The four D’s of defense – Part 2

In yesterday’s post I briefly touched on the four D’s of defense – Deter, Detect, Delay, and Defend – as described by many people in the personal and home defense industry.  I then applied those concepts to baseball.  Today I’d like to focus more attention on the last D because it is something a lot of people do not fully understand, including baseball players.  This lack of understanding can have serious consequences.

The first three of the four D’s are all preventative in nature.  In the personal security world, all are designed to prevent the physical confrontation from happening.  Successfully deterring a criminal from attacking means the attack never

came at all.  Detecting an attacker early removes the element of surprise and allows you to move to a safe location and quickly call for help in order to avoid the attack.  Delaying can give you precious time to hide, evade, or flee before any actual contact with the bad guy.

The fourth D (Defend) is different.  The battle has arrived.  There is no going back now.  You’ve tried all you can to avoid and evade the fight with the first three D’s but it came anyway.

Now what do you do?  I said yesterday that the answer is to defend yourself.  To fight.

This is not a trivial difference between the first three D’s.  It requires a MAJOR mind-set shift.  And it better shift very quickly.  Just like when a team attempts a 1st and 3rd play to steal a run, personal defense situations start and finish in terms of seconds.  The point is, you don’t have a lot of time to think.

When people have been attacked, especially by surprise, they tend to experience some common thoughts when the attack starts.  They often think the following:

• What is happening?
• Why is this person attacking me?
• Who is this person?
• Is this really happening to me?

The problem with this thinking is that when the attack is on, the answers to those questions are completely irrelevant.  All they do is waste you precious time from taking action.  

There is a saying that goes “defense means losing slowly.”  If someone swings at you and you just stand there and don’t do anything, you are going to lose and you are going to lose very quickly.  If you put your hands up only to protect your face, you are still going to lose.  It just will take a little longer.  To win, you have to attack.  This mind-set of ATTACK (as opposed to PREVENT) must accompany the fourth D – Defend.  

You’ve all heard the phrase “the best defense is a good offense.”   It implies that sitting back and staying in that defensive mind-set doesn’t work.  To be good defensively, you have to have an OFFENSIVE mind-set when the time arrives.  The problem is that people who are attacked and often players on a baseball field take too long to “flip the switch” from a defensive mind-set (preventative) to an offensive one (attack the opposition to stop the play!).  

Addressing the first three D’s (Deter, Detect, Delay) will go a long way to prepare for and hopefully prevent the offense from trying their tricks.  

But when it comes, you’d better defend.  Which actually means you had better attack!

Tomorrow’s post:  When Then