I stress it at every class I teach, this introductory session should be the beginning of your self-defense education and training, not a check in the box for "learn self-defense."  Since many of the intro sessions I teach happen to be in CrossFit gyms, I often make the analogy to fitness with the self-defense movements that we teach and say,

"Think of this like we just showed you how to do a push-up. You're not done with push-ups. Go practice some push-ups on your own time and get really good at them. Make it something that you do from now on."

Here are a few of the biggest problems that I see with a one-time introductory class:

One and done!  Not getting multiple sessions to build upon the mechanics- you see the movements one time and you practice them only the number of reps we show during the session.  In my multiple session courses we build in tons of reps working fundamentals, variations, and add in stressors to push the students once they have shown some fundamental proficiency.  I notice a significant increase in striking power and movement for individuals who work out regularly and do multiple training sessions.

My personal relation to this issue is when I train with experienced Crossfitter at the gym I go to, Danny Hale, which happens about once every 2-3 months. He works a skill-set that is difficult for me personally, the olympic lift, snatch.  I improve throughout the practice time, but I can't expect to continue to improve and own those skills if I don't work them regularly and put in the hours of training after the initial session is over!

Information Overload & retention of information- we can show you a ton of stuff in a 3-4 hour session, but most people seem to have limits to what they can absorb and internalize in a single session unless they take good notes.

Partnering with another beginner- at a one-time training session for beginners you will likely pair up with someone who does not move aggressively and possibly not even athletically. At a beginner's intro seminar, most of the participants will be very unfamiliar with moving aggressively and therefore less capable of moving realistically replicate the attacks. A result of this can be the slowing down your learning curve and not getting a good mental model of what the attacks we are training for look for.Alternatively- you might get paired with an an energy level well-beyond your comfort zone (this isn't always a bad thing and it's easy to adjust this in real-time). 

I had a girl in my last women's session come up after and say, 
"Hey, this is great, but is there a way I can do this with more aggression and resistance, against a man as the attacker?"

The answer to that is, yes.  Take a multiple session course, work the skills you learn on your own time, & look at this like a learning process rather than a destination.  After years and years of training, I still approach the subject of self-defense training as a student eager to learn and integrate new ideas after we have questioned, tested, and decided where the new skills fit in.  

Though these issues are present it's still worth getting started with an intro session. Everyone has to start somewhere and some training is better than none!

We want you to take the skills that work for you and practice them until you own them.

Train smart, stay safe, & keep learning,
Evan D.
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense
www.novaselfdefense.com

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In reading Jack Canfield’s, The Success Principles, Canfield discusses a concept derived from LA based psychotherapist, Dr. Robert Resnick, which teaches a simple formula for success that shows how your response to an event, which is the only thing you control, impacts the outcome of the event.


What I appreciate about this concept is how well it also relates with success in life and personal defense.

Event:  good or bad, the Event is occurrence that affects you directly or indirectly.
Response:  the response is what you personally do in response to said event; this could be a physical response, the emotional handing of event, or taking no action at all as the event unfolds.  Your Response is the only thing you control.
The Outcome is the net result of the Event plus your Response.  Both in life and personal defense, your Outcome to an Event can vary greatly depending on how you respond.

A real-world example:
Event: You get laid off from your job on short notice.
Response:  you sulk, complain to your friends and family about how the system is not fair, pin the blame on others, and binge drink for two weeks.
Outcome:  you've still lost your job, have lost motivation, have done nothing to improve your position, and your friends don’t want to be around you anymore because you're a downer.

Alternatively:
Response:  your response is, “Good, now I have the time to pursue what I've always wanted to do!” You're fired up, networking, and pursuing leads for the work you always wanted to do but wouldn't take the risk to get into before.
Outcome:  the outcome is always unknowable, but someone who looks at something positively and takes action is more likely to identify opportunities to improve his or her position.

Reframed in a personal defense perspective, some of the only things you bring with you into the Event are your pre-fight mindset, prior knowledge, relevant training. Since your response is the only thing you can control when the event is unfolding some of the best options for improving how you respond are continually educating yourself, improving your attitude, and taking responsibility for every event you end up in. 

Train smart,stay safe, & keep learning

Evan D.
NOVA Self Defense
Owner/Lead Coach
www.novaselfdefense.com

Training recap from renown author and self-defense instructor, Rory Miller. Written by Malcolm Rivers, coach at NOVA Self Defense.

Though I had read several of his books, emailed with him and followed his blog, my first seminar with renowned self-defense author and teacher Rory Miller certainly wasn't what one might expect when initially meeting someone. We were discussing what we loved about martial arts and what we wanted from training partners and mid-sentence Rory changed direction and asked: 

“Can I be mean to you?” I replied “sure” and Rory lightly slapped me in the face. “Now, you smack me.” I obliged and within 10 minutes of meeting each other, ice and one major social taboo (face touching among adult males) had been broken. We both smirked and a fascinating journey into the ethical, legal, mental, emotional and physical journey into the concept of violence began. 

Rory Miller serves, for me, as a sort of martial bullshit-o-meter. He's experienced and skeptical, while not quite a pessimist, and he's very much focused on keeping people grounded in their understanding of the difference between martial arts training and engaging in unavoidable, potentially injurious violence experienced with predatory criminals. He has trained and he has fought and he understands, through experience, what training does, and does not cover. His goal is to function as a guide to efficient, realistic ways to acquire the capacity and capability for real world violence that have the highest probability of transferring to worst case scenarios.

Rory is also comfortable with how many answers he doesn’t have because our answers can’t be his and his can’t be ours. He urges us to search for our own solutions based on what we knew about ourselves and though it is a bit uncomfortable at first, I eventually got to the point that I enjoyed the feeling that there was no guru and that there is no map. There is only what we come up with, how we tweak it, and what it does or may do because self-defense is all about ordinary people taking the power and responsibility to avoid, escape or destroy those who would make them victims.

Miller’s methods are broken into four primary ways of relaying information, principles and skills: teaching, training, playing and conditioning.

• Teaching is conceptual and doesn't really come out in fights but it’s good for legal information and ethical processes: two essential components which must be ironed out before anything goes physical.
  
• Training can provide great skills and is more accessible during violence but is hard to apply in initial violent encounters.
• Playing (yes, the fun kind) is an amazing way of experimenting with ideas and convincing your brain, through the stimulus-response relationship of the act and resulting enjoyment, that using physical skills, even dangerous ones, against another human being is worthwhile. 
• Conditioning, also referred to as “emotional engineering,” is the most high percentage way to install responses, even to sudden violence. Conditioning is effective, even in first encounters, and is as simple as stimulus, response, and reward. 

Ultimately Miller just hands us the tools, it’s we who must build our own self-defense structures and strategies. Empowering people to create their own answers and find their own ways is the point of all this and it’s not lost on Miller or those who have the pleasure to learn from him.

Rory Miller is the author of:Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence
Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected