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How important is this in training self-protection/self-defense? For students on the forum, do you feel equipped to use your voice as a tool in self-defense, or are you unsure about this area of your training? For instructors, what drills or concepts have you used to increase your students’ ability to avoid a fight where possible using verbalization, or gain the upper hand in another way?
I haven’t studied anything like that in krav, but I’ve had some real life experience with cooling off a situtation before a fight breaks out, if that’s what you mean.
verbal de-escalation
Jeff,
This is Roger, I joined Columbia Krav but haven’t been for a couple of weeks due to training at work. I use de-escalation almost every night in my job as a Corrections Officer. One of the main \”weapons\” in de-escalation is your tone of voice. If you have a calm tone of voice the other person will actually come down to your tone. If you start trying to talk over the other person you have a problem brewing. You do need to stand firm and maintain eye contact. This way you appear calm, cool and collected.
Roger
there are tons of great resources out there for de-escalation… geoff thompson’s stuff is great (duh)… i personally love his fence work/pre-emptive strike work… i understand why it wouldn’t be in krav (considering the desire to work worst case first [eyes closed, complete surprise], and coming from a military background where de-escalation is in the form of brandishing a firearm….
i would hope for it (meaning fence/interview stance work) to be added some time in the future… who knows?
I’m not sure how much you could actually train for it. Of course, if you could talk your way out of a situation, you should always do that rather than fight. You should probably appear confident but not aggressive. Don’t yell, don’t give commands, just tell him firmly that you don’t want trouble, back away, even apologize if that should help, don’t lose sight of him in case he is coming after you.
Thinking about it, the whole term \”verbal de-escalation\” implies that there was some type of verbal escalation before that. Somebody got very enraged about something and if you decide to provoke him further, rather than de-escalate a fight could start (that being different from, let’s say, a plain robbery, where the guy is not upset with you, instead just wants to steal your money. I’m not sure if you could talk your way out of that. You could comply or talk to distract him, then strike, but just saying \”Come on man, you don’t want to rob ME.\” is not likely to get you anywhere, at least in most situations).
Thankfully, I’ve never been physically attacked, but I’ve been in some situations where a total stranger got very enraged about nothing at all. Mostly road rage scenarios. Two different times women jumping out of their cars, yelling and screaming (at my mother, who was the driver). I remember both of us just being stumped, not even angry, just confused, because we had no idea what the individual drivers were talking about.
My mother was once confronted by an insane guy in a parking lot, after she had just parked her car. The guy claimed he had seen the spot first and it was his. I wasn’t with her, but she told me that the guy became very enraged and had some type of insane look on his face, so she apologized and drove back out of the spot (even though she really wasn’t \”guilty\” of stealing it). Another time some guys in a car followed her to a parking lot and then started yelling about something.
In all of those cases, even without training, she was just so stumped by the whole incident that she was not aggressive at all (and neither was I when I was with her). She instinctively didn’t say much of anything, letting the opposing party have their little tirade, even apologized and nothing else happened.
I think this may be a typical reaction if you are suddenly confronted by an enraged stranger – you’ll be so stumped, you won’t even have time to get angry. But even if you do, best thing to remain passive, say you are sorry and quickly get out of there.
We have run a whole verbal course several times. I think there is some valuable stuff there but in the end I buck the trend a little bit and question the amount of time needed to train on this sort of thing. I think it is important to learn to make strong statements, avoid the temptation to \”defer the NO,\” etc., but I think it is a shorter lesson than is sometimes taught.
I agree. A lot of it could probably be summed up with \”don’t provoke anybody and don’t let yourself be provoked\”.
Well, yes, but there IS a little more to it. There are some good boundary-setting drills and exercises, some ways to state things firmly but unprovocatively; and (to borrow a phrase from a very talented gentleman named Jeff Jimmo) the idea of \”knowing what your what is and when your when is.\”
But if I have a short time to teach someone, I would prefer to focus on worse case scenarios and let them use whatever instincts they have for the verbal confrontation. We spend all day long talking to people, and very little time dealing with people grabbing or hitting us.
to me the verbal de-escalation itself is less important than working from an \”interview\” stance… many many altercations start with someone getting in another’s face… to have a safe, passive looking (to witnesses especially) position that keeps someone near arm’s length is valuable. To be used to the situation, even as too learn to mentally disarm someone before striking and running…
to often you see someone \”bump\” chests with another, and the \”victim\” doesn’t extend a natural looking protective fence….
no, a fighting stance doesn’t count lol
btw, i agree with johh… i just think there are three levels. 1. complete surprise. 2. confrontation which usually constitutes an interview-like stance. 3. mid melee, where the fighting stance comes into play.
krav is the BEST at 1. i personally just like working 2 since i do go to bars, and find the confrontations there (while not as life or death) can be dangerous if not handled well.. just my opinion.
For #1, I think you will be likely to instinctively react correctly: You’ll be so stunned, you won’t have time to get mad, you have no idea what the other guy is talking about, so you may be less likely to become enraged yourself (at least not initially). So, you may just stand there, looking confused, not talk much, maybe apologize (even though you have no idea what you are really apologizing about).
