DECATUR - On the face of it, the confrontation between the 5-foot-10, 215-pound faux attacker dressed like Darth Vader and the petite 5-foot-4, 135-pound chiropractor looks very one-sided.

The attacker grabs Dr. Leanne Trostel and lifts her clean off the floor, but then suddenly, the doctor prescribes some powerful medicine: Bracing one leg around her adversary, she uses the other to deliver a healthy dose of rapid-fire knees to the groin. Down he goes as if felled by a light saber, only to be further propelled into some alternate universe with multiple blows to the head.

The clinical transformation from victim to victor, suddenly free to run away and practice another day, takes less than four seconds.

"What I like about learning these moves is they are just very simple, not complex, and I like simplicity," Trostel says. "And from the first lesson, I could use it; I could actually defend myself. It makes me feel safer, and it makes me feel happier."

She is talking about the Offensive Personal Protection System, or OPPS, developed by Decatur man Eric Littrell, the doctor's mock attacker (his Vader looks come from giant protective headgear and all-body padding).

Trostel started taking private lessons from him three months ago and, impressed with the effectiveness of what she was being taught, offered Littrell space to start an OPPS academy at her clinic.

The instructor and a handful of students meet in a small interior common area fronting the clinic's offices to explore the art of administering disabling pain to bad people. Littrell doesn't like the term self-defense, which he says is too passive. With OPPS, you take the fight to the attacker, and you keep on taking it until they aren't in a position to hurt you anymore or it's safe to run away.

"Self-defense is dependent on what the opponent does," Littrell says. "So the bad guy who is attacking you is calling the shots, and you are reacting. But when you are attacked, you want to be in control, and you want to dictate the terms of the fight."

Littrell is the guy who introduced a popular class in Irish stick fighting at Richland Community College. That was for fun, he says, but his personal protection system isn't.

A veteran of the Army and Navy, where he studied military self-defense techniques, and a lifelong student of martial arts forms ranging from tae kwon do to judo, OPPS is Littrell's synthesis of what works, distilled from what doesn't.

Littrell says you can forget the movie version of leaping kicks, twirling hands and kung fu screaming. When a man steps in front of you on a lonely street at night, holds a knife to your chest and snarls "Give me your money or I'll cut your heart out," the instructor says your body flushes with adrenaline, your bowels loosen and you forget all those fancy martial arts moves.

"When you are under the effects of the adrenal dump, the fight or flight response, one of the psychological consequences is you are incapable of fine or refined motor skills," he adds. "All you are left with is your gross motor functions, and that's what we use."

Students are taught to jab elbows and strike with palms, knees and feet at a machine gun rate, using interconnected moves to target an attacker's head, neck, eyes, groin and other vulnerable bits.

Littrell says that when a bad guy tries to assault you or comes at you with a gun or knife - all covered in class - they've crossed a line. There are no rules of engagement, no time to think about strategy. He says OPPS blends with natural body mechanics and flashes out of his students as an instinctive reaction.

"Neurological disruption," he announces, pulling the Vader helmet back on and getting ready to let his students practice what they've learned. "That's a fancy term for taking the attacker's mind off the attack. "You give him a shot there (indicates chin), a smack there (ear) and knee to the groin and maybe a hammer fist to the clavicle, and that doesn't give the bad guy time to regain his thought process and reinitiate the attack. He only knows pain, and he's down."

Husband and wife students Ryan and Devin Pope followed their instructor over from his Irish stick fighting class and are glad they made the trip. "When someone comes up to you and gets in our face, what Eric teaches is a refinement of our natural body movements and reactions and is very straightforward," says Ryan Pope. "It's hard and brutal, and it works."

Littrell also offers private instruction and was recently recruited to teach women students at a Millikin University sorority. He says he isn't getting rich off of all this, but he is getting a lot of satisfaction.

"I am not going to be fully satisfied, however, until I've taught everybody that I can get my hands on," he says. "I'm on a mission to empower ordinary people with the tools they need to protect themselves when violence enters their lives."

treid@herald-review.com|421-7977