Scientific street fighting is all about understanding the physiological response of the human body to a fight and understanding the effectiveness of various statistically based street fighting strategies.

Scientific street fighting may sound complicated, but it is not. Actually, it is quite simple. The best part is that it’s actually easier than learning a martial art. The key is that scientific street fighting removes the display of difficulty making moves in favor of simple techniques that have a proven track record of success.

So here we go…

How your body reacts to a street fight:

The first thing many people notice (and the most important thing when it comes to fighting) is that your hands start to shake. This is not a sign that you are afraid; it is your body’s natural reaction to a life-threatening situation.

What does this mean for scientific street fighting? It means fine motor skills shut down, things like handwriting or complex martial arts moves (like joint locks that require multiple steps). This is vitally important, so pay attention.

Why in the world would his body shut down fine motor skills when his life is in danger? The thing is, your body sacrifices fine motor skills to increase strength and speed in gross (or big) motor skills. These are much more important things like running, jumping, punching and kicking.

The key to scientific street fighting is understanding this reaction and creating a fighting system that takes full advantage of your strongest and fastest gross motor skills. Don’t even waste your time trying to learn complex moves that your simple body won’t allow you to use in the heat of the moment.

The loss of fine motor skills is by far the most important part of scientific street fighting, but here are a few more reactions that are great:

Your skin will turn pale because your body is restricting blood flow to the skin. This reduces blood loss from superficial cuts and scrapes you are likely to receive.

To save energy, your brain stops recording as many short-term memories. This is why people often can’t remember exactly what happened after a disaster or fight.

There are plenty of other great things your body does to prepare you for a fight, but when it comes to scientific street fighting, the first thing you should think about is focusing on gross motor skills.

Any move or technique that works well in a street fight should be simple and easy to learn. In fact, it shouldn’t take you more than a few hours to master any self-defense technique.

I’m not saying you’ll master anything in a few hours, but you should be able to learn it well in this amount of time. If he can’t, he’s probably relying on fine motor skills that take a long time to learn. These fancy moves are likely to hurt you when you really need them.

Ok, now the scientific statistics of street fights…

The number one street fighting stat you should learn and live by is that the average street fight lasts between 3-8 seconds. That’s how it is. There isn’t a 5 minute street boxing scene from some movie, just 3-8 seconds of ugliness.

So if you’re going to focus on scientific street fighting, this means you need to take care of business quickly.

To better illustrate this point, I like to use another statistic. The person who strikes first has a much higher chance of winning the street fight. If you haven’t figured it out yet, hitting first means that for at least one or two of those 3-8 seconds you’ll be ‘winning’.

The last stat is that after 12 seconds the fight will almost always go to the ground. Now, most fights never get to this point. 12 seconds is a long time in a street fight, but if it lasts that long, he’ll go to the ground.

What does this mean for scientific street fighting? Well, first of all, it means that you have to do your best to finish it in less than 12 seconds.

Throwing yourself to the ground drastically increases your chances of seriously injuring yourself. I often tell people that nothing good happens on the ground. You’ll get cuts, scrapes, skin loss on your palms, elbows, knees, and face, and don’t forget about getting your head banged on concrete (and I didn’t even get to the part where passersby or your friends attackers start kicking you).

In a nutshell, try to finish the fight in under 12 seconds by hitting first, using gross motor skills and dirty fighting moves.

You should also realize that if the fight is longer than 11 seconds, you will need to know how to handle yourself on the ground. There are scientific street fighting skills that will drastically improve your chances of winning on the ground, but I’ll save that for another time.

Okay, here’s a quick review of scientific street fighting:

1. Don’t waste your time with fine motor moves, they won’t work in a street fight (This is not an opinion, it’s a fact).
2. Use gross motor skills like punching, eye gouging, ear slapping, head butting, kicking, and just the simplest joint locks.
3. Always strike first if you want to win a fight.
4. Most fights are over in 8 seconds, so hit him with your worst barrage of attacks early on (using gross or simple motor skills, of course).
5. Finish a fight as quickly as possible to avoid falling to the ground.

For more science fighting tips, check out my blog at Fightfast.com/blog.

Stay smart and safe,

Bob Pierce

President, Fightfast.com