When has the fight really begun?

I spent yesterday attending Richard Dimitri's first ever presentation of his Walk the Talk seminar at Defensive Measures International's training facility in Brisbane, where I train a few times a week.

This seminar dealt with pre-fight cues and in building perceptual speed, rather than physical speed. Perceptual speed is the ability to rapidly see the physiological changes that occur in an opponent's body prior to him attacking you. Instead of looking at the opponent's chest for the first sign of a strike, you are holistically viewing the opponent looking for the 'tells' (as they call these signs in poker) that he is about to preemptively strike you. Then you can seize the initiative and strike the first blow instead. These 'tells' are subtle, like a wrinkling of the forehead or a tightening of the lips, changes to skin colour and many more. You then look for signs of 'winding up' and weight placement to indicate what strike the opponent will likely attack you with. What is his closest weapon and what is your closest target? How does your current posture pre-dispose the opponent to attack in certain ways rather than others. This teaches you to use a de-escalation stance as a form of 'target denial'.

Rich then gets you to experience who you react when you are on the verge of attacking someone, so you can see it through the attacks eyes and also to teach you about self control (so you don't snap and become a homocidal maniac), using a unique drill called the 'emotional invocation drill' which is very confronting but also very rewarding.

The aim of this seminar is to teach you the real dynamics and evolution of a real street fight. This is not really a 'martial arts' seminar as such, at least not in my view. This is for those who want to understand 'real violence' and as such I would highly recommend it to those whose jobs bring them face to face with violence on a regular basis, as well as those who realise that traditional martial arts training methodologies do not equip you for real world fighting (But hey don't take my word for it, check this article by kung fu master ZHAO DAOXIN). There is a vast gulf between a consentual 'match fight' scenario (like a muay thai fight or UFC) and getting mugged at 3am in a dark alley when you are tired, alone and likely to end up dead or in hospital if you make the wrong choices. As Rich says always assume the other guy has friends with him and is armed. If you are wrong, then this is good news!