It is a fact that you fight to defend yourself.

How else are you going to defend yourself, right?

Even all self defense courses teach you how to defend yourself.

He is urged to give everything he has in his counterattack.

With all your strength, all your aggressiveness.

You have the instructor yelling at you to punch harder, kick harder.

Struggle! Fight with everything you have!

It is because of this prevailing attitude that we have been approaching the problem of self-defense in the wrong way.

The fundamental difference between fighting and self-defense

A fight requires two willing parties. You choose to fight.

The fundamental difference between fighting and self defense is that in self defense you are not there by choice!

You don’t want to fight.

But you need to protect yourself.

So you fight out of desperation.

Fighting back is the biggest mistake you can make when you have to defend yourself.

The moment you get into the fighting mindset, you’ve lost the fight before it even started.

Think about it.

The playing field is not level.

You:

Minor

Weaker

less aggressive

he is not a fighter

your attacker:

larger

Stronger

Aggressive

best fighter

No matter how hard you fight, the reality is that fighting a stronger attacker has little to no chance of winning.

So the question arises:

Why do all self defense instructors teach you how to defend yourself?

Most instructors have a martial arts background and of course your self defense courses will stem from the martial arts they were taught.

There is a common perception that martial arts and self defense are one and the same thing. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Martial arts were created to fight NOT for self defense.

Instructors teach you what they do best: fight.

Instructors can defend themselves by counterattacking.

They have spent years of dedicated intensive training to be an expert.

The fight is difficult.

No matter what a self defense course promises you, it will take much more than a weekend course to master defense!

Because the fundamental difference between fighting and self-defense is not recognized, you end up with a blind man teaching a blind man.

No matter what happens, you can’t teach a woman to fight like a man and expect her to win.

It’s not going to happen as the odds are stacked against you.

The irony

The irony is that while the martial arts community will not allow a well-trained black belt to fight a larger opponent in their tournaments, they will turn around, teach a petite woman some basic moves, and drop her on an attacker who doubles him in size.

If martial arts can work for self-defense, they wouldn’t need to have different weight divisions in their tournaments and allow women to fight men.

A new approach

The first rule of self-defense is to run away, but unfortunately running away isn’t always an option.

So obviously a new approach is needed if women want to have a chance to be able to successfully defend themselves against men.

Contrary to popular belief, successfully protecting yourself against an attacker twice your size is much easier than you think.

I will delve into this new approach in the next article. Stay tuned.

I hope this article makes you think and not blindly accept the conventional wisdom that fighting back is the only way to defend yourself. There is a safer and smarter way to defend yourself.