Advanced Short Baton

Close Quarters Defense and an Insight to Pre Fight Body Language

Shamuel B. Kohen

Advanced Short Baton Close Quarters Defense and an Insight to Pre Fight Body Language First edition manual copyright 2006 Haganah Security International Amanuut Krav Maga Written and composed by Shamuel B. Kohen CSO CTO Haganah Security International Finland All rights reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission from the author. If you violate the copyright legal action will be taken against you and/or your organization. Published by Shamuel B. Kohen

ISBN-13: 978-952-92-0792-3 (sid.) ISBN-10: 952-92-0792-1 (sid.) ISBN-13: 978-952-92-0793-0 (PDF) ISBN-10: 952-92-0793-X (PDF)

Printer Cityoffset Oy, Tampere Printed in Finland

Contents
Introduction ........ 7 Purpose ................ 9

Practice tools and safety

Safety .............. 11

Tainining to survive
How you train is how you react ................................................................. 12

Body language and personal zones

What are zones? ....................................................................................... 14 Zones and self defense ............................................................................ 18 In your zone .............................................................................................. 23 Aggression in your zone ........................................................................... 24

Principles of unarmed combat

Fight hard and fight dirty ........................................................................... 26 Attack soft body parts ...................................................................... 26 Attack the attacker and his aggression ............................................ 26 Simplicity and economy of movement ............................................. 27 Mental preparation ........................................................................... 27

Stances, foot work, power strikes

Combinations in the actual combat .......................... 28 Movements within the close quarters fight ............................... 28 Power ........................................ 29 The power drop ................................................................................ 31 Stances .................. 32 Natural stance to power drop ......... 32 Ready stance to power drop ....... 33 Reception/analytical stance to power drop .......... 34 Strikes ............................................................ 35 Forehand strike ................................................................................ 35 Backhand strike ............................................................................... 36 Thrusting jab .................................................................................... 37 Strike combinations .......................................................................... 38

Body part targets

Effectively utilizing body parts as targets .... 40

Defense from the personal and intimate zones

Reactional defense ................................................................................... 42 The four directions of strikes and defenses.... 44 The follow up after the defense ................................................................ 46 Defense against a body shot .................................................................... 49 Defense against a knee to the groin ......................................................... 50 Body drop push ......................................................................................... 51 Body drop push to a strike ........................................................................ 52

Defense against standing grappling

Face grab against a wall ............... 55 Jacket grab against a wall ........ 56 Throat grab against a wall .......................... 57 Shoulder grab from behind against the wall ............. 58 Defense against the chicken wing hold .................. 60 Defenses against the guillotine hold ................... 62 Opposite hand wrist grab .......................................................................... 64 Opposite hand wrist grab to a control hold ............................................... 65 Same side wrist grab ................................................................................ 66 Defense against shoulder grab from behind ............................................. 67 Side strangle hold ..................................................................................... 68 Grab by the elbow ..................................................................................... 70 Bear hug ................................................................................................... 72 Rear bear hug ........................................................................................... 74 Chest grind ............................................................................................... 75

Defense against weapon strikes

Basic blocks ..... 77 Wild swing with a bottle, block with short baton ..... 79 Wild swing with a bottle, block and a stop hit ........................................... 80 Wild swing with a bottle, chest strike and an elbow hit ............................. 81 Wild swing with a bottle, strike with short baton ....................................... 82 Defense against a low hit ...... 83

Basic defense against the knife

Real knife fighting ..................................................................................... 84 The vital areas to protect ............. 89

The angles of attack ................................................................................. 90 Basic vital area defense against a thrust .................................................. 92 Vital area defense against side of the neck cuts ...................................... 93 Reflexive defenses ................................................................................... 94 Distance and visuals ................................................................................. 96 Defense against a low stab ....................................................................... 97 Stab to the stomach ..................... 98 Knife against the lower back ..................................................................... 99 The abdominal stab ................................................................................ 102 Defense against an over hand stab ........................................................ 104 Analyzing knife attacks ........................................................................... 106

Defense of a third person

Rear take down to a neck crank ...... 108 Rear take down using pectoral press ..... 110 Rear take down with solar plexus/breast bone press ............ 112 Rear take down by lower back press ..... 113 Rear take down using shoulder grind ...... 114 Getting the aggressor off of a third person ............................................. 115

Removal and compliance

A hit to the grabbing hand ....................................................................... 116 Grinding the ribs ..................................................................................... 117 Control hold hooking the arm .................................................................. 119 Single person escort ............................................................................... 120

