Why I Blog About Martial Arts

Recently, I heard a podcast about clearly identifying why you do anything because it is important to effectively deliver your message.  I started a martial arts blog for one main reason and a couple lesser ones.  I am going to cover the main reason today.

I was not satisfied with most of the martial arts instruction related to self-defense.  You can broadly divided martial arts’ schools into two main categories.  One group is primarily dedicated to competition.  The second group is focused on “self-defense”, which is performed at 20 percent on compliant partners.

The focus of the competition academies is focused on churning out great competitors.  They tend to be more open because they are sharing best practices with other academies to put out the best teams they can.

The focus of the self-defense academies is to teach their students to defend themselves.  The problem is that their methods are often flawed.  They practice at 20 to 30 percent because the techniques cannot be practiced safely.  The defenses are often unrealistic because they are based on attacks, which occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I would give the competition schools’ students a better chance in most self-defense situations because they at least have been involved in contact situations.  They also pick up best practices from other schools, while most of the self-defense schools tend to be closed and do not borrow from other systems.

I admire Bruce Lee and Rolls Gracie because they went outside their base art to complement their skills.  They opened their minds to other styles other than just the one they were initially taught.

My goal is to create a more realistic self-defense system based on competition style drilling and sparring that prepares the student for a street situation not necessarily a competition.   I want them to be used to contact as well as being competent in striking, grappling and weapons.

I also stress crime prevention as a way to keep my students out of situations that they would need self-defense skills.  An ounce of prevention goes a long way.

Besides being attacked 20 to 30 times, I have seen numerous assaults and criminal acts in my professional life.  My belief about self-defense was shaped by this experience.  Attacks are sudden.  You will react instinctively.  If you train correctly, you will react correctly.

You will not think about pivoting 45 degrees and bring a strike to the neck causing unconsciousness.  You may actually do this action, if you trained it but you will not have time to think about it.  Those techniques must be drilled until they are yours.

It was for this reason that I started blogging about the martial arts.

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