Almost a year ago to the day I had my worst injury to date.  Tore my biceps tendon and had to have a surgery to repair it.  I am just now easing back into martial arts and am still very cautious about what I'm doing, who I'm working with, a very clearly asserting boundaries in training. 

Pointing blame on why this happened doesn't help anything, but what I can do is help you understand the circumstances that led to it so you can hopefully avoid such an epic fail setback. 

The day it happened:
There were only two people in jiu jitsu class & we didn't really do a warmup.  We were problem solving guard passes and I wanted to play with some things I had seen that I thought would work better, so we were experimenting a bit. We then added some resistance, but that resistance quickly went to nearly full tension, full speed on an arm-bar attempt, a change of direction happened and snap. 
No pain, no pop, no agony.  The only equivalent thing I can relate to is if you've ever caught a big fish and had it swim under a rock, all of the tension in your line gets tighter then releases.  That's what I felt happen in my arm. 
Me: "F**k, something just went."

My big take-aways from this:

• Warm up every time you train.  If you're training somewhere that doesn't cut it for you with warmups, go somewhere else or do your warmup drills and mobility at home or before class starts.
• Continuous communication with your training partner.   "Slow down" "less tension" "take the speed down 30%" 
• Make sure the boundaries of what you're working are clear to you and your training partner.  "Be heavy, give me some resistance, but don't explode or go for submissions"
• Check your ego if and when it escalates: if one person starts making it a competitive scramble when you are trying to learn and doing something outside of your element, you're at more risk.  There's nothing wrong with having the days in training when you do pressure test things at a higher resistance and speed, but everyone should be on the same page

Be aware of your body and anything that is bothering you or giving you persistent issues.  I am pretty good about this and had told my naturopath that does acupuncturist, soft tissue work, on me that I had been having intermittent tightness in that bicep sometimes after lifting, but not regularly and I wasn't able to figure out the cause.  Several months post surgery the surgeon believes there may have already been a partial tear.

​I love martial arts. They’re philosophy for do-ers: ways to understand universal principles without the navel gazing or the circular logic. But their value in personal protection is pretty limited: a purely physical approach to self-defense is like a car with the world’s best airbags and no breaks. Effective self-defense requires a layered approach: using a variety of elements to address potential threats before you have to go hands on.

A layered approach distinguishes skills’ importance, weighing applicability range and emergency utility. For example: throat punches are great in emergencies and useless almost everywhere else. De-escalation, by contrast, is useful many places but less helpful once the shooting starts. Layering a personal protection plan requires individual risk assessment based on lifestyle, etc. but there are some general pieces worth acknowledging.

Awareness
Awareness of environments, yourself, others, patterns, victim profiles, violence dynamics, etc. helps layer a self-protection plan, as it rates highly in both applicability range and emergency utility. A student will spend her life in spaces, around people, and living in her body; awareness of those elements will remain relevant whether she’s in danger every day or never faces another threat and knowing the best escape route after stunning a predator can definitely save her life.

Authority
Chiron Training’s Rory Miller lists awareness, initiative, and permission as central concepts. Giving yourself permission is the internal process of lining up an action with your ethics, making it possible, or easier, to execute. Authority goes beyond willingness; it is the right and responsibility to take the action. Authority stems from a sense of duty to protect your life for yourself, loved ones, and the greater good. That responsibility can empower, expanding accessible levels of force everywhere: from the HR call on a harassing coworker to smashing a predator’s knee.

Boundary Setting
Awareness and authority set the groundwork for boundary setting by providing models for boundaries worth defending and authority to enforce them. Setting, communicating, and enforcing boundaries dissuades predators and gives a clear impetus for taking action, avoiding the confusion predators can induce. Boundary setting has a high usage rate across a variety of circumstances but is less useful once an emergency has begun. It can direct levels of force during the fight (“if his knife comes out, I’m going lethal”) but that’s hard for the less experienced. However, prior to the event, boundary setting remains extremely important for helping a student act when she needs to.

Social Skills
For regular folks (not cops, soldiers, bouncers, etc.) self-protection often boils down to four words: don’t be a jerk. It’s not sexy but the tactical application of social skills covers most violence against civilians. De-escalation, threat assessment, people reading, etc. all help avoid or quash problems well before they go physical. Social skills also assess the intentions of others and distinguish between jerks and predators. Once the emergency is on, however, social skills become harder to use, though fighting the mind by reading, misleading, etc. is still possible.