Closing comments About the author

Introduction
This manual has been written for the training and use of the short baton, or as others may call it Kubota, yawara or pocket stick. This manual is the second volume in the set of books in the use of the short baton, in the hopes it will help promote the proper use of this non lethal defensive tool for civilians, police and security professionals. What you will find in this second volume is the more advanced ideas and concepts of using the short baton in combination with more techniques as well as developing power for close quarters situations. These techniques come from my own experiences using this self defense tool, as well as other professionals that have used the short baton as a defensive tool. In this volume you will find combination techniques; Mastering the basics should be the goal of all serious students of self defense, for this reason I hope that the reader has somewhat mastered the techniques in the first volume. I know from my own experience, that to learn something new from books is very difficult and for this reason I would encourage the reader to get some basic training in reality based self defense schools, such as Amanuut Krav Maga or Krav Jiu Jitsu. I highly recommend boxing as well as Judo. Why I recommend these two is because of the fact that most city clubs have these two systems for a very reasonable price. However, learn what you can but I dont recommend fancy flowery and acrobatic type of styles. For learning how to apply techniques found in theses volumes, those systems will most likely hinder you. As with any defensive non lethal self defense tool, in the hands of the non-trained person the short baton can be turned into a lethal weapon. In this manual we will cover the non lethal target areas of the body; it doesnt take much thinking to figure out how to make this tool lethal. If the person chooses to use this defensive tool in a non legal and offensive manner, then that person must take the responsibility to answer for those actions when brought before a court of law. The techniques found in this book are built from a non combat readiness. This means that as you are going about your daily business and are in a level of alertness that comes from thinking safety and security, but you are not walking around with the long baton or firearm in your hand. In our training we use the idea of pressure testing and defending from a non fighting mode situation. This helps build techniques that can be used from most any posture and builds body language awareness. We do not walk around in every day situations as though we are ready to fight the guy just passing by. Nor is the security person doing his/her duty in a frame of mind that every person they come into contact with is ready to beat them down. That type of person is in a state of mental illness, and is called paranoid schizophrenic. I am not addressing that group.

Purpose
The purpose of this second manual is to teach the combination techniques of the short baton in a defensive manner against close range defensive and defense of a third person as well as controlling a non compliant subject in the course of police/security work. It is the purpose of this book to introduce the students to the more complex defensive combinations which we will learn in this volume. In this volume we will get more into the detailed techniques as well as defensive techniques in combination with body language. The short baton will be used in combination with empty hand techniques. The idea here is to teach the civilians as well as the protective professional on the advanced combinations of this most useful self defense tool keeping in mind that even though this is called advanced it is still very easy and efficient. I would like to advise the reader that the techniques shown in this volume show how the short baton can be used as a close defense tool as well as a pain compliance tool for defensive purposes. This volume will also cover how to effectively use the short baton to defend others third person defense, as well as how to use the short baton safely and effectively against a person that doesnt comply with reasonable requests by police and security officials. The reader is advised to use the amount of force necessary to stop the attacker and control a non compliant subject. Like any defensive tool the short baton can also be used as a weapon of aggression by the criminally oriented individual.

I would like to thank Jarkko Kulju for the pictures and Laura Benyik for all her work and assistance in the making of this book.

Practice tools and safety

Safety
Safety is a major factor in any proper and effective training. Even with a short baton you must take safety in training into account. A few reasons why people get hurt during practice are: ego, lack of respect for the defensive tool, over confidence as well as lack of safety consciousness. All contribute to injuries during training. Safety should be top concern in the training hall! Make sure youre in somewhat of a good health, you have proper equipment and that your training partner doesnt have an ego issue. Chipped teeth dont come from you hitting yourself in the mouth, at least I hope not. These types in injuries come from an over anxious and out of control partner, or at times a partner with an ego problem. We have replaced the keys with leather strips. The leather strips will be used during training to imitate the keys when you do whipping type strikes to your partners hands and other body parts. Replacing the keys with leather strips will help ensure safety in your training. However be cautious when striking to the face so that you will not injure the eyes. If you can wear some form of eye protection do so. Be aware that the short baton has a key ring attached and the possibility of the key ring breaking your eye protection if hit at the right angle. The eye protection may not protect you if you get hit directly in the eye area. So always use caution with the point to the face drills. If possible, practice with the tools you carry, this will help you know your tools and how it feels in training to real world situations. We will at times use the mini-mag in course of our duty or as the choice of carry instead the short baton. If you choose to use your mini-mag for training purposes, take out as much of the inside of the flashlight as possible. Empty the flashlight of its batteries, lamp, spring etc. When you are done with your training, you can put them back in and have a properly working light again.

