Why Did He Attack me?

Tracing the Circle – Weekly Meditations on the Practice

“Why Did He Attack Me?”

Let's talk about an arm grab scenario as an example here: 
In a typical training exercise, one partner makes his arm available for the grab; the other partner grabs the arm and stands there while the first partner does whatever it is s/he's going to do. End of story.

The only problem with this is that someone who is "attacking" you is not going to walk up, grab your wrist and just stand there. This, however, is mostly the way people practice. I call this kind of attack a "non-occurring event". It will -never- happen to you like that. He’s grabbing your wrist -for- something; the wrist grab is just the second stage of his attack.

We are willing to presuppose the existence of a "wrist grab" attack for the sake of practice. Would there be a problem presupposing, say, "grab wrist and pull toward"; "grab wrist to stretch arm to begin arm-bar"; "grab wrist to immobilize the arm so that it can't protect against a punch"; "grab wrist to assert male domination over female defender (say at a table in a bar)"; etc.

You can see that some of these attacks are more and less threatening. I would expect that a martial arts adept would have a spectrum of responses that covered everything from an escape, to a friendly "punch the belly", to "kill him before he kills you". I'd also expect the martial artist to know when to apply the appropriate level of response.

When I say, “What's the attacker's reason for attacking”, that's really what I'm talking about; “What's the guy's reason for grabbing? “Why is he trying to punch you? (to hurt you? to play with you?). Why is he trying to tackle you? (play, individual attempt to take you to the ground, tie you up so his friends can jump on you more easily...). Adding this as an element in practice changes the perception and the reaction.

When you've trained correctly and comprehensively, you can assess situations very quickly. It is critical to have the ability to distinguish between an attacker whose main aim is to humiliate against one whose main aim is to kill.