Chin Na in the streets on NYE

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
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Actually I should say in the Dancehall instead of on the streets. As many of you know, I do volunteer work for the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic managing combative patients. We had an interesting case I’d like to share from New Year’s Eve.

We were onsite at a concert when a patron became extremely combative. I was actually on break at the time, but my partner and I responded anyway because that’s what we do. The patient had taken a several severe falls, hit his head and came up fighting (this is sometimes a symptom of a serious head injury.) Of course, my radio battery had just died, so my partner and I were stuck in the field with this enoromous guy raging out of control through the audience, punching people out. We tried several attempts to restrain him but he was really big and fast. My guess is that he had some boxing and wrestling experience. In one tussle, we nearly fell off the balcony, but fortunately, he got both legs caught in some chairs and was trapped like a mad bear. My partner decided to run and get help, leaving me alone since as he put it “You’re a black belt, I’m just a nurse.” When security finally arrived to back us up, this big linebacker security guy helped us get him out of the hall. When he tried to break free, the linebacker attempted a simple wristlock (he obviously had some training - it was a classic move) but made a fatal error. He grabbed the patient’s one hand with both hands, so the patient popped him clean in the face with his free hand. Ouch.

Fortunately, the security dude was tough and took it. He wasn’t even angry - he understood the patient might haave a serious condition - more evidence of training. Together, we manged to control the patient and get him safely to the ER.

I share this because it was such a classic chin na technique, one that you see demonstrated all the time and probably even practice. And it can work. However, in this particular instance, it didn’t work at all. The gap of chin na is that a strike is quicker and it’s really tough to seal a chin na move that quickly. Not impossible, but really tough. In that siutation, it was the only option, since clobbering the patient really would help if it was a head injury. Sometimes you just got to take a hit to do the right thing.

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that was interesting.. Can you describe the wrist lock? I’m curious about wich one it could have been.

Sometimes you just got to take a hit to do the right thing.

So true

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Good story!!

Hope he’s recovering form the head injury,
and doing well.

Skard1

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i’m gonna go out and injure my head right now.

then i’ll be a more aggressive fighter AND people will let me beat on them. da mn . .. win win situation.

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Hi Gene,
I think the failure of the Qin Na in this instance is in how it is taught - too often Qin Na is taught as pain restraint techniques, which is based on a fallacy - that pain compliance will work in real life.

Here are a few thoughts:
1.) 10% of the populace will not feel enough pain to comply.
2.) If an individual can ignore the pain for more than 30 seconds, neural shutdown begins and the pain becomes tolerable.

So - Qin Na restraints really need to be submission based rather than pain based, and the pain based techniques we often see are really breaking techniques.

A person who is ‘out of thier mind’ one way or the other is just not going to be responsive to pain compliance - and it is too slow if they are beserk. This leaves limb immobilaztion and chokes as options.

Chokes can kill a person who is drunk or hopped up. Submissions work better when the person is softened up first.

Without being able to hurt your opponent in the application of a Qin Na technique, position and misdirection become the key components for pulling off a submission Qin Na against an individual of this type. If the person is present enough - speaking to them can serve as the misdirection - if not, it can be pulling them one way to go another or using multiple teammates to get the attention away from the person applying the technique.

It’s a tough job you have - because you can’t hurt your opponent.

Basically, your friend needed to find the way to occupy his opponents attention away from what he was doing - and that might buy him the seconds he needed.

You know, on reflection, there really is so much more than just technique practice to take skills to the street.

Be careful out there!

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The lock

Kristoffer: Actually it was more of an aikido lock. The opponent’s hand is facing his own face, elbow downward, fingertips upwards. Pressure is applied to the pinky finger side pressing toward the body and away from the body on the thumb side. It can be done with one hand, but in this case, the opponent was moving way too fast and violently to seize his wrist with one hand, so the security guy used both hands. He was real sweaty too, very slippery.