Training to survive
How you train is how you react
Since we are going to be dealing with close quarter confrontations in the chapters of this book, we will address some common issues that civilians as well as police/security professionals must consider. If you are a person like me, who trains in Judo, Wing Chun, Jiu Jitsu or any other system that relates well to close quarter conflicts then you will appreciate these next few topics. When an opponent gets in your face and is threatening to bust your head open, and to back up his threat he physically looks like he can sure put some unwanted pain in your life, the sight of this can create a very frightening and intimidating situation. One evening as I was supervising a group of nightclub security staff, a fight broke out between two groups of people. One group consisted of bodybuilding customers and the other group consisted of some college students. To get to the main point, the bodybuilders pushed the college guys around and we had to break up the fight. As the security staff advised one of the members of the bodybuilding group to go outside so we can resolve this problem, he refused to leave. My staff requested this person over and over again to leave the venue but he refused. I received a call on my radio for assistance. In the course of our gentlemanly discussion, I gave him the option of leaving voluntarily or be removed. Well, he made his choice and I asked my security staff to remove this individual. The biggest member of my security staff froze up, he couldnt move a muscle. The actual shock of having to remove a person that was in his face and double my security guys size froze him up, the sheer intimidation of the guy being in his face was enough. Since my security guy was a good sized guy himself, he never really had to get into very much one on one physical confrontation with a bigger aggressive person than himself. Needles to say it was his inexperience that froze him up. I quickly stepped into the situation once again. Luckily when the guy saw the team of security staff heading his way to escort him out, he chose to do the wise thing and depart the venue. In hind sight my security guy learned that distance could actually give you a little bit of confidence. The benefits of distance are for example, faster retreat as well as have a full view of the aggressor and to keep an eye out for arriving security staff to assist. If any of you ever worked night club security, you will know the difficulty of having enough space to react. However, learning to work with your surroundings should be the nature of your profession. Through experience in dealing with a crowd, you will slowly gauge safe distances you can work in your venue. This same technique of distance gauging applies to a crowded jail, bus station, anywhere you find yourself in the intimate zone and

personal zone with other people around you (see chapter Body language and personal zones). I normally try to practice techniques as I would find myself in the area I work in. I call this context training. For example, when we do self defense in our Amanuut Krav Maga club, I get the students to crowd in around the two students that are doing a certain self defense technique. We imitate busses, elevators, restrooms, crowded buss stations etc., any place where they may have a crowd around them. The attacker chooses an attack and the defender defends. As the defender defends he gives verbal commands to the attacker as well as other civilians around him to assist him. This trains the student how to defend himself in a crowd as well as ask for assistance. This is a stressful situation oriented drill. As the student gets the idea, we pressure test the technique to see if he can get it to work with the attacker not being so agreeable. Another drill is to have all the students crowd in and a pre selected student gets to be the attacker. He then chooses another student as the potential victim. A little Hollywood acting is required to get things realistic. This can be at times very humorous. For you guys that want to train this way, get a video camera ready. You may just have some good comedy here. All kidding aside, the video will offer valuable insight as to the body language and the reaction of the attacker and victim. Now lets quickly address the approach of the potential attacker. Is a greeting a greeting or is it a potential attack? Before we jump to the conclusion that everyone that gets in your face will give you a beating, without turning you into a paranoid schizophrenic, well address some common body language of greeting and the distances they are used in.

Body language and personal zones

What are zones?
In this chapter I will give you a few examples of the basic ideas of aggressive body language and help you understand and recognize them. For this first part, I will only use the hand shake illustrations to show and convey the ideas; by no means is this dogmatic, defense is progressive and dynamic, not fixed. The idea here is to give you an example of body language used in a non threat situation progressing to a possible outright attack. Signs and signals to a possible oncoming attack are there within the context of the situation, you just have to train yourself to recognize them. Culture, religion, places of residence (rural/city), all play a part in understanding pre fight recognition. We will start from the hand shake progressing to the shoulder hold and ending with the physical signs of a violent outbreak. NOTE: I am using these illustrations to convey the idea of what I am trying to explain to you. I could use many more and different examples but most people will relate to the common situations I will be showing in these illustrations. Lets start out with the words of Allan Pease in his book regarding this hand shake idea. Country v City Spatial Zones As previously mentioned, the amount of personal space required by an individual is related to the population density of the area in which he was brought up. Those who were brought up in sparsely populated rural areas require more personal space than those raised in densely populated capital cities. Watching how far a person extends his arm to shake hands can give a clue to whether he is from a major city or from a remote country area. City dwellers have their private 46-centimetre bubble; this is also the measured distance between wrist and torso when they reach to shake hands. This allows the hand to meet the other persons on neutral territory. People brought up in a country town, where the population is far less dense, may have a territorial bubble of up to 100 centimeters or more and this is the average measured distance from the wrist to the body when the person from the country is shaking hands. Country people have a tendency to stand with their feet firmly planted on the ground and to lean forward as far as they can to meet your handshake, whereas a city dweller will step forward to greet you. People raised in remote or sparsely populated areas usually have a large personal space requirement which may be as wide as 6 meters. These people prefer not to shake hands but would rather stand at a distance and wave. City sales people find this sort of information particularly useful for calling on farmers in sparse rural areas to sell farming equipment. Considering that the farmer may have a

