In a way you are wrong, and right. There is such a school here. Sensei is a vietnam vet. Shihan is a ww2 hero . Both have extensive frontline combat experience and involvement with literaly training the Australian SAS , in the modern days. They are experts in every single thing you mentioned . HOWEVER!!!! The fees got so high that ONLY wussy wussy lawyer types could afford it....so they had to TOTALLY change everything to suit those types. It ended up as a room full of non contact, arrogant, posh, office workers who could not even throw a basic jab. None of the students could defend themselves from a fly !!
Mike, have you heard of Geoff Thompson? He was a karate black belt that worked as a bouncer in London and realized a lot of what he trained was useless. He’s got old instructionals just out and open to watch on YT, but his ideas and ways of training were really interesting. He ended up training multiple additional arts like judo and Muay Thai and prefers them to karate which he’s an 8th fan in shotokan. Anyways, interesting guy I figured I’d mention that I figured might interest you if you haven’t already heard of him.
This. A thousand times this. By the way, how about evasion, escape and how to take cover? Honestly it seems to me like fighting isn't even the first thing to teach in self-defense (although it's still something you ought to learn). In self-defense, your goal is not to defeat the opponent. It's to get back to a safe state. Period. You might need to defeat someone to get there, but it's not always the case.
Selling bulletproof backpacks for your children means you've given up on the idea that people are good. I realize you send your kids to a proper lily-white school and you'll never have to deal with school shooters...well, unless YOU become one of them. You have a lot of tendencies that can make you that someday. You're a creepy dude. Is that what this post is about? Bullet proof garb for children? Why don't you vote for proper gun control instead and force your politicians to do the right thing?
I would define self defense as "avoiding dangerous situations but being able to control and defuse the danger if you couldn't avoid getting into the situation"
That's pretty good but I wouldn't say that that is the definition off self defense but a method of self defense. I say that because sometimes defusing doesn't work. Another thing that I notice is that if difusing is the definition of self defense there is a problem. I say this because you're assuming that all motivation for violence is do to agitation or anger. Sometimes violence is do to a desire to do evil for it's own sake. You can't defuse that.
I think “self defense” for a lot of people just means doing well in what would *legally* be considered defense of yourself or others, and therefore not assault - so winning a fight you didn’t start etc.
Too bad there's alot of people also believe in excessive violence in every situations and garbage like " i would rather getting judged by 12 than carried by 4". They resulted to extreme violence even when all people do is looking at them funny or cursing them and called it self defense
I'll quote Rich Dimitri on this: "While the vast majority of self protection systems train for the proverbial streets and generic Hollywood street violence, the reality of violence and abuse is that it rarely happens in the streets. When it does, it is either social violence gone awry, gang related, or roughly 10% of the time where a civilian will actually face a pure and applied self defense situation that can be avoided most of the time with proper awareness skills. Over 90% of violence and abuse are committed by people known to their victims, roughly 30% of that 90% are immediate family members. The physical assaults mainly come in the form of ambushes predicated by a personalized behavioural delivery system making technical applications moot for self protection. Over 90% of victims worldwide (including rape and murder) are victimized at home, school and work, not the streets. If learning self defense is your goal, worry less about the strangers in the hoodies in the alleys, as the enemy is much more often, closer than you think. Learn the differences between self defense, combatives and martial arts, it could save your life and loads of lawyer fees." We could also speak about the fact that most self-defense teaching arejust focused on physical altercation, and completly ignore harassment, emotional, mental, financial abuse. And elderly people, kids and not able-bodied people are completly left aside. SD as it is mainly teached now is just is utterly incomplète and focuses on a very narrow définition of what violence is, it sells better that way.
Yep. In fact, I would even go further than that, and say that de-escalation training is often far more helpful than combat training. Especially for those of us who work with the public, a lot of time what helps, is simply getting someone to calm down. My job also happens to be on a mountain, in extreme weather conditions, and for me, "self-defense" often has a lot more with being prepared for an emergency wilderness situation than it does being attacked by people on the streets. Though I do carry pepper spray and a flashlight for those situations too.
@@sarakajira yep. Everytime I mention wanting to learn X Martial Art for self defence or have a certain tool or other things I want to add or learn that people have an "alternative" to I just say along the lines of "Yes, I know. I am a security guard training to advance in such a profession or go be an LEO or serviceman. I know all about De-escalation, MOAB, and conflict management I have taken courses, read books and done it on the job. Thank you for telling me about it. Would you care to share your own level of experience or are you unfamiliar with the specifics of actually doing it?" Shuts a lot of people up. Same with mentioning I studied parkour and run/jog almost daily when people say "just run then". Kind of annoying when people give unsolicited or irrelevant advice like they're an expert when they don't know what the person they're talking to knows, has done, or does.
@@HeartlessKnave Yeah but this is the internet. The other thing is then you're just a mcdojo or your system is not foda streetz. Or I could challenge you to a fight at some unspecified place and time. But i'm definitely gonna google leo and moab
@@descoutinho-e1y Law Enforcement Officer. Management Of Aggressive Behavior. Additionally, some of those giving unsolicited or irrelevant advice are people I've met IRL, not purely online.
In my school that advertises self defense for children, the instructor gives free tuition so the kids can do better in school and keep away from bad company, they try to help the children make friends and build self confidence, and my instructor (who was a police man) would educate students who were molested on public transport on the legal actions they can take. Oh, we also do martial arts.
I like that the martial arts was emphasized last. I can't help but feel like a lot of the prior skills, like making friends, building confidence, laws & consequences are way more useful as "self-defense" skills. It's still good to have the martial arts to back it up, I mean, that's why we're all on this channel I think, but your school seems very helpful.
@@hard2hurt Free tuition for kids up to a certain age (after which they are paying customers)? And being able to write off the services as charitable donations? That just seems like using a platform for advertising your business With tax deductions. Especially if you hammer in continuous training is needed, it ensures future business. It’s what my instructor did. We went with him for about 5 years after the free classes ended. Edit: and in the classes, typically the older brothers or even parents were paying customers.
Self defence for kids?...... Run and scream. But the parents are the ones who should do the defence. No pun intended towards your instructor, i just don't believe in it.
He is a primary school teacher. Teaching martial arts thing is a hobby of his I think. He only has two classes a week at a community center and he charges $7 for 12 lessons. Maybe I am wrong to call it a school, cos we are a really small group.
I think the best things any combat sport can bring you are: 1: Athleticism 2: Mental Fortitude 3: Coordination and Ability to learn new skills But there are not many activities that developp those 3 qualities as well at the same time. That's why they are great for "self defense"
Wow this actually made me feel really nice about everything I've been doing. I've trained in various states of dress/ armor, different weather conditions, storming, muddy, and I seek training with different types of trainers as do my own trainers as well. I truly love martial arts and how expansive and colorful it is. I can't believe I ever spent any significant period of time without it.
I once heard that the RCMP definition of self-defence goes something like, "When a person's conduct is so egregious that stopping them is a higher priority than whether they survive being stopped." That said, I usually find it helpful to think of self-defence in three tiers: strategy, tactics and techniques. Strategy as in looking at the reasonably-likely threats your life actually presents and avoiding or mitigating those dangers. The people you associate with, the places you go, where you live. The big picture. Do you live somewhere where home invasions are common? Can you move somewhere else? Tactics come into play when you need to do something that has a non-zero level of risk (like most things) but need to minimise that risk as much as possible. So maybe you have to walk home through the middle of town at 2-3 in the morning. Maybe _still_ steer clear of large groups of drunken idiots. Techniques ... are the kind of stuff you can practice in a gym or at a shooting range. Winning a fight that you didn't start. Just keep in mind that if things get this bad, you've already fucked up on the first two.
loved that last line, we constantly had instructors disappear at certain times during the week only to find out they were taking more classes and continuously training themselves. really shows in they way they taught us.
In the last year iv really worked to clear so many misconceptions about "martial arts" that were incorrect and unhealthy. And it really has a lot to do with the content you and others have put out. Thanks to everyone 🙏❤️
Hey, I agree with everything your saying. I have studied “self defense” for a while and realized there is no way to prepare for a actual attack that may or may not happen. The more and more I do BJJ, MMA, Judo, or Kali the more inadequate I realize I am at actual self defense. One of our BJJ black belts is a full time firearms instructor outside of BJJ. Also one of the guys I train BJJ with is one of the founders of Dog Brothers Stick fighting organization. He is crazy good with edged weapons. One of my favorite resources of actual events that have occurred is the Active Self Protection TH-cam channel. He shows the good with the bad and actually what happens. Lots and lots of security videos. It would be cool if you had him in your channel.
I'm going on record here for you Mike. Your channel has genuinely got the most unskippable (is that even a word?) sponsorship segments because you always align with relevant sponsors and you actually test and use their stuff. I agree with your basic self defense definition as a general thing.
Agree 100% I tell my friends that you want to find a good, reputable martial arts school that has a self-defense class in their curriculum, not a "self-defense" school. That means that they're teaching how to apply what they know in the context of unbalanced, no-rules, life/death scenarios -- not that they claimed to have masters all aspects of those scenarios.
The concept of self-defense has shifted a bit for me since getting married. Maybe it's just that I'm less interested in 'self' and more focused on the 'defense' part. Would love of video about this.
For "self defense" I like to break it down in stages. They aren't necessarily linear, or have to hit each step because real life is messy but the stages I use are; awareness, avoidance, evasion, de-escalation, preemption, fight. You'd need an instructor who could teach you everything about each of those steps, which can be more detailed than one might realize. For example awareness. That can refer to situational awareness, but it can also be speaking to knowing your environment. What's the crime rate, what's the most common crime, where to do crimes typically occur, how many criminals usually commit the crime, how do they do so. It can be awareness about tactics they use, it can be awareness about time and weather and how that can affect things. You can go as deep or as shallow as you want in each of those stages. That's a lot. I'm more self defense focused in my training and I can't answer most of those questions about the town I live in, much less your town. If your town as a high rate of gun crime, you might benefit more from weapons training than someone who lives in a town where the last time a gun was used was in 1952.
You forgot de-escalation. You'd need an expert in it as well. I have talked down some serious situations. It definitely an important skill when it comes to protecting yourself from danger.
