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mike23
mike23's picture
How do you get back up.

I’m fairly new to Iain’s theories and philosophies so forgive my ignorance in asking probably some basics questions.

There are 2 types of altercations. The first, when you’re attacked by a criminal, in which case you fight just enough to escape. The second is a mutual fight which also happens often, maybe not to the 40 or 50 year old student but more so to the 15-21 year old student.

In the first scenario, you somehow have fallen to the ground and the criminal is somehow on top. It doesn’t matter in what capacity; Straddling you in mount or some other entanglement and trying to punch you. When you “fight to regain your feet” or “fight to get back up” What is the standard way you accomplish that? Is there a standard…..”bunkai” you use that seems to work quite often?

I know how those BJJ people would do it. It seems they have an escape or reversal for every problem on the ground, but what methods do you use?

In scenario number two, the mutual fight….And we know that happens; if you’re both on the ground are you finishing that bully on the ground or are you fighting to get up.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Hi Mike,

mike23 wrote:
I’m fairly new to Iain’s theories and philosophies so forgive my ignorance in asking probably some basics questions.

That’s what we are here for :-) I’ll do my best to succinctly clarify and direct you to places that cover these issues in more detail. Some of the issues you raise can be quite wide ranging, so I’ll avoid writing a huge reply (for practicality and my time restrictions), but I can point you in the direction of articles etc. where I clarify these points.

mike23 wrote:
There are 2 types of altercations. The first, when you’re attacked by a criminal, in which case you fight just enough to escape. The second is a mutual fight which also happens often, maybe not to the 40 or 50 year old student but more so to the 15-21 year old student.

That’s not really it. We have criminal violence and mutual combat. In very basic terms, criminal violence is when one person, or more, are intent on causing harm (outside of the law), and the other wishes to negate that harm while remaining within the law. The other is mutual combat; where both combatants agree to fight for a “win”. In a sporting environment this is legal and healthy. In the “street” it is illegal and stupid for both combatants.

Statistically, those under 24 are the most likely to fight in the street. Any age can do it, but most violence of that nature – think drunken bar fights – is carried out by younger males.

I go into much more detail on that here:

http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/article/problems-street-fighting

mike23 wrote:
In the first scenario, you somehow have fallen to the ground and the criminal is somehow on top. It doesn’t matter in what capacity; Straddling you in mount or some other entanglement and trying to punch you. When you “fight to regain your feet” or “fight to get back up” What is the standard way you accomplish that? Is there a standard…..”bunkai” you use that seems to work quite often?

I think you’re missing a few steps here. We need to consider goals and tactics so we understand the big picture.

The criminal will use violence to get what they want i.e. to harm another to gain emotional gratification, to commit a rape, to steal possessions, etc. They want to do this with maximum efficiency in a way that ensures they don’t get caught. This kind of violence can involve ambush, the use of colleagues, the use of weapons etc.

The person faced with such violence will want to avoid, or limit, the effects of that violence. They don’t need to “win the fight”; indeed it’s much better if they don’t fight at all. Rory Miller sums this up very well:

“It is better to avoid than to run; better to run than to de-escalate; better to de-escalate than to fight; better to fight than to die.  The very essence of self-defence is a thin list of things that might get you out alive when you are already screwed” – From “Meditations on Violence”

Finally, those in a mutual fight want to win. They want to assert dominance (in a “street fight”) or prove themselves to be the better fighter in a sporting context.

If we return to the example scenario given, the criminal is better served by remaining on their feet and kicking the living s##t out of the person they have just downed. That’s the most effective way for them to achieve their aim: especially if there is more than one of them. If we think of a rape, then using a weapon to intimidate and gain compliance is a more effective option for the criminal. The crime stats, and the experience of those who study criminal behaviour in depth, are clear that these are more likely (and hence given more priority) than a “ground and pound” scenario … although that can obviously happen too and should still be covered.

For the potential victim – as Rory succinctly expresses above – awareness, escape, de-escalation, etc are all skills that should be employed first and foremost. And because of the need to escape, combined with multiple enemies and weapons, then they’d never seek the ground … but, as you rightly point out, we do need “worst case scenario” methods should we get knocked down and all else fails.

