In order to learn physical self defense, you must train against uncooperative opponents. It’s not enough to practice alone. It’s not enough to practice prearranged drills with a cooperative partner. And it’s also not enough to train against a partner who only resists.
Unfortunately, many people don’t get the difference between resistance and “uncooperativeness”, so I’m going to take a few pictures from the training section of my book and post them here as an illustration:
Beginning an Elbow Lock
Cooperative Partner
In the images above, my partner does not resist the elbow lock, and he is entirely cooperative. He lets me get the lock, and pressure him down. Now, here is an example of resistance:
Resisting an Elbow Lock
In the image above, when I try to get the elbow lock on my partner, he resists. He bends his elbow and changes the angle, making it difficult for me to get the lock. But this is not the same as being entirely uncooperative. Here is one example of being entirely uncooperative:
Uncooperative Partner
This time, when I attempt the elbow lock, my partner not only resists the lock, but he also turns and punches me in the face.
In a real physical self defense situation, your opponent is going to both resist and be uncooperative. He may punch you, shove you, attempt to run away, or do something completely unexpected. But he will not allow you to do what you want with him.
Whatever system you train, if you want to be able to use it against a real opponent, you must make sure your partner is both resisting and uncooperative. If you’re working on a technique or combination of techniques, tell your partner: don’t let me do this. Tell him/her to do whatever it takes to stop you from succeeding. Otherwise, you won’t be prepared to deal with a real opponent.
For people who practice sport based styles or MMA, this post will be completely unnecessary, since sport based styles always train with both resistance and uncooperativeness. But for many traditional martial artists, the images above should be eye opening.
Note: All training doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be, uncooperative. When a new technique is being learned, or when a practitioner is drilling a technique for repetition to increase some skill or quality (speed, power, structure, timing, etc.), it’s necessary to train in a cooperative environment. But, every technique must also be trained against an uncooperative partner, in order to learn to realistically apply it.
For more on functional training, see my training page here.
EDIT: After one of the comments below, I thought I’d add this video, with a similar message:
Thanks for the helpful post, it’s really informative. It doesn’t matter how good you were in your self defense classes, in real situation things will be completely different, your attacker always look for weak points. It’s always beneficial to train for every possible situation. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Honestly this is a great lesson, my 11 year old is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and they did some elements of self defense, but most of it is like the scenario “Your attacker walks up from behind and starts choking you.” I can’t tell you how many times he had me try and attack him but then stated “your not attacking me right.” Oh yes I am!
Unfortunately, that’s pretty common. I’m going to add a great YouTube video you reminded me of to the post above…
Yes, This is the huge difference between martial sports like Karate/TKD and self defense systems like Wing Tsun and Krav Maga.
Great article! No one can ever know when a simple, everyday activity such as pumping gas at the gas station or getting some groceries at the local grocery store can turn into a fight for their life, finding themselves in a stressful situation, having to defend themselves and possibly loved ones from a threat. In my profession its of utmost importance to be prepared at all times and develop an awareness as the article spoke of and therefore I take that same awareness with everywhere I go, even on my off days.
Obviously your point is quite correct: a lot if not most of traditional oriented training is too static or predetermined and therefore of little value other than as beginner’s training. The problem is that a) these teachers probably never had to use what they teach for real (most of them have no experience with real violence), b) they attract an audience that doesn’t like to get its hands dirty so to speak (the population of a traditional martial arts school usually is of a very different social demographic than that of say a boxing or kickboxing gym) and c) the human tendency to make things as complex and flashy as possible in order to impress, satisfy one’s curiosity and revel in one’s ability.
I recently watched an instructional video made by Cold Steel about fighting with a machete: I was actually impressed (95% of it was or at least seemed very practical) but one segment rubbed me the wrong way. In it Ron Balicki (who’s a very respected martial arts master who competed in MMA fights) showed a number of disarms which seemed to me implausible to say the least. Why on earth would anyone try to disarm a live blade other than by hitting the assailant untill they dropped their weapon or were themselves completely disabled? To be fair he did add some cuts(which would make the disarms largly superflous) but the idea of risking getting cut while reaching for his arm or wrist hardly seems practical to me. It’s possible he could actually do it for real due his vast experience but something tells me he probably wouldn’t rely on these techniques either.
At the moment I’m too busy to train regularly but I do have some years of experience in JKD and kali and on the whole it’s been a good experience. At least there was regular sparring where I trained (my teacher regularly trained in thaiboxing too and he could more than hold his own against those guys) although there was a little too much drilling of the same techniques over and over again, for my taste at least. Then again we did have a lot of beginners. Still it was much better than the traditional jujutsu I grew up with: while locks and throws are nice for variety I wouldn’t use them for real (unless maybe a few basic throws)and most of the training was hopelessly impractical. If I ever see an oi-tsuki as an attack or defence again I’ll probably run like the wind as the teaching will probably stink to the high heavens.
Next year I’ll probably have more time so I think I’ll check out a local sambo gym: I know my groundgame is rather weak (I’m not good in grappling in general) and the combination of JKD/kali and sambo could prove interesting.
Interesting article, although I realized that harsh truth quite some time ago. It is rather astounding that so many intelligent people still buy into the traditional mess, isn’t it?
Very informative blog posts.
I can only speak from Aikido and yes I agree
that many techniques are not realistic.
However what do we mean by “traditional”
techniques? I prefer “old school” Aikido such
as Yoshinkan. The Tokyo riot police have
opted to be trained in Yoshinkan Aikido
every year for the past 34 yrs or so. Why? Because they work.These traditional techniques have been battle tested
during the fuedal period and do work. There are 100s of techniques in Aikido but they are
simply variations of the small number of formal techniques one is graded on. The whole idea of these formal techniques is to teach you the principles behind them. Once you grasp the principles you can forget the formal techniques. The greats like Giozo and Tohei never seemed to use formal techniques during randori. Also the older style Aikido definately made use of Atemi which is very effective in dealing with an uncooperative attacker.
I for one would never employ an elbow lock in the way shown in the first photo. For one thing the attacker needs to be unbalanced. In the first photo he is rock solid. Without unbalancing the attacker such a defence like an elbow lock would never work.Looking at the first photo it would be better to strike the elbow. An essential principle is to take away the attackers balance and never give it back.Also remember that when you unbalance the body you will also unbalance the mind giving you a clear advantage.
Thanks Peter. The elbow lock in the picture was just an easy example to use, and the lock is common in many martial arts. I would never use an elbow lock like that either. There are much better methods.