The most IMPORTANT aspect of self defense is often overlooked!

When we picture a self defense class, we often think of learning to escape grabs, block punches, cause some damage to your attacker(s), and get away from the assault relatively intact. When you pay for a self defense class you expect to “get your money’s worth” , learning some useful and sometimes cool moves. But will those cool moves help you after training them for only a few short hours? No, probably not.

In past articles I have talked about people who train for years and still end up getting beaten up, hospitalized, or even killed. Black belts and professional fighters getting horribly beaten when out of the training hall or ring. There are many reasons for that but the biggest one is the reason for this article. The biggest reason that physically trained athletes get hurt when attacked for real is because they haven’t ever had to face real aggression and they were not mentally prepared for it.

Training the mind in a self defense class type situation should be paramount. When it really comes down to it, everyone knows how to defend themselves. Everyone knows what hurts because something has hurt them before. Whether that was from being in a fight or just walking into a door, we have all felt pain and can use that information to extrapolate how to hurt others. I’m not saying that there is no use for training martial arts. The benefits of holistic martial arts training go far beyond the ability to fight, but in self defense, the moves might be simple and basic for the person teaching them or for people who train some form of martial arts, but for those who don’t and are taking these classes to learn how to defend themselves and have no previous training one of two things will happen:

1) They won’t remember the move when it comes time to use it, or

2) They won’t have the will to use it.

Aggression is scary. It can be overwhelming. You can train for years in the martial arts and never really see it. The only time you will see it in its natural, unbridled form is when you are attacked. That is why it is so hard to deal with. If you have never encountered real violence you don’t have a point of reference and it can cause you to do one of three (not two) things; Run (flight), Fight, or worst of all and unfortunately the most common, Freeze.

Freezing can happen when you cannot mentally process what is actually happening, like an over-stimulation. You can’t believe you are actually being attacked. Your mind starts looking for other rational explanations of what is going on instead of dealing with the issue at hand. If you experience this you may only freeze for a moment, a few seconds, but that is long enough to take a few shots to the head, which may be enough to stop you from having the ability to fight back.

Another common reason for freezing is fear. Fear is very real and everyone feels it. If you don’t you may not live very long. Fear is a natural, human response to danger. Fear itself can’t normally hurt you but the hesitation that fear causes in many people can. One of my favorite quotes from a movie comes from Point Break (the original one):

“Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true”

Fear can paralyze you if it is unexpected. It’s one thing if you slowly ease into your fear. If you slowly move up to the railing overlooking the Grand Canyon when you are afraid of heights. That is something that you can deal with. You are trying to overcome your fear. But if fear appears, seemingly out of nowhere, then it can shut you down.

That mental shut down is exceedingly difficult to train in a safe environment. You know that if you join a martial arts class that no one is probably going to try to hospitalize you. They want you to learn the art, enjoy yourself, and continue to train. It is hard to have regular attendance if you are always recovering from an injury. So, what can we do to train for “sudden violence”?

Physical training is great. It prepares you physically for a confrontation, but physical training alone cannot prepare you mentally and emotionally for a real attack. Now, you can chose to walk down dark alleys at night with a wad of cash in your hands or pick fights in bars with some drunken monster, but that will only wind you up in the hospital until you learn to overcome your fear and/or become a better fighter. There are less destructive ways to prepare yourself for a violent attack.

The first way is simply to imagine the situation and play it through. Imagination is important in all forms of training. Boxers do it when they shadow box and martial artists do it when they do forms. Maybe a better (cooler) way of saying it is mental scenario training. Meditate on being attacked. What would you do? How do you respond? See the attack coming in your mind. Mentally, not acting it out, respond to the attack and see yourself defeating the opponent. Be realistic. Now, replay the scenario in your mind and have something go wrong. Respond to the obstacle and again, defeat your opponent. Now do it again and lose. See yourself getting beat up. How to you respond to that? How to you regain control? Can you? It’s only in your mind so you are safe, but you need to see all possible variables and outcomes. Always seeing things go your way does not help you. It may increase your confidence, but it will be a lie. When someone actually connects you are back into that disbelief scenario and may have frozen. Don’t train until you get it right, train until you can’t get it wrong!

Watch actual fights. There are hundreds of thousands of fight videos on YouTube. Watch them. Learn from other people’s mistakes. What happens on the street is not the same as what happens in the UFC. I like watching UFC as well, but it is different when there are no rules, and possibly weapons or attacker back up. Watch as many as you can and see what happens statistically. This not only prepares you for what may happen but also desensitizes you to the attack mentally. The aggression is not directed at you, but it will help to see it and will help you process the aggression better when it is coming your way.

One of the biggest concerns I have seen in my 37+ years of training is a practitioner’s reluctance to actually hurting someone. I don’t mean the statement that fearful people use as an excuse not to fight. Some people train martial arts but are still afraid to fight. I have heard these people use the excuse that they “don’t want to hurt someone with their skills”. If that is legitimate and that is a choice then fine, but if you are lying about that, and therefore lying to yourself, then you have a problem and need to be honest about your fears and feelings. Lying about it does not make it go away.

Some people have a moral issue with hurting another human being. This is not that uncommon. I don’t like doing it either. However, if you find yourself faced with an attacker and you are not in a position to talk yourself out of it, you need to not only defend yourself, but make it so that attacker cannot continue trying to hurt you. I am not saying, “END THEM”! Just make sure they cannot chase you when you run away. As I have said many times, the term self “defense” is a misnomer. You cannot merely defend yourself. Mentally that is too passive. You need to become the attacker. You need to overwhelm your attacker and put them on the defensive. To do this, you must cause them pain. In this situation pain is the “gold standard” that everyone understands. You must make the decision to allow yourself to do this before you get into the situation. Otherwise, this will be another mental “sticking point” and anything that makes you think, slows you down in these scenarios. You don’t have time to think. ACT!

Lastly, learn about body language. Learn to read how people move. In communication, only 7% is the words we use, the other 93% is how we say those words and how we act while we are speaking them. My day job is a corporate investigator. I am certified in two methods of interrogation which all come with extensive body language reading training. After doing that for the last 20 years I now teach courses in body language reading and deception identification. Being able to notice a potential attackers body language cues will help you exit the situation before it escalates. The best self defense training is the one you never have to use.

Shameless self plug. I am doing an online body language and deception education training course on June 1st and 2nd from 7pm to 9pm both nights (Mountain Standard Time). It is a basic beginner’s course to detecting lies and understanding body language. If you are interested, please email me at brad@ronincombatives.com

Brad Dotten

Ronin Combatives

Calgary, Alberta, Canada