TV programs to which people send their home videos seem to have an abundance of clips showing males getting nailed in the cookies by croquet mallets, golf balls, running dogs, and a thousand other things, and it never fails to get a big laugh from the studio audience when the recipient crumples to the ground.
A groin kick is often the bread-and-butter technique in women’s self-defense classes. Frighteningly (at least from the male standpoint), female students seem to take to this technique with exuberant zeal. I’ve even seen women wear buttons that read: “Did I mention the kick in the groin you’ll get if you touch me?”
But is a groin kick really the equivalent to Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch? In a word: no. My educated guess is that there are thousands of home videos that depict people getting zapped between the legs in which they didn’t react at all. Of course, those clips aren’t sent to the studios because there would be no point. So they air only those that show a reaction from the victim.
War stories about kicks to the groin that ended a fight or made a would-be attacker hobble off tell of those times when the kick worked. Few people tell stories about how their groin kicks failed to garner a reaction.
Cookie-kicked people frequently drop to their knees in training, but that doesn’t happen as often in the street. That’s because there is an entirely different psychological and physical dynamic working in a real situation. The attacker is usually excited, angry, giddy, exhilarated, depressed, racially motivated, revenge hungry, so on. These are powerful “drugs” that can alter how he reacts to pain—which includes not reacting at all.
As a cop, I saw people not react to being shot multiple times, stabbed, beaten with a hammer, run over by a vehicle, and a host of other travesties that people do to each other. When a man continues to fight after his ear has been severed, when a man continues to fight when a bullet has shattered his spine, and when a woman continues to fight after she’s been shot five times in the skull — yes, five times — the effects of a kick to the groin can pale in comparison.
Sometimes a groin attack works, but not immediately. Two weeks before I retired from the Portland Police Department, I arrested a man in the precinct lobby. He was a big, weight-trained man who wasn’t about to go without a fight. For five minutes, we thrashed about the lobby bouncing off counters, falling over benches, and crashing into walls. At one point, I applied a wristlock on the man so hard that he yelped and leaped into the air, unintentionally kneeing me in the groin on his way up. I knew I had been hit hard, but I didn’t feel it that much. I eventually got him handcuffed and lodged into a holding room.
It wasn’t until I shut the heavy door, locked it, and leaned against a table to catch my breath that the pain and nausea hit me full force. The knee to the groin had an effect but not until almost 10 minutes later. During the course of the struggle, my adrenaline was pumping hard and my mental focus was on getting the strong man under control. The knee to the groin wasn’t enough to stop me, even to slow me. It did a few minutes later, but at the moment of impact—when you want your technique to work — it didn’t do the job.
Okay, enough with the negatives.
Making It Work
Since the human body is unreliable as to how it will respond to any technique, it’s in your best interest to never count on a groin technique, whether it’s a kick, punch, rip, or crush to do the job. It’s when you expect a result—you hesitate—that you can get into trouble. In other words, never kick an attacker in the groin and then stand back expecting him to crumple.
Simply put, a confrontation has a beginning and an end, which might last two seconds, 10 seconds, 60 seconds, or five minutes. What occurs between the beginning and the end determines the outcome of the confrontation. It’s in your best interest, therefore, to fill that time with your attacks. If you pause to see how you’re doing, you give the attacker an opportunity to apply his techniques. So don’t do that. Never execute one attack to the groin and stop. Instead attack, attack, attack . . .
Consider these options when attacking the groin.
Do attack the groin multiple times until he falls, backs away, or weakens enough for you to flee.
Do attack the groin two or three times and then attack with other techniques, such as hammer strikes to his neck or claws to his eyes.
Do attack as in the last bullet, and when he raises his hands to ward off your high attacks, attack low to his groin again.
Do attack the groin and if he does fall to the ground (after the first blow or after the third or fourth), lock him up with a hold, or flee.
Never stop to admire your work. Keep attacking until the person is no longer a threat or until you have an opportunity to get away.
Loren Christensen is the author of two dozen Paladin books and videos, including Fighting Dirty, Fighting in the Clinch (with Mark Mireles), and The Brutal Art of Ripping, Poking, and Pressing Vital Targets. Loren was a military policeman in Saigon during the Vietnam War and retired from the Portland, Oregon, Police Department after more than two decades of service. He can be contacted through his website at www.lwcbooks.com.