Top
Pain Receptors

Whether you’re applying a wristlock or raking your fingers across an assailant’s eyeballs, his brain receives “ouch” signals by a type of pain receptor called nociceptors. Some parts of the human body have many of these, while other parts have only a few. The eye, for example, has more than the chest, wrist or back. Case in point, a person suffering a heart attack complains of a dull ache in the chest while a person whose pointy finger is suddenly wrenched in a direction it isn’t supposed to go, screams and utters every blue word in the Book of Swearing. (Don’t bother looking, it doesn’t exist.)

Anytime you deliver force over a relatively large area, a kick to the assailant’s back, for example, fewer pain receptors are activated than when you apply that same force to a smaller area, such as a heel kick to his gums.

Some people under the influence of alcohol and drugs experience a dulling of the consciousness, and some people in a state of extreme rage or mental illness experience an over-riding of the consciousness. This means that there are some in both groups who might not feel broad-surface pain but will feel acute pain signals. 

Pepper Spray

Regardless of what the ads claim, pepper spray doesn’t always work on the street, and never is this truer than when the threat is violent with rage, mental illness, or high on booze or drugs. I’ve seen sprayed people shake their head like a wet dog and then continue fighting.  

Pepper spray is only a tool. Don’t count on it as the end-all defense, especially against pain-resistant people.

Consider the Groin

When a student gets whacked in the groin in class, he drops into fetal position and begins channeling Nancy Kerrigan: “Whyyyy? Whyyyy?” But in the street, striking an aggressor in the groin gets mixed results. Sometimes he curls to the sidewalk in agony and sometimes he doesn’t give the hit a passing thought. The problem is that there is no way to tell by looking at someone as to how he will react to a groin hit.

The groin is a good target; just don’t stop to watch for a reaction. It’s better to flow into a second, third, or however many techniques it takes to stop the threat.  

The Pain Resistant Attacker

by Loren W. Christensen

Here are the categories of attackers in which there are always a few who can tolerate pain to some degree. 

  • Attackers who have large fat or muscle bulk.
  • Attackers who are intoxicated on alcohol.
  • Attackers who are under the influence of drugs.
  • Attackers who are out of control with rage.
  • Attackers who are mentally deranged.
  • Attackers who feel pain but like it.

People with extreme bulk

People carrying excessive fat or muscle bulk are often tolerant of certain pain techniques simply because their mass prevents proper application, or it literally pads the pain receptors.

On one occasion, several officers and I were dispatched to help an ambulance crew control a 400-pound former Olympic weight lifting competitor they had gotten onto a gurney. The giant man was normally a pleasant fellow but he had run out of pain medication that he was taking for a crushed nerve in his neck. He had dropped a monstrous barbell on his top vertebrae a couple of years earlier.

Our entire encounter lasted about 45 minutes, in which every four or five minutes he would go stark raving mad. One moment he would be chatting pleasantly with us, and the next his face would abruptly scrunch, and he would groan, “Here it comes, boys” a warning that some violent thrashing was about to commence. The situation didn’t call for us to hit him with a baton, Taser him, or apply a pain-constraint hold, which he wouldn’t have felt anyway. Nonetheless, when the pain hit, we had to control him for his safety, and ours.  

So we dogpiled him, draping ourselves over his arms, legs and torso (handcuffs were too small for him as were the gurney straps), and then hung on for dear life. Some officers were launched into the air by his massive flailing limbs, while others held on fast to their assigned stations, enjoying a sort of carnival ride until the poor man’s 60-second pain surge subsided and he was once again his affable self. During one of the breaks, we secured his arms, legs and huge torso with twisted bed sheets. That enabled us to get him to ER where he received four times the normal dosage of tranquilizers. 

This is an example of improvising. We started with a six-man dog pile, which worked for a while, though I don’t how much longer we would have tolerated being tossed about. Then we made rope-sheets, which held him fast until we got him to ER.

This big man was lying down the entire time of our contact. What about one who is standing? The hardest part of taking a well-padded and pain-resistant standing person to the ground is unbalancing his large mass and weight. Once that is done, big people usually go down easily because their weight works against them.

Remember the axiom: Where the head goes the body follows. With that fighting concept in mind, practice techniques that:

  • push the big attacker’s chin up and back.
  • push the back of his head forward and down.
  • take advantage of any weight shift to force the big person down in whatever direction he’s leaning.

These concepts are also applicable when dealing with normal sized people who are impervious to pain.

