Self Defense Against Striking Moves - Punches

I am Sundar J.

M. Brown with Joe Diamond's Mixed Martial Arts Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Today, we are discussing practical self defense. In this segment, we are going to learn how to defend ourselves against one of the most simple and arguably most common street attacks - a simple punch. In this scenario, my opponent just tries to throw punches at me. So, when he does that, my move is this.

Now, let us break it down step by step for understanding. The first thing I have to do as always is assume a base position. If I feel like I am going to be attacked, I immediately want to secure my balance. Now, to defend against a punch, there are many sophisticated techniques but this is something very simple that works almost every time. I am simply going to extend my arm in between the area of the person's head and where they are punching to deflect the main force of the punch. Be aware of that in the street if you are fighting, you are going to get hurt even if you are defending yourself. It is a fight, it is real, but this is going to keep you alive and safer. So, as the person throws the punch, I extend my arm through like this and I want to slap down with the back of my hand across his tricep. The person now has one hand isolated. The other hand follows, I repeat the motion. Now, the right hand is where I begin. I want to take the hand without losing contact from his arm, swim the hand through like this under the armpit and as I do, I am going to insert my arm and follow that arm as a lead, walk into his back like this. You will notice that I maintain contacts here the entire time. So, starting from this position where the punches first occur, I slither my hand under and following my leading arm I circle to back side until I come here. I have dragged this arm across the body as I move. Now, I can join my hands like this. I want to protect myself from any further dangerous punches. So, I am going to glue my head in his chest and tuck my face down like this. Now, I want to walk into my opponent if my hips touch his and I am going to pull on my opponent's hips sucking him in and changing the angle of his body. When I am pulling him up straight, it is hard to make him move. But if I change the angle of his body by using the pressure of my head against his chest and pull him on hips like this, I keep him in the direction that is easiest for my take down. Now, I am going to just use a simple little trick here to take the opponent to the ground. Using my rear leg, the one that I walked with first, I am going to sweep and then step back into a base position. You can see the opponent has already lost his base, his balance. He is falling. So, all I need to do is let go. Do not follow the opponent to the ground while holding him because you are going to injure yourself. However, I do need to follow the opponent to the ground and in order to do that safely, I am going to put my hands down first, then fall with my knees. I want to end up straddled across the opponent's body because from here, I can punch or I can just get up and run away. In the street, if I drop the opponent this hard on concrete, he is going to feel it and it will but him enough time to escape.

So again, from this punching position, the opponent throws and I insert the hand and slap the back of the tricep. I insert the next hand and now, this blocks the punches. My rear hand, my right hand swims through and I follow that leading arm walk into the side maintaining contact and pulling the arm across the body the entire time.

Now, I clasped my hands and I suck my opponent's hips into mine. Now, I bend my head to protect myself from an internal attack to the face and I use the pressure of my hand to throw the weight away across my opponent's body at an angle. Now, I am going to use my back leg, the one that I led with to sweep and step and throw my opponent. I let go, I let the opponent hit the ground. My hands go first, then my knees and then from here, I can punch, one more time, full speed.

In the following segment, we will be discussing how to defend yourself against kicks.