HS 98 – Real World Self-Defense with Alex Haddox

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My pleasure to welcome to the show Alex Haddock. He is an expert in self defense, home security awareness, understanding the threats that are out there and he is a master martial artist. So I'm sure you're going to learn a lot today about the things you need to do to protect yourself in real world situations. Alex, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on again.

Good, good. And when you say again, you were on another one of my shows, so these listeners may not know that, but you were on the Speaking wealth show talking about podcasting and that was a great interview. And your subject area is so fitting for my Holistic Survival show that you were kind enough to join us today to talk about some of those issues. So thank you for that. First of all, tell the listeners where you're coming to us from.

I'm actually based in Los Angeles.

Fantastic. My hometown, where I grew up in la and certainly not one of the safer cities by the way.

Yeah, it's any major city where you Have a lot of people in a compacted area, things tend to get a little dicey at times.

But I'd especially say LA is bad. And the reason is that the whole, pardon my political commentary here, but the whole socialist republic of California is becoming really sadly a banana republic. Where you've got the rich and the poor, the middle class is just fleeing that state. And whenever you've got that kind of like haves and have nots type environment, I think it lends itself to instability. You know, when you go to South American banana republic type countries, I mean, I don't want to live in a place like that, Alex. You know, even if you are rich and you've got all the things you want, you got to live your life under constant fear and threat. Bars on the window. I mean, I was in Costa Rica last year, you know, razor barbed wire around people's houses. This is no way to live. So that's just my little political thought on it. And sadly I think that's what so much of California and especially LA is becoming. It's really too bad that's happening. So if you have a comment on that, feel free, but let's, let's jump on the topic area too. Any thoughts?

Well, having spent my entire life in Los Angeles and I'm seventh generation Southern Californian, there is a huge disparity in wealth. I mean, we have the super, super wealthy because of business and the movies and then literally just down the street there's abject poverty. And one block is okay, the next block is a slum and it's. So getting from a nice area to a bad area to rob is not that hard sometimes a matter of a couple of blocks. I mean, they installed a brand new freeway down by the LA airport and it joined a really bad neighborhood to a really good neighborhood. And they called it the criminal highway.

Oh my gosh.

Because the guys would go into the good neighborhood rob, and the first thing they would do is jump on that freeway and hightail it out of there. So whenever there was a robbery, the police, first thing they did was jump on that freeway and start looking for speeding cars.

Sad, sad stuff. Boy, I tell you, that's, it's really sad. Well, let's first talk maybe about awareness. One of the things that I think is particularly scary is, you know, I live in Phoenix now. Grew up in LA as a kid, spent my adult life in Orange county until just last year when I moved to Arizona. And I love it. I'm very pleased with the move. However, you know, I keep Hearing that this is like the kidnapping capital of the United States with these Mexican drug gangs and so forth. And you know, I guess kidnappings kind of in particular is becoming, you know, certainly when you're traveling abroad in certain countries, but even in the States now is becoming more and more of a threat. So, you know, I think the first thing is really awareness, isn't it Alex? Awareness of one's surroundings, Right?

Absolutely. I've done some world traveling myself. I've been to Africa, South America, Europe and of course all over North America. And it really, it doesn't matter where you are. Awareness and avoidance are the key to staying safe. And I actually have, I have a book called Practical Home, A Guide to Safer Urban Living. And I have an entire section of the book just dedicated to awareness because it doesn't matter if it's in your own backyard. You need to be aware of what's going on around you. And one of the things, I also have a podcast called Practical Defense and I've got 217 episodes out now. And that's the primary part of what I preach is awareness and avoidance. So yes, it is critical no matter where you are and what you do.

And what can one do to be more aware?

