Self-Defense: It's Not Just a Freakin' Hobby

More than a few times, I have read people pontificating on why they study martial arts. Some will tell you that they study to cope with stress, for physical fitness, for the cultural aspects, for the mental/spiritual effects, and so forth. Those are all valid reasons, too, and I don't wish to denigrate them, and yet...

It's amazing to me how many people study martial arts and are apparently utterly unconcerned (or else outright delusional--as in the case of people who study "martial arts" but spend most of their time on point sparring and so forth) about their applicability in real-world self-defense situations. It's like they just don't see a need to prepare themselves for conflict. It's like they think martial arts is a hobby, like tap or jazz dance, or ballet, or golf.

It's not. At least, it's not intended to be.

Let me suggest to you, if it hasn't occurred to you already, that you live in a world where people will cheerfully threaten you over your political views, as described by the father of one young lady, emphasis mine:

Kristen wrote this editorial (No thanks, Mrs. Obama ..) for her high school newspaper in February of this year. After the article was published, she underwent attacks from African-American students, parents, local church groups, and members of the community. She was called a racist, threatened with a knife, attacked verbally and physically in the hallways at school, and her vehicle tires were slashed in the school parking lot. Members of some local minority organizations even met to discuss how to retaliate against her and a boycott of her school newspaper was launched.

If you're interested, I believe that this is the text of article she wrote.

You live in a world where, through no fault of your own, you may, like a co-worker of mine, wind up the object of some drug-addled, bi-polar weirdo's obsession.

You live in a world where someday, they may be coming for you...

and you may find it vitally necessary to be able to break the grips of people attempting to take you somewhere you don't want to go, or to put a man on the ground with one technique.

And so many of you just don't seem to care. Frankly, you people freak me out.

Hard to Argue With That...

Doug Giles writeth:

I have a dream!

A dream where instead of reading about a cute college coed left dead and naked out in a vacant lot or bloated and floating in a river, the story reads: “dead jackass found double-tapped and dead on the curb as his soul wings its way to Hades—all because he messed with the wrong mama.”

A dream where it’s normal for girls to know Jiu-Jitsu and mixed martial arts. A dream where they can shoot golf ball sized groups with their .38 at 15 feet. A dream where they have a BS detector that’s so sensitive they can read people and environments with godlike clarity within a nanosecond.

Personally, I'd recommend RyuTe instead of jujutsu or MMA, but that's a picayune criticism. I'm all for as many women as possible being armed, trained, and ready to defend themselves.

Wise Words on Self-Defense

I should note at the outset that I do not agree with Mr. Redmond about everything in the universe. More than once he has said that he thinks--well, as he put it in this post:

Karate is not self-defense. Karate is a tactical dueling system only.

He has frequently given me the impression that he really does think that Shotokan (the system he practices) sums up what "karate" is, and that it is less a real-world self-defense system than a sporting contest with a historical connection to mano-a-mano macho contests. I, on the other hand, enter a practice session with an acute focus on the problem of keeping my pale tuchus alive and unharmed in the event of a violent assault, and think that karate--specifically RyuTe--is an excellent "life protection" art. Be that as it may, I rather liked what he had to say in this post. Herewith, a short quote:

I avoid violence. I, like most others who have practiced fighting arts or have been in the military, am well aware that when violence starts, so does chaos. And in the chaos, anything can happen. No matter which of you is the master and which is the fool, either one can step on a banana peel and end up injured severely or dead.

Those who engage in violence when ANY other option is available roll the dice that they will not be killed. Good luck to those people. I prefer to de-escalate and avoid violence unless I judge it to be absolutely necessary.

Self-defense is not about winning fights – it is about using strategy and decision making to avoid them completely.

