This is a fabulous martial arts secret that comes to us in great and finished form from the Art of Aikido, but I teach it all the time to my students because it is tailor made for women and girls and I just love its brilliance and brevity. This comes directly, like all of these messages nonstop from my classes.

This strategy comes from the world of big versus small, in other words this is as far as I am concerned a strategy that when implemented, is the soul of what I am teaching you, this strategy is as great as it can get. It is, when done correctly, unstoppable when it comes to shifting the imbalance between big strong attackers and small weak women or girls.

I love this so much that I am going to tell you how to do it and then you can go to the section on self-defense techniques where you will see me go through this technique where you will really know and understand how to do it really well.

Let’s start with don’t push the push. Let’s say that an attacker is coming at you to grab your throat and push you into the wall. Since you have been trained in this: don’t push the push, you do three things at the same time:  you step to the left with your left foot as you grab his right wrist with your right wrist (this grab requires you to cross over your chest from the right side of your body to your left side) as you right foot also slides to the left at the same moment as the left foot slides to the left. As the two feet come to this point outside the lines that the attacker would normally have to walk on you, you make a ball of foot pivot with the right heel swinging towards the direction of your attacker’s charge.  You are most definitely close to your attacker, but not in his direct line of attack. You then spread your two feet apart about a shoulder’s width. You are now “at rest” in a 90-degree angle from where you originally were standing, you watch him zip past you. 

Your two feet are both pointing in the direction of the center line that you were standing on and being attacked on and you are about to make your big move.

Now, that is the set up so far, so,  STOP  let’s talk about the attacker. Since the attacker is attacking a woman, he is fearless concerning anything she can do, to hurt him. He actually could be moving towards her pretty quick, because his intention is to push her hard into the wall. All of this intention of his is what is wanted and needed by the woman or girl. The more clear and defined and committed he is to pushing her against the wall, the better.  So in the grand scheme of things all you have to do is gently guide and pull the attacker into the wall or off the edge of a rooftop.  You will say, “ is that all that it takes”, yes no more than gentle and easy pulling of his hard push.  Now, if you want to jerk him forward, be my guest, if you want to side step your horse stance in quickstep in the direction he is pushing you to accelerate his movement through the channel, that’s fine too.. Again be my guest. But let me make a point when you do jerk him the direction he is going in anyway, you will mess up his balance real quick. When you are practicing this with a woman who is bigger than you be prepared for moving quicker by her side as you guide her towards the wall or edge of a flat roof top. As beginners, don’t get close to the edge of the wall because accidents can happen in training situations. But I recommend that when you are doing this in practice you always put a wall behind you. When you rent the video of this technique you will see my assistant (my beloved) Simba not only pushing me into the wall, but putting her hand on the back of my head and ramming my face into the brick and then taking her other hand off my wrist and placing it also on my face and scraping the front of my face on the brick wall. Just to get better acquainted you understand.

When you watch the demonstration on this site, you will understand why it is so easy to manipulate endlessly your attacker. His attempt to push you into the wall is nothing short of God smiling; no make that beaming, at you.

Now, lets look at the don’t pull the pull strategy and see what we can learn. The attacker has come up to you and grabbed you and is dragging you away in some semblance of a straight line. When the attacker is dragging you he is moving at a speed that is comfortable for him, but he has got a hold on you and has no realization that you can simply push him wherever you want him to go. Additionally, since his hands are holding onto you and he is not punching or choking you, this grab of his is worse than don’t push the push.  What he is not doing is protecting himself from your free hands and free feet. This will prove to be a big mistake because as soon as you hit him once you can hit him again and he will be unable to stop you from whatever you want to do. This is a sad pathetic attempt to grab you and it will turn out so badly, so quickly for him.

My advice? Don’t pass up the opportunity to kick him in the testicles as you take your steps forward. In other words, you kick him once in the testicles and then you set your foot down and take another step and wham, you kick him a second time.  Once the ball starts rolling down hill, don’t stop to think about what it all means, you have one objective here and that is for you to be safe. So, that means that when he grabs his testicles in great pain, his face will be much closer to your waiting fists. That’s when you use the upper cut I am going to teach you to hit him in the throat and then when it straightens him up ward you hit him with a palm heel to his Xyphoid Process. This strike lands on a soft and unprotected spot directly above his heart. The goal is to strike him with the heel of your palm as hard as you can, retract that same hand and strike him in the eye socket with a spear finger