One six-foot four, 230-pound officer told me that he was the lightest of four others who dogpiled a huge man who was violent on PCP. The combined weight of all the officers was well over half a ton, and although at first the big subject could easily move the pile around, they quickly wore him down to a point where they could apply restraints. The officers were aware that the tremendous weight on the man could suffocate him, so once the cuffs and hobbles were on, they got off.

The dogpile is an effective technique as long as you know where the threat’s hands are and as long as you don’t stay on top of him too long.    

Note: Be careful tripping and sweeping big people because it really hurts when they fall on your leg. 

People intoxicated, high, enraged and mentally ill

I’m placing these four types into the same group, since the common thread among them is that some people in all four function with a dulled consciousness.

There is a wide-range of responses to pain within this general category. Some feel a little and others feel nothing. Here is an example of someone in the latter group.

A fellow officer got a call on a pregnant woman who had been stabbed in the stomach, the suspect last seen somewhere in the blocks between houses. The officer eventually found the man in a backyard, and ordered him at gunpoint to drop his knife and lie down. Glassy-eyed and either mentally deranged or high on something, the man began slashing the air with the blade as he advanced toward the officer. Not until the officer backed into a garage wall did he fire a .45 caliber slug into the assailant’s chest.

As if in a nightmare, the man ignored the hit and continued to slash the air as he advanced toward the officer. With no other choice, the policeman, who was also a member of SWAT, fired a second shot into the man’s chest. Again, he only twitched and then continued his advance. So the officer shot a third time, bending the man toward the gaping wound. Again, he straightened and slashed at the officer. So the cop fired a fourth and fifth time. Only then did the man drop dead into the grass.

Round after round into critical targets and all the subject did was twitch each time he was hit. Do you have a technique that’s more powerful than a .45 slug? I don’t either.

There is no guarantee when applying pain to a violent person whose mind is altered by one of the mental conditions being discussed here. Additionally, consider that by the time you’re forced to defend yourself, the person is likely at the peak of his rage, intoxication, drug high, or psychotic behavior.

What is important when dealing with people impervious to pain is the same thing that is important when dealing with any hostile person: When something isn’t working for you, you need to switch tactics. Logical? Not always. Perhaps you’ve heard the stories of panicked people in a burning building pushing against a locked door over and over until it’s too late to take another avenue of escape. The same thing can happen when an adrenaline surge takes over your rational thinking. You hit a violent person, say, in the chest. When that doesn’t get the desired effect, you keep hitting him there, over and over. Of course, you might eventually wear the guy down, but since he isn’t feeling the blows, the window of opportunity is wide open for him to attack you in some fashion. 

People who like pain

There are many reasons why a person will grimace and smile as you give him your best shot. He might be smiling simply because he is drunk or high and doesn’t feel it, he might have had a violent past and is conditioned to pain, or it could be some sort of sexual issue with him. It might even be a blend of all these things.

Train to keep attacking

It’s important to train in such a fashion that you don’t become unnerved when someone doesn’t react to your best joint lock, palm-heel strike, or roundhouse kick. Here is why. Say you apply a joint lock on a nasty drunk, the same technique that made your classmate dance funny-like on his tiptoes. Not only does the intoxicated man not react, he looks puzzled, as if he isn’t sure what you’re doing and what you want from him. You look puzzled, too, as you wonder why the technique isn’t eliciting the usual yelp and chest slap. Then, because you allowed half a dozen seconds to pass during your confusion, the drunk smashes you in your puzzled face.

When a radio talk show host doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, it’s known as “dead air,” and considered a bad thing. When you pause or hesitate in a physical confrontation while the threat is still, well, a threat, that too can be a bad thing.

To prevent this, you must train physically as well as mentally to keep on the offense until the seemingly invulnerable person is under control. Say you kick the man in the thigh twice, neither blow drawing so much as a grimace. Although you see his lack of reaction, don’t pause to wonder what went wrong. Instead, immediately hit targets where there are more pain receptors, targets that shock the brain, or targets where an injury greatly reduces the recipient’s ability to attack.      

Dealing with any combative person is seldom easy and always dangerous. This truth is magnified many times over when the attacker is impervious to pain, when he neither reacts nor acknowledges your techniques. Happily, you don’t run into these types of people often, but when you do, it can be a real challenge.

Fighting the Pain Resistant Attacker presents techniques and fighting concepts that have worked for me and for others who have dealt with these formidable people.

When I first began working on this book, I asked a high-ranking jujitsu instructor about the mechanics of a particular technique. He answered my question and then added, “When done correctly, this hurts everyone.”

Out of politeness, I didn’t respond. But I will here.

No, that technique doesn’t hurt everyone. There are people out there who will eat it, smile and keep coming at you. That is what Fighting the Pain Resistant Attacker is all about.  


DiggThis