastest hands on the planet, by any means, in fact the ‘athletic’ ability I possess regarding hand speed is pretty poor however I make up for this by making sure my recognition of a threat and my decision making as regards it are extremely fast. A fast mind makes up for slow hands. I can recognise my aggressor’s plan and determine a solution to it quickly. More importantly, I don’t hesitate in putting my solution into action.

In any potentially violent situation I need to make a threat assessment. On one of the routes I do my roadwork/running on, I pass a pub with a beer garden/tables on the street. I would guess that 9 times out of 10, somebody issues some verbal challenge to me or insults me (I guess I’ve just got one of those faces). None of the individuals who make these comments/challenges though are a threat. None of them ever move their position or try and get closer to me: they just stand or sit and shout. No problem. The day I will start to worry/take their challenges seriously is when one of them gets out of his seat and starts to walk/run towards me. There is no threat at distance. When there is time and space to exit a threat is diminished. If someone(s) wants to or is trying to eliminate these two factors then the threat becomes serious.

An aggressive person persistently attempting to close distance is the greatest indicator that they are committed to doing you harm. Your first goal must be to protect your space. This can be simply done by placing an arm out in front of you in a placatory manner. This acts as a barrier that guards your space. If the aggressor is being verbal, you need to make a quick assessment as to whether they are in a state where they can be talked down. As I have said before the only question they are likely to respond to is one, which gives them a chance to continue their aggressive behaviour. Simply asking them, ‘what the problem is?’ may be all it takes to start a dialogue. On the other hand if the question is ignored/not answered you have a very strong signal that the person is getting ready to attack.

When we go in to survival mode, we switch off the front brain and rely on our animal brain i.e. the mid brain to find solutions for us. Never forget that an aggressive person like your self is also in survival mode. Unfortunately, they see their best chance of survival in terms of aggressive posturing or by fighting. They are operating primarily via instructions from their mid-brain. By asking a question, you can ascertain very quickly how deep into survival mode they are i.e. how much conscious processing (the realm of the frontal brain) is left. If they ignore the question or go silent, reason has left the building and you know that you are or shortly will be engaged in a physical confrontation. If the person goes silent or their speech becomes monosyllabic this is the time to act: an attack is milliseconds away.

There are other signals that aggressive people on the brink of getting physical give off but from my experience many are quite subtle and difficult to spot e.g. colour draining from the face, lowering the gaze etcetera, etcetera. In looking for clues as to if and when a person is going to attack, you need to get straightforward and obvious answers.

Using verbal set-ups are one of the best ways to get confirmation as to an attacker’s motives and timings. They also open up the potential for dialogue that can potentially be used as a de-escalation technique. If an aggressive individual is able to respond rationally or even semi-rationally to a question then their front brain is still engaged and they are not acting in a purely animal way. Many individuals don’t want to fight and do so only because they feel backed into a corner e.g. from their ego/pride or peer pressure etc. Opening up dialogue, leaves them a door open through which they can exit with their ego and pride intact.

Salesman when they talk about closing a deal will talk about closing all the doors i.e. not giving their potential buyer an escape route, so that the only route for them to go down is that of closing the deal. In de-escalation the opposite should happen: as many doors as possible should be left open, so that the aggressor can find an easy way out. One of the four rules of de-escalation is to respect the other person. It matters little if you actually do respect them it’s important however that you act as if you do. Respect, means leaving or finding a door for them to exit by without them having to compromise their ego or pride.

Another of the four rules (the first, in fact) of de-escalation is to respect your self. This is important, when you consider your role in maintaining distance, between you and your aggressor. If you keep backing away as an aggressor closes the distance, although you are maintaining distance, you are not respecting yourself. Constant backing away is a submission signal, which seems to be in alignment with the idea of de-escalation however it is one of the actions that prey take when faced with a predator. Depending how far down the road into mid brain activity an aggressor is, constant backing off may switch on the predator instinct and actually cause the person to attack.

Standing ground, with minimal backwards movement is a signal that you: a) respect yourself and b) should not be thought of as ‘prey’. These are actions that your aggressor will not consciously understand which is half the point as they have switched into their own survival mode, which is controlled by the mid-brain/animal brain. Unconsciously though they will react to the signal.

I had a student, a musician who used to play in some rather rough bars and pubs. His attendance at classes was sketchy because of his working schedule i.e. he often had gigs on in the evening. He’d come to me to learn self-defence because he wanted to be able to take care of himself should things ever kick off when he was playing, as it seemed they often did (I never knew if it was as a result of his playing or if he was just unlucky with the venues he played at. Equally he may have just had a face like mine, which invited trouble). He’d been training with me for about the equivalent of four weeks, when things kicked off big time in a pub he was playing at. He told me, he was initially standing by his microphone shell-shocked at the speed with which the situation had developed, when two guys started walking towards him. He didn’t back off but instead raised his hands before him and in a confident and emphatic voice – something we’d trained – said, ‘back off, I don’t want any trouble’. This was all it took for the two guys to turn round and start looking for another, less confident victim.

