by N. Mashiro
Telephone: If you have the opportunity, call for help. If your captors force you to talk over the phone during ransom negotiations, use the handset as a club and brain one of them. You can also throw the body of the phone at an opponent, orwhirl it like a bola, entangling the enemy in the cord.
Tennis Racket: Strike chopping blows with the edge, or jam the base of the handle into the attacker's abdomen or throat.
Toilet Brush: This innocuous item is found in most bathrooms, usually residing in a small pail beside the toilet. The end of the handle offers the usual potential for hammer blows, and the brush end is very effective when jammed into the eyes. For added effect, bu sure that you smear the brush in something really repulsive first. (See shit.)
Toilet Paper: I wish that I could tell you to smack somebody in the side of the head with a roll of TP to kill him, but it just doesn't work too well. The roll of cardboard in the center, though, does have possibilities. Extract it from the tissue and roll it into a tight, hard cylinder. Use it like a pen to hammer at his face and temple. Then there is the "spit-wad" attack, in which you soak a fist-sized wad of TP in bleach and smack it into the opponent's eyes.
Toothbrush: What could be a more natural thing to demand from your kidnappers than to be allowed to brush your teeth? No harm in that, right? When the guards aren't looking, stroke the bristles across a bar of wet soap. Then use your thumb to flick the bristles into a guard's face, spraying soap droplets into his eyes. When he grabs his eyes ram the brush as far up his nose as it will go (or into his ear).
Umbrella: The best kind has a heavy wooden handle and a steel spike on the end. When closed an umbrella is used like a cane for slashing and jabbing at the throat, solar plexus and face. When open it takes only a small movement to ram the ends of the stays into the opponent's eyes.
Urine: Many pieces of light cloth (such as a T-shirt) are ineffective weapons when dry, but make formidable flails when wet. Use some of nature's fountain and get to work!
Wash Cloth: Dripping with scalding hot, soapy water. Throw it into the guard's face, then follow through with a kick in a tender spot.
Watch: Many people say that the band of a watch can be slipped over the knuckles to make a punch more punishing. In my experience this only works with leather bands. Otherwise the punishment is to your hand.
Windowshade Roller: An excellent, weighted club that is nearly always overlooked when clearing a room of possible weapons. Take it down off its brackets, strip off the paper shade, and use the roller for jabbing or for powerful swinging blows to the head and body. Let the sunshine in!
Wrench: One of the most effective of all small makeshift clubs. Be careful, though. A steel wrench is so heavy and so narrow that it is possible to splatter someone's head with it when you only intended to tap him.
Yo-Yo: The lowly yo-yo was originally a hand weapon, something like a cross between a bola and a boomerang. You can throw it, swing it, hammer with it, or use the string as a trip wire or garrote.
by
N. Mashiro, Ph.D.
Introduction 1
1. Fistfighting 5
2. Wrist Releases 25
3. Escapes from Chokes & Lapel Grips 45
4. Escapes from Headlocks 61
5. Defense from the Ground 71
6. Escapes from an Unfriendly Embrace 85
7. Attacks from the Rear 91
8. Defending Against Knives & Clubs 107
The techniques outlined in this book are aggressive and violent and are not meant to take the place of qualified professional instruction. Attempting any of the techniques in this book could result in harm to life or limb. Therefore, this book is offered for information purposes only. Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for the use of misuse of the information contained herein.
The first two volumes in this series, The Dark Art of Death and Weapons At Hand, were intended to serve as exhaustive references on the vulnerable points of the human body, the body's natural weapons, and those common objects which can be pressed into service as makeshift weapons in an emergency.
The enthusiastic acceptance of these books by the martial community has been a source of great pleasure and pride to me, but readers have compained that the previous works did not discuss the all-important subject of how to use these weapons against an opponent's vulnerable areas. It is to this question that the present book (and the next one) must be addressed.
In my martial arts studies I have concentrated mainly on forms of karate, but with a very strong interest in that type of fighting commonly known as self-defense. Self-defense is a crude method of fighting, hardly an art at all, which is in every way inferior to any of the more sophisticated systems of hand-to-hand combat. It does have a single overriding virtue, though, which puts the others to shame. Self-defense techniques can be taught to novices in minutes, and if the novices are serious of mind and moderately sound of body, they can then perform the techniques with devastating effect.
By contrast, a karate student is shown how to punch during his very first lesson, but it may be years before he can deliver the lightning-fast, body-shattering punch which was once used for crashing through samurai armor. Some karate masters have studied the art for thirty years or more before becoming satisfied that they have mastered this punch.
This is the difference between karate and self-defense. A highly trained karateist could fight a room full of selfdefense students and might well defeat them all. Similarly, a well-trained self-defense student might well prevail against a room full of barnyard (untutored) fighters. A ten-hour course in self-defense, or even a two-hour tutorial, can make a helpless person relatively formidable against most opponents. Ten years of full contact karate lessons can make you formidable against nearly anybody. Ten hours of karate training does almost no good at all.
