Can martial arts be used as self defense?

The age old question, are martial-arts self defense? The answer is, yes and no. For instance, martial arts obviously have self defense applications since they do contain some self defense moves. However, self defense isn’t the only aspect here. A lot of aspects actually become more of a lifestyle instead of just simply learning self defense. This is the reason why most self defense practitioners need to only train a few months to defend themselves while martial artists train for years at a time. They learn just the techniques that will be most applicable in self defense and in keeping them safe on the street instead of the entire art.

But what about true martial-arts self-defense. Does such a thing even exist? Certainly systems have tried to be martial arts self defense systems but do they actually work? Some of the more popular examples of these include Krav Maga and Systema. Almost entirely dedicated to teaching you self defense moves, these arts have very little “fluff” involved. However, their shortcoming is that they still cling to traditional martial arts techniques. With martial arts techniques, there is a very long learning curve not present in self defense systems. So these systems are not the best way to learn proper self defense techniques despite the fact that they can most certainly be used as martial arts self defense solutions. I recommend that you find a competent self defense instructor that teaches a system created specificially for reality based self defense (RBSD).

The benefits of RBSD are that they allow you to master everything needed to defend yourself in a very short amount of time. You see, you can learn these self defense moves in a matter of weeks, not years and years of training. And there are no silly belts or anything like that. At least not in a good reality based self defense program. If you are looking for martial arts self-defense make sure you try to look around and find a good RBSD school.

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