Mike Clarke of Goju Ryu Saith:

I once fought on the streets, for about three years all together, and in that time I was arrested several times and found guilty of inflicting everything from G.B.H. (Grievous Bodily Harm) to Wounding on those I fought with. I was stabbed a number of times, and eventually ended up behind bars as a guest of Her Majesty the Queen. I'd like to know how the street-smart seminar instructors of today managed to avoid collecting a similar criminal record for violence, you know, when they were field testing the skills they are now teaching.

Putting my utter stupidity and my teenage years behind me I have, over the past 36 years of karate training...

There's a whole lot more to the post, of course, but this part intrigued me for a few reasons.

First, there are not that many people who will just bald-facedly admit to having a past like that. Usually people just make excuses, if they will admit to it at all.

I'm tellin' ya, I wish I had my teen and young adult years to live over again. I wasn't a convicted criminal, mind you, but I made so many idiotic mistakes and committed so many sins, mostly because I was convinced my brainpower gave me a better guide to what I should be doing than the people who were trying to counsel me, people who represented the distillation of generations of experience. I was wrong; they were right. And because I didn't listen, I have experienced only a fraction of the earning power I should have commanded, and that has made life much harder on my wife and children than it need have been.

Now, don't go cryin' for us. We don't starve. I'm just sayin' I could have made things a lot easier on us if only I'd listened, that's all.

Second, he did actually turn things around. I have no idea whether or not he is a Christian--usually I associate turn-arounds like that with Christianity--but really, there are not that many people who start out in life like that who turn things around. He did. Very impressive.

Third, think about what he's telling you. Here's a guy who was indisputably one of those "wily, crafty, desperate, willing-to-do-anything-to-you streetfighters," against the likes of which people are constantly telling you that traditional martial arts are useless--useless!--and what does he choose to train in?

Traditional Okinawan Goju Ryu, that's what.

Think he might have reason to believe that it'd work in the sorts of altercations which he's had in the past?

And, by the by, if you find yourself interested in Goju Ryu as a result of Mr. Clarke's writings, you can fairly easily find instruction in Japanese Goju Ryu in Oklahoma. If you're interested, there are some links in my sidebar.

Big Bad Bug-Eyed Criminal Master Predators

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Sometimes it seems like I've got more stuff "in process" than I can find time to finish. Part of this material (the part in italics) is a bit of something I started writing a couple of weeks ago and never got 'round to finishing. I may use it in that other piece yet, so don't be surprised if you see it again.

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Everybody's got their bete noire, I suppose--or perhaps a few of them.

One of mine is the constant conjuring-up, by some people, of the invincible killer streetfighter/criminal/biker/whathaveyou. Every so often, I'll read a post, or a book, that talks about criminals or streetfighters or whatever as though they were invincible, some sort of unstoppable force, defense against which is all but impossible for mere martial arts practitioners.

I do not get this.

Oh, I will grant some things readily. One is that I don't actually hang around such people as a rule (and personally, I tend to think of that as a plus...). Another is that they can be sneaky *&^%#%@!. Some of them can be pretty ruthless, no doubt about it.

Some few weeks ago, the Tulsa Police shot one of these miscreants to death. They were executing a raid on a meth lab in a bar (near a neighborhood I used to live in and still deliver to!), and one of the resident bikers (biker gang bar, it was) decided that he was going to reach for a pistol.

Ruthless? Yes. The man was apparently willing to shoot it out with the cops.

Smart? Mercy, no! The man was willing to shoot it out with the cops!

Effective? Well, he wound up dead. Fat lotta good his street smarts and ruthlessness did him.

I once knew a man who was a former Marine, a Vietnam combat vet, if I remember correctly. He was also a former inmate, a recovering drug addict. The guy was intimidating-looking. Pushing fifty, but looked strong. Covered in ugly tattoos. Looked a mess. Fairly smart guy, too, as I recall. Attended church (not the one I'm at now, a different one) with us and his cousin for a while. By some people's reckoning, he should have been one of the deadliest guys on the planet. I never did get to see him fight (why would I?), but after getting to know him fairly well, I never had any reason to suspect that his technique or his determination or his ruthlessness, if he had any, was superior to mine or any other former Marine's.

