[POWERJIM]

What is the "Best Martial Arts" for Self-Defense?

by Wayne Muromoto

A while ago, someone emailed me asking my opinion about the best martial arts to study in terms of self-defense.

Stupidly, I was my usual facetious self in answering that question, until the person gave me the reason why he queried me. He, a young, healthy male, had been robbed. In the course of the crime, he had been assaulted and found himself unable to protect himself from bodily harm. The physical injuries were minor, but the experience shook him to his psychological core. To have your sense of self, of destiny, and control taken over by a criminal is surely one of the worst feelings you can have, and in a sense, this young man might have had a sense of being violated similar to the trauma suffered by sexual assault and rape victims.

One way this young man thought he could rebuild his sense of self-confidence was through becoming trained in a martial art that would enable him to fend off such an attack in the future. Once I realized the seriousness that underlined his question, I tried to reply to him in the way that I am writing now: Basically, I told him, in all honesty, no martial art is a foolproof method against being hurt in a robbery or crime, if the assailant is unarmed, or with a knife, or especially a gun. You can slip on a banana peel, miss a block, or be in the wrong place in the wrong time and get clobbered. Or worse, your life could be in danger if you resist.

Then again, there are instances when compliance or resistance don't really matter one way or another; the attacker is just bent on doing you harm one way or another, and, unable to escape, you just have to figure a way out of your predicament using whatever means are at your disposal, including martial arts. With that caveat, I told him that martial arts can give you a better sense of awareness and physical ability to possibly deal with an attack, but it's no panacea.

Now, although I practice martial arts, what I then informed him was my own, honest opinion, and I had nothing to gain or lose because he lived thousands of miles away from me and I wasn't looking to recruit him for my school, or for any particular martial arts school. If my following opinions rile anyone, then just take it as it is; simply my own opinion, and there are, I'm sure, many more opinions coming from all quarters.

The first line of self-defense, even before being physically trained, is self-awareness. In this, I include being aware of one's own limitations as well as being aware of one's surroundings. If a dark alley seems suspiciously like a great place to ambush someone, then don't go down it if it's late at night and you're walking through it alone. Take a slightly longer route home. So know your own limitations, and avoid the possible places or situations where you could get caught. Old martial artists would call this "winning by not fighting." You maneuver yourself out of a combative situation before it even happens. In a similar manner, if you don't want a fight, then don't go into a bar known for its brawls acting and looking for a fight. Know yourself, know the others. Again, in knowing oneself, don't dress or act the part of a victim. Walk erect but not proud, aware of your surroundings, and put away your Rolex watch and fancy gold chain necklace. Be "normal," i.e., don't act overconfident, but don't act like you're scared of your own shadow.

Don't rely on externals to protect you. What I mean is, don't pack a Saturday Night Special when you decide to go to that raunchy bar on the other side of town. In some places it's illegal to carry a concealed weapon. And in the worst case, it gives you a sense of false confidence. Just don't go to that bar, period. Don't place your hopes on having a pistol in your drawer at home, or carrying a knife or baseball bat in your car, or a can of Mace on your key chain, or a stun gun in your purse. While Mace or a stun gun may help, there's no iron-clad guarantee that you can reach for it in your purse in time to protect yourself. Remember there are limitations to any weapon at hand, and be aware of the local law regarding carrying such weapons on your body and the damage you can inflict in a given situation.

I'm not advocating or denouncing gun control laws here; that's another matter entirely.What I'm talking about doesn't deal with guns as a means of self-defense. I don't want to go there because that's another humongous controversy.

That said, sometimes all your best intentions come to nothing; you try to avoid danger zones, you try to not exude fear or false bravado, and still the bad guys try to rob you. The advice I hear from local police officers is the advice I prefer. If a robber wants your money, give it to him.

Getting involved in a struggle over money is not worth risking your life. There are too many variables so that even as a trained martial artist, you may not survive unscathed. In terms of rape, sexual assault or physical assault, I would refer you to discussions with your local police as to what is the safest, most reasonable responses. I'm a martial arts instructor (a mediocre one at that); not a specialist in counseling rape victims, and I don't pretend to be one.

However, I'm sure that avoiding fighting with a criminal is usually best because you never know what other variables may put you in danger. The assailant could have friends lurking around the corner, for example. Or he could have a knife or gun that you missed seeing. Or he could just be bigger and meaner and stronger than you.

So what about the times when, as this young man noted, that you try to avoid difficult situations, but you nevertheless are attacked. Even though you give the criminal your money and try to avoid conflict by backing off, the attacker still assaults you and you have to fight for your life? Then, I said, you fight as if it's a matter of sheer basic survival. You use whatever you can, whether it's martial art, a two by four, whatever.

So he pressed me. What martial art is the best, then? In that situation I said, it's not so much the style of martial arts in itself, but how much you train and how well that martial arts fits you.

In most instances, assaults require a rapid response. You don't have time to think, "Okay, he's coming in with an overhead strike. I can use either an age-uke block and punch combination, or I could step to the right side, deflect the strike, and kick. . .or. . ." The attack comes quickly, and you must respond reflexively, without the luxury of thinking up a fancy defense. Whether it's judo, karatedo, aikido, or whatever, you need to train long enough so that your response is quick, simple and reflexive.

So if you take up any form of martial arts as a means of self-defense, then you have to focus on the basics, repeating the methods over and over again until they are a natural, reflexive part of you, so that as soon as you see an overhand attack, for example, you can react quickly, without hesitation or thinking, without intellectualizing what you're doing or letting the fear/flight emotional response render you frozen in your tracks.

Repetitive training will help. But mental training also helps a great deal. Martial arts practice is wonderful in that it puts you in a physical situation that challenges both your body, mind and emotion to maintain calmness and deliberateness in the middle of physical mayhem. It's a very good fit for training for self-defense, but not a complete fit, because when all is said and done, a real self-defense situation is still different from martial arts. But the martial arts can prepare you somewhat for it.

To paraphrase one combat veteran, "five minutes of real combat is worth months of basic training." In other words, nothing can prepare you completely for a real self-defense situation. Nothing. Proper training, however, will at least have you ready and more prepared compared to someone who has had no training at all. That is why soldiers are drilled repeatedly for combat; once in combat their reactions have to be reflexive, and the only way to develop that short of throwing them into real battle and letting the rate of natural attrition decide who has natural survival skills is to train the soldiers, over and over again, until such simple and complex tasks under duress become second nature.

Self-defense training's end goals is just that: physical self-defense. There's nothing wrong with that, but that is its limit. Martial arts has a myriad of goals: mental and physical health, self-confidence, spiritual training, learning body dynamics, and thus self-defense is but one of various goals of martial arts. That said, therefore, ten-step self-defense courses for women, etc., have obvious limitations and I am ambivalent about the worthiness of many of those courses. They may give some basic physical tools and techniques to people, they may bolster self-confidence, and within those limited parameters they may serve a purpose and be somewhat adequate.