And there is another important difference: you can't learn karate from a book. Karate training involves a rigorous physical, emotional, and mental discipline which simply cannot be captured in the written word. For one thing, traditional karate derives much of its devastating speed from mental processes related to Zen Buddhism, concepts which can be understood by dedicated students but which cannot be expressed in words at all.
Whether or not self-defense can be learned from a book is an open question. Certainly the general public thinks it is possible, judging from the large number of self-defense texts littering the bookstores. Unfortunately, most of these books have been written by good fighters who are not good writers. They are written by athletes who have forgotten how little speed, strength, and agility is possessed by the average person. Some of the books have been written by persons who can only be described as pathologically deranged. Such persons would rather kill than wound, rather injure than escape. To kill a man for the crime of trying to punch you in the nose (as these people advocate) is neither civilized nor responsible behavior.
For these reasons, I have approached my own discussion of self-defense techniques with a pronounced sense of caution. I do not want to publish just another mediocre and unusable book, written by someone who does not need it for an audience which cannot understand it. I have tried to organize the material into natural families of techniques, each of which stems from a specific attack and begins with a specific, basic defense. The theory is that a student can amuse himself by practicing a variety of counters to an attack, but at the same time he is almost unknowingly repeating the motions of the fundamental reaction which may save his life.
As an example, while practicing defenses against a knife attack the student is encouraged to try various disarming techniques, all of which begin with a defensive side step to get out of the path of the blade. In this situation the simple act of getting out of the way is far more likely to save the student's life than any fancy disarming trick. This side step is presented as an integral part of all the disarming techniques, insuring that even those students who will never master any one of the tricks will still repetitively drill on the single motio
n which might really help them.
Low Blows concentrates exclusively on the use of the body's natural weapons, and only rarely mentions the use of makeshift weapons. This is quite deliberate. The study of self-defense through the use of knives, sticks, clubs, and firearms is a topic which I reserve for advanced students. This is partly a prejudice on my part, having learned from experience that a student who has become proficient in barehanded fighting can subsequently learn weapon handling by second nature. The opposite, however, seems not to be the case. An exclusively weapon-oriented student seems to fall apart when required to fight unarmed. Therefore, I like to teach my students the bare-handed techniques first. The next volume of the Black Medicine series, called Equalizers, will explore the more advanced subjects of fighting using kitchen knives, Bowie knives, bayonets and other daggers, yawara sticks, batons, canes, staffs, flexible weapons, pistols, rifles, and shotguns. I hope that readers will enjoy experimenting with these self-defense techniques and will never actually have any practical need for them. Self-defense techniques are by nature dirty, crude, damaging, and painful. They are also very, very effective. Good luck.
N. Mashiro
April 1981
Figure 1: Everywhere you look, the ugly face of violence. Note the right arm cocked back ready to punch. This cocking motion is your signal to fight.
Fistfighting is the most common form of assault a man is likely to encounter, usually in the person of a demented longshoreman in a bar or an irate driver on the street. (Women have their own problems, which I will address later.) With a little nerve and determination a self-defense student can meet an attack from such a person with a reasonable probability of victory.
That doesn't mean that you can win every time-that only happens in Kung Fu movies. In my estimation a selfdefense student has about a 50 percent chance of giving an assailant a severely painful surprise during the opening moves of a fistfight. The other 50 percent of the time you're going to get pounded like a tenderized steak. For most self-defense students, these 50-50 odds represent a substantial increase in their survival potential even if there is no guarantee of victory. If you want better odds than that you'll have to take up karate.
The key to success is the fact that most barroom brawlers and marauding motorists share a common failing: they're assholes. There are plenty of devastating ways to begin a fight, but these morons usually initiate hostilities with the old TV roundhouse punch. This attack is so common that you can actually anticipate it, guard against it, and if necessary you can use the punch as a wide-open invitation to dismember your opponent. That's where your chance to win lies. If the attacker uses a more sophisticated attack your victory or defeat will depend on luck, stamina, speed, and good sense. You will probably lose.
The first attack we'll consider is this typical right-hand, roundhouse blow to the face. Sometimes it comes as a punch, sometimes as a slap, but it always involves a fatal cocking of the elbow which can be the undoing of the attacker.
ATTACK # 1
Right-hand roundhouse punch (or slap) to the face. The attacker scowls, twists his face into a mask of hate, snarls "I'll just have to teach you a lesson," pulls his right arm back in a dramatic wind-up, and then throws a punch as powerful (and slow) as a piledriver. (See Figure 1.)
BASIC DEFENSE *1
The first thing is to recognize that you may be about to be attacked. Watch for that right-hand punch! Think about your response and get ready. The instant his right arm starts backward to cock the elbow, you must start to move.
Take a deep step back with your right foot. This backward step pulls your face out of range of the incoming blow. Then use a left knife-hand block to meet the attack. The knife-hand block uses the little-finger edge of the palm to deflect the opponent's arm out to your left. From this basic position you can select from a wide variety of counterattacks.