De-escalation should probably be first or close to it on any self defense course. Knowing you have some idea on what to do if it hits the fan helps but ultimately you don't lose any of the fights that don't happen.
ever seen the video of the valor thieves sitting in a circle telling tall tales of being in the service, with each of them knowing every other person is lying, but too scared to be found out to call anyone out?
@@StanleyKubick1 can't say I have. Not sure your point either. 🤷♂️ I said that de-escalation is an important skill that he forgot to mention. What does a bunch of stolen valor guys have to do with that? I've never claimed to have been in the military. I wanted to be when I was younger, but I have a knee injury that was disqualifying. I don't understand where you are going with that. Could you please explain it to me?
Great video as always. We have a project, two friends and I. It's a very small "self defense" school here in south america. I'm a krav maga instructor and I've been doing MMA for a while, one of my friends is a BJJ brown belt and is also training wrestling. The other one is a combatives instructor with a background on Philippines styles. We try to do everything you mentioned, and we fall short. And of course, we don't get enough students, not many of them stay long enough with us and we are underpaid. Trying to be a real self defense instructor is hard and it also sucks but I couldn't do it any other way.
For me, self defense is all in the description. It's keeping yourself safe from harm. That harm can be from criminals, but that's fairly rare. A lot of it will simply be following the rules of stupid - Don't do stupid things in stupid places at stupid times with stupid people. Another huge portion will be first aid and emergency communication skills. An extremely underrated, but important part is physical fitness. I'd say the smallest part of it is fighting (this does not make it not important! When you do need it, you really needed it) There's no "school" for it because it's a series of choices. You can be the best fighter in the world but if you're hanging out in the bad part of town at 3am flashing $$... You're probably not following the principles of self defense. Conversely, if your preventative measures fail and you haven't been consistently training to fight, you may as well have been doing fuck all the whole time because the situation is now upon you can you cannot respond to it.
There is some cultural and historical context to "self defence" marketing also. What I mean is that the school where I originally trained karate was started in the 80s, when the town was much rougher and more thugs and drunks were out in the streets, and it was a little more clear who the "self defence" part was aimed at defending against (I.e. basic street violence, not anything like home invasion defence or kidnapping or dealing with high level professional criminals). Plus the instructor was also a bouncer. These days the streets are much safer and so it is a lot more nebulous exactly what threats should be the focus of self-defence. That old karate school even closed down because not so many people were really worried about that kind of street self defence anymore, though of course the declining fashionability of karate was a factor also.
I love BJJ, but I always laugh when we do some of the "self-defense" techniques then we never use them in live training and punching is only incorporated into the MMA class that barely any of the BJJ guys go to. about 10 percent of why I do BJJ is for self-defense the other 90% is because I love it.
But see, the fact that you love BJJ is part of what makes it a good self-defense system for you. Years ago I asked someone at a gun range, "What do you think is the best gun for home defense?" and she said, "The one that you love, because you'll want to come out here and train with it all the time." There is no self-defense strategy that doesn't involve a crapton of training, and you're not going to train regularly, robustly, passionately, unless you love it. If you love going to the gun range, then be a gun guy. If you love BJJ, then be a BJJ guy. I stick with Krav Maga because I love it. Any self-defense training is better than no self-defense training, so stick with the training that you love and just do so with the understanding that you have some holes in your self-defense strategy and there aren't enough hours in the day to address all of them.
@@laraballard7125 "Any self defense training is better than no self defense training" I have to disagree. Bad self defense training can be dangerous as it will make someone overly confident in skills they don't actually have and could get them hurt worse. If someone is smart they would just hand over their wallet to a mugger and ideally be done with it. However if they go on the offensive they could get 100% killed because they were preemptively stopping an attack that they were sure the mugger was going to do anyway. They get killed in the process when they had no way of actually knowing if the mugger was going to attack them or not, due to things they were taught that they have misconceptions/misunderstandings about or are overly confident despite not actually knowing or being any good at the things they were taught, if they were even taught anything good. If that makes sense. I may have repeated myself a lot... anyway.
@@HeartlessKnave Sure. But that over-confidence can be a problem at any level, even with really good self-defense training. My Krav Maga instructor recently told us a story about an expert martial arts instructor (I've forgotten in what style, but the guy was very well respected) who got killed in a bar over the weekend. He had some kind of confrontation with another bar patron over a spilled beer, and expertly put him on the ground, pinned him, announced, "chill, man. It's over" or words to that effect, then let him up. If there was a TH-cam video showing this confrontation, you would have said, "Wow, that's a perfect model of how to handle a situation like that." So, confrontation supposedly over, the guy on the floor promptly got up, pulled a gun out, and shot the black belt dead. Knowing that now, I suppose you could now critique the black belt and say, "Well, when you pin someone to the ground, you should definitely frisk him for weapons before you let him up," or even "did he really have to show off all his martial arts skills, which apparently humiliated the guy, instead of just buying him another beer?" My point is that you could have some bad self-defense training, or years and years of really good self-defense training, and still make a fatal miscalculation about when and how to use force or how to judge the motivations and capabilities of others.
@@HeartlessKnave BTW, I think over-confidence is way, way, way more of a problem with male students than female students. Women go through life painfully well aware that most of the physical threats to our being are bigger and stronger than us. So, if anything, we're under-confident and unaware that there's anything at all that we could do physically to fend off a male attacker. My 5 years of Krav Maga has made me more risk-averse, not less. I get pounded on weekly in sparring class by a guy who is clearly fighting me at about 50% of his physical capacity. It's unpleasant enough at 50% that it serves as a weekly reminder that I want to avoid at all costs ever having to deal with a bare-knuckled dude in a real self-defense situation. So I never wear earbuds in public anymore, never mess with my cell phone on a public street anymore, am hyper-aware of my surroundings when using public transportation, etc. I'm confident but also quite fight-avoidant.
I'd like to see a video where you talk about training with your medical kit. "Worry about being able to plug holes before you worry about making holes". Also, on a personal note, when it comes to body armor I HIGHLY recommend FRAS. (plates, not the soft stuff) Its rifle rated armor that is actually light and comfortable. Its a tad pricy, but worth it if you can afford it. (and i'm sure it would fit in your nifty backpack)
When making holes you don't care about about that person's well-being, that would be contradictory to the action. But I'm on your team as in reccomending most people to at least have some basic medical skills. Just do some classes, it can truly save lives.
@@EnFyr That isn't what that saying means lmao. It means if you are in a situation where you feel it's necessary to have kevlar and a gun, It's more likely you or someone else (other than the attacker) will need medical attention than it is you will need to shoot somebody. Think about a mass shooting event; there's likely going to be more than one responder and only one person needs to shoot the guy but there will likely be MANY casualties that need medical attention.
I wish more people would own up to this. And especially the comment that "I'd okay for this to be a hobby" point. I think a lot of people use the "Self Defense" mantra as an exuse to train because they don't want to admit that they just think it's fun and that that is the only real reason they need.
Look at mike. Applying the discipline of academia to his craft. Consulting and learning from experts while critically thinking about the limits of their (and his own) expertise before using what he’s learned to test his hypothesis on certain topics/situations. Test, evaluate, learn, plan repeat. I love it ♥️♥️♥️
I would expand your definition by including something like "choosing to actively intervene to help someone who appears to be unlawfully assaulted". Might change the dynamics as it might include some active engagement vs disengaging as the primary strategy
The weird paradox is that if you train seriously for self defense you are almost 100% more likely to get hurt during training than you are in the hypothetical street scenario that will probably never materialize.
Thanks for this video! I used to work for a guy that wouldn't let me train at other place cause he thought it would make us look like we didn't know what we were doing. Since I went solo I've been training with other people but that's always been in the back of my as this irrational fear. Reframing it as "if you're not training at other places you clearly don't know what you're doing" is super helpful for my brain.
I just happened to fall into a school like the one you are describing. Great school that taught all aspects of defense with plenty of weapon training. Tom Howanic-Patriot Martial Arts- Texas. Great school and great all the instruction you said.
I was the senior student and an assistant instructor at a "self defense" school for about 5 years. We had almost all of those bases covered (though we definitely did not have defensive driving stuff as part of the curriculum). Our head instructor had dojo/traditional school/tournament experience in several striking arts, as well as he is a certified first aid/AED instructor, and a handgun&CCW instructor. He also had some catch wrestling background. And then when I joined the school, I brought my experience in wrestling, knives, and fighting "on the street" and in prison (cuz I've made some boo boos that sent me to bad places).. and after we pressure tested those dojo "this will always work" techniques against a monster of a man who has fought a lot (me), we kept those things that were high probability, and cut the rest. We sparred at various levels of intensity, we grappled hard, we used practice knives regularly, we trained with full blowback gas airsoft guns, we worked on first aid, and we worked on escaping first, fighting to escape second, and never trying to "fight to win". We also had several other people join our gym, one was a 5th dan master of Chung do Kwan, one was retired Army SOC, and one was retired Ranger 1st Batt. They added a lot of knowledge and experience to the table. We probably should've added guns to the grappling and sparing more often, though we added knives and sticks pretty regularly. We did plenty of conditioning and fitness, because if you can't do a pull up, are you strong enough to climb a fence to escape, or to pull an arm off of your neck if somebody is trying to choke you? But what we focused on is giving people a range of techniques, and then telling them to find the ones that worked for them, and make them become like reflexes. Like a few striking techniques with the hands, a few kicks, a few grappling techniques, and Master them. Get your ten thousand reps, and learn them until they happen without thinking. Learn some disarm strategies, some escapes from common attacks, and master them. And we had really frank conversations about the fact that trying to fight to win is already a losing situation in a real self defense scenario. The bad guy chose you because he thinks he can get over on you. Which means he knows sh$t that you don't, like he had a weapon, a buddy, something. So situational awareness is key. And yes, "self defense" is a marketing phrase. We talk about the difference between self defense, combatives, martial arts, martial sports, and combat sports. They may all look similar, and use some of the same things. They may be useful for similar things. But the training and then mind set of each is different. And training is fun. Most people will never need to fight for their life. And if you are one of the few who do, it doesn't matter what the sign on your gym said. Hit hard and run fast.
