Gedanate

I am a female college student, and I got a taste of martial arts when I took one single Aikido class quite a while ago. It enjoyed it, but the classes they had were too big for my liking. I would like to learn properly, but at a smaller school or dojo.

I really want to learn some martial arts because I want the self-defense part of it as well as better fitness and mental discipline.

I only have a little money to spare for recreation activities such as this, but I really want to become a skilled martial artist. I want to be able to defend myself in most situations. Yes, I do understand there can be nothing out there with 100 percent guarantee of safety!

How do I find a self defense class or a martial arts school that is affordable to me but has good training? Can you suggest where I should start looking?

Thanks, Laura.

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I’m 5′10″ and around 160lbs. So I’m not small, but not large. I want to study a good self defense form of martial arts that can be applied in the real world (street fights). I’ve heard Kenpo karate is excellent for this. What do you guys say.
If it’s important I’m a Taosit.

I know a woman who is in her 40s who told me that once she kicked a guy as hard as she could while she was wearing high heels.

She drove her heel into his groin until he lost consciousness, and she confided to me she didn’t care how badly it had hurt him… even if he could never have children after what she did to him.

Do all women who have been taught self defense think and act like this?

What’s the difference between martial arts and self-defense? It’s quite simple when you look at it. Self-defense is about getting home in one piece. Martial arts is about self-improvement, fitness, and looking good.

Most martial arts will teach you some self defense skills and will certainly boost your self confidence; but whether your skills will save you in a real self-defense situation purely depends on how the incident starts.

You need to realize that martial arts training in a gym or a dojo is a strictly-controlled environment. It has to be so, or else there would be so many injuries to the participants that the school would quickly go out of business, and the owner would be bankrupted by lawsuits or thrown into jail.

So martial artists are taught to ‘fight’ by a set of rules. Those rules are designed to prevent the contestants from getting seriously injured. Receiving a few bruises, or even a black eye does not count as an injury per se. I have been taught that injury is where you are carried off to a hospital trauma department. Injury is where a surgeon has to go to work on you before your body can start to heal. Injury is where you cannot carry on, no matter how determined you are.

A broken leg is an injury, so is a ruptured testicle.

So even the toughest, full contact martial arts still have very few serious injuries. If they had more, they would not have many students left.

But out on the street if you choose to get into a fight, you have no way of knowing how a fight is going to end. There is no referee to stop the fight if it gets totally out of hand, and there are no rules. None whatsoever. So you have no way of knowing in advance whether the other guy is going to drop you with a sucker punch and then mark or maim you for life while you are lying on the ground dazed.

It does happen. There are plenty of psychos out there, just looking for an excuse to do serious damage to somebody else… anybody else – and you will do fine if you are stupid enough to make yourself available to them.

That is why you should always apologise if necessary and walk away from a fight. So what if the guy calls you chicken. Are you really so vulnerable that it worries you?

It is only in the movies that the hero proves he is tougher than the bad guy. We would all like to be such a hero, but then ‘being tough’ like that is social posturing. It’s trying to be the alpha male – the top dog – so you can impress and win the girls. Save that for the ring, where there is a referee.

Wanting to be a hero will get you crippled or killed. Avoid the fight and go home in one piece.

That’s my take on it. Does anyone else care to comment?

A reader recently asked me, How can I train to be mentally prepared and avoid panicking if I get attacked?

He said, David, I am scared I will betray my nervousness to an aggressor.

How can I prevent this from happening?

Hey, David.

What would you recommend as the best way I can learn self-defense at home? I am all by myself and I have nobody to practice with.

Are there any good books you can recommend, videos or DVDs I should look at, web sites I should visit for this info?

I am looking for self defense, not some particular type of martial art. I have no particular leanings here. I just want something that will work for me when I need it, and I don’t want to limit my options.

Thanks in advance…

Confused writes:

How can you make sure you hit your opponent’s pressure points accurately and effectively?

Is there a visual indicator I can rely on, like a certain patch of wrinkles in the other guy’s shirt that  shows the spot I need to hit. What should I look for?

I try them out on myself (in case I ever need to use them for self-defense. But when I train with a sparring partner, everything happens so fast that I am not sure my jabs have hit him in the right place. And most times when I do know I hit the spot, I also realize it was purely by luck.

I have never done any martial arts training, but I’m asking this question in case I’m ever attacked and need to defend myself. I would much rather use pressure points than other attacks.

Is it true that if you just blindly punch someone, it’s more likely you’ll be the one getting hurt? That’s why I’m asking about vulnerable points on the human body.

What do you think is the best self defense weapon?

I am planning to make a gift and was thinking about buying any of self-defense weapons. I know that they are all designed to give you time to escape, but anyway, what is the best? Pepper spray doesn’t look as a serious option, maybe a stun gun?

I am interested in learning boxing for self defense.

