personal safety Archives

the constant student

Last week I sat down and attempted to schedule my working hours to better accommodate the increased training time my changed weight training programme demands. It provided a refreshing opportunity to review how I allocate my time and brought me to a startling conclusion.

I invest more time each week studying to learn new useful information and practices than I do revising or repeating material I already ‘know’.

Like many people that took up martial arts at a young age, there are some things that I have practiced for decades. There are kata that I drill every week that I have known for many years. I may feel different when doing them, I may be more aware of what my body is doing, I might aesthetically look better, have better motor control and balance, but I am essentially ‘revising’ or refining my understanding of ‘old’ material. In similar vein, while there are some elements that I currently train in classes that I’ve introduced after a few months of trials in comparison with past approaches, there are other techniques and drills that have been a staple of my training for ten, twenty or thirty years.

Most of my physical training is spent revising and refining previously learned material.

Outside the dojo I’m constantly learning.

I will reread texts because as I learn and change there will be elements of other people’s work that will resonate differently with me. For example, from my own books, people with a narrow understanding of karate may sometimes be put off my application texts because the stances or kata are slightly different to their own. After gaining more experience they may see the parallels with older versions of the same kata as depicted in books or how other styles use the kata and realise that such details can be adjusted according to requirement. In similar vein some people may read one of my kata books and simply take a single application or two they like, whereas others might look beyond the techniques and instead adopt the flow system method of failure cascade that I’ve been using for over twenty years and apply that to their own sparring, with or without my actual applications. Others might take my training assessment criteria and apply them to their own repertoire to assess the efficacy of what they do as I did (with some tweaks) from Bill Burgar’s criteria.

The value of any book or information to a reader depends on the individual’s experience and understanding.

I’ve been teaching since 1989 and have formal teaching qualifications across a number of different disciplines, but I regularly look at how my own students teach, how other instructors teach and listen to podcasts on coaching to try and see how I can improve that element of my work.

I used to lecture on personal safety and self protection, but mainly now deliver information relevant to that vast subject through my syllabus and my sim days. It remains however the field where I still feel I have the most to learn even though I am currently writing a book on the topic. Over the decades the focus of my study has shifted and of course over the years I have been researching a number of my peers in the field have published their own books and the drive towards evidence-based crime prevention and policing has meant that the resources and information available to draw upon keeps growing. I do not anticipate ever reaching a point where I will feel I ‘know enough’ in this field.

I first qualified as a fitness instructor in 1995, the same year I was awarded my Shodan in Shotokan Karate. Sports Science is another continually developing field as we expand our knowledge of the human body and how we can enhance performance across multiple fields and recovery from injuries. I’m continuously trying to improve my knowledge in this field to see how I can enhance my personal training, my classes and the supportive information I give to my students in their syllabus.

I enjoy my current physical training and feel that in terms of what I do and what I teach I offer a useful holistic combination of skills to my students. My curiosity to learn more goes beyond that. As I depend on being injury free to work, I am very cautious as to how I cross train these days; I’m wary of being at the mercy of a student with less control than an experienced instructor, but I do seek to learn more through watching others (and then trialling with my own instructor team) and through judicious cross training.

As teaching karate is my main occupation, I have the luxury of the time to continually endeavour to further my knowledge. Every day is a school day and I love learning. The thought of limiting myself by not continually seeking to improve my understanding of something is anathema to me.

I am always going to be a student and that makes me happy.

Introducing Self Protection to Martial Arts Classes

I consider myself first and foremost a self protection instructor, it’s the subject area on which I spend the most time, but in my regular evening classes I’m teaching Karate, a martial art.

On one of the nights I teach there are two other clubs running alongside mine on neighbouring badminton courts: one teaching a Kickboxing system, the other teaching Krav Maga. These clubs aren’t teaching self protection either and (in the main) neither are teaching self defence.

What do I mean?

Self defence is the physical aspect of using force to protect yourself or others. It is a term given to the legal use of force that might otherwise incur criminal charges. It is however commonly used as a catch-all term instead of self protection; the broader umbrella comprising the more important aspects of crime prevention through personal safety awareness, avoidance, deterrence, threat negation (running away, de-escalation through language and body language), psychological preparation (to improve both the ability to avoid force and to use force), physical control (where necessary and appropriate) and self defence.

I am teaching a martial art in my evening classes. My students learn techniques, they practice forms to rehearse techniques and footwork, they strike pads and they spar freely with one another. But because every drill and training method has been analysed from a training safety perspective, has been assessed as the necessary and reasonable response to the levels of potential injury concerned in the attacks concerned, and I include habitual acts of violence in addition to ‘martial arts techniques’, I make sure that what they do also falls into the legal category of self defence.

Introducing the concept of self defence into martial arts classes is not that hard. It just requires a little work. The broader the repertoire of your chosen art, the easier it is. It is mainly selecting appropriate responses to stimuli and understanding when to stop.

Is the teaching of martial arts skills as self defence a problem? Self defence is a legal construct rather than fighting skills and as such is not a fixed item. What qualifies as self defence will vary according to circumstances, personal perception, and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It’s not always easy to say that this part of this system is self defence while another part is not, it’s not always that clear cut. But there are some skills often taught that cannot be self defence because they are designed to maim or kill a person when they are no longer in a position where anyone could reasonably claim that they believed they still had the potential to do harm. Teaching such techniques and leading students to believe that they are learning self defence is a problem, and it is one that is prevalent in both the RBSD community as well as traditional martial arts. The teaching of techniques that are quite simply fantastical in the context of application in non-consensual violence is a problem that is prevalent in both RBSD and TMA, but in martial arts is not an issue if they are competition rule-set appropriate for the club concerned.

Introducing self protection into martial arts? That’s harder.

People often come to martial arts looking for self protection, but what they want in their regular classes is a physical workout, not a series of lectures, group discussions, story sharing and introspection. Regular classes also tend not to lend themselves to accompanying physical attacks with realistic elements such as verbal abuse, de-escalation opportunities and decision making.

I have what I feel is a good working solution that allows me to teach self protection through martial arts. It all comes down to my syllabus.

My syllabus document keeps changing and growing. Like most martial arts syllabi it contains a list of what I expect to test at each grade along with martial arts vocabulary, but that’s just the first 18 pages of a 152 page A4 document. Most of the syllabus is dedicated to personal safety advice, the theory that underpins our training methods, legal information, self protection book recommendations and real crime reports. I’m always adding in more material and I still haven’t included every element that I used to discuss in my self protection lectures.

While I enjoy discussions and talks on the many-faceted elements of self protection, I am particularly fond of reading information since the written word affords the opportunity to stop to analyse and absorb information that is often lost in live presentations. I thus feel it is important that all my students have access to written resources that they can revisit as often as they like.

This does raise an important point. How can I be sure that my students will read the information that I have provided? That I am providing self protection rather than a self defence focused martial art? To do this I use written exams for the majority of my gradings. Students are asked questions on the syllabus to ensure that they know the underpinning theory and personal safety material I want them to know (either through reading my syllabus, reading books, attending courses with me or others or just general life experience and emotional maturity). I recently moved from paper exams to online questionnaires where students can attempt to answer multiple times (each time having to re-read questions and answers) until they get perfect scores.

This is a balanced holistic approach to giving students the exercise that is good for their physical and mental health, skill sets that will give them an edge should they ever be in a violent incident, and ingraining information and personal habits that will help keep them safe. It’s also a ‘non-intrusive’ approach to self protection teaching in martial arts that I would like to see as a template for more clubs that advertise themselves as providing ‘self defence’.

In this manner my students get constant access to high quality information from me and other sources and have the opportunity to question me further in person or through email discussion. I also provide further opportunities for them to test their decision making, conflict management and martial arts skills under pressure in my Sim Day scenario training outside our regular class schedule with debriefs involving a discussion of tactics, ethics and legal considerations.

You can combine martial arts with self protection.

The Enemy Within

“Paedos!”

Starting a Personal Safety Course with a group of 12-14 year old girls, this was their first suggestion when I asked them what they were worried about.

I had a list of potential dangers I wanted the group to consider, but in this workshop, the first of a series of weekly sessions, I wanted to hear from the group first, to draw out their concerns rather than impose a fixed list of ‘dangers’ upon them. I have never been a teenage girl, and I’ve not experienced being a teenager in the 21^st Century. I felt therefore that their concerns were more appropriate a starting point than my list and as they discussed concerns with my team we gradually identified everything I had written down.

It was not surprising that their primary perception of danger was that it was ‘external’. The stranger lurking in the street or following them, the cat-fisher on an online platform, certainly not anyone they know.

The unfortunate reality is that while most people are aware that there might be external dangers from strangers, and sadly many people do fall victim to predatory crimes from those they have never met before, a significant proportion of abusive and violent acts are committed by those known to their victims.

I have been involved in education for over 32 years. I’ve taught teenagers as a teenager myself in the cadets, I’ve assisted in primary and middle schools, I’ve been a tutor for undergraduates at University, volunteered as a teaching assistant in secondary schools, taught in secondary schools and been a boarding house tutor for teenagers in a state boarding school. I’ve visited numerous schools to lecture on Personal Safety and Self Protection and I’ve planned and supervised numerous week-long and weekend multi-school camps and trips with teenagers and worked with more adults and teenagers than I can possibly recall.

It’s not therefore surprising to me therefore that over those years I have encountered individuals that unfortunately have fallen into that first category the girls perceived as a threat. I’ve been employed to lecture on Self Protection at one location for a number of years by a person subsequently found to have inappropriate material on their computer. I’ve worked alongside a person from another unit as part of a short-term team for a week only for them to be arrested the following week for inappropriate behaviour (and online material) that neither I nor other staff witnessed. I’ve seen an IT professional many education staff relied upon found guilty of inappropriate behaviour with students in addition to having inappropriate material. Sadly one of the teenagers I used to supervise in a co-curricular activity has, as an adult, engaged in inappropriate behaviour and been incarcerated for a time.

These were not the one-dimensional bad guys twirling their moustaches with British accents as you might see in movies. They were normal people, living normal lives, with friends, family and colleagues. They did a lot of good for a lot of people, but sadly they also engaged in behaviour that either directly or indirectly harmed others. I’m not trying to excuse them, I’m not trying to understand them, but as a Self Protection Instructor and writer I have to accept the reality of them. People are complex. ‘Good people’ can get gradually drawn into terrible behaviours. ‘Bad people’ can hide behind organisations and superficially normal behaviour to disguise their nature and actions.

This is something that is vital to explain when talking about Self Protection. All too often the threat is not ‘outside’ our social circle, it is from those we know, those who to all outward appearances are ‘normal’. We are most vulnerable to those who get close to us: our family, our friends, our colleagues, our medical practitioners, our online relationships, our teachers and our students. These individuals have a greater level of access to us than anyone else and a better understanding of our vulnerabilities. Those who give us our greatest support also have the potential to do us greatest harm. This is one of the most difficult subject areas to address sensitively when discussing personal safety.

In my country anyone that has regular access to children as a professional or volunteer has to undertake regular criminal record checks and most likely has regular child protection training too. The former helps ensure that people with inappropriate past records are kept away from children, but of course it only stops those that have been caught. The latter ensures that adults involved with working with children are better able to have systems in place that make abuse unlikely and have training to spot behaviours that may indicate the need for intervention. It’s not a perfect system, but it is a good system. What that system cannot easily do is protect children from abusive peers, relatives in their social groups, or friendships and interactions online. Education about inappropriate behaviours, encouragement to listen to their gut and to flag up and call out controlling, narcissistic or violent behaviours early with the knowledge that such ‘whistle-blowing’ will be supported by peers and those in authority, may help steer many from getting into problematic and potentially abusive close relationships and situations.

I despise fear based marketing. I don’t want the people I try to help to be paranoid about things that may never happen. I and these teenagers are lucky that we live in a country that is actually very safe. While all types of crime are higher than we would like, they are lower than in many other countries and we can bring them lower yet.

The analogy I like to make when teaching personal safety is ‘the Green Cross Code’ that was in vogue in my younger years. As young children we are taught that roads can be dangerous, but if we pay attention, look and listen for traffic to see that it is safe to cross, we can do so safely. Very few people are paralysed by fear at the prospect of crossing a road, or wake up dreading that they might have to do it, or have nightmares about doing it. The necessary steps to crossing the road safely become so internalised that we approach roads, cross, then carry on with our lives with no second thought about the danger we have avoided. Self protection should largely be the same: unconscious habits that come from an awareness of potential dangers, meaning that we live worry-free safe lives, very rarely having to take focused steps to avoid trouble.

Perceptions of Karate?

“Hi, I’m calling about a karate class for self defence, the Leisure Centre gave me this number, it’s for my nephew.”

“Can I ask how old your nephew is? The youngest I teach are thirteen years old.”

“Oh, he’s four.”

Sigh.

Despite my websites giving my minimum ages in several places, and having no photos of any pre-school children on any of my media, this type of enquiry regarding 4-6 year olds is the most common I get. If they are pre-school I tell them that I’m sorry but there is nobody I can recommend. If they are of primary school age I refer them to the local Judo group where I think the games and the contact will be good for the children (and I know they run a good youth programme).

Often my suggestion of Judo is rejected. They want their barely-shoe-tying offspring to learn self defence (or so they claim), or maybe have someone else instil discipline, self-control, and respect for elders, but they don’t like the idea that there might be contact or rough play. No, Karate or TKD (I also get asked if I know of any TKD clubs) are much safer options. No contact but happy smiling children marching obediently in silence to the command of an adult, or so the pictures seem to show. Every tired parent’s dream?

I should let this go. I should not get annoyed about the fact that karate is predominantly perceived as a crèche activity for children, or a safe no-contact form of exercise for parents and children to do side by side, because that probably does reflect the vast majority of karate available. Because I’m wearing the same uniform and using the same name I will naturally be placed in the same category.

With so much choice these days, advertising and the perception of keyboard warriors rule. Those who want to ‘fight’ or physically compete against others are drawn to Mixed Martial Arts, Muay Thai or Brazilian Ju Jitsu gyms or perhaps Boxing. All of which are disciplines visibly proven in their competitive arena. Others (especially those enrolled by their parents) might go towards Judo if they like competition and rough and tumble element but with perhaps more of the discipline aesthetic. Krav Maga tends to dominate the self defence market because of the gung-ho nature of its advertising.

White Dogi styles like Karate, Ju Jitsu and TKD don’t always train in their uniforms.

The intake of your average karate class now, whatever the type of karate (sport, classical, traditional, practical, children’s, crèche, functional, applied, modern, combat…), is now subtly different to that perhaps of the first forty years of karate in the west. Now we seem to have a higher proportion of people that either come purely for the stimulation of a different form of exercise, or who like the idea of studying self defence but are put off by actual violence (although some people do choose based on proximity or recommendations as people do arrive ‘up for it’). Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. From my perspective I feel that the people who come to me are the ones I can help the most if they were too timid to try more overtly aggressive combat sports, but then they could just as easily have gone to a karate club that is, from my perspective, simply teaching them children’s exercises, and not learned there anything that might have helped them avoid, de-escalate or escape from real aggression and violence.

The majority of self defence isn’t physical training.

But how is that different from any of the other disciplines that they could have chosen? I’m not going to point a finger at any single art other than my own because I think all martial arts, in differing ways, suffer from the same issue of a huge diversity in club quality, approach and understanding.

I’ve seen a lot of different systems. I’ve seen a lot of different clubs. The good, the bad and the ugly; the deluded, the fantasists and the charlatans; the cults, the cocks and the c**ts. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. It’s no wonder Master Ken’s spoof of the martial arts community is so popular.

There is something for everyone out there, but if you want to find something that’s right for your needs you need to ask a lot of questions about what you really want to achieve, and be prepared to search for people who give you comprehensible explanations for what they are offering. There is nothing wrong with martial arts as a form of exercise, or as a crèche, so long as the instructor delivers that. When it boils down to it that’s how simple it is. Look past the style labels, look at clubs, talk to instructors, watch a class, talk to the students, talk to the parents, ask to see credentials and insurance, and then make an informed choice – you’re more likely to get what you want.

Hands Up!

Our body language can determine not only how likely we are to be chosen as a victim of an unprovoked violent crime, but also how likely an attack is to be successful. There are many things we can do to lower the (already low) risk of being hit if we are approached, but one of the simplest is how we hold our hands when talking and listening.

I have an unusual little rule in my clubs. If I am talking to you, and you are not in the middle of a drill or holding a partner, and you don’t have at least one hand held naturally at chest height or above that could successfully intercept me, then I will give you a light tap on the cheek to remind you that you were vulnerable to an attack.

Like many other instructors I teach drills where students have to defend themselves against an attack mid conversation, and I also do reaction exercises where students have to preempt on a visual or verbal stimuli while talking and listening in natural postures.

My ‘slap’ rule may seem harsh, but students only get a light ‘Eric Morcambe stye’ tap and the interesting thing is that the maximum number of times I can recall it happening to one student is three. I’ve seen enough people sucker punched to want my students to have good head protection while they appear as if they are merely talking or listening, and the best way to retrain that body language is constant practice.

personal safety

innovate – educate – inspire