Many years ago, when I was still quite young, I had an acquaintance about a year or so younger. I think I am remembering this story correctly, but it's been a long time. At any rate, this fellow had apparently informed on some nefarious character, and he had been threatened. The ne'er-do-well had threatened to bust my acquaintance's head when he got out of jail, and my acquaintance was concerned, for he had never given a thought to fighting in his life.

He wasn't able to take up martial arts at the time, and I ended up giving him some very simple techniques. I showed him a low sidekick (I may also have shown him a low front kick, but I can't remember for sure) and told him to practice it on a tree he had in his back yard. I also showed him (and a very flawed rendition it no doubt was, as I only knew what I had read) the basic Wing Chun punch. Now, I have heard that Bruce Lee once said, "When in doubt, straight blast," by which he meant deliver one of those punches after another, as fast as you can, constantly moving forward. I knew from experience--Taekwon-do free-sparring experience, believe it or not--(limited as it was at that time) that most people don't cope well with that. They end up getting hit whilst trying futilely to block one punch after another, or backpedaling so fast that they trip over their own feet.

And then I left him.

I heard later that he had in fact been assaulted by the ne'er-do-well, and that he had had his glasses broken and gotten a black eye. His assailant, on the other hand, wound up with a broken nose and a broken rib, so I guess that my guy "won" by a score of two broken bones to one black eye, if you want to think of it that way.

The point of that story, if you didn't catch it, is that by the "criminals are tough and ruthless and will overwhelm anyone" theory, my acquaintance should have gotten his clock cleaned. Didn't happen.

Another story: Old boss of mine happened to look out of his living-room window and saw a guy whalin' away on a woman across the street. He hollered at his wife to call the cops and charged across the street.

Knocked the guy back, then picked him up and body-slammed him across his knee (I would have loved to see this maneuver!).

Bad guy later came back (just in time to meet the cops!) with a board with a nail stuck in it.

Ruthless? Obviously! But invincible? Even particularly tough? I would question that.

One time, I interrupted a rape. Pulled the guy off the girl, and, stupidly, held the guy out at arm's length for a second. I was looking for a weapon. He was trying to pull up his pants, and when he got them up far enough, took off like a rabbit.

When I think back on that one, I still can't believe that I didn't just bust his head on the spot. But on the other hand, that ruthless criminal predator didn't hesitate to flee the scene when confronted with a non-victim, either.

Look, I'm not trying to tell you that there aren't some mean people out there. Ruthless people who won't hesitate to use extreme violence to get what they want. I hope you don't think I'm telling you not to train hard and prepare for the worst. That would be stupid.

On the other hand, let's get real. Most crooks that I have seen or heard of aren't any bigger than I am (almost 5' 10" and about 200 #s, about 15 of which is, uh, padding). They aren't any smarter, any fitter (younger, I guess). They're don't generally appear willing to work any harder--as a matter of fact, it seems fairly obvious that a lot of crooks get into crime precisely because they don't want to work hard. They're not, as far as I can tell, willing to absorb a bunch of punishment. Sneakier, yeah. That they are.

Look, are you generally pretty aware of what's going on around you? Are you usually able to tell when things are about to go "bad?" Do you generally avoid places that have bad reputations? Are you able to hit hard and fast when you want to? Can you generally hit your target? Can you easily escape most simple grabs? Are you hard to hit?

If you are, I'd give pretty good odds that you will make it home safely. Nobody can know for sure, of course. But I think the odds are more in your favor than some people are willing to believe. For cryin' out loud, don't build the bad guys up in your mind to the point where you think good, solid martial arts training is useless. Cheez Louise, that's just silly.

