Many grown men don’t even know how to throw an effective punch that will hurt their attacker more than it will hurt them. Boxing or Muay Thai will start you off and give you an idea of how to strike, but in a real fight you don’t wear gloves and there is a good chance you will be grappled. Also what will you do when the fight goes to the ground which almost always happens? You can’t explain that you didn’t learn that, and it isn’t part of your style. Judo is a great sport, but when your clinch fighting or grappling on the ground do you know how to end the fight quickly and deal with a weapon? Fighting techniques are all about dealing with the unexpected and surviving.

Real fighting techniques are usually whatever has been banded from more civilized sports. In boxing for example you can’t punch your opponent in the groin, bite them, gouge out their eyes with your fingers, or give them in a head butt. While this makes for a fair and safe match on the street those are all things you want to do to help you survive. Even sports with weapons are having restrictions on what can be used, but don’t let that stop you during a real fight. Even the most skilled martial artist will pickup a broken bottle from the ground or a knife off the counter and uses them if they have the chance to supplement their training. When you’re in a real fight you aren’t in a show and you aren’t trying to score points so don’t hold back when it comes to your techniques.

Most people have their priorities screwed up and the current state of society reflects it. People will spend a small fortune on gym and health club memberships to become healthier, but they won’t change what they eat or even get enough sleep. People want safer neighborhoods, but they don’t make any effort to get to know their neighbors or police officers in their area. Another mistake people make is that they plan for a future they might not be able to enjoy, because they can’t protect themselves.

The amount of options available to the average investor is amazing. If you plan well for it, your retirement can be some of the best years of your life - without having to make many sacrifices during your career. It doesn’t matter if you’re a day laborer or a lawyer you can find the right fund to put money aside for the future. You can make your hard earned money grow, but it won’t matter if you’re fighting for your life, and you don’t know what to do. There are predators out there that see you as a target because of your good fortune and they will be perfectly willing to hurt you to get what they want.

You have to look at self defense training as part of your long term planning just like setting up a trust for your kids or a mutual fund. You might not like thinking about a day when you aren’t there for your spouse and family, but you better put your fears aside and make the arrangements you need too. Afterwards you do feel better, and you know when you stop working that you won’t have to worry. The same peace of mind comes from knowing what to do if you get into a real fight and have to defend yourself and your family.

Self defense is all about diminishing returns just like in business. The harder you make it for an attacker to hurt you or take your property, the less likely they are to pursue you as a victim. Now you lock your doors, have alarms on your vehicles, and carry pepper spray and a charged cell phone – these are all good things to help reduce the chances of attack, but you can still do more. If you’re attacked and your first response is to fight back your attacker will back off if you know what to do. When you react without fear you will put the fear into whoever is attacking you, because they thought it would be easy. You keep hurting them; they will realize it isn’t worth their energy and will do what they can to get away.

You never missed a payment on your mortgage, you pay all your credit cards on time, and you are debt free so don’t ruin it all because you don’t know how to protect yourself. Your health and personal safety should be your main priority so don’t push them to the bottom of the list. You diversify your stocks and other investments so you have options, so treat your self defense training the same way. The more you know, the more successful you will be if you have to use them in a fight. If you’re planning for the future you need to be prepared deal with not only a drop in the market, but if someone tries to drop you.

Real martial arts training can’t be rushed. Despite what instructors who work for black belt mills and McDojos say, it takes years to learn a martial art. It could take up to five years for a student to earn their black belt from a legitimate martial arts school, but you might not have that long. You aren’t going to live at the school until you’re ready for a street fight and thieves, rapists, and murders aren’t going to wait around until you know how to fight back. While martial arts training can take years to learn, the fundamentals of self defense don’t take very long at all - allowing you to have time to train in whatever style you enjoy.

One of the dirty little secrets of the martial arts industry is that most people who learn martial arts aren’t learning self defense. How can this be true? After all, most schools list self defense as one of the many things you will learn. Well, you’re being lied to or at the very least being misled. Most people who take martial arts like karate, Tae Kwon Do, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are actually just learning a combat sport. Because those styles and others are considered sports, safety precautions have been built in so that nobody gets seriously hurt or killed while they’re competing and training. Now these sports are a lot of fun and are great for combat conditioning, but they don’t replace basic self defense training.