Well, there, what I'm going to refer to now is what's known as the Cooper color code. And it's by Colonel Jeff Cooper, who was an icon in the self defense industry way back in the day. And he came up, he took the military awareness color codes and adapted them to civilian use. And there are five different levels. White, yellow, orange, red and black. And white is where most people are, which is complete lack of awareness. These are the people you see jogging down the street with their headphones on, bop into their music and almost get hit by a car or the person texting and falls into a manhole. Or you know, the people that just unaware of their surroundings. These are the people that are setting themselves up to be victims. And that's, that's the lowest level. That's white, that's where you don't want to spend your life. The next level is yellow. And this is relaxed awareness. And this is where you want to live your life. This is comfortable but aware. This is not paranoia. This is understanding what's going on around you. Being visual, listening and smelling and feeling. You use all of your senses to be in tune with your environment so that you are aware of what's going on. You hear the rustling in the trees, you feel the breeze, you see the colors, you see the movement. And then in These situations, if something's out of the ordinary, it jumps to your immediate consciousness and it brings it to your forefront, the forefront of your brain so that you can then focus on it and identify whether it's a threat or non threat. And this is where you want to be. Relaxed awareness, color code yellow. Orange is when you are the one, you've identified a threat and you're taking active action to avoid the threat. So you see the sketchy looking guy down the block or there's a dog walking off a leash and you're, you know, with a young child and you take steps to protect but you're not panicked. You just say, okay, there's something that's going on, let me pay attention to it. Then. Red is an actual crisis when you're actively avoiding, you're escaping or your actual physical conflict. And the last one is black. And black is when you're actually stunned, you're unable to respond. There's so much overload that's going on in the situation that you're stunned and unable to do anything except just stand there and not be able to react.

I guess particularly important, and this may sound kind of odd, but I want to be really practical here. I think that a lot of threats are particularly prevalent and you know, correct me if I'm wrong when one is obviously off guard, but you know, maybe out, it's Saturday night, they're out on the town, they're partying and that includes alcohol and maybe late at night. And that's I think a particularly vulnerable situation. Any tips on that? I mean people when they're under the influence of booze, you know, they don't think as well. So maybe being like hyper practical. How can partiers be more aware? Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I have lots of experience with that. My friends always like to invite me along because I was pretty much the self designated safety guy. We would go out and we'd party and I would drink the least because one of the things I hated was getting intoxicated to the point where I felt vulnerable. So I never ever drank to excess and my friends took advantage of that and just completely let loose and knewing that I would keep an eye on things and keep an eye out for them. They also used to joke that when I started getting nervous is when the party started really getting fun.

Okay, yeah.

But alcohol and any sort of narcotic is generally a bad idea for security because it lowers your inhibitions and it lowers your awareness and ability to recognize threats and be able to respond to them.

I Think this is a particularly big threat for college age girls. You look at like Natalie Holloway, that the threats they face are bigger than threats the rest of us face. And so parents be worried, especially about your girls. But I mean, I live in a college town. I live next to a big college here in Arizona and I see these kids out and they're just, they're just drinking like fish. It's, it's really, it's really scary.

Oh, yeah. And one of the things that I teach the teenage girls and the, and the young women that, that I teach is that you never ever accept a drink from a stranger.

Yeah, well, that's true.

If you're in a bar, unless the bartender hands you the drink, don't drink it. If somebody goes, oh, I'll get us a couple of drinks, I'll be right back. No, because you have no idea what's happening.

Walk up to the bar, grab your drink and don't leave your drink.

Absolutely. If you've left your drink, it's done. Don't finish it. Get your own drinks. And sometimes even in sketchy places, sometimes the bartenders are questioning.

The bartender could be in cahoots. Exactly, exactly. But certainly. Yeah, that's very good advice. What else?

And just, you know, never drink to excess. And if you feel uncomfortable, leave. You know, there is so much social pressure for women especially to be nice, to be compliant. And one of the big things is it's okay to be a bitch. If you feel uncomfortable, pull out the bitch and just be annoying. Be more trouble than your worth. The guys, I'm not going to say all guys are predators, but there can be predatory like behavior either from, from a, from a criminal or a guy who is just being overly aggressive. If you feel uncomfortable, be a bitch and leave. It doesn't matter. People are worried about reputation. Forget reputation. Your life is more important than some college reputation of being not a nice person or not a team player. Screw that. Your safety is far more paramount. I personally know women who have been date raped using roofies. Literally went out partying with some friends, woke up on the beach, had no idea how she got there, and she had been raped and was just abandoned on the beach.

I mean, the roofie is like a prescription drug, right? What is it for? I mean, what is the thing that it treats? I mean, how do these kids get a hold of it?

I don't exactly know. I'm really not big on the drug culture. I don't know exactly how it happens.

Scary stuff. Really scary stuff. I heard, I saw on A program that like, it had like the drink, you know, I was hearing about someone who got spiked with a roofie and, and that the, the drink tasted slightly like, had sort of a Dr. Pepper taste to it a little bit, but it's almost undetectable from, from what I hear. It's just very subtle. So no one's going to sense it in their drink. Yeah.