Monkeyslap too: Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a choice between pain and submission in the field. We had four people on him by that time, each on opposite sides waiting for the patient to be distracted by one of us so the rest of us could jump him from his blind side. But he was also in an aisle by the stairs so we couldn’t really take him down there easily and it limited his options to three directions (aisle, aisle, stairs.) I was on the stairs, probably the worst place in retrospect. We needed to control his arms and upper body, then quickly escort him to somewhere where would could put him down. That was about 30 feet away down a hallway, and we almost made it. The security guy took an opening, but just couldn’t seal it fast enough to avoid getting hit. But ultimately it worked since we got him and no one was seriously hurt, although a lesser man would have gone down with that punch.

I guess that’s a lot of my point here. We often discuss theory, but in real world scenarios, all the theory goes out the window. Options are reduced to reactions.

Also I should clarify that there have been plenty of times where chin na has worked well (in fact, it is my primary strategy for this kind of work.) It’s just that this time, the patient was faster.

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Gene,
I totally hear you.

Once, many moons ago, I was standing in a bicycle path and coming towards me was a thief running with the cash box of what I later discovered was the local drug store. Two police men were on foot behind him. Being a ****y young MA guy, I broke off a branch and struck my best Toshiro Mifuno pose.

Then reality intruded. As he got closer, no less than eight peace officers lept from the bushes. How did I miss them? Well, to make a long story short, it took eleven officers total to subdue this guy and stuff him into a squad car - he was hopped up on PCP and exhibited inhuman strength.

I sat there, looked at my stick, and thought ‘gee, that wasn’t very bright.’

Too often the training hall does not prepare us for actual situations. Which is why your hobby of community service is really great - not just as good volunteer work, but real experience for your art. Admirable.

I was just trying to communicate some of the reasons (outside of enviornmental) why and how certain things may or may not work. But even then nothing is a perfect rule. If it was, everyone would be doing it, right?

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Monkeyslap, if a pain compliance won’t work, a submission may not either. People in the state Gene described aren’t worried about pain or submitting, they’ll ignore even a broken bone while resisting.

Gene, there’s a slight detail to make a wrist lock work that many miss, the angles of the arm. Of course making sure everything is lined up right and locked in one handed on a resisting opponent with an adrenelin rush is darn near impossible.

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Glad you gentlemen were there! It’s great when responsible people handle situations. As an EMT I can’t tell you how much help it is when a patient is handled properly. Your attitude with a violent patient is everything.
There is a practice called NAPI, (non abusive physical intervention) that has non painfull holds that are reasonably effective. The best part is that great care is taken in not getting hurt. You are taught to never have your head in line with the patient to avoid head butts, and to account for every limb. I studied at the Vermont State Hospital for six months 20 years ago. I accually used some of the techniques with inmates when I was a correctional officer when jiu jitsu or chin na would have been OK and the techniques still worked.
NAPI was developed by the university of maine so perhaps they would have more information on it.

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They don’t talk about stuff like that in the reality fighting books do they? On CSI a few weeks ago they had a similar story taken from the headlines. A guy on a plane starts freaking out, apparently his brain was swollen and the aspirin he took excasperated this a la Bruce Lee(wasn’t it something like that? anyway…). He essentially lost his mind and the people on board beat him to death. This happened pre 9/11 about a year ago in the news. I think basic locking techniques would’ve worked better against someone like that because he wasn’t a trained fighter, though he was really big, on the show and in the real life story.

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Rogue,
Submission Qin Na does not rely on pain compliance but on functional insufficiency - the body just doesn’t work in that position.

True, someone on PCP might burst loose, but the average crazy man is stuck.

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Taken someone down on PCP useing just your bare hands, is probably not gonna happen. I don’t care If your the worlds greatest, strongest, and fastest martial artist, chances are your not taking them down. Strikes, locks, or anything is not going to work. Out on the street, I saw a cop shoot a guy on PCP, three times in the chest with a .40 caliber glock.The guy went down. And then got back up! The cop eventually to took a head shot.

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Sh!t man

That is B A D f*cking sh!t.

