The fallacy of self-defense seminars.

Self-defense simply means defending yourself. Most of the martial artists I know including me got into martial arts simply due to this reason. Defending my rights and honor from oppressors and bullies. I studied hundreds of books, watched thousands of youtube videos, and visited multiple gyms to understand this. And, ultimately realized the true meaning of self-defense. With my years of study in this field, I can confidently claim that a day-long or week-long seminar is not enough to understand the true meaning of self-defense. Maybe a couple of month-long courses can provide you the basic idea but it won’t definitely teach the true meaning. In this article, I will try to provide arguments for this claim. 

Self-defense is a broad term. To defend yourself, not always it is needed to engage in physical contact. From what have I seen and also through consulting with experienced coaches and instructors I came to the conclusion that most of the scenarios where people engage in violence can be simply avoided through ignoring. The first lesson of self-defense should be how to avoid violence and the second lesson should be knowing when to engage in violence. This would create a lot of self-awareness and help a student of self-defense greatly rather than learning how to disarm a gun, which is pointless. We will cover that in the latter part of my writing. 

Now let’s go straight to the point which is self-defense seminars and their effectiveness. First, if we look into the target audience for these self-defense seminars most of them are job-holding people, businessmen or women, who can not engage in a long-term commitment with any martial arts gym, but they have the interest to learn self-defense. As a day-time job holder myself who was constantly absent in the gym due to study and work, I know how difficult it is managing your work life and martial art training. Most of the traditional martial art training demands a great number of physical conditioning and rigorous training routine. Maintaining this with your 10-12 hours job requires a huge amount of passion for this. 

Due to this, a majority seeks an easy route to learn self-defense from day-long or week-long self-defense seminars. In these seminars, trainers teach overweight, unfit, inactive desk job holders the art of self-defense. They are most gullible and know a little of martial arts; therefore, they become easy prey for some fake martial arts instructors who are very good at marketing themselves. Not all the self-defense camp or seminar organizers are fake. A lot of traditional and good coaches also organize self-defense seminars, and they go easy on these attendees and show eye-catching stuff to the students to give false presumptions, expectations to these attendees. 

From the marketing point of view, I do not see any wrong with any of these. The gym owners and trainers also got to eat and make money. There are very few students who want to follow the traditional path of martial arts. In this era of shortcuts and google search. We demand everything with a click on our smartphones. 

I am not opposing the self-defense seminars but we need to operate these seminars correctly and truthfully. This is what this article is about. The trainees are going to learn very little from these seminars. We need to inform them about this even if it sounds bad. It will bestow a piece of reality. This brings me to the third lesson for the self-defense seminar. The student should be informed that from the seminar you will hardly learn anything, just the basic concept of self-defense and the art of violence. 

Now, I will provide my argument regarding why should we operate self-defense seminars based on these principles. I have seen lanky unfit men/women boasting about beating up random people also boasting about their certification of attending certain self-defense seminars, and how it makes them so dangerous. As a martial artist myself, I understood that it does make them dangerous. Dangerous for their own good!! Why? They are walking around with a false and delusional notion regarding their capability. In their mind, they beat up 6-7 foot healthy people because they have spent 10 dollars in a self-defense seminar. They are taught how to defend a knife attacker which they will try to do in a real-life scenario, which is severely dangerous and will cause self-harm. They need to know not to fight someone who is holding a knife as long as their intention is to kill you or someone you know. They should be informed regarding this before showing them those moves. Also, notify that the one who is performing these moves has performed them 1000 times and achieved mastery through it. Even then, these moves have a 50/50 chance of being successful. No worldly material does not hold that much value to take such a risk. So if someone comes in front of you with a knife and asks anything in return, give it to them!

Your chance of successfully implementing that knife unarm tactics you learned 3 months ago has less than a 1% chance of leaving you without any serious health risks. The same can be applied to gun disarm tactics. There is no way you should ever go for disarming a gun from someone. Before teaching them these tricks the trainer should inform them they should only and only apply them if they are a hundred percent sure that their life is at stake. This is why I always say that someone who does not have any self-defense idea is more secured than someone who undertook a self-defense seminar which taught them faulty things and misinformed them of the usability of those tricks.

As I mentioned before, I am not opposing the idea of self-defense seminars. I just want coaches and trainers to teach them in a way that does not cause them harm rather than any help. 

Now I am going to list the things that should be thought of in a self-defense seminar. As mentioned before: 

1. Number one, teach the trainees that the most violent altercation can be avoided just by ignoring and controlling your ego. Tell the trainees not to let their ego cause them harm. Teach them to leave the ego behind as they entered the dojo or gym. This is should be the first lesson. 

   

2. Number two, teach the trainees when to engage in violence. Give them examples of specific scenarios. In terms of the knife and gun defense, the only time they should try to apply those when someone’s life at risk and they are confident about it. If someone tries to kidnap you or similar scenarios. Also, explain to them when and why we should not use them. 

   

3. The third lesson should be a reality check. Tell the trainees that they will hardly learn anything from these seminars. Martial art needs practice and life long effort. A seminar will just introduce them to it. They will understand the reality of it. They will respect it more. 

   

4. The fourth lesson is basic conditioning. As most of the trainees come from an unfit lifestyle, the main focus should be providing them right conditioning program. The trainees should continue the condition exercises after the seminar by themselves. Put emphasis on training themselves regularly to taste any improvement and benefits. 

   

5. The fifth lesson should be a basic jab, straight, and basic boxing footwork along with basic Muay Thai elbow (Sok Tad or Sok Tat) or horizontal elbow. This would be the only focus on the seminars. These are easy to learn but effective in multiple self-defense scenarios. Make the trainees practice it rigorously, and teach them different applications based on different scenarios. 

   

6. The sixth lesson is basic boxing defense. The block, perry, roll, and slip.  Mastering all of them definitely not possible in a seminar. Focus on teaching blocks, and just give them a hint of perry, roll, and slip. 

   

7. The seventh lesson includes basic pad work for upward mentioned moves along with footwork and blocks.

8. The eight final and most important lesson is sparring. The trainees have to engage in sparring with some trained individuals. I do not support letting the trainees sparring between themselves because they do not understand how and when to hold power. They will injure themselves and their partner. If they spar with a trained fighter they will understand the true essence and meaning of self-defense and violence. If all the previous lessons fail to lose the ego of a trainee, I am 100% sure this lesson will. 

   

Everyone should learn self-defense. The intention behind this article is to promote martial arts and martial-artist. The writer wants to uphold the honor and greatness of it. Whoever wants to learn it, should know that though there is no shortcut way to achieve perfection on it, learning the basics of it can help them in multiple scenarios. It can save lives if it is taught in the right way. So coaches and trainers need to focus on the teaching essence of it rather than making it easy for the trainees and participants.