The advice is to run, but, where to?

Discussion in 'Self Defence' started by Tom bayley, Aug 1, 2021.

  1. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Really getting into the weeds now, but you misunderstand me.

    My 2 year old has a schema for horse that includes wings and a horn.

    Schema are only as good as the data they are built from. Data comes from observation, i.e. lived experience. Statistics can inform us of risk, but there are no complete data sets to inform us of how to tackle that risk if we are unlucky enough to encounter it.

    Pontificating on tactics without grounding them in the successes and failures of actual people who have lived to tell the tale is an exercise in fantasy.
     
  2. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    Winner is whichever has mastered Baz's "Ba-ding! Ba-ding! Ba-ding!" noise :D
     
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  3. Tom bayley

    Tom bayley Valued Member

    This is good advice . it would help people to be more aware of controlling behaviours and to be better prepared to deal with them. whether its bullying at work, at school, within friendships or abuse within relationships.

    This is particularly good advice for new university students, since many of them will be forming new relationships.

    The difficulty is that being the subject of controlling behaviour is often accompanied by complex phycological situations that require specific specialist training to be able to broach, discuss, and begin to tackle.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2021
  4. Tom bayley

    Tom bayley Valued Member

    You clearly have an insightful and intelligent child.

    I don't know where you get this from. Your characterisation of self defence teaching is grossly removed from my experience of the last 30 years. It is even removed from the context of this thread as the Op asked for people to share there real world experiences in order to asses how well advice fitted to real world experience.

    I would be happy contribute to a thread called. "why self defence is fanciful pontification." However your line of discussion has nothing to contribute to this current thread or to answering the question in the Op.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2021
  5. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Sarcastically insulting a toddler with special educational needs, how lovely. Aren't personal attacks against MAP TOS?


    So far you have had zero people writing about their real world experience of running away from an aggressor in this thread, though many have posted replies. Why aren't you having a go at their kids?

    Seems to me you could do with checking the biases in your OODA Loop...
     
  6. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    Is there something going on aside from this thread? This reaction seems pretty over the top man. A two year old who can have a schema to identify horses, even in a wrong way, is legitimately probably pretty intelligent. So much so that I took @Tom bayley 's comment to be sarcasm at you bringing in a 2 year old for a conversation about self defense. I don't believe anyone else has placed their child in a position to be a topic of discussion, which is why I think you're perceiving that he's having a go at yours? Maybe he is, I don't know. If he is, then stop it @Tom bayley , do better.

    It should be general practice to not provide details about other people online, especially about children. You really didn't need to further put it out there that your child has special educational needs. For a community concerned with self defense I would think this would be as obvious as not answering "YOUR FIRST CAR AND YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER ARE YOUR MATRIX NAME" questions on social media. Just gonna' throw that out there.

    I think as soon as you bring something like the word "schema" into a conversation like this you've already intellectualized it way too much. Some things don't need to be complex, nor do they need a complex explanation.
     
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  7. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    I hope you're right about Tom, but he saw my reply and didn't correct me, so I don't know. Taken in the context of a generally snarky and sarcastic post, I don't hold much hope that it was meant to be complementary.

    Not sure how mentioning that my child calls unicorns horses, or that they have some extra educational needs will endanger my family...

    I know about the concept of schema from educational psychology, which is why I used that example.

    But I didn't introduce the topic, and was, in my own verbose way, making the same point about making self defence overly complex. Which I think is like most professional jargon: to try and justify the fee for learning it.

    "Hey, I've not been in a fight since I was 14, but there's a whole lot of big concepts and complicated diagrams I can put on this white board to make it look like I know what I'm talking about!" kind of thing.
     
  8. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    As Tom was, I assume, previously unaware of your child's SEN, I'm not sure raising them is a reasonable action in this thread. I'm also not sure I read his post as sarcastic attack.

    As a real world example of running, I can offer an incident from many years ago that I have previously mentioned on MAP.

