When in Doubt, Move

A police officer responds to a silent burglar alarm one night at a warehouse.

He is just moving from a brightly lit area into the dark recesses of the loading dock area when he is hammered by a series of blows.

The blows continued to rain down on the officer and he knew that serious injury or death was all the awaited him if he could not escape. His martial arts background is in a karate style that emphasizes circular movement and whipping techniques -- he resorts to his training and begins to whip around in a circular fashion to try and find an avenue for escape.

As he is moving, he begins to hit various bodies and, through the fog, senses that there are people around him. He draws his baton and begins to land some strikes as he whips around. One backhand baton strike fells an opponent. Another lands, and another. He regains the initiative and drives off the other attackers.

It turns out there were a total of six attackers who jumped down on the officer from the back of the flatbed they were loading with stolen goods.

However, even when faced with a situation that was (at first) completely foreign, the officer successfully solved the problem by resorting to his training and moving.

Action beats reaction – when in doubt, move.

There is that time in any confrontation or fight that I call a “set” point. I’m not sure if that terminology is confusing, but that’s what I use to articulate that hard-to-explain-but-easy-to-observe point at which one or both of the participants move to the critical zone in preparation of jumping into combat.

If you’ve seen it in fights or sparring, you know what I’m talking about. It’s almost as if one or both guys come up to the line and – just for an instant – “set” before they launch their attack. It’s the demarcation line where someone has to make the decision as to how and where they want to attack.

And, many times, it’s a sticking point. You get up to the critical point, set, and then get caught flatfooted by the opponent.

I think the reason is because there is that moment of doubt that seeps into your mind. Whether the doubt is about target selection, weapon selection, legality of your actions or just an unfamiliar situation slapping you in the face, it will make you get stuck or hesitate for an instant.

The unfamiliar situation, especially, seems to be a major source for doubt. You may even literally think to yourself – now what am I supposed to do? I’ve had people tell me they can remember thinking, “I know there is something I can do here, but I don’t remember what it is”. But, without knowing what to do – they freeze.

You can also freeze or be stuck in an emotional way too. Consider the situation in which I backed up an officer from another agency. I don’t remember too much about the original stop in the first place, but the subject was a very buffed construction worker/biker type off of his motorcycle with his license and registration out. The officer was dramatically smaller than the subject and the original stop was escalating into some sort of confrontation when we rolled up.

The subject is standing full face to the officer with his wallet, license and registration in his hands, both arms extended out from his sides in a non-confrontational, but frustrated pose. The officer has swaggered (I use “swagger” deliberately) up to the subject and taken up an “interview” stance (or what others might call a bladed stance, usually a pre-cursor to attack). The officer is jutting his chin out toward the subject.

Without remembering the details, I do remember that the subject was objecting to the officer’s treatment in a firm manner, but in my estimation not in an especially inflammatory manner. It was something along the lines of “I’ve shown you all my paperwork, it’s all in order, now you are just hassling me for no reason and I don’t know what I did to deserve it.”

With this, the officer draws his flashlight and positions it on his shoulder in preparation for a downward strike.

There is a big pause, a set point. We’re all holding our breath, wondering who is going to kick off the action.

Without knowing all of the background, I’m thinking at this point that the officer’s ego has put him into a situation in which he is stuck. He has been pushing forward, escalating a situation to a point where the officer is getting ready to use physical force in a situation that does not warrant it, but his ego, apparently, cannot allow him to deescalate.

The way to get “unstuck” is to move.

Step off to an angle. Or move in a circle. There is a whole different line of discussion about which initial movements are “best”, but in the end everyone has their own reasoning about their initial movements. The key is to move off line.

If you are standing, you have to move your feet to move off line. If you are on the ground, you have to move your hips to move off line.

Movement has tremendous advantages. You deny the opponent a target. You force him to react to your movement. You change the actual reality of the moment.

Movement gives you the opportunity to get you into a more advantageous position.

