What Makes Up Self-Defense?

    Today a lot of people have this idea that self-defense is only fight training, complex martial arts, and more and more so, the belief that combat sports is self-defense. When people talk about self-defense these days, they often relate to sports fighters. Contrary to popular opinion, self-defense is not only fight training and it sure as heck is not combat sports, at least not by itself. Many traditional oriental martial arts are far too complex to be used under a high stress situation and takes far too long to master. A typical oriental martial art takes about 10 years to complete the training and most people in bad areas do not have that kind of luxery to train for that long plus you will need to have a very high level of inner calm under a highly adrenalized state that requires a high level of real world fighting experience (Note: Sports fighting experience is NOT real world fighting experience). And combat sports, while good for advanced training after mastering the foundations of self-defense and while the training methods do improve fighting attributes that have SOME carry over to real life fighting, it only addresses fighting and even then, combat sports fighting methods is INCOMPLETE for real life fighting.

    With that mentioned, there are far too many subjects besides fighting that combat sports and traditional martial arts don't even address at all. For Example:

• They don't address awareness and intuition
• They don't address survivors mindset ( and no the competitive mindset isn't the same thing)
• They don't address escape and evasion
• They don't address basic confrontation management
• They don't address neither stress management nor fear management
• No mention on improvised weapons
• No mention on the use of force continuum
• No mention on self-defense laws
• No mention on how to legally defend yourself in court or how the court operates
• No mention on crime prevention and personal safety tactics
• No mention on the basic structure of a violent confrontation
• No unarmed weapons defense and techniques are brought up at all
• No mention on emergency first aid if you or your loved one are wounded after a fight
• You are not taught basic situational awareness 
• You are not taught how to use basic boundary settings and verbal commands
• You are not taught how to read a aggressors body language for warnings signs of attack
• Multiple attacker situations is not even addressed at all
• Combat sports and TMA training does not include realistic, full contact, scenario training
• Combat sports aim is to win a tournament, self-defense seeks to escape the assault
• Self-defense training regularly stresses and teach students to escape and run at the 1st chance

This list is not even a complete list but will give you a picture as to what REAL self-defense training is supposed to be. The goals and training methods are not the same. While I do advocate combat sports training, I only advocate it as supplemental training as a add on once you have your foundations in at least the basics of self defense. If you're goal is to defend yourself then you should be focusing on basic self-defense training. Not combat sports or traditional martial arts. I know this may ruffle some feathers but quite frankly, I don't care. My concern is in saving lives from violent assaults and when false information is being spread that can get people killed then I have to call it out. On my next article I will compare and contrast the fighting methods (specifically addressing the fighting aspects) between traditional martial arts, combat sports, and authentic self-defense training and what the big differences are. If you need training, you can sign up for The Complete Self-Defense System or if you are nearby the Mayaguez, Puerto Rico area, you can sign up for one on one private lessons with me.

Please, train honestly and stay safe!!
​Ricky, Certified Self-Defense Trainer