From our earliest days, humans have had to live a life of violence and conflict. Whether we were hunting for food, defending a tribe or village, or marching to war, violence and conflict were there. We are, as a species, adaptable and violent. And we always have been.

In our modern world, conflict comes in many different varieties. Sometimes we argue with words, or through digital devices we send hateful messages that we would be frightened to speak aloud in the presence of the person we wish to chastise. Violence and conflict are found in the person yelling at and demeaning their spouse, in the cyber bully who taunts a child ever closer to suicide, and the drunken Uncle who starts smacking his nephew

because he wants to “see some of that karate you’re learning”, as well as the more obvious examples of spousal abuse, rape and murder.

The subject is mind-boggling and so vast that it cannot be covered completely by any one person.

So in this presentation I am going to look at a small section of violence and conflict, specifically that which is now hidden from children. There are a few issues I see as contributing to what is becoming a huge problem. I will discuss those issues and try to piece this together.

Problem→ Solution→ New Problem

Most of the really big screw-ups that we see today that make us scratch our head and ask why are things like this? can be traced to the common process of Problem→ Solution→ New Problem. People see a situation they don’t like, and set out to “fix it”. This is exactly what has been going on for a very long time as people try to come up with ways to make violence “go away”. The very attempt to make violence go away is ignorance of what humans are, but I will save that for another day.

Gun laws, laws dictating the blade length of a knife that you are allowed to carry, and so on are examples of the result of this mentality. The real issue that people don’t like to face is that the people who promote this mindset are essentially legislating what type of violence is legal through the very act of making other types illegal. Disarming the entire world would not stop violence because there will always be rocks and people with arms strong enough to throw those rocks.

But people feel the need to “do something”, even if that something doesn’t do anything. Or, as we are about to explore, even if what you do makes things much worse.

In order to better grasp the issue, we are going to first travel back in time.

The year was 1982. I was in the 8^th grade, and while I was not really having the time of my life, things were not as bad as I thought they were, and as my real hard times were still a couple of years away, I was blissfully ignorant.

In PE class, Coach Broadhurst decided the boys would be allowed to wrestle. I was excited about that. I was a wrestling fan to the core, and while I had never really wrestled much except for tying my little brother up in knots, I was sure I could make a name for myself.

Yes sir, I was about to reinvent my entire image that day.

That was the plan anyway. I was really not very athletic back then. My opponent was. And while I knew the names of a lot of moves and holds, he knew how to get a person into those moves and holds, and as it turned out, I couldn’t get out of any of them! It didn’t take long until I was the one tied up in a knot.

Things went from competitive, to very rough in short order. I was not very liked by my opponent. And some advantage was being liberally taken. Then out of nowhere – the sleeper-hold! You young pups call it a rear naked choke these days, but back then we all knew it as the Sleeper and we knew it was Goodnight Irene once that was applied. I couldn’t get out, and the Coach stepped in and that was that. I was already pretty low on the social food chain at the time, so losing face wouldn’t have mattered much, but because of the way the coach stepped in, after letting things progress to an all but decided finish, no one lost face. I didn’t lose face because an authority figure stepped in and stopped everything before I passed out and pooh-poohed in my pants. My opponent didn’t lose face either through not getting pooh-poohed on, as well as through not having an authority figure chastising him for being too rough. Nobody lost anything, and we got to play rough like boys are supposed to play.

It wasn’t that bad. Boys were boys, no big deal.

Now let us return to our present time.

Prevention of small scale conflict between children by parents

Today we have parents who may or may not have been bullied as a child, who have gone to great lengths to prevent all small scale conflict for their child from the first time the kid is around other kids. There are parenting manuals to teach parents how to do this. We have “sports leagues” where points are not counted because it makes the losing team feel bad. Gone are the days of coaches naming two team captains who select their team one at a time, because the last kid picked might feel bad.

Speaking as the kid who was almost always picked last, kids are pretty resilient critters. I got over it! I got over it the moment the game started. Every time!

