“I teach karate as a life protection art, not as a sport….. My son commands the 4th Marines he trains Marines to go to war, and then you pray you never have to. It’s the same thing in training karate, that you train to win, there are no silver medals in a life protection situation.” (End quote) – Doug Perry 10th-dan Shorin-ryu
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One of the things that I think is vitally important in our training and teaching is to clearly define what you are teaching. What I mean by that is to identify in which context any given methodology, technique, tactic, training method, etc is to be utilized.
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The most common failure of this that I see is people mistaking martial arts, dojo or tournament fighting and self-protection to be one and the same. There may be some crossover, but they are very different and teaching one as the other can be highly dangerous.
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Teaching fighting as self-protection will ignore vitally important things like personal security, awareness skills, the law, escaping, de-escalation, and a host of other things all of which are way more important than “fighting skills” when it comes to real self-protection.
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In reality, using tournament or dojo fighting techniques in a real situation can even put you in more danger than you may already be in.
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Do NOT teach dojo or tournament karate techniques as self-defense. Do NOT allow your students to become ill-equipped and overconfident believing they will be able to defend themselves adequately, when in reality they possess little or no self-defense skills and knowledge.
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People really need to keep in mind that the majority of Karate McDojos have been watered down to the point of stupidity and total inefficiency, making their Karate worthless against much of anything except a wooden board. Which ultimately puts the safety of their students in jeopardy. Authentic original Karate consists of strategies, self-protection techniques and principles, focussed towards life protection in the real world, facing lethal or non-lethal attack. Not winning a medal, or series of consensual fights in a dojo.
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Students deserve better. Teach the truth. 
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 Photo Credit & quote: TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography & James Pankiewicz, Asato Dojo, Okinawa.
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With thanks to Iain Abernethy.

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