Aug 20, 2010 0
what is a threat?
I have a friend and associate that, like many, is a martial arts instructor. I have a lot of respect for him, a mutual respect that we share through training and competing in the 80s. He has evolved over the years and would like to reflect his knowledge in a school he has rebuilt.
He asked me to read and comment on the substance of his training method. I thought I should share with you my reflections. His primary idea is one of total personal protection. The course contains core training and then special topics. These topics include: Threat Recognition, Angles of Attack, Positional Superiority, as well as other core topics.
The core elements and specific lesson topics are very well put together. They are clear, concise, and easy to remember. This is import because, most people have more to do than just think about self defense.
I thought I would reflect on one topic:
Threat Recognition – the idea is simple enough, you need to know when something is a threat to you (as well as being able to identify friend from foe). I believe it also I believe however, that this is not as easy as one might first imagine. Obvious threats – ones requiring direct action, such as a fist coming at you, are easy to distinguish. But, the better you are at self defense, the better you are at identifying threats before they become manifest as an actual attack. This requires both knowledge of people, and knowledge of ons self (and one’s own internal biases and fears. The penultimate tragedy is thinking that somebody is you enemy, that is really your friend (the ultimate tragedy is not recognizing people that mean harm).
Most of the other core concepts are straightforward as a matter of building a knowledge base of what you can use, and what works.
He was happy to read these comments. I wonder how he will integrate these reflections in his teachings?