Conflict and feeling less than perfect or not being fully accepted by our peers is an important part of childhood learning that is being missed by generations in our country due to parental meddling. In an effort to pad the falls and sand the rough edges of life, our children are growing up without many of the essential life skills we earned through the experience. I  don’t want my kids picked last in sports, or to have another kid steal from them or push them down, but you can bet that if that happens I have experience to advise my kids on what to do. And my actions are not going to involve threatening to sue a school or yelling at a teacher. When this current crop has kids, they won’t know how to handle it, and neither will the kid.

Far too overlooked; there are many consequences to hiding conflict from our children. The consequences were not anticipated, and are currently ignored. The list that follows is from my own observation, and as such is probably incomplete. But here is my list:

Increased sense of panic about conflict

Panic in any situation is usually traced to inexperience or negative previous experiences. Children are supposed to learn about many things and adults prevent much of their learning out of stupidity. For example; a child will stare at people in different situations, especially when the people the child is staring at are doing something strange or new to the child’s experience, such as arguing, flying a kite or performing Tai Chi.

When a child is staring, they are taking it all in, they are learning. Adults will tell the child not to stare. This is because adults stare for an entirely different reason. When an adult is staring, it is perceived as a threat. This is why I teach adults to notice the gangster, but never stare at him. All well and good, but adults tell the kid to stop staring and in doing so they interfere with the learning of the child. The same thing happens when an adult steps in and prevents an argument, disagreement or other conflict for their child, instead of letting the kid solve the problem.

When the adult prevents the child from ever experiencing conflict, the child is stuck with an entirely new situation when conflict or physical violence does occur. The child is likely to panic, and will undeniably experience stress.

Loss of ability to identify conflict early enough to avoid, or resolve if extrication is no longer possible

In the lower levels of conflict and if we want to use the term, violence, the child learns what it looks like, and how it starts. There are many subtle clues that an alarming number of adults just don’t see, and this might be connected to parents cutting off conflict for the child instead of allowing the child to solve it him or herself.

You really want your kid to be safe?

Then your kid needs to be armed with the ability to identify conflict before it becomes unavoidable. This requires knowledge and experience, so some of the minor conflicts in your kid’s life are going to have to be allowed to run their course. You cannot baby them forever and still end up producing a healthy and well-adjusted adult. You just end up producing a thirty or forty-year old baby, and there are already enough of those out there.

Loss of ability to appropriately give a response to match the situation

This lack of experience has other problems as well.

From my perspective, the children brought up like this have no clue as to what is and is not an appropriate response in many various situations.

How could they? They have zero experience.

This is how we end up with kids who are insulted, and respond through murder or suicide. A girl rejects a boy, and he reacts by raping or killing her. Pure stupidity. Or he turns into a stalker because no one has ever told him ‘no’ in his life, or else he was brought to an understanding that his own wants are all that matter. More stupidity!

An ounce of prevention

When a kid has never been taught or experienced that people push other people around, you could well end up with a kid who gets pushed around and responds with over the top violence. As a reflex habit we look to place blame:society, mental illness, what have you. Blame is a deflection of responsibility. Blame allows us to wash our hands of the situation and move on.

Remember the old saying, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Well, we have a similar situation here, and blame may make us feel better, but it also gives rise to the poorly thought out “remedies” which get paraded around as if they make even a small difference.

Our current society has become so squeamish over conflict that they no longer see that is does have a value. Childhood conflict especially. We have more than a generation out there right now who have no clue at all what to do when things go bad, and they are just as unprepared for what to do when they don’t get their way.

I don’t want to be seen as advocating youth violence as an answer. That would be even more stupid that the situation I am trying to address. Rather, I would like to offer up the idea that not everything that makes us uncomfortable is by definition bad. Discomfort can lead to growth.

Going back in time again, just a few years this time; I remember watching my youngest daughter as she was trying to learn to stand and walk. Every fiber of my being wanted to go help her to stand up and to start walking, but any such effort would have delayed her ability to both stand and walk. I hated seeing her fall, but it is a part of the process. Sometimes it might be best to stand back and let our kids figure some things out on their own.

In KICKSTART KIDS, we teach and train traditional martial arts, but a powerful impact is made by our class in the way that we teach kids about being resilient, about conflict resolution, about winning with humility and losing with good sportsmanship. We throw ideas of entitlement out the window by making each student earn their rank, and we teach them how to face failure with a resolve to go back, work harder, and then try harder the next time that opportunity presents itself. 

