Cool Versus Effective

[blackops]

I don’t know about everyone else, but I run into this issue every now and then. For myself, for my family, ect. Why, variety of reasons. I didn’t start in combatives. I began at 16yrs old in a Korean art and my passion for martial arts started there. I never achieved great ranks, but I had a lot fun. Movies had a big impact and there was no internet, no youtube where you could see real fights and crime happening. Unless you were in some kind of military, security or law enforcement position you had no way to add to your experience unless you where unlucky enough to get into a serious fight or some kind of criminal assault. The latter happened to me, along with a variety of injuries, that shot down my faith in martial arts as the best way to learn self defense. I started searching elsewhere for answers. Eventually, I focused on looking for “effective” fighting systems. Systems that could protect me and now my family. This is how I found the SDTS. The problem was reaching my nephew and niece in a consistent way. I don’t know how many times we started and then stopped because they grew bored. One day, I asked my nephew what kind of fighter he wanted to be. He said,”Like the assassin’s creed character.” I let loose a very heavy sigh. Fighting in the movies is exciting. Learning solid moves that will actually work apparently is not. I myself have practiced crazy techniques, super low probability of working techniques, impossible to recall and use “effectively” techniques, or just flashy and “cool” on video techniques, and I still do although the practical value may be small and may actually be harming my capacity to actually defend myself. A personal choice I suppose, but one day for the millionth time I tried to engage my nephew by starting on “cool” fun moves and basically then having it fail horribly for him and embarrassingly for me under just the lightest of stress testing. Great way to confuse someone. Now I love martial arts, but I can’t help being very concerned on the wild unpredictability of a violent encounter and the impossibility on keeping it any kind of box. And then there is time. Time as in no time. My niece and nephew are competitive swimmers. Heavy work loads by all involved. They don’t have the time to go a dojo and learn something that’s going to take years to learn just to be sort of effective. I had only 3 months of training before my friends and I got jumped by a gang where we were outnumbered 2 to 1. By sheer luck one of my friends miraculously knew the gang leader and we got a pass. Probably won’t happen to most kids, but it happens. Real, dangerous, life threatening violence. Making these cost benefit decisions is stressful is it not. My brother once had a bottle broken on the back of his skull when he was attacked from behind who now actually says that he doesn’t have time after kids and work to learn “effective” self defense. I have a sister-in-law who once described a guy to me that was hired where she works and she shared with me the things he said to her. Red flags exploded in my head and I warned her heavily of him. Up to this point, generally, when I brought up the need for “effective” self defense I was met with rolling eyes, but a week or two later she told me he had been fired. I asked for what. The words “sexual assault” and “girl” were part of that conversation. A scary conversation. It may be an uphill battle to keep my niece and nephew interested because of the shadow cast by “cool” techniques generated to please the audience or the video camera or their friends. An uphill battle to explain the benefits of learning “effective” self defense to overworked parents and busy kids, but I will keep pushing for the “effective” self defense system instead of the “cool” one because my goal is to have my family and myself be as “effective” as we can possibly be in defeating any violent encounter that may unfortunately arise.

[Damian (Instructor)]

Excellent observations. Well said.

[Author]

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