Physical Skills
In violent emergencies breaking the bad guy can help. But, frankly, putting hands on people is dangerous; the higher the force level, the messier the potential outcomes. Social consequences, legal hassles, physical damage are all distinct possibilities, even when in the right. This is why physical skills are the last line of defense in a potentially violent situation: they solve a very narrow set of problems in ways that can create damaging fallout and are useless beyond said confines.

Layer your self-protection plan, even with the stuff that’s less visible in the next John Wick movie. When training, look for classes/instructors who focus on purposeful skill building more than mindless melee. Also remember that, aside from protecting you, most of the elements listed above have the fringe benefits of making you more popular, more successful, and happier. I’ve yet to see where paying attention or being socially skillful exhibit a downside.
 
Be safe, be well
 
Coach Malcolm

We are excited to announce our partnership with Lions Way Martial Arts for our Seattle launch of our self-defense classes! I have been training with Lion's Way under their head coach Skip Scherer in their adult Sambo program for some time now. Lions Way is a great fit for us; we share many of the same core values with respect to offering high-quality, practical training presented in an intelligent and progressive format.  

We will be offering a free women's self-defense seminar on April 21st to kickoff our Tacoma and Seattle offerings.  This is the only free session we will be doing and it's filling up fast.  After this seminar we will be offering in-depth self-defense training for groups and companies in Tacoma and Seattle, particularly corporate self defense and offices in and around both cities. 

Most people that train for self-defense have some manner of preparing for the ambush attack, the surprise you were not anticipating.  If you have a trained response for this what is it and what really comes out for you when you are genuinely startled?

Earlier today I was solo hiking a trail on a mountain near Seattle on a fairly isolated trail.  I encountered several fairly large piles of bear scat concentrated in an area I was walking through near some berry patches, which is something that makes me uncomfortable, especially when I’m alone.  I continued hiking at my normal power walk pace, didn’t see or hear anything but I was approached quickly.  I heard fast steps on the ground behind me from about arms reach away, turned, and saw black  as it was right on me.

In this moment I perceived danger because of where I was and the cues I had been aware of, influenced by a fear of being in black bear territory.  My initial reaction was lighting fast, I was startled, shoulders shrugged, both hands started to come up as I oriented toward what I heard so I could see and gather more information- what happened after the hands coming up was a response I have cognitively trained many times: reaching my lead hand out to push away, grab, or otherwise touch what’s near me and get my rear hand into action for repeated strikes.
As I was extending my lead hand, my rear hand started to rise and began to clinch a fist, hands were still somewhat low since they were initially down at waist level.  I mostly train open-handed strikes, so it was interesting to see that a closed fist is was came out.

He realized the error; the runner apologized for approaching and passing me quickly without auditory cue; he was a big guy, I don’t know how he moved that quietly without me hearing him until right on me.   In the moment I did not see him at all and only heard him when he was 1-2 steps away as he startled me, as I oriented towards him saw just his black shorts, and wasn’t able to make out what the threat was until he had passed me.
I missed him with my index hand because of his speed, which is a good thing since he was not actually attacking me, but it was good knowing that a variant of something I have trained repeatedly was able to come out under an authentic surprise, and that I was able to control my cognitive response and not hit him (also, it’s not the first time I’ve almost clocked a runner).

Still keep in mind, the perceived threat ended when:

• the jogger did not attack me
• the bear did not maul me (because it wasn’t a bear)

Had it been one of these situations, the reaction would likely have been significantly more severe.

Homework:  What I want you to think about is cataloging the times in the future you are genuinely startled and flinch, see and pay attention to what actually comes out and how you move. I would only consider doing this for future perceived threats where you are startled, since the brain and imagination have are good at filing in the blanks if you are to consider past encounters.  You might think you will move a certain way, but experience something completely different; it is best to really know yourself and how your movement is biased, so that you can pair how you actually move under duress to your training and be sure that these can sync efficiently.  
 
Train smart, stay safe, and if you approach me running please give me some auditory cue so I don't hit you!
​
Evan D.
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense

The crowd murmured in anticipation as the instructor positioned his students for the next demo. Suddenly, he exploded into motion, striking them with blinding speed. They regained their composure as the instructor stared intensely at the crowd around him, basking in their adulation. If I had rolled my eyes any harder they would have fallen out of my head.