As prior military and practitioner of a few styles you're so right. There's so many things under the umbrella term self defense. Hell yeah market your schools that way but you breaking down the actual requirements for the full training and cost boggles the mind. No one person could ever be a total expert. You got the fighting, situational awareness, laws, physical and mental demands, descalation, first aid, after action, avoidance, and the list goes on. Great content dude and spot on. 🍻💯💪
This isn't one of those " In my opinion it means ". Self Defense is a legal construct. It has a specific meaning written into law. It is you standing before a judge using an affirmative defense and saying to the court " Yes I assaulted that person. But I have a legal justification for doing so". Those justifications are written into the law and you can only use those that already been established.
Great video content! My gym is primarily a Muay Thai gym, but i do teach courses (women's, blade, Pocket PDT, etc, all 8 hr courses). My biggest pet peeve is Martial Arts schools that boast Self Defense, but teach "art". There are 3 categories: 1.. Martial Arts - a rank structured curriculum that is "one size fits all" so that the entire family can achieve Black Belt. It is all technique based, many of which contain multiple "moves" to get to a single result. 2.. Combat Sports - Here we test what works and doesnt work (from the Martial Arts content) But, separated by gender, age, and weight division AND we have safety rules (ie; no eye gouges or headbutts, etc) 3.. Self Defense - No multiple moves, no compliance, no rules, no gender or weight or age divisions, No time outs, No "going light", etc etc. I see way too many Martial Arts instructors teaching "Self Defense" to women and kids and teaching things that clearly will NEVER work against the bigger stronger, sometimes armed, attacker. Look, Self Defense is NOT "one size fits all". It is both gender and age specific and needs to be trained/taught accordingly. Size matters, age matters, gender matters, environment matters, day/night matter, clothing worn matters, weapons matters, number of attackers matters, situation matters.... Thank you for posting this video and bringing that to light.
Saying your school teaches self defense may be marketing but it's also true if you're teaching part of the myriad of skills involved :) Good points as always Mike
I've helped my martial arts instructor with running self defence seminars, and much of this is emphasized. Legality and psychology are focuses. Having a theoretical understanding of psychology and the biological processes that occur during stress helps in rationalizing your own responses to high stress situation, and can help in providing guiding principles for stressful encounters (I.e, how does stress affect bodies in general, and my body in particular, and what does that mean for self defense/high stress encounters?) The overriding theme is that training 'tactics' trumps techniques. Similar themes, though with more specificity, have been emphasized when I've helped him run Use of Force for security and police. In my experience of having almost a decade of martial arts training and working security, the foremost benefit of martial arts training is that it helps inure you to SOME (but not all, not by a long shot) of the stresses of acute violence, and gives you a set of 'tactics' and conditioned responses that may be able to protect you before you have the time/wherewithal for more considered decision making, or that can inform your overall approach while in the 'fight'.
How do you overcome the problem of striking first? I don't mean the technical skill to. I mean having the confidence to push through the mental barrier of overthinking about what comes next if your strike fails to stop or put them down as they have a friend/s preparing to jump in and you're in a confined space with one at your back and have no options or room available to maneuver or reposition yourself. Its great that you included training on what to say on a 999 call. This is something I've personally had the worst luck with. I have some kind of autism that causes me to says things i'm trying not to when in a stressful situation. This sadly caused 999 calls i made to be taken as a hoax which sadly resulted in the murder of a women when they refused to send help. Now I'm forced to carry her death on my conscience because i left to call for help when i should of just struck the biggest guy & hoped for the best (even having been presented the perfect opportunity to possibly end him instantly after coaxing him into presenting his neck but finding myself unable to follow through because he'd not initiated contact to switch me from passive to offence. I hate myself because i stopped an attack just short that likely could of saved her life after I defused & tricked him into weighing up some weed in the hope of setting up a pre-emptive strike to even the odds as knew it would be 2 on 1 & he was twice my body weight on his own, but then when presented with it i stopped my elbow just shy of hitting the bridge of his neck while he was bent over, alerting him & causing him to return to an erect standing position losing me the advantage i'd stalled for. i had a key but couldn't bring myself to just start stabbing him in the neck/face while he was down there as it just isn't in me. why couldn't i just do that? she might be here now if i had. it haunts me knowing i couldn't overcome my aversion to hurting people long enough to end some sicko's life who deserved it at the cost of someone's who didn't. Unfortunately i suffer from pulling my own punches. I stop almost immediately before the point of impact even when my strike has full mechanical power, force & accuracy. I don't have an issue once contact has been initiated by them, but sadly most bullys and criminals wont strike first once i posture up which is something i need to flick my switch to offence or i end up overthinking & talk myself out of the fight that if it actually come to, usually doesn't go as well for my aggressors as they expect it to. I Just can't initiate contact. once its been established all the what ifs go out the window & it becomes a game. i suffer no fear while fighting & actually enjoy myself once it begins, aside from getting gassed quickly. I'm just not able to break my conditioning not to hit somebody unless they attack 1st. even when i want/need to hurt i still pull my attacks because subconsciously i'm trying not to. I can't even join my local combat gym to try to break this terrible burden as the 2 individuals who killed her are members there. I weighed 8 stone when this happened at 6 foot tall. The only good to come of it is that I'm now trying my damnedest to gain the weight & working out to ensure this never happens again. As I made a promise to the women i failed to save not to let them get away with it, & can't allow myself to let another person fall victim to my inability to strike first. They destroyed everything I thought I knew about myself, & nothing i can do can bring her back or alleviate the guilt i feel for leaving to call for help rather than staying to fight & protect her. Ironically a large part of my fear of returning was based on the fear of going to prison for what I knew I'd be forced to do had I done. Sadly while I myself am somewhat hard to hurt, I also find it equally hard to hurt others as it completely goes against my nature. its often not a fear of my personal safety that stops me, its my fear of hurting people, I just can't bring myself to do serious harm to somebody intentionally, even to those intending to do harm, who deserve no mercy and will give none. I need to break this curse as I can't allow anyone else to fall victim to my inability to do what must be done in a crisis situation. I'm just a gentle peace loving guy, you can have all the weapons & all the training in the world but if you can't get your head around hurting someone else, or striking pre-emptively when its called for, it all counts for nothing.
I have a different definition of self defense than many people but it sounds like you would agree with me. Martial arts and self defense are two different things. Martial arts is using your body in a dynamic way to fight. Self defense is a mindset on how to protect yourself and your loved ones from grevious bodily harm or death. Some martial arts inheritly play into self defense and certain systems are more condusive than others for protecting yourself and others. Self defense helps teach how certain techniques can be practically used outside a dojo or gym. However, these techniques are only effective if they were refined through repetition on a resistant training partner in the martial arts school.
Dude, absolutely one of the best, most truthful and savage videos of yours I have ever seen. And that says something, because I think I have seen every video you have made! LOL.
i spent time at an academy that had a tiered system for students that went: 1) lots of stressful training underwater (learn to relax). 2) lots of "parkour"esq endurance stuff..running, jumping, climbing, crawling (learn to escape). and finally after all that they would start wrestling and kickboxing, sometimes with proxy weapons. i think they had their priorities very much in order. learning to relax will help you avoid most confrontations, learning to escape will handle most of the rest, and only in the rare event that both of those attempts fail do you need to do some real fighting, and maybe just enough fighting to get you back to step 2. lots of SD schools pay lip service to this truth but they dont actually do much to train the "relaxing" and "escaping" bits
The only thing I'd add is self-defense also extends to others is some situations: my children, my elderly parents, etc. I'm just as concerned for my family when I'm out, or in my house, than defending myself, as they are also easier targets.
Having been in situations where I've been attacked, I've found that some of the most valuable "self-defense" skills, are things like: intuition--listening to your still small voice in your gut telling you to avoid a situation. Empathy and de-escalation: learning to calm someone down and possibly prevent a situation where an irrational person might get out of hand, before it does. And because I work on a mountain in extreme weather conditions in the winter: basic preparedness for possible wilderness emergencies. I do live in the city in the summer and take public transit and I've definitely seen my share of crazy people starting to fight on a train. I keep pepper spray and a flashlight for that.
I own a school that says self defense on the building too. It speaks very clearly to what we do. Very good for marketing because it is very clear the intention. Then it's our job to keep it effective.
A lot of what you mentioned though could have its cost drastically minimized by lectures on TH-cam, so that dojos could only focus on practice, instead of teaching and learning things from scratch everywhere. Maybe this will be more feasible in the near future. The mere fact that you were able to enumerate a finite number of skills is already a hint that it might be possible at some point.
100% agree with this. My younger self would disagree but he couldnt really fight anyways. I use “self defense” strictly for marketing. My mindset is staying prepared and thats what I teach. Mix and match from everything. Boxing, thai boxing, close quarter striking, grappling, weapon control, etc. The goal is to train scenarios and principles rather than techniques. Once fists start flying and adrenaline kicks in, technique is useless IMO. More I have studied and taught this approach to “self defense” the more I have found my ways to align with those you have mentioned. Looking forward to working with ya in person and having some discussions like this
Back in my late teens when I was training in Kenpo Karate, I considered myself training for "self defense". The gym went over the 'I hit you, you don't hit me back' type drills, full contact sparring with MMA rules, and grappling was also offered there. I felt very well off while I was training there and used some of it one time to stop a fight from happening. I consider a school/gym like that a self defense gym personally.
I watched a review of a Buck 119 a while ago, and the guy made comment that he thought it was funny that it was advertised as a hunting knife. Modern hunting knives have more ergonomic handles and significantly different blade geometry, and that you wouldn't be skinning anything with a 119. I commented something to the effect of, "you could skin a squirrel with a sharpened crowbar, it just might be a little messier. Use what you've got." He gave me the little heart thing on the comment, so I think he approved of the philosophy. I used to IMAGINE what I would do in fights. I'd been in plenty, but just scraps with other guys as teenagers. A couple real ones, but mostly friends in the backyard after watching UFC clips for an hour (seriously). I used to IMAGINE it, though. And it typically involved grabbing something. An ash tray, throwing a lamp, a chair. Then I got into boxing, and after a year actually had a couple amateur fights. By that time, after training about seven hours a week and sparring at least twice a week, I realized something. That's not notable experience by any means. There's still regulars at the gym who dance circles around me. BUT.. I realized at that point that grabbing a chair or something would probably put me at a disadvantage. I have skills and knowledge that I've put into practice for enough time, that I'm better off sticking to what I know and keeping my hands free. My philosophy on self defense changed because I realized that hitting someone with a lamp was drastically less effective than using the skills I had actually practiced for all that time. So the same way some G10 or micarta handled Nessmuk style knife is gonna make better work of a deer than a 119... you're better of with the 119 than your teeth and nails alone. Boxing doesn't nearly encompass all the skills you need to effectively defend yourself in every situation. BUT I think I'm much better prepared for a fight than I was. So yeah, that's my two cents. I know you weren't arguing AGAINST that, I just wanted to share. I think ANY training, no matter what specific facet of "self defense" it may encompass will leave you better prepared than you were before. Unless your instructor is some mall cop Tier 1 chair force operator. Then you're probably worse off.
