Martial Arts and Self Defense Articles, The Self Defense Company

This was the question my father asked me every time I felt pain or discomfort. He’s since passed away, but every time I feel pain I can still hear him asking me to be honest with myself with this one simple question. Now, he didn’t say this to be malicious, he just wanted to teach me a little something more than athletic competition.

When you train, you’re gonna get banged up. As a competitive athlete, you get used to living with pain. Soreness, torn muscles, dislocated fingers, toes and broken bones. I am sure there are plenty of you who can predict the weather better than the Doppler. So how does working with pain teach you and how can you use it in your training.

When it comes to REAL self defense; we have a saying, “if you can leave your house, you better be ready to get the job done.” So regardless of your pain level, if you are serious about protecting yourself you have to be ready to go. Regardless of how tired, sick or injured you are.

Does this mean I wake up every day ready to take on the world? No. I probably wake up like most of you, slowly. But make no mistake, no matter what condition I’m in, when I leave my house, I’m good to go. And you better do the same. If you’re not, stay home. Remember Murhpy’s law: what ever can go wrong, will go wrong. Chances are the one time you limp out to the convenience store will be the time it gets knocked over. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until then to see if your adrenalin will save you.

You have to teach yourself to operate under less than optimum circumstances. You need to discover what your pain threshold is and you have to know the difference between a hurt and an injury. And you must learn how to function when you’re hurt. And the only way to do that is to practice hurt.

Did you injure your arm? Hit with the other one. Is your leg broken? Use a cane or a crutch. If you can’t function 100%, arm yourself. You should really be packing a little nasty surprise anyway!

When practicing self defense realistically, this is the only attitude you can have. Anything less will leave you vulnerable.

Remember ANY physical conflict will get you hurt in some way. The notion of dispatching an enemy with hand to hand methods and not sustaining any injury is a lofty notion, but laughable at best. Even a one shot knock out will leave your hand sore. A knock down, drag out fight will leave him in the gutter and you in the hospital.

Your going to get hurt, you just have to deal with it. This is one of the primary reasons I prefer to work out barefoot. Stubbed and dislocated toes hurt. This pain gets channeled into anger. The anger gets turned into adrenaline. Then you can associate pain with adrenalin. This is what will save your life!!! As soon as you feel pain you get mad and your convulsive reaction becomes an aggressive reaction.

Now if your practice doesn’t allow you to practice injured, you need to evaluate what you are trying to accomplish. I remember talking to a guy who practiced Brazilian jujutsu. He talked about what a great method of self defense it was and he expounded about the “realism”. Then he continued to tell me that he couldn’t practice because he was hurt. Now before I continue I must say that if the fault here is NOT Brazilian jujutsu; the problem is the guy practicing it. If he were realistic about his self defense he should get on the mat and learn to make his jujutsu work for him ESPECIALLY WHEN HE”S HURT. And the same goes for whatever you study, if you wish to adapt it for self defense, you better adapt it to every situation. It’s like you’re “married” to your martial art- for better for worse, in sickness and in health. If you wrestle- you better know what its like to get hit or what it’s like to roll on the pavement. If you box, you’d better condition your hands to strike with out protection. With a little imagination, you can adapt anything for self defense.

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