In the mutual fighting context it’s different as a ground fight can be tactically wise to seek and maintain.

These are tactical issues and that’s were some of the major differences are to be found. This will also dictate how much training time will be allotted to the various elements.

For your average person learning self-protection, then you’d best serve their interests by focusing on awareness, escape, de-escalation, pre-emption, etc. The person focussed on fighting, can ignore all that because they are agreeing to fight. They don’t want to avoid it and will seek out challenging opponents (in a healthy sporting outlet).

So the training and tactics will be different; and that is hugely important. We can now look at techniques.

mike23 wrote:
I know how those BJJ people would do it. It seems they have an escape or reversal for every problem on the ground, but what methods do you use?

Good BJJ people have similar ideas to what I’ve just outlined. They know that a change in context and goal changes tactics and choice of technique. This video from Ryron and Rener Graice covers this from a BJJ perspective: https://youtu.be/e864iZ4sB8Q

From a karate perspective – if everything has gone wrong – then we need to practise getting back to our feet. Gichin Funakoshi tells us he practised this (against both single and multiple opponents) as a youngster in Okinawa in his book “Karate-Do: My Way of Life”.

The self-defence focused karateka will not spend anywhere near as much time getting good on the ground as a judoka, BJJ practitioner, wrestler, etc. does. So the first obvious observation is that karateka are never going to be anywhere near as good i.e. the quality of technique will be lower; because it has a lower priority and hence has less practise time allotted to it.

While I have learnt some techniques to regain the feet from karate (and to fight from the ground while the enemy is standing); there is no doubt that other arts do this better. In my case, I very much agree with what Funakoshi said in “Karate-Do: My way of life”. Of his two main teachers, he said:

“Both Azato and his good friend Itosu shared at least one quality of greatness: They suffered from no petty jealousy of other masters. They would present me to other masters of their acquaintance, urging me to learn from each the techniques at which they excelled.”

Karate is, and always has been, an evolving art. Not one single generation has passed it on unchanged. More on that here:

http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/article/styles-are-they-killing-karate

In my case, to best fulfil the need to regain my feet should all else fail, I have learnt from those who excel in these areas (i.e. through my practice of judo). However, I have taken those techniques and integrated them with the goals and tactics of my karate (as Funakoshi endorsed).

We spend about 10% of training time on the ground (tops); so we don’t learn everything a judoka learns, but take the simplest escapes and drill those. We also accept that the skill level reached, in terms of ground escapes, will not be the same a judoka (although we will excel in striking, live practise with multiples, dealing with weapons, escaping etc by comparison because your average judoka never practises those). The judoka needs to be able to out grapple highly trained grapplers and hence they need a much wider range of techniques and they need those techniques to be much more highly refined. Different goals need differing methods to most efficiently achieve those goals.

One of our defining guides is, “We can’t be experts in everything; but we want to be beginners in nothing”. We are not seeing expertise on the ground, but a Judoka is. So we train differently.

One other difference is that a Judoka never practises escaping from the top position (because they are winning by maintaining that position), but because of multiple enemies, weapons, etc. it’s something the self-defence focused do need to practise. We’d also never practise turning them face up when they are face down … but the opposite is true for a competative judoka. Different goals need different methods. So we can ignore a lot of judo methods because they are not convergent with our goals.

It’s not technique that is the big difference, but (most importantly) tactics, choice of technique, quality of technique, and the training time allotted.

mike23 wrote:
In scenario number two, the mutual fight….And we know that happens; if you’re both on the ground are you finishing that bully on the ground or are you fighting to get up.

Or his friends stab you to death (#)… or they enthusiastically welcome you to the “boot party” you just invited yourself to … or you beat the snot out of him and get arrested and spend time in jail because it’s hard to legally justify repeatedly punching someone in the face on the floor in the name of self-defence (or snapping a joint for that matter) when you could have got up and ran. Self-defence and “fighting” are two different things.