    When I was around 18, I holidayed with a bunch of friends and we ended up in a pub in a town we did not know. I had no training or awareness at that time, beyond the common experience of an 18 year old.

    I was unaware that there was a local conflict between students from some local college, and locals.

    Some of my friends and I drank probably too much, and left by a back door. A larger group followed us out of the pub and engaged us in conversation as they closed range. I took a punch to the jaw, which I rolled with, at which point we ran. We ran full pelt, with our attackers getting close enough to pull an unbuttoned shirt from my back, but thankfully no closer.

    We had one route of escape, and we took it, we went to the main street where there were lots of people as a result and were left alone.

    Looking back there were signs we missed. A large group of men in their early 20s at a couple of tables watching us too closely, etc etc. Some training that raised our awareness of the danger, and made us think about how we left the pub would all have helped.
     
  9. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    Any information you give about yourself can be potentially used against you, or used to find you. I'm not saying you gave such an extraordinary amount of information that you put yourself and your family at severe risk. I'm saying the more private information you give out, the easier a target you make yourself. The more information you give out about another person, the more of an easy target you make them. Normally a paranoid thing to say but we're talking about all this from the perspective of being martial artists interested in self defense. It also plays into "what makes a safe place" because how you do things and communicate with others online should certainly be involved in that process.
     
  10. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    You're right, of course, but that was already done when I used my real name on an internet forum.

    Regaress, compared to anyone with a Facebook account, or any social media where photographs are uploaded, I'm not doing too bad.

    And, I mean, you've posted a lot more personal information on here than I have. Was that a boo-boo?
     
  11. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    I brought it up due to it being a third party from a very vulnerable population with a potential disability making them extra vulnerable.
     
  12. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    The information given puts them in 12% of their cohort. If we're talking about risk of victimisation, it would be greater if I were black, Asian or other ethnic minority and merely mentioned that I had a child at all. Do you think it's a mistake for ethnic minorities to say they are a parent online?

    What are the risks you are concerned about?
     
  13. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    I've no idea what's going on here....I'm going to tactically back away from this thread and then turn and leg it when safe to do so.
     
  14. Tom bayley

    Tom bayley Valued Member

    David I have just read you post alleging that wrote an attack on your daughter.

    You stated

    In the post above you use deliberately overcomplicated language to state that your child understands that a winged unicorn is a type of horse. The phrasing of your post also implies that you think that she somehow wrong for understanding this.

    I replied

    My reply is not attack on your child, before you mentioned her I was unaware that you had a child. My reply is an observation that in this case most two year olds have a better practical understanding of the use and value of schema than you do.
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2021
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  15. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Ah, so you were insulting me. Cool.

    Here is a good lesson in escalation for you, Tom. When you have "I would be happy contribute to a thread called. "why self defence is fanciful pontification."" which, forgive me if I'm wrong about this, comes across as rather... sarcastic, and also "You clearly have an insightful and intelligent child." in the same post, then the latter may be tainted by the former. Rather than get your thread back on track, it is likely to veer it further off course.

    If you cannot reply with actual arguments, and instead have to call people stupid for not understanding you, perhaps you should ask yourself if you are in a position to teach this material effectively.

    We're not talking about teaching a martial arts class that people do as a fun hobby, we're talking about people entrusting their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, in the training you give. Unless someone has lived through that in one way or another, is it right that they tell others how to deal with it? Are theories and statistics enough to be able to impart practical skills in students?

    If you have never talked, or fought, your way out of violence, isn't that like trying to teach a hook punch when you've never actually hit someone with one?

    Just some thoughts, I'll leave you to it now.
     
