How do you overcome fear in a self-defense situation? Basically you don’t, you learn to use the fear instead. Making it a tool that you shape not allowing fear to control you. All fine and dandy, but how do you go about learning how to use fear?

Let’s examine what fear is. Fear is an emotional response to stimuli either eternal or internal. Fear has certain physiological responses.

Increased heart rate

Increased respiration

Introduction of epinephrines into the body which constrict capillaries, increase strength and increase speed.

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There are various mental responses to fear

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Freezing up. Not being able to move at all though your mind may be telling to run, block, fight!

Anger. Anger and fear are very closely related. A reaction to fear of anger will at the very least help you to survive better than freezing up, but it could also inhibit your thought processes and get you killed.

Trained reaction to fear. Your body relaxes, your mind focuses. Adrenaline increases your strength and speed making you a very dangerous individual.

I’ve personally spent a long time studying fear and it’s various physiological and psychological effects on individuals. I’ve developed a very good method of dealing and working with the fear response, which directly and indirectly over the years has saved my life from avoiding car collisions to defending my life.

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There are two different ways of training to use fear.

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1. Place yourself in life threatening situations on a regular basis.

This method has the disadvantage of ending your training career at an early start.

2. Place yourself in life threatening situations on a regular basis mentally.

This method has the advantage of extending your training career while at the same time possibly saving your life.

Many martial artists spend their lives learning to block and strike. Going through situation after situation. Attacks from the front attacks from behind, from the side, multiple attackers.

Some martial artists don’t even practice these scenarios. Assuming the same defensive reaction from the front will work from the side and from attacks from behind. Some martial arts instructors when asked “what if” by their students will simply say, “just don’t put yourself in that position”. If that were the answer there would be no need to take self-defense at all. Just don’t put yourself in that position.

For those martial artists who do practice situational self-defense training, many of you are not allowing for the mental aspect of a physical attack.

Mental preparedness for a physical attack, I believe, is even more important than the physical side of preparing for an attack. Why do you think it is that a trained martial artist would fear a seasoned street fighter (weird term). Because the street fighter has been in real fights. The few tricks he’s picked up to win a street brawl have actually been executed by him under the mental stress of a life and death situation Most martial artists, fortunately, have not had this misfortune.

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My Method of Emulating Fear

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Let’s look back at the physiological effects of fear once again.

Increased heart rate and respiration are two major physiological responses to fear.

A tensing of voluntary muscle groups is another, more so in the untrained individual.

If you emulate these three physiological responses to fear, you will be on your way to emulating it mentally as well.

So first a slight tension of voluntary muscle groups. Now increase your breathing. Short shallow breaths are best to emulate this physiological response.

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Now to The Mental Aspect

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You need a padded up live partner. For this drill I would often take an air shield and tie it to the front on an advanced student.

You need to have enough mental control to remember to strike only the air shield of your partner.

Now your partner must do some acting as well. He/She must look both in the face and body language as though they intend to hit you and hurt you. Even emulating the foul language you might hear from an attacker in an attempt to intimidate you would help.

Now you put it in your mind that your partner is not your partner. He’s a stranger that intends on doing you harm, mugging you, raping, beating you senseless and unless you defend yourself and hit this !@#$ just as hard as you can and don’t get hit yourself that’s just what’s going to happen.

Start with a prearranged attack and counter-attack, but, put it out of your mind that you actually know what’s going to happen. Feel the fear and tension before the attack, then block or evade like you mean it, like your life depends on it and counter-attack (eventually at the same time naturally). Takes turns doing this with your partner. Be careful not to get so carried away you hurt him. Remember it’s his turn next.

Now from here perform the same mental and physical preparedness and move to my one step sparring variations you can find in my printable ebook Bringing The Martial Artist Out from Within. Continue to strike just the air shield for now.

Now put some pads on and remove the air shield. Do one step variations again. Same mental stress of a real situation, but strike anywhere and pull the technique so you don’t hurt your partner.

