I recently had a conversation with a chief instructor of a popular self-defense program. For the sake of anonimnity let’s call him Joe. For the record I will not name the program specically and my only comment being the program is nationwide and no doubt has some highly qualified instructors.  Plus I am sure the graduates of these classes have had many benefits.  That said please allow me to get to my point. 

During this convesation the instructor and I got onto the subject of who would win and acutal fight.  Not between he and I, but rather if he would engage with someone he said, “I know who would be walking out.”  The implication being he would tune his opponent up and basically total the guy.  Needless to say I was incenced and tried to hold back my laughter in the same breath.  You see prior to this segment of our conversation he mentioned that the ONLY training he had of a martial nature was the material contained in the course itself.  (Think weekend seminar in case you are confused).  In short that amounts to about 20-30 hours of training and really only learning how to apply basic kicks and punches.  Quite frankly if he got into any real type of conflict he would get his a** kicked… and in a big way.  Let me explain…

I undestand where he is coming from.  This sounds like a typical “sports-minded” approach which in a nutshell is that you beat the other team before you play the game.  The overriding mindest is that you win before the fight even starts.  And for the most part I agree with that philosophy.  However there is another level to this. When you are talking about survival you need to realize that you will be engaged in a conflict with someone else who will be in it for their own life.  If you think about it that changes things a bit.  Plus there is something else going on with the instructor; something I refer to as the ego phase. 

You see when you start training in martial arts and work with people of lesser experience it is very easy to beat them.  As you move up the ranks and start to train, you basically work with people who have no abilty and you know, as the instructor, you can tune them up anytime you wish.  Overtime this ability of being able to beat up beginners starts to create false impressions in the instructors mind.  What happens is that you deceive yourself into thinking that you can beat alomst anyone- based solely on the fact that you have done the same techniques (which are usually predicatble and obvious) over and over on people who cannot defend themselves in the first place.  Then, before you know it, you think you are the man and can basically whip anyone who gets in your way.  Well, that type of thinking can (and most likely) will get you killed.  No style is superior to another and when you fight with someone you do not know what type of training they have.  I was always taught to treat someone like they are a “golden gloves” boxer- far better to overcompensate then to under compensate.  I really wanted to say “Check your ego at the door tough guy, you are not as good as you think you are.” In my mind I was thinking you’ve only had a weekends worth of training and if you were to engage in realy fight with say an MMA fighter, he would walk out- not you.

In closing, remember anyone can be beat, anyday, anywhere, anytime.  If you must fight realize what you are fighiting for and recognize the person you are fighting with is in it for the same reason, not for bragging rights or a title belt.   The Japanese have a saying, which is stated in the title of this article.  “Don’t make hat big enough.” Meaning if you have a big enough head there is not hat big enough to fit it.