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Self protection, self defence or fighting?
What do you want from your study of martial arts? If you first answer this question then you can decide which style of martial art is best for you.
When many people think about starting a martial art they will say that they want to do so for a number of different reasons. They may want to learn something with a historical context, like a traditional koryu martial art, or maybe something with emphasis on the art or spiritual side, for example tai chi or shorinji kempo. Perhaps they are seeking to learn how to use historical weapons. The staff or sword, not, perhaps, much use in a bar fight but interesting and stimulating all the same. A skilled iado master can be something fantastic to behold.
There could be many other reasons for joining a martial arts club. Perhaps you want to meet new people, make new friends, have an excuse to go to the pub one a week after training. Maybe you want to get fitter or lose weight. Maybe you just have a fetish for white pyjamas?
In many cases, however, the reason given by many for wanting to start a martial art is the desire to learn how to defend yourself or make yourself safer in today's society.
In Aiuchi Jiu Jitsu we say that we train in, and teach, self defence, but then again so do many other martial arts. So what is the difference? What is our approach?
If learning to defend yourself is the reason you want to start a martial art, then to help understand our approach we thought it might be helpful if we explain how we feel that self defence is different to fighting and how that is different to self protection.
You can then decide what sort of martial art you want to take up and whether or not Aiuchi is right for you, maybe you are just looking for some self protection classes?
Self Protection
Making yourself safe in today's society. This is what we call self protection. Self protection is all about avoiding the problems or confrontations in the first place. Being aware of your surroundings, not leaving your valuables on display, not acting like a potential victim and not putting yourself in harms way because of carelessness. Self protection is about common sense and risk management. Being a nice, calm, ego-less person really helps too.
One example of a key self protection principle concerns taxis. Did you know that there are on average 11 reported rapes in London every month from people getting into unlicensed taxis? This is where self protection comes into play - ask yourself why are the taxis unlicensed? Is it because they are uninsured? Or that they don't have driving licenses? Maybe they have criminal records so that they cannot get licensed? Maybe they just don't want to be traced. Is it even their car? Is the car safe? Does it have a valid MOT? Now ask yourself, knowing all of this, would you want to get into that car, alone, at night?
These questions are just examples of using common sense, and perfectly describe the ideas behind self protection. If you move into a new rented house, do you change the locks or do you trust that the previous tenants are nice people who don't want to steal your laptop and haven't got a spare key?
Although there are many aspects of self protection, below are some brief aspects:
- Awareness - being ‘coded up’, being aware of your surroundings. It is much easier to attack someone talking on a mobile. Not only are they distracted, but you can see that they have a nice shiny new phone that is worth stealing!
- Avoidance - reducing the risk of violence.
- Knowledge of attack rituals, the different risks associated with pre-planned and opportunist crime.
- Knowledge of your rights under the law - how far can you go to defend yourself?
- Victim signals, body language and the Fence.
- Effects of adrenaline - understand them to deal with them.
- Common risks and scams, from theft to date rape.
Self protection is not a set of physical techniques or tricks to defeat an attacker that has chosen you as a victim, it is about using common sense and knowledge of criminal behaviour to avoid the problems in the first place. Self protection principles can be taught in a very short period of time. You don't break a sweat, you don't lose a few pounds, and rarely acquire interesting bruises.
Although aspects of self protection are taught in Aiuchi, we do not focus on this area in our weekly sessions.
We do however run self protection courses from time to time and if you would like information on these then please contact us. We also present short courses on self protection to organisations and companies and can often run courses at your premises if you wish. We have run courses in the past for organisations including Conde Nast Publications (Glamour, GQ, Vogue etc) Marsh Insurance, Goldsmiths University and the Alzheimers Association.
We are willing to support certain charitable and community projects and in some cases will run self protection courses free of charge, however for commercial organisations the cost is in the region of £200 depending on location and travel expenses incurred. The course includes classroom based PowerPoint-based discussion, some basic self defence techniques (for context) and is run by two trainers with extensive martial arts experience. For more information please contact keith.cooper@aiuchi.org.
Self Defence
As opposed to self protection, we define self defence as a set of physical techniques that are used once a confrontation has been started. Someone hits you and you respond in such a manner or with such a technique.
The aim of the techniques and the principles taught is to minimise damage to you and to enable you to escape. If the attacker is injured during this process so be it, but the aim is to escape.
This is the area where the majority of the lesson time in Aiuchi is spent. Using a variety of safe training weapons and scenarios, we try and emulate attacks that you may get from the oik on the street. The sort of weapons implied here are, but not limited to, broken bottles, bats/sticks and knives. Of course the attacker may just use their body in the attack; fists, feet, elbows etc even rugby tackles and therefore we spend a lot of time on these sort of attacks too.
Unlike self protection principles, self defence cannot be taught in a sound-bite, or even with a few hours. Whilst it is true that you could take away a couple of tricks after your first session to obtain proficiency, to get a real benefit and to understand the principles being taught regular training and practice is needed.
Training in self defence will break a sweat, you will lose a few pounds, and may, occasionally, wake up the next morning with a strange bruise or ache. It is this effort, however, that leads to the results.
Examples of self defence arts, among many others, include styles of jiu jitsu, judo, aikido, chin na and of course - Aiuchi Jiu Jitsu.
Fighting
Fighting goes a little further than self defence, the aim is to actively engage an opponent to defeat him (or her!). You stand your ground as it were.
This is the area that many martial arts focus on, and it can be worthwhile study. The techniques are often incredibly effective and can be devastating. The law, however, states that if you fail to take an opportunity to escape a situation, then this is no-longer self defence and you could be found guilty of an offence later on. If you end up in prison then you have not been practicing any form of self defence - self defence is about your whole life - not just defeating a drunk thug on a Saturday night.
The techniques taught are therefore valid and effective from a martial perspective but the aim of the fighting system is to defeat the opponent and therefore these systems cannot be classed as self defence systems. You also need to ask yourself if the attacks that you are training to defend from are the type of attacks that an assailant outside a club may use or are they designed for a sporting environment? Are the defences a response to prescriptive stylised attacks or more random street orientated attacks? Do the techniques work from a self defence perspective or only from a fighting/sporting perspective?
Examples of fighting arts, among many others, include styles of karate, kickboxing, tae kwon do, krav maga, iado, kendo, escrima, kung fu, boxing, muay thai and mixed martial arts styles.
In summary
- Self protection - avoiding confrontation through common sense.
- Self defence - physical skills/techniques designed to escape a violent confrontation.
- Fighting - physical skills/techniques designed to defeat one or more opponents to win a fight.
If the reason you want to take up a martial art is because you want to be safer, it is worth considering the above to decide what sort of martial art or self protection training you are seeking. do you want to learn how to fight, do you want to learn self defence, or do you want to learn self protection?
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