A street fight is a raw primal battle where fighters act more like animals than well trained or refined men and women. You have to know how to bite, head butt, and eye gouge an opponent in a fight, and you don’t have time for complex techniques. There is even a right way and a wrong way to punch someone, and most people have no idea that the edge of hand does even more damage. When you’re reacting to the stress of battle you won’t be thinking straight so you need to use simple self defense techniques to survive. Most martial arts styles are too complex to use in an actual fight so even trained martial arts instructors will often go back to the basics in a real fight.

You shouldn’t stop training in your favorite martial arts style, but you do need to start learning self defense techniques that will work in the worst conditions. A fight is all about hurting someone badly enough so they aren’t about to hurt you, and you don’t have time to waste. Your black belt might be years away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn what you need to survive now. Real self defense training is about making the most out of your basic actions, and maximizing damage, and it should be simple enough for anyone to do.

Wushu is made up of two disciplines Taulo and Sanda. Taulo is more like gymnastics than any martial art. It includes routines that are performed up to twenty minutes and can include traditional Chinese weapons like swords, butterfly knives, and staffs. Performers will perform many impressive jumps and flips in the air, but will not fight any opponents. Points are rewarded for performing moves correctly, and the program is broken up into barehanded, short weapons, and long weapons portions. If practitioners do meet on the mat there actions are already scripted. Sanda is based off of Chinese boxing and wrestling styles and is more combat oriented and has been called Muay Thai kickboxing, but with grappling. Though it is derived from several combat styles it is still a combat sport.

The hand movements are called Ba Ji, tumbling moves are Di Tang, and Tung Bi is full arm movements. The animal katas are called Xing Yi. The weapon katas for Wu Shu T’ung includes a large number of different types of swords, the nine-section whip, three section staffs, spears, and other ancient Chinese weapons. The central Committee of National Physical Culture must accredit all students and teachers who must embody the ideals of communism.

In 1998 the government attempted to take the politics out of the sport, but little has changed with the actual style. The sport requires a great deal of flexibility those who participate are great athletes, but they aren’t street fighters. Wushu is just the latest of many styles that has been produced in China, but it is a government imposed cultural martial art and combat sport not a form of self defense.

While films have given martial arts an almost mythical status Karate was created out of a practical need for self defense. Okinawan nobles would regularly travel to China to study Kung Fu and other martial arts, and then returned home to share what they learned. The basic goal of traditional Karate was to kill or disable an opponent as quickly as possible, and considering the samurai who guarded Okinawa were armed to the teeth it was necessary. Over time schools developed katas that allowed a student to train without a partner, and they harnessed their energy through their kiai.

There are four officials styles of Karate recognized by the Japanese Karate Federation, and they’re Shotokan-ryu, Shito-ryu, Goju-ryu, and Wado-ryu. Though there are many other styles these four were all designed with combat in mind. Wado-ryu is a mixture of Karate and Japanese Jujutsu, and uses body movement to avoid attacks. Goju-ryu uses a variety of techniques and uses many other exercises to strengthen a student’s mind and body. Shito-Ryu uses square-on stances and linear strikes as well as teaches weapons training. Shotokan-ryu Karate is probably the most popular of the four, and uses deep stances and linear movements.

Today many martial arts schools are concerned with combat sport Karate while others focus on the self defense aspect with others trying to do both. Traditional Karate at its heart is a system meant for self defense, but much of its lethal techniques have been stripped away. Though there are some instructors out there teaching real combat karate they are few so do your research and know that just because you’re learning Karate doesn’t mean you can protect yourself.

In hand-to-hand combat fighters can use a variety of submission grappling techniques. While all techniques are designed to make an opponent submit, due to pain or fear of further injury they all work in different ways. Compression locks can cause intense pain to an area of muscle or bone, and joint locks do the same on the vulnerable joints of the body. Chokeholds can be used to strangle an opponent until they’re unconscious in a match or until death if it is a self defense situation. While every martial art has its own techniques all attack the same sensitive areas and the only limitations are the rules of the sport.

With different rules and backgrounds each combat sport has a slightly different take on submission grappling. With Jujutsu which the Japanese samurai designed for actual combat the techniques are designed to deal with armed and armored opponents, and can be very lethal. Judo fighters wear gi’s and use throws to take an opponent to the ground and then use arm locks and chokes to get the submission. Sambo is similar to Judo, but no gi’s are worn and leg locks are employed more often. In BJJ which is also very similar to Judo, but emphasizes ground fighting techniques can be done with and without a gi.

Submission grappling has been with us since the dawn of time, and can be found in many martial arts around the world. Until you grapple with an opponent up close and personal it is just a game, but once you get hold of him or her it is a fight. They can ignore the points, and they can ignore the clock, but they can’t ignore the pain for long. Submission grappling is key to victory.