There is no doubt that he was lucky however it’s also true that you create your own luck. He did all the right things: he didn’t back away and he didn’t offer a challenge. The two individuals who backed off were possibly in ‘deep survival’ mode because they never said a word (they were also in all likelihood in hunting ‘pack’ mode as well). What his action of standing his ground and raising his hands did was to invoke a subconscious ‘flight’ response in his two aggressors. If you’d interviewed those two guys after the event I would bet neither one could of given a reason as to why they walked away: something just told them it was the right thing to do. The ultimate human survival tool is to exit the situation (flight); this behaviour is preferred to that of fighting in 95% of all individuals. Responding to aggression with behaviour that invokes such a survival response in ones aggressor(s) is acting in an optimal fashion.

Maintaining distance without retreating is the action of an animal that is not afraid to fight but that is acting defensive manner rather than a threatening one. Confirming this by raising he hands in a universally accepted non-aggressive manner reinforces this. It is unlikely that such actions will have the exact same dramatic effect that they did for my student however they will communicate the correct message to any aggressor and give a solid foundation upon which to build a policy of de-escalation or physical defence.

Even when a ‘flight’ response is invoked in an aggressor, such as causing them to walk away or turn their back, there is no reason to stand down as I have seen such a response turned quickly into an aggressive attack.

When I lived in Sunderland (a rough town/city in the North East of England), I once witnessed the following in a nightclub. I was standing at the bar when some argument broke out between two guys. I have no idea whether they were friends or what the argument was about except that like most drink fuelled arguments it was loud and passionate. There was a moment of silence (a good sign that an attack is imminent) and then one of the guys turned and made as if he was starting to walk off. This was merely to hide the fact that he’d pulled a knife and turned himself so he could get maximum distance and force with his attack. The other man obviously thought the event was over and started to go into a post-stress relaxation mode. Suddenly the guy with the knife whipped round and with full body weight and an outstretched arm sliced the other with a 45-degree line across his face.

Some ‘flight’ responses are false and others temporary. I have no idea whether the guy with the knife was genuinely backing off when his ego got the better of him and he decided, ‘_______ it, I’ll have him’ or if planned his move from start to finish. What I would say though is that few animals (humans included) will turn their back on a potential aggressor(s). Most people/animals when they back down, back away still facing their aggressor. Turning your back during a violent confrontation, even if you are the instigator is unnatural behaviour and unnatural behaviour is usually used to mask actions, which are the opposite of what they appear to be.

Much of what you are doing as part of a threat assessment is confirming your aggressor’s actions. If someone comes up to you screaming and shouting and calling you every name under the Sun, then everything about that person’s behaviour is telling you they are predisposed to making things physical. Your assumption should be that they are going to attack you, everything you do be it asking them questions, talking to them, standing your ground whilst creating distance etc, is about confirming that this is really what they intend to do. Basically, you are giving them a ‘last chance out’. It is there choice whether to take it or not. If they respond to your questions, if they back off, then fantastic: fight avoided. However your questions and stance are there to ascertain if they are actually serious about the threats they are making, your base/starting assumption is that they are.

If somebody turns their back to walk off or backs off, the appropriate response is for you to do the same i.e. back away but without turning your back. If the aggressor’s survival instinct is directing them towards ‘flight’ (disengagement/moving away), you should try to help them confirm this behaviour by helping them to create even more distance. The further the distance they have to cover to re-engage the harder it is for them to go against their flight response. They have to consciously overcome it, which means utilising their front brain, which in turn means a re-introduction of rational processing.

If an aggressor is merely masking an attack by turning away or stepping back (so they can get momentum into an attack) then by stepping back, you put yourself well outside of range. This means they need to once again re-align them self to make an attack. If the guy who was striped in the Sunderland bar incident had stepped back as his opponent turned his back he would have given himself more space and hence time to deal with any attack. If his assailant had genuinely had a flight response moment it would have been harder for him to re-think/overcome this if the distance between him and the person he wanted to make a victim had been greater.

From my experience the worst part of dealing with violent situations is the period when you know that your aggressor is intending to attack but you are waiting for them to do so. There are times when you immediately know someone cannot be talked down or out of violence; when you know that they are preparing them self for physical violence and are not willing to follow any other route. This ‘instinctive’ feeling is as good an indicator that someone is about to launch an attack as their speech becoming monosyllabic or them persistently closing the distance. You don’t even need to ask a question to confirm your gut feeling you just know that they’re going to attack.

This feeling can be relied upon because it is the result of thousands of years of evolution and survival learning. It is a feeling we should learn to trust.

[Geopagus]

Great read, thanks for sharing.

[casingpoint]

Interesting reading , but who is Gershon Ben Keren? Does he have any credentials or just a blogger? Sounds like some guy feeding off his personal experiences in and around a violence urban social scene. Which may well be among the best of credentials for writing on that subject.

[CHL/LEO]

Based upon my personal experiences and training, along with dealing with these types of people, I'd say he's pretty accurate in his observations and recommendations.

[Dragonfighter]

Based upon my personal experiences and training, along with dealing with these types of people, I'd say he's pretty accurate in his observations and recommendations.

+1

[Photoman]

Interesting. Similar to what you can read at http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/

[Venus Pax]

Good article.