Strength Still Matters

I mentioned to my boss the other day that I was thinking about training for the Tulsa Run (15K, or just over 9 miles, for those of you not familiar with the event). Not that I'm planning on burning up the course, mind you; it's probably been 9 or 10 years since I last ran that race. Still, I'm not totally out of shape, thanks to RyuTe. I'm pretty sure that by mid-October, I'll be doing short runs--say 2 miles--on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at a pretty good clip, and a nice, relaxed long run of 6 or 7 miles on Saturdays. Then, on race day, a nice relaxed 9 miles.

I kind of like running. I'm not a fanatic, but I kind of like it, and it's been too long. But that's not the only reason I'm thinking about doing this. As I said to my boss, in the event of some sort of public disturbance or disaster, I'd kind of like to have the option of putting two quick miles between me and whatever sort of squatstorm is coming down.

You know what el jefe said? He said I ought to plan on doing that emergency run with one under each arm, meaning, of course, that I might be carrying the three-year-old and the eight-year-old (I guess he expects the 21-year-old, the 17-year-old, and mi esposa to fend for themselves).

You know what else? He might be right, and that put me in mind of something I've thought of many times: in martial arts, in self-defense, in life-protection arts, we strive for maximum effectiveness and efficiency. We don't want to rely on muscle power for a technique to work because there is always someone stronger than we are. Considered purely from the perspective of executing martial arts techniques against an attacker, that is a good way to approach things, too. But as time has gone on, it has grown more apparent to me that we neglect the strengthening of our bodies at our peril. There's just more to life protection than defense against violent attacks.

What if you find yourself having to shove rubble aside in order to get yourself or someone else to safety?

What if you're caught in a flash flood and have to lift some little ones into the branches of a tree? And then climb it yourself?

What if the smartest self-defense option you have is to rabbit--that is, to run?

Once you start thinking about it, it's easy to come up with scenarios wherein muscle and endurance matter more than martial arts skill.

Just sayin'.

How Dare You Fight Back

When I opened up The List of Things That Offend Muslims the other day, I noticed "self-defense" on the list.

So I clicked on the link. I'd say the story is unbelievable, but where the "religion of pieces peace" is concerned, nothing surprises me anymore.

The Great Equalizer

I have often been amazed by how many people view guns negatively. I had a supervisor ask me one time, "Have you ever had a relative who got killed by someone with a gun?" I had to answer in the negative. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "See, if you had, you'd know that gun control is a moral imperative."

What I didn't say, and would have said, had I been quicker on my feet, was, "Have you ever had a relative whose life may have been saved when she brandished a firearm?" I have--and I have a very, very hard time with people who think that she should have encountered that threat unarmed.

The Way It's Always Worked

That this works is not difficult to discern from history. Not that it is an absolute truth, but in general, for a nation to be weak or to show weakness is to invite attack. Not that one should necessarily be belligerent; that is just as clearly an error. But you sure want the first thing to cross a potential attacker's mind to be, "No way I'm messing with that guy." In general, deterrence works, suicidal Islamofascist goons excepted.

Amen, and Amen...

This wonderful thought was sent to me by a friend. There will be a few more coming in days ahead.

So Help Me, I Don't Understand...

I know that there is more to self-defense than simply carrying a firearm. God knows, I know it, believe it, and preach it. Yet there's a darn good reason that the old saying, "God made men--Sam Colt made men equal," was once common currency. No single bigger equalizer than the firearm exists. It's such a no-brainer for so many women...

...or should be. So many women are reluctant to carry them and learn to use them. So help me, I don't understand...

Just Call Me a Wimp, But...

...I think I know which item I'm pickin' up...

Perspective

This was sent to me by a relative.

Truer words have seldom been spoken. I can't tell you the number of times I've talked to people whose premises, if followed to their logical conclusions, amount to this very thing.

Well, What Did You Expect?

In my Google Reader box the other morning, there were two posts raving about Lyoto Machida and the effect he's having on karate's reputation. Apparently, he's a mixed martial arts fighter--MMA fighter--with black belts in Shotokan karate and Brazilian Jujitsu, and apparently, after years of people watching the grapplers have much the best of it in the MMA ring, he's making karate look pretty fearsome.

