Personal Self Defense skills should help you when you are in some of the worst situations...
Personal Self Defense skills should help you when you are in some of the worst situations...
Agreed.
And...?
Knowledge is but a small piece of the puzzle.
I have faced such situation twice because I have worked in honky tonks and dive bars for 35 years. I was also a truck drive once and someone tried to rob me years ago.
Thank God most normal people around here will go through life and never face such situations.
The things that are really important in a bad self protection situation I believe cannot be taught.
Ed Boyd
Mr. Ridge,
Sorry if I was a bit abrupt, it's just that your first post here at E-budo was a new thread and consisted of a simple statement. No introduction, no context... often the MO of spammers trying to get their foot in the door.
There are a number of members of E-budo who are serving police officers, others who work as security guards, military personnel, retired any-of-the-above, and people with decades of martial training. I suggest you take some time to look around the various fora, as the topic of self-protection has been discussed many times.
Welcome to E-budo.
Andrew Smallacombe
Aikido Kenshinkai
JKA Tokorozawa
Now trotting over a bridge near you!
Philosophy, strategy, thoughts on technical responses, etc...become useless.
Will probably happen between 5-7 feet (2 meters). Very likely you are trying to get into your car.
It happens very fast. There is no time to think.
Ed Boyd
Hmmmm - yes and no.
I would argue that personal defense skills can and should help you in even a variety of relatively low threat situations. To be sure they are needed in the worst of the worst, but the vast majority of instances are going to be pretty pedestrian. Too often "self defense" is thought about in terms of the bogeyman-high end threat requiring an extremely violent response when most are simply not like that at all. Many people have no idea how to assess threat or manage conflict in the minor day to day things that can escalate, and these skills can be learned and practiced to good effect.
Second, I believe it is too broad to state that strategy and technical responses will become "useless." Certainly for people not stress inoculated sufficiently this is pretty common, and even for some who should be stress inoculated, but if this was always the case then pretty much any training would be useless.
I don't personally think that is true. Training that is contextual and provides realistic stress inoculation will allow greater latitude, even under duress, for tactical and strategic thinking and technical responses.
This is taken from my limited experience; you can train in martial arts for many years, decades in fact, you can fight in the ring or octagon, you can carry a kubotan or sharpen the end of your brolly but you will NEVER know how you will react to a self defense situation. You may have an automatic response to aggression, if you are lucky your kata may save your life. But the true enemy is the freeze impulse; that is total inaction in the face of your attacker. It is not gender specific and age matters not. You can train for it, you can with the right instructor learn to develop a real response for what is basically the fight or flight reflex. My Sensei used to test our response to fear; he would take you to the edge of panic, then teach you how to use this energy and its potential to save your life. I know it does not sound like the cool calm Samurai approach, but this is not the movies. I have only been in a serious situation once in my life and thankfully I am here to type this post.
Gareth Williams
Look to the Far Mountain and see All.