And if you've already had a few drinks, you may not be aware of it, which is again, goes back to the point of being aware and not getting too intoxicated and not, not getting to the point where you're unaware and you're losing control.

I don't think a lot of people are following that advice, but it's great advice, certainly. Okay, well, what other kinds of awareness, like, are there certain places that are particular vulnerabilities? I mean, you know, obviously don't walk down dark alleys late at night.

What are the sort of, the particular threat places? A lot of times I've heard many times that the garage. If someone lives in a sort of suburban style house, you pull into your garage and, and you're getting out of the car, maybe you have packages or groceries with you or the kids or whatever. And that's an easy place to be distracted, accosted. Usually the doors open and then you can be pushed right inside the house and there you go, you got a home invasion robbery on your hands. Any thoughts about like vulnerable, high vulnerability places?

Well, you hit on a big one there and I'm going to come back to that in a minute because there's kind of long stories around ambush as you're entering or leaving your home. But in terms of vulnerable places, it's bars.

Yeah, well, that's what I brought up first.

Yeah, bars are just bad places. There's a lot of alcohol, there's a lot of ego, there's a lot of machismo. There's a lot of strutting and preening to try and win the attention of the women. And there's a lot of, a lot.

Of bad behavior in general.

Yeah. You know, between the, I mean, drugs and alcohol and young hormonal people, it's just bad.

Couldn't agree more.

It's just, you know, just avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. I know people love clubbing, but it's, it's, it's dangerous. The other thing that in addition to avoiding bad places is avoiding certain types of people.

Tell us about that.

If you hang out with the wrong crowd, you're going to get into trouble. I mean, this is Something our parents have taught us since two, you know, we're out of diapers. Just don't hang out with that crowd. It is absolutely true, and it still holds. Even if you're 20, 30, or 40 years old. If your friends get into trouble and go looking for trouble and cause trouble, you will get sucked into it. So it's really, it's choose your friends wisely.

The old saying, you know, if you lie down with dogs, you're gonna get fleas. Yes. Yeah, that's definitely true. But I mean, you know, one thing coming back to women, you know, certainly women have a higher developed intuition than men usually. And I really do believe. And I think one of the things where women can make the mistake is they don't follow their intuition. They feel it. Like a lot of times I've heard stories of various victimizations and you'll hear the victim maybe talking about the incident and they'll say, you know, I had a feeling, but I didn't listen to it. So listen, trust the intuition, I would say.

Right, absolutely. There's a groundbreaking book called the Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.

I've heard of it.

Oh, it's, it's. I have several copies on my shelf. One always stays on my shelf. And then I. There's another hard copy that I loan out all the time. So I've got. I always keep two copies.

Tell us about what it says.

It's hard to summarize, but basically it is. Follow your intuition, follow your gut. The reason why the book is called the Gift of Fear is that the fear is what keeps us alive. That tingling, that some people call it a sixth sense in the back of our brains that says, hey, something's not right. That's what you listen to. That's what you need to listen to. Now, we are conditioned socially to suppress that, to talk it away. Well, you know, he's a nice guy and I'm just being silly. And you know, all these other things. And so you talk yourself out of these little nags. And those nags are based on very subtle behavior that your intuition picks up on. Body language, choice of words, location, sounds and smells, all those awareness things, your subconscious is processing those and then sends up these little flags saying, eh, something's not right. And that is what Gavin de Becker calls, you know, kind of the fear response. Listen to it, react to it, get out of that situation. And that's the, I guess the book in a nutshell.

Yeah, good, good. Talk to us about the actual defense. So we talked about awareness. Let's cover defense real quickly, then I want to talk about protecting one's. What can people do if they're confronted? If they're in a situation, what do you do? Hit the guy in the Adam's apple? What's the advice?

Well, it depends upon what the threat is. Because regardless of whether you know it or not, there is a legal standard for what you're allowed to do in terms of a physical response. And it boils down to you have to respond with equal force. So if the guy punches you, you're allowed to punch back. If the guy kicks you, you're allowed to kick back. If the guy pulls a weapon, then you're moving up the scale onto, you know, lethal force. And then you're allowed to respond with an equal or reasonable amount of force there as well. So I'm giving a really short synopsis. Here. So basically, if somebody tries to punch you, you're not allowed to pull your gun and shoot him. That would be excessive force. And there are all sorts of different caveats in different levels. And there's disparity of force, like, you know, woman against a man and or able bodied versus disabled child against an adult. So they're all these. It's very nuanced, but the core of it is if it's a man versus man, you have to respond with equal force. And you can't.

