Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.

Epic situational awareness fail

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The first lesson of self defense is to have a solid awareness of your surroundings. As you can see, awareness not only keeps you safe but also dry. Talk about an epic fail… :-)

 

I never really understood people who walk around texting like that. I mean, isn’t it blatantly obvious you’re going to run into things when you focus on the small screen of your cellphone? Or worse, become a prime candidate for muggers, purse snatchers, and their ilk? I’m not sure if this woman would agree with me, but she’ll sure pay more attention now….

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Fear, self-talk and self-defense

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Loren and I were talking last week and he mentioned something that would be an interesting topic to talk about here. It combines the three things I mention in the title:

  • Fear
  • Self-Talk
  • Self-Defense

Here’s what I mean:

We all like to think of ourselves as bad-ass mo-fo’s who eat nails and spit them out as bullets. It’s a nice and comforting thought but it isn’t accurate: except for rare cases, most people will feel fear when they’re in a self-defense situation. That fear can manifest itself in many different ways but I’m only going to focus on one of them now: negative self-talk.

Picture this situation

You’re having drinks with a couple buddies in an up-scale bar, a place where the bad guys usually don’t come.  You’re having fun and so is everybody else there. Nothing going on but everybody having a good time. But you do a regular radar sweep every now and then, just in case.

During one of those sweeps, something pings on the screen: one guy gives off a negative vibe. You let your sweep pass him by and then observe him in your peripheral vision. A couple of things become apparent right away: [Read more…]

LEO Training Success Story

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This weekend, I received a nice e-mail from a LEO  about his defensive tactics program.  At his request, I used initials instead of his name (can’t be too careful with liability issues these days.) Here’s what he wrote:

Just finished my department’s defensive tactics program today, including some takedowns. Per your heavy bag video, I’ve been practicing my sweeps full-force on the bag for the past month or two. I only got to do two reps because of time constraints, but I blasted a huge shorter guy to the floor each time. This is without having actually swept a person in six months. No joke, those methods work. 

Thanks again for making the video and answering my various questions.

M.C.

That’s just wicked cool. It’s always great to hear stories like this, it makes all the hard work worthwhile.

All over the world, LEOs don’t get enough training time for their defensive tactics program. So they have to supplement with solo training or find a buddy to practice. I can’t help with the latter but a lot of my books and videos focus on solo training. So I’m real happy to hear The Fighter’s Video Guide to Hard-Core Heavy Bag Training helped him a little bit.

Here’s hoping he gets to go home safely to his loved ones after every shift.

The Fighter’s Video Guide to Hard-Core Heavy Bag Training

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A self defense lesson from natural predators, Part Two

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In Part one, there was an ambush gone wrong. In this one, it looks more like a streetfight to me.

Check it out:

Look at it from a self defense perspective and there’s a lesson for us from the world of natural predators:

  • The birds only attack from the back, never up front.
  • They wait for the cat to turn to shoot in and zip out of the way right after. Stick and move. :-)
  • Once the black cat moves in, they scatter.
  • But they don’t miss an opportunity to attack again when they feel it’s safe enough to do so.

It reminds me of street fights where two guys are arguing until another one joins the fun with fists swinging. The one left standing then uses every opportunity he gets to get in a free kick or punch.  In those cases, getting away is usually the better option. The white and brown cat should have done that right away… :-)

Cool music from Predator BTW.

Props to Anne for this find.

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Every day self defense carry

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Updated on 12/03/2018

On an e-mail list I’m on, there was a discussion about what your every day carry for self defense is. This is a topic of debate that you routinely find on the Internet. There are usually two camps:

  • You can never carry enough weapons/ammo aka “Lock and load, boys! There’s no such thing as overkill!”
  • Only carry a minimum for what you might need.

The funny thing on the list was this: a professional soldier, one who is active in a war zone and has seen the elephant, got his rant on about civilians who walk around trying to imitate an armory. I think he has a point. It’s fashionable these days to talk about carrying multiple knives and guns plus ammo because you might:

  • Lose the knife so you can go for a back up. And when you lose that one you still have five more back ups to go to.
  • You can throw the knife because you still have back ups.
  • If your gun runs dry, you just grab another, no need to reload.
  • If you do need to reload, you have tons of ammo on you.

As such, I don’t think these statements are wrong per se. They seem logical and have a ring of common sense to them. But that still doesn’t mean they are right. Let’s take a look.

Every day self defense carry

Some basic assumptions.

Before I move on, I’ll make a couple of basic assumptions about you, dear reader. I admit up front, they will be off for some of you. If that’s the case, don’t get upset about what I’ll write next. But for the most of you, I’m willing to bet my Metallica vinyl record collection that I’m not too far off. Here goes: [Read more…]

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