You’re probably no stranger to the idea of using something as an impact weapon to strike an assailant.
But there is a right way and lots of wrong ways to use them for the greatest effect on the street.
Sure, you could do your basic caveman strike, but wouldn’t you like to have some actual technique behind your methods?
I talked to Brian Stein about using impact weapons in a street fight, and here is a run-down of what he told me.
Three Tips For Using Impact Weapons In A Street Fight!
Impact weapons are often recommended because, if you aren’t already carrying one, you can easily find one.
These are all around us.
They’re all hard, they’re all strong, and they’ll all do serious damage to whomever you hit with them/
This is just a matter of physics.
A rock, a brick, a piece of wood…
…Impact weapons are everywhere!
Any rigid metal or plastic object that can be held in the hand can be used as an impact weapon.
It could be a flashlight as easily as a pen, a marker, or a purpose-built impact tool.
You could use a roll of quarters.
In a real emergency, you could even use a tightly wrapped, rolled up newspaper or magazine.
The modern pocket flashlight is nothing more than an aluminum or plastic pocket stick with an LED on one end.
Hammers, socket wrenches, crowbars… these are all impact weapons.
But there are some things you need to know about impact weapons to use them the best way.
Tip #1: Compliance Techniques Don’t Work
Tak Kubota, who popularized the “Kubotan,” taught a lot of compliance techniques in his materials.
The Kubotan is basically just a yawara stick, which is a dowel five or six inches long.
They’re commonly sold today as keychains and lots of people carry them for self-defense.
The problem is that the compliance techniques taught for use with weapons like this — things like jamming the stick down into the attacker’s knuckles, or into his body to activate pressure points — just don’t work.
Yes, you can use the Kubotan, yawara, or any other rigid, stick-like object, to facilitate come-along techniques and other joint locks for leverage… in theory.
In practice, none of this stuff works unless you first beat the attacker up so much that he’s dazed and confused…
…and even then, they aren’t likely to work reliably.
One is compliance techniques using the Kubotan, yawara, or pocket stick as leverage to facilitate the technique.
Compliance methods are simply too complicated to be effective in a real altercation.
Tip #2: Key Flailing Doesn’t Work Either
Another technique that isn’t advisable is key-flailing.
This is where you use the Kubotan as a handle and you whip the keys on the split ring at someone.
This is based on the idea that if you’re carrying one of these impact weapons, it probably has a keyring on it and you’re using it to carry your keys.
Taking that a step farther to use the keys as a flail, though, is a bad idea.
While it can be distracting and annoying, key flailing does not have the power to do any real, serious damage.
Most likely, it will just annoy your attacker until he can take your keys away from you.
Tip #3: Strike Targets of Opportunity
Different martial arts and systems may have different fancy means of applying weapons like this.
In a real fight, however, you basically just want to hit the guy.
You hit whatever the person presents to you.
This is called a “target of opportunity.”
It’s literally whatever is available to you.
You aren’t seeking a specific vulnerable point.
You’re just using your weapon to wail away on the closest target of opportunity.
For example, many martial arts-trained people will try for good, clean head shots.
They are “head hunters.”
But your strikes simply don’t have to be this perfect to be effective.
When resisting the urge to head-hunt, remember that, while the face represents the person, their hand or arm can be just as vulnerable, if not more.
If you hit someone hard enough in the hand, for example, they are not going to punch or grab you with that hand anymore.
You do not want to stand toe to toe and fight “fairly.”
This is not Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and this is not a good, clean fight.
You’re using weapons to brutalize someone in order to stop them from killing, maiming, or raping you or someone you care about.
The “stun and run” strategy is usually best.
You hit them hard, hit them often, hit whatever is available, and as soon as you can break away and get to safety, that is what you do.
