Martial Arts, self defense, expertise and instruction

LionsDen · Orange Belt

Idk if anyone else has noticed this, but a while back I realized there’s a lot of people who readily admit they’ve never fought, let alone fought in self defense or defense of another, yet they are self proclaimed experts on self defense, and often no one questions that.

No disrespect meant, but a prime example of this phenomenon is iain Abernathy.
He’s made hundreds if not thousands of videos, about karate and self defense, yet he’ll gladly admit he has 0 self defense experience. Despite this the karate community accepts him with open arms as an expert.

I don’t fancy myself an expert despite a scuffle or two when I was much younger, and two years in a field where I was averaging about .75 physical altercation per shift, but I use my personal experience to shape my current, and future training, as well as the way I teach.

Can anyone else think of another physical discipline where someone can only have an academic theoretical knowledge base, and get away with not only claiming to be an expert but also teaching others, and have few people inside or outside the community be critical of said person?

bushido_man96 · KF Sensei

Most college professors....
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Zaine · Black Belt

You bring up an interesting point. My gut reaction is to say that I disagree with your premise, I don't know if it's entirely fair to call the knowledge base theoretical. I, however, am not sure how I want to go forward with explaining my position at the moment, so I am going to think on it and come back to it.
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LionsDen · Orange Belt

sensei8 · KF Sensei

I'll keep this post of mine as brief as possible because each of us have their own thoughts about this topic. Here's my preface...

EXPERT: (Oxford Dictionary)

1. a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area

2. having or involving authoritative knowledge

Authoritative knowledge is when a hypothesis moves from an idea into one that can be proven. Always with the proviso that there may yet be avenues unexplored. Until this happens, the facts, as perceived, are authentic.

I don't know how anything in the MA can be comprehensive when the ideology of Shu Ha Ri remains. Nor can an idea always move into being proven when effectiveness lies within the practitioner to be so.

Then, aren't accumulated knowledge and experience OF a certain subject, like the MA, purely subjective or widespread? Another opinion. Then, who's the expert of opinions, and how are opinions viewed by said experts?? Another opinion.

Once again, labels ruin the whole meat and potatoes of anything.

Imho!!

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crash · Orange Belt

lets see, there are boxing coaches who have never fought, some who fought amatuer but never made it to the pro level, and a few who never fought at all, there are military instructors who never went to war, the list goes on, academia has its place, even in the combat arena

sensei8 · KF Sensei

Wastelander · KF Sensei

The thing about self-defense is that it more about mental skills and knowledge than anything else, and once you have been educated in the subject, that education can guide your physical training. You can also improve that physical training even further with exposure to contextually-appropriate pressure testing, which should not only be informed by the academic knowledge of the context, but also knowledge of effective pressure testing methods for other similar contexts. You can be an expert in self-defense training if you are an expert in these things, despite having never had to employ the skills in real life, because you're an expert in every aspect of self-defense that CAN be taught. There is no fully-accurate substitute for real life experience, and you can't teach it, so it doesn't really matter if the instructor has it, or not, so long as the information about real life experiences has been incorporated into the training.

Now, all that said, I will say that I could simply be biased, since other than getting beaten up several times growing up, and only defending myself from one schoolyard bully, I've been able to avoid physical confrontations--which I do attribute to my self-defense knowledge, for what that's worth. My instructor had some real-life self-defense experience, and he also trained with a couple instructors who had been active field agents for federal agencies, who encountered their share of violence, plus his own research and reading the publications of others who shared their own experiences. I've done my best to get similar exposure, but I'm not planning to go out and purposely get attacked, either.
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ashworth · Brown Belt

If you put yourself in a position to have to use your self-defence so that you can gain real-life experience to become a more credible instructor then you have missed the point of self-defence

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sensei8 · KF Sensei

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