Self Protection, Self Defence & Fighting

A friend of mine that is not a Martial Artist but never the less surfs quite a few Martial Arts sites asked me if there was a difference between "Self Protection" and "Self Defence"? He was confused because the two terms seemed to be used for the same purpose by certain Styles he had researched and wanted to know if it was just "Sales Talk".
Not wanting to get involved in an argument about Styles I do not know too much about I responded by telling him what it means to me, and what I try to get across to the People I teach.
No matter what style you train in you should learn different things for "Self Protection", "Self Defence" and "Fighting", because they are all very different things and cannot be thrown in together, and the way I see it is that-

 "Fighting starts when Self Defence has succeeded, and Self Defence starts when Self Protection has failed"

To me "Self Protection" is making decisions that do not put us in harms way.
"Self Defence" is stopping Attacks from hitting us.
"Fighting" is hitting the other guy.

Let me paint a Picture.

You are standing near the Bar at a Night Club, there is a loud, obnoxious Guy acting like he owns the place that you have seen on the other side of the Room, he comes over to the Bar to get himself a Drink and stands there making fun at the people dancing in front of him, something happens he spills his Drink and turns to blame you, next thing he hits you, {The Bad guy is now Fighting}  you attempt to Block his attack {You are now in Self Defence} after the first few Blows you start hitting him back {You are now Fighting} and he starts to Block your Attack {He is now in Self Defence} and the Dance begins.
If you had chosen to move away as soon as the Ape had come to the Bar {Self Protection} none of this would of happened,

Fighting starts when Self Defence has succeeded, once you stop him hitting you it gives you the chance to hit him.

Self Defence starts when Self Protection has failed" if you are not there to be hit you do not need to defend yourself.

As Mr Miyagi so rightly said   "Best Defence, don't be there"

It is important to understand these differences, because it is almost impossible to think about attacking if you are in Self Defence mode, and it is almost impossible to think about defending yourself when you are hell bent on attack. 

On the Face of it this comment may appear to contradict what we teach in Wing Chun, that is "Simultaneous Attack and Defence", it does not though, firstly in Wing Chun we "Counter Attack' as opposed to flat out attack, and this really is a very big difference especially Mentally, and once you begin to understand your training you will see that our Simultaneous Attack and Defence is actually more like attacking from behind a Shield. I will go into this in depth at a later date, but for now , Read, Think and Ask Questions.

Training transitions into fighting

Myself and some of the more Senior Guys are doing some serious revision to get ready for the Visit of a highly regarded Sifu from Hong Kong, apart from the training we are also trying to formulate a list of Questions to ask so as to not waste time with the usual stupid Questions asked at these events, one of the Guys wants to know "How do we turn what we learn at training into useful tools for Fighting"?

This is a great Question, and like most really sharp Questions will generate a lot more Questions before we get anywhere near an Answer.

I myself have been involved in some form of M.A. for 50 years {I started Boxing late in the Year of 1960, a long time ago} and one thing I know without any doubt is that the vast majority of Martial Artists are not what you would call "Violent People", even though at some level we re training to be Violent. The opposite is more likely to be found, that most Martial Artists abhor Violence, but they realise that it is out there and realise that it could fall on them unannounced like Rain from a clear Sky and that the only chance they have of escaping in one piece is to have "Better Violence" at their command. Many have never had a Violent Encounter {excluding Schoolyard Tiffs} and as such will have absolutely no Frame of Reference to assist them come that Dark Day.

So how do we turn our training into usable Fighting Skill?

Or more pertinent "Is it even possible to turn our Training into Fighting Skill"?

My own take on all this is that we will find it impossible to use our training in a real nasty Street Encounter {been there, done that}, mainly because the Person in that fight will not be the Person that turns up for training every week.

How you Feel affects how you Think, how you Think affects how you Feel, and they both affect how you Fight. In training we Feel good and we Think clearly, this is the body that we inhabit while we are training, this is the Person that is learning the Skill Sets, and it will all evaporate instantly the Minute the Wolf leaps out the Bushes.

So why do it, why train at all?

Again this is just my take on it, but underneath all of our Flash Physical training there is another training going on, a type of training that develops Confidence, Intent, Strength of Will and Self Respect, you could almost regard this as Spiritual Training because we learn it at such a depth that it is training our very Soul, and when that "Hard Rain" starts to fall it is our Confidence and Self Respect that have us say to ourselves " this Guy does not have the right to Terrorise me" and it is our Strength of Will and our Intent that will allow us to Counter Attack and hit out with Righteous Anger and win the chance of Escape, which is all any intelligent Human being should be looking for.