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The term submission gave me the wrong idea MS2. The mechanical locks are a major part of controlling techniques we use in JJ, knees on the neck, shoulder locks, etc. My sensei told us a bouncer story where he had the guy in a mechanical/submission lock. What my sensei didn’t know was that the guys face was by some broken glass. Said guy paniced, must have gotten a rush of adrenelin and just muscled his way out. Moral of the story was the opponent has to be more afraid of you than anything else.

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Y-A - I beleive I posted my PCP story above. Ah, the naivety of youth.

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Moving opponent using pain is what grappling is in a beginning level.Advanced grappling is to move opponent(s) by controlling their anatomy naturally.
When you use a jointlock,you should make sure that it controls the whole body,not just a hand or an arm.
You should also make sure that you are on a “blind side” or having a safety position so your opponent can´t hit and escape.
It is always a lot easier to use kicking/striking rather than china na,but in a situation like that,it is better (and harder) to use chin na.
You can´t just go and grab their arms,you have to use atemi to put him off his guard,and chin na works only if it is a SURPRISE.

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Gene,

as you may know, there are several different sub-types of Qinna (Chin Na).

You have sealing the breath, sealing the blood flow, immobilization, and Qinna to breaking or dislocating bone or joints… There are other ways to classify but these are fairly easy to understand classifications.

In the situation you describe, the sealing methods would have required exact attacks to the points on the body. In a moving situation, this requires great expertise as well as precise power and penetration. This is REALLY hard to do in such a situation. It also may be dangerous to the person (patient) since the indications were that he may have suffered head trauma, the last thing you may want to do is cause a loss of conciousness…

So, aside from being **** near impossible to execute, they would not have been a good choice.

the breaking and dislocation techniques…well same reasoning…NOT what you would have wanted to do with a patient.

This leaves the controlling techniques.

I also used to work in a hospital. I was the man in the white coat who came to carry you away in a psyche hospital. Actually, I did a lot more in the way of therapy and such with patients…but if they got violent, it was in my job description to prevent them from hurting themselves or others.

I learned a bit of Qinna and had one instance where I tried to use cavity press as well as joint control. I found out the hard way that joint control more often than not relies on PAIN. It just plain hurts.

Well, with a person with mental problems, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, brain injury, etc… PAIN does NOT work. they simply do not feel or react to it. They also get very strong and sometimes the pain will push them into a zone where they will almost literally rip their own arm off to beat you with it.

I KNOW from more than one encounter that this is the case. In one that I remember very well, I hit points, attempted joint Qinna and several other things to no avail. Then the next day when the patinet was on his medication and I was back on duty, he apologized…and then complained of how this joint hurt, this area on his body hurt and he could hardly move…all of the areas he related were where I had attempted to control him… Seein how there were other staff members that tried and mine were the only points he complained on, I KNEW it was done correctly. I simply kept my mouth shut and jotted it down for future reference.

Qinna may not be the answer for such a situation.

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Actually, I HAVE had to subdue a person on PCP…also on Methamphetamines, LSD, and just plain psychotic.

Pain does NOT work on them. Neither does immobilizing based upon the physics of the joint. The drugs make them so much stronger than you could believe. when you weigh 185…have a solid arm immobilization that worked on 240 lb staff members in training…in fact, one of them in the field was the BEST one I had ever done…Only to have the Speed freak pick you up with one arm from a position of weakness and fling you across the room…you rethink strategy really quickly…

In such instances, it takes 6 people to subdue one…one for each limb, one for the torso and one for the head. any less, you may be able to do it…but there is better than a 50/50 chance that someone will get hurt.

I gave up that line of work not long after having to use a leg and arm bar technique on one PCP patient who started a fight…only to have the patient he was fighting with come over and take advantage of the situation and kick my patients teeth out.

The sound of all of the front teeth breaking is NOT one you forget well. How the other patient got his street shoes is still a mystery to me…that was against ward policy and I did not allow such things…but the earlier shift was incompetent.

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Yeah, I tend to agree on the PCP maniacs. I couldn’t beleive how many police weilding thier night sticks it took to hold this guy down, pull his boots off and stick him in a squad car.

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M~S~T I believe I posted MY pcp story above. Ah, the amnesia of the aged.