We've said it before and you've heard it from numerous trainers and instructors out there -- you will respond to a stressful situation in precisely the manner in which you've been trained.

So the moral to the story is to be careful of how you train and where your spend most of your time. 

Here's a good example from a recent trip I had to a large and thriving Western city to observed a four-day close quarter combat instructor's course.  While I was there, I had the opportunity to patrol with the metropolitan police department.  I was riding with my primary contact on the force.  Incidentally, another officer that I've met before was also working in a beat right next to ours.

We heard him get in a vehicle pursuit.  As the pursuit turned into a vehicular accident and then into a foot pursuit, the officer's voice rose up a couple of notches indicating that things were getting exciting.  This officer is one of the department's  DT trainers and we were getting a bit of a chuckle as we sped to back him up.

When we arrived on the scene, we found a stolen Dodge Neon wedged nosefirst into a brick wall with a metro squad car blocking the car's rear.  Both of the Neon's doors were open and the squad car had three male juveniles in custody in the back seat.

The arresting officer (the guy that we knew) was notifying radio that the scene was Code 4.  He saw us pull up and came over to my window.  He told us what happened:

The Neon failed to negotiate a turn and had slide through a residential intersection, crashing into the wall and the occupants bailed.  He pursued the driver on foot.  The driver dashed in between two houses and was attempting to scale a wooden fence when the officer tackled him, both of them crashing through the brittle boards of the fence.   A fight ensued and the officer ended up on top, repeatedly striking the subject in order to gain compliance. 

My partner asked if he was okay.  He was, but he showed us his right hand.  It was already starting to swell up.

What happened?  The office repeatedly punched (with a closed fist) the subject in the head.  The result?  A broken hand which required surgery the next day and a recovery time of between 4 to 6 weeks.   The problem?  The officer is right handed.  Now he's out of commission almost entirely for that timeframe.  Plus, as you get older, you know that old injuries come back to haunt you.

Remember, this officer is a DT instructor and one of the first things he said was, "I could almost hear in my head the words 'palm heel', 'palm heel' as I was punching this guy."  He admitted that he knew as he was punching that he was making a mistake...

But, how many of us wouldn't do the same thing?  We know that we should use open hand strikes to hard areas and closed fist strikes to soft areas, but do we really train for that?

We put on the gloves and we box, kickbox, and cross train in Muay Thai.  Then we put on the bag gloves and we hit the heavy bag to work up a good sweat.  Then we head to karate class and we do hundreds of closed fist techniques.  We pound a makiwara to toughen up our knuckles.   We end up doing thousands and thousands of repetitions against resistance with a closed fist.  It's no wonder we are going to punch with a closed fist when things get crazy.

What we really should be doing is training in a way that will save your hands.  Hit to the head with open hand strikes.  Save your punches for the soft parts of the torso and neck.  The exception to this rule is when you use a hammerfist.  You can close your fist and still hit to the hard parts with the bottom of your fist without damaging your hands.

The hammerfist has a huge advantage as a versatile weapon because it allows you to still strike even if you are holding an object in your hand, say like a small flashlight. Or a big Motorola radio.  Some of military trainers suggest the hammerfist strike while holding a pistol in your fist so that the butt of the weapon adds to the strike. (The old pistols made great impact weapons, while I've heard reports of some of the newer pistols breaking and malfunctioning when used as an impact weapon.  In this case, it's primarily the magazine floor plate which can be broken allowing all of your rounds to fall out).

There are those out there that say that the other exception is the closed fist to the jaw, primarily the portion that would be covered by a football facemask.  However, anecdotal evidence would suggest this is harder than it sounds because several professional boxers have broken their hands in street brawls and one would assume that they would be the experts at hitting a person on the jaw.  However, Geoff Thompson has published a number of accounts of his successful use of a closed fist against a person's jaw (he says the movement of the person's head after you punch them cushions your fist a bit).

Not to get off on a tangent about hammerfists, but try and devise a way in which you can spend your training time hitting to the head with open hand strikes.  Use one of the various training dummies that have a head and an body on them.  Use one of your training partners as a human dummy and practice your combinations with open hand strikes (or hammerfists and elbows) to the head.  While you are grappling, take the time to mimic the motions that you would use to strike the opponent when appropriate.  You can even do your one-step or three-step sparring with the mission of using open handed strikes to the hard parts and closed handed strikes to the soft parts.

Be careful of falling into the trap of pounding your padded training partner with your fists simply because the padding makes it possible.  I've had good luck wearing an instructor's headgear with a wire cage.   You cannot punch barehanded to the cage because it hurts.  But you can slap and palm heel it with no problem.

I've noticed that the sparring partners who fair the best against the helmet with the wire cage on the face are people from Okinawan and Chinese martial art systems who spend the majority of their time sparring and training to fight bare knuckled.  The people who have the worst time against the cage are boxers and Muay Thai fighters.  Ironically, many Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu people also do well.  I think they are taught early on the realities of hitting to the head with an open hand, but I also see that they are relatively uncomfortable striking and they still fear hurting their hand on the cage.  They have not punched enough in their careers to develop the reflexive punching response of boxers and others who routinely wear gloves.

Do a gut check here, if you primarily wear boxing-type gloves while you train, then you will almost certainly punch with a closed fist when in a fight.   Even if you tell yourself that "in a real fight" you will remember to strike differently, your training will override your conscious thought.

Healthy hands good.  Broken hands bad.

Structure your training now to save yourself later.  Because you WILL fight the way you train.

Brad Parker is executive director of Defend University (www.defendu.com), a research and development group located in Phoenix, New York, Ireland,  dedicated to the exploration of leading edge techniques and strategies for self-defense, security and defensive tactics.