The Scoop On “Pressure Point Fighting”

© COPYRIGHT 2010 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sword and Pen – September 2010 Issue

[Reprinted With Permission]

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WE have for decades now been adamant about the fact (and it is a FACT) that pain compliance techniques, and in fact pain per se, as a means of stopping a determined and dangerous aggressor, is woefully insufficient. First, because such skills almost invariably depend upon fine motor articulations. Such actions cannot successfully be relied upon in serious hand-to-hand combat. Second, because pain per se is SUBJECTIVE. As a professional, licensed hypnotherapist of more than 20 years, we can tell you that some people can — literally — ignore any degree of pain. Some people (admittedly, not too many) can have deep abdominal surgery or tooth extractions with no anesthesia. Hypnosis — the power of suggestion — is quite sufficient. They do not pay attention to that which would make most of us (our self included) collapse from the pain!

But "pain compliance" via pressure point skills does not cause anywhere near one fiftieth the pain that would be felt from surgery or from having a tooth pulled without anesthesia. Some pressure point techniques — applied correctly — will cause some people to wince and give up.

Unfortunately, fanatical murderers, gang members, home invaders, kidnappers, rapists, and muggers, etc. tend not to be in the "wince and give up" category. These bastards need to be maimed or killed, more often than not, in order to stop them.

One of the greatest law enforcement defensive tactics instructors who ever lived, and a personal friend of ours, Robert J. Koga, devised a most powerful and effective method for police control of suspects when he served as a teacher with the LAPD in the 1960’s. However . . . those skills — and all non-injurious pain compliance skills — have no legitimate use in situations when one is attacked by a dangerous assailant. Police do sometimes have need for compliance-control skills, and for them and those in similar occupations where security and peace keeping is the idea, okay, they serve a purpose. Such people sometimes need to control pests, nervous but not dangerous physically resistant suspects, and annoying riff raff. But police also need man-stopping methods for dangerous encounters, and any experienced street cop will attest to this. Private citizens and members of our armed services (possibly excepting military police, when acting within the parameters of that specific MOS ) do NOT need and should not waste their time and energy learning "compliance" and "non-injurious" methods. The political correctness of this B.S. today, and its popularity in the martial arts field certainly provides an alarming statement about the lack of common sense, the fantasy-worshipping, and the plain stupidity of those who are seeking a "nice" method of self-defense. One might also argue that it says something a bit more foul about those who cash in on these customers — but that’s another story.

Demonstrations of pressure point fighting, just like demonstrations of most martial arts skills, can be visually impressive and dramatically convincing. But a martial arts demonstration is not a violent incident, and the fact that something looks good when performed by well rehearsed experts in front of an audience does not mean that the demonstrated techniques translate into combatively effective techniques, when attempted under combat conditions.

"But what about those seminars and demonstrations in which subjects from out of the attending group or audience are invited to participate and to experience the effectiveness of the methods?" one might ask. "I have seen people rendered utterly helpless by those techniques."

The answer is that what you saw was an essentially cooperative, believing individual subject himself to a demonstration that he already was convinced would be effective in causing him to react as claimed by the demonstrators. This is what happens quite often when one observes one of those popular televangelists cause people from the audience to swoon. It is their (i.e. the peoples’) belief in and inner anticipation of that which is being done to them that causes the reaction.

Let an expert in pressure point fighting try to stop the attack of any member of an outlaw biker gang with that bulltshitty nonsense! He will quickly discover that when a really tough hombre is coming at you with murder in his heart, the last thing you can afford to try is some idiotic pain compliance nonsense.

What stops a dangerous, determined attacker in a serious physical encounter is MASSIVE SHOCK to the central nervous system or/and INTERFERENCE WITH THE ATTACKER’S BREATHING. "Subjective" has nothing to do with anything, here.

Break a man’s knee and he falls. Period. Even if, miraculously, he was so high on drugs, or so insane or drunk that he didn’t feel any pain (highly unlikely) he would fall.

Smash into a man’s carotid sinus with a powerful open hand chop, and he collapses. He likely would "feel" nothing. But he’d be unconscious (in some rare cases, perhaps dead) because when blood flow to the brain is suddenly interrupted, one collapses. Period.

Crush a man’s throat, he ceases offensive action, and drops dead.

Unpleasant as such actions are (and we concede, no decent human being would ever dream of using such actions unless his life or limb, or the life or limb of another innocent person hung in the balance) THEY WORK RELIABLY. "Pain compliance", "pressure point fighting", "humane self-defense", "non-injurious self-protection", ad nauseum does not work in those life-threatening predicaments when dangerous physical aggression by a would-be killer must be contended with. And that is the type of situation that should be of preeminent concern in any legitimate, authentic, professionally taught program of close combat and self-defense.