Peyton Quinn:Founder of RMCAT training, Black Belt Hall of Fame Member, former bouncer/cooler by night and a High School Math teacher by day, Peyton is also a very well published psychologist
Why, when Asian Martial Arts training was once seen as the 'ultimate in self-defense training' do so few people actually increase their real world self-defense ability through martial arts study?
Why do some people studying classical martial arts develop such truly strong self-defense ability but most people and even those who study martial arts for years develop no increase in their ability to defend themselves?
Understand please that I do want to put Martial Arts training in any sort of negative light at all and I do hope you will all understand that. I have not developed advanced rank in three major systems of martial arts nor have I been inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame without having a profound respect for the value of martial arts training. The study of martial arts truly has so many and varied benefits that it is well worth anyone's pursuit.
Still, developing true self-defense ability for today's world is only seldom achieved through the study of martial arts alone except for a very few people.
Yet we have demonstrated here at RMCAT that through the scenario based, adrenal stress driven training methodology that the bulk of any person's comprehensive self-defense ability can be actualized in a very short period of time. In fact, even in just one intensive weekend here. Traditional martial arts training just can not achieve this.
I hear martial arts school owner's declaring (and incomprehensively to me as they sound almost as if they were proud of it) that it takes 'years to master' their particular art for self-defense purposes. But most people in today's world just can't invest those years in such training even if it eventually it did develop in them so true self-defense ability.
I will list below what I see as the reasons that classical martial arts training is not the most efficient way to develop effective self-defense ability and this despite its many other quite valuable benefits. I will try to list them in roughly rank order:
1-Asian martial arts, that is unarmed martial arts, were not developed specifically for self-defense purposes. The martial systems we recognize today were largely developed in the Twentieth Century. They were developed from adapting true warrior weapon based movements of the past to the empty hand. We must remember that no unarmed classical martial art was developed for actual 'hand to hand' fighting because mankind has never fought unarmed such as we see in the popular fiction of martial arts films. The exceptions are athletic contests and we still have such 'consensual athletic contests' today. I refer here to sports like the UFC, Vale De Tudo, MA Tournaments and Pro Boxing.
But an athletic contest is not a self-defense situation in any way whatsoever. Nor can we legitimately draw any conclusions from watching any such athletic contest as to what 'might work' or be important in an actual self-defense situation. Man has the opposing thumb and the well developed brain and we are thus natural tool users. Every war of any size that has ever been fought at any time since pre- history right up until this morning has always been fought with weapons and not bare hands.
Martial arts as we know them today were developed largely to maintain the
The skills needed in a tournament have no realtionship to the self-defesne skills needed in the real world
traditions of martial study long after the feudal periods of civil war and military conflicts between rival clans had ended. Karate for example was unknown in Japan until about 1918. Tae Kwon Do was actually developed and codified and given its name in the 1950's.
Consequently, if we study the true histories and not the popular mythology we see that Asian empty handed martial systems have only a 'reflected link to actual combat' in that the movements were based on weapon arts of the past.
Now contrast this historical reality with the sort of statement I have heard "...and the techniques of our 'Bang Wang Fang' system are a thousand years old and proven on the battle field". It is just not true.
2- Martial Arts Schools toady are largely commercial operations primarily serving the legitimate needs of children with discipline outside of the home and developing their sense of personal self-reliance. Most any martial arts school gets about 85 % of its income from parent's paying the monthly fee to have their kids take lessons. The objective here is a very worthwhile one for these kids too. But it is not really related to self-defense at all. As a result of the increasing commercialization of the martial arts industry increasingly less and less attention has been placed on their self-defense aspect even with the few adult students who study in martial art schools.
There are more than a few 'martial arts school' millionaires out there who run powerful marketing operations. I see nothing wrong with making a good living at your profession either, but let us not confuse monetary success with the quality of the instructional services.
RMCAT Armored assailant training makes full contact real! You learn to strike full, power and 
knock a man off his feet by doing just that. There is simply no better training method than learning by 'doing'
I must also say that I have seen some martial arts schools that succeed very well at both high quality instruction and financial success as well. But unfortunately they are increasingly becoming the exception today. Shihan Brad Jones a Shotkan school owner in Toronto Canada would be my first prime example, but there are others I am most sure.