I was confronted on a busy downtown street once by someone who turned out to be completely delusional, but they started to attack me when I had my back to a busy street. While teetering on the edge of the curb, I remember thinking that I hate to fight with my right side forward (which was mildly disconcerting to be distracted like this immediately before having to go fist city with this guy). As he got to the critical zone and I knew that we would actually be engaging physically in the next second, I moved off to one side allowing me to get away from the street and away from the traffic – I was afraid that our initial clash might result in me being pushed back into the street. My decisive movement did two things, I got away from the traffic and it also forced the guy to turn off his original line of attack and turn toward me. He stopped his attack, I think, because he saw that I had taken away his initial advantage.

Movement gives you the impetus to break the emotional deadlock you might have with someone.

I once found myself having a bit of a wrestling match of egos with a driver who I pulled over for speeding. I was suspicious of the driver because he had a notion about running from me when I turned on my lights, then he started to pull over, then he started to run again before finally pulling over.

I was very wary and suspicious of this kind of behavior – the indecision as to whether they will stop or not. Plus I was a little mad, this guy was not pulling over despite being lit up. The driver turned out to be a normal guy with his wife out to pick up relatives. His story was that he didn’t know I was trying to pull him over, he thought I was after someone else. Okay, not entirely implausible. But then he wanted to argue that he was not speeding, only driving fast. I felt myself being drawn into an unnecessary argument with this knucklehead. Maybe I had low blood sugar at the time. By moving back to my car to look at his license and registration, I broke the engagement. I unstuck myself from the conflict.

The cop locked into the confrontation with the motorcyclist could have gotten out of his jam by moving to a different position.

You could find yourself in a similar situation – and many people do – when the original conflict begins to escalate into a confrontation and you and the other guy find yourself doing the old, “oh, yeah, what are you going to do about it?” argument. Your ego and the other guy’s ego drive both of you towards of point at which the confrontation turns into a fight.

Marc MacYoung likens this kind of behavior to that of inexperienced poker players continuing to raise each others’ bet simply because they have too much invested in the pot and not necessarily because they have a good hand.

Movement is an initial starting point to begin solving problems. Remaining frozen in place because of indecision or lack of training allows the opponent to gain a huge advantage. Think of a fight akin to a chess match. In a chess match, one person makes a move. Then the opponent makes a move and so forth. If you played chess against someone and allowed them to make two, three, four moves without making a move of your own, the match would be over pretty darned quick.

The same holds true for a fight. If you allow your opponent to make a series of moves without answering or countering any of them, you will be obliterated in short order.

So the secret is to move. Your movement will at least negate his first move.

Your first move? Step back. Better yet, step back at an angle.

Unfortunately, we seem to be hard-wired in retreating from a threat in a direct line backwards. It’s better than nothing, but an attacker can gain ground faster than you can give ground in a straight line. Better to step back at an angle. Often, it’s even better to step off at a right angle.

Imagine you are standing in the middle of a clock facing 12 o’clock. At the very least, you should step back to the 6 o’clock mark. Better is to step to the 5 or 4 o’clock angle. Best, perhaps, is to step off to the 3 o’clock angle.

This method of movement works for physical confrontations as well as emotional, ego-driven ones as well. By physically stepping off at an angle, you can break the emotional connection you have with the other person. It gives you a tactical advantage as well.

On the ground, you need to embrace the same principle. If you are stuck, you need to move. Here you will need to move your hips instead of your feet. If you just lay there, the opponent will maneuver into a more advantageous position.

Get off your back by turning up onto your side, preferably facing the opponent. Scoot your hips away from the opponent to give you room to move.

Generally in a grappling situation, the person on the bottom wants to move to increase his space and the person on the top wants to inhibit that movement to decrease the space between them.

In the grand scheme of personal combat, there are different types of movement, e.g. linear, circular, vertical, etc. And all of those can’t be addressed here. But the point of the article is to recognize the sticking points of confrontations and “unstick” the situation by moving.

Be cognizant of its power and focus on it during your next training session.

Brad Parker