519 - Floored!

Aide-Memoire: 12/11/24 workshop - serious considerations for throws and takedowns for self defence

Nov 14, 2024

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Putting people on the floor:

From coaching at the guys at Tuesday night’s workshop: the main focus was striking and limited kicking for a survival context. The topic of putting people on the floor for various reasons came up and here’s a couple of points discussed along with some video examples to consider.

Now I say “various reasons” because sometimes this seems to be part of the skill sets presented by some out there without a context that actually fits a normal person.

When someone travels towards the hard, damaging and un-matted surfaces that make most of the environments of our daily lives, well there’s a high chance that they’re going to be injured by the journey or more accurately - the destination.

Will the legal machine perceive you as someone who is allowed to use this level of damaging force or will it go after you as someone with a thin allowance of options that will be portrayed as having been seriously overstepped?

Understanding that this probably won’t be “smoothed out” in an enquiry led by others who are on your side, it may be reasonable to suspect that flooring people without any thought of consequence may end up with your life ruined when it’s used against you legally.

Conversely, the possibility of being floored by someone else should be viewed by you as extreme or even lethal force being used against you.

Life altering injury or even death are on the table from being on the receiving end of some bully’s lack of critical thinking, self control or simple wish to humiliate you. Sports use takedowns and throws, which is where a lot of this can filter out from, with a sports context still unquestioningly attached which can be devastating. Likewise with applying military combatives solutions to a situation that is not state sanctioned warfare.

We’re little people - we don’t just have the stress of an aggressive situation to deal with but also, the fallout that comes after. There’s no legal trickledown and you’re at the bottom of the pile.

And you can be shockingly ill prepared for this. I know of guys who have been ruined by being outmanoeuvred legally by someone who they unwittingly injured while defending themselves and the blow-back is the aggressor using this to wreck their lives with solicitors and the threat of prison.

Putting someone on the floor for the average person has the advantage of hindering them from easily pursuing you ( at a minimum temporarily or potentially… permanently) but it may or may not be needed, so it should be thoroughly understood as to why you are seeking to do it based on the risks.

It also has a common humiliation factor for individuals who are fighting rather than actually defending themselves from unavoidable assault, especially with phones and tik-tok clout to be gained.

Both sides:

Two examples of flooring people outside of padded dojo, and another that shows a failure to control the risk of it being done to you:

This fight is over a verbal disagreement (allegedly called his mother a whore…) and ended with severe head injuries and unknown legal consequences as restitution:

But these are just low self-control/intellect kids who’ve watched too much MMA and don’t know consequence right?

Here’s an example of an allegedly “trained” person with equal stupidity (this is the best and most benign reason I can suggest based on the video and info that was sent to me as an explanation for his actions and the one that keeps me safest online…):

A cancer patient in his seventies receives a fractured skull for failure to obey authority:

The dangers of being thrown to the floor:

This cop in the following video is easily thrown with basic under hooks in front of a baying mob while trying to arrest a suspect. He’s done a good job of turning this around quick but concrete might have been a different story to grass.

Takehome:

We need to know these survival skills to be somewhat prepared to counter an unknown spectrum of threats, both as the one who puts someone on the floor and also as the one who maybe on the receiving end.

A) Putting people on the floor - however you do it - needs to be seriously considered in terms of how it can harm them and the optics of how others will view your actions and then… harm you. You also need to think of the risk of ending up on the floor with them.

B) The factor of being put on the floor, needs to be understood as a severe risk to your survival and planned for.