Un-armed fighting scares a lot of people …
This is the reason so many people carry weapons of some kind: they’re trying to even the odds in their favor, give themselves an advantage.
This is entirely understandable. Why should you EVER fight a guy on his terms when you can use a force multiplier of some kind to make the fight less fair in your favor?
Whether you use a pocket stick, a bolt, a bandanna full of batteries that you can make into a homemade blackjack, a piece of rebar, a metal pipe, or whatever else, there are a lot of situations in which you can be armed.
But there are others in which you can’t. (And it seems like the liberals want to pass every law imaginable to make sure you’re NOT armed).
Especially when facing somebody who is a lot larger than you, or when facing multiple opponents, the idea of facing off and fighting somebody with your bare hands can be pretty intimidating.
You may be wondering how you can get past his guard and take him down …
You may be wondering if you’ll hurt your hands when you try to punch him …
If he’s a lot bigger than you, you may have lost the fight before it’s even begun because you’ve psyched yourself out …
Snap out of it!
Every single guy in the world, no matter what type of build he has, no matter how large or small he is, possesses certain vital targets that you can exploit.
You just have to find a way to get to these vital targets. They’re absolutely the same on everybody.
Just so we’re on the same page these vital targets are NOT meant to cause “pain” …
Pain is subjective. An assailant on PCP could take 3 rounds of 9mm to center mass and not feel “pain” (at least not for the next 30 seconds while he continues to do bad things to you or your family).
When picking “vital targets” to hit when you’re unarmed you’re merely picking targets that will “break” the man in front of you.
What do I mean by breaking the man?
Simple:
A guy hopped up on drugs like PCP will keep coming even if he’s hurt. Now, let’s say one of his legs falls off — his structure is broken — he can keep coming but he’d look like a zombie pulling himself across the floor … or hopping towards you because his entire body is not functional.
That’s the idea — you want to destroy a part of the human body that’s needed for proper functioning. That way you have the advantage whether you’re smaller, weaker, older, less mean, and less trained.
Make sense?
(BTW, I learned this all from the guy who helped developed the Navy SEAL unarmed combat methods … more on him later)
Now I’ll share one of these vital targets with you.
Let’s start with the throat, because it’s the only area of the body you might be thinking can be reinforced by working out.
Have you ever seen a picture the famous Karate instructor, Ted Gambordella, bending a knife with his neck muscles?
Well, if you work out hard enough and long enough, yes, Virginia, you can have a gigantic neck like that. And if you place a piece of metal gently against your neck muscle, and you hold it just right, and you exert your muscle strength against the flat, not the edge, of the blade, then yes, you can make that knife flex.
This is a parlor trick.
No matter how strong a man’s neck is, he can’t strengthen the hollow of his throat. This is the front of the throat where a man’s adam’s apple is.
Spear him there with a solid part of your body (or any other rigid object) and he will react immediately, choking and recoiling. This is called a spinal reflex — like when you touch a hot stove, your spinal reflex will pull your hand back immediately without you thinking about it.
If you maintain pressure on that spot you can choke him. Hit him hard enough and you will immobilize him while he chokes or possibly dies.
The throat is a tricky target because all it takes is a dropped chin to protect it. Your chin and your forehead are both bone shields. You don’t want to punch a person in either location. Punch the forehead and you’ll break your hand. Punch the chin and you could wind up with teeth in your knuckles. Either way, it’s not a fight-ender unless you manage a knockout blow.
The throat, then, is a target of opportunity just like other targets.
You’ve got to wait until the throat is unobstructed … and when it is … you can ram your forearm, hand, fist or any other solid body part as hard as you can into that area.
The idea is to focus on hitting “through” his throat — like your target is on the other side of it …
Put you full bodyweight into it — yes, even if you’re a frail 98 pounds — and that’s 98lbs of force into one, small, easily broken part of the human machine.
And the best part?
Does it matter if your attacker has a knife? A gun? A machete?
No.
To a man who has just been hit with (a minimum) of 98lbs of force in his windpipe — the brain short circuits — he forgets about intent or even if HE still desperately wants to murder you — his brain is desperately trying to get his throat to work again because his brain/nervous system knows that it needs the body to breathe.
You’ve made his windpipe non-functional, and that tilts the odds heavily in your favor.
Obviously, if you hit it hard enough, this target can cause death.
But it might just save your life.
One more advantage to the throat as a target …
Think through almost every possible scenario in which a “bad guy” gets close enough to do you or your family harm … or is already attacking you … in most every way someone could attack you … their throat is exposed.
Next up, another (Ahem) sensitive area…
Have you ever been kicked full-force in the groin?
If you haven’t, trust me: It’s like an off switch for some people. You hit the ground before you realize why… and then the pain rolls over you.
Some people can shrug off a ball shot, especially if they’re full of adrenaline from a fight, but in most people, getting nailed in the nads is no joke.
Now, here’s how to make a groin kick work on EVERYONE.
Again, we don’t want to focus on pain — pain is subjective.
We need to focus on WRECKING the target.
When attacking the groin, you’re focusing on rupturing testicles. (If for some strange reason, your attacker is a woman, you’re focusing on rupturing whatever is in the groin area all the same). Plain and simple.
A kick to the groin hurts — ruptured testicles is a traumatic injury.
