Everything Works (at least once)

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

In many of the postings and articles I have written it may have been insinuated that certain things don't work. For instance, I have made it known that mixing sport with defense protection as if they are one is bogus because a lot of what is sport may, may, not work in defense. 

I try to use words like, "may or might or could," simply because "everything works." What I mean to say is that there are those out there who play strictly with the sport aspect and may have faced a self-defense situation where they used it and, "it worked." 

What I do say is this, many of those in the sport, especially those in the more extreme versions, are very strong, healthy, fit and capable in applying their skills who have used them in defense, or so they assume and may have gotten away with as defense, but in reality they were successful due to "luck." 

Everything works for just about everything closely related in application such as technique-based self-defense drills toward what they assume in a bar or other venue is, self-defense. Again, they were lucky in that the person didn't die, the person didn't civilly sue, the person didn't put in a legal complaint and if they were involved, first responders, they were not mandated someone had to go to jail so they let all parties off the hook. 

If I had to lay a bet I would bet big that those self-defense scenario's were socially driven fights rather than the asocial predatory-like attacks some might encounter. 

What got, or gets, them through is a lot of luck and the fact that in all likelihood their fitness and mind-set toward a competitive discipline contributed a great deal to that luck because simply, if a social monkey dance, it wasn't much different than a sport competition except no referee's or rules mandate by the sport. 

Now, if asocial in nature then the fitness and sport helped the luck to have a greater possibility of success. 

It has been a double edged sword because simply 95% of those who take the proverbial self-defense martial arts and karate training never have and never will encounter a real self-defense situation because their lifestyle and environment dictate it. 

The few that this author is aware of where someone in say, MMA, used their MMA skills and literally broke the law and some were prosecuted and some not - again, luck of the draw as to where it happened and the mandates of the first responders. 

In truth, luck is huge in the defense-protection industry and that narrow path is shrinking to such a narrow alley one can barely traverse it turning sideways and bumping shoulders and hips against those boundaries set by the law and the legal system (two very distinct and dangerous systems themselves).

This is one reason why people hear all the time how one's MMA experience, or whatever other sport profession used, works for self-defense and why martial arts and karate self-defense is defended as capable of defending and protecting. The stats on those that worked are somewhat small and overall don't represent the reality of the defense-protection through self-defense - defense. 

I thought my stuff worked and was self-defense and only in the last decade or so, out of about forty-years, did I finally discover that through a huge bit of luck the few things I did got me through because today it would be seen as fighting and not self-defense. 


Why a lot of my work, training and practice have shifted drastically toward a more adequate defense-protection model of which I teach through my writing effort as with discussion with others as they occur. I found at my age to change and continue teaching on the dojo floor would not benefit my students but my more academic effort would - benefit others (active listening).

Bibliography (Click the link)

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