Self-Defense - The Role of Your Emotions in Effectively Surviving a Brutal Self-Defense Attack

Most self-defense and martial arts classes avoid the emotions altogether. Others limit their focus on a gross over-simplification of emotional states during a self-defense situation. But, aside from being frightened or angry, what role do your emotions play in dealing with a potentially deadly situation?

Did you ever consider that?

Aside from being responses to the moment-to-moment occurrences as we move through our days, what role do your emotions play. For most people, it's kind of like your blood type. Apart from knowing what it is so we don't end up with the wrong one if we need it, it and the emotions are just things that we "have" and have no control over.

In reality, the emotions are actually tied to our body's own natural, human, defense system. It's true. Your body is already hard-wired for self-defense by design.

The thing is that, our sophisticated brains, socialization, and cultural, academic, and familial education has virtually made us completely unaware that we have these abilities and functions.

So, what's the function of your emotions, and how can they be used for self-defense? Excellent question.

It's not the focus of this article to explain all of the inner workings of your human brain. Let's just start with some very simple responses to stimuli from the world around us.

You see, everything that we're exposed to, invokes a feeling, or response at a base, primitive level. This happens without us being conscious of it, and also happens below the level of what we normally call our emotions.

These base "feelings" or responses can be generally classified as feelings of:

Attraction - we like it


Aversion - we don't like it, or...


Apathy - it doesn't cause us to move either way

Don't confuse these simple feelings with higher, more complex emotional moods like:

Love
Hate, and...

Ignorance

The ones I'm talking about are much simpler and tied not to the higher brain functions, but actually come out of our lower "reptilian" brain - also known as the R-complex - the section of your brain that is primarily concerned with self-preservation activities like eating, procreating, and not-dying.

"Why," you may ask, "do I want to know all this scientific mumbo-jumbo? All I want to do is pick up some moves to protect myself?"

And I would answer, "you don't have to learn anything."

Not if you just want to learn your "moves" and then hope that you'll be able to use them in a real street self-defense situation.

Remember. When you're training in a martial arts or self-defense class, you're probably pumped up, happy, having a good time. Am I right?

Looking at the base feelings I described before, that would put you in "attraction" mode, where you like what you're doing and want more of it. The activity - the training - it feels good and, while perhaps difficult at times, probably not very threatening or dangerous at all.

Now, whether or not you've ever been in a real fight, or ever been attacked by an enraged individual out for blood, I'm sure you can imagine what that must be like. You can almost see his eyes and the intense look on his face. Add to that, the intensity and intention he's projecting and the smell of him - we can't forget that smell and feel of him as he invades your personal space.

Are you still in "attraction" mode? I bet not. And you're not even in the real situation. I'm just describing it and you're having an "aversion" response.

How do you think you're going to feel actually being in the heat of the moment?

You got it. Very different than in class or your own personal training sessions where there is no real danger.

If you understand the role and immense value that your emotions play in keeping you safe. And, if you learn about what role they play in spearheading your body's natural defense mechanisms, then you can also train to tap into their power and use them as tools for your own defense.

Having this knowledge will help you to tailor and adjust your actual training methods to accommodate, acknowledge, and utilize your emotions as the valuable aids they are.

Remember, any monkey can learn the moves, but a real expert - a true master - uses things that most individuals don't even know about, or don't know exist. So, do you have to study and use your emotions in your self-defense training? No.

But then, you don't "have" to breath either. But I'd highly recommend it!

Are you a private individual, police or security professional, member of the military, or company manager looking for real self-defense training that works?

Get the information you need to survive a real world self-defense situation.

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Jeffrey Miller is an internationally recognized self-defense expert. He is the creator of the unique EDR: Non-Martial Arts Defensive Training System and teaches individuals, security professionals, companies, and organizations how to be more safe in Today's often unsafe world. Visit his web site at => http://www.warrior-concepts-online.com

Learn how to kick: Kicking effectively in a self-defense or Combat Situation part 4 of 10

This 10-article series will deal with the various components that must be Add be calculator, when considering the use of a particular kick in a combat or self-defense situation. These ten components can also be used by the tournament competitor, although certain segments should be changed slightly for the tournament aspects of kicking, rather than the more intensive nature in order to use a kick or kick in battle. Although all of these individual components is important, is the most effective when combined together and utilized properly executing a kick.

Although I am only going to discuss one of the components in this article, here is the complete list of all ten of them.

