I'm curious as to whether or not there has ever been a self-defense training program based on valid research methods and sound data. If someone's goal, or their employers goal, is to become proficient in self-defense as quickly as possible, it makes sense that the moves/system they are taught should be supported by research (i.e., evidence-based). To the contrary, martial arts/self-defense training is often based on speculation and assumption which is sometimes way off track. Furthermore, it's the initial attack (i.e., wrist grab) that you are often taught to defend almost as if that is where the attack ends. In developing an effective self-defense system I think it's much more important to know the most likely reaction of say 1000 random people who grab your wrist. Do most people pull you forward, do they push your hand down, do they try and hit you with their free hand? It's satistics like this that should guide your training. A lot of instructors say "Most people do this", but how do they really know that? I also know that self-defense scenarious can be unpredictable, but at the same time we're all people and our bodies tend to move and react in a certain way unless trained otherwise. Kind of like how most untrained people will try and push up on your upper body or try and turn to their stomach when mounted. I wonder if the Department of Defense or other large federal agency has ever conducted a massive and valid research study on something like this? Would be interesing and it makes a ton of sense. Like all research though, it would have to be well done to have much value.
From my experience training with military guys who have gone through the combatives courses, I'm under the impression that while the US Govt/military encourages some level of practical hand-to-hand combat skills, most of their research dollars are going to be spent elsewhere. Guns and bombs are far more effective than any self-defense program. If you find yourself without a gun or a bomb, you should at least have a radio so that you can call someone who has a gun or a bomb.
An evidence-based approach to hand-to-hand self-defence training would, I suspect, tell you that the expected dis-utility from injury on the mat will always out-pace the expected return.
Im no expert but i believe at one point the DOD did put some thought and money into this which led to the army combatives program:
http://www.ussocp.com/history/macp/
and eventually this:
http://www.ussocp.com/history/socp/
Carry and learn to shoot a gun.
a real problem with evidence based approaches to self defense is what evidence, and whose assessing it.. its a methodological nightmare... theres lots of statistics on incidents... I read a load of that stuff a number of years ago...
bare in mind now that most martial arts dont really follow the lessons learnt from the evidence base from neurological and physiological perspectives relating to response, skills aquisition, information processing, etc
I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but the "Gracie Combatives" program is sort of based on the Gracie Family's 'research' and analysis of fights and what the most common positions and situations encountered in a typical fight.
I doubt they sat down and counted how many times out of 1000 someone grabbed the wrist a certain way and then entered the data into a mainframe but the concept is the same; they took their own experiences and analyzed fights they witnessed etc.
That's a great question Aaron.
I'd say answer is yes, people have done that, but not as much as one would think and it's hard do do for the resons sly fox mentioned.
But, for example, in the 1970s a martial artist named Matt Thomas started something called "Model Mugging" after a Female Black Belt he trained with was raped. When the woman asked her teacher why her years of karate training failed, he said basically, "you need to train harder". She got upset and quit as did some other people. Thomas and some others started actually researching how, when & where women are raped. What sort of tactics are used and tried to figure out what methods they could employ to counter this. They discovered was the typical martial arts class covers almost none of this. What they came up with is quite different from "martial arts" training.
Tony Blauer did a similar thing, though not so focused on women's self-defense/rape defense.
There have been others too. There are also a lot of people who SAY they did this, but they didn't actually do any unique research themselves, they just took what everyone was doing.
There are great statistics, easily available to anyone (e.g. FBI's uniform crime report) that give useful information about different crimes.
It drives me nuts when I see a MA or SD instructor say baseless stuff like, "If you are going to be attacked it will probably be multiple people with weapons"
--Really... based on what evidence?
Teachers tend to say what they THINK will happen based on... well... their own opinions they got from who knows where? There is no excuse for that.
-- BTW, in terms of MILITARY combatives, the Russians did it resulting in Sambo, the Chinese did it resulting in Sanshou/Sanda, the Israelis did it resulting in Krav Maga and the other Israeli systems and William Fairbairn did it resulting in Defendu.
I'm sure there are other too.
Back in the mid-nineties I made a questionnaire that I distributed to about 45 bouncers in the Chicago area figuring that even if they themselves hadn't been in a lot of fights, they'd SEEN literally hundreds of altercations. I was going to use the information for an article to be submitted to some martial arts magazines, but I never finished it.
I know the average bar fight isn't a mugging or home invasion, but I gleaned a lot of interesting nuggets of information. For example one question was how often did they see kicking in a bar fight and what kind of kick was it? Front kick? Round house? It turns out the percentage of kicks was very low, less than 5%, unless one of the combatants fell to the ground at which point kicking and stomping became the primary form of attack.
I used this to illustrate in the article, which I never published, that if your self defense training involved many hours of defending side kicks to the head, then you're wasting your time. You should be working on stopping kicks and stomps while lying in the floor.