#2 is more dangerous. Now YOU may be mad as well. The other guy yells and screams, calls you names etc and now you really want to do the same thing, which would provoke him further and could lead to a physical confrontation. If you are trained in fighting, you may even make the mistake to believe that you \”could take him\”, or maybe you would even like the opportunity to try out your fighting skills on the SOB.
Of course, you should try to fight all of these sentiments and do the de-escalation thing. No matter how angry you are, you should try to walk away from it, which may not always be easy. It’s basically anger management, but once you’ve decided to go the de-escalation route, the things to do likely remain the same: Be firm, not provocative, apologize if necessary (even if you don’t think there is any reason to), try to back off and get away.
For #3, de-escalation might come too late. If there is already some pushing and shoving and fighting stances, maybe now would be the time for a quick counter/preemptive strike, then turning and running if possible.
The boundary-setting drills and exercises, are those mostly rape prevention? If so, would they be in the same category as verbal de-escalation? Or are they more like a general relationship advice sort of thing? It seems that, when talking about verbal de-escalation, one would assume that an attack is imminent, but rape prevention can deal with issues that happen long before a potential attack.
Roger’s advice(re-print) is outstanding. Thank you.
\”This is Roger, I joined Columbia Krav but haven’t been for a couple of weeks due to training at work. I use de-escalation almost every night in my job as a Corrections Officer. One of the main \”weapons\” in de-escalation is your tone of voice. If you have a calm tone of voice the other person will actually come down to your tone. If you start trying to talk over the other person you have a problem brewing. You do need to stand firm and maintain eye contact. This way you appear calm, cool and collected. \”-Roger
I used to work in tech support(RTFM) and we used to get some real angry folks because they were mad at themselves, the place they bought it at, and once in a blue moon, even us(it’s true). We got some good training from the company on how to de-escalate a hot situation.
We were by no means in a prison like Roger, but angry people who just spent a lot of money on the phone can say real mean things about your mother or your heritage. The company let us hang-up on anyone who swore at us, but typically we gave people a warning or two. It depended on the individual’s threshold for verbal abuse.
The best lesson that I learned was to let people air out like a hot oven. Let the person say his/her piece for a good while until trying to engage them in rational conversation. You don’t have to take abuse, but listen to their gripe(this if for phone training, but it’s worked face-to-face as well for me).
This is a tad similar to what Roger said about speaking at someone’s sound level(this was suggested to us as well). Angry tones like angry tones, not happy tones- they get stomped I have found. You can’t fix the problem until you fix the person(their emotional state). Until you do that, you will not get very far(unless the person wants to just smash yo’ face and then we know what to do.)
Re: Verbal de-escalation
Apologies for getting to this late.
\”How important is this in training self-protection/self-defense? For students on the forum, do you feel equipped to use your voice as a tool in self-defense, or are you unsure about this area of your training? For instructors, what drills or concepts have you used to increase your students’ ability to avoid a fight where possible using verbalization, or gain the upper hand in another way?\”
Man, this is why you should have gone to RHEK’s seminar in the spring!! A major component of the seminar was, indeed, implementing verbal concepts into your training, alongside detecting/preventing pre-ambush rituals. Here’s the trailer (apologies, Sr. Hoover):
https://secure.martialartsites.com/index.cfm?storeid=040902115412&ProdID=ECTDVD
We were doing line-up punching/headbutts during LIII last week!
In terms of contextual importance, I can also suggest reading/watching Geoff Thompson’s work (STRONGLY SUGGEST the 3-second fighter series), Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s work, Richard Dmitri’s stuff, Gavin de Becker, etc., etc. The crystallized amalgamation of their training, IMO, is in the DVD.
Or I’d suggest having RHEK pay a visit to your school.
GK, I congratulate you for your consistent demonstration of lacking any sort of understanding of RBSP. That takes determination over the years!!
Re:
quote \”Lazlo\:I used to work in tech support(RTFM) and we used to get some real angry folks because they were mad at themselves, the place they bought it at, and once in a blue moon, even us(it’s true). We got some good training from the company on how to de-escalate a hot situation.We were by no means in a prison like Roger, but angry people who just spent a lot of money on the phone can say real mean things about your mother or your heritage. The company let us hang-up on anyone who swore at us, but typically we gave people a warning or two. It depended on the individual’s threshold for verbal abuse.
The best lesson that I learned was to let people air out like a hot oven. Let the person say his/her piece for a good while until trying to engage them in rational conversation. You don’t have to take abuse, but listen to their gripe(this if for phone training, but it’s worked face-to-face as well for me).
This is a tad similar to what Roger said about speaking at someone’s sound level(this was suggested to us as well). Angry tones like angry tones, not happy tones- they get stomped I have found. You can’t fix the problem until you fix the person(their emotional state). Until you do that, you will not get very far(unless the person wants to just smash yo’ face and then we know what to do.)
I hear that. I work for the IL poison control center, and we get tons of calls from irrate folks. Same story.
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