I wouldn't know, for I don't watch MMA. Not really interested. To my mind it looks like a slightly-elevated schoolyard brawl. Very little of what I've seen touted as "karate" in the MMA ring bears any resemblance to karate as I have been taught it. You're entitled to your opinion, and thank God above there are some things that we don't really need to fight about--our opinions on MMA, for instance. So if you think I'm full of it, fine, say so and be done with it.

The thing that interested me is that both of these posts talked at least a little bit about how karate's reputation has degenerated over the years. Once it was held to be a ferocious fighting art. Now, it's widely perceived as something little kids do, along with scouting and Little League baseball and soccer.

And all I could think to myself was, "Well, what did you expect?"

I'm not trying to run anyone or any style down here, but when I was in Taekwon-do, in which I was this close to getting my first-degree black belt before I up and joined the Marine Corps Reserve, Taekwon-do was much rougher stuff than what it seems to be now. And even then--man, it almost hurts to say this...

I never--never, never, never--got more than extremely cursory and wildly unrealistic self-defense training. Kata applications were so wildly unrealistic that looking back on them now, I can't help but think they were pulled out of someone's backside. The attitude seemed to be that if you could kick someone in the snout, that was enough self-defense for anybody.

I kid thee not: I learned more about self-defense and kata applications in three months with RyuTe than I did in several years in Taekwon-do. The emphasis on vital points was, and remains, so intense that more than a few times I've almost felt--well, it's intense. Everything in RyuTe seems to take advantage of some weakness in the human body. Not so in Taekwon-do. A shot to the torso was a point, and that's all that anyone seemed to care about. It was just assumed that that type of skill would translate well to real self-defense situations.

Oh, you might say, "MOTW, you were just the victim of bad teaching." Well, I don't blame those instructors. They were just teaching what they knew. But "bad teaching?" One of them, to this day, runs a dojang here in Tulsa and is frequently held up as one of the greatest TKD coaches in the world. As a matter of fact, I know that he's trained world champions. Another of my teachers was, while he was alive, one of the most highly-rated point fighters in a four-state area. Another one was one of the most highly-rated full-contact fighters in the state of Oklahoma. I had third-dan teachers, fourth-dan teachers, sixth, seventh, and eighth-dan teachers, from associations ranging from the ITF to...well, an association I won't name here.

It's not the teachers. It's the system. Real self-defense knowledge has largely vanished from Taekwon-do and most other modern forms of karate. The point, the tournament, is now all. And when you make a dadgum game out of it, what do you expect but that kids will play? And that when they get tired of the game, as kids do, they will drop it for another game?

No wonder karate's reputation has suffered. People made a game out of it, dropping what self-defense orientation it had right out the bottom, largely for the sake of enrolling more children in classes, and now people see it as a joke.

I'll be blunt: if real karate is concerned with real self-defense, with life-protection skills, it will never be popular in this country, I don't care what Lyoto Machida does. It will always be the peculiar interest of a handful of people who are highly motivated to be able to improve both themselves and their odds of making it home alive and unharmed.

(I am not, by the way, suggesting that children should not study martial arts, only that we shouldn't confuse "martial arts" marketed as a sport or children's game with martial arts.)

No, No, This'll Never Be You...

Don't worry about it. You'll never, ever have a need to put up unarmed resistance. You'll never, ever have a need for the ability to put a man on the ground with each technique.

Shhhh. Go back to sleep. Why would you need to have the ability to, unarmed, knock a man off his feet?

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Hat tip to Cathouse Chat's Kat.

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On Guns, Self-Defense, and Personal Security

Not so long ago, the Obama administration, via Attorney General Eric Holder, made it known that they would like to reinstitute the old ban on "assault weapons" (in quotes because the term is defined so loosely as to include some weapons that are most definitely NOT what one would ordinarily consider assault weapons), as well as other possible gun controls. Reaction from such of the conservative blogosphere as I read was predictable, mostly focusing on the obvious (in my opinion) violation of the 2nd amendment, with some weighing in on the right to defend one's life and property and the need to be prepared to do so.