  16. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    That is an interesting question and somewhat of a dichotomy when it comes to teaching self defence.
    If someone is getting into a lot of violent situations (unless they are a LEO, bouncer, prison officer, security personnel, etc) then clearly they aren't very good at self defence. Get into 1 or 2 fights and you are unlucky. Get into 10 and you should probably have a long hard look at your lifestyle and/or personality.
    But then, without that experience (as you say), how can a person actually teach self defence in any meaningful way?
    How much is enough experience to be considered valid? 5 fights? 10? 50?
    I find myself exactly in that dichotomy. Aside from some experiences in my late teens/early 20's my life (thankfully) has been largely violence free since. The odd face off with a drunk or two but nothing of note.
    I'm now a middle aged man in a small rural village who keeps himself to himself so my chances of being involved in violence are (again thankfully) pretty remote (but never zero).
    Especially if I practice good pro-active self protection strategies such as being aware, avoidance, escape, not taking part in the "night-time economy", etc. That's not something I want to change just to gain some sort of self defence street cred or kudos.
    And yet I have an interest in self defence and in my small capacity as an assistant instructor at a TKD club would like the people I come into contact with to get the best SD advice I can offer when they ask (which is not often to be fair).
    I would like the training and martial arts I do to have a good grounding in reality even if ultimately, these days, I largely do it to keep active and have something to do with my son.
    I would like my wife and children to go through life with some self defence knowledge.
    So what I do is try to find people who are close to the kind of "primary source" David is on about. People who have walked the walk. People like Geoff Thompson or Peter Consterdine for example. See what they say and do. See what the people they have trained say and do. I then try and cross reference these sources with other sources to come to some solid conclusions they share.
    If multiple people say "Do A" then chances are "A" is pretty good advice. If only one sources is saying "B" then chances are "B" is not good advice.
    Prime examples are the pre-emptive strike and grappling.
    Pretty much every credible self defence source will cite some sort of fence and pre-empt as a primary strategy (should local law allow) with grappling as an important back up that is best avoided if possible.
    While people in BJJ generally don't teach pre-emptive strikes and have clinching and ground fighting as their primary strategy and will seek the grapple.
    I tend to disregard the BJJ advice, or at the very least put it into context with the other stuff.
    So in that way I start to build a picture of what to do, what is good advice, without actually having to get int0 fights myself.
    Now whether I should then make the step and teach that kind of stuff in any sort of structured way? Well...I don't teach it. I don't feel qualified even though I know the stuff I'd do comes from sources that are qualified.
     
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  17. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    This actually brings up a good point other that qualification to teach self defence: how much time do we actually need to invest in it?
    Especially if crime figures are coming down and you are in a demographic where being attacked is statistically unlikely.
    Avoid bad places, keep to well lit areas, keep your eyes open, don't put expensive items on display then.
    1) fence
    2) pre empt strike
    3) get out of there
    4) basic grappling if it goes to pot until you can get out of there

    How much more is needed or desirable for the vast majority of people?
    Yes learning legal ramifications is all well and good, but to what end how much time do you have to put into it before you not only understand those ramifications but can also clearly in the heat of battle be confident of obeying and abiding by them?
     
  18. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    Honestly I don't think you do need much more than that. But that's still quite a bit to cover (depending on the street savvy of the people involved).
    That would/could still constitute a good part of the first year of training someone if they came to me fresh and with a desire for self defence. And something they would revisit every few months and keep topped up in regular training. When I work the heavy bag I always do some good reps of my chosen fence, action trigger and pre-emptive strike even if the session was really just for exercise.
    That's also stuff that can be contextualised in wider training and drip fed into other drills and martial arts as a whole.
     
  19. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award


    Agreed, 100%

    If it's just me then
    A) If they're not holding onto me, I can freely move, to either escape or enter.
    B) if they are holding onto me, grip fight so there not, and freely move, or superior clinch, to takedowns,
    C) if I end up on the floor, disengage if possible.

    I think training at a gym that also does a fair bit of wrestling and MMA helps, the big emphasis of get on top, stay on tap, learn to stand up out of things really helps, modern ibjjf focused BJJ has lost that emphasis a little. But does turn out some very skilled people.


    Ps a winged Pegasus is called a Pegacorn, sometimes an Alicorn although technically that's just the horn not the entire beast.
     
  20. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    When my daughter was little she called them uni-horns...which I think is better.
     

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