The Prefight Triangle
Self-defense, tactical time, where to stare, and hands kill
What is the Prefight Triangle?
The Prefight Triangle is a three-point shape visually superimposed upon an adversary that tracks the highest areas of strategic value in the moments leading up to a fight.
In the last blog post, we discussed the power of triangles as the most robust structure in the universe, its usage as a target in martial arts, ergo the Golden Triangle of Targeting, and its effects on an opponent.
Today, we will pivot to a different type of use case.
Triangles can be used for more than targeting; they can also be used to establish a prefight game plan.
What do I mean by the prefight game plan?
To understand the Prefight Triangle, we must first understand the prefight.
The Prefight
From a strategic perspective, a fight has two core physical axes: time and distance.
Note the axes are not time and space, as many misled martial artists like to say. No, time and distance. Why?
Distance is the most strategic element of space, thus trumping height and width. The Strategic Engagement of Force discusses the details of this dimensional dichotomy at length.
The elements of time and distance create a frame called the Time-Distance Theater, in which all tactics, strategy, and game planning, the complete Hierarchy of Decisiveness, can be overlayed into.
When we look at the time axis, the clock is a constant that affects all force engagements.
Time is one of the most important bastions to control from a tactical perspective.
If you are not in control of the clock in a fight, then the opponent is.
Tactical Time Outlined
Every fight has a start, middle, and end.
This three-part process is an inescapable law of the universe; we are all bound by time.
Per the poet Morrisey, “We are born, and then we live, and then we die.”[1]
Morrisey’s prose applies to combat: fights are born, they live, and they die.
The rule of three relative to time is paramount to martial arts and even political, armed, and military conflict.
First, the genesis of the conflict we can call the prefight.
The prefight is the events that lead up to the point of contact.
The prefight phase is called the “approach.”
The approach phase could be the scheduling of an arena, the training leading up to a bout, or a street context: a guy walking in on someone sleeping with their wife.
Next, the middle of the conflict is the actual force exchange: kicks, punches, triangle chokes, etc.
This phase of the conflict is called the “delivery.”
Finally, the end of the conflict is what happens after the delivery.
This phase is referred to as the “close.”
For example, once he is down, stomp on him to ensure he doesn’t get up.
The “close” also encompasses the contact aftermath — activities like going to the hospital, calling a lawyer, collecting purse winnings, whatever.
Thus, in summary, the three tactical phases of combat for an actor across time are:
- Approach
- Delivery
- Close
Most martial arts folks seem to spend the bulk of their training hours in the delivery phase, focusing on contact-based skills, grappling, and striking.
The strategic and tactical fighter actively engages in all three planes of time, not just the delivery.
Encompassing all three planes of time distinguishes the tactical fighter from the dummy.
The Approach Phase and the Prefight Triangle
The Prefight Triangle is visually superimposed upon the opponent during the approach phase and is especially helpful when dealing with a single adversary.
As aforementioned, the triangle is the strongest shape in the known universe.
Why do life and creation choose the triangle? [2] Because it yields the best odds of success for survival.
If life chooses the triangle as its greatest chance of success, then we too, when practicing self-defense, will choose life over death, and put the triangle to work for us.
The Prefight Triangle is drawn between three points. I will break down each point, starting with the mouth.
Point 1 — The Mouth
There are a few popular misconceptions about martial arts and self-defense.
One of the big ones is where to place your beam when faced with an opponent.
Answers will vary depending on who you talk to, the style of martial art, and the person’s life experiences.
The most popular answer to the question of where to place your beam is the eyes.
William Shakespeare once said, “The eyes are the window to the soul.” While Shakespeare is a master of words, I cannot vouch for his swordsmanship.
The rationale behind the Shakespearean thought process is that a person’s eyes can betray their emotional content, thus giving you insight into their intent and state of mind.
The second most popular answer to the where to stare question is at the opponent’s chest.
The chest is an antidote to the eyes approach, as when you look into someone’s eyes, yes, you can read their emotional content — but they can also read yours. It is a two-way street.
If you are scared to death and going to piss yourself, well, staring into their eyes wide-eyed is probably not your best choice.
However, if you stare at their chest, you emotionally distance yourself from the situation, not to mention you have a better peripheral field of vision against kicks and punches.
While not wrong, I believe the eyes and the chest are not the best places to look in the approach phase of the fight.
For example, should I gaze at the opposing actor’s chest if I am engaged in a verbal dialogue?
Avoiding eye contact in this domain shows weakness, insecurity, and disingenuousness.
Furthermore, how can I de-escalate a situation if I am staring at someone’s tits? Let alone if it is a woman.
The mouth offers several advantages over the eyes and the chest, as it negates the downside of each while yielding the benefits of both, and it can be used across all three phases of tactical time.