The combination of striking the air shield full contact and pulling the techniques on your partner when striking anywhere help prepare you both mentally and physically to strike full contact anywhere on your attacker, under the stress of a life threatening situation.

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Ready to Become More Dangerous?

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Start again with all of your self-defense drills. Emulate your fear for at least 10 seconds to put yourself in a life-threatening mental attitude.

Now consciously relax your muscles. Make your breathing slightly faster than normal to emulate a threat, but make it deeper as well as if you were trying to control rapid breathing.

Now start again and add a mental aspect to begin working with your fear and stress. Begin again with your drills and this time take your fear and turn it into anger. It’s not the final solution yet, but it will give you a better chance of survival than being frozen in place solid.

Turning fear into anger takes practice, but isn’t that hard to accomplish. As I said earlier the two emotions are very similar. Basically this can be accomplished with an example such as this;

Instead of, “Oh my gosh, this stranger wants to hurt me!”

You change it to something like, “WHAT!? THIS SCUMBAG LOWLIFE WANTS TO HURT ME! I’LL SHOW THIS !@#$!”

Now add your rapid breathing to this and slight muscular tension and remember YOU’RE ANGRY!

Now do your steps to relax and attempt to control your breathing while remaining angry.

After you can successfully emulate anger whenever you want to now take your final step.

Start again with your self-defense drills. Follow all of my above steps, but now empty your mind! Void it of emotion. Let your well trained reflexes from various scenarios take over guided by subtle consciousness and thought. You may need to practice a meditation exercise for this which you can find in my printable ebook Step by Step Learn Internal Energy Strikes with the bonus section Taking Strikes and Coming Back for More.

You must be careful not to hurt your partner during any of these drill phases.

Don’t forget other scenarios as well adding the fear factor to them as well.

With shoes

Without shoes

Street clothes on

Small space

large space

Those of you who have read my printable ebook Solo Martial Arts Drills, when you do your 10 minute workout, do you always make sure you have enough room and everything is out of the way? Always? Why? Is that the way it will be if a burglar enters your home.

“Just a minute I have to move this chair”

Do you ever grab a nearby “weapon” (a shoe, a belt, whatever) and begin using it as part of your training?

Think think think.

The more situations you can think of the more you will be ready for as many situations as possible both mentally and physically. To a slightly smaller degree, you can also apply your fear training to your solo drills training as well.

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Conclusion

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This training method, when done properly, will take a lot out of you. I do not recommend using this method all of the time, but definitely put it in your training schedule and practice the method on a regular basis.

For more information on utilizing your fear factor to increase your chances of surviving a self-defense situation see my printable ebook Bringing The Martial Artist Out from Within http://kirkhamsebooks.com/MartialArts/ or my downloadable video Self-Defense and Over Coming Fear http://kirkhamsebooks.com/MartialArts/Martial_Arts_Videos/

Enjoy,
Rick
Sensei J. Richard Kirkham B.Sc.

J. Richard Kirkham is a dual certified teacher and martial arts instructor. He has expertise in alternative teaching methods and positive reinforcement methodology.

Tags: Wing Chun, Kung Fu, Las Vegas Kung Fu School, Las Vegas Wing Chun School, Lo Man Kam, Lo Man Kam Wing Chun, Martial Arts Self Defense

The most surprising statistic that most karate and martial arts teachers discover is the one that tells them “why most of their adult students quit shortly after enrolling.” In fact, the greatest percentage of adult dropouts from martial arts classes occurs within the first 100 days!

This has sparked some groups to investigate the reasons behind this phenomena. Surveys have been conducted both in the United States as well as in Canada. Additional inquiries may also have been conducted in places like Europe and Australia as well.

What the researchers found was, to them, incredible. They found that, by and large, the number one reason for adult students dropping out of their programs was…

…no real-world self-defense training early on in their training!

“How could this be?”, was the question. The researchers were stunned. After all, they were martial arts teachers and they certainly taught self-defense as a part of their classes.

How could these adults say that they weren’t being taught real-world self-defense techniques?

