Practice, practice, practice

Practice doesn't make perfect, it just makes it permanent. You need to repeat drills, movement, actions that work no matter what. Then those same actions will surface when your are under pressure, when you need to deliver a blow to your opponent. Otherwise you will perform washed down, wimpy, non effective techniques. And THAT will get you killed. If you are at the point where you need to fight back, fight back with power and effectiveness. Otherwise you will just be provoking your opponent to fight back and since he is most likely stronger and bigger than you (we rarely get attack by smaller and weaker people) you just gave him the chance and motivation to win.

Importance of training

If you do not make the decisions in advance, I guarantee you that you will hesitate to make them later and that hesitation may make the difference between you living and dying"
-Lieutenant David Grossman

This is why training is so important. Train your body to have good muscle memory. But also train your mind to be capable of handling potentially dangerous situations.

The Gift of Fear, part 2

"A woman is waiting for an elevator, and when the door opens she sees a man inside who causes her apprehension. Since she is not usually afraid, it may be the late hour, his size, the way he looks at her, the rate of attacks in the neighborhood, an article she read one year ago, it doesn't matter why. The point is, she gets a feeling of fear. How does she respond to nature's strongest survival signal? She supresses it, telling herself: "I'm not going to live like that, I'm not going to insult this guy by letting the door close in his face." When the fear doesn't go away, she tells herself not to be so silly. and she gets in the elevator.
Now, which is sillier: waiting a moment for the next elevator, or getting into a soundproofed steel chamber with a stranger she is afraid of? "

-Gavin De Becker

The Gift of Fear, part 1

"Can you imagine an animal reacting to the gift of fear the way some people do? With annoyance and disdain instead of attention?? No animal in the wild, suddenly overcome with fear , would spend any of it's mental energy thinking, "It's probably nothing." Yet we chide ourselves for even momentarily giving validity to the feeling that someone is behind us on a seemingly empty street, or that someone's unsual behavior might be sinister. Instead of being grateful to have a powerful internal resource, grateful for the self care, instead of entertaining the possibility that our minds might actually be working for us and not just playing tricks on us, we rush to ridicule the impulse. We, in contrast to every other creature in nature, choose not to explore- and even to ignore- survival signals The mental energy we use searching for the innocent explanation to everything could more constructively be applied to evaluating the environment for important information."

-Gavin De Becker

ATTACK PROOF ???

Many people feel that the best way not to be attacked is to make oneself attack proof. The problem with that idea is you aren't the one who decides whether or not you are attack proof, he is.And generally speaking his fist crashing into your face means that he didn't think so.What's more, that attack landing tells you that there was an opening that you didn't know you had. And how do you protect something that you didn't know you needed to defend (or thought was already defended?)On the other hand, an awareness of attack range blended with leaving an intentional opening really has a wonderful influence on knowing when the attack is starting and where it is headed.

-Macyoung

The true goal

People intending to kill you usually don't stop until
a) they've succeeded,
b) they believe they have succeeded or
c) the danger to them becomes too great to continue.

most violence is NOT about killing. It is about achieving a goal.

The art of falling

Most people get hurt falling down because they are still trying to get upright after they passed the "point of no return". In other words instead of preparing for a landing, they are still trying to stay up. Hitting the ground for them is not only a shock, it's a surprise.. They did not expect to fall over. Since they didn't expect it, they didn't prepare for it Since they didn't prepare for it, they got hurt when it happened."
Macyoung

Learning how to fall is a great self defense tool. Think about it, if you are injured or knocked out falling down, you have just become a much easier target. Learn to fall properly and how to get back up quickly.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
Clint Eastwood