If you live in the city, you already have enough on your plate to deal with on a daily basis, and adding a physical confrontation to the menu is certainly the last thing you want.

Even so, conflicts are quite common in the concrete jungle due to the population density that governs this environment. While some of these inconveniences are simply verbal altercations, certain situations can escalate, and you may be forced to defend yourself.

Armed confrontations are rare compared to unarmed hostilities, considering that certain areas have a gun-free zone policy. Yes, I know that such restrictions won’t stop the bad guys from carrying a firearm, but that’s a discussion for another time. Today we will concentrate on the prospect of fending off an unarmed attacker, which is an intimidating scenario for most people out there.

There are certain things you can do that will always turn the balance in your favor during an unarmed attack. So, if you have nothing but your bare hands to defend yourself, consider doing the following when someone comes at you.

Stay on your feet

This is one of the first things I learned during a self-defense class held by a good friend of mine, David, who worked in law enforcement. David told the class that many folks will instinctively go for a grab and try to bring their adversary to the ground to overpower them with their body weight. This is especially the case for those who lack fighting experience of any kind and is not always the best approach.

First of all, in the heat of the moment, you may not be aware of your surroundings and may be unaware of who’s there to help your attacker. If you’re down there concentrating on immobilizing or pummeling your adversary, someone else may be focusing on you, and you won’t see them coming.

Second, there is a saying that “the referee always sees the retaliation,” and this never works in your favor. Let’s say you are in the clear and you’ve engaged in a one-on-one fight, and you managed to bring the adversary to the ground. Any law enforcement officer, security agent, or even a good Samaritan will intervene and try to break up the fight. In this case, they could intervene if you are being too aggressive towards your attacker, or they can immobilize you and give your attacker the chance for a comeback.

So, as you can see, bringing the fight to the ground is not recommended and it may very well work against you, even if you are on top of things (pun intended).

Asses the threat before engaging it

As mentioned earlier, in the heat of the moment, you may not be aware of how many attackers there are, especially if you go head-on and attack the most obvious threat. Some of the attackers may be staying back, waiting for an opportune moment to intervene. Before engaging with any assailant, make sure he or she is the only target you should be concentrating on. This can sometimes be difficult in urban settings due to population density and the fact that many people lack situational awareness.

Situational awareness is a skill that requires constant training, and people living in the city have a hard time keeping track of what goes on around them. In fact, I will go as far as to say that situational awareness is nonexistent for most city dwellers. It’s easy to understand this if you look around and count the number of people who are distracted by their phones or whatever is playing in their headphones.

So, before you engage physically with someone, make sure there aren’t any other people around who will help the attacker overpower you. In case you realize that there is more than one aggressor, you have to change your tactic.

Fight dirty

If someone attacks you on the street, you better do whatever you can to survive the experience. This is not an organized match; nobody is counting points and keeping score. It may very well be a fight for your life. You may not always know the intentions of your attacker since some aggressions occur suddenly without a period of escalation. And since it’s clear that there’s little room for deescalating such a situation, you might as well use savagery and madness to your advantage.

Every blow is permitted, and you should aim for the areas that quickly incapacitate the attacker. Go for the throat, so to speak, and any soft spots like the groin or eyes. If you are a member of the weaker sex, claw and bite your way out of the situation and never leave any spot of exposed flesh untouched and unscarred.

The point I’m trying to make is that you need to transform yourself into a beast and take advantage of every opportunity and weak point of your adversary to inflict as much damage and pain as possible. In unarmed confrontations, usually, the most vicious and aggressive person comes out victorious.

Use your environment

There is a lot of stuff lying around in the city, especially trash. Some of this trash can be used as projectiles or blunt weapons against your attacker. Anything you can get your hands on should be used to inflict pain on those who wish to cause you harm. As stated before, there are no rules in this fight, and your goal is to incapacitate your aggressor as fast and efficiently as possible. A chair, a brick, a crate can all become weapons if things get out of control.

Also, the layout of the environment can be used to your advantage as well. Get to higher ground, find a spot that forces the attacker to follow you and leave him/her exposed for a brief moment. If you cannot use the environment to control the fight, you should at least be able to use it to put some distance between you and the attacker. Fleeing or hiding may be seen as cowardly by some, but you’re not there to please a crowd; you just need to escape the situation unharmed.

Don’t get cornered

As said previously, the environment and all the objects in it can be used to tilt the balance in your favor during a fight, but you shouldn’t let yourself be carried away. Sometimes, when you try to put some distance between you and your attacker, you may end up getting in a corner, and that’s a bad spot to be in. If you are not able to control the fight in an open area, it’s clear that you will have a hard time defending yourself if you get cornered.

Also, keep in mind that the environment is an unknown battleground for both of you, so don’t follow a certain path or a certain course of action if you feel it won’t bring any advantage. You could lead the attacker into a dark alley to surprise them and perhaps apply a blow with an object you find lying around, but if that fails and if the alley has a dead end, you will be cornered.

Master some sort of self-defense technique

To survive a fight, you don’t need to be an expert fighter or have years of self-defense training behind you. You just need to master a technique and know how to use it so that you come out on top. In a self-defense class, I noticed that certain individuals were practicing specific strikes with their fists and feet.

I asked the trainer, and he told me that those individuals don’t have the time to train at all times or learn everything from A to Z, so they decided to concentrate on the basics like striking vital points and hitting those vital points from various positions, even when they were overpowered. They would train in pairs, and their main goal was to successfully strike a certain body area with accuracy.

This makes sense if you think about it, and that’s why you see many fights ending quickly with a swift, properly applied blow to a certain body point (like the groin area or the neck). If you’re curious to find out which are the vital points on the human body that can incapacitate someone, you’ll discover there are quite a few. The problem is not about finding these vital points, but rather striking them with enough force and accuracy to end the fight.

A last word

Although I’m an advocate for and support the 2nd amendment, and I also have a CCW permit, I do acknowledge the fact that you may not always rely on your firearm to defend yourself. There could be various scenarios in which you would have to defend yourself in an unarmed fight, and I believe you should be able to do everything in your power to survive and tell the story. Hopefully, these tips will help acknowledge the reality that living in an urban environment creates openings for conflicts.