Martial arts classes are like this, but from my perspective, KICKSTART KIDS has an intensified version of this effect, because we see our students every day. We see them on their good days and bad. We see them on the days when they are ready to train and on the days when they want to be anywhere except the karate class. As a PE Credit alternate elective, and part of their daily class schedule, they have no choice but to “go to karate” every day. 

When you see your students in these different situations, a lot changes from the commercial martial arts setting where you only see kids on their “up” days. 

In our current society we have an overwhelming amount of hyperparenting going on. Yes…I did just make up a word, but it needs to be done by someone, so why not me?

Many parents out there today don’t just want a level playing field for their kids, which if it was what they wanted would be an understandable enough wish. The real world doesn’t work that way, but at least I could understand the desire. Many of the current crop of parents want equal results, or to have the rules changed in favor of their kid. I have heard of parents throwing fits because the date of a sporting event conflicted with the date of another event, and the parent even pushed so far as to request that the entire event be done again on a day when his kid could compete without distraction! 

This is a special kind of absurdity for which I do not have the vocabulary to describe without resorting to the liberal use of profanity.

In the martial arts, we teach students, children an adult alike, that competition is about being your best under pressure. Anyone can be great when there is nothing on the line. But when we are under the pressure of competition, we get a chance to truly test ourselves. Outside factors come into play, how do we deal with them? 

We didn’t get enough sleep last night, do we use it as an excuse or see it as an opportunity to find out how hard we can fight on under the circumstance? 

Our opponent is bigger, smaller, taller, shorter, faster, slower…better…than we are. How do we face it? Shall we give up or throw our absolute best at them and see if this is our day? 

A martial artist would look at these challenges and come up with one answer, fight on!

A non martial artist may come up with the opposite, and the modern parent, armed with hand sanitizer and smart phone would be finding a loophole in the rules to allow their child a first place prize. 

Rational adults can look back on their childhood and see that getting our feelings hurt, being picked last for a team in PE, skinned knees and stubbed toes, and even losing made us better. In an episode of King of the Hill, there is a line that describes it perfectly, “Sure we got bruised, and cut and burned! But that was how we learned that things were hard, or sharp, or hot!” We don’t want our kids to suffer,  I get it, but we need our kids to learn. 

As a parent of three of the most wonderful humans I could ever want to know,  understand the desire to have your kid be the best at everything. But as a thinking human being I know full well that this is not possible. This is why I encourage my kids and my students to be the best that they can be. But I don’t hide from them the fact that there are winners and by default that means there have to be losers. This is life in the real world.

There is a series of internet memes that I love called You had ONE JOB. The entire series is just photos of absolutely idiotic mistakes; a billboard installed with half of it upside down, a brick walkway with a red brick border, except for the one black brick suspiciously out-of-place, with a red brick in the middle of nowhere. Well, parents, you have ONE JOB; to raise a child equipped to survive in the real world. It is not to shelter them from reality, as this would only end badly or produce one more neurotic adult. Your job is not to ensure that your little Timmy ends up with the same job at the same pay as little Johnny from next door. You job is not to live out the life you wish you had through your kid. 

Failure is a part of life, and pick any wildly successful person you wish; if you read their story you will find failures along the way. 

It is how we humans learn.

Parents today seem to want their child to only experience success, even though that very concept is as ludicrous as the concept of a pendulum swinging only to the right. You cannot remove the pain of failure from your kid’s life experience and produce an adult human worth a spit. 

A bigger opportunity is missed here in teaching that failure is not the end of the world.

Take a moment and contrast this with effective leadership from any other business venture.

Outside of the martial arts, those who are viewed as good leaders understand the nature of being a leader as being one part of a relationship. I don’t use this term in so base a sense as “you can’t be a leader unless you have followers”. What I am talking about is the interaction and interplay of human emotions which are constantly changing between those in a role of authority, and those who are under authority. The type of “top down” leadership where the “boss” sets the goals and the vision or mission, and everyone else does what the boss says has been shown in study after study to be ineffective. This is the model that is clung to by most martial arts groups, but obviously we can do better.

