Self-defence schools: the good and the bad

Introduction
My training didn't start out as a search for the best form of self defence. I started martial arts purely for fun, but as time has passed I have seen others looking around wondering what they should train in. Beginners are met with an overwhelming number of martial arts claiming to be able to teach literally everything from near-invulnerability to psychic chi-blasts. These claims are usually dismissed even by someone with no understanding of martial arts training, but the rest of the pack still number in the thousands of styles, organisations and independent clubs within easy reach of the average would-be beginner. This article is for those chasing one of the most elusive creatures on the planet: effective self defence training. I hope that this helps show the difference between a good club and a bad club if this is your focus.

Where I'm coming from
I started out my martial arts career in Judo when I was 11. We had fun while trying to throw each other to the floor and follow down for a pin or a submission. At the time I doubt any of us thought of this as sparring, probably more as a game. As part of the class we would do self defence training from time to time, and undoubtedly the sparring (or randori in Japanese) helped us to understand the ways in which people actually fall, how to break balance against a resisting opponent and how best to survive someone attacking for real. However, there seem to be fundamental differences between how people behave in a Judo lesson than in a real engagement, and I came to realise that the few self defence classes that we had were merely a glimpse into the world of self defence training. I decided to find myself a second art, one which would complement my Judo effectively while increasing my ability to look after myself.

Since I had already learned throwing, an art that included that made a lot of sense to me. As such I went and tried out a local Jujutsu school. I had a lot of fun learning some self defence applications for the throws I had learnt in Judo, but I realised that there was still something missing. This class trained the self defence techniques in a fairly static manner then moved on to sparring (again called randori, but with completely different rules than I was used to from Judo). This sparring was light contact only, with certain defined scoring areas and would switch to grappling if anyone grabbed hold of the opponent in any way: no more strikes allowed. Looking back, I think I actually learned less about self defence by training in this manner than I thought I was at the time simply because the rules made it very unrealistic.

When I moved on to university, however, I found a method of training that works extremely well for me, one which I have stuck with ever since: non-compliant self defence drills. The idea behind this method is to give your partner an increasingly difficult time within your training class rather than sparring. As such, you can start out by drilling the techniques against a compliant partner, then start stepping up the difficulty. Maybe this time the partner will throw repeated punches rather than just the simple one used when learning the basic technique. Maybe this time he'll step back as you step in, leaving you in a very uncomfortable fighting range for a grappler unless you move quick. Maybe this time he'll grab back and try to keep you away. There's certainly an element of competition involved in this sort of training, but the ultimate idea is simply to push your opponent outside the comfort zone to find out if the techniques work when subjected to this sort of testing.

The advantage that this method has is that it gradually steps up the difficulty and allows training of increasingly more difficult situations. I have no doubt that for one-on-one situations the full-contact sparring seen in MMA schools is some of the best possible training, but when you include things like multiple attackers, grabs (including chokes, headlocks, bear hugs), weapons, defending another person, etc, I believe that sparring becomes very less appropriate while defence drills with resistance method work extremely well. I have been bashed for this opinion by full contact sparring advocates in the past, but I can live with that. They have their training method, I have mine. For the rest of the article I will be addressing situational self defence training rather than sparring. There will be other articles for the good and bad sparring schools, I'm sure, it's just not something that interests me as much as this subject.

Good and bad
I believe that the good end of the scale for self defence training has been explained above. Unfortunately the martial arts world is rarely simple. You can't, as a beginner at least, know whether one school teaching self defence is any better than another until you have some experience under your belt (so to speak), and many schools take advantage of this by claiming benefits that simply don't exist.

Recently I have had a number of work-related problems getting my my usual training venue, and as such have been training in something a little closer to home. This club is part of a global art which makes some fairly hefty claims about how good they are at self defence, yet I see little evidence of this ability in their training methods at the class in question, in their students or in the demonstration videos readily available on YouTube. There are videos of their black belt gradings available for anyone to watch, and the quality of their self defence is scary. Not in a good way either, it's scary that these techniques are the best that these masters of their art know (ok, a black belt is commonly referred to as a beginner who knows the basics quite well, but I'm still appalled that anyone would be given a black belt for these demonstrations).

To try and show some of the differences to any beginners reading this article, here's a simple release technique from a same-side wrist grab. This is a basic technique that you should learn to deal with in any art that looks at self defence. In arts like Judo and MMA you will likely learn it incidentally as part of standard sparring grip defence, in other arts like Jujutsu and Aikido you will practice specific techniques against this grab. The art that I mentioned above with the scary black belts has effectively one technique against this: kick them then snatch your hand free.

