TO defend your self, implies you know what is happening

To defend oneself it implies that you know what is happening, or else you’re not defending yourself. The key word here is “knowing”, and on this note learning how to handle that knowledge.
The mind and body work on association, so it recognizes situations and uses past experiences to handle coming situations, be it learning how to use the new tv-remote or something more serious like a person threatening your life. Even though both situations can be stressful, the strongest impact of stress is probably the threat on your life. Antonovsky (ref) states that all things in life stress an individual, it’s a question of how well the individual coopts with the situation and one key factor of handling a stressful situation is the sense of coherence; the understanding/knowing of how/why the situation is as it is.
To get to this knowledge and implement it scenarios have been used by professionals for many years. Police, ambulance, firefighters have all done scenario training were the situation was simulating real life situations. Being it as first responders or taking over for a colleague, seeing and working the scenario helped getting to know many facets of a scenario. Thus bringing knowledge to the real life scenario.
For many years Tony Blauer has been stating that the “scenario dictates”. Stating that any motivation or decision will take it’s offspring in the scenario.
Scenarios will also show the evolution from start to end, thus connecting “the dots”. Getting this knowledge is essential, since it’s brings us to the ques and pre-ques . The ques / pre-ques are the signals that indicate something could be on its way, be it a punch or a head but.
This brings us back to the start of the blog; knowing what is happening.

The fundemental part in a puzzle

Learning martial arts has been a teaching in structure and systems. No matter which style there was always an assumption for what you did and why.

With the blocks you assumed certain attacks, the attacks you assumed certain situations and the stances you took, enforced these assumptions.

Never did I question these assumptions, since they were "golden rules", and each system/style had it's own. Sometimes they would fit each other and at other times these would fill out voids.

By time I started to teach these techniques, I was using the same assumptions that were taught to me. But my teaching was moving from martial artist to more non-marital artist. People having their daily work in areas were physical confrontation was more a norm. They questioned my assumptions, moving my understanding of what is self-defense, and how can I teach people who need it for daily self-defense.


A lot of people working in areas of physical confrontation don't want to spend hours and hours doing techniques that have to be worked on for years, to be able to do self-defense. And waiting for a "black belt" isn't the goal. I started to look into how to minimize repetitions so my students could learn effective techniques that could easily be utilized; looking at how to do techniques that depending on natural movements. I also started looking into who else had been thinking about this, and what have they done. But it was a puzzle, each time I thought I had a piece in place, 2 or 3 more areas had a space to be filled. There was always areas with something missing or just some kind of information just "hanging out there".


This search brought me to Tony Blauer (Coach Blauer), reading it on the internet, buying his Highgear, the CD's and DVD's. It sounded good and had some possibilities. What I didn't realize was that reading and doing are 2 different things, something I usually told my students, but really experienced/woke me up the first time I participated in the PDR cert. with Tom Acuri.


It blew my mind. I thought I was working on a puzzle piece by piece, but found that I was working around one major piece: PDR/SPEAR - startle/flinch. Suddenly I found myself having old pieces of the puzzle falling into place while others just materialized by themselves.

The concepts of P.D.R/S.P.E.A.R just filled in a void, not pushing my knowledge away, but filling out many gaps. The Cycle of Behavior helping on fear management on too the physical drills(and the usaged of startle/flinch) giving a fundamental understanding and reference for future training.

The drills in themselves being small puzzles that can be taken apart and put together to fit the scenario you need to practice. Emphasizing Coach Blauers statement "The Scenario dictates all".


In every real life scenario the BG has to come to you, making what I think the encroachment drill the key drill to all drills. Where it's possible to think or act(or practice) tactical, protective and primal on all parts of the drill, and at the same time change angles of the encroachment or just letting the BG change his intent(on the drill or meanwhile doing the drill), gives many variations just based on 1 drill. Even two(or more) BG can encroach and still use the encroachment drill. Even on the technical side many variations can be practice, be it tactical, protective or primal, distance and CQF also are refined using a BG as the sharpening tool. Of course encroachment isn't enough, but the attack when the BG encroaches can differ depending on the scenario, given us other drills, like the bear hug drill or under lateral. And by putting the encroachment drill in front of the other drills, they come to life. And in that sense they become close to reality, and given us students the possibility to practice real self-defense based on real approaches or encroachments if you want :-)

With this Coach Blauer has helped me get back to where self-defense counts; for people who need techniques and principles that work for them. And I now can see my puzzle given sense, and looking forward to many good hours with Coach Blauers PDR/SPEAR.

Startle/Flinch reaction - the second it starts

Nothing happens by it self. There is always a story/a prelude before the physical part of the confrontation, not that the victim always can see it, but it's there.

The second an attack starts, if it is introduced faster than expected the body reacts with a startle/flinch reaction. A reaction coined by Tony Blauer, that states that "An individual who is confronted by a physical threat will have an autonomic response, startle-flinch that is part of the unconscious self-defense mechanism. This occurs long before the cognitive identification process which allows a victim to process the available information and make a conscious decision that results in the fight or flight response."(citet from tonyblauer.com)

Richard Schmidt states that it takes 300-500 repetitions before a new movement is learned, but the 10 fold (3000-5000) to learn a new movement that has to replace the old. 3000- 5000 repetitions take time, which could be used to learn 10 new movements for the same number of repetions. In theory you'll learn more by not using your time to change movements. In some cases it would be nessecary, but in those cases were a movement has the poetenial to work for you, why not use it, as with the startle/flinch which puts the body into natural protective state.

Using the startle/flinch as your base will give you a double edge; Using your time more effective and starting your defence as soon as possible!

Rising to the occasion

One modern myth is the people will rise to the occasion when in a physical confrontation. And inside this you'll also to the correct "technique" and say the correct things!

Let’s take a step back and look into what happens when a physical confrontation starts. Without looking into the different types of confrontations and in what context they are, the following stands true for any kind of confrontation:

• Getting aware that a confrontation is starting or has started
• A “this isn’t happening to me”/holey shit / flinch-startle moment
• Primal responses kick into action
• The body prepares/starts a fight-flight-submit or posture response
• Adrenalin kicks in and only gross motor skills are easily accessed.
• Visual and audio perception cannot be relied upon.
• Mental thought processor “tunnel” towards the threat, perceiving and focusing on everything that could be/is a threat

There are situations were some of the processes get bypassed, and they will be handled on later articles.

A physical confrontation is a person to person experience, and since most people will try every possible means to avoid this, a denial of a confrontation will get you ambushed by your own bodily reaction to what is happening. Putting yourself into a situation that it seems like a surprise that it really did happen, and even in some cases were some people turn their backs towards the threat.

Not acknowledging the fact that you are already in a confrontation is missing out on valuable time and possibilities.

Even if you are aware of the confrontation your body will respond with your primary response type, narrowing it down to fight-flight-posture-submit response. Utterly narrowing your possibilities you will only have gross motor skills available and pre-practiced /defined/blueprint skills. Not to mention you might be under influence of alcohol or might have your arms full of groceries; the scenario.

Getting back to “rising to the occasion”, you’ll be doing something but would it be what you expect? Would you be able to react In a confrontation with a person bent on harming you or one of your loved ones? How do you know you will rise to the occasion, without even knowing how you will react.

It’s like driving a car and everyday you drive the same way. One day it rains, the other has a snow storm, and even if you have taken into consideration the weather you could find yourself skidding out of the road. If you have tried driving on a driving course were the roads were slippery, you would prepare your self emotionally and physically for what happens, and by that increasing your chances for you to get the car back on track.

But it really boils done to: do you want to be prepared or take your chances?