Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.
Sometimes you’re the predator, sometimes you’re the prey. We all know that. Just don’t forget that these roles are interchangeable at any point in time… Watch until the end:
There are more self defense lessons of course:
Props to Rock for this find.
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This is a guest post by a fellow author and amazing fighter, Mark Mireles. I’ll do a follow up post in a few days to touch on the great insights he gives here. Enjoy!
The Ultimate Martial Arts Question – Which Came First the Chicken or the Egg?
I’m a Wim’s Blog reader. I don’t say much here on the blog but I read and reflect. It has been said “observe much, learn much, train much”. Sage advice. In my voyaging time, I had the opportunity to follow the thread that outlined the argument between self defense, martial arts training and mixed martial arts.
The discussion was that no matter how visceral and brutal MMA is at the end of the day, it’s a sport that is governed by rules. There were several posts that interjected the fact that MMA does not include weapons defenses and multiple attackers. These are good points indeed. Although the self-defense crowd was very professional, at the end MMA was viewed as sport.
The MMA crowd argued that MMA was an effective fighting system because it arose out of the traditional martial arts. MMA was deemed a modern fighting system that was a sport but could be effectively used as a practical form of hand-to-hand combat. The sum was greater than its parts. Transversely, the traditional form of martial arts was viewed as limited because it didn’t address all ranges of real fighting.
At the end of the day, it appeared that the two groups agreed to disagree agreeably. From my computer (being a voyeur) I thought both sides made solid points and it got me thinking. Contemplating the point of view of both camps, I had the opportunity to witness something and wanted to share it with the “Wim-ers” (yes I just coined us, Wim’s Blog enthusiasts). If you don’t know me or my books
Wim did an interview with me some time ago. If you didn’t read it, let me introduce myself. I’ve been a street cop for over 20 years and been practicing martial arts since 1977. After years of street experience and martial arts training, I came to my own conclusions related to real fighting, training, and teaching. [Read more…]
I just ran across this piece of news.
Long story short, a guy gets shot 23 times and still survives… Just stop and imagine that for a second: 21 bullets enter your body and you don’t die. Talk about being lucky!
Granted, no vital organs were hit but the guy got shot in the arms, legs, abdomen, and jaw. Even though these aren’t vital organs, there are still plenty of arteries there. So despite having no organ damage, he could have bled out and died anyway. But he didn’t.
So what?
Well, this just goes to show that you can’t always predict what’s going to happen when you use force, deadly or otherwise. Because let’s be honest: if somebody says a couple cops are going to fire 46 shots at you, hitting you with 21, would you really think you’d survive? Nope. And in most cases, you’d be right. But as this story here proves, there are exceptions.
To be clear: I’m not saying you should go out and make a LEO draw on you because you might just get lucky and survive. What I’m saying is: you never know what’s going to happen when the feces hits the rotating blades.
Now you might be thinking “Duh!” and that’s your prerogative but my point is this: even if you accept that the most unlikely things can and will happen in a fight, that won’t stop you from making assumptions about fighting and combat. Making assumptions is just human nature and we all fall prey to this bad habit. To make matter worse, we usually don’t realize we make these assumptions. But we sure do train according to them. And there’s the problem…
I train in both combat sports and traditional martial arts because I believe they both have value. In fact, they complement each other very well, providing you distinguish between the different environments they operate in. To do that, you make up an intellectual image of what each of these two categories of disciplines looks like. You make this image by drawing from your own experience, reading, watching videos of actual fights, talking to others who share their experience, etc. All these things combine into some big-ass assumptions about what a fight looks like in an MMA or similar competition and how things are on the street and in self-defense scenarios.
Chances are good you’re right on the money for some and totally wrong for others (Unless, of course, you’re so totally awesome you’re never, ever, EVER, wrong about anything.)
But you won’t know that until you start fighting for real, regardless in which environment.