Perhaps, the problem was not that “self-defense techniques” were or were not being taught. Because, even after these studies were conducted and karate programs started to “import” third-party self-defense packages into their product offering, adult dropouts remained high.

Maybe the problem was in perception. Maybe students just couldn’t see how the “stylized” movements of a centuries-old system could be applicable against a street attack against a stiletto or ‘Saturday Night Special’-wielding assailant.

It’s certain that students were not seeing and hearing what they thought they should in order to believe that they were getting what they needed to survive such an attack. Even if these students don’t know what ‘that thing’ really looks like, their gut-level feeling was that, “this stuff isn’t going to work.”

Maybe the problem - what adult students are looking for - is in something even more crucial to learning self-defense against violent attackers. And maybe this “thing” was easier to identify by novices than by trained instructors who had been indoctrinated into sport systems.

Maybe what was lacking in all of these programs was something the real experts like to call…

…Experience!

Regardless of the subject, it’s fairly easy to see when someone has experience with the information they have, isn’t it? I mean, experience in actually applying that information to produce viable, proven results. As the old saying goes, “those who can - do; and those who can’t - teach.”

And, what adult students are looking for is someone who “can” AND “teaches” others how they can as well.

Now, this isn’t to say that most martial arts instructors don’t know their arts and the techniques and skills that come with them. Most certainly do. And these people are very good at what they do.

However; there is a huge difference between knowing how to ‘perform’ a skill - any skill - and being able to apply that skill in a particular context. And self-defense is no exception.

No matter how hard they try, most martial arts and self-defense instructors will not be able to convince most adults that they know what they’re talking about without the experience to back it up. Adult students are not children. They have seen far too much in there lives to let these less-than-able instructors slide.

And with the new threat of terrorism being added to the ever-present concern with crime, most adults have no desire to learn martial arts for purely ascetic reasons. They want - no, they demand - and rightly so, that the person they place their trust in, not to mention their very lives, knows what he or she is doing.

So, what’s an instructor to do if he or she lacks actual real-world experience? Should they rush right out and get into a few fights? Should they go hang out in the seedier side of town and wait to be mugged, raped, or beaten?

No, of course not. But, they can, like their students, go in search of real experts - people who have “been there” and who can help them learn what they need to know in order to help the people who come to them for this type of knowledge.

Of course, this may require that they suck in their pride and get a check on the old ego. But, as everyone knows who has been in an actual violent confrontation with a dangerous attacker, you need to “check your ego at the door” if you’re going to survive.

Teaching self-protection skills to others is a huge responsibility. And one perhaps that’s too great for a lot of people who are teaching for purely personal reasons.

There is another option available, however; just in case the primary one is totally unacceptable. And that option is simply to…

…stop trying to teach self-defense if they’re not qualified.

By all means, an instructor can, and should, continue to teach his particular style of martial art. But he should stop trying to convince intelligent, grown adults, that he knows what he’s talking about with regards to surviving a violent attack if he doesn’t. He should remember that people are placing their lives in his hands every time he open’s his mouth, or demonstrates a technique. I’m not sure whether or not many instructors have thought about this. But they should.

After all, most martial arts instructors teach honesty as one of the major tenets and character traits of a black belt master and leader. Wouldn’t this be the “honest” thing to do?

The moral here is that, if a martial arts or karate teacher wishes to teach self-defense - if he or she wants to get and retain adult students looking for this type of training for the long-term, they really have no choice but to do what they must.

They, like every other information-based professional, are in business to provide a service. They must decide what that service is and whether or not it includes real-world self-protection against violent attackers who don’t follow the rules of fairness and respect found in martial arts schools and karate tournaments.

They should also know this…

…no company, whether it’s a furniture store or a martial art school, stays in-business very long if it can’t give its customers what they want and need. Their clients and students may never tell them that they don’t believe or trust them. But, rest assured that if they’re not getting what they’ve paid for, they’re gone.

As a final thought, and one that I live by. What if, some day, “I” must depend on one of my students to protect me from a dangerous assailant for whatever reason. Wouldn’t I want to make sure that what he or she learned was really going to work?