I, too, agree that the 2nd amendment would be violated by such a ban; the wording of the 2nd amendment seems very plain to me. I do not see how banning "assault weapons" would not constitute an infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms (Please don't attempt to argue this point in the comments unless you have something really novel to bring to the table; I am already familiar with the common arguments on both sides of the issue.). I also agree that man has an inalienable right to defend his life and property, and that there will soon be, if there already isn't, a greater need to be prepared for such defense. But I still think Americans' rights to own firearms are going to be infringed. The only questions are "How much?" and "How fast?" We have too few people who understand these things now for the country to avoid being demogogued into such infringements.

What are you going to do, if it comes down to it and the federales come to take your guns?

I suppose you might begin now to hide your guns, but even assuming that you are carpenter enough and surreptitious enough that no one else alive knows where to find your guns, a hidden gun isn't the most useful self-defense tool, is it? And if it really does come down to it, despite our much-beloved "from my cold, dead fingers" rhetoric, I doubt very many will actually choose being shot to death in front of their wives and children. Unless we are able to win--and keep winning--the battle for the 2nd amendment in the political realm, I think the reality is that it is going to be very difficult to keep, let alone carry and use, firearms for self-defense.

I also think that people tend to imagine themselves more capable with a gun than they really are--that is, they tend not to be aware of what can go wrong, or to over-rely on their firearms. Nothing is foolproof. For example, if I recall correctly, the author of Attack Proof told of an experiment where gun owners were placed on one side of a smallish room and someone with a knife on the other. In no case was the gun owner able to draw and aim before the knife-wielder had crossed the room and commenced his attack--and they knew the attack was coming! If you own a gun, are you sure that you will be able to draw, aim, and fire in time? What if you are grabbed first? What if the situation doesn't call for deadly force? What if someone attempts to take your gun away? Don't tell me it can't happen; police officers worry about it all the time.

I like guns; I have two and would like to buy two more. I would never suggest that firearms aren't a valuable part of a self-defense plan. But I am suggesting that relying solely on firearms is a mistake. Our thinking needs to be broader than that. We need to ask, and keep on asking ourselves questions like, "What will I do if I am followed? In a car? On foot? What will I do if I can't get to my gun? If I am surprised, what will I do until I can draw and aim? What can I do to minimize the chances of being surprised? How will I react to sudden stress and fear? What will I do if someone tries to take my gun? How can I keep intruders out of my house or car in the first place? Are there other viable ways to defend myself and my family that I can add to my personal security plan?"

Those questions are important now. How important will they be if, someday, your firearms are legislated out of your hands?

A Must-Read Tale

A blogospheric acquaintance has published a riveting account of an assault upon her person; it touches on the wisdom of trusting your gut, on using your head, and the "why" of studying martial arts.

I suggest everyone read her post, but I especially suggest that women read it. Circulate the link. This is really excellent.

Computer Chess, Private Heckner, and Thoughts on Self-Defense

Not too long ago, it dawned on me that on most Monday nights, it's just me, the seven-year-old, and the two-year-old 'til about 10 o'clock. That would be the perfect time, I thought, to have a friend over for some iced tea and a couple of games of chess. All I had to do was spruce up the house a bit, and spruce up my chess game, uh, a lot. So I went looking, and found a free computer chess program (NagaSkaki, if you're interested).

I was fully prepared for the program to kick my butt, and it did. In addition, it affected my style of play. I am not a very sophisticated player. I have always just tried to dominate the center of the board and briefly check to see if my move will leave any of my pieces exposed to attack.

The computer almost instantly calculates the move that will do me the most damage. The effect is that the computer goes for the throat with every move. It is a startling effect until you get used to it. I found that I often skipped my second step--checking for potential counterattacks--and consequently made more than my usual number of mindless blunders. The machine's sheer aggressiveness disrupted my normal plans and destroyed my game.

