The “Brass Knuckle Effect” – Improving Your Odds In A Streetfight

What Would You Do If This Happened To You?

Imagine being on the threshold of a serious, life-and-death streetfight, mugging or sexual assault.

You’ve been confronted by a big, ugly, piece-of-dung who has singled you out as his next conquest.

Talking your way out of this is getting you nowhere.  You’re going to have to fight for your life or endure of a severe beating (or worse).

Like any sane person, your reaction is predictable.

Your sympathetic nervous system, (fight or flight response) kicks into high gear. Your breathing and heart rate quicken, your gut feels queasy, your knees start knocking and you can barely hide the fact that you’re shaking like a leaf. You know that these symptoms are normal in situations like this, but that doesn’t make you feel any better.

You thought you were fit and well-trained from your self-defense workouts but now you’re not so sure. In the face of battle, you feel flustered and full of self-doubt. Your mental dialogue kicks in and you start berating yourself for not having trained harder… “I’m not ready for this!“

You’re mind is reeling as it searches for the best tool to pull out of your bag of tricks to get yourself out of this mess.

Enter The Brass Knuckles

In the midst of this ordeal, a trusted friend discretely slides up beside you and transfers something into your dominant hand.  What is it? Brass knuckles!

Immediately you breathe a sigh of relief… the chaos just got simpler and more manageable… All you have to do is smash those brass knuckles into vulnerable parts of your adversary’s anatomy, over and over until he either gives up or crumples to the floor.

Fear gives way to clarity. Now you know exactly what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it.  It doesn’t matter if he wants to stand and swing, grapple and clinch or try to take you to the ground because now you have a “secret weapon.”

The probability of you not only surviving but “winning” the altercation has IMMEDIATELY changed in your favour. Even if those knuckles turned out the be “cardboard,” your chances of success just went up.  I call that “The Brass Knuckle Effect.”

So what am I saying? Am I suggesting that you arm yourself with a shiny set of knuckle-dusters?

Nope… What I’m suggesting is that you take the point of this “mental exercise” and apply it to your self-defense training.

The Brass Knuckle Effect improves your combative performance by developing a reliable, “multi-purpose” fighting technique that can be trained to a high level, in a short period of time and used effectively in a wide range of combative situations with confidence and effectiveness.

The Brass Knuckle Effect Is Based On Four Principles

The Brass Knuckle Effect is built upon four tried-and-proven principles of critical incident performance:

1. Hicks Law – the more techniques you have to choose from, the longer it will take to select one and execute it.

2. The Inverted U Hypothesis – Under stress your ability to perform fine and complex skills deteriorates. Gross motor skills, which are simple, large-muscle movements become more effective under stress.

3. The Locus Of Control – It’s not what happens in life that creates stress but our reaction to it. Your perception of control over the outcome of an event dictates the degree of anxiety or confidence you experience.

4. The Law of Specialization – By focusing your training on a limited skill set, you can improve that particular skill faster than if you distributed that same amount of effort amongst several different skills

The Benefits Of The Brass Knuckle Effect

Simplified Thought Process – Under intense stress, your sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, your ability to think logically or creatively is impaired.   Your neo cortex suffers a “meltdown” while the limbic system or “lizard brain” takes over.  The good news is that this part of the brain is also the source of emotion and trained skills. Relying on your Brass Knuckle Technique simplifies the chaos and confusion associated to a critical event.

Reduced Stress Response – A simplified game plan with a high probability of success strengthens your “locus of control” over the situation… This decreases your fear and stress symptoms while increasing your confidence.

Faster Reaction Time – By limiting yourself to a single “Brass Knuckle Technique,” you reduce your response options and decrease the amount of time that it takes you to act.

Increase Your Proficiency – If you build your training around the development of your “Brass Knuckle Technique,” you’ll bring it toward the point of mastery… or at least to where it’s pretty damn good.  If you want to stop an attacker, this is the your best bet to make that happen.

Selecting Your Brass Knuckle Technique

Let IT pick YOU – Don’t arbitrarily pick a technique off the top of your head. Think about an appropriate technique that feels natural to you.  If you spar, what strike do you land most consistently?  When striking a heavy bag or focus pads, what strike lands with the most authority and impact?

It Should Be a Gross Motor Skill – When the “excrement hits the oscillator,” you’re going to be under stress.  Is the technique you select dirt-simple and based on large-muscle movement?

Applicable In All Three Ranges Of Combat: Can your Brass Knuckle Technique be applied effectively at all three ranges of combat: free-standing, grappling and on the ground?

(I wrote a previous post about stress and technique selection.  You can read it here.)

Training Your Brass Knuckle Technique

Make Your BKT The Centre Of Your Workout – When working on your striking skills, build drills and combinations around your BKT.  Learn ways to set it up, ways to follow it up and how to deliver it in a rapid-fire blitz.

Vary Your Training – Master the intricacies and bio mechanics of the technique. Incorporate it into as many drills as you can think of.  Hit the heavy bag with it, build it into focus pad and Thai pad drills, work it into boxing glove drills with a partner.  Perfect practice makes perfect.

Use Partner Training To Develop Multi-Purpose Application – Being slow and analytical, have a training partner “attack you,” one technique at a time.  Your goal is to defend against the attack and counter with your BKT, no matter what he throws at you.

Condition and Strengthen The Muscles and Movement Patterns Associated With The technique – Seek out exercises that will contribute to the power of the strike.  Use body weight exercises, weights, kettlebells, bungee cords etc.

Here’s a video clip by Wim Demeere to give you an idea of how you can condition and fine-tune the straight punch: (Check out his blog at http://www.wimsblog.com/)

A Final And Important Note:

I’m not suggesting that you limit the entirety of your training around one technique to the exclusion of all others.  That would get boring pretty quick.

If you’re a martial artist, you’re going to want to develop a complete and well-balanced skill set.  You also want to keep your training fresh and interesting.

If you’re training for self-defense, you always want a back up plan so practicing a variety of skills is a good idea. Who knows, you may be injured and have to resort to another technique to keep yourself in the fight.

I suggest dedicating a portion of your workouts to your BKT so you can have it in your back pocket and ready to go should you need it.  A ten to fifteen minute block should be plenty.

Also keep in mind that you’re not “stuck” with a single specialty technique indefinitely… Once you’re comfortable with the development of your chosen specialty technique (or you get bored), switch to a different one and repeat the process.

The silver lining to this approach is that “mastering” a specific technique, and understanding it on a deep and meaningful level, will enhance your performance and rapid development in other techniques as well.

What is YOUR Brass Knuckle Technique?  

If you don’t have one yet, what’s your best guess as to what it might be?