“It’s not who’s right, it’s who’s left.”
When it comes to surviving physical altercations, there has never been a truer word said.
We often argue amongst ourselves in the Combatives/SD community, about who is right and who is wrong; about what techniques/concepts/principles/tactics/strategies etc. are right, and which ones are wrong.
The bottom line however, is that anything that leaves you standing and your attacker on the floor unconscious, is good.
Right and wrong do not matter.
How you put the other guy down doesn’t matter.
It only matters that you did.
If you say a technique is wrong and someone else uses that same technique to survive a physical confrontation, is that technique (or tactic, strategy…whatever) still “wrong”?
Of course not. How can it be wrong when it was used successfully? Even once.
Just because a technique or way of doing something does not fit your definition of what is right–or even what makes good self defence– it does not mean that the technique in question is wrong or invalid.
That’s just how you perceive things.
There are so many different approaches to self protection because there are so many different people teaching it. What an instructor teaches is just their learning of the subject.
We put too much stock in instructors– in what they say and teach. We never seem to look beyond the personality or system and realise that what is being taught is merely one person’s experience of a very large and very complex subject.
We would all do much better if we became our own instructors and figured out what our particular take on self defence is.
You have to own what you do. You must have your own approach, not a bad carbon copy of someone else’s.
That approach doesn’t have to be ground-breaking or new, and can pull from many different sources, but it should fit you perfectly. It should feel natural and flow from you when needed.
To achieve this means taking full responsibility for your own training and not leaving it in the hands of some instructor. It means thinking critically about everything and going with your gut on what feels right to you.
It means taking proof over opinion and conjecture.
It means testing stuff out until you are satisfied.
You may not become invincible with this approach, but you will certainly increase your chances of survival if the shit hits the fan sometime.
Your self defence is the only self defence that works. In my experience, it’s the only form of self defence that does the job. Not someone else’s take on it.
There is no right or wrong in self defence, not really.
There is only what works for us as individuals, and what doesn’t.
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I couldn’t agree with you more: SD is not an exact science (or even a science at all) but a practical skill so it’s the end result that matters and nothing else. There are many ways to solve a particular problem and some may be more suited to you than others. The oft-repeated (but unfortunately less applied) Bruce Lee maxim sums this up nicely: ‘absorb what is usefull, discard what is useless, add what is essentially your own’. In the end you are going to be one who has to make it work and prevail and systems or styles are only vehicles to learning and self-improvement. Depending on your physical and mental characteristics you’ll develop preferences for certain techniques or tactics (e.g if you’re small you’re going to fight very differently than a tall person) and if they work for you that’s basically all that matters. In the end you are responsible for your own development (not your instructor) and every instructor worth his salt will expect you to develop your own way of doing things: “One does not repay a teacher well by always remaining a pupil” (Nietzsche). My views on SD are somewhat different than my sensei’s yet I continue to learn from him and others since I know I’m most definitely not all-knowing let alone all-powerful, of course I do try to be critical of what I’m taught (including contrasting it with other information) and my main criterium is if I could make it work or not. The reason why I respect my teacher so much is that a) he uses the same methodology (learning from many instructors, testing it, analysing it) and b) he encourages me to follow my own path rather than trying to mold me into his own image.
I agree with this. Not every technique works for every opponent, so what works on one opponent, won't work on the other… But that doesn't make the technique wrong.
I agree with this. Not every technique works for every opponent, so what works on one opponent, won’t work on the other… But that doesn’t make the technique wrong.