Scientific street fighting is all about understanding the human bodies physiological response to a fight and understanding the effectiveness of various street fighting strategies based on statistics.
Scientific street fighting may sound complicated but it’s not. It is actually quite simple. The best part is it is actually easier than learning a martial art. The key is that scientific street fighting eliminates showing difficult to do moves in favor of simple techniques that have a proven track record of success.
So here we go…
How Your Body Reacts To A Street Fight:
The first thing many people notice (and the most important things when it comes to fighting) is that your hands begin to shake. This is not a sign that you are scared; it is your body’s natural reaction to a life threatening situation.
What does this mean for scientific street fighting? It means that fine motor skills shut down, things like hand writing or complex martial arts moves (like joint locks that require several steps). This is critically important so pay attention.
Why in the world would your body shut down fine motor skills when your life is being threatened? The thing is your body sacrifices fine motor stills for increased strength and speed in gross (or large) motor skills. These are much more important things like running, jumping, punching, and kicking.
The key to scientific street fighting is understanding this reaction, and creating a fighting system that takes full advantage of your stronger and faster gross motor skills. Don’t even waste your time trying to learn complex moves your body simple won’t let you use in the heat of the moment.
The loss of fine motor skill is by far the most important part of scientific street fighting but here are a few more reaction that are pretty cool:
Your skin will go pale, because your body is restricting blood flow to the skin. This reduces blood loss from shallow cuts and scrapes you will likely receive.
To save energy you brain stops recording as many short term memories. This is why people often can’t remember exactly what happened after a disaster or fight.
There are a lot of other really cool things your body does to get you ready for a fight, but when it comes to scientific street fighting the number one thing to think about is focusing on gross motor skills.
Any move or technique that will work well in a street fight should be simple and easy to learn. In fact it should not take you more than a few hours to become proficient in any self defense technique.
I’m not saying you will master anything in a few hours, but you should be able to learn it well in this amount of time. If you can’t it’s probably based on fine motor skills that take tons of time to learn. These fancy moves are likely to get you hurt when you really need it.
Okay now for the scientific street fighting statistics…
The number one street fighting statistic you should learn and live by is that the average street fight last between 3 and 8 seconds. That’s right. No 5 minute street boxing scene from some movie, just 3 to 8 seconds of ugliness.
So if you are going to focus on scientific street fighting this means that you need to take care of business fast.
To further illustrate this point I like to use another statistic. The person who hits first is way more likely to win the street fight. If you haven’t figured it out yet hitting first means that for at least one or two of those 3 to 8 seconds you will be ‘winning.’
The last statistic is that after 12 seconds the fight will almost always go to the ground. Now most fights never get to this point. 12 seconds is a long time in a street fight, but if it does go that long it will go to the ground.
What does this mean for scientific street fighting? Well, first of all it means that you should try your best to end it in less than 12 seconds.
Going to the ground dramatically increases your chances of getting seriously hurt. I often tell people nothing good happens on the ground. You will get cuts, scrapes, lose skin on your palms, elbows, knees, and face, and don’t forget about having your head slammed into the concrete (and I didn’t even get to the part where bystanders or you attackers friends start kicking you).
Bottom line, try to end the fight in less than 12 seconds by hitting first, using gross motor skills, and dirty fight moves.
You should also realize that if the fight does go longer than 11 seconds you will need to know how to handle yourself on the ground. There are scientific street fighting skills that will dramatically improve your chances of winning on the ground but I’ll save that for another occasion.
Okay here’s a quick review of scientific street fighting:
- Don’t waste your time on fine motor skill moves, they won’t work in a street fight (This is not an opinion it’s a fact).
- Use gross motor skills like punching, eye gouging, ear slapping, head butts, kicks and only the simplest joint locks.
- Always hit first if you want to win a fight.
- Most fights end within 8 seconds so hit him with your nastiest barrage of attacks right from the start (using gross or simple motor skills of course).
- End a fight as fast as possible to avoid going to the ground.
For more scientific fighting tips check out my blog at Fightfast.com/blog.
Stay Smart and Stay Safe,
Bob Pierce
President, Fightfast.com