By nature we’re all optimists. If you tell people that the average life expectancy is 87, and then ask them how long they’ll think they live, they’ll normally give you an answer of 93, 95 etc. The statistics never apply to us, just to everyone else. Millions of people play the lottery. Why? Because somebody has to win. The odds and the chances don’t matter; somebody has to win and that somebody could be me. When it comes to violence however, we don’t think/believe it could be us, we’re always sure it will be somebody else: good things happen to...
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We all follow \"rules\" that we believe will keep us safe, however these rules are built with certain scenarios in mind. When predatory individuals, change these scenarios and situations our rules fall by the wayside, as we never imagined them being applicable to the exact or particular situation we face. We all believe that it is a bad idea to get into a strangers car, and might even state that we never would, however many people who have held to this rule have (and will), sometimes with no dire consequence
Most of us feel our safest when we are in crowds, and our most at risk when alone. The nightmare scenarios we all fear, usually involve us being followed or approached at night, in a deserted location, when nobody else is around. We often work to the assumption that predatory and other individuals wouldn\'t threaten and assault us when others are there because there would be witnesses to the offense - unfortunately predators and highly emotional/angry individuals don\'t have the legal consequences at the forefront of...
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The Dojo/Studio can never fully replicate real-life violence, and neither should it, however to comprehensively train yourself to handle and survive a real-life encounter, you must train all the aspects, components and dimensions that are present in a violent incident – and these aren’t just the physical ones; these include: threat recognition and identification (these are not the same thing – we can be alerted and recognize a threat, before we identify what it actually is), control of the adrenal response, effective decision making along with pain management and the appropriate physical responses. It is impossible to develop all of...
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