This isn't quite the huge research project you are looking for but it did affect my training and how I taught my self defense classes. 
You know what is fascinating to me...
If you watch a lot of these store surveillance videos where people survive a shooting/robbery at store by disarming or otherwise chasing-off the armed attacker, often there is not ONE single thing they do to survive that would EVER be advocated by a self-defense instructor to do in that situation. These people are going on pure instinct (e.g. guy has a gun to store-owner's head, store owner opts to hit armed assailant with a bouquet of flowers). Some people look at these and say, "What an idiot, he's lucky to be alive. He should have done X,Y,Z instead". But it's very hard to put yourself in that situation and feel exactly what the "vibe" in the room was in that moment. Sometimes a "terrible idea" is all a person CAN do --and sometimes it works. There is no black and white in these situations. We are trapped by our own preconceived notions of "what works" and "what will get you killed". The rigidness of those lines is in sharp contrast to what really happens in these situations; all SORTS of crazy sh!t happens! It's a chaotic environment. You're talking about human beings in one of the most acutely emotional moments of their life.
Anyone can walk a balance beam 1-foot off the ground. Raise the balance beam 100-feet off the ground and now it seems terrifyingly difficult. Same with doing what is normally easy in these types of situations.
Watch a few dozen of these videos, all kinds of insanity and ill-logic is going on because BOTH parties are highly adrenalized and not thinking particularly rationally.
So when an "self-defense expert" tells you this or that, take it with a huge grain of salt. Usually they are just selling an overly simplistic world view that makes people feel "safer". There are SO many variables in a real-life situation, it is impossible to account for all of them and therefore very hard to create a genuinely comprehensive self-defense system.
FWIW, I share the view that MOST of your training should focus on the psychological & emotional aspects of what happens to you when you are in true fear for your life and you get the "adrenal dump". You should focus on how to be functional in the adrenaline state. It should focus on things like rules of thumb and give you a flexible framework for decision making (which become harder under stress). The last thing to work on --and the least important-- are specific physical strategies.
You walk into liquor store and something seems "off" when suddenly you are mesmerized by the appearance of a gun in your face. Someone is yelling at you but you can't really hear them. You can barely move for some reason. You feel like you are underwater. You half-notice blood all over the wall and you have to figure out what in THAT moment what you can do to make it most likely that you will live.
So, what is the sum total of what many systems offer you in that moment to survive...?
--Go for a wrist lock!
(Honestly, I can see why some would opt for the flowers instead.)
Sub
ttt
Although it's impossible to mimic the "real world", I still think you could get some insightful information by conducting controlled studies in the laboratory. For example, you could instruct 1000 random people to walk up behind a study participant (or even a dummy if injuries were a concern) with the command to "try and hold that person so he/she can't get away." You could then breakdown the most common holds people used. If it turns out a lot of people grab your hair, you'd be wise to develop a self-defense for that. Of course you wouldn't stop there. Next you'd have people grab your hair and study their reaction (do they tend to push, step forward with their right leg, etc) as you try and execute the self-defense. It would be next to impossible to mimic the adrenaline rush and unpredictableness that occurs in a true self-defense situation, but at least you would have some data to support the validity of your training.
IMO basic self-defense isn't rocket science.
Teach people awareness/behavior because 99% of self-defense is avoiding situations and locations that lead to danger. For example, do not go to rowdy bars. Do not go to bad areas of town. Do not travel alone, especially at night. Etc. This is mostly common sense, maturity, and avoidance of peer pressure.
Teach people how to avoid and counter a roundhouse right hand because if you do get into a physical alteration that is the most common attack by far.
Teach people headlock escapes.
Teach escapes from inferior positions such as mount, side mount etc. Teach technical stand-up.
Teach what an underhook is, how to pummel, how to do a throw-by, how to slip a headlock - with goal of getting behind your opponent with good control. From there you can knee the coccyx, takedown, or shove and run.
Train, train, train these basic grappling tactics.
Teach to carry a rape whistle and to yell "FIRE!"
Teach that there isn't a reliable method of countering knives or guns, especially when adrenalized.
It's actually pretty easy to get people adrenalized if you have them in a controlled environment. This is the premise on which adrenal stress training is based. There are some tricks and when you use them together, it kinda snowballs.
Beyond the "group psychology" at play, using fear of the unknown & performance anxiety in front of peers, things like REALISTIC body language (which contain pre-assault cues) and the verbal skills of the individual mock assailant are critical. You simply must project CREDIBLE threat or creepiness or craziness or whatever it is you are trying to project in that scenario.
Just because someone puts on a padded suit and lets students hit them doesn't mean they understand the PROCESS of learning while in the adrenal state. It's sort of like the difference between learning BJJ from a skilled, experienced Professor and learning some some Youtube-inspired "crappling" down at the local McDojo.