In the approach phase, if I stare at an opponent’s mouth, it seems like I am staring at their eyes. It is challenging to discern the difference.
While I am avoiding direct eye contact, it does not seem like it.
However, since I am not directly gazing into their eyeballs, I can still distance myself from their emotional content and them from mine.
Appearing to look into someone’s eyes is essential for the de-escalation process.
You cannot de-escalate if you are talking to a person’s chest.
However, like the chest, if I watch the mouth, I am still within bounds to use peripheral vision to detect the use of tools such inanimate weapons such as sticks and knives.
If the fight switches from the approach to the delivery phase, I can still use the mouth as a central point for my beam.
The face is a high-value targeting area while still allowing me to use peripheral vision to pick up body movements.
From a defensive perspective, if someone’s mouth faces me, they can strike me.
Conversely, if the opponent’s mouth is not facing me, they cannot strike me.
The moral of the story is to move their mouth away from you, thus their beam, thereby nullifying their striking capacity.
For these reasons and more, the mouth as a default location for your field of vision is robust across all combat phases: approach, delivery, and close.
However, while the mouth is a strong default view, your vision cannot permanently be fixed at one point in combat always.
The eyes need to scan for other risk factors and rove around the body, constantly assessing for changes in the situation.
This roving effect is where the alternative points of focus come into play.
Points 2 & 3 — The Completion of the Triangle
As you will recall, to draw a triangle, we need three points.
The best place to place your initial beam for tactical fighting across time is on the player’s mouth.
However, a one-size shoe for all situations is not realistic, and there are other shoes we need to be able to fit into for the most robust solution to survive a self-defense scenario.
There are two alternative points to place your beam.
The following sites fixate on the player’s most dangerous assets: the hands.
Hands 1 and 2 are the other points on the triangle. Why the hands?
The principle of the “Three Where’s” comes into play here: where are his friends, where are his hands, and where is the exit?
Note the first line, where are his hands?
Why do police shout, “Show me your hands?” Law enforcement’s emphasis on the hands would indicate that keeping track of these pesky apparatuses is vital.
There is a saying in Contemporary Jeet Kune Do, “Hands kill.”
The hands are the most dangerous tools on the human body and are the instruments of death.
To fixate on the mouth alone limits us from the qualities that make a fighter dangerous.
In a concrete jungle with no set parameters for the fight, the transition from the approach and the delivery is not always cut and dry.
The process can be murky. Keeping track of the hands at all times is paramount, as a weapon can be just-in-time deployed at any moment.
Hands or mouth? Where should our focus be? Hmm, what to do? The split focus problem is where the Prefight Triangle comes in.
The Prefight Triangle is drawn between the actor’s hands and mouth. Your beam can rove along the triangle while keeping other fight factors in peripheral vision.
While the Prefight Triangle is ideally drawn during the approach phase as a tool of assessment and planning, it remains a constant throughout all three tactical stages: approach, delivery, and close.
This allows for continual reassessment. In an altercation, the induction of weapons versus empty hands can significantly impact the tailored response.
Focusing on the Prefight Triangle can give you insight into how to tailor such a response that will ensure victory.
The concept of the Prefight Triangle is a mental model that aids human focus on what is essential and steers the mind away from emotion, thereby stimulating reason.
The neocortex and reason are where strategic and tactical game planning emanates from.
If one is caught in an emotional state, worried, scared, anxiety-ridden, or stuck in the limbic system of the human mind, there is no tactical planning occurring at that moment.
Let’s set expectations. The Prefight Triangle will not make you like Spock from Star Trek, an emotionless robot of logic.
It will, however, induce a certain degree of rational thinking to offset the chemical stew of inevitable emotions in situations of self-defense and violence.
We do not need to be Spock; we just need a little dab of reason, enough to make good choices.
There are other dangerous elements of consideration beyond the hands, such as a boot to the groin.
However, a boot cannot readily hold or shoot a gun. The hands are highly dynamic instruments and capable of wielding mass destruction. What is the part of physical human anatomy that launches atomic weapons?
With the hands as the ultimate purveyor of death, when against a single opponent, the Prefight Triangle is chosen based on priority and probability.
When dealing with force engagements involving one-to-many or many-to-many actors, the priority of the Prefight Triangle shapeshifts from a vertical to a horizontal plane, but that is a concept for a different day.
Chow.
About the Author
Scott Gehring is a modern-day enlightenment warrior who delights in adventure, free-spiritedness, creativity, tinkering, travel, and an insatiable love for constructive conflict. An acclaimed expert in multiple art styles, Scott, for over 35 years, has passionately pursued understanding, performance, health, discipline, truth, morality, and the purity of combat.
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