If we are in a Violent Encounter it is not really all that important "How I Hit, it is not important "Where I Hit", it is only important "That I Do Hit", at the end of the Day it is always Will over Skill.  If I get into a Violent Situation my aim should be to get out any way possible, and not be looking for a chance to validate my training, if I embrace the "Escape at all cost " ethic you can be certain that some elements of my Years of Study will surface even if by accident, but you can also be certain that if there is a nice Fat Stick handy I will pick it up and use it.

In my opinion many people create Major Problems by depending on their training instead of depending on themselves, for almost 20 Years I have trained in Wing Chun, I have great belief in the effectiveness of Wing Chun, but I do not consider myself a Wing Chun Man {even after all these Years}, rather I see myself as a Man that uses Wing Chun as his primary Tool, and I would have no hesitation in changing Tools if the situation required it.

So in answer to the original Question; "How do we turn what we learn at training into useful Tools for Fighting"?

My Answer is "What makes you think you need to"?

But then again I could have it all wrong.

Protecting The Rice Bowl

Many years ago, sometime in the late 1990's, I had a home Movie kind of Video taken at a Workshop in Hong Kong at the V.T.A.A.  It was hosted by Sigung Tsui and was by all accounts a Junior Master Level {Level 5ish} only workshop, there was translation of a kind because two of the participants did not understand Cantonese, but as always with Sigung it was mainly done via example not explanation, you can no doubt imagine that as an instructional video it was of limited value, however one section of it completely changed how I viewed my training, and how I trained.  The whole Group of very Senior Students where having immense difficulty doing a test from the Biu Gee, ultimately Sigung called a halt to their efforts and remarked that their problem was that they did not fully understand Sil Lim Tao.

Junior Masters and they did not understand S.L.T.

 If they did not understand after however long they had been training I decided that I would know even less after only 4 or 5 years so I started from the very beginning once again and sought out as much information as I could from anyone Senior, especially my Sifu. Now it is widely held that Hong Kong Masters are very frugal with their information, many postulate that the longer it takes you to learn the more you end up paying, it is referred to as "Protecting The Rice Bowl"and I promised myself that if I ever ran my own School that I would avoid falling into this type of attitude, and give information freely to any that looked for it.
Now that I run my own School, or to be exact now that I run the training for a Club that I have formed, I have been putting my ideas into action, and on the whole everyone is progressing far better than under the old system, but not everyone is making significantly better progress, in fact not many at all, there are two guys that are really taking advantage of what is on offer and they are flying along, but the others seem happy to just plod along, one or two are actually going backwards but still seem content????
I am beginning to think that you cannot really teach another person anything, at least not in your own time frame, that they need to somehow find their own way, find there own questions and then come to their Instructor for answers to these questions, and that perhaps giving out lots of information may in fact overwhelm them instead of helping them, and that they may be better served by not being given information until they ask for it, how easy would it be to see this as "Protecting My Rice Bowl"?
I may owe a few apologies to people that I have thought poorly of.

Wave if you know me.

I am just answering an E-mail from one of our Club Members, in fact one of the Foundation Members and he is basically asking "maybe we should start a Blog!   DUH!  If you are one of us and reading this then join as a friend or do something to let me know you are there. Just tick a Box beneath.

HELLO, IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE!!!

A slow start to the Year

Training has recommenced, James, an old friend that I used to train with at the Other School has decided to come and train with us, it is always a great addition when you get a New Member that is really quite senior and knowledgable, it kind of improves the Gene pool, and there is a real chance a couple of other Senior guys may be coming over soon as well, we have 24 people on the books and 10 of these would be what can only be called Serious Wing Chun Students, this is really good for the less senior Students, the knowledge base is really deep and the pace of progress is furious.  With it being the first Day of the New Years training I went over some of the information that we should all know, as is always the case a few of the guys heard it for the first time, I can remember many occasions when I was training with my Sifu and he would tell me something and I would think "Why did he not tell me this years ago, why has he left it so late", but of course he had told me, like everyone once my Brain was full {which seems to not take very much} any new information would go in one Ear and out the other without leaving any trace, I think I will spend some time every lesson making sure that everyone has all the early information secured in there minds, and I will post up some of the more easily forgotten things here, for instance I tell everyone the main reason for shouting OOSH" breathing out very forcefully} when we Punch. Next time.

Happy New Year

Well we have made it to 2011 and in fact we are in really good shape, the Committee is working hard in a number of different ares that excite me, not least the fact that a new Web site is underway and we are getting organised to do some Fundraising in an attempt to finance the Club without increasing any fees, on the Wing Chun front, we have a few Instructional D.V.D;s in the pipeline and would hope to have them out by our first anniversary in late February, and also I am going to actually keep the blog alive, 2011 should be a great year.

WATCH THIS SPACE.