Once again, destructive trauma to the body sends a whole lot of signals to the brain and nervous system …
When a man’s testicles are ruptured (or someone attempts to rupture them) — the brain sends a signal and the body reacts predictably …
The man bends over, both hands reach for the groin and he typically takes one and half steps back from the point of impact …
In the picture below you see the beginning of this process — the man has already lifted up onto his toes. He is about to move backward and bend down to grab his groin (the point of impact):
Now, please only pay attention to the man in that picture … because she is kicking his groin all wrong.
Again, as with the throat strike — intent and penetration is everything here. You must be trying to break the target.
Again, you are not kicking “at” the groin/testicles — you’re kicking THROUGH them — you are aiming to have your shin/foot go through his groin and up into his chest.
If you don’t aim through your target you won’t break it (ask any karate student who has tried to break a board or brick — you don’t “hit” the board — you hit through the board)
Her foot should be sticking out from between the back of the man’s legs because she should be stepping INTO the kick, putting her entire body weight into and THROUGH the man.
Again, even if you’re just a frail 98 pound senior citizen, this ensures that all 98 pounds of you is focused into one small area — his groin. In that case, it’s a simple matter of physics, the groin goes down as your bodyweight goes through it.
Now …
The thing about groin kicks is that everybody expects them.
All men know their groins are very vulnerable targets. It’s easy to protect your groin. You turn your hip, turn your leg in, even lift your leg to intercept an incoming blow, and you can stop the worst of the attack from hitting your balls.
First off, that’s not your concern. Try to ram your shin/foot through his testicles and deep into his body and rupture your target. It’s not your job to worry about “what is he going to do” — your job is to worry about injuring him.
However, if for some reason that strike doesn’t fully land …
In order to make full use of the groin as a target, you may have to wait until the groin is within reach of your hands.
A lot of the same people who expect a kick or a knee to the groin don’t expect you to just reach out and touch them there. It goes against our natures to reach out grab a man’s groin (unless it doesn’t, in which case, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”).
All kidding aside — if a bad guy is trying to do bad things to a woman — this is very important. He must be close enough to touch her, so she’s probably close enough to “touch” him back.
When you grab the groin in the course of a close-quarters fight, you’ve got to do something pretty horrible to make the technique work for you.
Grab and twist the balls as if you’re trying to twist and rip them right off the body. Don’t be afraid to punch the abdomen while you’re pulling and ripping with the other hand, too.
This technique is harder to do on tight, heavy jeans or leather pants, which will make it harder to grab the other guy’s sack through the cloth, but on regular slacks or cargo pants, you can do a pretty horrible job on somebody.
For women, If he’s in a state of undress because the violent attack has gotten that far (God forbid) at least you stand a better chance fighting back in this manner than by taking the liberal rape defense approach of urinating on yourself.
Again, think through multiple situations in which you might be attacked … as you can see just the 2 targets we’ve covered thus far … are almost always available to you.
The man might attack you from behind … but as soon as you realize you’re being assaulted you can turn and as soon as you see his throat or groin — HE becomes the victim.
You can’t prepare for “every scenario”. Real life is too complicated.
But you CAN prepare for the right targets because … 100% of every man that has ever attacked someone had:
1.) a throat and
2.) a groin
Finally, let’s talk about the eyes.
The eyes are the most sensitive targets on the human body. Whole UFC matches have been stopped when somebody got accidentally poked in the eyeball.
A finger touching your eye GENTLY produces an immediate adverse reaction …
Ever held a baby who is being cute, thrusting around in your arms, waving her little tiny hands all over the place and one of those tiny, small, frail fingers accidentally touches your eye?
Just a small scratch to the delicate eye causes a whole waterfall chain of automatic reactions …
Shove your fingers in someone’s eyes and you’ll immediately cause them to try and flinch away. The eye typically waters, and the eye lids close to protect against the threat.
In a fight, therefore, the eyes are excellent targets.
The easiest way to attack them is to open your hand into a “rake” and claw your fingers across the eyes — much like a violent slap except with the tips of your fingers raking the eyes.
You only need the tip of one fingernail to catch a delicate cornea to inflict damage.
If the fight becomes up close and personal, you will try to get one hand around the back of his head and work your fingers into his eye area with the other. Or shove both thumbs into an eye socket …
Be aware that this will cause him to thrash violently. Any of us would react the same way to the potential of being blinded.
We will absolutely FREAK OUT when another man’s fingers touch our eyes, and we will do everything in our power to kill the person trying to blind us.
But again, you must think in terms of penetration and destroying the target. Even if you get jumped, once you start attacking his eyes — YOU become the attacker …
Tim Larkin, the founder of Target Focus Training, the man I alluded to earlier who helped the Navy SEALS develop their system of unarmed combat demonstrates this below:
When targeting the eyes, the throat, or the groin, don’t head into the fight TRYING to get them. You need to wait for the opening. The fight has to make it possible for you to get in on those targets; you don’t march blindly into the conflict and think ahead of time that you definitely will hit him in the throat, or that you can only hit him in the eyes.
Instead, strike whatever is most accessible. Use your nearest weapon to his body and put it in and through whatever is the closest available target.
Your goal is not to “win” the fight. Your goal is simply to get away as unhurt as possible. It’s called Survival. That’s the only thing that matters in the real world.