The Exercise

In this exercise the defender starts a counter-attack: with a series of aggressive techniques in quick succession she puts the attacker under pressure until they give up or until she has the chance to get away.

Practical Purpose of the Exercise

This exercise concerns a situation that may arise if one of the students is physically attacked: the first technique she does has no effect. So she can´t get away immediately. She therefore continues doing more techniques until the attacker gives up or she can get away. It is important to do these techniques in quick succession and to work powerfully in a determined way. So the defender takes over control and keeps it.

Mentally: Taking over the Active Role

This exercise also supports the students in seeing themselves as acting persons even in a physical confrontation. Sometimes the students show by their questions and remarks that when thinking of a physical confrontation they regard the attacker as acting person and themselves as merely reacting part: "What can I do, if the attacker takes hold of me in this way?... Okay, but when I do this technique and the attacker grabs at once again and pulls with the other hand..."

If I start thinking like this, I give a lot of my thoughts to the actions of a possible attacker. By doing this, I give them in advance a lot of power over me. In this exercise it is the defender who determines the course of events. She finds herself in an active and strong role; so her attention is drawn away from the possible actions of a possible attacker and focused on her own strength and possibilities.

This exercise is for students of twelve and above.

Three Stages

The exercise should be done in three stages:

	Stage One	The techniques are done slowly and in a soft way.
	Stage Two	The students work faster applying force in a moderate way.
	Stage Three	They work fast and forcefully.

Working at distance

From stage two on the students work at distance. This means while doing the techniques they keep a distance of about two steps between them. So they can do the techniques forcefully without hurting the partner or putting her into distress Stage One: Working Slowly