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Sam Harris wrote a good article on the principles of self defense. In summary (quotes are from the article linked): Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. “What are you looking at, asshole?” “Sorry, man. I was just spacing out. It’s been a long day.” De-escalate and move on. Principle #2: Do not defend your ...

Yes, depending on your definitions of martial arts, inadequate, and real world. No, depending on your definitions of martial arts, inadequate, and real world. Surviving an attack (or combat) is all about stacking the deck in your favour: martial arts (arts of Mars, the God of War) do help, so do guns, team mates, artillery, the police, not being there, ...

OK, I've just watched the video. This situation was ludicrous. looking at the body language of the participants as the car approached, this probably could have been defused with a simple apology - there were words being flung but little more than that those two wanted to fight. They rolled up their sleeves and squared off. I'm going to refer to the ...

I'm going to beat the dead horse I keep near my keyboard. I'm skeptical of any school that requires the student to perform any action that the student feels has the potential of being long term harmful. That's not a problem with the school/style, that's a problem with the teacher. As a counterexample, there are two of us who are currently preparing to ...

He had a choice, he made it by stopping his car, getting out of his car, by allowing his monkey brain to take charge. Talk about some stupid commentary afterwards by the newscasters.... Geez... Plus didn't Patterson have past issues with road rage/DUI's? As Marc MacYoung said the number one pre-attack indicator is you being an asshole. I doubt Patterson ...

One of my old instructor used to teach a couple of ways. 3-hour seminar One approach was a free, one evening seminar (3 hour long) usually offered in the first or second week of the term at a university. Obviously this was a very limited unit. The focus was on rape-by-force and rape-in-a-coercive-social-setting scenarios (not the whole story of course, but ...

Stages of Conflict Prior to any discussion of conflict, we need to examine what the conflict is and at what stage we're entering into it. The stages below represent levels of escalation (delineated clearly only for illustrative purposes; they are never quite so clear), and your entry into a conflict may occur at any stage (that is, you can be trained to ...

Sang Kim in Martial Arts After 40 gives some good advice, the most general point being the suggestion that older martial artists should consider switching from power styles to styles that emphasize precision. He specifically suggests considering weapons arts, to reduce wear and tear that gets harder to recover from as one gets older, as well as their ...

I fully agree with Sardathrion that there are almost always signs before actual violence, because violence is almost always an escalation. Even when there are no signs of the attack itself (i.e. a drive-by shooting), there is an history of violent escalation (insults, threats, etc.). As for the inadequacy of martial arts with the real world, I'd first say ...

Interesting. There are a lot of assumptions here. Let's cover the assumptions that you're making about the attackers first: A1Q - You seem to be indicating he's the lookout, as well as a fill in. His position would indicate that, if you're cornered, he's also closest to a wall. A2L - Being loud, barking orders, etc. is not indicative of a leader ...

From my experience as a bouncer, I can unequivocally state that you are making two very big assumptions here: escalations can be avoided escalations should be avoided The best way to avoid an escalation is to walk away. However there are many times where you can't or shouldn't avoid the escalation, and there will be times where you need to join the ...

I am myself in the Big Boy / Old Man category, so I feel your pain! Especially since you've been training in quite hard / high-impact styles. For the inflammation: ibuprofen (600mg, after training) ice packs or ice baths (lots of icing after training does wonders) frequent massage with arnica cream, dit da jow, or similar For your next training ...

I'm going to concentrate my answer on techniques, I presume that in the course you will cover off basics like being aware of your surroundings, checking your vehicle before getting in to it, your car keys are a handy impromptu weapon, trust no-one, if attacked don't concentrate on trying to knee the groin, etc. With this sort of course you have to ...

I've done this a few times back when I was teaching (we described it as "women's self-defense", not rape specifically). For a short seminar, I concentrated on only two things: Situational awareness -- basic rules of thumb to stay out of dangerous situations, be aware of your surroundings, and not to act/look like an easy victim. Practice hitting or ...

One of the major differences between the 'illegal' moves and the 'legal' moves is that the legal moves have fairly previsible responses. If you poke someone in the eye, you're not quite sure what their response will be. If you bridge, no matter the opponent's response, you're probably (no pun intended) on much more comfortable ground. To go one step deeper ...