Shotokan Karate was developed not for sport, but for real life combat situations. The Japanese ruled Okinawa with an iron fist and first restricted then completely banded the natives from owning weapons. This made learning a martial art a necessity and with the help of Chinese instructors Karate slowly began to develop. Though some aspects of Kung Fu can be seen Karate developed into a brutal style that includes hand and leg strikes, throws, blocks and grappling. Weapons training included every day tools and farm implements and much of the training was done in secret to avoid the wrath of the ever watchful Japanese.

In 1879 Gichin Funakosi like many of his peers started studying martial arts and would studied both Shōrei-ryū and Shōrin-ryū styles of Karate which were popular at the time. Finding them to complex he began to develop a simpler style taking from the best aspects of both. He also drew from his experiences in Kendo, the Japanese fencing martial art based off of samurai sword fighting techniques. After over twenty years of study he began teaching and demonstrating his new style in Okinawa and later Japan where he continued to write and teach.

Shotokan style Karate has long and deep stances and its use of more linear movements which differs from the circular movements of other Okinawan styles. Once in Japan Funakosi began calling Karate the”empty hand” instead of “China hand” which had been the tradition in Okinawan schools for generations. His actions angered many other instructors and Funakosi could never go back to Okinawa, but his style of self defense continues to be taught are the world. Sadly though Shotokan Karate has been turned into a tournament combat sport with a points based system. Funakosi intended for his style to be used for self defense against enemy soldiers and criminals not to score points in a martial arts competition.

The monks developed their own close combat program that included weapons training and martial arts. Over time their teachings would not be confide by the walls of their monastery, and their method of hand-to-hand combat would go to inspire hundreds of other forms. While training in one of its many derivatives is easy to find it is almost impossible to find true Shaolin Kung Fu training.

Martial arts existed in China before the monks, and they weren’t invincible. Developed from exercises the original form of Shaolin Kung Fu was a solid combat effective martial art that stressed quickness and brute force, and utilized common weapons. Many monks were soldiers and even generals prior to embracing monastic life, and they influenced the development of the new martial art.

The monastery was destroyed several times, but the monks were a force to be reckoned with. Throughout their long history they would fight bandits, pirates, and helped many Chinese leaders in times of crisis. The monks also trained students to train, but not all students would follow the doctrine of the monks. As others developed their own versions of Kung Fu not all were as effective as the original.

In the 20th century the monks survived both the Chinese civil war and the invading Japanese, but when the communists seized control things would change forever. The communists persecuted the monks and made Wushu the official form of Kung Fu. The new form of Kung Fu is completely devoid of any spiritual aspects, and in China Maoist teachings are part of the training. Many who teach Kung Fu are actually teaching Wushu which looks impressive, but is completely useless when it comes to self defense.

Today the monks hang on to their traditions while adapting to an every changing world. The monks use modern weights and machines as part of their training, and when someone wrote an offensive article about them they contacted lawyers not assassins. Though some monks have escaped communist China few outside of the monastery practice true Shaolin Kung Fu.

The Shaolin monks have become know around the world, but myths and legends distort the truth. Martial arts existed in China before the monks, and they weren’t invincible. Developed from exercises the original form of Shaolin Kung Fu was a solid combat effective martial art that stressed quickness and brute force, and utilized common weapons. Many monks were soldiers and even generals prior to embracing monastic life, and they influenced the development of the new martial art.

The monastery was destroyed several times, but the monks were a force to be reckoned with. Throughout their long history they would fight bandits, pirates, and helped many Chinese leaders in times of crisis. Though it cannot be confirmed the Triads China’s organized crime group claim to be descended from monks betrayed by their emperor. The monks also trained students to train, but not all students would follow the doctrine of the monks. As others developed their own versions of Kung Fu not all were as effective as the original.

In the 20th century the monks survived both the Chinese civil war and the invading Japanese, but when the communists seized control things would change forever. The communists persecuted the monks and made Wushu the official form of Kung Fu. The new form of Kung Fu is completely devoid of any spiritual aspects, and in China Maoist teachings are part of the training. Many who teach Kung Fu are actually teaching Wushu which looks impressive, but is completely useless when it comes to self defense.

Today monks use modern weights and machines as part of their training, and performances at their temple in China showcase modern Kung Fu not the traditional form that made them famous, because the communist government has outlawed Shaolin Kung Fu. Though some monks have escaped communist China few outside of the monastery practice true Shaolin Kung Fu.