Self Defense
Probably the most controversial question is: how to learn self defense?
When many people recommend different martial arts, techniques, and YouTube videos, we say non of this is a priority, what matters is actual hands-on and practice.
Self defense in simple words
Self defense and martial arts are no different than any other sport, and talent alone can’t beat practice; if watching videos can do anything then all of us who watch football and Lionel Messi would become great football players 🙂 but reality is far from this.
So hopefully by now we can trash out everything called YouTube regardless to it’s content.
Self defense categories and scenarios
- Weaponized ( One on one or group)
- Armless (One on one or group)
We believe that there’s no self defense that can guarantee results against weapons; what could be key with armed scenarios is your understanding of psychology in general, and the attacker psychology in that particular case; those factors determine 95% of the decision making and how to react more than anything related to martial arts techniques.
In scenarios when weapon being presented, best is to either run, or to give the attacker what he/she wants as alternatively you might get injured and still lose everything.
Self defense can help you facing armless attacker, those scenarios that can be categorized as (work or school bully, street assault, work assault, sexual predators, … etc)
What is real, what can we do, and how effective it will be?
Experience and practice!
Whatever you decide to learn as martial art, experience and practice is what’s going to give you the efficiency, effectivity and confidence rate that you are looking for.
We believe that grappling martial art (BJJ) is the most effective one, you can grapple twice a day and still have very low injury risk compares to other martial arts sparring.
Grappling can give you different techniques for different problems (body size and athleticism), but practicing that technique is what will make it really work, the more you practice the more it become natural and the application success rate will increase.
Why we don’t recommend boxing and kickboxing in self defense scenarios?
Well the major issue with them (punching, kicking and slapping) is they create great tension and scene escalation.
Keep in mind that we want to end this scene with minimum damage as possible, when the victim starts to throw punches, kicks and do not succeed with instant knock out (most likely), then the level or aggressiveness from the attacker will surly increase, and that’s exactly what we want to avoid.
If the attacker was possessing a weapon but did not use it initially, following the tension increment in the scene he will feel threatened and most likely will introduce it.
Techniques that can increase tension are not recommended, that’s why we keep watching police officers trying to calm down the offender and never escalate the scene; grappling could be the only way that allows you to achieve efficiency, security and control of the scene.
Closure
Whether you feel that punching and kicking can save you, or you agree with grappling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a safe granted solution, either way, enrolling in a martial art school and keep practicing those martial arts regularly (2 ~3 times a week) is the actual key to keep you safe.