Real Street Fighting Moves

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Done wrong, the thumb gouge to the eye is almost useless . . . but done right, it is one of the most dangerous and effective self defense techniques that street fighting or WWII combative training has to offer. Read on, to learn the five simple guidelines to the effective use of thumb gouges to the eyes:

1. Don’t “poke” the eyes, gouge past them–Regardless of whether you are trying to control someone through the use of pressure against his eyes or are actually trying to destroy the eyeball, don’t ever just poke at the eye itself like a little kid. Rather you should try to force your thumb between the eye socket and the eyeball into the skull.

This will cause more pain, more fear and continued, increasing pressure will either destroy the eyeball or pop it out of the skull.

2. Thumb the eyes from the inside–If you were to place your thumb between the eyeball and eye socket on the outside of his eye, near his temple and he were to push your hand away, that would be the end of your thumb gouge.

If you had chosen to gouge the eye between the eye and the nose, on the inside of his face and he were to force your hand to the side, he would have to rake your thumb across the entire surface of his own eyeball, causing pain and damage to himself.

3. Don’t gouge with one hand, keylock around his head or neck–I hate it when I see pictures of inexperienced trainers just grabbing a person’s head and forcing their thumbs into his eyes. If you were to do that, he could easily just push or pull your hands away.

Now imagine holding his head in a sort of headlock, keylocking your arms (a keylock is a way to cross both forearms to control a part of an opponent’s body and simultaneously combine the strength of both arms on a hold) and then thumb gouging his eye. Its hard to explain a keylock in words, but, if an aggressor were to try to push you away from him, a keylock will automatically force your thumb even more forcefully into his eye.

4. Aim your thumb gouges with your palms and fingertips–If you were to try to shoot your thumb directly out into an aggressor’s eye, you would miss much more often than not. Instead, first make contact somewhere on your attacker’s body with the palm of your hand.

As soon as you have made contact with your palm, you should be able to run you hand along his body and find his head, even with your eyes close or in the dark. When your palm is on the side of his head, find his ears with the tips of your fingers, which will bring your thumbs automatically into position to gouge the eyes.

Try it on yourself right now:

• Put the palm of your right hand on the right side of your face and touch your right ear with your fingertips.
• Now circle your thumb around and it will automatically go between your nose and eyeball, as when using a thumb gouge to get out of a choke from behind.
• Put your right palm on the left side of your face, fingertips on your left ear and your thumb automatically goes into position to gouge the eye, like a thumb gouge to someone standing in front of you.

5. Make hooks with your thumbs–As you can imagine, the optimal body weapon for causing pain to and / or damaging the eyes is a small or pointy one. Therefore, you need to be sure that you are always using the tip of your thumb and not the wide and soft pad to apply pressure.

A very simple way to make sure that you do this is to make a hook with your thumb. In other words, curl your thumb in so that contact with your opponents head is only made with your palms and the tip, not the flat pad of your finger. This holds true regardless of whether you are attacking with your thumb or the other fingers.