Very important words of wisdom and warning! The only thing I'd take issue with is saying that you need "experts" in all of these areas - and Mike might not have meant that fully literally. Of course, the more qualified a person is the better, even to teach very basic skills. But if basic skills are all you need from a certain area to incorporate into your "self defence package", than a few experts on the things that truly matter plus some generalists will do … or perhaps even just an expert at one thing who is skilled enough at the rest to incorporate it into a self defence class. Obviously, anyone worth their money will tell you exactly where their limitations are (like Mike does constantly) and when you might need an expert in another field to reach a certain target.
I agree with you 100% self defence is mostly: -"do not get married for legal and financial reasons" -"do not frequent places where ppl usualy fight" -"know how to evade the places you enter in case of emergency" -"be prejudiced" (yes, be "racist", be a biggot, believe in all steriotypes it will save your life) -"know how to do first aid properly" -"know how to carry someone you love if they need it" -""greyman" strategy is the best" -"do not cultivate enemies" -"do not talk about politics and religion with others, it is disrespectifull and causes trouble" -"do not let your ego get the best of you" and finaly if it all goes to shit, know how to fight, don't even bother in beeing the very best or efficient, a good decietfull trick like pretending to be harmless + jab+straight is enough to get you out of most of those situations in real life. a person that is good in self defence is someone who never needed to defend themselves against strikes and shots etc etc.
Mike Tyson really summed it all in one phrase: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. My line to add to Mike Tyson's comment, there is no such thing as a one size fits all miracle martial art that will work in all situations, they all have their strengths and weaknesses and if any "Master" falls in love with his discipline and does not look, learn and teach anything else, well, he's nothing less than an incompetent, even more so if all he/she teaches are forms and techniques without any sparring worthy of the name. This is the main reason why Kung Fu and Wing Chun are too often seen as a joke...not because the martial art is a joke, it's because too many Sifu are a joke.
I completely agree with Acusto Dulla below. I am a martial arts instructor. I recently put together a seminar on self-protection. It covered most of the areas mentioned in the video above. At the end of writing it I was depressed to realise how irrelevant most of it is for the majority of people at risk of physical harm. The majority of violence occurs, not between strangers, but between people who know each other. In my opinion a self-defence course should include how to recognise techniques of emotional control, financial control, social control and isolation, and physical control. It must also cover how to build assertiveness so that a person can remove themselves from a toxic situation.
Used to instruct some Muay Thai when the head coach ran late. Anyone that ever asked me about "Self-Defense" was made very clear that it isn't self defense, and we teach a sport to be done in a ring between two consenting people. That being said, it's always better to know your distance and how to block a few haymakers + throw a jab and a teep as compared to someone who has never trained in their life. Beautifully said Mike, and if I remember correctly in the words of Matt Hughes, your BJJ plan goes out the window the first time someone drops an elbow on your face and you've never felt that.
A sports martial arts competition, is the closest thing to a real fight I have experience. Not ashamed to say I was nervous and full of adrenaline in my first bjj match and points fight many years ago. Still feel it now. Nothing we do in the gym comes close.
As a Krav Maga Instructor ( don't hate me people) I couldn't agree more, as much as I enjoy Krav it does require you to cross train if you want to improve in certain areas. I've trained in BJJ to improve my groundwork, went to Muay Thai to work on my kickboxing and I'm currently working with a boxing coach to learn better ways to teach footwork, headmovement etc...
Years ago a middle aged single woman that I used to work with asked me to teach her some "moves" because she's afraid to go for walks. I told her that I can't help her even though I'm a martial arts instructor. Instead she should get a dog or volunteer to walk dogs. She couldn't understand so I explained; its not about the "moves" if that's all it was then I've wasted 30 years of my life training. What she really wanted was a deterrence and since know one will know that she knows some "moves" she needs a visual deterrence such as walking in a group, with a large male body guard or a large dog. Ultimately my point is Self Defense is complicated and almost no one who is looking for those skills really knows what they are looking for. Last point. When I was a young man I competed in kickboxing. One night after training for 3 hours, I was exhausted and bruised and I thought to myself, "I get beat up worse everyday at the gym than I ever will if I got jumped in an alley". That was not literal but the point is, training for real self defense / combatives / combat sports is harder than most people are willing to commit to.
I train and coach at a "self-defense martial arts" dojo. we use the "self-defense" at a method of training. so the newer you are, the more defensive skills you learn first like blocking, escaping, running away to safety. then as you move up the ranks, then you learn more offensive skills. I would say we are a rounded style of standing, take-down, and ground techniques. however, we don't get crazy combative with fire arms because we cant dodge bullets... so How deep does the term have to go or should go for "self-defense" to be affective? Like if you were to name the stages of intensity if the dojo were to have limited self-defense skills? Does that make sense? Like we teach up to knife & stick (cuz theyre the most common in our area) but not much firearms.
As someone who has had the unfortunate experience of having to call 911 more than a dozen times for a variety of high adrenaline situations I can vouch for how unexpectedly difficult it can be to get the exact type of help you need to your location quickly and efficiently. You need to know how to communicate your exact location to an operator that is often not even from your town, and communicate about the incident in such a way that the police take the threat seriously enough to respond, but not so seriously that they shoot someone immediately upon arrival.
I took about 6 months of Uechi-ryu when I was young. Our instructor wanted us to be "tough" so we kicked the floor barefoot, punched bags until our knuckles bled and did other silly stuff. No one bothered at the time to ask that if we ever did get into a fight, that you aren't going to stop & take your shoes off, because that is how we trained.
Hey, the closest I had to fulfill your requirements on self-defense have been Workshops with Rory Miller. Had been in Germany in the HQ of a local biker gang. Pretty funny. Because Rory was a U.S.Citizen, there were german police officers who familiarize us with the german legal framework. Rolling, punching, Weapons, legal stuff, all in a "natural" setup with regular clothes. Great fun. What was really strange for us, was how adamant he was about not having actual firearms on people during the workshop. That was strange, because that is never an issue in our country, because they are well regulated. Ah, great times. Defending from a car seat or whilst sitting on the toilet.
Very thought provoking piece. Thank you for sharing this. I also do not believe it is realistically possible for any one person to master everything that falls under the umbrella of self defense, and that is why this journey of learning and discovery can potentially take a lifetime. The two basic flaws I often see is that I think some confuse any one component of self defense as the entirety of self defense, and of course that is not so. As mentioned before, the other problem is if and when I encounter someone who claims they have indeed mastered all that is self defense. Such claims make me skeptical. Having said that, I still use the term self defense school and self defense instructor, because as you yourself have mentioned, it gets the most people to about the same page without having to get too bogged down on the semantics. That way you can spend more time focusing on the task at hand. As for practicing, while one can not practice and train all the skill sets all the time, we can still try to practice quite a bit of it in our everyday life. For example, situational awareness is something we can and should try to do all the time, and not only when we are in class training. Same for some parts of defensive driving skills, and more. In the end, self defense is just doing the best we can to take good care of ourselves, and more importantly, take care of those around us who need and deserve our help. We can only do the best we can, and hopefully, some day look back without too many regrets.
As a former tactical Tad, I agree completely. I gave up on trying to find the proper "Self Defense School" exactly for the reasons you listed. ATM I train kickboxing. It is not a self defense school, but I reckon if I do get into problems, what I learned there is probably gonna be more helpful than the "360 krav maga defense against a knife".
You can check out the full line of bulletproof backpacks at www.leatherbackgear.com
In a way you are wrong, and right. There is such a school here. Sensei is a vietnam vet. Shihan is a ww2 hero . Both have extensive frontline combat experience and involvement with literaly training the Australian SAS , in the modern days. They are experts in every single thing you mentioned .
HOWEVER!!!! The fees got so high that ONLY wussy wussy lawyer types could afford it....so they had to TOTALLY change everything to suit those types. It ended up as a room full of non contact, arrogant, posh, office workers who could not even throw a basic jab. None of the students could defend themselves from a fly !!
Have you seen the ad TH-cam put at the end of the video 😆
Mike, have you heard of Geoff Thompson? He was a karate black belt that worked as a bouncer in London and realized a lot of what he trained was useless. He’s got old instructionals just out and open to watch on YT, but his ideas and ways of training were really interesting. He ended up training multiple additional arts like judo and Muay Thai and prefers them to karate which he’s an 8th fan in shotokan. Anyways, interesting guy I figured I’d mention that I figured might interest you if you haven’t already heard of him.
This. A thousand times this.
By the way, how about evasion, escape and how to take cover? Honestly it seems to me like fighting isn't even the first thing to teach in self-defense (although it's still something you ought to learn).
In self-defense, your goal is not to defeat the opponent. It's to get back to a safe state. Period. You might need to defeat someone to get there, but it's not always the case.
Selling bulletproof backpacks for your children means you've given up on the idea that people are good. I realize you send your kids to a proper lily-white school and you'll never have to deal with school shooters...well, unless YOU become one of them. You have a lot of tendencies that can make you that someday. You're a creepy dude. Is that what this post is about? Bullet proof garb for children? Why don't you vote for proper gun control instead and force your politicians to do the right thing?
I would define self defense as "avoiding dangerous situations but being able to control and defuse the danger if you couldn't avoid getting into the situation"
Say it in 5 words or less!
@@kapitalidea stop bad people, with magic
@@lukeskywalker2913 lol excellent!
That's pretty good but I wouldn't say that that is the definition off self defense but a method of self defense. I say that because sometimes defusing doesn't work. Another thing that I notice is that if difusing is the definition of self defense there is a problem. I say this because you're assuming that all motivation for violence is do to agitation or anger. Sometimes violence is do to a desire to do evil for it's own sake. You can't defuse that.
@@davidrushing2507 You defuse a bomb by deactivating it's ability to due harm. You defuse a person the same way.
