Thoughts on Self Defense

What this substack will cover

Welcome reader to the first issue of BowTiedPeruns Self Defense Substack (hold you applause).

This substack will educate you in all matters self defence, ranging from “soft skills” i.e. how to verbally deescalate a potentially dangerous situation to hard skills i.e. actual martial art skills and weapons manipulation/defense.

I believe having sufficient spatial awareness as well as knowing how to recognize the tell-tale signs of someone having the intention to hurt you, is as important as knowing how to fight (if not more), so some of the first posts will be covering exactly that.

I also plan to cover some higher level stuff (pistol/rifle manipulation, choosing and setting up your equipment) as well as some basic first aid stuff.

The martial arts aspect consists of basic striking (Muay Thai, traditional)  and grappling skills (BJJ and Grecko-Roman wrestling) peppered with some techniques from Kali and traditional martial arts.

All of these techniques will be covered in a *weapons-based environment context*, meaning they should work even if your attacker produces a weapon.

The crucial thing I want you all to realize at this point is that there is a significant difference between martial arts in a sports context and martial arts in a weapons context.

So, what are martial arts in a sport context i.e. combat sports?

All combat sports can be reduced to the following:

They are dueling activities with weight classes where two consenting individuals test their skill on flat terrain for a predetermined amount of time.

Think about that quote.

While I’m not saying a competent sport fighter will not be able to handle himself in a self defense situation, the training modality in which he is trained is not optimal for real world self defense situations.

This is because the reality of criminal assaults stands in stark contrast to the way most people train martial arts, firearms, tactics etc. Two key things present in criminal assaults usually not trained in classes are:

1.       Unequal initiative (i.e. surprise)

2.       Disproportional armament

Rarely in training are people take by surprise. Even self defense classes that teach knife defense for example, drill their techniques with both parties being either armed or aware that an attack is coming. You always know your training partner is going to initiate. Realistic situation usually start with unequal initiative, with one party being ambushed or taken by surprise.

Disproportional armament is self-explanatory. If attacked, you will probably start of in a disadvantage related to you attacker.

Self defense will, in short, teach you to put up with aggression and respond to aggression with an appropriate amount of aggression. It is focused less on dueling technique and more on conditioning the practitioner to responding to violence appropriately.

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