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If you’re going to learn self defense, you shouldn’t half-ass it. Too many times, someone has taken a few classes from their local blackbelt — you know, the one that’s never actually been in a street fight in his life — and they think they know how to defend themselves. They might know a few techniques, but a few techniques are rarely, if ever, enough.

If you want to learn self defense right, you need to start by getting experience. You don’t have to go join Fight Club and brawl in the streets, but you do need to put a little money down on some sparring gear. There’s just no substitute for knowing what it’s like when an opponent comes at you and really puts some effort into punching you in the face. It turns a real-life attack from a paralyzing terror into a moderately scary scenario that your body is actually somewhat prepared for.

Getting attacked is a prerequisite to defending yourself, so how could you ever learn to defend yourself without getting attacked?

Your mind and body have to be trained to deal with not only the physical reality of a man swinging a crowbar at your head, but the emotional impact that comes with understanding that a someone actually wants to kill you. The adrenaline rush isn’t just a physical experience — yes, your pupils dilate, your heart races, your muscles twitch, etc, but at the same time, your emotional state hovers between fear and rage. If it collapses toward fear, you run — if it collapses toward anger, you fight. Learning that process by living through it is a vital part of any attempt to learn self defense.

Once you’ve learned the realities of getting attacked and counterattacking, it’s time to focus on technique. If you don’t have an instructor with real street fighting experience in your local area, invest in a self defense DVD. It might seem like personal instruction has profound advantages, but those advantages come with drawbacks.

A personal instructor has a specific viewpoint and history that carries through into his instruction. If you’re part of a class, you have to deal with the fact that the class learns at a different pace than you do. And of course there’s that monthly hit on your pocketbook. A self defense DVD allows you to learn self defense without any of those problems.

A DVD is almost always a blend of the perspectives and experiences of several instructors, reducing the effects of ‘paradigm blindness’. A DVD can be paused, rewinded, and generally abused into fitting your learning speed. And of course, you only pay for a DVD once.

Once you have a source for your physical and mental ability to deal with an attack, and you have a source for your technique, it’s time to combine the two. Spar, and practice the techniques you’re learning from your DVD while to do. Push yourself, and get familiar with what each technique feels like at full speed. Only once it’s second nature can you say you’ve managed to learn self defense the right way.

About the Author

For more details about learn self defense & self defense dvd, please visit http://www.closecombattraining.com/.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/William-F-Gabriel/78372

If you have good reason to think that you might be in harm’s way, studying self defense tactics is a strong choice for ‘best way to spend your time’. There’s little more frightening than having someone determined to hurt you and having no idea what to do about it. Fortunately, there are some simple things you can learn — mental tricks, physical maneuvers, and spiritual disciplines — that can turn the tables on your attacker with surprising ease.

Mental Tricks

Attackers rely on your fear to make their job easy. They expect you to cower, run, hide, stumble, fumble, and generally fail. There are a lot of various opinions on how to get over this, but there is one mental trick that always works: hurt him. That means spending some time, every day, to imagine in great detail that you are being attacked. Imagine the feelings of resentment and anger coalescing in the pit of your stomach, and imagine striking back with complete intent to kill. The more vividly you picture it in your mind, the more easily that feeling will surface when the moment finally comes, and fear will be replaced with focused outrage.

As a side benefit, the imagination, when clearly used, actually does train muscle memory. That’s why sports stars, martial artists, and other people in physical occupations spend so much time discussing the benefits of visualization. It can prepare you, mentally, emotionally, and physically, for being attacked, and if you aren’t prepared, the best self defense tactics in the world won’t help you.

Physical Maneuvers

There are such a wide variety of physical maneuvers from such a wide variety of disciplines, from martial arts to military self defense courses, that to even compile a list of the top 1% would be too long for a small novel. But there are three truly simple moves that will momentarily incapacitate and inflict pain on any attacker.

Gouge the Eyes: Even a light touch to either eye will force a blink, and any decent impact will cause flinching and watering of the eyes — a few precious seconds you can use to escape or set up a more devastating counterattack.

Strike the Throat: Any decent impact on the throat will cause gagging, reflexive back stepping, and distraction. Hit it hard enough, and you’ll incapacitate your foe for several seconds.

Clap and Rip the Ears: Clapping someone on the ears can cause dizziness, deafness, and pain — but following that clap up with an earnest and violent attempt to remove the ears in question follows that stunned moment up with an abiding panic that tells your attacker that you are deadly serious.

Spiritual Disciplines

“Spiritual” might be an odd word when discussing self defense tactics, especially if you’re familiar with one of the more pragmatic perspectives like the military self defense style. But it’s a simple fact that people who believe they will survive, do. Whether you’re talking about recovering from cancer or surviving a beating: the stronger your reason for living and the more certain your faith in whatever you believe in, the more likely you are to survive.

That doesn’t mean you should enter a fight believing God will protect you — in this case as in any other, fortune favors the prepared. But if you know that someone out there is really, genuinely ready to harm you, it pays to make your spiritual peace.

None of these tricks involve a lot of study or training. That can be a good thing if you’re in such danger that you don’t have time. If you have any ability, of course, it’s critical that you obtain instruction in self defense tactics from a reputable source as soon as possible. Having a few tricks up your sleeve doesn’t begin to compare to having real experience with self defense tactics.

About the Author

For more details about self defense tactics & military self defense, please visit http://www.closecombattraining.com/.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/William-F-Gabriel/78372