Jump the rungs and move up on the ladder unless you can legally defend it in court.

Okay, so what kind of force? Someone comes at you, what can you do? They're bare hands, no weapon.

Then you respond, bare hands, no weapon, bar fight.

But what is the response? What specifically should you do? What do the martial artists say? You know, where do you hit? What do you do? What's the technique? Wow.

Okay, what you need to do is not focus on defeating the opponent. Your focus needs to be on escape. Because if you stick around to fight, a fight is illegal because that's a cooperative event.

Right?

If you're up there and you're bumping chests with this guy and say, no, your mother stinks. No, your mother stinks. That's a fight that's illegal. It doesn't matter who throws the first punch. In that case, they're both going to jail.

How do you escape?

Escape? There are two ways. When you're actually being attacked, the person is trying to overwhelm you with force to disable you to do what they want to. You either take your stuff or just hurt you. You need to be more aggressive in response. You need to, instead of Trying to retreat, because a lot of people, especially untrained, think, well, I'll just defend myself and somebody will come to my rescue. No, no one's coming to your rescue. No one is going to jump in and help you out in a fight that doesn't work that way. And it's going to take 15 minutes for the police to respond. Once the telephone call is made, you have 30 seconds before this thing's over. So what you need to do is you need to attack back. You need to push back. You need to attack into their attack in order to get them to stop. See, the whole point is to make them stop. It's not to defend yourself, it's to make them stop. And the only way to do that is to be more aggressive and more violent in response to their attacks.

And what does that include?

Whatever it takes. Kicking, punching. You know, the fancy karate moves that you see in the movies are the stuff of myth.

Sure, sure. But, you know, there are, there are vulnerable zones of the human body, though. That's what I'd like you to speak to. Just give any, anyone advice who's maybe lesser equipped as to what they can do. I mean, there are certain points of the body that are more. More vulnerable than others. And they're not the commonly used fighting points. They're not typically people, they just punch each other, you know, but the smart person uses some of these vulnerable places and uses those. The defense points. Right.

What I like to teach is if you're in those types of situations and you really, really need to escape, is you take out the knees. And because if you take out the person's knee, you can walk away because they're not coming to. Coming after you afterwards. And then once the attack has stopped, you are legally required to stop as well.

I don't want to talk about the legal stuff, Alex. I mean, you know, I don't think it matters that much. I think we're talking about much lesser people that get attacked. The opponent is usually the stronger person. That's why they're being aggressive, because they think they can victimize someone. I want to talk about survival. I don't care about the law yet. Okay. I don't think this is a fair fight to begin with, and I don't think the person listening is going to keep attacking the person they want to survive. So how do they take out someone's knee, for example?

Well, the best way to take out a person's knee is with a very low round kick and attack it from the side or attack it from the.

Front and the knees are pretty vulnerable, aren't they, in terms of that sideways motion? Is it true? Is that why someone, when they're at the ATM or standing, concerned about any threat, shouldn't lock their knees? Are the knees less vulnerable when they're unlocked? When you're not completely locking them standing?

They're absolutely less vulnerable when they're not in the locked position. And one of the reasons why you would want to stand, say, with bent knees at the atm, is not so much to prevent attack, but to allow you to be able to respond more quickly. Because if you have to respond quickly, the first thing you have to do is bend your knees so you waste time unlocking your knees if you remember to. Because again, if you're not trained.

Yeah, milliseconds. Really?

Milliseconds. Milliseconds. And even if you're untrained, you don't know to automatically unlock your knees. And so you're going to spin and you're going to fall over. So by keeping your knees slightly bent, you're going to have better balance and better reaction time and reduce your risk of falling when somebody attacks you from a hiding spot. But it does protect the knees as well. But that's very good. A lot of people like to talk about going for the eyes, but again, we're talking about lethal force there. So if you're in extreme danger and you really feel that your life is threatened, and in most cases, this is talking about women versus men. The eyes are a target, but they wouldn't be a target for the normal person. But the whole point is to get them to stop, disable them somehow so that you can escape and then escape.

