When the Fight Goes to the Ground. Lori O'Connell
or applying them for self-protection in a real street situation. This chapter covers a variety of principles and training practices that will help you learn what you need to stay safe on the ground, while maintaining safety for you and your training partners on the mats.
The Tenets of the Can-ryu Jiu-jitsu Core Curriculum
Before we cover the concepts that are specific to ground defense, it is important to understand the tenets under which we teach the core curriculum of Can-ryu Jiu-jitsu. These serve as guiding principles for what we teach our students for self-protection. These tenets all address the underlying idea that when attacked, people often undergo an adrenaline dump as they face that which threatens them, and that affects the way they move, think, and react.
1. Simplicity. Our style’s core curriculum is meant to be easy to learn. A student should be able to understand and learn the mechanics of a defensive technique in less than 3 minutes. If there are physiological reasons why a particular move is not practical for a person, the technique should be modified in such a way that it is usable or they should be shown a completely different technique that makes more sense for their body type. But ideally, our core curriculum is formulated to be comprised of techniques that will work for the greatest variety of body types and attack situations. The reason for this is that the harder something is to learn, the less likely we are to use it when under the affects of an adrenaline dump. Of course, the longer you train a technique and commit it to muscle memory, the more likely you are to use it when under attack, but if the technique is easier to learn in the first place, you are that much more likely to develop that tendency.
2. Commonality of Technique. We strive to use similar types of techniques in similar defensive situations. The purpose of this is to prevent brain stalls, which can occur under the pressure of an attack as a person tries to “think” of what to do. If the defensive technique that is taught is the same for all the different minor variations of the same attack, it reduces the chances of this. Also, when you train to defend against all the different variations of a type of attack with the same type of defensive technique, you spend more time committing that technique to muscle memory, making it more likely that you will use it when attacked.
3. Usage of Gross Motor Skills. In the interest of making our core curriculum easier to learn and apply, we emphasize the use of gross motor skills over fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are skills that use the larger muscle groups of the body. All gross motor skills come from things we learned from infancy to early childhood, including walking, crawling, maintaining balance, reaching, hopping, etc. By using defensive techniques that employ larger muscle groups, we are drawing on physical skills the body is used to using, ones that have been reinforced since our early physical development. This makes them easier to learn and use when under an adrenaline dump. The body already has a tendency to resort to movements it has already learned, so we are taking advantage of that by using gross motor skills for our defensive techniques. Fine motor skills, on the other hand, require a lot more training to get the movements ingrained in our subconscious minds. That is not to say they cannot be effective (we do include a variety of fine motor skill techniques at higher levels of training in Can-ryu), it just takes longer to develop the muscle memory to make them second nature. Gross motor skills include techniques like open hand strikes, eye gouging, scratching, biting, etc.
4. Awareness of Additional Threats. In all the defensive techniques we use in our core curriculum, we emphasize a constant awareness for the potential of additional threats to our safety. This means that we teach students to look around and be aware as though someone else may attack, even when they are defending against one person. This extends into other types of threats that may be actively or passively introduced in a defensive context including weapons and environmental hazards. This is an important skill to develop because our natural tendency is to tunnel-vision when under an adrenaline dump, causing us to focus on what we perceive to be our primary threat. Without training awareness, a person can be vulnerable to changes in circumstances and surroundings when in this psychological state.
The Importance of Making Exceptions
Bear in mind that while these are the guiding principles behind our core curriculum, the defensive techniques we teach may be harder for some people than others based on factors such as size, strength, reach, etc. We must always give ourselves the opportunity to make allowances.
For example, the “3-minute rule” might become the “10-minute rule” if a student is attempting a technique under more challenging circumstances, such as a bigger/heavier training partner. This is especially true for ground defense. They may need the extra time to learn how the mechanics work, and to make them work under more challenging circumstances. This is why it can be beneficial to first try things out with lower levels of resistance on someone who isn’t too much bigger. As for commonality of technique, someone may have prior training in a certain way of reacting to a particular attack. Even if it does not necessarily follow with this principle within our style, for self-protection purposes it may make sense for that person to use these previously trained skills because that is the way their body wants to react. When it comes to fine motor skill techniques, they can become equivalent in practical value to ones using gross motor skills when they have been trained enough. When they reach this stage of development, some people may be able to rely upon them as easily as simpler techniques.
When it comes to training and applying techniques for self-protection we try to remember the following maxim: “Never say always. Never say never.” There will inevitably be times when we break from the principles, so we must train ourselves to treat each situation as unique and to keep our minds open to alternative solutions.
Ground Defense Rules for Self-Protection
There are four general rules to follow when applying our skills for the purposes of self-protection and preservation:
1. Rule #1: Protect your head and neck. If an attacker is trying to immobilize you and eliminate your defensive capabilities, the most dangerous targets are the head and neck. While defending from the ground, you should maintain a protective guard to protect these targets whenever possible. To do this, keep your arms up to form a barrier around your head. Keep your chin tucked with the shoulders raised to help prevent strikes to the chin and jaw. This also protects against chokes. If being struck, try to keep your head moving to make it harder for your attacker to land a solid blow.
2. Rule #2: Find/create opportunities. Like in any defensive situation, you need to find, create and take advantage of defensive opportunities. When fighting from the ground, space is your friend if your goal is to escape. Space opens up more defensive options, allowing you to use more of your body, which is particularly important if your attacker has the size/strength advantage. Attacks to vulnerable targets, in combination with applicable body shifting techniques, can serve to create more space. The extra space can allow you to use more powerful strikes, apply body shifting more effectively, or simply give you the opportunity to escape.
3. Rule #3: Keep your limbs close. If an attacker can get control of your arm or leg, it decreases the number of tools you have to use in defense, also allowing them to more easily apply joint manipulation techniques. When your limbs are fully extended, it is also easier for an attacker to gauge your reach, further minimizing your ability to defend yourself. To keep this from happening, keep your limbs bent and retracted close to your body. This allows you to use your body as an anchor while still being able to use them to attack back.
4. Rule #4: Get off the ground! The ground is a dangerous place to be. You greatly increase your ability to protect yourself and escape a conflict by getting off the ground as soon as you have the opportunity to do so safely. As such, it is important to train yourself to get back on our feet once you have escaped a ground attack.
Challenges for Different Body Types
There is no