The following list of eighteen counterattacks all begin from the basic defense position just described. Try out each of these possibilities in practice and then really work on one or two as your special weapons. Don't try to become proficient with them all. If you learn just one well enough to use it in a fight you won't need the others.
COUNTERATTACKS FOR SITUATION #1
1-1: You have just completed the block and your left hand is in contact with the attacker's arm. Grasp his right wrist with your left hand, pull on the arm lightly to straighten it, and then slap up under his elbow with your right palm (breaking his arm). Show this one to anybody who thinks that self-defense requires strength! This technique must be performed quickly to avoid the inevitable left-hand punch.
Figure 2: The typical roundhouse punch is so slow that it is a simple matter to lance your fingernails into the attacker's eyes before he can finish his swing. It's usually quite a surprise to him.
1-2: Parry the blow with the left hand as before, then straighten your left arm suddenly in a vicious stab to his eyes with your fingertips. The motion is like that of a striking snake, extremely fast. If you succeed in hitting the eyes you may blind the guy, so reserve this attack for situations which really require it. Even if you don't succeed in reaching his eyes, a near miss will shake him up and distract him. That gives you another opening. (See Figure 2.)
As a variation, try stabbing your finger tips into his eyes without blocking first! Most students can pre-empt this punch and end the fight with a lightning stab to the attacker's eyes. Try it! (For practice just try to tap your partner on the forehead-leave his eyes alone!)
1-3: Grasp his wrist with your left hand and pull him in as you stab your right finger tips into his eyes. This attack is similar to the previous one except that the right hand makes the eye-stabbing strike. It takes longer to do it this way, but some people prefer to use the right hand.
1-4: Grasp his wrist and pull him in as your right hand attacks his throat. Notice that there is a dynamic motion implied here. You pull him toward you so that he collides head-on with your outgoing blow. This can be a finger tip stab to the soft spot between the collarbones (possibly fatal) or a fist blow to the Adam's apple (also possibly fatal). Most people do not think of striking the throat due to watching countless TV heroes who always punch to the jaw. The throat is a large, soft, extremely vulnerable target which is not usually well defended. Practice a few attacks to the throat and see what you think.
1-5: Grasp his wrist and pull him in as your right hand delivers a karate chop to the left side of his neck. I don't normally advocate karate chops for self-defense students because it is hard to perform the cleaverlike blow correctly, but the side of the neck is so easy to hit and so vulnerable that even a completely inept blow there can produce significant results. Flatten out your hand, stiffen it up hard, and deliver the little-finger edge of the palm in an axelike motion against the opponent's neck, about three inches below the ear. If you succeed you'll make him dizzy at least. You may knock him out, and in rare cases you might just kill him. It's possible that the sight of a karate chop slicing through the air might give him second thoughts even if you don't hit anything ... but it's better to hit!
1-6: If you don't feel comfortable with the karate chop, don't worry about it. Self-defense students can usually do as well or better using a hammer-fist blow (like pounding your first on a table). Smack him in the side of the neck with a right hammer fist. He'll reel on his heel.
1-7: Grab his wrist and pull him in as in the previous techniques, but deliver the chop or hammer-fist blow to the opponent's left temple about an inch behind the eye. You'll definitely give him a headache, you might knock him out, and if you are strong you could kill him. Be prepared for him to fall to your left due to the spinning effect of your combined pull and strike.
1-8: Grasp his wrist and pull him in as you strike up under the nose or the chin with a right palm-heel blow. I favor the palm-heel attack for self-defense students because they can hit with vicious enthusiasm without any danger of injuring their hands. A punch to the jaw may look easy in the movies, but I have found that u
ntrained fighters almost always sprain their fingers or wrists when attempting to deliver powerful punches. (Try it out for yourself on a heavy punching bag and see.) That can be disasterous in a fight. The palm-heel attack uses the fleshy heel of the palm as a battering ram, immune to any injury, with which to inflict powerful blows on an adversary. The blow up under the chin is especially violent and can have fairly unpredictable results ranging from a bitten tongue to a broken neck.
1-9: Perform the usual basic defense and then deliver a right palm-heel strike to the solar plexus, which is the soft spot immediately beneath the breastbone. A sudden blow here will momentarily paralyze the opponent's diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him. There is also some chance of doing damage to the stomach, liver, or spleen. An extremely powerful blow, delivered by a muscle-bound karate expert, can bruise the heart itself. The palm-heel attack can be used successfully against the abdomen and ribs, too, but the solar plexus is the most vulnerable target even if it is also the hardest to hit. Aim for it in the knowledge that a near miss may still do some damage. Note that some people have natural immunity to this attack due to strong abdominal muscles, deep layers of fat, extremely heavy clothing or high blood alcohol level.
1-10: A variation on the basic defense is to use the left knife-hand block to knock the incoming blow upward instead of sideways (an up-block). Then slide in close to the opponent, pushing his extended right arm up high over his shoulder. This will tighten and extend the ribs on his right side. Finish with a right palm-heel strike to the lowest ribs on the right side of his chest. You'll break them easily.