Get off the couch!  No, not the dog, I mean you.

After attending my introductory session people often ask "What can I do to improve the physical aspect of my self-defense skill-set?"

Before I give them specific advice one of the first questions I ask is,

What do you do for exercise? Or what athletic activities do you do?

If the answer is “nothing” we’ve got some work to do. I have seen vast gaps in initial capacity in participants I have trained over the past 6-7 years.  By initial capacity, what I mean is, given a very short amount of time:

How well can you move? How quickly can you learn and adapt?  

Quite simply: Your level of fitness or lack thereof can be a huge limiting factor in your ability to use your body to defend yourself.

If you are not doing anything active, the short answer to improving your self-defense capacity is to explore making physical activity part of your lifestyle. Find a type of exercise that you are interested in that you find fun and rewarding - bonus points if it is functional and builds strength.  Not only will increase your quality of life in many ways, but it will also lay the physical foundation for self-protection.  My clients who come in with a solid fitness background show increased body awareness, faster reaction times, and more forceful strikes - all key elements when you are in a life-or-death situation.

Sometimes people in sedentary jobs will tell me that they do not exercise, but want to get better at the skills I teach. There is a huge gap for those lacking practice with using their bodies.

Let’s set aside the mindset and non-physical. EVERYONE can benefit from learning how to understand the pre-cursors to attacks, how to improve their awareness and listen to their intuition.  

Imagine the challenge of trying to teach someone the physical aspects of personal defense who has not done anything active besides moderate walking, for the past 5, 10, or 20 years.  

“Ok, now we are going to go over using your palm/elbow/knee as a tool to generate force that you are going to hit somebody with as hard as you can.”

How does this stack up to someone who you can work with who has a moderately athletic background and therefore more practice with a range of motor-patterns and potentially greater strength?

Sometimes I don’t have the luxury of time, I’m hired for a single session, and one of my main goals is hoping that something sticks, and the participants will change their mindset or lifestyle to that of a more positive, active, and prepared lifestyle.

Bottom line is that you don’t have to be a cardio kickboxing champion, Crossfit games athlete, or ninja to be good at learning self-defense, but if you don’t live an active life, any physical challenge that comes your way will be more difficult.

Train smart, stay safe, and get off the couch.

Evan D.
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense

For 2016 our training plan is to continue to offer two-session introductory self-defense classes in Arlington at CrossFit South Arlington, alternating women's classes with classes open to men and women once every 1-2 months.

At our Falls Church location, the small yoga room, we will continue to offer multiple-session courses, but may experiment with offering two or three session courses, offered once per week, rather than solely offering the condensed 4-session course.  

We recently introduced a local martial arts school to a modified version of our condensed self-defense course, which included doing scenario training, these types of courses might be opened to the general public in 2016, and the location is in Arlington.

After every 2-3 introductory courses, the plan is to offer a Fundamentals II class.  Our hopes are to continue with the Gun/Knife focus, and to add a Multiple Attacker focus, as well as a fighting from the ground course.

Experiencing the build-up to an attack, even when it is artificial can cause adrenaline, a freeze, and/or a host of other reactions in participants unfamiliar with aggressive language and behavior.  Once some fundamentals have been established it is good to experience it now and then as an assessment of how you are at utilizing your skill-set under pressure.

Some of the biggest challenges are role-playing the bad-guy role, acting, and understanding that even with good protective gear, you can’t go full force, full speed and keep everyone involved safe.  Safety-wise, you have to come up with a compromise that works for your group.

Acting/role playing: at face value, you either have it or you don’t.  If you struggle with taking on the bad-guy role, consider being an angry aggressive version of you.  Think about when you are driving and some idiot does something stupid, cuts you off, almost hits you, putting your well-being at risk.  Be THAT version of you that yells aggressively in the car, when the scenario requires an escalation (you do that too, right?).

Scenarios should NOT always be, “Bro, you spilled my beer!” or “Hey mother f-er! Bla bla bla!”  Consider scenarios that allow gray areas. 

Scenario training quick-tips:

• Not every scenario should be a fight.  The role-player should have some instances where verbal de-escalation is possible to allow escaping without going physical.
• Some scenarios should have no verbal or build up. 
• You should be practicing your engage-to-disengage skills as well.  
• Movement with your hands-up non-aggressive posture when applicable
• Employing the 3-Es if you think you can get away without engaging (empathy excuse exit), “sorry man” and keep moving!
• Identifying secondary threats- having a second role-player enter the scene or get involved in the dialogue during the build-up.

Think of scenario training as gaining the experience of taking an important test.  It’s good to get some experience with it, but doing tons of scenario-work can be counter-productive if you don’t have sound fundamentals.

Don’t just take the test 40 times, study for what’s going to be on the test, then re-test and assess your skills!

Prepare for what is likely to be on the test and to get familiarity with decision-making under stress, then evaluate what areas you need to work on.

One thing I’ve done to help take the thinking out conducting scenarios is create a cheat-sheet with some possible encounters.  The conductor of the drills gets to decide what the bad guy(s) will be doing, the actual attack, the duration of any relevant build-up, and the orientation of the good guy.  This takes some of the thinking out for the bad guy, and helps the students experience a wider array of scenarios and responses.

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

I had a good discussion with a participant in my recent fundamentals intro class, who was retired law enforcement officer with a lot of broad self-defense training and real hands-on experience from his line of work.  Something that he said stood out, that his training goals are seeking out new perspectives on fundamentals that work for him.

With his 20+ years of experience it is unlikely that anything I showed him was new, but illuminating the same problems from different angles provides a greater understanding of perspective, which may have given him insight on what works for him, whether that be from confirming his previous ideas or adopting modifications and new concepts to his belief system on what will likely work for him to keep him safe.

The idea of perspective resonates with something my first martial art instructor said during a post class lecture, “Reality is the sum of all perspectives.”  If you only see things from one angle, how much can you really know about the subject?  An underlying problem in the martial arts and self-defense industry is the “know-everything complex” that I believe in XYZ and tune everything else out.   I’ve been fortunate enough cross paths with multiple individuals having a wealth of knowledge that are open-minded to new ideas because they understand that no one source holds all the information.

Sometimes I’ll attend a new seminar where the prioritization of concepts that are being taught don’t resonate with my perspective-(my perspective is prioritizing things that can be learned quickly and taught easily to people who do not have any training in efforts to deal with the most probable encounters they might face.)  This is my perspective because it is what resonates best with me and with my interpretation of what my clients need.

However, without investigating this instructor’s perspective, I could be tuning out useful information that could work for someone with goals different than mine. For example, a more experienced person in a security role seeking solutions for their field endeavor could be better suited for learning joint manipulation and leverage than a civilian whose primary goal is avoidance and personal defense.

I’ve learned something useful from everyone I’ve trained with.  I encourage you to get out and learn from someone new.  More exposure to relevant information makes you more well-rounded and knowledgeable.

Stay safe & keep learning,

Evan D.
Owner Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense