Pressure Points – always reminds me of the Star Wars IV quote, ‘You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.’

I have a lot of misgivings about teaching pressure points, as they are associated with many myths, half-truths, and lies. Some think of them as a ‘Death Touch’ or places where you press a point and they fall over.

The fact is that there are places on the body where you can strike for significant effects; however, there are a lot of things that you need to get right before you can apply it, such as.

Pressure points are a ‘final’ part of of the application – you should already have good technique for the main application, e.g. striking. It can be helpful to think that pressure points are ‘icing on the cake’.

Before application, you need to gain ‘access’ to the pressure point. Therefore, you must first shock or distract the opponent before attempting a strike (not a press), though some of them are Primary targets – so can hit those first.

You wont get an effect in a self-protection scenario by pressing the points – they need to be struck; hard and with good technique.

The Chinese system is called ‘Dim Mak’, and the Japanese system is called ‘Kyusho Jitsu’, but they both use the same basic Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) terminology in describing the location of these points, which is the same as used in acupuncture.

There are two parts to the pressure point ‘scene’: the first use is to control and disable, and the second is to perform knockouts. I have a basic knowledge of the first, but have never mentioned the points using TCM terms in any instruction on pressure points. I have no practical experience with pressure point knockouts, although I am familiar with some of the theory. I don’t feel the need to change this state of affairs due to the dangers involved in making anyone unconscious, however brief.

Here are my recommendations if you want to learn about martial arts and pressure points.

1.     Avoid any video or seminar associated with ‘George Dillman’, including his students or associates. In my opinion, they are dangerously irresponsible in knocking out people at seminars, and it’s only a matter of time before someone is accidentally permanently disabled during their demos.

They also try to make something that is already reasonably complex almost incomprehensible, with additional distractions such as sounds and colours. They also promote ‘no-touch knockouts with Chi’, which only seem to work on “their” students and have never been shown to work on strangers. After a demo failure on a journalist, George gave an explanation involving the statement that almost anyone was able to negate the ‘chi’ in these techniques by using the position of their feet and toes!!

I attended a George Dillman and Leon Jay seminar in 2000 in Leatherhead, Surrey, and it was the worst martial arts experience I’ve ever had – so I’m a bit biased. However, I am not the only one who feels this way. Showmanship, bragging, limited explanation, peer pressure to be knocked out and disregard for safety were my major criticisms. I avoided any attempt to be ‘knocked out’ for demonstration purposes, but thankfully the paired training did not practice knockouts – just control and pain compliance.

2.     Be prepared to learn the ‘language’ of pressure point locations: Acupuncture points and meridians from TCM. For example, ‘Stomach 9’ or ST 9 refers to point 9 on the Stomach meridian

This point is actually in the neck, lateral to the Adam’s apple, on the anterior border of muscle sternocleidomastoideus. So you can see that TCM descriptions are a lot shorter than Western medical terminology.

3. Look at Russell Stutely for a more practical approach, although he started teaching Pressure Points extensively in the UK, after training in Shotokan, he is now based in Cambodia. Steve Burton is another practitioner worth looking into who trains in the UK and approaches the subject from a ‘Kung-Fu’ perspective.

A long time ago a company called NAP promoted videos from these UK practitioners, amongst others, so I indulged once or twice with some of them (in their closing-down sale) – hence I have some idea of what they teach. NAP have ceased trading so don’t try to buy anything from their ‘old’ site.

I will cover some ‘important’ points in future posts.