A wise old man once said your training ingrains flaws and skills equally. That instructor’s impressive display ingrained, in himself and his students, two things: ineffective striking (he incapacitated neither student) and standing, unresponsive, when attacked suddenly. Seems dumb, right? But self-defense and martial arts are rife with these suboptimal practices.

Your training partner puts you in a headlock; you drive his chin back, “attack” his groin, and drop him. Great job! But why’d you let him grab you? You spent just as many reps allowing yourself to get grabbed as you did “defending”. Moreover, if you’d counterattacked with serious contact or commitment he’d be curled up on the floor. And what did your partner get out of that rep, acting practice?

Physical self-defense is practicing for a worst-case scenario: being forced to protect yourself by breaking other people. Effective training requires partners, posing at least two problems. First, broken people can’t train which means we either purposefully injure training partners or train not to hurt people; neither works. Second, half the time you’re both practicing losing badly because training ingrains habits into all participants. As the attacker, you train to attack once, usually without power or intent, and then passively take a “beating.” Why? Because, almost invariably, you want the defender to succeed. You’re ingraining training scars: counterproductive habits that condition acting ineffectively in desperate situations. The solutions lie in making conscious adjustments to make training both safe and effective.

-Go Slow- First, improve efficacy and safety by changing your speed. Slowing down is a great safety flaw (a conscious adjustment that keeps training dangerous moves from injuring participants) that promotes perfect mechanics, precise targeting, and full follow through without injury. Moving slowly also limits training scars: predators don’t kill slowly so, when partners attack, you’re not training yourself to ignore a serious threat. In the headlock counter example: practice the initial attack unthreateningly slowly and, once you both feel comfortable with how headlocks work, start defending them. Still slowly, have your partner try to headlock and, as soon as you see a threatening motion, do something about it. Gradually, let your partner apply the headlock more and more so you train counters at every point.

-Use Equipment- Equipment like pads and armor allows for striking with power and intent without doing serious harm to your partner. This avoids frequently seen training scars like pulled punches or practicing missing. When practicing headlock counters with your partner, have them position a pad or focus mitt near their groin so you train to strike with power and follow through.

-Move with Intent- This isn’t so much an adjustment as a principle. Whatever moves you’re doing should do damage if it were not for the safety flaw you’re using. You should strike with full intent to do damage and happen to be stopped by the pad or your partners block, etc. Training with intent enhance realism and helps find potential holes in safety protocols. So when you’re counterattacking from the headlock, use full intent so your partner has to defend themselves and you avoid a training scar.

-Train from Surprise- Practicing from surprise involves restricting visual or audio cues. With this you can counter at every stage of an attack without the training scar of ignoring assault indicators. Coming back to headlock counters, have your partner set up close to you with a pad arranged to protect his groin. Close your eyes and have your partner randomly head lock at full speed. React immediately to the aggressive touch and counterattack his groin. If your training partner is fast, you’ll be forced to counter the headlock at different points.

-Use Safety Officers- Safety officers serve as a useful adjustment. During many drills; especially as intention, energy, and skill increase; it becomes difficult to participate and be conscious of safety simultaneously. Many adjust for this by unconsciously employing bad habits but safety officers can maintain safety protocols without those bad habits.

-Involve Resistance- Attackers shouldn’t be practicing losing while defenders practice winning; you should be retaliating or, at least, fending. For example: when you’re the attacker applying the headlock, push your hips back to avoid the groin attack and cover up to fend off follow up strikes. To heighten the resistance, use specific techniques or defenses as precursors to modified sparring. Using head lock defense as an example again, set up with restricted vision and armor or pads. Have your partner initiate a headlock at full speed and counter as soon as you feel an aggressive touch. Once you’ve responded, a very brief modified sparring session should begin, allowing both parties to practice attacking and defending. Fending and sparring have obvious value for the attacker but also keep the defender from creating unrealistic expectations of how fights will go.