bubble of 100 to 200 centimeters or more, a handshake could be a territorial intrusion, causing the farmer to react negatively and be on the defensive. Successful country sales people state almost unanimously that the best negotiating conditions exist when they greet the country town dweller with an extended handshake and the farmer in an isolated area with a distant wave. (Allan Pease, Signals, How to Use Body Language for Power, Success and Love, Bantam Books, 1984) We will use the same idea that was in the previous quote in context of self defense and security. Remember to view body language of a potential threat in context of culture, environment and setting, i.e. city or country dwelling.

Intimate Zone 0-50 cm

Personal Zone 50-120 cm

Social Zone 120-360 cm

Public Zone Over 360 cm

Illustration 1. The personal zones Looking at this illustration and taking into consideration your culture, surroundings as well as context of where you are, where is the zone that you would be uncomfortable in if you are approached for what ever reason by a person? If youre in a nightclub, then the Intimate zone would not be a problem because its in the context of the place. If you are a police officer interviewing a person then obviously the intimate zone will be a danger to you. Again, context of environment will dictate where you will be standing in relationship to the other person.

Intimate zone Close friends Parents Loved ones

In context of work, you would shake hands in the intimate zone in a tight and crowded environment.

Personal zone Close friends Associates

This also in context of work, you would shake hands in the personal zone in a not so tight and crowded environment.

Social Zone People you just meet Strangers on the street or on travels

Another context, you would shake hands in the social zone in an open and spacious environment.

Public zone A dirty person A smelly person A person with a dog that looks threatening A person you dont want to get close to for what ever reason

Lets try to understand the psychology and possible norms in regards to distance zones. Try to adapt this to your own culture and environment. Ask yourself: Who would you let into these four zones? What is the norm within your cultural context?

Zones and self defense

The hardest thing to know is when an actual attack is going to come at you. But knowing the context of the person approaching you will normally hint at this. From the illustration here you can see that a physical attack in a hand shake scenario can come from a close or further distance, such as a head butt from intimate and personal zones, to a punch from the social and public zones.

1.

2.

Once you reach out and taken hold of a persons hand, you are within their control for that short period of time. If you see the attack coming, you can change the hold to your advantage. From studying the illustrations, you can reverse the situation. You can put yourself into the position of the attacker and use the hand shake to control the aggressor. Study the illustration (Illustration 2.) It shows the paths of your movement in its basic form as well as your personal space. The illustration also shows the aggressors personal space. Do not invade anyones intimate zone or personal zone or you may find yourself on the receiving end of a physical or verbal attack.

The four directions of strikes and defenses 1. 2.

3.

4.

The aggressor strikes from the close range with a wild and big hook punch. As the strike comes in at you: 1. You defend with your triceps, elbow and forearm area. 2. As your head is being struck at, tuck your chin in and tilt your head slightly down to cover the side of the head area. Keep the side of your head safe! It only takes one good hit to the side of your head and you will be greatly disoriented. If the aggressor happens to hit you on your ear as well, permanent damage may result. (Pictures 1. and 2.) 3. As the strikes come into your rib cage area, tuck your elbow into your side and take the impact with your triceps and forearm area. Bend down a bit from the knees for balance and pivot. (Pictures 3. and 4.) To develop a reflexive type of reaction you should drill this with a partner or in front of a mirror. However I advocate the use of a partner as much as possible. Just remember to bend your knees and keep tight. Remember the point of this way of defense is to develop the natural reflexes we all have. No fancy technique is involved, the base of these basic defensives are from natural body movements and reflexive actions.

Defense against standing grappling

1.
When being pushed up against a wall, it is very important that you do not lay flat against the wall with your head and your back. By lying flat, you will greatly reduce your ability of movement as well as give the aggressor a very solid base to hold you there. 1. Press your head forward off the wall. 2. With your lower back and butt push against the wall. 3. Keep your heel raised up on the wall. Use your heel against the wall to act as a brace. You will use this to assist in keeping from being put flat up against the wall.

2.

DO NOT BE FLAT AGAINST THE WALL!

3.

Face grab against a wall 1.

If by chance your head does get pressed up flat against the wall you can still escape the hold. 1. Turn your head to the side to allow you to move somewhat freely. 2. Trap his hand so that you can keep him trapped for just a moment until you strike. By trapping his hand temporarily you will have some control over the aggressor. 3. Turn and strike. Use the wall to push off as you strike, this will give you a little added power at that close range.

2.

4. Trapping, turning, and punching should be done at the same time if possible.