Some college perspective...

Going to college, I have recently had the opportunity to talk to marital artists of different disciplines and different focuses. Some people at my own level, some higher, some lower. Meeting all of these people, and talking about the various arts I tried to maintain, that different is not wrong. Everyone has their own favorite techniques and everyone makes different assumptions. Both schools and people, I think.

For instance, I always assume that my attacker is going to be bigger, stronger, and faster than I am because I’m a fairly small female. (I would perhaps argue that it wouldn’t hurt for anyone to make the same assumption.) I also bear in mind what the goal of the attacker is. In my case, it’s most likely rape/abduction. But for the bigger males in class? Not so much. They’re more likely to be victim to a drunken guy with an attitude problem.

One young man I talked to, a Combat Hapkidoist, always assumed that he could kill his attacker. I was working with him, and every single time, he took them to the ground and killed them. Every time. This makes sense, in combat, you assume you can kill anyone who attacks you, it’s not wrong; it’s just a different assumption. In our style of Hapkido we don’t make this assumption. Defending yourself in some cases also means defending yourself from the law. We talk, in depth about when lethal force is actually needed and actually legal. You can’t immobilize someone, take their knife and then hold them down to slit their throat; it’s frowned upon. (I learned that on a test…sorry Trav.)

My Judo instructor (who is also a Defense Tactics instructor of some variety) observed in his line of work that fights that start nearly always end up in close grappling style fighting. Because Judo is the “art of in close fighting” as he says it is thus great for self defense. My commentary on that is that I would rather not let it get to grappling range. But it isn't wrong. I think grappling experience is really good for everyone, but especially females because it gets you used to be being smothered and keeping your composure and controlling your breathing.

Despite all of our differences, there is one thing, that I have heard every one of them say, and that I would echo whole-heartedly—--I was actually going to write an entire essay on this by itself. That saying is: awareness is the best self defense.

Awareness is without a doubt the best self-defense. After all, if you don’t get in a fight you don’t have to use your martial art or physical defensive skills (or your gun for those that carry). It isn’t an excuse not to learn to defend yourself physically, or a guarantee that you won’t get in a fight, but it is a great start. Know your surroundings and use some common sense. It’s a bad idea to walk alone in dark alley at night. Picking up hitchhikers with prison uniforms on. Leaving your drink unattended in a bar. Getting in a car with a boy you just met (ladies). Be aware if someone seems to be following you. Look around. If someone strikes you as suspicious, keep their movements in your peripheral. If you hear a gun rack, find out why (this might not be a normal sound for everyone, but it is for me). These are simplistic, but I know people who don’t even have this much sense. It’s not paranoia, it’s just smart. It’s good self defense.

It takes a lot of years and thousands or tens of thousands (in my opinion) to build good physical self-defense techniques. Yet, awareness is comparatively very easy and is the most important thing you can acquire. If you learn nothing else about self-defense ever, you should learn to be aware of yourself.

Some shooting practice...

We-- Sabumnim and I went out to the range today for some "last minute" practice before the set up for the Area 3 match begins.

We worked on some movement drills between two shooting boxes. The drill is, starting inside the first shooting box, draw, put one shot on a silhouette target, move to a second box and put one shot on a silhouette from the new shooting position. Sounds easy right? Well, that's because in theory it really is easy. We were working on doing it efficiently though, and that's a little harder. For me, the hard part is to remember to keep moving. I'm not supposed to stand there and shoot. As soon as one foot is in the shooting area and the other one is off the ground, the shot can be made.

I did a lot of bad-Kung-Fu-movie posing with one foot of the ground. When we moved it up the two shots per shooting area I was taking both shots standing on one leg. This is why we practice I suppose.

A second drill involved shooting while moving. This is one of the things we've been working on really hard lately, is shooting on the move. I have gotten better since we started, but I am still not confident enough with it to try in competition. In this drill we took four shots at a target while backing up, reloaded, and took four shots at a second target while walking forward.

Um. My reloads were good?

At the end we did a "modified" Bill Drill. I was supposed to draw and put six shots on the paper as fast as I could (the target was REALLY close). A normal Bill Drill is six shots in the A zone, a little harder. My fastest was draw and six shots in 2.44 seconds. Actually not too bad. We did three rounds of this, of the 18 rounds, only 5 landed outside the A zone and all of them made it on the paper.

They keep telling me I could shoot faster.

Last order of business for the day was working on my silhouette for my dorm room in college. I started saying last summer that I wanted to just absolutely destroy the center A of a target to hang on my wall, and now we're working on it. I'm all thrilled about that-- it's going to so cool!