Training for the Improbable

Kids (and adults) get into the martial arts on a daily basis with the desire to make themselves stronger and more capable of defending themselves.  By and large, those same kids (and adults) will most likely never have any need or reason to use their acquired skills on another human being for the sake of preserving their own lives.  I feel like most people understand this as they get older, but when we're children there might be a bully at school that makes us feel weak, or a person in our lives that makes every effort to feel inferior.  The movies and TV shows tell us that learning to fight will teach us to stand up for ourselves and overcome the adversity and beat the bad guys.  That's absolute bullshit.

The martial arts in generally can do an admirable job of teaching one to take care of themselves in a self-defense situation, but the problem comes when the instructors don’t differentiate between self-defense and training to fight.  Training to fight, can in many ways be the best way to teach somebody to take care of themselves, as is spoken about by numerous proponents on Bullshido.net.  On the other hand, depending on the style, training to fight only teaches movement within a specific rule-set.  My primary training focus has been Shotokan karate, within that rule-set we learn to duel with our opponents within a specific fighting range.  Little of it useful in the real world unless it is trained thus.  Some styles, such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, incorporate combat within a different range, but again neglects to discuss all the possible ranges of combat/

Back to differentiating, though; self-defense is typically defined as a situation where the victim is caught by surprise.  There is, generally speaking, a given victim and a given aggressor.  After the first few seconds, if the situation has not been defused in some way, we have now changed it into a fight.  In a fight, there is generally no given victim, both sides are aggressors.  The law, of course, can take a different view on this once the dust has settled, but by and large, if you watch a fight, there’s really no way knowing how it started.

Rob Redmond, of 24 Fighting Chickens, outlines proper self-defense “training” in the best and most concise way.  Self-defense isn’t about being able to fight, or knowing how to punch, kick and throw opponents, it’s about maintaining your safety by way of avoiding danger.  His blog post The Essence of Self Defense (Redmond, 2010), illustrates in best detail the type of “training” one should undergo to properly prepare for self-defense.