Slightly different question today:
“Self defence.
How often should it be practised ?
And .. where if one doesn't do any MMA or the like.”
Sean
I've been sitting on this question from Sean for a bit, I wasn't too sure whether or not to talk about it rather than my usual topics of fitness training and injury management.
But, my background before I was a fitness coach was a martial arts practitioner, martial arts instructor and doorman.
I've also participated in many security industry courses, some run by Steve, an old mate of mine who is a former Royal Marine who after retirement from the Marines and then contractor work founded a security training company.
It was for Steve that I created a detailed self defence course, which I do intend to relaunch on my davehedges.net site as an online course.
So, how often should we practise self defence?
Well, first and foremost, we can take a needs analysis.
Take a moment and think about when you last felt that you or those close to you were in real physical danger?
For most people that I ask this, the answer is never. Or not since school.
The smarter folk probably talk about a near miss or actual incident while cycling/driving
And this informs the need for actual self defence training.
Good self defence, just like good driving, is preventative in nature.
It's about awareness of your environment, your situation.
It's about your presentation, body language, personality, appeared
It's about not going silly places and doing stupid things.
So to that end, self defence is a daily task.
I break self defence into a three part continuum, which I stole from Steve, who took it from the UN close protection handbook.
These categories are Avoid, Evade and Confront.
We mentioned Avoid, that largely comes down to awareness and not being stupid.
Evade can be environmental awareness to reposition yourself, communication skills to deescalate a scenario, or physical fitness to get off side quick sharp
And as this is a newsletter from a coach specialising in fitness training for people interested in fitness, you likely have, or are actively developing the attributes necessary to move quickly if needed.
So that leaves Confront.
The part of the continuum that deals with the actual, real and visceral violence.
Self defence training for the Confront section is minimalistic.
It's also quite brutal.
It largely involves hitting hard and repeatedly, with some escape techniques from the grappling arts and whatever else you use to create space to escape and get back up the continuum to Evade and back to Avoid.
All this can be learned in a weekend.
But dialling it in so it's useful takes time and repetition.
My advice for most folk is to go to a martial arts class for repetition.
Yes, you will learn a lot more than self defence needs, but you'll get the opportunity to work against resistance, to think and act under duress and against resistance.
If you go to a striking based class, be it karate, kickboxing,
Muay Thai, then you'll dial in the striking ability.
If you go to BJJ or Judo, you'll dial in escapes.
Do both, a bit of Boxing and a bit of Judo and you'll have little to worry about.
Get a few weeks or months of dedicated training in a martial art to get the fundamentals.
Then you may drop the frequency if it doesn't really float your boat and you just want self defence skills.
Good self defence is simply violent application of fundamental skills.
You don't need a flying arm bar or a spinning back fist.
But you do need a hip escape and rear cross, both of which you'll learn in the first class and practice every class after that.
Regards
Dave Hedges
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