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• What happens if you are in a fight or altercation (in a social violence context)

1. Pre-fight

• There is a ritual people go through before a fight starts. Learn these signs so as to avoid and deescalate
• Posturing: the person will act in certain ways to assert dominance and to signal he is ready to rumble
  • Shouting, cursing, pacing around.
  • Throwing out insults to puff himself up and to reduce you in his and other people’s eyes.
  • Dropping the head to protect the neck and to prepare for aggression. 
• The purpose here is to intimidate the other person and is done unconsciously.
• If the person takes a stance toward you, beware! They are ready to fight.
• Steps of the pre-fighting stage:
  • Verbal arguments and posturing and intimidation
    • Psyching self up for the fight
  • More posturing and angling to intimidate.
  • Getting up in the person’s face and they are ready to fight.
    • If you are at this phase, you need to get out immediately.
  • The shove or push.
    • The fight has begun at this point and you cannot get out of the fight scenario
• You want to do all you can to defuse and deescalate the situation during the pre-fight stage!

2. Physical confrontation

• At this stage, the fight is on and it is near impossible to avoid violence and physical harm
• Even if you “win” the fight, you will be hurt to some degree.
• The point to all this material is to AVOID getting to this point.
• Fighting is illegal, and you can get hurt and get into legal trouble, so you want to avoid fighting at all costs. 
• Sometimes, you may have done all that you can to avoid the situation and you find yourself in a fight, what are some tips to help you in this situation:
  • Most likely, your attacker is experienced in fighting and is a violent person.
  • Take a good defensive stance with one foot forward (take a step back with your right, for example) and put up a guard.
  • Try to keep your wits about you during this fight time.
    • Your hot center of the brain is activated and you will be in instinct mode.
    • Try to be rational and get out if you can.
  • Strike the attacker with open handed strikes 
    • Palm heal and shuto strikes.
    • Punching a person can break your hand
    • Open hand strikes allow for gripping and holding and controlling the person.
  • Do not go down to the ground on purpose
    • Other people may start attacking you as well.
    • When on the ground, you focus only on that one person and you lose sight of other threats around you.
    • Sometimes the person takes you down and then you must fight on the ground.
  • Do not show off
    • Do what you need to do and stop.
    • Strike the person, knock them down, and then step away with your hands up saying you don’t want to fight.
    • Stop fighting as soon as you can so as not to further injure the person because that will get you in further trouble with the law.
    • Think about what other witnesses are seeing: do they see you as showing off and being a jerk or do they see you as trying to avoid the fight and to stop fighting as soon as possible. 

3. Health and legal considerations of violence

• Use of force for self-protection law in PA.
• Avoid fighting at all cost.
• Fighting is illegal and people get hurt.
• This is a litigious society and people will sue you if you hurt them in a fight.
• You can also go to jail for fighting, and jails are not where you want to be
  • Very dangerous place.
• Anytime you are in a fight, you risk serious injury and even death.
• Fighting affects more than just yourself and the other person.
  • You can get so injured that you cannot care for yourself or provide for those who depend upon you. 
  • You can hurt or kill the other person and affect those who rely upon him. 
• Avoid fighting at all costs. 

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