Some may interpret the following as a criticism of Kyushindo Karate, but this post is relevant to the entire martial arts community.

Self-defence is a massive topic that most martial arts clubs and styles teach.

There are a lot of criticisms of martial arts concerning self-defence, but in general, they can be summarised as follows:

• Martial Arts practice unrealistic scenarios.
• Martial Arts practice at an unrealistic distance.
• Martial Art’s emphasis is being defensive.
• Martial Arts pretend to attack in their training drills.
• Martial Artists are unaware of ‘bad guy’ attack patterns and rituals.
• Martial Artists don’t anticipate that attacks hurt, damage and overwhelm.
• Martial Artists think that cool physical tricks are self-defence, and ignore or, at best, downplay the most important principle – avoidance of violence.

It would seem that there is no point in training for self-defence because the criticisms imply that the way to train for self-defence is actually to do it, with all its dangers.

Awareness of these limitations is the first step in developing a self-defence strategy. Ultimately, this means distinguishing ‘martial arts’ from ‘self-defence’ during training.

In following posts I will expand on the points above. I’m not a fan of ‘self defence’ preferring the term ‘self protection’.