3- Individual's talents, attitudes, body types and personal goals for taking Martial Arts study differ widely. Let's face the reality here. There are very, very few people with the natural talents and body type of a 'Bruce Lee'.
Further still, even if we confine ourselves to the adults taking martial arts classes only some of them do so for self-defense purposes. Instead these adults will often focus on the other very real 'body and mind benefits' of such study. Many MA school owners have told me "Some of them might originally sign up for self-defense objectives, but that is not why they stay".
Hence, we have a situation where a martial art that was not originally designed for self-defense purposes in today's world is now being taught to people in a classical and uniform manner is often sold as being 'self-defense training'.
The natural result is that few martial arts students develop much if any real world self-defense ability. That is the skills to avoid a fight through knowledge of the human predator's thinking process or to prevail in a fight that does go physical.
We must also recognize that the 'fight' starts long before it gets physical too.
Further still, before it gets physical this is the best time to win and conclude the fight as well. Yet, this entire issue and this very important reality of self-defense is not dealt with at all in classical martial arts study.
It is a claer fact that people are not 'uniform' in their body types or personality or in their objectives in training. For example, TKD is a 'power style' and all the body mechanics needed to strike a very powerful blow are present and taught well in any good TKD instruction.
Yet, if one is 115 lbs or just a much physically smaller person than their adversary, while they may develop their full striking potential through TKD study, that still might not be enough in an actual self-defense situation against the much larger opponent. Size is not always decisive by any means but it does count.
My point is that the physical technique approaches that might serve such a smaller person better, throws and evasions, blending and 'slipping' are not taught in classical TKD. Further TKD's emphasis on tournaments and especially its role in Olympic competition has all but completely and totally divorced this art form practical self-defense instruction in most schools today.
Even with this though, I will say that the instructor always makes the difference and I certainly am not singling out TKD here either really. It is a somewhat similar situation with most any martial system. By this I mean the 'art' itself is being taught rather than its possible applications to self-defense. Also many MA techniques simply have no application in a self-defense situation anyway, they are just part of the art itself.
4- Most Martial Arts instructors are good at teaching their art but they have little experience teaching self-defense nor do they often have any actual experience in defending themselves in a real self-defense situation. Most martial arts school owners and instructors I have met are good at teaching people their given art. By this I mean its forms, techniques and training methods. But those arts were not originally conceived of or developed for actual self-defense purposes and the fact is that few martial arts instructors have ever been in a real fight or true self-defense situation themselves.
-----------Thus concludes my rant on this subject: on a scale of 1 to 10, I see this rant as a 6-------------
Now to be balanced on this issue the question arises, "Can someone teach effectively something they never have done themselves?" I must say that based on my experience and observation the answer is a qualified YES.
Sometimes an instructor truly can train someone to do something they have never done themselves.
In fact a good instructor can train someone to do something that they are not even physical capable of doing themselves. Professional boxing trainers have done this and created world champions. Olympic high divers have been trained by instructors with no Olympic experience or even any personal 'Olympic level potential.'
Consider that even in the military some instructors have never been to war yet they can train effectively prepare soldiers for combat. In Desert Storm the drivers and gunners of those Abrams tanks had never fired at any enemy or been in any tank battle before. They were mostly trained by people who had never done so either. But they were trained in simulators, that is 'scenario based training' and this is the best and most effective way to train and the result was they totally dominated the battlefield when they got there.
I must aknowledge that I have seen MA instructors turn out some good fighters with real SD skills and most especially the physical ones and yet without any real self-defense or actual fight experience themselves. However, these instructors are again the exception
This woman is learning to project a strong verbal boundary that says "i am not going to be your victim'
.
The fact is that most MA instructors simply do not know from personal experience how real attacks occur or the pre-incident cues that precede a fight going 'physical'. Here I am referencing things like the 'human predator's interview' methods to find suitable victim potential.
And so extraordinarily critical to effective real world self-defense is one's developing a clear understanding the concept of 'props' in the human predator's mind. An ignorance of 'props' or 'proper respect' has taken many people's lives as a direct result of that ignorance.
