In a serious fight, your goal should be to stop your attacker as quickly as you can, says Richard Ryan (left), and your best chance of accomplishing that is to overwhelm him with simple techniques.

0ne of the instructors in my Dynamic Combat system recently asked me some technical questions about using contact and control techniques to neutralize an armed assailant. In addition to wanting to know when to use traps, he asked when it's appropriate to use clamps, or techniques in which you wrap your arm around a limb-preferably at the elbow or knee-and pull it toward you to immobilize it.

When I asked him to be more specific, he described a situation in which a person swings at him with an impact weapon or slashes at him with a knife. He said he'd step forward to block or shield the attack, deploy a clamp and follow up with a series of strikes. I responded by repeating his description of the scenario but said nothing about the clamp or any control move. He paused, and a puzzled look appeared on his face.

Then he asked again about the technical application of clamps. I repeated my answer. Frustrated, he went into even greater detail, asking if forward pressure should be applied on the opponent's arm at the point of contact to be able to sense the possible retraction of the limb.

Once again, I didn't answer the question but described the interception just as I had before. He stopped talking, looked at me for a moment and thought about what I'd said. Suddenly it dawned on him: "So you're telling me not to use the clamp?"

"No," I replied. "I'm telling you to rethink your tactics and reassess your purpose in any self-defense situation. Keep it simple."

He thought for another moment. "Then why do we teach the clamp if we don't intend to use it?" he asked.

"We will use it under specific conditions," I replied. "You didn't present those conditions when you described the scenario."

In reality, you should deploy a complex maneuver such. as a clamp only if a window of opportunity exists to use that specific response. It should happen by incident or by accident, not by premeditation. In other words, when specifically describing the deployment of an action like a clamp, you should consider using it only when an opponent "gives" you the option. That's because the objective in every serious combat situation is to immediately stop the attacker from doing harm. And the surest way to do that, when it's legally and morally justified, is to instigate immediate and overwhelming devastation on the attacker, not on the attacking limb.

It would be foolish, even suicidal, to rush in blindly and try to stop-hit an attacker without having a defense – especially an assailant who's armed with an edged weapon. Your focus should be to minimize the risk of injury to yourself while you "get to the hit." If you can destroy his ability to function via attacks to his bio-computer, respiratory system, vision center or support structure, it's game over.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, simplicity wins over complexity. There are too many variables in the control and takeaway of any weapon-distance, timing, individual and situational reaction time, level of commitment (or the lack of it) – that can impede your attempt to disarm all but the most inept attackers. In a weapons-defense situation, ending the fight sooner rather than later can mean the difference between life and death.

The next time you practice a complicated weapons defense or disarm technique, take a step back and question its utility in a real fight. Put on appropriate safety gear and test whether the half-dozen-moves-of-death counter you learned would actually work against an uncooperative attacker. Tell your partner to do everything within his power to stop you from doing everything you try to do – the moment you try to do it.

Chances are, reality will intervene, and you'll learn that in combat, reactive simplicity is king. Even if you can successfully use those complex moves one out of three times, you have only a 33 percent chance of surviving the encounter. Personally, I don't like those odds. I want my techniques to work 100 percent of the time. If that's not possible, I want to stack the deck in my favor with an arsenal of moves that minimize my chance of getting seriously injured while solving the problem.

About the author: Richard Ryan is the founder of Dynamic Combat and the creator of the Tactical Defense Training System. To contact him, call (800) 945-4387 or visit http://www.DynamicCombat.com.

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