You've been led into a closed room. And now he's starting to get aggressive and is positioning you up against a wall.
What do we do now?
In the video above, Coaches Shannon and Ach go through different options you might need to defend yourself and escape out of the room.
And escape is the operative word here. If you are new here you might not be familiar with our binary decision making when it comes to our self-defense strategy. The first thing we ask ourselves is do I stay with people or do I go to people?
Stay with people or go to people?
The attacker needs privacy to carry out his crimes against you. If you are approached in a public place, the attacker needs to take you somewhere else that is more secluded and private. If you are approached in a private place, then the attacker has already stacked the deck in his favor -- he doesn't need to take you anywhere else. He already has the privacy he needs to affect his assault.
Where some of us can get hung up on is the labels of "public" and "private" versus the actual circumstances of the location. For example; the laundry room in the apartment building. I might think it's a "public" space because it's open to everyone in the building. But where is it located? In the basement? Away from the living areas? In this regard it's better to regard the laundry room as a private location.
So is it public or private? We like to use this question as the test: if you scream right now, could anyone hear you? If the answer is 'no' or 'I don't know', then you're in a private area and your strategy needs to be Go to People.
In the video, it's obvious it's a private location. Therefore, Shannon's strategy is to escape. She wants to Go to People. You'll notice in the video the first two options involve talking her way out of the situation and using boundaries. Her first one uses the lowest level of force while her second one is distinctly more firm.
Shannon and Ach then show a number of options which use a progression of techniques designed to help you escape.
Take a look and comment on the video. You'll notice that someone has already asked us for a video on how to escape from a two-handed grab. When you see our answer, you'll notice we had to first set the stage for the question: Stay with People or Go to People?