-Keep it Quick- Limiting drills’ duration is a final useful adjustment. By limiting time, you can do three things: prevent injuries, avoid artificially induced safety, and keep participants from “winning” or “losing”. For you to win, your partner must lose creating training scars for at least one partner. If the drill ends quickly, however, partners are less likely to get hurt or have a definitive “win” and can develop intensity while maintaining good habits. Safety officers can help with limiting time appropriately.
So, is practicing headlocks the point? Absolutely not; the point is training thoughtfully. Notice that these safety flaws counterbalance each other, creating a robust training method without major holes and avoidant of training scars. Conscious adjustments and safety flaws should always exist but creativity can blend them to your advantage.

Be dangerous, train safely,

Coach Malcolm
NOVA Self Defense

Blue: the only natural line of movement for persons passing through this direction given the impassable brush and drop off near the edge of the tennis courts, not shown clearly in aerial view.
​
Red: given the above, seeing anyone deviate off this path towards us would be a known encroachment, which can still be a gray area depending on what they say/don’t say, how they move, what they do, how you feel about all of the above, and how they respond to any verbal interception prior to closing distance.  

This is a good explanation from Rob Pincus of something you can do to keep your hands readied when passing someone who maybe has not verbally engaged you or encroached into your space, but is either eyeing you or will be passing by you in close proximity. I've done this for years and years, but never actually had a name for it.

As mentioned by Rob, scratching the side of your head is very close to a covered position for a shielding elbow which covers your head, neck, eyes and face from someone on the side you are shielding.  

Incidentally, I also use this on people that I perceive to be careless, uncoordinated, or exhibit erratic movement, particularly when they have a ranged object in their hands that might poke me in the eye (walking stick, umbrella, pointy toys swung around by kids, martial artists swinging their bo/tambos). 

In the picture below I am isolating one element of a compressed cover I taught to the class, but you can see from this structure, that if Malcolm was to swing at me from where he's standing, having this shield up is an ideal position for me to take the hit or preferably slam into with a compressed structure, and it would be significantly easier to make this transition from an active grooming position with a readied hand/forearm than having my hands down, in my pockets, or clutching onto a phone.  On a related note, slamming through someone's face, neck, chest with all of your body-weight focused on the points of your elbows is a pretty awesome way to get them moving back and get you into launching forward with strikes and pressure!

It is unnatural and draws unwanted attention to be walking around with a shielded elbow locked in, but keep in mind the principles that except in situations where clutching a tool is appropriate, unencumbered hands are easier to use and active hands are more quickly put into action.

Train smart & stay safe,
​Evan D
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense

I did a women’s self defense corporate seminar in DC for a proactively-thinking street-smart group.  Several of the ladies shared some of their experiences with how they live day-to-day, head on a swivel, maneuvering to avoid individuals that seem sketchy, and for them it is a lifestyle they have already taken to heart.
 
I was talking about awareness and I asked them, “how many of you talk on the phone or text regularly when you are commuting?” Very few hands went up. How many of you KNOW that it’s not a great idea to be on the phone texting, somewhat distracted while commuting?  All hands went up.

Then I asked them a follow-up, “what about when you don’t know where you’re going and are trying to get your bearings straight?  How many of you will pull out your phone and GPS where you’re going while walking?”  Most of them raised their hands, sheepishly.

Those of us who take our responsibility to safety seriously need to take a look at holes in our game.  We need to analyze where our safety-gaps are and look for patterns of behavior where we break our own personal safety rules and exhibit less-aware tourist-like behavior.
To look at it from another angle, do you feel more or less vulnerable to something bad happening to you when you don’t know where you are going? For most people I would say more vulnerable, particularly in that you are focusing on an additional stressor, where am I and where is my destination?

Compound that with switching critical focus between your phone in-hand and looking at your surroundings trying to follow where to go and you are significantly more distracted and not likely to see someone assess or approach you.
There are always times when you will have to improvise and deal with things on the fly, but for many situations, a little work up-front can make you capable of being more aware and less fixated on figuring out where you are or where you are headed.

Do your homework upfront.
One way to compensate for that is by looking things up ahead of time.   You can use Google maps and get a street view of exactly where you are heading-before you get in the car to go there.  Even better would be to identify the close landmarks on both sides of your destination using the street-view, so that you know where you are without relying on just your GPS. 

As an example, I frequently travel to places in DC that have never been to when I do corporate self defense seminars for office employees.  I can be near my destination and still have no idea where it is relative to the best location for parking. 