I think “self defense” for a lot of people just means doing well in what would *legally* be considered defense of yourself or others, and therefore not assault - so winning a fight you didn’t start etc.
Too bad there's alot of people also believe in excessive violence in every situations and garbage like " i would rather getting judged by 12 than carried by 4". They resulted to extreme violence even when all people do is looking at them funny or cursing them and called it self defense
@@jaketheasianguy3307 You can still be charged with assault, attempted murder, even murder even if you didnt start a fight
@@jaketheasianguy3307 those people give such american and "i cant be trusted with a gun" vibes.
That's what i focus on
@@jaketheasianguy3307They're just thugs.
I'll quote Rich Dimitri on this:
"While the vast majority of self protection systems train for the proverbial streets and generic Hollywood street violence, the reality of violence and abuse is that it rarely happens in the streets.
When it does, it is either social violence gone awry, gang related, or roughly 10% of the time where a civilian will actually face a pure and applied self defense situation that can be avoided most of the time with proper awareness skills.
Over 90% of violence and abuse are committed by people known to their victims, roughly 30% of that 90% are immediate family members.
The physical assaults mainly come in the form of ambushes predicated by a personalized behavioural delivery system making technical applications moot for self protection.
Over 90% of victims worldwide (including rape and murder) are victimized at home, school and work, not the streets.
If learning self defense is your goal, worry less about the strangers in the hoodies in the alleys, as the enemy is much more often, closer than you think.
Learn the differences between self defense, combatives and martial arts, it could save your life and loads of lawyer fees."
We could also speak about the fact that most self-defense teaching arejust focused on physical altercation, and completly ignore harassment, emotional, mental, financial abuse. And elderly people, kids and not able-bodied people are completly left aside. SD as it is mainly teached now is just is utterly incomplète and focuses on a very narrow définition of what violence is, it sells better that way.
WELL SAID!🙏🏾
Yep. In fact, I would even go further than that, and say that de-escalation training is often far more helpful than combat training. Especially for those of us who work with the public, a lot of time what helps, is simply getting someone to calm down.
My job also happens to be on a mountain, in extreme weather conditions, and for me, "self-defense" often has a lot more with being prepared for an emergency wilderness situation than it does being attacked by people on the streets. Though I do carry pepper spray and a flashlight for those situations too.
@@sarakajira yep.
Everytime I mention wanting to learn X Martial Art for self defence or have a certain tool or other things I want to add or learn that people have an "alternative" to I just say along the lines of "Yes, I know. I am a security guard training to advance in such a profession or go be an LEO or serviceman. I know all about De-escalation, MOAB, and conflict management I have taken courses, read books and done it on the job. Thank you for telling me about it. Would you care to share your own level of experience or are you unfamiliar with the specifics of actually doing it?" Shuts a lot of people up.
Same with mentioning I studied parkour and run/jog almost daily when people say "just run then".
Kind of annoying when people give unsolicited or irrelevant advice like they're an expert when they don't know what the person they're talking to knows, has done, or does.
@@HeartlessKnave Yeah but this is the internet. The other thing is then you're just a mcdojo or your system is not foda streetz. Or I could challenge you to a fight at some unspecified place and time. But i'm definitely gonna google leo and moab
@@descoutinho-e1y Law Enforcement Officer. Management Of Aggressive Behavior.
Additionally, some of those giving unsolicited or irrelevant advice are people I've met IRL, not purely online.
In my school that advertises self defense for children, the instructor gives free tuition so the kids can do better in school and keep away from bad company, they try to help the children make friends and build self confidence, and my instructor (who was a police man) would educate students who were molested on public transport on the legal actions they can take. Oh, we also do martial arts.
I like that the martial arts was emphasized last. I can't help but feel like a lot of the prior skills, like making friends, building confidence, laws & consequences are way more useful as "self-defense" skills. It's still good to have the martial arts to back it up, I mean, that's why we're all on this channel I think, but your school seems very helpful.
What does the instructor do for a living, then? I've never known anyone that is good that does it for free.
@@hard2hurt
Free tuition for kids up to a certain age (after which they are paying customers)?
And being able to write off the services as charitable donations?
That just seems like using a platform for advertising your business With tax deductions. Especially if you hammer in continuous training is needed, it ensures future business.
It’s what my instructor did. We went with him for about 5 years after the free classes ended.
Edit: and in the classes, typically the older brothers or even parents were paying customers.
Self defence for kids?...... Run and scream. But the parents are the ones who should do the defence.
No pun intended towards your instructor, i just don't believe in it.
He is a primary school teacher. Teaching martial arts thing is a hobby of his I think. He only has two classes a week at a community center and he charges $7 for 12 lessons. Maybe I am wrong to call it a school, cos we are a really small group.
"Being fit is self defense." Thank you! I feel that I see a lot of people that ignore this aspect.
Fit people are harder to kill, they are faster, stronger, and generally more in tune with their capabilities.
With someone who also has Self-Defense written on my building - spot on.
I'm also Def guilty of paying lip-service during bjj lol
Well... I know what Ed's teaching next week lol.
I think the best things any combat sport can bring you are:
1: Athleticism
2: Mental Fortitude
3: Coordination and Ability to learn new skills
But there are not many activities that developp those 3 qualities as well at the same time. That's why they are great for "self defense"
I would add 4: being able to fall down without hurting yourself.
Often underestimated in importance (and difficulty).
@@jamielondon6436 true but not all combat sport teach that ^^
@@Jenjak Their fault, not mine. ;-)
@@jamielondon6436JUDO
Wow this actually made me feel really nice about everything I've been doing. I've trained in various states of dress/ armor, different weather conditions, storming, muddy, and I seek training with different types of trainers as do my own trainers as well. I truly love martial arts and how expansive and colorful it is. I can't believe I ever spent any significant period of time without it.
I once heard that the RCMP definition of self-defence goes something like, "When a person's conduct is so egregious that stopping them is a higher priority than whether they survive being stopped."
That said, I usually find it helpful to think of self-defence in three tiers: strategy, tactics and techniques.
Strategy as in looking at the reasonably-likely threats your life actually presents and avoiding or mitigating those dangers. The people you associate with, the places you go, where you live. The big picture. Do you live somewhere where home invasions are common? Can you move somewhere else?
Tactics come into play when you need to do something that has a non-zero level of risk (like most things) but need to minimise that risk as much as possible. So maybe you have to walk home through the middle of town at 2-3 in the morning. Maybe _still_ steer clear of large groups of drunken idiots.
Techniques ... are the kind of stuff you can practice in a gym or at a shooting range. Winning a fight that you didn't start. Just keep in mind that if things get this bad, you've already fucked up on the first two.
Thanks Mike. Wish I lived near you. Would love to train with you guys. Stay up!
Same!!!
Speaking as a private self-defense (🤔) instructor, I really enjoyed this video. I'll be sharing it with my clients.
loved that last line, we constantly had instructors disappear at certain times during the week only to find out they were taking more classes and continuously training themselves. really shows in they way they taught us.
In the last year iv really worked to clear so many misconceptions about "martial arts" that were incorrect and unhealthy. And it really has a lot to do with the content you and others have put out. Thanks to everyone 🙏❤️
I use Rory miller’s definition: self defense is the small set of things you can do to save yourself in a situation where you are already screwed.
I like it!
Nice
Hey, I agree with everything your saying. I have studied “self defense” for a while and realized there is no way to prepare for a actual attack that may or may not happen. The more and more I do BJJ, MMA, Judo, or Kali the more inadequate I realize I am at actual self defense. One of our BJJ black belts is a full time firearms instructor outside of BJJ. Also one of the guys I train BJJ with is one of the founders of Dog Brothers Stick fighting organization. He is crazy good with edged weapons. One of my favorite resources of actual events that have occurred is the Active Self Protection TH-cam channel. He shows the good with the bad and actually what happens. Lots and lots of security videos. It would be cool if you had him in your channel.
a bullet proof backpack to take to school might be the saddest thing anyone could ever have created
@Indigo Rodent there was just under 3 a month last year in the US, and five during the whole year in the entirety of Europe
@Indigo Rodent I’m gonna go out on a limb here with a hot take: nobody should be getting shot in schools
I'm going on record here for you Mike. Your channel has genuinely got the most unskippable (is that even a word?) sponsorship segments because you always align with relevant sponsors and you actually test and use their stuff. I agree with your basic self defense definition as a general thing.
Agree 100%
I tell my friends that you want to find a good, reputable martial arts school that has a self-defense class in their curriculum, not a "self-defense" school. That means that they're teaching how to apply what they know in the context of unbalanced, no-rules, life/death scenarios -- not that they claimed to have masters all aspects of those scenarios.
The concept of self-defense has shifted a bit for me since getting married. Maybe it's just that I'm less interested in 'self' and more focused on the 'defense' part. Would love of video about this.
Yes I noticed that as well
Seriously one of the best videos I’ve seen about this topic. Thank you so much, Mike!
When you were giving your definition of self defense I was thinking of adding situational awareness, I was glad to hear you say it later
For "self defense" I like to break it down in stages. They aren't necessarily linear, or have to hit each step because real life is messy but the stages I use are; awareness, avoidance, evasion, de-escalation, preemption, fight. You'd need an instructor who could teach you everything about each of those steps, which can be more detailed than one might realize. For example awareness. That can refer to situational awareness, but it can also be speaking to knowing your environment. What's the crime rate, what's the most common crime, where to do crimes typically occur, how many criminals usually commit the crime, how do they do so. It can be awareness about tactics they use, it can be awareness about time and weather and how that can affect things. You can go as deep or as shallow as you want in each of those stages. That's a lot. I'm more self defense focused in my training and I can't answer most of those questions about the town I live in, much less your town. If your town as a high rate of gun crime, you might benefit more from weapons training than someone who lives in a town where the last time a gun was used was in 1952.
You forgot de-escalation. You'd need an expert in it as well. I have talked down some serious situations. It definitely an important skill when it comes to protecting yourself from danger.
De-escalation should probably be first or close to it on any self defense course. Knowing you have some idea on what to do if it hits the fan helps but ultimately you don't lose any of the fights that don't happen.
@@bslygh exactly!
ever seen the video of the valor thieves sitting in a circle telling tall tales of being in the service, with each of them knowing every other person is lying, but too scared to be found out to call anyone out?