1. Your kicking ability

2. Your intended use

3. Environment

4. Telegraphing

5. Striking the Implementer

6. Striking correct objective

7. Initial impact

8. impact

9. Deviation or follow-up action are

10. Return to the fighting position

Component four; Telegraphing:

Telegraphing can and will take many forms. Most are subconscious nature, while the other is done deliberately, but inadvertently. Most people would not not and deliberately telegraph their intentions to their opponent, but end up doing so in any event, primarily due to lack of proper training. What I would do in this article is to present you with the most common forms of telegraphing when kicking and the three most effective ways to eliminate them.

Verbalizing:

Verbalizing your intentions is usually done by opening your mouth and declaration to your opponent that you want to kick his ass or words to that effect. This not only telegraphs your intentions to your opponent, but it can also be used against you if your opponent decides to take you to the Court on a civil case after the dispute has arisen. It can also be used against you, if the authorities are involved and it turns into a criminal case.

Your foot and what comes out of it can be one of your greatest assets, or one of your worst enemies. So instead of opening your mouth and tells your opponent your intentions are keep closed and let him wonder.

Eye Contact:

Ever wonder why the United States Secret Service agents wear sunglasses? No, it is not to look cool or really to keep the Sun out of their eyes. Although it is the original purpose of the sunglasses. The Secret Service's primary purpose is for wearing sunglasses is to keep people from seeing where and what their eyes see. This gives also disable the perception of that they are looking everywhere at once.

One of the most common telegraphs a person want to do is to look at part of the body, to which he intends to strike on their opponent. This is a dead giveaway and should never happen, unless you are able to carry out deceptive strategy.

Ideally, your eyes focused on your opponent like a flashlight with mid light centered on your opponent's upper chest. While your peripheral vision scans his whole body like the external view of the flashlight. At no time should your eyes be focused like a laser beam on a single point of focus.

Facial Expressions:

Have you ever heard of a person has a "poker face?" This means that the person concerned does not give off any signs of emotion, betray his emotions. This is quite common in poker players and should be one of many goals, you will want to strive to reduce the chances of accidental telegraphing your intentions to your opponent.

Keep your face so cold and emotionless as face on a Granite statue.

Shoulder, Arm and upper body movements:

Hunching over the shoulders and torso in the waist is often very good indicators that a person gets ready to kick. Another is to lower hands before kicking in.

Always see yourself in the mirror and look close to yourself and what you do before and during the opening of your kick. Write them down and then remove them.

Finally, your goal should be to have a ' poker body ' go with your poker face.

Shifting your weight:

If you are a relatively inexperienced on kicking in, you will almost always telegraph your intentions to kick by significantly shifting your weight onto your non-kicking legs. This is almost always accompanied by a reduction of the hands.

If you are an experienced kicker, there should be no noticeable difference in your weight distribution on the eve of the kicking. This is of course dependent on you executing each component of kick correctly.

Improper opening of Kick:

This is usually done by either one of two things; not set up your kick with another technique prior to initiating the, and/or lifting your legs with your thigh muscles to kick rather than correctly takes advantage of your foot and ankle to lift your legs up.

The 3 most common ways to eliminate Telegraphing:

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

1. Practice the correct technique:

This is pretty much a no-brainer here. If you have a 99% of properly kick and 1% incorrect, so you have an incorrect kick. You must practice (regularly) to each component of kick correctly and with correct mind-set, in order to achieve the maximum amount of productivity and efficiency out of your kick.

2. Practice with a competent education Partner:

You partner can and will have a different perspective on you and your kicking skills and will be able to critical feedback necessary for you to improve these skills. Have a good training partner is invaluable to improve your kicking skills, so when you find one, do not take them for granted.

3. practice in a mirror in front:

The mirror is without doubt my favorite piece of equipment for use in order to improve the effectiveness of my spark. Should your goal is to be able to perform your kick the impact before the note in the mirror that you actually have kicked. Of course this is not easy to do, it should not.

Ideally your kick strike your opponent before he sees it, and before you even realize you have cast it.

Shawn Kovacich have practicing martial arts for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of the 4th degree (Yodan) black belt in Karate and Tae Kwon both Do. Shawn has also participated in such prestigious full-contact bare border karate competitions as Shidokan Open and Sabaki Challenge, among others. In addition to its many holdings is Shawn also a record holder of two time world for endurance high kicking certified by Guinness Book of World Records. Shawn is the author of the highly acclaimed achieving Kicking Excellence Series and can be reached via his website at http://www.kickingbooks.com:

Click the following link to learn more about Crescent Kick,: Crescent Kick