# - For a graphic example of how multiple enemies and weapons change things, you can watch the video on this webpage: http://www.wimsblog.com/2015/03/ground-fighting-against-a-knife-attack/

As we often discuss here, you can never divorce method from context and objective. This podcast I did three years ago cover the topics raised in this post in more depth:

http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/context-context-context-podcast

Thanks for the questions Mike and I hope this helps clarify my thinking. In short, fighting (in a legal way) and self-defence are both good and both have inherent value. However, they are not the same and we need to mark the differences to ensure the most effective training. It is the differing goals, mind-set and tactics which make the biggest difference.

I know I’ve put a few links in this post, but the one below is undoubtedly the main one to listen to if the general concept is still unclear:

http://iainabernethy.co.uk/content/martial-map-free-audio-book

All the best,

Iain

mike23
mike23's picture

Awesome thanks!

I’ll have to re-read this a few times to grasp it all and watch the links given! I do follow many posts and the knife one was a real eye opener. There was another one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AcpGJooT54 (WARNING GRAPHIC clips of people getting stabbed.)  that made me change directions. I, and I assume others who watch try to insinuate themselves into the clip thinking-what would I do, however many are unseen and from the back. ( Knife attacks are so dynamic so different )

Thanks again I hope for others to chime in!

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

mike23 wrote:
Awesome thanks!

My pleasure! I’m pleased that was of some help.

mike23 wrote:
I’ll have to re-read this a few times to grasp it all and watch the links given! I do follow many posts and the knife one was a real eye opener. There was another one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AcpGJooT54 (WARNING GRAPHIC clips of people getting stabbed.)  that made me change directions. I, and I assume others who watch try to insinuate themselves into the clip thinking-what would I do, however many are unseen and from the back. ( Knife attacks are so dynamic so different )

Yeah, there is no “good” solution to knives. However, as we can see, the “knifer” is not looking for a fight here. It’s back to that point about their objective being best achieved by surprise, etc. This again underlines how a “fighting solution” to self-protection is not the way to go.

Fighting does have its own inherent value though. I also think we have to be careful not to focus so much on self-protection that miss all the other aspects of the martial arts. As I’ve said before, I want my martial arts to be BOTH life-preserving (self-protection) and life-enhancing. I want to have fun with them and be challenged by them. The fighting side of things, for me, is a part of the life-enhancing side of it. We just need to keep the various sub-sections from bleeding into one another. They are different; but of equal value when judged by their own standards.

To use my well-worn analogy; A paint brush is a useful tool. A hammer is a useful tool. But trying to knock nails in with paint brushes, or paint with hammers, is not good! Self-protection and fighting can both be good, but disaster strikes when you mistake them for being interchangeable.

Back to the original question of what you use to get up, here are some of the basic things I’ve put online previously that would be relevant:

Nothing that would be unfamiliar to anyone with even a little judo training, but suitable for “worst case scenario back-ups” for us karateka. These are drills for high-repetition of course and in other drills the need to get fully upright and escape would be practised.

I’ve not put anything online about escaping from the top; although I regularly teach it at seminars … so I’ll look to correct that.

Important to practise striking while on the ground too. It’s easier to get up if they no longer want you near them and they are disorientated

Here are a couple of online videos on that:

Again, these are just little clips put online. They don’t show everything we do. Nor do they get across how the drills fit in the wider methodology. I hope they add somehting though.

As a wider point, it's also not just standing and ground-work either. For self-protection sitting needs covered too:

We also need live ground-work against more than one person if our ground skills are truly going to be relevant to self-protection (as Funakoshi tells us he also practised). These drills remove all doubt about the ground being a terrible place to be in self-protection (although the drills can be fun!). The person on the floor who has support from a standing person almost always wins; irrespective of who is the most skilled ground fighter of the two on the floor. I’ve no footage of that online (there is some of the Kata-Based-Sparring DVD) but here are some photos from the recent residential course.

mike23 wrote:
Thanks again I hope for others to chime in!

Me too! And I’m sure they will.

All the best,

Iain