Yet I have never seen this issue of 'props' raised in any classical martial arts instructional program in the more than 40 years of being in and around these schools.
But the central issue in self-defense and the one that eclipses all others is how the adrenal rush is handled. This is very often more decisive than 'technique skill' in any real world self defense situation and in any actual physical fight. Technique skill itself is irrelevant to self-defense compared to this adrenal stress issue.
True Self-Defense training for today's world must involve much more than physical technique but
classical martial arts instruction is centered almost exclusively on the study and practice of physical technique. I know from my work and observation as a bouncer and 'cooler' so many years ago that the physical aspect of self-defense is really not your first priority nor is it the difficult part to learn effectively either (on a physical level).
It is a very fundamental error to see 'physical technique' in this way that is as being what self-defense training or skills are. This is a false 'mental paradigm' which distorts both what a real fight really involves and what self-defense training should be.
The objective of self-defense is to get home that night in basically one piece, to still be alive afterwards and breathing and on your own and without aid of machinery. The result of 'losing' a real fight is often permanent physically disabling injury. Sometimes it means the loss of vision or a partial loss of vision due to even a slight change of occular pressure in the eye as the result of a blow. Missing teeth are common, broken hands are also common. Prison terms and jail are also common results of fights.
Just because you were not the initial aggressor is no sure defense against going to prison either.
If you assume it is then you are totally vulnerable to the legal system and its machinery. You must be taught how to avoid going to prison by understanding how the legal system really works. Television's legal dramas won't help you there either. The things they depict there and the system portrayed there does not exist and never has and in fact could not exist. Again no martial arts school I have ever seen or even heard of even engages these issues at all.
Above all you must realize a real fight is not a game or contest at all. A real fight is a terribly brutal, animalistic affair that is spiritually degrading afterwards and one which unleashes primordial homicidal tendencies. Any real fight between adults always has the potential for homicide. That is just a stone cold fact.
No athletic contest no matter what the rules or lack of rules is a real fight. Nor can anything be concluded about what might work in a real fight (even on the limited technique level) be properly derived from watching anything that happens in any prize ring.
Yet consider this, how many people actually think a ring match like the UFC or Vale De Tudo etc is
a "fight'? Think about how many people have as their 'model' for what is important or the 'skill set' needed for a real self-defense situation purely based on these contests? The correct answer is a great number of people do and they are thus under this quite false and potentially dangerous mistaken impression.
Training for sports like this has value, even some self-defense value perhaps. But being even a good pro-ring fighter does not mean that individual has strong or comprehensive self defense skills at all. This is well documented.
In Reno, Nevada a NHB man was recognized while waiting in line to get into a nightclub when another person began to ridicule and bully him. The NHB man acted like a responsible adult at first and tried to avoid the encounter all together. But eventually he lost his temper and when they fool made actually made physical contact with him the NHB took him to the ground instantly.
the skills of the prize ring are not the skills needed for self-defense outside that prize ring
In the next second another person took the opportunity to kick the NHB man in the head. The NHB man was fully occupied with the woofing 'fool' and he was on the ground and his 'fight paradigm' but his training did not include the possibility of a second assailant.
That NHB man was never able to fight professionally again. He lost most of his sight in one eye. His jaw was broken in two places and he lost most teeth on that side of his mouth. He constantly hears ringing in his ears to this day. Those were not the limit of his permanent injuries or mental damages either. He confused real world fights with a ring contest and the result was thus trajicaly inevitable.
Yet had been taught the reality things, even in a one day's training he could have and would have avoided the entire incident and not been hurt at all. He had great technical ring skill but no self-defense skills at all.
Real world self-defense even as far as the physical 'skill set' that is demanded is actually much simpler than any 'ring contest' or even what one might infer from martial arts study.
The most key and the very first elements of self-defense instruction must include avoidance and 'de-escalation of conflict' skills. True self-defense training means developing a good understanding of how human predators think and how and why they choose their victims. It is not all about 'moves' or techniques.
