3 MINS 39 SECONDS
Unicorns may be real. Effective self-defence courses aren’ t
During a recent INpowered programme I told the group that self-defence courses you can believe in are like unicorns or pink elephants. You see them in movies and read about them in books, but they don’ t exist.
O ne of the ladies looked at me defiantly and said,“ Mark, unicorns do exist!” I conceded that they might, though I had never seen one. However, I stand by my main point: effective self-defence courses do not exist.
I went and googled self-defence moves the other day. I got more than 1.4 million hits.
“ If he does this, you do that,” and“ if he does that, you do this,” and, and … The internet is full of all these“ quickfix”,“ instant ninja”, and“ only-selfdefence-course-you-will-ever-need” nonsene
Walk into any bookstore and go to the“ self-defence” section. You will see hundreds of books filled with thousands of colour photos showing numerous dangerous scenarios and how to DEFEND yourself in them. For example, when they say,“ If someone grabs your right hand”, you’ ll be prescribed a whole bunch of complicated and often confusing moves
The problem with these internet moves and book scenarios is that they will never work UNLESS you practise them every day. Also, they have not taken into account that your attacker has not seen the clip or book and doesn’ t know how he should stand to attack you, much less how he is meant to respond!
Defence moves need to be second nature to be effective. It is proven that to achieve any measure of proficiency with any real skill, you need to practise it correctly as many as 10,000 times.
You see,“ self-defence” is reactive. It’ s a space reserved for the“ Friss Chris Frikkie”. It involves thousands of wellpractised moves against different targets from all sorts of positions and in a variety of scenarios. In short, you cannot learn to defend yourself with a single course, or in a short space of time.
There are all sorts of fighting arts out there. Some have developed over hundreds of years as part of a fighting culture or subculture; others have military origins, and others still are for sport and entertainment. Some are really good. Some are total rubbish. And almost all of them have someone teaching a“ self-defence” course using that particular approach and philosophy.
Having a black belt or a high grade does not qualify you to teach a selfdefence course, though.
Would you send a loved one to see a doctor who had done a“ doctor’ s course”? Of course not, which is why you shouldn’ t go and do a selfdefence course if you want to learn to defend yourself. As with the doctor, we are talking about your life! There is no room for error.
What you will need to do is find a reputable system with a qualified instructor where you will invest about four hours a week for the rest of your life practising techniques
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