Occam’s Razor: “The best solution is the easiest one.”
Sun Tsu: “The greatest victory is won with the least battle.”
I was giving a class to a bunch of self defense trainers recently. I was teaching how to go from controlling an attacker’s posture into taking them to the ground. It should be noted that my class was comprised of people with various martial arts backgrounds. As such, there was a high expectation that the techniques I would be teaching would be complex in structure and painful to the attacker. Since the martial arts industry has no shortage of sophisticated takedowns that involve feats of flexibility and coordination, I knew what they anticipated. Hollywood further perpetuates this idea that all the most effective moves must have a certain “cool factor”. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to look like John Wick or Jason Bourne when confronting a violent attacker?
Interestingly, when I demonstrated two highly effective takedowns of a large attacker which required nothing more than a thrusting action of the palm across either the chin or chest, (and caused absolutely no pain or damage to the attacker, btw) I was met with both disbelief and claims that they were “stupid”.
As the two sage philosophers state in their above quotes, the goal of all self-defense is to work as simply and efficiently as possible. What my learned students didn’t understand when I demonstrated the ease of take down, regardless of the size of the attacker, is that the elegance of the technique is in its simplicity. No sweeping actions, no massive footwork requirements and no strength required. These techniques don’t need you to look or move like a martial arts expert, and that’s entirely the point!
That people have a belief that they need to be in remarkable shape or have exquisite timing to accomplish tasks of self-defense is misinformed. Krav Maga has always been based on the assumption that the defender is smaller, weaker and slower than their attacker. Economy of motion and accuracy of targeting is all that is needed.
In fact, at Krav Maga Personal Safety, we stress to each of our students that the entire engagement process with a hostile should take no more than six to eight seconds. We also focus on the fact that no techniques taught ever require a defender to take themselves off balance or compromise their physical structure in order to affect a strike or take down. Simply put, if you’re attempting to achieve a self defense goal with massive exertion and/or lengthy time on target, you’re simply doing it wrong.
Sun Tzu and Occam would approve.
