Surviving A Fight On the Ground
Picture this, you are getting out of your vehicle and from “out of nowhere” an attacker appears and pushes (photo #1) you. And before you realize what has happened you find yourself on the way down to the ground (photo #2). More than likely, you will have hundreds of thoughts passing through your mind, in the short amount of time that it takes for you to actually reach the ground. Or maybe, you do not have any thoughts other than, “Now what am I going to do”? On your way down to the ground the attacker pulls a knife and is headed towards you. Your life is on the line, so what are you going to do? The question is, “Have you trained to handle this particular situation?”
In the past I have read statistics on the number of confrontations that have ended up on the ground. Some say that as high as 90% of fights end up on the ground. If you are on the ground, things have probably gone badly for you, as we have given you just one example of how you might find yourself on the ground. Defending yourself from the ground takes a lot of energy and you are not nearly as mobile as you are on two feet. In most situations you probably want to get back to your feet as quickly as possible.
And of course, there are ideal ways to get back to your feet and there are “bad” ways. In this article we will provide you with a good method to get back to your feet quickly and safely. Some of you readers might have excellent ground fighting skills, and you may feel comfortable on the ground. However, if this is a two way gun battle, the ground is probably not the best place for you to be.
Another reason that you might find yourself on the ground could be because you were moving backwards, lost your footing and you fell. It is important for you to know how to safely fall to the ground in order to be able to defend yourself once you are there. Our natural reaction to falling is to put our hands out to catch ourselves (photo# 2). This is one of the worst things that you can do because you are likely to sprain a wrist or worse, both. Of course, since your adrenaline is running high, you may not feel the injury immediately. However, if you do, then you are in serious trouble.
So, the question is, how do you fall to the ground safely? There are a few ways to fall to the ground safely. Ideally when you hit the ground, you do not want to “fall” any farther than you must. If you are shoved or you lose your footing, you are probably going to continue to move backwards and eventually end up on the ground. Do not “fight” this motion but rather just go with the flow. As you find yourself moving backwards and begin to fall, simply lower yourself by “squatting down” as low as you can (photo # 3). It is important to avoid landing on the ground flat on your back. Another thing that you want to avoid is slamming your head into the ground. You should train to keep your hands in close to your body while you fall, as shown in photo #3. Your hands are pretty much your lifeline and if you damage them, you may be finished! Training on falling to the ground while keeping your hands in close to your body is going to be necessary to overcome the natural reaction of placing your hands out. You are going to need to train a lot to override that natural tendency!
Now that you are on the ground, what should you do? This is where it gets fun for me because this is realistic stuff that can easily happen to you. In the event you are pushed down and the attacker is coming at you with a knife, club, or whatever, and you feel that you need to draw your gun, how do you draw your gun and shoot? Where you carry is important here! A lot of people carry at the three o’clock position and that is fine if that is what you do. I carry at the 4 o’clock position and if you carry there you are probably going to have to shift your body (photo # 4) a little to one side to draw your gun. For those of you who carry at five or six o’clock, you may injure your back when you fall to the ground! Also, the further back you carry your gun the more problem you are going to have accessing it while on the ground. How you draw your gun and get it on target as quickly as possible depends upon a few things. First of all, as we just mentioned, where you carry is important. Second, are your legs flat on the ground straight out (photo # 5) or are your knees bent (photo #6)? Another factor is how far away is the attacker now and what is their body positioning relative to you? That is, are they standing upright or have they bent over to stab you? So, as you can see there is no cut and dry solution because there are several variables involved.
The advantage to having your legs bent is that you can fight with your legs (photo # 7). If your legs are straight the attacker can cut them (photo #5) or hit them with a baseball bat, etc. Having your legs straight in my opinion is not a very good defensive position. With that in mind, you should probably have your knees bent and legs spread somewhat.
Here comes the controversial but realistic issue. And that is, you should never sweep your muzzle with anything that you are not willing to destroy. I am a firm believer that whenever possible you should not sweep anything with your muzzle. However, in a combat situation such as this, your life may depend upon you having to sweep your leg or foot to get the gun on target. Your safeguard here people is another rule of gun safety… and that is, keep your finger off the trigger until your muzzle is on target and you make the decision to shoot. Wait a minute, why didn’t I say sights on target? Because you may not be able to get your sights on target because you might be shooting from retention! However, if your muzzle is not on target, then you are not going to hit your target. You do train shooting from retention without your sights?—right?!
