Ten Most Common Attacks

Below are the 10 most common attacks, male on male, taken from police figures, witness statements etc for UK and Europe.

These are listed in frequency order.

1. One person pushes, hands to chest, which is normally followed by the pushes striking first, to the head.
2. A swinging punch to the head.
3. A front clothing grab, one handed, followed by punch to the head.
4. A front clothing grab two hands, followed by a head butt.
5. A front clothing grab two hands, followed by a knee to the groin.
6. A bottle, glass, or ashtray to the head.
7. A lashing kick to groin/lower legs.
8. A broken bottle/glass jabbed to face.
9. A slash with knife, most commonly a 3 to 4" lock blade knife or kitchen utility knife. (Apart from muggings, sexual assaults and gang violence, the hunting/combat type knife is seldom used).
10. A grappling style head lock.

Given that the most common form of attack is a straight push to the chest it makes sense to begin training in bunkai against something like that kind of attack. Obviously you must also take all the other most likely attacks into consideration and train against them.

In the 1970s in Tokyo we certainly trained against all kinds of attacks, straight and curved, long range and short range, from the front, sides and behind, with grabs and without grabs.