Is it hard for someone with no fighting experience to learn how to box?

How effective is boxing in a real confrontation, and how hard is it to learn?

Where do I go now to find out more?

Knowing how to do a back breakfall instinctively, without thinking about it, keeps you from cracking your head open as your body hits the concrete. This is a quite a common injury in real street fights, and has resulted in many deaths and criminal charges of manslaughter or worse.

Since you learn Judo, Aikido, Hapkido or Jujitsu by throwing your partner and being thrown in turn by him, you have to learn  right from the start how to break your fall safely, because you will be thrown many, many times while training. And at senior levels, as you get closer to Black Belt skill level, you can expect to throw and be thrown yourself scores – or even hundreds – of times during training sessions that could last from one to two hours.

And when you are skilled enough to be chosen as someone’s Uke (that’s the attacker who gets thrown all over the place) for a demonstration or a competition you are expected to  take some hard falls without getting hurt. So you had better be darned good at tumbling.

So martial arts breakfalls will get you fit alright.

It is like you are doing weight-lifting, over and over again. But it is the weight of your own body that you have to keep picking up each time you rise to your feet after being thrown.

How much did you say you weigh?

The most basic of all breakfalls used in Jujitsu, Judo and Aikido is the back breakfall. You start to learn this one at first from lying down on your back, on the training mats or on the ground.

As your skills improve, you graduate to sitting and then squatting breakfalls. Then you learn to do them from standing at your full height… and when you get good at them, you will be able to handle being hurled at speed and with full power by your training partners.

You learn to keep your head from smashing into the ground as you land, and you learn how not to place your arms and hands.

The way an untrained person tries to break their fall – by placing their straight arms out behind their back and between them and the ground as they loose their balance and fall down – almost guarantees that they will break their arms, one or both clavicles (the collar bones) and possibly their coccyx (or tail-bone) as well.

Uninitiated onlookers who are watching an Aikido, Hapkido, Judo or Jujitsu training session think that the guy flying through the air is being thrown… as if Tori*  that’s the person doing the ‘throw’ is tough and strong. But it’s not a matter of superhuman strength, it comes from timing and feeling for and understanding your opponent / partner’s balance – and how to break that balance.

And it’s true, some of the so-called ‘throws’ wouldn’t actually throw many real-life attackers, like out on the street. What they would do is cripple the guy. The Uke jumps over his own arm from, say, a Kotegaeshi wrist throw because he knows only too well what will happen to his arm if he is too slow taking that breakfall. So he does this flying somersault and his body goes thump on the ground; but what he has actually done is avoid a serious injury from a potentially dangerous martial arts technique.

Think about it. What hurts you more … a punch in the head or having your arm broken in two places?

That’s why we learn to breakfall.

* Note: Tori, the defender who executes the throw is called Nage in traditional Aikido styles.

My young children and I would like to learn a martial art for self defense. What is the best martial art for this?

If there are no martial art classes in my area, does anyone know any step-by-step instructions on line somewhere?

We just need to learn how to get out of a bad situation fast if we have to.

Thanks for your suggestions.

(In the U.S) I’m young and I’ve been thinking about having my Mother and Sister take a self-defense course and then have them carry a non-lethal weapon (for self defense) in case anything were to happen.

What are some self defense weapons other then tasers and stun guns? and how much would a self defense course cost?

Thanks.

I have a minor disability that affects my balance somewhat and my ability to stand for long periods. I’d like to learn some effective self defense. Would boxing be adequate?

I don’t really care for participating in tournaments, I just want the self defense bit of it.

I already carry a concealed firearm, but since I travel by air a lot in my work, there are many places I am not allowed to bring my pistol. Therefore I need to be able to use my hands and body to defend my life if necessary.

Police officers in Mobile Alabama used as taser on a mentally-disabled deaf man who had spent a long time inside a toilet cubicle in a store’s bathroom.

Not realizing that the unfortunate fellow was deaf and mentally-challenged, the boys in blue knocked on the door and called for him to come out. And when he didn’t hear them, they gave him a dose of pepper spray which they sprayed underneath the toilet stall door.

The officers then broke open the toilet door and immediately tasered the hapless man, later named as Antonio Love, age 37.

When the cops realized they had swarmed a deaf and disabled man, they tried to book him for disorderly conduct. Fortunately, the charges were thrown out by a duty magistrate, and Mr Love’s family have since lodged a formal complaint about the incident.

What style of self-defense would be best for someone with no experience?

I’m not athletic or very flexible, but I’m hoping to learn some self defense. Is there one that will be able to give me some skill in the art, but will not be too demanding in the beginning? I’ve heard that most forms of self-defense require a minimum level of fitness in the beginning.

Yes, I could carry a weapon, but that’s not always possible in case of a attack. For example, a lot of places don’t allow pepper spray.