*****

For some reason, I recently found myself thinking about my brief encounter with Private Heckner. When I was in Marine Corps boot camp--24 years ago, more or less--Heckner was platoon guide for another platoon in our series. All I remember about him was that he was big--a full head taller than I am, at least--and that nobody in our platoon liked him, though I couldn't tell you why.

We were learning the basics of bayonet fighting, and had reached the point where we were being pitted against one another in pugil stick matches. I lost my first match. We had been told that the match would stop when one of us landed a "killing blow," and when I landed the "blade" end of my stick squarely in my opponent's chest several times and the match wasn't halted, I dropped my guard and looked at the official, whereupon (of course!) my opponent clocked me. Then the match was stopped, and I said, "Oh. They just want to see recruits beat the snot out of each other."

My next opponent was Private Heckner. I knocked him out very quickly. I struck toward his head with the blade end of my pugil stick. Instead of parrying with one end of his stick, he raised both ends of his stick, which left it horizontal and in front of his face. It did stop my blade end, but left everything below his forehead open.

At the time I went into boot camp, I ranked--I have been using Japanese terms so long, I have forgotten the Korean, I'm afraid--ikkyu in taekwon-do (For those who don't know what that means, my next promotion would have been to first degree black belt). The taekwon-do taught in this area at that time was basically Koreanized Shotokan. If we didn't know how to do anything else, we knew how to generate power by trunk and hip rotation, and that is what I did to Private Heckner; I moved in on him, and as my weight settled and I snapped my hips forward, I hit him with the butt end of my pugil stick. I'm sure that it felt like almost my whole body weight had suddenly arrived under his chin. Witnesses said that I hit him so hard that the blow actually lifted his feet off the ground, and when he hit the ground, he was out cold; I don't know for how long. Probably a minute or less.

This really surprised people. Later, when one of the assistant Drill Instructors who hadn't been there at the time heard the story, his reaction was one of shock. Private Heckner was really so much larger than I was--than most people were--that the idea that I had knocked him out seemed like something out of pulp fiction.

*****

Thinking about these two incidents provoked some thoughts on self-defense. Here they are, for what they're worth.

1) Many times, it's not the technical sophistication of an attack or defense that determines the outcome. It's not that technical sophistication isn't valuable; it is. But many times, the determining factor is surprise or the sheer, confident aggressiveness of an attack or defense.

2) Most of the time, a self-defense situation doesn't involve expertise on the part of your assailant. He might have surprise, or muscle, or size in his favor. He might have composure-rattling aggression on his side. But very often, if those don't work, if you are prepared for them, he is all out of "bullets," so to speak, and very simple, well-executed techniques directed at vulnerable portions of his anatomy can be fight-stoppers. It's not like you're playing chess with the grandmaster. Usually, you're countering simple (often outright bad) techniques, executed aggressively, from a common thug.

3) Despite the negative things I've sometimes said about taekwon-do and certain other forms of modern karate, the reality is that a decent instructor in those systems can teach you to hit darn hard--and if you will take the the trouble to learn the vulnerable points on the human body from one of the many books and videos available, a further reality is that the ability to deliver a big payload to a vulnerable target at high speed just might be all the self-defense you will ever need. That, and the ability to escape from some simple grabs. This is good news for those who live somewhere where the only martial arts instruction available is from a taekwon-do nidan who teaches through the local parks and recreation department. Some training, in some system, even though it might not be what you really dream of, is probably better than no training.

4) It never occurred to me to try kicking Private Heckner. Instead, I instinctively applied an appropriate technique to the available opening. This, to my mind, suggests that concerns that knowing too many techniques might result in being frozen into inaction are overblown. You may not consciously select a technique, but some part of your mind will, with enough training, make an excellent selection for you on the spot.

Just some random thoughts on the subject, worth about what you paid for them.