Most of all perhaps, true self-defense training must provide a simulation that elicits the adrenal response in the student so they can then learn to think and act correctly under the pressure of the 'interview' and verbal abuse and challenges of a human predator.
This demands scenario based training. But, scenario based training is unknown to most martial arts school instructors even though it has absolutely proven itself to be the best methodology for teaching self-defense. The martial arts student most often does not even realize that the adrenal rush is the real problem in an actual SD encounter. He is taught nothing about de-escaltion.
Neither have they been taught or learned how to handle that adrenal response by experiencing it. Yet their ability to manage the adrenal flow is what allows someone to employ de-escalation skills and avoid it going to a physical fight. I must tell you with all the fights and the three civilian killings I have witnessed with my own eyes that most all of them were absolutely avoidable if the victims had handled it differently.
You must learn to spot the 'woof' instantly, perhaps even before a word is said or finger is pointed. And you can learn this. Most communication is really non-verbal.
It is natural to feel that when a person you never saw before comes up to you and says menacingly: "What the fuck are you looking at you piece of shit? I'll pound your face into raspberry jam" that he is not likely someone who can be de-escalated.
But I discovered through experience that most times they can be dealt with and in a way that makes them decide not to get physical with you. And understand that this will not be accomplished by showing either fear or anger, or by threatening them, counter challenging them and most definitely not by telling them you're a 5th degree black belt either.
Any of those responses are like 'honey to bees' or more precisely like 'blood in the water for a shark' to the human predator. Once you understand the modus operandi and thinking of such people you will see exactly why this is so.
To simplify it basically comes down to this reality: they are not really looking for fight at all, they are only looking for a victim. You must respond in a way such that they determine that you are outside of their acceptable 'victim profile'.
Once it gets physical though anything can happen and once it gets to that point most people trained or not can't afford anything less than throwing that 'mental switch' and going from zero immediately to 110% counterattack.
The predator knows most people just can't do that. He knows most people will show fear, denial or anger and he is ready for all three of those responses.
But if they even suspect that you will fight if they push it and force it, then they will seldom attack you. But you must rehearse this skill under authentic stress. The only real way I know to do that is through scenario based training where one develops a calm but focused assertiveness.
Remember neither fear or anger are choices you really make, they are only automatic biochemical responses your body 'makes you feel'. Only calm and focused assertiveness is a decision you make yourself.
Let me also say that your verbal boundary and assertiveness also psychologically 'draws the hammer' on your capacity to 'go off' instantly and effectively from 'zero to 110%' if he does push it to the physical point. When he perceives this in you in real time, well then you have already won and frankly this is the only true way a fight can be totally won in the most profound sense.
By this I mean anything less than avoiding the physical part of the fight entirely is at least partially a failure of your first and most critical self defense skill of avoidance. I absolutely know that people can learn this skill through proper scenario based training too.
The physical party of the fight to my thinking is always going to engage a random element. Greater technical skill than your enemy is good but it certainly is no guarantee of escaping unharmed or even alive. But, understand that the less than correct mental attitude will often guarantee your failure.
Learning how to deal with this type of stand up aggression and thus avoiding a physical conflict is priceless and will that skill will apply to many aspects of your life well beyond 'woofing' situations like you see above.
Everything I have related here is part of the reason and logic of RMCAT training. It is why a weekend doing this training for most people will increase their total self-defense ability more than even a few years of martial arts training can. People do not look for the right solution until they perceive the true problem. The real problem in self-defense is how you handle and employ the adrenal stress reaction. This is why RMCAT training is centered on this reality and it works.
When you successfully complete the course, 'You will know what you know'. You will have dissolved the illusions for yourself. You will see the truth of it and all the "what if' questions you once had in your mind will seem not just meaningless, but also a bit silly and amusing to you as well.
True self-defense training and the RMCAT experience will transcend your idea of what self-defense training itself is, .. and quite importantly it will apply positively to every aspect of your life that involves people.
I am going to have maybe just three RMCAT armored assailant courses a year now. I finished one of them last weekend and it was truly a sterling class too even by RMCAT standards. And you good people reading this who were in it, I will be sending you the DVD of your class in all its splendid glory in a week to ten days!