Get to the point already! Shees…
Here’s the rub: [Read more…]
This post needs some background before I come to the martial arts stuff, so bear with me…
This weekend, I attended my brother-in-law’s wedding. He married a beautiful bride and they had a great day. The wedding party went on until early morning and everybody had a great time. Especially me because I:
Anyway, I had a blast. In fact, it’s been a long time since I was able to kick back and relax like that. After so many years of working on awareness and prevention, I don’t feel at ease anymore in a crowd. Particularly when there’s a lot of alcohol involved, which was the case here. Simply because there’s such a high potential for violence in these circumstances. It usually goes something like:
And I’m not even mentioning pickpockets, gangs or other criminals. Go to any big public gathering and they’re bound to be there too.
But at this wedding, it was invitation only and there were no assholes among the guests. Even the wildest drunk didn’t come close to needing to be calmed down. And party-crashers couldn’t sneak up on us; I’d have spotted them long before they even came close to me. So I got to relax, let down my guard and just have a blazing good time. A rare occasion for me.
For the record, when we left and went to the parking lot, I cranked up the awareness and prepared for trouble. I know when it’s time to have fun bit also when that time has passed… :-)
What’s the point, dude?
The point is: every now and then, you need to do a reality check.
In my opinion, and also my experience, people in the martial arts and self defense community are very bad at this. In fact, I’ll raise my hand right now and confess to be a big sinner in this regard. I’m so involved and fascinated by everything concerning martial arts, self defense and training for these two that I sometimes lose perspective.
The correct perspective is that, as far as I know, nobody is actively trying to kill me. This means I’m not in danger of a violent death while I’m typing this blog post. Following this logic, the only danger for violence is random violence. Random violence means: [Read more…]
Here’s something that happened today:
I went to the supermarket to buy some groceries. The store isn’t located in the best part of the city but not the worst either. It’s not the kind of place I’d linger after dark but during the day time, it’s fine. I’d been to the store numerous times already and the customers are usually locals, it’s that kind of place.
As I walk up to the condiments section, I spot a guy who gives off the wrong vibe. Not violence, but something else, so I tag him mentally. He’s walking towards the same spot I’m going but there’s a big, older gentleman between us. I remember because the older man is blocking the aisle by placing his shopping cart diagonally across and standing on the other side so I can’t pass.
I stand there for at least five seconds and he still doesn’t notice me, despite turning his head towards me twice. He just continues talking to his wife. I opted for the fastest solution and leaned over to grab what I needed. Then I left to pay at the cash register.
The guy who gave me the bad vibe remained where he was the whole time, seemingly looking at products.
After two minutes of waiting in line, that same guy walks out the store without a purchase. He’s not in a hurry, but he makes no eye contact with anybody and doesn’t waste time hanging around either. 30 seconds later, the older man comes bustling over and tells the woman at the register he’s been robbed by a pickpocket. He describes him and the employee says the man just walked out. Cussing like a sailor, the victim gives chase but is back after a minute. Obviously, the pickpocket has vanished.
The gentleman cusses some more and – get this- starts blaming the employee. I shook my head in disgust.
Some thoughts:
In short, he had no awareness of his surroundings at all. None. He lived in his own little world and everybody else was not even a blip on his radar. Just background noise. To make it worse, when he messed up, he started blaming others for his own faults. Not that he deserved to be robbed but he did make it hard to feel any pity for him.
I may not be the sharpest person there is but I spotted the thief right away. The only reason I did so was years of constantly trying to be aware of what was going on around me, trying to spot problems or dangers before they came close. Awareness is the very first thing you need for effective self-defense, so you need to work on it especially hard. After a while, it becomes a habit and you don’t have to think much about it anymore
Mind you, I’m deaf, dumb, and blind compared to some of my friends. Their awareness is like a finely tuned self-defense radar, spotting trouble long before my radar even says “beep.” But here, I picked up on the vibe the guy sent off and immediately knew something was wrong. So I kept track of where he was at all times, noticed him again before he left the store, and made a mental note to look for him in the parking lot, just in case. Turned out I didn’t need that last part.
Awareness isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a skill you constantly practice, also when you’re going shopping. In this case, my self-defense training perhaps saved me from losing my wallet.
For some more information about awareness and self-defense against pickpockets, try this book:
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