FFMA Review of Tony Somers Self Protection Masterclass 24th October 2007

By Alan Macdonald

It was a freezing cold night but in spite of the hearth tempting conditions over thirty FFMA students, partners and other health professionals chose to brave the conditions and attend this first FFMA guest masterclass by Mr Tony Somers.

Tony, a long time friend of Geoff Thompson’s, is the epitome of what I am coming to recognise as a true martial artist. Humble, friendly, always willing to listen and with a wicked little twinkle in his eye that belies the ferocious power simmering under that demeanour. A NLP councillor and a committed life coach, Tony now teaches across the country full time, a wide raft of essential skills in today’s unpredictable world. We at FFMA had decided that we wanted to expose our students to every aspect of the arts, as we believe that no two people are the same, both in movement due to whatever physical attributes they may have, and in their mental attitude too. This mental attitude, be it overly aggressive or pacifistic, necessitates an approach to striking either in control issues or in relaxation attempts to restrain the overabundance of testosterone rampaging through the system. We therefore, were very privileged when Tony volunteered completely of his own accord to teach this class.

Tony had intimated that he was going to teach Conflict avoidance and resolution, The Fence and concluding with - ironically the place we all don’t want to be - restrictive punching. As we found out from Tony’s erudite oratory, it is all too easy, and three out of four people do this, to be so concentrated on our mundane tasks of daily living, that we bumble along through life, perhaps walking in to danger zones, without thinking. He underlined the need to be aware, the different levels of alertness and how to recognise potential threats. He described the behaviour that the would be assailant would exhibit and the body language-positioning the victim could use, which would either encourage or discourage an attack.

From this fascinating subject, he moved on to the cagey but relaxed (I wish!) bearing one should adopt upon an approach by a perceived assailant - The Fence. This is a pattern of behaviour originally assimilated by Geoff Thompson and over the years, due to its logic and effectiveness, it has been taken up and developed by others who have added their interpretations to it. As Tony described, it is a variety of means, ideally without the attacker realising, of keeping them at a safe distance, buying time and possibly defusing the situation or indeed just drawing him in to provide the opportunity for a knockout. Using the hands as a communicative and visual barrier in a non-threatening way affords ideally both a way of ‘talking him or her down’ and creating an out-of-range striking distance an aggressor would need to breach to continue his assault. With practice - no advocating of vigilantism here!! - this communicating with the hands and awareness becomes a natural behaviour.

Tony then moved on to where we don’t really want to be. An imminent striking situation. He defined areas we might find ourselves in - against a wall, corralled in by two or more aggressors or possibly leaning against a bar and how this severely restricts our striking ability. With a buzz of excitement the class moved to the practical aspects of this, punching from six inches, using their ‘chi’ to illicit as much gut power as possible. Another tip Tony gave us was to ally the strike with a disarming question beforehand, as this for a nanosecond, halts the bullying Neanderthal’s thought intentions enough to provide a split second gap in which to turn his lights out.

The two-hour class was riveting and all students and other attendees professed their opinions as to how interesting and eye opening it had been. We owe a big vote of thanks to Tony Somers and appreciate the time he gave us that evening. We look forward to inviting him back in the near future.

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