My friends and I were talking about traditional martial arts yesterday and their relative effectiveness in a self-defense situation. Their son just started his study of a traditional martial art and one of their friends, a single middle aged woman, occasionally studies it also. These are two very different demographics that need very different things from training. Traditional martial arts are excellent for kids for the very reason they are horrible for adults; we called it the body-mind-spirit triangle. Traditional martial arts have a spiritual/philosophical component related to eastern schools of thought, they have a mental component that teaches how self-control and self-discipline as well as will power, and they have a physical component centered around healthy physical activity. Notice, that is not the physical realm of violence, though. This is great for kids because we don't want to teach kids how to snap necks and gouge out eyes on the playground. But a middle aged woman living alone needs to learn ONLY how to gouge out eyes and snap necks, or put bullets into high center chests.
More importantly, the mental training required for self-defense is not, as the traditional martial arts industry says, eastern philosophy. Now, I am a Taoist and I got into eastern philosophy through the study of traditional martial arts as a teenager, but I am also a combat veteran and none of that thinking is what kept me alive in a war. The philosophy of violence is one of aggression. When confronted with a predator or evil bastard, aggression is the only mentality that will allow you to survive.
"Everybody will fight for their lives in that situation, though," is a common argument against training aggression. "Survival instinct will kick in." But what we are learning is that adrenaline does not just produce one of the two classical options of fight or flight; many people freeze. Arguably most people will freeze when confronted with violence directed at them personally, as opposed to random flight-inducing violence. This is the same as the confusion in an ambush, not being able to process the threat leads to defeat. So, you have to train to overcome that. In the military we use battle drills to respond to ambushes, because then you don't have to think and make decisions, you can just react. There's utility to that in martial arts also, but only to a certain extent. Good self-defense systems will be simple self-defense systems that have a small number of responses to any kind of attack. Go for the eyes, throat, groin, knees and then stomp their head into the ground. Or, jab a thumb into their eyes with your weak hand while you draw your pistol and empty it into their torso (which is what I prefer). Simplicity is success in combat operations, and self-defense is a very personal combat operation.
Now look at traditional martial arts with ten or fifteen different belt levels that all include a dozen or so different "techniques" to respond to various attacks. That is how unscrupulous martial arts "McDojos" make money, after all, by keeping people paying monthly dues for years. This is absurd when you look at how our special operations forces train for hand-to-hand combat in their qualification courses. Granted, they continue doing hand-to-hand training once a week for the rest of their time in their units, but I'm saying the guy that just graduated the Special Forces Qualification Course is infinitely better prepared to defend himself in actual hand-to-hand combat than any "Take My Doe" black belt who has been studying two days a week for ten years. How is that possible? Because the Special Operations Combatives Program trains the mentality of aggression, cheating, no rules hand-to-hand combat, not the philosophy of "arts." As I always say: cheating is winning. If you are not cheating, you are not in actual combat; you may be in a duel where there are rules for lethal sport, but that's not self-defense or combat.
This is where martial arts fails adults so miserably. It is not just that fifteen techniques for fifteen belts is idiotic when it comes to defending yourself, but they don't train the mentality of kill or be killed. Now, there are some non-traditional martial arts with all the belts and so forth that are not bad because they teach the mentality. And, if you have the mentality of cheating to win, technique is a nice to have. But, if you have all the techniques in the world and can do a flying spin kick, if you are fighting against somebody with the combat mentality, you will always lose. The self-defense practitioner will grab a brick and beat you to death after you do your beautiful flying spin kick. Or, he'll run you over with a van, spin kick be damned. This is what is lacking in sports martial arts or traditional martial arts mentality training: screw fairness. If your life is on the line, there is no such thing as fairness. Nor is there any such thing as lady-like or gentlemanly behavior. Cheating is winning in combat.
This is where I differ from other firearms instructors. I don't just teach firearms safety. I teach aggressive reflexive fire. The person who has the Initiative at the end of a fight is the winner. So, if somebody is mugging you, robbing the store you are in or has invaded your home, the key to victory is to seize the Initiative away from the predator, and become the attacker. Don't defend against the attack, attack the attacker. Close with and destroy the enemy. That simple sentence is the mission of the American infantry and it sums up everything you need to know about winning in any kind of combat: move forward, get closer, get inside their ability to react, and DESTROY the enemy. It does not say, beat up, or defeat, it says DESTROY. That is the mentality we have to train into students if we want them to not be victims.
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Soule
Easy 6
www.easy6training.com