The transcript below is from the video “6 STUPID THINGS a Martial Artist SHOULDN’T DO” by Fight SCIENCE.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
6 things a martial artist shouldn’t do in a street fight. Keep watching.
1. Don’t Show What You Know
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
The first thing a martial artist shouldn’t do is give any indication that they know what they’re doing.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
This feels counter-intuitive to me because I thought that I should emanate this image of someone who’s not worth messing with.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Advertising or saying to people, “this is what I do, leave me alone” can be a credible threat and people might back down. But if the person intends to engage you in this encounter, they will escalate to further levels of violence. They’ll weaponize themselves and that is the danger to you. If you took a Bruce Lee pose in front of me, I’d pick up a chair and smash it over your head.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
Classic!
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Well, the point is if I really felt that I couldn’t handle you or you are going to be tough or hard work in a fight, I’m going to escalate to put the odds in my favor. And that would mean picking up anything in my environment, getting my friends, weaponizing myself, or doing anything I can because you’ve shown me that you’ve got some skill.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
They’re going to make it easier for themselves, so you need to make them feel like it’s already easy enough.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Why give the person an inkling that you’ve got a skill? Use the element of surprise. If they underestimate you and you have some skill, then you can use that to your advantage to dominate and control that person.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
So the best thing to do is try to mirror the behavior in front of you. Try to not pose in a martial arts stance. Don’t give any indication that you know what you’re doing.
2. Don’t Let Them Go First
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Never underestimate the guy in front of you. Don’t be reactive. You’ve always got to give the bad guy credit, the aggressor, that he can be just as dangerous as you are.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
Is that an element of egotistical confidence if I think, well, I’ll wait for them to punch, I’ll dodge it and then I’ll counter attack?
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
But not only is it arrogant but it’s also reactive. And reactive behavior is probably the most dangerous form of self-defense behavior that you can have. What you’re doing is you’re allowing them to move and then you to respond afterwards. Now you could have a high level of skill. You’ve never met this person before in your life. You don’t know what their abilities are and you don’t know what their resilience would be to punishment. So you can’t be reactive. You have to be proactive. You may have the skill level but then you’re gambling.
3. Never Expect Movement
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Never assume that the bad guy will move how your training partner moves in the gym. Your understanding of physical movement is really reflective of your experience. But you can’t assume that the person in front of you is going to move the same way as they do when you practice your martial art.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
Okay, so in the real world, not only are you likely facing someone who’s untrained or trained differently from you, but you’re not dealing with this same structure that you’ve been used to training in.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
But if you’ve ever trained with a beginner in your own specific martial art, they are the worst people to train with because they’re so unpredictable. Now you put that in the context of a street fight, if you have this sort of expectation that the bad guy is going to move the way that your training partner does, then that’s not going to happen. But when you’re a trained martial artist is you get used to people moving in a certain way. How you fix that? You try to train with the new people that come in the gym that never trained before.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
But they’re going to fight erratically, as you said.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
But that’s how you get the experience of how to deal with people that don’t move the way that you expect them to move.
4. Don’t Fight With Fairness
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Don’t take your gym mentality to the streets. Basically, don’t fight fair. It’s not necessarily the rules. This is your conditioned response to the stimuli.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
Yes, so your condition to these rules that you are, even if they’re unspoken, you’re following.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
But it could just be the rules are you don’t kick the groin, for example. You don’t do this. But if you don’t train it, it becomes an adversity to you. You won’t naturally be inclined to kick someone in the groin. You won’t naturally be inclined to headbutt someone, for example.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
Both of which could be life-saving moves if you’re under attack.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
How many people train grabbing the testicles?
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
But you don’t want to be caught short needing to do that and not knowing how.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Yeah, exactly. And that’s my point.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
It makes sense.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
If you fight to a certain rule structure, then that’s going to be imported subconsciously into the fight. We never want our subconscious conditioning to become a disadvantage for us.
5. Don’t Think One Punch
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Never assume that one punch will finish a fight. So many martial artists have this in their mindset. But the extension of this point is that most people don’t accept that they’re going to get hit in a fight, that’s why they want to train in a martial art. The point being is that the mindset that you can finish fights quickly is actually going to be a disadvantage for you when you’re in a street fight. The human body is very very robust. It takes a lot of punishment. So you can’t assume that you’re going to hit someone once and they’re going to fall on the floor.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
You need to be able to fight them until it’s over and you don’t get to decide really when that is.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
But here’s the thing, never forget that that person is also having an adrenal response too. You’re suffering from adrenaline, you can take punishment but so too is that person. So you’re hitting someone that’s also experiencing adrenaline. Yeah, it’s just as dangerous for you than it is for them. If you accept that you’ll get hit in a fight, then you’ll be much more effective in defending yourself. That’s a psychological issue.
6. Don’t Try To Look Good
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Don’t try to look the part. Fighting is formless. It’s chaotic. It’s not about what it looks like. It’s about how effective it is. So never try to look the part. When you’re fighting, a punch is a punch. You get your hands up, a block is a block. But you’re not trying to do this stylized dragon move or pantherfist or what have you, what you’re trying to do is just get the job done in a gross motor fashion.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
And survive.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
And survive, which brings to the next point. You never try new moves on the day. That is the time when you actually, you should know what you’re doing by that point. If you go into it and you have no expectations of what’s going to happen or what move you’re going to do, it’s going to be far safer and you’re actually going to be much more effective in your own self-defense because you’re responding to real-time information, not what you think’s going to happen.
Host (Fight SCIENCE):
So it brings us back to that same critical point which is that adapt, be fluid and deal with the information as it’s handed to you, not with preparation and thought about what’s going to happen, what it’s going to look like, how you’re going to react, what that’s going to feel like because then you’re caught up in your mind and you’re missing what’s happening in front of you at the time.
Dr Mark Phillips (Criminal Psychologist, Security Consultant, Martial Arts & Defensive Skills Instructor):
Ultimately, most people want to look good when they’re fighting. They’re more obsessed with how they look rather than how effective they are, because they’re attracted to martial arts because it looks good. But the truth is, in a real attack, if I’m focused on what I look like and I want to look cool, then I’m putting my life at danger in my family’s life at danger as well. That’s one thing that a martial artist shouldn’t do.