Alright, so, you are on your back, with your knees bent and you are going to draw your gun. Extract your gun from the holster while keeping your finger off the trigger and bring your gun out as far as you need to in order to clear your gun side knee/leg (photo # 6). I prefer to rotate my gun straight up when it exits the holster to insure that I do not sweep my leg with the muzzle. After you clear your leg bring you gun on target (photo #7 center picture). Shooting between your legs like this can be a very scary thing to do. One thing that you can do to reduce the chances of you shooting one leg is to turn one knee down to the ground. Now, as your target moves you can rotate left (photo # 7 left picture) or right (photo # 7 right picture) depending upon which knee you have down on the ground and keep your gun centered as you rotate. So, if my left knee is down and my right one is up I can rotate to my right, and keep my gun centered. Rotating back and forth is a drill that you need to practice! Having one knee on the ground will also play a factor in getting back to your feet more quickly as we will discuss here in just a little while.
Maybe you were moving backwards to draw your gun and you lost your footing and when you hit the ground you lost your gun. Depending upon the situation and how many attackers are present and what weapon the primary threat displays, you may want to retrieve your gun quickly! Remember, staying alive is your #1 goal and that does not always mean having your gun in your hand. If you turn your back on the obvious threat to get your gun, you may end up seriously injured or dead. So, maybe your best option is to fight the attacker unarmed. Do you have unarmed combat skills? Because if not, your only option may be to go for your gun and as I just mentioned doing so may get you killed. Okay, let’s say that getting to your gun is the best option for you, how do you do that and what do you do once you get the gun?
Depending upon the distance to your gun, you may need to crawl a few feet. Once you have your gun in hand, the question is do you shoot while on your stomach or do you roll over on your back? Something that I want to point out about being on your stomach is that, if someone is successful in getting on your back you are going to have a very difficult time defending yourself from this position. I would say that in most situations being on your back is better than on your stomach. However, your situation might require you to grab your gun turn on your stomach as much as you can and shoot as soon as your muzzle is on target. You may be shooting prone, sideways straight out, or even backwards towards your feet. Some of you might be thinking that you will not need to be able to do this. Let me say this. If you are serious about self-preservation, you will train to handle as many situations as you possibly can. Being on the ground is not at all unrealistic. In fact, it may be more realistic than most of us want to admit. Would it not be a tragedy that you lost your life simply because you ended up on the ground and had not trained to handle that very real scenario? Let’s face it; there are only so many situations you can humanly train for because of time restrictions in real life. So, what you need to do is to focus your training on the most likely scenarios you could find yourself in. Quite honestly, there are probably less than thirty realistic and likely situations you could find yourself in. Of course, there are countless variables in each situation changing the circumstance greatly.
Now, let’s say that you get your gun out and shoot the attacker and they happen to go down. You should immediately scan the area for additional threats while on the ground. Personally, I would not extend my arms outward when doing this but rather keep my gun in close incase there are other threats present. Should you have your arms extended while scanning the area, one of the adversaries could grab your gun and it is now a struggle. I prefer to bring my gun into a retention position. If you should identify a threat that is behind you above your head and you are able to extend your arm(s) out to shoot, you can do so. Ideally, you should be able to shoot from just about any position on the ground while lying on your back or on your stomach!
One way of getting back to your feet is by using what we call the three point stance. As I mentioned earlier you may already have a knee touching the ground. For this illustration we will say that I have my left knee touching the ground as in photo #12 (left side). I would then proceed to place my left hand on the ground and then raise myself where I have one hand, knee, and foot on the ground (photo #12 - center). As you can see, I am still able to continue to shoot one handed if necessary. If I am unarmed I can also defend myself with my free hand (photo #13) or by kicking (photo #14). From here I would continue to stand upright and then move laterally or back at 45 degrees to create distance from the attacker (photo #12 - right).
Of course, situational awareness during the entire confrontation is paramount. Practicing these skills can mean the difference between life and death. We do recommend that you begin training with an inert gun and then progress to an airsoft gun. Only after having trained extensively on every small detail should you begin your training with live ammunition. Another important thing that we need to mention is that you should be aware of your backstop because you do not want to shoot over it. Therefore, you may have to lower your targets where your shots are impacting the backstop.
Train hard, train often, and train realistically!
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