But when done well, people can get CRAZY adrenalized in class. Sometimes in fact the problem is a student getting TOO adrenalized, where they are completely-non-functional and you have to make everything less "realistic" in order for them to start to integrate skills. (Truthfully though, this is usually students who have a significant "history"; they have been beaten, raped or seriously abused in some other way).
People bring their own fears and past trauma with them to this type of training. When someone gets adrenalized in such a situation, their mind scans their memory for pertinent information acquired previous times they were in a similar adrenal state. That is how our survival mechanism works. As a result, if you have been in serious fight or assaulted or anything like that where you felt acute fear, very often you will feel like you are "right back" in that same moment.
subd for crazy adrenaline
shen -
You know what is fascinating to me...
If you watch a lot of these store surveillance videos where people survive a shooting/robbery at store by disarming or otherwise chasing-off the armed attacker, often there is not ONE single thing they do to survive that would EVER be advocated by a self-defense instructor to do in that situation. These people are going on pure instinct (e.g. guy has a gun to store-owner's head, store owner opts to hit armed assailant with a bouquet of flowers). Some people look at these and say, "What an idiot, he's lucky to be alive. He should have done X,Y,Z instead". But it's very hard to put yourself in that situation and feel exactly what the "vibe" in the room was in that moment. Sometimes a "terrible idea" is all a person CAN do --and sometimes it works. There is no black and white in these situations. We are trapped by our own preconceived notions of "what works" and "what will get you killed". The rigidness of those lines is in sharp contrast to what really happens in these situations; all SORTS of crazy sh!t happens! It's a chaotic environment. You're talking about human beings in one of the most acutely emotional moments of their life.
Anyone can walk a balance beam 1-foot off the ground. Raise the balance beam 100-feet off the ground and now it seems terrifyingly difficult. Same with doing what is normally easy in these types of situations.
Watch a few dozen of these videos, all kinds of insanity and ill-logic is going on because BOTH parties are highly adrenalized and not thinking particularly rationally.
So when an "self-defense expert" tells you this or that, take it with a huge grain of salt. Usually they are just selling an overly simplistic world view that makes people feel "safer". There are SO many variables in a real-life situation, it is impossible to account for all of them and therefore very hard to create a genuinely comprehensive self-defense system.
FWIW, I share the view that MOST of your training should focus on the psychological & emotional aspects of what happens to you when you are in true fear for your life and you get the "adrenal dump". You should focus on how to be functional in the adrenaline state. It should focus on things like rules of thumb and give you a flexible framework for decision making (which become harder under stress). The last thing to work on --and the least important-- are specific physical strategies.
You walk into liquor store and something seems "off" when suddenly you are mesmerized by the appearance of a gun in your face. Someone is yelling at you but you can't really hear them. You can barely move for some reason. You feel like you are underwater. You half-notice blood all over the wall and you have to figure out what in THAT moment what you can do to make it most likely that you will live.
So, what is the sum total of what many systems offer you in that moment to survive...?
--Go for a wrist lock!
(Honestly, I can see why some would opt for the flowers instead.)
Excellent Post. People constantly blur the line between what is needed to become a better "fighter" as opposed to being able to defend ones self. The two are not neccesarily the same. Trained fighters have been jumped, sucker punched, beaten up and killed. Untrained people have taken knives and guns away from bad guys and fought off multiple attackers. Every scenario is going to be different based on the parties involved, their surroundings and a host of other factors that will influence how it ends up.
Train because you enjoy it. Train to stay in shape. Training is better than Not Training.
But... don't expect that training will take the place of common sense in keeping you and your family safe. Avoid bad people, places and things and hope to never have to use youe skills for self protection. It might not end like you planned.
Geoff Thompson, a British self defense expert, was a notorious street fighter & bouncer who studied how actual altercations occurred. Based on his experience, he designed a system whereby you recognize the adrenaline response in the aggressor, assess the probability that they will actually fight, and if so, set them up for a sucker punch to knock them out. Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification, but I found his material to be very straightforward, practical, and reality based. His writing style is entertaining, filled with anecdotal evidence to support his arguments, and if anything is interesting food for thought.
Thanks FJJ828... I certainly agree with the points you made.
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Hoffa, I like Geoff Thompson too.... I like many of the "non-crazy" self-defense instructors out there. Although the specific tactics they espouse differ somewhat, there is a definite "through line" in their collective material.
Among people who are actually endeavoring to teach self-defense --and not just teaching martial arts re-packaged as Self-Defense-- there tends to be a LOT of commonality (e.g. always consider the vital role of our innate survival mechanisms, keep it very simple, train as realistically as possible, incorporate scenario training including verbal skills, etc).