@@StanleyKubick1 can't say I have. Not sure your point either. 🤷♂️ I said that de-escalation is an important skill that he forgot to mention. What does a bunch of stolen valor guys have to do with that? I've never claimed to have been in the military. I wanted to be when I was younger, but I have a knee injury that was disqualifying. I don't understand where you are going with that. Could you please explain it to me?
3:37 this sounds like the best school on earth and I would 150% sign up for this school 🤣
Great video as always. We have a project, two friends and I. It's a very small "self defense" school here in south america. I'm a krav maga instructor and I've been doing MMA for a while, one of my friends is a BJJ brown belt and is also training wrestling. The other one is a combatives instructor with a background on Philippines styles. We try to do everything you mentioned, and we fall short. And of course, we don't get enough students, not many of them stay long enough with us and we are underpaid. Trying to be a real self defense instructor is hard and it also sucks but I couldn't do it any other way.
For me, self defense is all in the description. It's keeping yourself safe from harm. That harm can be from criminals, but that's fairly rare.
A lot of it will simply be following the rules of stupid - Don't do stupid things in stupid places at stupid times with stupid people. Another huge portion will be first aid and emergency communication skills. An extremely underrated, but important part is physical fitness. I'd say the smallest part of it is fighting (this does not make it not important! When you do need it, you really needed it)
There's no "school" for it because it's a series of choices. You can be the best fighter in the world but if you're hanging out in the bad part of town at 3am flashing $$... You're probably not following the principles of self defense. Conversely, if your preventative measures fail and you haven't been consistently training to fight, you may as well have been doing fuck all the whole time because the situation is now upon you can you cannot respond to it.
There is some cultural and historical context to "self defence" marketing also. What I mean is that the school where I originally trained karate was started in the 80s, when the town was much rougher and more thugs and drunks were out in the streets, and it was a little more clear who the "self defence" part was aimed at defending against (I.e. basic street violence, not anything like home invasion defence or kidnapping or dealing with high level professional criminals). Plus the instructor was also a bouncer. These days the streets are much safer and so it is a lot more nebulous exactly what threats should be the focus of self-defence. That old karate school even closed down because not so many people were really worried about that kind of street self defence anymore, though of course the declining fashionability of karate was a factor also.
I love BJJ, but I always laugh when we do some of the "self-defense" techniques then we never use them in live training and punching is only incorporated into the MMA class that barely any of the BJJ guys go to. about 10 percent of why I do BJJ is for self-defense the other 90% is because I love it.
But see, the fact that you love BJJ is part of what makes it a good self-defense system for you. Years ago I asked someone at a gun range, "What do you think is the best gun for home defense?" and she said, "The one that you love, because you'll want to come out here and train with it all the time." There is no self-defense strategy that doesn't involve a crapton of training, and you're not going to train regularly, robustly, passionately, unless you love it. If you love going to the gun range, then be a gun guy. If you love BJJ, then be a BJJ guy. I stick with Krav Maga because I love it. Any self-defense training is better than no self-defense training, so stick with the training that you love and just do so with the understanding that you have some holes in your self-defense strategy and there aren't enough hours in the day to address all of them.
I’m the 10% 🙋🏾♂️😂😂😂
@@laraballard7125 "Any self defense training is better than no self defense training"
I have to disagree. Bad self defense training can be dangerous as it will make someone overly confident in skills they don't actually have and could get them hurt worse.
If someone is smart they would just hand over their wallet to a mugger and ideally be done with it. However if they go on the offensive they could get 100% killed because they were preemptively stopping an attack that they were sure the mugger was going to do anyway. They get killed in the process when they had no way of actually knowing if the mugger was going to attack them or not, due to things they were taught that they have misconceptions/misunderstandings about or are overly confident despite not actually knowing or being any good at the things they were taught, if they were even taught anything good.
If that makes sense. I may have repeated myself a lot... anyway.
@@HeartlessKnave Sure. But that over-confidence can be a problem at any level, even with really good self-defense training. My Krav Maga instructor recently told us a story about an expert martial arts instructor (I've forgotten in what style, but the guy was very well respected) who got killed in a bar over the weekend. He had some kind of confrontation with another bar patron over a spilled beer, and expertly put him on the ground, pinned him, announced, "chill, man. It's over" or words to that effect, then let him up. If there was a TH-cam video showing this confrontation, you would have said, "Wow, that's a perfect model of how to handle a situation like that." So, confrontation supposedly over, the guy on the floor promptly got up, pulled a gun out, and shot the black belt dead. Knowing that now, I suppose you could now critique the black belt and say, "Well, when you pin someone to the ground, you should definitely frisk him for weapons before you let him up," or even "did he really have to show off all his martial arts skills, which apparently humiliated the guy, instead of just buying him another beer?" My point is that you could have some bad self-defense training, or years and years of really good self-defense training, and still make a fatal miscalculation about when and how to use force or how to judge the motivations and capabilities of others.
@@HeartlessKnave BTW, I think over-confidence is way, way, way more of a problem with male students than female students. Women go through life painfully well aware that most of the physical threats to our being are bigger and stronger than us. So, if anything, we're under-confident and unaware that there's anything at all that we could do physically to fend off a male attacker. My 5 years of Krav Maga has made me more risk-averse, not less. I get pounded on weekly in sparring class by a guy who is clearly fighting me at about 50% of his physical capacity. It's unpleasant enough at 50% that it serves as a weekly reminder that I want to avoid at all costs ever having to deal with a bare-knuckled dude in a real self-defense situation. So I never wear earbuds in public anymore, never mess with my cell phone on a public street anymore, am hyper-aware of my surroundings when using public transportation, etc. I'm confident but also quite fight-avoidant.
My favorite TH-camrs always seem to know when I'm sitting around bored watching stupid shit
Love this video, man. Loved hearing it straight from ya when you were over in Columbus, OH.
One of the best, brutally honest videos you've done, Mike. High freakin' five!
I'd like to see a video where you talk about training with your medical kit. "Worry about being able to plug holes before you worry about making holes".
Also, on a personal note, when it comes to body armor I HIGHLY recommend FRAS. (plates, not the soft stuff) Its rifle rated armor that is actually light and comfortable. Its a tad pricy, but worth it if you can afford it. (and i'm sure it would fit in your nifty backpack)
When making holes you don't care about about that person's well-being, that would be contradictory to the action.
But I'm on your team as in reccomending most people to at least have some basic medical skills. Just do some classes, it can truly save lives.
@@EnFyr That isn't what that saying means lmao. It means if you are in a situation where you feel it's necessary to have kevlar and a gun, It's more likely you or someone else (other than the attacker) will need medical attention than it is you will need to shoot somebody. Think about a mass shooting event; there's likely going to be more than one responder and only one person needs to shoot the guy but there will likely be MANY casualties that need medical attention.
I wish more people would own up to this. And especially the comment that "I'd okay for this to be a hobby" point. I think a lot of people use the "Self Defense" mantra as an exuse to train because they don't want to admit that they just think it's fun and that that is the only real reason they need.
Honest and fair assessment! Valid points!
I feel like these are words that a lot of people really needed to hear. Thank you Mike for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences
Look at mike. Applying the discipline of academia to his craft. Consulting and learning from experts while critically thinking about the limits of their (and his own) expertise before using what he’s learned to test his hypothesis on certain topics/situations.
Test, evaluate, learn, plan repeat.
I love it ♥️♥️♥️
I would expand your definition by including something like "choosing to actively intervene to help someone who appears to be unlawfully assaulted". Might change the dynamics as it might include some active engagement vs disengaging as the primary strategy
That's adjacent to a topic in an upcoming video
@@hard2hurt great, will be on the lookout for it
"There's lots of moves. But connecting them is the issue"
This should be plastered in every martial arts school
The weird paradox is that if you train seriously for self defense you are almost 100% more likely to get hurt during training than you are in the hypothetical street scenario that will probably never materialize.
Thanks for this video! I used to work for a guy that wouldn't let me train at other place cause he thought it would make us look like we didn't know what we were doing. Since I went solo I've been training with other people but that's always been in the back of my as this irrational fear. Reframing it as "if you're not training at other places you clearly don't know what you're doing" is super helpful for my brain.
Yeah... that guy is super insecure and I feel bad for him.
Thank you for the information, very insightful.
I just happened to fall into a school like the one you are describing. Great school that taught all aspects of defense with plenty of weapon training. Tom Howanic-Patriot Martial Arts- Texas. Great school and great all the instruction you said.
Perfectly put 💯💯💯
Content like this is why I love your channel.
I was the senior student and an assistant instructor at a "self defense" school for about 5 years.
We had almost all of those bases covered (though we definitely did not have defensive driving stuff as part of the curriculum).
Our head instructor had dojo/traditional school/tournament experience in several striking arts, as well as he is a certified first aid/AED instructor, and a handgun&CCW instructor. He also had some catch wrestling background.
And then when I joined the school, I brought my experience in wrestling, knives, and fighting "on the street" and in prison (cuz I've made some boo boos that sent me to bad places).. and after we pressure tested those dojo "this will always work" techniques against a monster of a man who has fought a lot (me), we kept those things that were high probability, and cut the rest. We sparred at various levels of intensity, we grappled hard, we used practice knives regularly, we trained with full blowback gas airsoft guns, we worked on first aid, and we worked on escaping first, fighting to escape second, and never trying to "fight to win".
We also had several other people join our gym, one was a 5th dan master of Chung do Kwan, one was retired Army SOC, and one was retired Ranger 1st Batt. They added a lot of knowledge and experience to the table.
We probably should've added guns to the grappling and sparing more often, though we added knives and sticks pretty regularly.
We did plenty of conditioning and fitness, because if you can't do a pull up, are you strong enough to climb a fence to escape, or to pull an arm off of your neck if somebody is trying to choke you?
But what we focused on is giving people a range of techniques, and then telling them to find the ones that worked for them, and make them become like reflexes. Like a few striking techniques with the hands, a few kicks, a few grappling techniques, and Master them. Get your ten thousand reps, and learn them until they happen without thinking. Learn some disarm strategies, some escapes from common attacks, and master them.
And we had really frank conversations about the fact that trying to fight to win is already a losing situation in a real self defense scenario. The bad guy chose you because he thinks he can get over on you. Which means he knows sh$t that you don't, like he had a weapon, a buddy, something.
So situational awareness is key.
