Red Panda Self Defence

A fantastic (and I hope interesting!) conversation with a great host
We have a fun discussion surrounding a bit of my background, martial arts as a whole, and then a good overview on some key personal safety details- all whilst having a fun conversation. Definitely worth having a listen to, so please search Tait Talks Podcast on youtube/spotify/apple and give it a listen and a follow- Tait is very funny guy and has some really interesting stuff up already.
Great conversation and something I feel will be valuable- please listen and let me know your thoughts!

The ability to play a role can be invaluable for personal safety. Whether thats playing the vulnerable victim to lull an aggressor in, or acting as if something has gone wrong to remove yourself from a situation pre-emptively, being able to convincingly portray something makes all the difference having it accepted as being true.
There is a big focus on movements being natural when looking at strategies for safety, so as not to alarm/alert our aggressors and provoke further escalation. Having the ability to act natural is harder than you might expect- particularly under pressure! Being confident and relaxed in the image you portray is a legitimate acting skill, after all you essentially need to play a convincing role in order to give you the highest chance of a predictable and desirable outcome.
As well as when you are already engaged, you can also use acting as a tool pre-emptively to avoid situations. Imagine you are at a cash point and you feel someone is acting suspiciously and you fear they may be waiting to rob you. You need a way to naturally avoid that situation without it being suspicious and raising alarms. Maybe you loudly swear and act like your card has failed or you have no money, so withdraw the card with no cash and walk off annoyed. You have shown you are a low value target and exited the potential scenario without engaging with the aggressor.
Perhaps you are being followed, and need to make an abrupt turn to a safer environment, or do something that would be hard for someone following you to also justify. Try abruptly stopping, and tapping your pockets as if you have forgotten/lost something, then walk back the direction you came with some urgency.

There are many ways you can play with this idea, but it is just another tool to add to the toolkit!

One key thing to pay attention to if you feel a situation escalating into a potential violent encounter is the presence of an audience.
If someone is being confrontational or aggressive and there is an audience present, such as a group of their friends or you are in a public place, then the chances are you are dealing with some form of social violence. If there is an absence of spectators, then you are likely dealing with a form of predatory violence.

This is because social violence generally is down to a goal of elevating ones perceived status in society through aggressive displays, which obviously requires the presence of other people to demonstrate this. Predators however are goal driven, and take measures to ensure they can isolate victims in order to reduce the chance of them being caught and improve the efficiency of their assault.

Once you identify what type of violence you are dealing with, you can then make an intelligent tactical assessment as to how to best deal with the situation. Different types of violence require different approaches and strategies, and using the incorrect one can end up worsening the situation for you.

Learn to de-escalate different types of violence in an intelligent way, to help improve your chances of staying safe. Sign up for a free trial class now!

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A brief overview of the key stages in a violent encounter. There is so much more to self defence & personal safety than just learning to use physical techniques, you have to have an understanding of key related areas of study for each of these sections in order to have a truly holistic understand of personal safety.
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One great point to focus on when engaged with a potential threat is to make sure you can see their hands at all times. The hands can indicate a lot of things, from how they are feeling through body language, to whether they are concealing objects (such as weapons). If you can see their hands it means you know what they are doing, they could be indicating aggression by clenching fists or pointing etc, or indicating a concealed weapon by touching it or reaching for it.
Also, by being able to see both hands fully, you are most likely at a distance where you have a reactionary gap to deal with a sudden closing of distance.

Regardless of the type of violent encounter you are facing, your attacker(s) will be naturally self serving. The assault must be worthwhile for them, and if they end up being injured or caught it can incur too great a risk for them to take that chance. This is why in most cases an attacker will pick what they perceive as an easy victim, and equally it is often seen that as soon as a strong fight is put up or other people appear at a crimescene that criminals will quickly abandon their assault and escape. Self preservation is important on both sides!

So the lesson from this is all about attention. Make yourself a hard target. Draw attention as quickly as you can, whether that is shouting and calling, or fighting and creating a scene, this draws attention onto the attack and can be enough to panic your aggressor and cause them to abandon their plans.

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There is fairly predictable behaviours from different personality types, and criminals are no different. Depending on what type of violence you are dealing with, and what the circumstances are, there are different strategies that are appropriate for you to exact a safe getaway. Its all well and good training lots of skills, however if you don’t understand when certain skills are preferable then you could end up making things much worse. For example- The idea of compliance is great to keep you safe against a mugger (surrendering wallet etc), but compliance with a ra**st is not going to help you at all. So why the difference? They are both violent criminals, what makes the same strategy safe for one and incredibly dangerous for the other?

The answers comes from understanding basic criminal profiles and violence dynamics. You should know in advance how to identify different types of criminals & violence, how they operate and how is most appropriate to defend yourself against them.

Learn the difference between social and asocial violence, the different types of violent encounter within them and how to spot them. Humans are pattern seeking primates, which actually makes it surprisingly easy to apply a pretty universal understanding of how these interactions go, which allow us to build intelligent responses in advance, and train these solutions. Make sure you think about how and who you are training for!