June 03, 2017

3. The role of the attacker

After you have seen what the reaction of a pressure point can be, I would like to talk about the crucial role of attacker. You probably did not see this coming, but it actually is a crucial subject.
The idea of using pressure points is that you would like to use as little effort as possible.

Therefore keep in mind, the stronger the hold or punch of the attacker, the more painful your attack to the pressure point will be. That is because of the fact that the nerves will be stretched.

Let's show this in a short video: I use pressure point LU-8 here.
When someone just holds you bij the wrist, you do not have to react. There is no aggression in that particular hand, the danger might come from the other hand. If that same person would grab you hard on the wrist, now you can easily use pressure points to get out of the grip in a relaxed and "friendly" manner.

The same goes for attacks with Atemi-Waza. When the attacker comes in with a soft punch, he will feel a "block" (read attack) to pressure points. But when he comes in with a true hard punch, the impact of the "block" will be a lot harder! The defender uses the same effort, but the harder the attack the more impact on the pressure points there will be.

Only a real attack leads to a real defence

It actually goes for all attacks in martial arts. Let's give an example:

When your partner attacks you with a punch tot the chin, you truly want to hit the chin every time! Even after practicing the same punch 20 times. You often see the hand stops just in front of the face, or that the strike is next to the face after a couple of times. As from that moment, the attack is not realistic anymore and you will not learn from it anymore.

I hope this is helpful in your mindset as an attacker. In my next blog I will write about how to attack a pressure point.