It is getting cooler out which will give us the ability to venture into techniques involving the use of clothing to assist in the defenses. But today we focused on the things that can be done when an attacker choses to bring his head (and the related attachments) into reach of the hands. And yes, these cause an extreme amount of pain and will make even the strongest of men scream. It is often not a good idea to punch the head since the skull is a very hand thing to hit. So when the attacker decides to lower his head down and offer it as a sacrafise there are many things that can be done to discourage him from continuing his assault.
We started with the situation where we the attacker closes distance and we lock up in a nuetral positon. If we allow the attacker to control our neck or elbow we will soon find ourselves in a very bad situation. So, we need to control his ability to, move behind us or take us to the ground. Control of the neck and shoulder are paramount to limit the ability for the attacker to compromise our safety. We dont push him away because that would cause a serious error on our part. The first thing we trained is to control the neck, shoulder and chest. Then drive our hand into the chin in an outward motion while maintaining control of the shoulder rotation. This is called a 'head koto" and with effectively pry him off and allow us to drive him to the ground. It is not a comfortable move to practice and care was taken not to cause injury.
If the attacker protects his neck and jaw, we then use other techniques to allow for the space to open up. First one we practiced hurts a bunch. We curl our fingers and drive them down and around the collar bone. This will then allow us to control the apponent . It will also allow us the ability drive our hand up into either the carotid or the throat. We continue to drive our hand into these areas util we can drive the head into the ground. Another good option we practiced is one of YHC favorite. Instead of driving the hand and fingers into the throat or carotid, the eyes are often the best choice. typically the thumb will have the best angel of attack and provide the discouragement that we desire,, and often the screams will follow. IF we have failed to control the attacker well enough, we will often find that he will have moved into a take down. Unfortunately for the attacker his ears are not well protected in this position and can easily be grabbed and torn off,, again creating the discouragement to stop the attack. An alternate defense is the nose tear. Reaching the hand around the head and hooking the nose will allow us to apply pressure to this fleshy body part,,, and the pain once again will provide discouragement. Care should be taken practicing these attacks because the ears and nose are not attached to the body very well and can ( and will ) be torn or removed very easily. We can always move into the figure 4 defense and attacks (that we have practiced during the past few weeks) if we fail to attack these points effectively. Things will happen very quickly and we must respond effectively to stop the attacker from putting us in a very bad position. We cant allow the attack to control the lateral side of our body for this will give him a clear path to moving behind.
This practice took much of the limited time this morning but we wanted to get to knife techniques. We were only able to review two attacks before the time ran out. We will visit the knife defenses and attacks more during the coming weeks.
Thank you for allwoing YHC to share this system with you fine men.
Stay strong and stay safe.
Tick Tock