The fact that obscures the insight needed to cause many martial arts groups to change their model of leadership is simple. A ruthless and cranky boss creates tense followers or employees. Tense and stressed people can be extremely productive in the short-term, so with a high turnover rate, an illusion is created where the boss feels that his near fascist style is effective. Without the high turnover, in this case being mostly students who quit, but also instructors who work for the school or organization moving on at the first opportunity, the method might have been dropped long ago. But perhaps not, as the driving motivation behind these people is power. They do love to lord it over others.

Another added difficulty is the “this is the way it has always been done” mentality.

This mentality, and the strange ideas that we carry on generation to the next about what precisely we feel it means to “be a Black Belt” are part of why leaders of schools and styles can go so far off course. I am certain that no one ever plans out becoming an evil overlord of a particular martial arts style or school, but it does happen every day.

It would be good here to stop and consider a series of questions. This is an exercise that is of great importance to those of you who are leaders or instructors right now as the answers apply to how you lead, whether this leading is part of an organization, or leading the students in a class. I would ask the following:

What is the ideal instructor/leader like? Take some time to list the qualities of the ideal leader. What qualities would this person have that would make you want to work with them. Perhaps you can make this easier by calling to mind someone you worked for in the past that was so good or inspiring that were they to be transferred to another area, you might be motivated to request a transfer to continue working with them. Ask yourself what the mood of this person is like? What is their approach to the people they are in charge of, and how do they treat those people? Perhaps you might want to consider how they develop the vision or mission of the group, is it top down, or is it more collaborative? Do they take action or talk about problems and challenges? What is the ideal?

What am I like now? If you are a leader in any capacity now, you should next consider what you are like now. This is not as easy as it may seem at first. Most people have an idea or image of how they are seen by others. Whether this idea or image is how they are actually seen is another matter. There tends, in my experience, to be a disconnect of sorts between how people think others see them and how they are actually seen by others. This issue has only been exacerbated with the rise of the digital identity. It can be disastrous to the leader to allow the false image of how they are seen to go unchecked.

For a leader, there must be an honest assessment of how they are perceived by those they lead. This can be honest assessment can be had many ways, but one easy way is through the anonymous survey. Constant feedback from the people you lead is not always easy, in fact it can be painful. No one enjoys hearing about the areas where they are weak or ineffective, especially when those are the very areas where our imagined self is the epitome of effectiveness and strength, but true growth means being an adult and facing the truth. Take the necessary steps to find out where you are right now, because without this information, the next step is impossible.

How do I get there from here? Once you have an honest and true picture of how the people you lead view you, you can begin the process of mapping out your journey from where you are to where you need to be. Some may find that the journey is short, and others may find that it is more distant, but that part does not matter. What matters is in knowing you are not where you want to be, and taking the steps necessary to become the leader you imagine yourself to be. Chart the path in small steps, and remember that you need to be genuine. Being a positive leader does not mean slapping a fake smile on and handing out a bunch of platitudes. Such gimmicks are identified immediately, even when those you lead do not openly say so.

As the steps are taken to make the needed changes, stay genuine to the idea behind making the changes, and keep a professional, disciplined, and consistent focus on making actual change.

As a final note, a person does not have to be an evil martial arts overlord in order to benefit from this introspection. Good leaders constantly ask themselves questions just like these in order to continually improve. Being a good leader, just like being a good instructor or good student, is a continual process of refinement. Always improve.

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Kris Wilder 2013 Seminar Texas

The above link will take you to a blog article reviewing a seminar with Kris Wilder. If you are thinking about joining us when he comes to Texas, the above article give some really good insight. Enjoy!

If you want to sign up, please click here.

I really hope this idea goes nowhere. I am sure at some point the developers were sitting around throwing ideas around an one said, “UFC!” and at the same moment another said, “American Gladiators!”, and this was the offspring…

• What should be included in a children’s self-defense class?
• Where is the line regarding how much information the child needs to hear in a class, without crossing the line?

In other words; if the dangers a child faces are in many ways different from those an adult will face, what do we need to cover in a self-defense class for children, and how much is too much when we are telling the kids about the dangers they face?

I will start with the first: what should be covered.

In truth, the self-defense for a child needs to include everything the child needs to know. Depending on the age of the child being taught, some facts may need to be brought up in less detail, but the child needs to know what they are up against, without being forced into paranoia.