You want to talk about home security? We just have a few minutes left, so I wanted to make sure we cover that. Any good big easy tips that someone can do to protect their home?

Oh, yeah, there are lots of things that you can do to protect your home that are very easy and inexpensive. And I really cover these in my book. And lighting is very, very important. It's not the end all, be all, because you really need a layered system to protect your home. But lighting is a very, very good, inexpensive deterrent. So I would start with lighting. And the next is awareness of your property. What are the vulnerable points to your property? You know, walk around, see where people can hide, keep, keep an eye to those places, put lights on those places. Something that people also don't really pick up on is that the back. The back of the house is a very common point of entry. And so what the guys will do is they'll hop. Even if they don't go down your yard, they'll hop your neighbor's wall, go down through your neighbor's yard and then hop the wall into your backyard. So I mean, if you think about your backyard, it's, it's walled, it's got big trees, you want to keep it quiet.

Easy place to hide.

Yeah, it's a perfect place for back there unviewed. And work on your doors or work on your windows to, to try and break in.

So cutting back shrubbery is another good tip, I'd say.

Absolutely, absolutely. You want to have a clear view to the front of the house so that anybody driving by can see it. So there's no hiding places. If you look at my yard, everything is, you know, less than waist height. It's just, you know, it's like, it's like somebody at child height just went around and just buzzed the whole place because you want to keep that visibility. Criminals don't want to be seen. So making high visible areas and keeping lights up is very important. And to go back to the point that we talked about earlier with the garages, garages are actually very dangerous places, carports especially, because what happens with carports and garages is that we're distracted, we feel safe because we're in our homes, but we're not because garages really are, should be considered from a vulnerability perspective outside of the house. And so there are a lot of ambushes that happen right there at the garage. You know, people will follow you home if you're in a nice car. And this has happened to my own mother twice. My own mother has been followed home from the grocery store twice. Fat gray haired old lady in a nice Mercedes followed home. But fortunately she lives in a gated community. And as soon as the guys saw the car following her, they turned around at the guard gate. And my mother's the most unobservant person in the whole world, so who knows how many tests actually happened. But there are also cases, you know, here once or twice a year where judges are murdered in their garages by criminals. They know where they work, right, the courthouse. And so it's either the family or they get let out of prison and they're mad at the judge for the sentencing or they blame him for something that happened during the court case and so they follow him home and they murder them as they're getting out of their cars in their garages. So you need to keep your awareness at all points. And there are Lots of cases where people. I had a friend who I used to go to the gym with and he was actually an IRS agent. After one of our workouts in his carport in a very nice part of town, he was held up at gunpoint in his carport as he was getting out after one of our workouts. The guy put up a gun to the back of his head and said, give me your wallet. And he was like, here you go. Said, Count to 100. And I think my friend counted to 200 before he turned around. Never saw the guy. So, yeah, these ambushes are.

Really a problem. One of the things I recommend is alarm systems for your house. And what a lot of people do is when they, when they go first go in the house, the alarm starts beeping, right? And your instinct is to run in and turn off and stop that infernal beeping. Don't do it, let it beep. You have 30 seconds, right? Get into the house, shut the door, lock it, then turn off the alarm system.

And before you even lock it, turn around and look at your surroundings. Just take a quick glance and make sure they're okay before you shut the alarm system down. Oh yeah, right. Yeah.

I practically back into my front door. But yeah, no. And I've had emails from listeners in my show from other countries asking about these types of entries because they've had friends and family who were ambushed coming into their home. One of the guys was in Mexico City and he said that his family, his friend's family with the kids and everything as they came home from dinner one night, got ambushed. They were all tied up inside the house and had watched this guys go through and completely empty out the house.

Yeah, scary stuff. You know, my grandparents suffered a home invasion robbery and I remember hearing about that when I was a kid. And I'll just. This stuff really happens in real life, so it's good to be prepared. Well, Alex Haddocks, give out your website if you would and tell people where they can learn more.

Sure. Thanks. Yeah, the. My Corporate website is palladium-education.com and we do workplace violence prevention training, firearms training, self defense training. We're working on a program now for professional security guards. And my podcast is called Practical Defense and it's free and it's weekly and I've been doing it for about five years now. And you can get all these types of tips that we talked about today on the show. And my book is called Practical Home Security A Guide to Safer Urban Living. And it's available in paperback and all the various ebook formats.

Fantastic. Well, Alex, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.

No, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

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