ALL of us watch YouTube, or we should, if for some strange reason one happens to be from another solar system.  The wealth of information is incomprehensible at times, but the treasures to be collected are worth the effort.  However, for everything positive there is a negative side, as well.

I would venture that most of us realize martial arts cannot be cultured from video.  One needs “hands-on” training from a qualified instructor, but this is not the purpose of this blog.  Neither is the obvious “there are numerous, unqualified teachers out there, whose methods are simply bad.”

Rather though, I occasionally suggest that my students do something that often makes them very uncomfortable and sometimes literally sick to their stomachs; and, that is to watch actual street fights, surveillance video attacks, etc., to get the impact of how sudden and brutal these assaults truly are.  Unless one has experienced this, it is very difficult to project and teach reflexive survival responses, no matter how many actual accounts I share with my Krav Maga faithful.  Remember, and it has been empirically proven, that only 9 out of 10 humans will fight back.  One can train forever and still completely freeze under the physical and psychological impact of an attacker’s initial blows.

So, study the cruelty of several kids kicking another young person in the head, while on the ground in a parking garage; get disgusted by the random callousness of the phenomena known as “knockout”; observe how a sociopathic brute lays waste to a smaller man; as, unfortunately, these are real-life and as close as most of you will come, I pray, to having you or your loved ones’ lives threatened.  Understand that effectively fighting back is at first mental, then technical; learn how to actually “flip your survival switch”, as it may be necessary someday.