The dangers and challenges that a child may face range from bullying and other harassment, to physical assault from an adult, and even sexual assault from an adult who statistically is likely to be someone they know, but there are enough cases where children are sexually assaulted by strangers that the threat from those people they do not know cannot be ignored. These categories are broad and contain subsets of study.

Let’s take a look at these issues one at a time.

Bullying and other harassment.

As there are different types of bullying that happen today, the pat answers that our parents gave us are no longer correct, and in many cases are irrelevant to the child.

The child needs to be taught that much of the advice that adults may have for them on dealing with a bully is outdated or just flat wrong. Ignoring the bully does nothing, and standing up to the bully only works if the bully is insecure. Ignore the bully is the advice of a middle-aged person to a child who does not have the life experience or maturity to successfully apply it. Standing up to the bully is asking for trouble, unless the bully is insecure. And just as a hint; if the bully was insecure about being able to beat down the victim, they would not bully them, they would find someone weaker. Bullies don’t look for a fight, they look for a victim.

Children need to be taught the ramifications of fighting the bully, as most schools in the U.S. have adopted zero tolerance  policies on fighting.  A zero tolerance policy sounds like a good thing because of the name and the given subject matter, but the fact is that violence still happens, but the school sees both parties as guilty, or at best, sees both parties as willing participants. And while it may anger some parents to read it, the schools are correct on this part of the issue. There are a good number of opportunities to extricate yourself from a tense situation before it ever turns into physical violence, so in one aspect both parties are willing participants in a fight. But the bullied child may not see it that way, and may think they fight back in self-defense. This brings up another issue which children need to be taught – there is a difference between morally justified and legally justified. The complicated details will pass over the head of most children, but an adult can still communicate to the child that the law may not always be on their side if they fight everyone who offends them. Additionally, one must remember that these are kids we are discussing. Being told that there are opportunities to walk away before the conflict turns physical, and actually being capable of walking away are two completely different things. We have social programming hard-wired into our brains, and kids (as well as adults) often fail to understand and/or recognized when impulse rather than reason is driving their actions. So, helping a child understand this aspect of the situation really should be a part of what is taught. As difficult as this may seem to the self-defense instructor, there is a real opportunity to make a difference that can have a long-lasting impact on the life of the child. If you make the kids understand that backing down and thus avoiding the fight with a bully is in fact self-defense of a high order, due to the superior presence of mind needed to do so, then you will have done a great service to the child. There are adults who never learned that it is not only okay, but actually advisable to back down from some fights. Getting a kid to understand this is an important factor in their long-term safety.

Another aspect of bullying that is often overlooked is cyber-bullying. The common answer from adults is “just ignore it! Don’t read the hateful emails and don’t read the venomous Facebook posts.” This is really easy for a middle-aged person to say. If you do not have some experience in ignoring the bad things said about you by the time you reach age forty, you probably have not lived in the real world. Again, these are kids we are talking about. They do not have the life experience to see this rationally. And lest we forget, when we were teens we desperately needed to be accepted, and if we were not it hurt us grievously. I had the chance to read some of the vitriol posted on a Facebook page about some of the students in the school where I teach. The things that were said offended me, and the comments were not even about me. Knowing some of the kids that were being talked about made it worse. As an adult removed from the situation, I was still affected. How much more so for the child who is being “blasted”? Cyber-bullying must be addressed with kids or they will have nothing to go on when it happens to them.

For the other forms of harassment, most children face times when someone forcibly excludes them from being a part of the group. This is difficult for adults, and much more so for children. It is important here to teach the child that these things do happen, but the best way to deal with it is to find something that they are interested in and participate in it fully. For me it was martial arts. For others I have known it was music in orchestra, band and choir. For others so gifted, sports were the answer, and I have personally seen the wonders that were found in a book or poetry club, but the point is to find somewhere to belong, and be a part of the group. Teach them to avoid the dead-end road of gangs, and instead opt for something positive. Being a part of something that they are interested in will give them that sense of belonging, and also provide them with a group of friends, which is the biggest element missing in the life of the bullied child. They need to find a place where they are accepted. Once they are a part of the group, the antics of the bully are lessened and fade away. added benefits are increased self-confidence which will deter bullies, and the sense of fulfillment that one gains from doing something they enjoy.