To give you an idea of a good art's techniques against such an attack, you have a number of options. First and foremost you assess the situation to see what the free hand is doing. Is there a weapon? Is there a punch coming. If there's a weapon, the grab is now almost incidental, it's all about defending against the next attack. If it's an empty hand but still a punch, you can step in and block the punch or step around the opponent to evade (obviously still keeping a sufficient guard to protect yourself though). You can then choose to escape, if you wish, by rotating your palm upward and stepping back while making a move as though you were running your fingers through your hair (this accesses the weakest part of their grip and applies a large portion of your body weight to it), leaving you outside striking range and able to run if you wish. If you don't want to go backwards you can rotate around the opponent, aiming to strike his elbow with your own as you turn through, releasing the grip (using body weight again) and ending up behind him with the ability to run or counter-attack as you see fit. You can instead extend their arm and step around into a shoulder lock. You can control their hand or arm using various techniques which attack the joints. You can step in and throw them to the floor.

I could go on, but this gives you an idea of the true depth that a real self defence art goes into when dealing with even the most simple of techniques. Naturally these aren't all taught at once to beginners: this would be an information overload that would render all the training useless. Instead one or two techniques will be properly learnt before trying out a few more. Perhaps two students starting at the same time might see five such techniques in their first six months, each of them learning two or three that fit their personal style well. This is more than sufficient because of how these techniques are trained.

Technique or attitude?
The training method as much as anything will define the quality of the techniques. In terms of refinement, the techniques I outlined for a good art are better than the one I outlined for the scary art, but that technique would itself be refined and improved with the right training mindset. Again, let me give two examples of training the same defence situation that define the difference between good and bad training.

In the first class the technique is trained by allowing the attacker to grab on to the same side wrist. The defender then does their technique while the attacker does nothing. Success! The defender gets free, does their counter attack and rejoices that they've learned such an easy defence against a common attack.

The second class starts the same way. They run through the technique a couple of times to get a feel for it, then they start making it harder for the defender. The attacker will grab hold and try to drag them away, or will try to hit them with the free hand. Eventually it all starts looking quite rough, but that's where the real learning happens. A technique learned in isolation with no resistance or pressure testing is worse than useless: it gives you confidence where none is necessarily warranted.

Conclusions
In short, the differences between a good school and a bad are as follows:

• In a good school you will learn situations and will have a number of techniques for each situation, while a bad school will teach you one technique per situation regardless of the necessity for more
• A good school will push you outside your comfort zone one way or another. A bad school will give you a great deal of encouragement when you have achieved remarkably little
• A good school will leave you exhausted. Pressure testing your techniques is hard work: you will be physically exhausted and mentally worn out from the stress. A bad school might leave you physically exhausted if they do a lot of exercise, but if you haven't felt stressed, worried and possibly even afraid, then you're not getting what you need from the training

So, some counter intuitive questions that might help determine if the school is right for you:

• Is it hard to learn? Wrong answer: no; right answer: it's very hard work, it's not for everyone, but if you persevere then you will learn it eventually
• Do I need to grade? Wrong answer: yes, you need to grade to progress; right answer: no, if you choose not to grade you will still learn a lot
• Will it hurt? Wrong answer: no, we take every precaution not to let you get hurt; right answer: yes, from time to time accidents happen when you train hard. However, we have a good safety record and qualified first aiders are present at all times

If you are looking for effective self defence rather than mere self confidence, you have to expect to work very hard, to occasionally go home with cuts and bruises (though not too severe, of course!) and to occasionally be extremely stressed out and frustrated by your training. It's not an easy ability to learn, and in fact it may not be worthwhile. An instructor of mine at university was well known for claiming that learning Jujutsu to a high standard would probably end up being more expensive and painful than a couple of muggings if you summed up both experiences, but self defence is about more than just avoiding losing money to a mugger. It's a legitimate boost to confidence; it's a way to exercise while learning something useful, and it may save you from something worse than merely losing money one day. In short, it's a way of life like any other martial art, but it transcends styles and gives you a framework into which you can add anything from any arts that you like as long as you can answer the question “Can I really use this?” with a “Yes!”

Have fun with self defence training, but please watch out for purveyors of false confidence.  

Yes. And then there are those little squabbles between schoolyard pals, boyfriend and girlfriend, good ol boys in a pub, and anything else that seems off hardcore defense.

Good point! This is an interesting and useful article and some I've already used in choosing a martial arts class