When he attacks, your opponent expects to hit or miss
you, but he certainly doesn’t think he’ll feel sudden pain.
That, in a nutshell, is the brilliance of limb destructions.
Many times, one can be enough to crush an adversary’s
fighting spirit.
CAVEAT
I won’t underestimate your intel-
ligence and tell you that knowing
how to defang the snake will lead to easy victory. Any-
time you find yourself in a fight, it has the potential to
become a lethal encounter. That’s why good instructors
will caution you never to underestimate your opponent
or his resolve. And never overestimate a tactic or tech-
nique in your toolbox.
Treat defanging the snake as any other weapon in your
arsenal. Learn where it will be most appropriate because
— just like with disarms — depending on a limb destruc-
tion rather than the totality of your martial arts skill set
is foolish. Doing so will leave you vulnerable to an oppo-
nent who knows better than to play the game you want
him to play.
A superior self-defense plan entails developing all your
offensive and defensive skills to the highest possible
level. Once your go-to techniques and tactics are reliable
and your overall skill base is solid, start experimenting
with the limb destructions shown here. Then spend time
fine-tuning those that fit your way of fighting.
REQUISITES
To be able to implement a
limb destruction, you must
possess a good sense of timing, as well as defensive skills
that are second nature. Practitioners of different martial
arts will depend on different methods to get into the most
appropriate ranges for launching their counteroffensive.
Knowing this is critical when you first attempt to use limb
destructions because you’ll need to focus on those that are
closely related to your natural defensive tendencies.
Another factor to keep in mind is that limb destruc-
tions work because they afford you the same level of
defense as your passive defensive skills — while simul-
taneously adding that aforementioned element of pain.
In other words, even if you don’t injure your opponent’s
limb, you’ve still fended off his attack. In a properly exe-
cuted limb destruction, you never have to gamble that a
failed defang means you’re getting bit by the snake.
TRAINING
Over the years, I’ve found
that the best way to develop
this tool set is to focus on one destruction at a time dur-
ing sparring. Defend normally most of the time, but try a
limb destruction on one of your opponent’s strikes — per-
haps a jab or lead-hand punch.
Once you’ve become successful with that, refine it
during “handicapped sparring” against the same attack.
Handicapped sparring refers to sessions in which you
purposefully limit the techniques you use. When you’ve
mastered that, test it in free sparring against various
opponents. When you deem it reliable, move on to the
next destruction. Approaching the task in this manner
means you’ll be able to quickly dismiss the moves that
don’t suit your style and focus on those that are higher
percentage for you.
To demonstrate how to counter a left haymaker with
a siko limb destruction, Tony Torre (left) faces his
adversary (1). The man pulls back his fist and launches
the punch (2), prompting Torre to control the trajectory of
the hand using his right palm while driving his left elbow
into the opponent’s biceps (3). He follows up with a
forearm strike to the neck (4).2431AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 § BLACKBELTMAG.COM 63