Physical assault from an adult.

It is not possible in almost all cases for a child to fight off an adult. We do a grave disservice to children in a self-defense class when we make it seem that they can easily fight off the adult if they do it the way we say. We all want to promote what we teach as the best there is, but we must remember that we are dealing with the life and safety of a child, and a certain degree of honesty would not at all be out of line. In fact, anything less is irresponsible.

I am blunt with students of an age to understand. I tell them that most adults would annihilate them in a fight, and their best recourse is to fight back with the intent of escaping the fight. It is not about the child winning the fight with an adult, it is surviving the assault, escaping, and calling the police as soon as they are free from the assault. It is irresponsible for the instructor to give the child the false sense of security by making them believe that their new black belt and awesome ninja skills will beat a violent adult. Fighting is nasty business. For a child or teen, escape is more important than standing and fighting, and this must be taught.

 Sexual assault

Many adults feel uncomfortable in even letting their brain accept the thought that there are adults who prey on children, but those people are out there. The child needs to be taught warning signs, how to spot predator behavior, and what to do when they understand that they are in the presence of a predator, including what to do at the widely varying stages at which they might first understand that they are with a predator. If this is a part of the self-defense curriculum you teach your students, then it would be recommended to let parents of potential students understand this before they bring the child to the class.

How much is too much?

To tell the truth, the answer to this question is going to depend on a lot of factors, such as the age of the student in question. Obviously you don’t want to go into a lot of details about child abduction with a group of four-year olds. But if your class is a group of teen aged girls; approaching subjects ranging from abduction to date-rape is a legitimate part of the lesson provided their parent knew it was a part of the class before signing the girls into it.

I think children should be told the truth. I do not follow the reasoning that children need to be shielded from the less desirable realities of the world. I would prefer to arm my children with the knowledge that the world is a dangerous place, but that if we are aware of the dangers then the dangers are greatly reduced. If telling a child that there are adults who will harm them because they are a child makes the child more cautious and thus more aware and safe, I am all for telling the child this truth. However, depending on age, some truths will need to be sugar-coated.

To approach a children’s self-defense course with anything less than a 100% commitment to get things right is to cross a line of dishonesty that many people are incapable of, and whether the instructor is legitimate or not, most do not wish to harm children.

So in answer to the how much is too much question, I say that depends on the age of the child. But keep in mind – children today know more about some subjects at an earlier age than we let ourselves believe. However, there is no age where dishonesty is appropriate. One need not go into the details of sexual assault with a group of students who do not fully understand what that is, when the same problem can be addressed in making the child aware of warning signs that a person is not acting right, and arming the child with the knowledge that telling a trusted adult about the inappropriate behavior of another adult is the right thing to do, that calling for help and making noise is acceptable, and that sometimes being rude to an adult is appropriate.

Just as with adult self-defense, self-defense for a child needs to start with awareness.

The above link will open a PDF form with the seminar and registration information.

Author and Co-Author of many books on the martial arts, Kris Wilder is also the leading authority on applied traditional martial arts in the U.S. He has expanded the knowledge and understanding of applied traditional martial arts through such work as The Way of Kata, and The Way of Sanchin Kata, as well as myth dispelling works such as The Little Black Book of Violence. A knowledgeable martial artist and a truly good human being, Kris Wilder brings a lot to offer. The seminar is not style specific, so regardless of your martial arts background, there is something here for you to learn.

Don’t miss this opportunity to train with Kris Wilder and learn to Hit Harder, Stand Stronger, Think Clearer.

Like so many other aspects of the Asian martial arts, when they arrived in Western Countries, the first thing we did was misinterpret everything. In other articles on this site I have mentioned the way blocking is not really blocking, and how one-step sparring was an off-shoot of a much bigger process in bringing a student to a certain level of fighting proficiency. Stances fall into this same category – wholly misinterpreted.

As a person who spent much of his life training in a system where stances are the signature of the entire style, this was a hard to gain understanding. My instructor insisted that stances be done a certain way, and nothing less than perfect replication was acceptable. As such, my stances never were acceptable.