For me, pre-planning my commute means less stress, and less stress across the board means more brain-computing power for other stuff.

Train smart & stay safe,

Evan D.
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense

How many street-smart blunders do you find in this photo? Comment below on the ones you can identify- you'll have to think outside the box for a few.  I'll post the answer key after I get a few responses.

Today I was able to practice what I preach while teaching an outdoor private lesson in the park near my house.

Empathy-Excuse-Exit- is a template I teach for disengaging from someone on the street that you do not want to talk to.  It also works for non-threatening people that just plain weird you out.

While my client and were taking turns back and forth trying to punch each other in the face, practicing covering up with our forearms a man approached us.  This guy gets much closer than I would have usually allowed without addressing him first; my vision was tunneled and most of my focus was on the known threat, a punch to the face, which was occupying my awareness, so I didn’t see him approach.

The way he’s dressed is an outlier that requires immediate attention, he’s shirtless and shoe-less, and walked a pretty long ways through dirt and gravel to approach us.  It’s super weird. There are little kids everywhere on recess in this park, my client and I are attempting to punch each other in the face and he and I are no longer the weirdest person in the park.

He asks, “Can either of you do a woman’s voice for me?”

Mentally I check to make sure I’m not on the set of the movie Deliverance.

Empathy: Me: “Sorry man.”
Excuse: “I can’t”
My client John also says no.

He asks again, & attempts to explain why: I’m trying to bla, bla, something about pretending to be his wife for his mobile phone company confirmation…sounds like committing fraud, to explain why he wants a woman’s voice.  

I don’t know this guy, though he doesn’t seem threatening to me because he’s being super friendly about what he’s asking for, but he's not fully dressed and asking for something weird and uncomfortable to me.  Regardless of what he’s asking, I do not want him to get any closer & certainly don’t want to help him with his weird, ethically questionable request.  Fortunately, he does not encroach closer and maintains about 10 feet away with conversation attempts continuing.

Sometimes individuals will utilize guilt as a way of getting what they want.  He attempts again and tries to use guilt to bait us to comply with his request:

“Come on, help me out. You just have to say a couple words.”

I attempt my 3’E’s again- escape isn’t needed yet because of space and proximity.

Empathy: Me:” Sorry man, I can’t do a woman’s voice.”
Excuse, strengthened: “I’m getting over a cold and my voice is raspy and deeper than usual.” (As a subtly manipulate my voice and make it sound more raspy).

He finally leaves.  My objective is complete.

Changing a few variables in this situation could have drastically changed the perceived threat and response from someone else. If this man had approached a woman who was by herself or one of the caretakers of the many 3-5 year olds running around, she would have probably been significantly more on-edge and freaked out by a shirtless shoe-less man making a strange request and encroaching into her personal space.

Reflection on why I manage encounters this way:

What do I have to gain from this encounter?

• Committing fraud for someone else
• Letting someone I do not know get super close to me
• Helping a shirtless-shoe-less stranger with an odd reques

​Compare that with: what could I be putting at risk by letting my guard down and having this person get really close to me  given that I don’t really know their full intent?

Key point: It’s not your duty to be everybody’s hero.  When in doubt, be selfish and cautious when it comes to your personal space and strangers.
 
Be smart & stay safe,
Evan Dzierzynski
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense

I would be interested to hear about some of your encounters and how you have managed attempts from someone to engage you or ask something of you.  Please comment below or on the FB post!

Getting a refresher training and high level perspective from one of the most real and experienced experts in the industry a few weeks ago, Lee Morrison, was an excellent opportunity that was well worth the trip.  Whenever I get to learn hands-on from a high level coach, I always come back recharged with energy and creativity.

Really excited about the new format of how I'm running myself-defense seminars. I had the opportunity to run two 2-hour self-defense courses today with my newly organized format, a coprporate sessions and a women's only course saw awesome results and got some great feedback from both groups.  Huge improvements in how they were moving and how they were attacking the drills: giving them skills prioritizing preventing the bad from occuring, managing it is a gray-area, and smashing the person if the fight is on!

I'll be doing this new run through in my upcoming women's session on January 9th and 16th- session two will build on the skills and intruduce other varibles.  Come out & train!

Registration info here

Train smart & stay safe,

Evan D.
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense