How long in a dojo to be able to defend yourself

[potsie23]

I'm new to MA's. In my do-jang we cover all aspects right from the start. There are many aspects to our discipline. If you work at all the aspects of your particular discipline within TKD, they will blend to give you the ability to effectively defend yourself if you ever have to. It is not one set of skills that work better than the other, it is the ability to draw on all of your skills that make self defense effective. I hope this helps and makes some sense.

[Soheir]

If we would forget the mental side (that would be stupid but..), I'd say it depends mostly the style, how much you train and how fast you learn. Also your physical shape affects.

But mental side has at least as much to do with it as the physical side. You can do many years martial arts, no matter what style it is. No one can know what will happen if someone attacs you. As someone mentioned, the sun can catch your eye, or the ground under you may be slippy, you might have to protect someone else too.

How much you can trust on the things you study? I think it does again

depend how much you train and how many times you repeat the same thing. In a real situation, you are proably nervous etc. so you have to be able to do something Very familiar. Without thinking it trough.

Edited October 11, 2010 by Soheir

[potsie23]

I think all that is very true. If you are willing to train long enough and hard enough to gain some muscle memory the movements and actions will become somewhat automatic, but as you said, the emotional reaction to the attack is the deciding factor in how one will defend oneself. Is it fight or flight? As I said I'm very new to martial arts and am still learning the monumental task of thinking openly and outside of the box, so the emotional value is there. It is very difficult to know what I would do, but you hope that through training and conditioning we will develop the more important ability to recognize when to fight and when to walk.

[ninjanurse]

Well said!!!

[ninjanurse]

Well said!!! Sounds like you have a good start in the martial arts and have your head in the right place.

[bushido_man96]

Its important that the training is tailored such a way as to be conducive to self-defense learning. This will help the learning curve in the self-defense aspect. Also, making sure that some stress-training is included will help in the fight/flight response.

[StrangeBacon]

In terms of the traditional Martial Arts try finding a school that does variations of Bunkai training which for those that may not know is breaking down forms or katas and using them against an opponent/s this not only teaches you the applications of what you're learning but also gets you used to the feeling of someone coming in to attack you as the techniques will have a reduced effectiveness if the attacker isnt committed to the attack.

I grew up with the notion that i'd be eating mashed potato for the next few weeks if i didnt get SOMETHING in the way of the strike, which, above all else teaches spontaneity, you'll be surprised with what comes out if you practice for long enough!

[Ishkabibble]

In terms of _quickly_ learning self-defense, I think you need a school that does a lot of dynamic rather than static drills. As everyone has already said, it's impossible to predict how you will react in a real fight, so your training needs to simulate an actual fight as much as possible. You need drills that involve throwing or blocking multiple techniques: most attackers won't stop if you land one punch. You also need partners (or instructors) that are willing to be aggressive during the drills: most attackers want to _hurt_ you, so if your partner just goes through the motions, you won't benefit as much.

I think TKD does have great self-defense applications, but if you want to quickly learn to fight (and 4 - 5 months is a pretty short amount of time) then I would suggest studying Krav Maga or boxing - something that emphasizes facing an opponent rather than forms that emphasize the "art" of MA.

[TKDKeller]

This is a tough topic, but here is what I have for you. IT doesn't MATTER what style you learn, one style is not better than another, it DEPENDS on the person. If you want to defend yourself then I suggest sparring realistically with many different people, especially people who have no martial arts background because real fights are not telegraphed and the person you are fighting will not have perfect form in his or her actions, most fights you see are usually hay maker punches, punching wildly and then its usually to the ground. I personally trained years back in a lot of forms and sparring and one day I found myself in a confrontation with someone and he tried throwing wild punches at me which threw me off, however I came back with about 10 punches as fast as i could in what seemed like seconds and it was over, I didn't think to kick, elbow etc, it all depends on your opponent and what you are comfortable doing and adrenaline is the ultimate factor in what you "will" actually do in a confrontation. Train to take hits and how to end the fight as fast as possible is my advice.