In Hung Gar, the common saying regarding the Horse stance is that the thigh bone must be parallel to the floor. This is the goal I was taught, and for years this was the goal I taught my students. The problem with thigh bone parallel to the floor is that, while one has dug a hole and made a strong base, it is not possible to move well from such a position. I have no intention of getting into a debate on the correct way to perform individual stances; thigh bone where, toes pointed here or there, and all of that. That is just pointless.

The correct way to perform stances is a much smaller problem than how the stances themselves are to be understood.

Stances, no matter how much anyone argues to the contrary, are intended to be transitional.

“We don’t get into a stance to do techniques; we do techniques by moving into stances.” – Iain Abernethy

Stances are to be a posture we pass through, not stop at. Imagine you were on a jury in a trial, and the case was one of assault. As a part of the proceedings, you are shown a series of still photographs of the assault. In one picture you see the accused grab the victim by the lapel. In the next you will see the fist drawn back, and perhaps the accused is in a “stance” that resembles a back stance. In the next picture you see the accused in what appears to be a front or forward stance as he delivers a vicious punch to the victim’s face. You may or may not be moved by this series of photographs. But then the prosecution produces a film of the same incident taken from a security camera. In the film, you will never see the stances, and the violence will be much more intense.

Forms or Kata are at photographs. We are learning the techniques contained therein. When we focus on the application held within the forms, we should be able to quickly see that when we practice, for example, checking our forward momentum, this is done solely to keep us from depositing our face on the ground, not because that is how we will execute the technique in a real fight. This is where application drills become so much more important than the rote practice of kata itself.

Awareness

First, you need to stay aware so that you are able to avoid most situations before anything turns violent. It is so easy to get distracted with all of the toys we have now. But if you are engrossed in your phone or have the earphones in listening to your music, you are ignorant of your surroundings. It is one level of dumb to be unaware, but using intentional distraction to be ignorant is practically suicidal. I don’t know how many times I have nearly run over someone when I was driving and they step out in front of me because they are more interested in their phone than they are in not getting killed. Put the distractions away. Alain Burrese has a free guide on this subject available here. There is also a ton of great reading on No Nonsense Self Defense website as well.

Don’t make things worse

Next, you need to understand ways to scale down the intensity of a situation when you see it heading toward violence. The industry term is de-escalation. When the other guy is puffing up and being a loudmouth, if you pay attention, you will find that you are doing the same thing. Calm down and don’t make things worse. You need to let the other guy have the win, let him have the last word, and do not give in to the urge to “one-up” anything he says for his parting comment. This is your safest road.

Legally defensible action

If you do act, anything you do must be legally defensible. If you bump into someone and cause them to spill their drink, and they take offense, and you don’t de-escalate, opting instead to act like a raving ding-dong and they take a swing at you, and you use the “redirect-the-punch-break-the-arm-take-out-the-knee-break-the-neck” self defense response that you are training in your RBSD school, you will be in jail. It isn’t “Self-Defense”. You stopped acting in self-defense when you participated in the verbal escalation of what could have been a minor mea culpa incident. “Sorry dude! That one was my fault. How about I buy your next round?” is a lot better than going to prison because something minor got out of hand and you played a big role in it getting out of hand out of nothing more than wanting to be macho.

Adrenaline

Self defense that does not take into account the effect that adrenaline has is not realistic. Fine motor skills melt away when adrenaline hits the bloodstream. If your entire self-defense training is based on intricate techniques, and especially if you only practice these techniques on a compliant partner, you are going to be in serious trouble if violence ever looks into your life.

A few necessary items

Don’t fall for the hype. Real self-defense training is going to include things like self-defense law in the State or province where you live, there should be scenario training to help you learn to identify different types of violence you may face. The training will need to be something simple that can be learned quickly and drilled often. The there will need to be some lecture based lessons, not just warrior monk physical techniques. A good course is going to cover the different aspects that encompass the subject. I do not understand there even being a market for classes that only cover the fighting aspect and teach you how to overwhelm the opponent with a level of violence out of proportion to the level of threat you are under. It is not only foolishness on the part of the student who is entering the course, it is dishonest and irresponsible on the part of the instructor.

Be careful where you train and what advice you accept.