And yes, "self defense" is a marketing phrase.
We talk about the difference between self defense, combatives, martial arts, martial sports, and combat sports.
They may all look similar, and use some of the same things. They may be useful for similar things. But the training and then mind set of each is different.
And training is fun. Most people will never need to fight for their life. And if you are one of the few who do, it doesn't matter what the sign on your gym said. Hit hard and run fast.
I get a momentary sense of indigence when you tell me Im not something Ive never claimed to be.
Haha humans are funny.
As prior military and practitioner of a few styles you're so right. There's so many things under the umbrella term self defense. Hell yeah market your schools that way but you breaking down the actual requirements for the full training and cost boggles the mind.
No one person could ever be a total expert. You got the fighting, situational awareness, laws, physical and mental demands, descalation, first aid, after action, avoidance, and the list goes on. Great content dude and spot on. 🍻💯💪
No one keeps it real like Mike. Love your channel brother.
This isn't one of those " In my opinion it means ". Self Defense is a legal construct. It has a specific meaning written into law. It is you standing before a judge using an affirmative defense and saying to the court " Yes I assaulted that person. But I have a legal justification for doing so". Those justifications are written into the law and you can only use those that already been established.
Exactly.
Great video content! My gym is primarily a Muay Thai gym, but i do teach courses (women's, blade, Pocket PDT, etc, all 8 hr courses). My biggest pet peeve is Martial Arts schools that boast Self Defense, but teach "art". There are 3 categories: 1.. Martial Arts - a rank structured curriculum that is "one size fits all" so that the entire family can achieve Black Belt. It is all technique based, many of which contain multiple "moves" to get to a single result. 2.. Combat Sports - Here we test what works and doesnt work (from the Martial Arts content) But, separated by gender, age, and weight division AND we have safety rules (ie; no eye gouges or headbutts, etc) 3.. Self Defense - No multiple moves, no compliance, no rules, no gender or weight or age divisions, No time outs, No "going light", etc etc. I see way too many Martial Arts instructors teaching "Self Defense" to women and kids and teaching things that clearly will NEVER work against the bigger stronger, sometimes armed, attacker. Look, Self Defense is NOT "one size fits all". It is both gender and age specific and needs to be trained/taught accordingly. Size matters, age matters, gender matters, environment matters, day/night matter, clothing worn matters, weapons matters, number of attackers matters, situation matters.... Thank you for posting this video and bringing that to light.
I love these videos where Mike just has some stuff to say and says it.
Saying your school teaches self defense may be marketing but it's also true if you're teaching part of the myriad of skills involved :)
Good points as always Mike
I've helped my martial arts instructor with running self defence seminars, and much of this is emphasized. Legality and psychology are focuses. Having a theoretical understanding of psychology and the biological processes that occur during stress helps in rationalizing your own responses to high stress situation, and can help in providing guiding principles for stressful encounters (I.e, how does stress affect bodies in general, and my body in particular, and what does that mean for self defense/high stress encounters?) The overriding theme is that training 'tactics' trumps techniques. Similar themes, though with more specificity, have been emphasized when I've helped him run Use of Force for security and police.
In my experience of having almost a decade of martial arts training and working security, the foremost benefit of martial arts training is that it helps inure you to SOME (but not all, not by a long shot) of the stresses of acute violence, and gives you a set of 'tactics' and conditioned responses that may be able to protect you before you have the time/wherewithal for more considered decision making, or that can inform your overall approach while in the 'fight'.
This is a great. It puts a lot into perspective and leaves a lot to think about. Thanks!
That was a very tightly produced video Mike! Well done!
I need a different school for when I am being consensually kidnapped…
that's not pg-13 so i can't discuss that
"yea bro, BJJ is the ultimate form of self defense, lemme show you!"
*Aggressively butt scoots towards you*
How do you overcome the problem of striking first? I don't mean the technical skill to. I mean having the confidence to push through the mental barrier of overthinking about what comes next if your strike fails to stop or put them down as they have a friend/s preparing to jump in and you're in a confined space with one at your back and have no options or room available to maneuver or reposition yourself.
Its great that you included training on what to say on a 999 call. This is something I've personally had the worst luck with. I have some kind of autism that causes me to says things i'm trying not to when in a stressful situation. This sadly caused 999 calls i made to be taken as a hoax which sadly resulted in the murder of a women when they refused to send help. Now I'm forced to carry her death on my conscience because i left to call for help when i should of just struck the biggest guy & hoped for the best (even having been presented the perfect opportunity to possibly end him instantly after coaxing him into presenting his neck but finding myself unable to follow through because he'd not initiated contact to switch me from passive to offence.
I hate myself because i stopped an attack just short that likely could of saved her life after I defused & tricked him into weighing up some weed in the hope of setting up a pre-emptive strike to even the odds as knew it would be 2 on 1 & he was twice my body weight on his own, but then when presented with it i stopped my elbow just shy of hitting the bridge of his neck while he was bent over, alerting him & causing him to return to an erect standing position losing me the advantage i'd stalled for. i had a key but couldn't bring myself to just start stabbing him in the neck/face while he was down there as it just isn't in me. why couldn't i just do that? she might be here now if i had. it haunts me knowing i couldn't overcome my aversion to hurting people long enough to end some sicko's life who deserved it at the cost of someone's who didn't. Unfortunately i suffer from pulling my own punches. I stop almost immediately before the point of impact even when my strike has full mechanical power, force & accuracy. I don't have an issue once contact has been initiated by them, but sadly most bullys and criminals wont strike first once i posture up which is something i need to flick my switch to offence or i end up overthinking & talk myself out of the fight that if it actually come to, usually doesn't go as well for my aggressors as they expect it to.
I Just can't initiate contact. once its been established all the what ifs go out the window & it becomes a game. i suffer no fear while fighting & actually enjoy myself once it begins, aside from getting gassed quickly. I'm just not able to break my conditioning not to hit somebody unless they attack 1st. even when i want/need to hurt i still pull my attacks because subconsciously i'm trying not to. I can't even join my local combat gym to try to break this terrible burden as the 2 individuals who killed her are members there.
I weighed 8 stone when this happened at 6 foot tall. The only good to come of it is that I'm now trying my damnedest to gain the weight & working out to ensure this never happens again. As I made a promise to the women i failed to save not to let them get away with it, & can't allow myself to let another person fall victim to my inability to strike first. They destroyed everything I thought I knew about myself, & nothing i can do can bring her back or alleviate the guilt i feel for leaving to call for help rather than staying to fight & protect her.
Ironically a large part of my fear of returning was based on the fear of going to prison for what I knew I'd be forced to do had I done. Sadly while I myself am somewhat hard to hurt, I also find it equally hard to hurt others as it completely goes against my nature. its often not a fear of my personal safety that stops me, its my fear of hurting people, I just can't bring myself to do serious harm to somebody intentionally, even to those intending to do harm, who deserve no mercy and will give none. I need to break this curse as I can't allow anyone else to fall victim to my inability to do what must be done in a crisis situation. I'm just a gentle peace loving guy, you can have all the weapons & all the training in the world but if you can't get your head around hurting someone else, or striking pre-emptively when its called for, it all counts for nothing.
I have a different definition of self defense than many people but it sounds like you would agree with me.
Martial arts and self defense are two different things. Martial arts is using your body in a dynamic way to fight. Self defense is a mindset on how to protect yourself and your loved ones from grevious bodily harm or death. Some martial arts inheritly play into self defense and certain systems are more condusive than others for protecting yourself and others. Self defense helps teach how certain techniques can be practically used outside a dojo or gym. However, these techniques are only effective if they were refined through repetition on a resistant training partner in the martial arts school.
Dude, absolutely one of the best, most truthful and savage videos of yours I have ever seen. And that says something, because I think I have seen every video you have made! LOL.
This is the best breakdown of this topic I have ever heard.
i spent time at an academy that had a tiered system for students that went: 1) lots of stressful training underwater (learn to relax). 2) lots of "parkour"esq endurance stuff..running, jumping, climbing, crawling (learn to escape). and finally after all that they would start wrestling and kickboxing, sometimes with proxy weapons. i think they had their priorities very much in order. learning to relax will help you avoid most confrontations, learning to escape will handle most of the rest, and only in the rare event that both of those attempts fail do you need to do some real fighting, and maybe just enough fighting to get you back to step 2. lots of SD schools pay lip service to this truth but they dont actually do much to train the "relaxing" and "escaping" bits
i love your videos and i love your honesty. keep them coming.
The only thing I'd add is self-defense also extends to others is some situations: my children, my elderly parents, etc. I'm just as concerned for my family when I'm out, or in my house, than defending myself, as they are also easier targets.
I’m not here for the school I’m here for the gear reviews and tips that make me hard 2 Hurt
Go wrestle. Take a shower. Eat protein. Repeat.
Having been in situations where I've been attacked, I've found that some of the most valuable "self-defense" skills, are things like: intuition--listening to your still small voice in your gut telling you to avoid a situation. Empathy and de-escalation: learning to calm someone down and possibly prevent a situation where an irrational person might get out of hand, before it does. And because I work on a mountain in extreme weather conditions in the winter: basic preparedness for possible wilderness emergencies. I do live in the city in the summer and take public transit and I've definitely seen my share of crazy people starting to fight on a train. I keep pepper spray and a flashlight for that.
I own a school that says self defense on the building too. It speaks very clearly to what we do. Very good for marketing because it is very clear the intention. Then it's our job to keep it effective.
A lot of what you mentioned though could have its cost drastically minimized by lectures on TH-cam, so that dojos could only focus on practice, instead of teaching and learning things from scratch everywhere. Maybe this will be more feasible in the near future. The mere fact that you were able to enumerate a finite number of skills is already a hint that it might be possible at some point.
100% agree with this. My younger self would disagree but he couldnt really fight anyways. I use “self defense” strictly for marketing. My mindset is staying prepared and thats what I teach. Mix and match from everything. Boxing, thai boxing, close quarter striking, grappling, weapon control, etc. The goal is to train scenarios and principles rather than techniques. Once fists start flying and adrenaline kicks in, technique is useless IMO. More I have studied and taught this approach to “self defense” the more I have found my ways to align with those you have mentioned. Looking forward to working with ya in person and having some discussions like this
Back in my late teens when I was training in Kenpo Karate, I considered myself training for "self defense". The gym went over the 'I hit you, you don't hit me back' type drills, full contact sparring with MMA rules, and grappling was also offered there. I felt very well off while I was training there and used some of it one time to stop a fight from happening. I consider a school/gym like that a self defense gym personally.
