Fighting ability is just one aspect of self-defense. It exists alongside other skills such as situational awareness, verbal de-escalation, escaping, weapons, protecting others, the law, etc. which many people unfortunately overlook.
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Also learning to recognize and avoid, or verbally de-escalate potentially hostile situations, these are hugely important skills if your interest in practicing the martial arts is for self-defense…… But most comments I see are about fighting alone.
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You can’t rely on fighting skills alone, because its NEVER going to be enough. There are other skills that are just as essential.
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I often write about this because there are so many people that do not understand that fighting in a dojo, gym, school, or tournament, is NOT self-defense. Too many of the comments on my Pages reveal misunderstandings from people that believe fighting skills are sufficient. Boxing, MMA, Jiu-Jitsu, karate, they are all excellent disciplines in their own right, but your training needs to be in the correct context and the correct mindset.
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Everyday there are news headlines of people squaring off with an attacker thinking they can fight they way out of a bad situation. Most peoples skills fall way short of what is actually required. You must understand this and stop living in a fantasy world. In addition to the martial arts, I have worked for the Military and Police Service, and now as a retired EMT, I have familiarity with fights, stabbings and worse. After speaking with many of the injured (the ones I could), they all had one thing in common, they overestimated their skills.
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It continues to astound me that people are lacking logic and common sense when it comes to the subject of self-defense. As an example, many schools and dojo rarely consider an attacker simply with a hidden blade, or in fact any kind of weapon, whether environmental or strategic.
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Even very skilled empty hand practitioners don’t take the time to really understand the mindset, variables and the chaos of edged weapon attacks. And the sad truth is, any variation or change can destroy even a good defensive tactic within seconds. And it will happen to you if you look at knife or weapons attacks in the same way as empty hand fighting.
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System or style is not as important as the instructor and their mindset. How you train is almost more important than what you train.
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If you are interested in self-defense then start by identifying your threat model, and train accordingly. What is the most likely way you’ll be attacked? What is the best way to train yourself to defend against that threat? These threat models are often labelled as the HAOV (habitual acts of violence), and should be studied deeply.
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An actual fight is about survival. Not about squaring off and going toe-to-toe.
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If you’ve decided your martial arts have to incorporate a practical skill set for real self-defense, you need to answer those two questions and train accordingly. Find an instructor whose vision is to train people on that threat model and those type of defenses, and you likely won’t waste your time….. and maybe, just maybe, you will survive a potentially violent encounter.
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“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
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