Rory Miller and Marc MacYoung do a "Conflict Communication" course. They are available for seminars, and I beleive will have a book coming out soon on the topic. I've been through the seminar with Rory and it was a great learning experience. http://conflictcommunications.com/index.htm Rory's book "Facing Violence" is also a great resource on this topic.

A couple of options immediately spring to mind: Aikido the internal Chinese arts of Hsing - I and Ba Gua (Pa Kua) Aikido is reasonably well known and needs no introduction. The internal arts though are relatively unknown to a lot of people. They are separate arts and they are quite different to your tradition karate/TKD/jiu jutsu, they do have some ...

Some great answers here already, but I'll just add that where I used to train, we had a set of "self defence" techniques. Self Defence #1: Run away. It's the first thing all students were taught there. So the answer to your question would be: run away at the first possible opportunity.

The "real world" as you might surmise from the "world" part is a big place, and things are quite different in one part of the world from another. There are many different situations which might call for self defense, some of which only affect some people and others which only affect different people. So for the question to really garner a useful answer you ...

In Germany, if you are in a situation where someone is aggressive towards you, you are allowed to use reasonable force to defend yourself. As a trained martial artist or someone who has experience fighting, you are asked to first try and defuse the situation by blocking the first attack, instead off beating your opponent right away. Of course in practise, ...

As far as turns overlapping, it doesn't matter as much. The drill eventually gets to a free-flow, but the goal is to move slower than your opponent to force yourself to move (and think) more efficiently. In other words you can wait until after the opponent lands before initiating your movement. Does that happen when someone tries to hit you? Yep, ...

Whatever you think you know about rape is probably wrong. So, I suggest that before even starting to think about what material you will teach, you must learn about rape. A god web starting point is the section on rape from MacYoung's site). Next, find your nearest rape support group and contact them to ask them to teach you. Finally, look up your local ...

First, I see we have some definition misunderstanding. Legal moves in terms of sport competition or self defense? If it is self defense, you need to legitimize the level of force you use. If a bite was an available tool for you to escape and you can justify it, it was a legal move ... Now, about biting itself. It is a great tool if you rip a part of the ...

In Choy Li Fut when faced with multiple opponents we are taught to take out the biggest threat first. There are a number of factors that we can use to determine who this might be: Do they have weapons? Weapon > No Weapon What type of weapon? Gun > Knife Have they had martial arts training? Training > No Training (probably hard to know) How big are they? ...

There's a few things here that I want to address: I did start thinking about owning a gun and getting a license to carry a concealed weapon after that I feel for you; no one should have to go through what you went through. Let me say this first off: I am 100% for responsible firearms ownership. That said, many people become victims of crimes and ...

I was at Rory Miller's seminar. Here is a short video of this exercise. This is a group version of the drill, but we spent hours doing the couples versions. I found this drill to be amazing. I'm a (novice) student of Ninjutsu, and I've never being able to apply locks in a Randori. Moreover, I've never seen locks applied by anyone else - The Randori always ...

There are a lot of good answers and advices for the cases when you already are in trouble. I think martial arts develop an extra sense for danger, which you should use to avoid problems. The best case is that you never need to defend yourself with force. Unfortunately you can always find yourself in bad situation, no matter how careful you are. I follow ...

For the physical aspect, you have to ramp it up to as close to the intensity of an actual fight as you can. That is to say your training partner will be trying to knock you out, they'll be throwing kicks that if unchecked will have you limping for a week, throws are aggressive and quick, and takedowns are often done as slams. You'll get hurt in the beginning ...

Filipino and Indonesian martial arts incorporate a lot of striking and grappling, are quite usable and versatile in the "real world", contain both empty-hand and weapon techniques (which are often the same), and in general, are kind to the joints. The exception being some of the silat groundwork where you're a pretzel, but any reasonable school will take ...

Have you thought about tai chi chuan? I know that westerners tend to think about it more as yoga than martial art but that's a terminology mess to be blamed on popular culture. There are schools that are treating tai chi chuan as a martial art though you might put some effort in finding one. It is an internal art and it will give you freedom to go at your ...