Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts and Self-Defense Blog by Wim Demeere | Techniques, Books, Podcasts

Fear, self-talk and self-defense

by 19 Comments

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

by Leave a Comment

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

.

Video review: “One against Many” by Branimir Tudjan

by 4 Comments

Here’s my long promised video review of  “One against Many” by Branimir Tudjan. Stay tuned for more as I’m also working on an interview with Mr. Tudjan. I’ll put it online as soon as it’s ready. Here’s the review:

The video starts with an introduction in which Mr. Tudjan explains the framework of his MOSS system: the three rules of self defense and some good advice on the realities of defending yourself and what you need to survive multiple opponent confrontations. He then goes on to point out the most common mistakes:

  • Going to the ground
  • Going for a lock or control hold
  • High kicks
  • Taking a fighting stance

This advice makes perfect sense to me and conforms to both my own training and experience. Good stuff.

The next topic Branimir covers is what he calls “The dynamics of fear”, meaning the adrenal stress response you get when you find yourself in a self defense situation involving several attackers. He explains that fear is common and totally normal in a fight. Instead of fighting it, accept it and use it to your advantage.

The last prelude to the technical portion is an explanation on the difference between the athletic and tactical response. It would take too long to explain this here but the discussion revolves around technique-based fighting versus principle based responses.

Next up is a big chapter on striking techniques. Mr. Tudjan covers a limited set of techniques he found to be most practical for fighting multiple opponents. Most of them are the classics we all know and love: palm strike, hammer fist, gouging and biting, elbows and knees, etc. But there was also the handball jump strike (both empty hand and with weapons) that I was surprised to find in the list. Personally, I like it a lot but it takes some training before you can pull it off in a real fight. You also need a solid load of guts and confidence in the technique. But once you’ve trained this technique well enough, you have a wicked surprise waiting for your attackers. [Read more…]

A self defense lesson from natural predators, Part Two

by Leave a Comment

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.

.

Every day self defense carry

by 21 Comments

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…]

Popular posts


Recent Posts

Search this blog

Custom Search
Google