Welcome to the second in a multi-article series on Components of Personal Defense.  In the first article I introduced the concept of Situational Awareness and discussed how important Situational Awareness is in everyday life.  In this article, I am going to expand on this topic and introduce the importance of distance in determining a threat level.  I’m also going to show how certain “tells” can alert you to a potentially dangerous situation and how Situational Awareness and distance can combine to provide the time it takes to decide on a course of action.

Threats come in many forms and we deal with them continually.  Fortunately, training and experience combine to minimize the impact of the threat.  Let’s briefly go back to driving a car.  If someone grew up on a tropical island and never experienced motor vehicles, that person may well be in mortal danger if they try to cross a street.  But since we have experience with cars and were taught to look and listen before crossing, we minimize the potential danger.

So it is with interpersonal hostility.  If we have no experience with human threats, it is unlikely that we would be able to identify friend from foe.  Luckily, we have genetic preprograming developed over the millennia that is available if we become aware of its ability.  Recognizing things out of place or behavior that doesn’t look right are indicators of potential threats.  However, we must “tune in” to this ability.  If the hair stands up on the back of your neck or you get a nervous feeling in a situation, this the “dog barking at the door” trying to tell you something.  There is a best-selling book by Gavin de Becker called the “Gift of Fear” that goes into great detail on this ability.  I highly recommend it.

So, what if you see a sketchy guy eyeing you from across the street.  Is this person a threat?  The answer is, it depends.  The reason we need to be concerned about threats is because of potential energy.  The larger the potential energy, the further away the threat can be and still have an impact.  An individual staring at you from across the street is not an immediate threat because the potential energy is the sum total of the person’s strength.  Because there is a street width between you and them, the threat potential for damage is low.  However, if that person crosses the street and is now at close distance, the threat potential becomes elevated.  From this we can develop a formula to calculate a potential threat, be it a person, a car, or a hurricane.  That formula is Potential Threat = Potential Energy / Distance.

So how can we tell if a person containing potential energy will actually use that energy in an attack?  This involves “reading” the situation and looking for clues of intent or “tells”.  Obviously, the sooner we can assess the situation and identify a potential threat, the more time we have to decide what action is appropriate.  This is where Situational Awareness becomes critical.  This is what is commonly called the Pre-Fight stage of the Engagement.

The Pre-Fight stage can be very short, as in the case of an ambush, or it can be protracted, as in the case of the preverbal “cold shoulder”.  For our purposes, we will focus on the interpersonal verbal disagreement that escalates to physical violence.  In this case, there are often pronounced “tells” that indicate the verbal argument is moving to a physical fight.  Obviously, the argument is an indicator of intent, but words alone are not sufficient to respond with self-defense violence.  We need to see other “tells” that indicate an intent of violence.   One of these is “the stare”.  This is where the individual readying to throw a punch, changes their focus from their advisory’s face to a point in the distance.  What the person is doing is changing from listening to focusing on throwing a punch.

Another “tell” is dropping the dominant foot back (Weaver stance).  This places the body in a more bladed position that allows for more power to throw the punch, as typically the first punch is a dominant side roundhouse.

Another “tell” is fidgeting or shuffling of the hands and feet.  This indicates a mental “work up” in preparation to throw a punch.  Often, an individual that is not fully committed has to pump themselves up before physically engaging.  If you see this, there may be an opportunity to defuse the situation before it goes physical.

Similar to fidgeting is clenching and unclenching of the hands.  Again, this is a “work up” tell.  Flexing hands or other muscles similar to a boxer limbering up is an indicator that the individual is preparing for physical violence.

There are bunch more physical “tells”.  Being able to read the situation is critical to understanding the level of risk.  Not recognizing the pre-fight indicators means you will likely be surprised.  There are plenty of instances of people being “sucker punched” and severely injured or killed primarily because they didn’t see the signs of pending violence.

The next article will discuss the fight and how making good decisions is critical to managing the outcome of the fight.

Train Hard!  Stay Frosty!  Never Give Up!

John