I know I would!

Jeffrey M. Miller is the founder of Warrior Concepts International, a Pennsylvania-based company specializing in helping private, law enforcement, and corporate clients to develop time-tested and proven self-protection and personal development skills that work in the real-world. He is the author of the highly acclaimed, educational video, Danger Prevention Tactics. His latest book, “The Karate-Myth” shows the reader why most martial arts and self-defense programs don’t work and how to insure your safety in today’s violent world. For additonal information about having this internationally-recognized expert as a guest or keynote speaker for your organization’s next meeting, or to sponsor a seminar with Mr. Miller, you may contact him through his web site or by calling WCI in the U.S. and Canada, at (570) 988-2228.

Tags: Wing Chun, Kung Fu, Las Vegas Kung Fu School, Las Vegas Wing Chun School, Lo Man Kam, Lo Man Kam Wing Chun, Martial Arts Self Defense

We’ve all seen the news stories. They fill a good portion of the evening news and the daily papers - both online and in print.

Have you ever wondered…

What if the victims in many of these stories had properly prepared themselves for the eventuality of being attacked, because…

1. They recognized the existence of danger in the world…

2. They knew that, based on the shear numbers of incidents that…

…danger could, and probably might, touch them, and…

3. They took steps to insure that they would be a survivor instead of a victim who’s story would be laid bare to the world, courtesy of the press…

What if even one story ended like this…

“…she remembers learning how to get out of this type of attack and [automatically] reaches up to grab and pull his arm away from her neck. What she finds though, is that she cannot even begin to budge it in the least.

“Taking the short stick-like key ring that she habitually carries in her hand when there might be a need, she begins delivering a barrage of stabbing and grinding attacks to her assailant’s body. As she feels his grip loosen, she expands her counter-attack to include stamping heel kicks to his instep, smashing headbutt strikes to his face behind her head, and maybe even a well-placed elbow or two to his ribcage.

“She finds herself free as her assailant is sent reeling from the painful blows. She stands there in her defensive position, watching to see what his next move will be, her eyes burning with rage and indignation. Her very presence communicates to her would-be attacker that, “what he is feeling right now is the nicest thing that he will feel if he tries to touch her again!”

Can you see how the assailant’s own perception would be suddenly different, because…

Seeing what was supposed to be his victim standing before him, obviously prepared to do more than he has already experienced, the assailant’s intentions change. What began as a defensive, anger-response to his own pain and a desire for retaliation, has now, with the realization that his victim is no-such-thing, he decides that his own safety is more important than what he wanted from “this” particular target.

He decides to let her go. And, besides…

…he will be able to find another, easier, victim…

…soon enough.

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This story illustrates a common occurrence - more common, in fact, than most of us ever begin to realize. It describes, in one form, what happens to would-be assailants every day, who choose the wrong target and are left with the realization that not everyone will play the role of the “victim.”

Unfortunately, stories like this are usually never reported on by either the police or news people.

Why? Because they never even know about them. Because the intended victim handled things on their own and escaped safely, returning home to friends and family.

This article then, is a tribute to all those who have decided that, should something ever happen, they choose the outcome of this story to be theirs.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if even half of citizens were capable and prepared to defend themselves against danger? I for one can think of two types of people who would have to find new work…

…criminal attackers, and…

…reporters!

Jeffrey M. Miller is the founder and director of Warrior Concepts International in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. He is the author of the “Foundations of Self-Defense Mastery” eCourse, which is available free of charge to subscribers of his self defense newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter at: http://www.warrior-concepts-online.com/newsletter-subscribe-self-defense.html He is also the creator of the EDR: Non-Martial Arts Defensive Training Program, author of the book, “The Karate-Myth” as-well-as the powerful, “Danger Prevention Tactics” video. Additional information is available by visiting http://www.warrior-concepts-online.com.

Tags: Wing Chun, Kung Fu, Las Vegas Kung Fu School, Las Vegas Wing Chun School, Lo Man Kam, Lo Man Kam Wing Chun, Martial Arts Self Defense