Thank you for being honest about this whole thing
I watched a review of a Buck 119 a while ago, and the guy made comment that he thought it was funny that it was advertised as a hunting knife. Modern hunting knives have more ergonomic handles and significantly different blade geometry, and that you wouldn't be skinning anything with a 119. I commented something to the effect of, "you could skin a squirrel with a sharpened crowbar, it just might be a little messier. Use what you've got." He gave me the little heart thing on the comment, so I think he approved of the philosophy.
I used to IMAGINE what I would do in fights. I'd been in plenty, but just scraps with other guys as teenagers. A couple real ones, but mostly friends in the backyard after watching UFC clips for an hour (seriously). I used to IMAGINE it, though. And it typically involved grabbing something. An ash tray, throwing a lamp, a chair.
Then I got into boxing, and after a year actually had a couple amateur fights.
By that time, after training about seven hours a week and sparring at least twice a week, I realized something. That's not notable experience by any means. There's still regulars at the gym who dance circles around me. BUT.. I realized at that point that grabbing a chair or something would probably put me at a disadvantage. I have skills and knowledge that I've put into practice for enough time, that I'm better off sticking to what I know and keeping my hands free. My philosophy on self defense changed because I realized that hitting someone with a lamp was drastically less effective than using the skills I had actually practiced for all that time.
So the same way some G10 or micarta handled Nessmuk style knife is gonna make better work of a deer than a 119... you're better of with the 119 than your teeth and nails alone.
Boxing doesn't nearly encompass all the skills you need to effectively defend yourself in every situation. BUT I think I'm much better prepared for a fight than I was.
So yeah, that's my two cents. I know you weren't arguing AGAINST that, I just wanted to share. I think ANY training, no matter what specific facet of "self defense" it may encompass will leave you better prepared than you were before.
Unless your instructor is some mall cop Tier 1 chair force operator. Then you're probably worse off.
Very important words of wisdom and warning!
The only thing I'd take issue with is saying that you need "experts" in all of these areas - and Mike might not have meant that fully literally.
Of course, the more qualified a person is the better, even to teach very basic skills. But if basic skills are all you need from a certain area to incorporate into your "self defence package", than a few experts on the things that truly matter plus some generalists will do … or perhaps even just an expert at one thing who is skilled enough at the rest to incorporate it into a self defence class.
Obviously, anyone worth their money will tell you exactly where their limitations are (like Mike does constantly) and when you might need an expert in another field to reach a certain target.
9:12
This speech here remind me a of Batman in someway, like how he learned each part of his skill set from various expert of the field.
Didn’t know what this was going to be about. Watched it. GREAT VIDEO!!!
I enjoyed this video! Great insights!😎👍
I agree with you 100%
self defence is mostly:
-"do not get married for legal and financial reasons"
-"do not frequent places where ppl usualy fight"
-"know how to evade the places you enter in case of emergency"
-"be prejudiced" (yes, be "racist", be a biggot, believe in all steriotypes it will save your life)
-"know how to do first aid properly"
-"know how to carry someone you love if they need it"
-""greyman" strategy is the best"
-"do not cultivate enemies"
-"do not talk about politics and religion with others, it is disrespectifull and causes trouble"
-"do not let your ego get the best of you"
and finaly
if it all goes to shit, know how to fight, don't even bother in beeing the very best or efficient, a good decietfull trick like pretending to be harmless + jab+straight is enough to get you out of most of those situations in real life.
a person that is good in self defence is someone who never needed to defend themselves against strikes and shots etc etc.
This video raises points that are eerily similar to a paragraph on this topic left by me in the comments a few months ago. You're welcome!
Mike Tyson really summed it all in one phrase: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. My line to add to Mike Tyson's comment, there is no such thing as a one size fits all miracle martial art that will work in all situations, they all have their strengths and weaknesses and if any "Master" falls in love with his discipline and does not look, learn and teach anything else, well, he's nothing less than an incompetent, even more so if all he/she teaches are forms and techniques without any sparring worthy of the name. This is the main reason why Kung Fu and Wing Chun are too often seen as a joke...not because the martial art is a joke, it's because too many Sifu are a joke.
Some great observations about all the skills needed. I like your no b.s. perspective.
I completely agree with Acusto Dulla below. I am a martial arts instructor. I recently put together a seminar on self-protection. It covered most of the areas mentioned in the video above. At the end of writing it I was depressed to realise how irrelevant most of it is for the majority of people at risk of physical harm.
The majority of violence occurs, not between strangers, but between people who know each other. In my opinion a self-defence course should include how to recognise techniques of emotional control, financial control, social control and isolation, and physical control. It must also cover how to build assertiveness so that a person can remove themselves from a toxic situation.
You win every fight you don't get into. That's my definition of "self defense".
So true. Everything you said. Love it
Used to instruct some Muay Thai when the head coach ran late. Anyone that ever asked me about "Self-Defense" was made very clear that it isn't self defense, and we teach a sport to be done in a ring between two consenting people. That being said, it's always better to know your distance and how to block a few haymakers + throw a jab and a teep as compared to someone who has never trained in their life.
Beautifully said Mike, and if I remember correctly in the words of Matt Hughes, your BJJ plan goes out the window the first time someone drops an elbow on your face and you've never felt that.
10:01
A sports martial arts competition, is the closest thing to a real fight I have experience. Not ashamed to say I was nervous and full of adrenaline in my first bjj match and points fight many years ago. Still feel it now. Nothing we do in the gym comes close.
I just remembered how uncomfortable Mike was when he was being taught how to blade someone to death. 🤣
As a Krav Maga Instructor ( don't hate me people) I couldn't agree more, as much as I enjoy Krav it does require you to cross train if you want to improve in certain areas. I've trained in BJJ to improve my groundwork, went to Muay Thai to work on my kickboxing and I'm currently working with a boxing coach to learn better ways to teach footwork, headmovement etc...
Years ago a middle aged single woman that I used to work with asked me to teach her some "moves" because she's afraid to go for walks. I told her that I can't help her even though I'm a martial arts instructor. Instead she should get a dog or volunteer to walk dogs. She couldn't understand so I explained; its not about the "moves" if that's all it was then I've wasted 30 years of my life training. What she really wanted was a deterrence and since know one will know that she knows some "moves" she needs a visual deterrence such as walking in a group, with a large male body guard or a large dog.
Ultimately my point is Self Defense is complicated and almost no one who is looking for those skills really knows what they are looking for.
Last point. When I was a young man I competed in kickboxing. One night after training for 3 hours, I was exhausted and bruised and I thought to myself, "I get beat up worse everyday at the gym than I ever will if I got jumped in an alley". That was not literal but the point is, training for real self defense / combatives / combat sports is harder than most people are willing to commit to.
Good chat, thanks coach :)
I train and coach at a "self-defense martial arts" dojo. we use the "self-defense" at a method of training. so the newer you are, the more defensive skills you learn first like blocking, escaping, running away to safety. then as you move up the ranks, then you learn more offensive skills. I would say we are a rounded style of standing, take-down, and ground techniques. however, we don't get crazy combative with fire arms because we cant dodge bullets... so How deep does the term have to go or should go for "self-defense" to be affective? Like if you were to name the stages of intensity if the dojo were to have limited self-defense skills? Does that make sense? Like we teach up to knife & stick (cuz theyre the most common in our area) but not much firearms.
Practice everything, and when you're out of ideas, practice coming up with ideas
As someone who has had the unfortunate experience of having to call 911 more than a dozen times for a variety of high adrenaline situations I can vouch for how unexpectedly difficult it can be to get the exact type of help you need to your location quickly and efficiently.
You need to know how to communicate your exact location to an operator that is often not even from your town, and communicate about the incident in such a way that the police take the threat seriously enough to respond, but not so seriously that they shoot someone immediately upon arrival.
Awesome video!!! Thank you so much!!! 🥰
I took about 6 months of Uechi-ryu when I was young. Our instructor wanted us to be "tough" so we kicked the floor barefoot, punched bags until our knuckles bled and did other silly stuff. No one bothered at the time to ask that if we ever did get into a fight, that you aren't going to stop & take your shoes off, because that is how we trained.
Hey, the closest I had to fulfill your requirements on self-defense have been Workshops with Rory Miller. Had been in Germany in the HQ of a local biker gang. Pretty funny. Because Rory was a U.S.Citizen, there were german police officers who familiarize us with the german legal framework. Rolling, punching, Weapons, legal stuff, all in a "natural" setup with regular clothes.
Great fun.
What was really strange for us, was how adamant he was about not having actual firearms on people during the workshop. That was strange, because that is never an issue in our country, because they are well regulated.
Ah, great times. Defending from a car seat or whilst sitting on the toilet.
Very thought provoking piece. Thank you for sharing this.
I also do not believe it is realistically possible for any one person to master everything that falls under the umbrella of self defense, and that is why this journey of learning and discovery can potentially take a lifetime.
The two basic flaws I often see is that I think some confuse any one component of self defense as the entirety of self defense, and of course that is not so. As mentioned before, the other problem is if and when I encounter someone who claims they have indeed mastered all that is self defense. Such claims make me skeptical.
Having said that, I still use the term self defense school and self defense instructor, because as you yourself have mentioned, it gets the most people to about the same page without having to get too bogged down on the semantics. That way you can spend more time focusing on the task at hand.
As for practicing, while one can not practice and train all the skill sets all the time, we can still try to practice quite a bit of it in our everyday life. For example, situational awareness is something we can and should try to do all the time, and not only when we are in class training. Same for some parts of defensive driving skills, and more.
In the end, self defense is just doing the best we can to take good care of ourselves, and more importantly, take care of those around us who need and deserve our help. We can only do the best we can, and hopefully, some day look back without too many regrets.
As a former tactical Tad, I agree completely. I gave up on trying to find the proper "Self Defense School" exactly for the reasons you listed. ATM I train kickboxing. It is not a self defense school, but I reckon if I do get into problems, what I learned there is probably gonna be more helpful than the "360 krav maga defense against a knife".
You just deepened my understanding of what Tim Kennedy is trying to do with his Sheepdog Response training systems/seminars.