Warrior Arts.

 

Why is Forest Knights tag line Wilderness, Wildlife and Warrior Arts?

 

Forest Knights was asked to travel to Cheltenham to teach a group of 20 young people self defence.

We feel that having a good knowledge of self defence principles buildings self confidence and enables young people to make wiser choices about the people they associate with etc. This knowledge gives them sense of pride and self control.

Knowing when to react and how to deal with a potentially life threatening situation is an essential life skill, the ability to defend your self not only enhances your self worth but gives you a sense of responsibility.  All power is a double edged sword and the ability to cause discomfort to others must be used wisely.

The course was structured to focus on the principles of movement timing and balance.  It was important to instil a high moral compass to ensure that the young people understand that using the skills taught were for a very limited number of situations, 99.99% of the time it is wrong to harm anyone.  Much better to walk away and avoid conflict.  If someone is being abusive and a bully allow them their space and maybe over time you may show them that they were wrong.  Lead by example and try to be a positive influence on those around you.  If you are being robbed and you are certain that the thief is only interested in your possessions then let them have them.  All objects can be replaced.  Phones can be blocked and traced, your photos recovered from the cloud.  Hardly worth a potential conflict for a phone you're likely to upgrade soon.

 

When is it right to fight?

 

In our experience the only time it is right to fight is to protect yourself or those you care for from physical harm.  Being a pain in the rear is not sufficient a reason to harm someone and will undoubtedly cause the authorities to take a very dim view of your behaviour.  In other words you're the one likely to end up with a criminal record.  Bye bye DBS and your career choices.

So now you have considered when it's necessary to act you are free from making that decision when the time comes.  Now when  a person invades your personal space you can move instantly from a passive response to actively defending yourself.

Once the decision is made there is no turning back.  There is little middle ground in a real life threatening situation.  The real world is an ugly place and violence is painful and brutal.  It is much more productive spending 30 years learning to paint than 30 years practising martial arts.

However should you need those skills that 1 minute of time will be the 1 minute that defines your future.  Act swiftly and decisively.  Keep your techniques simple and effective.  Forget the movies.  In real life when you're tired and afraid perfection goes out of the window.

We worked with the young people on the Principle of  Move Pain Go.

 

Move.

Avoidance.  Move into safe space away from the threat.  This can be away from the attacker or in close and personal. We worked on how to avoid getting hit by movement of the whole body especially the feet. 

Pain.

All counters should give the attacker or attackers some form of stimulus to engage their brain. To interrupt their flow and create doubt.  This will give you the time and space to go. Only do what it necessary and keep it simple.  Economical violence.

Go  

The next and most important part is to leave at the earliest opportunity.  Once you have disabled your attacker and created space to move then go.   Get away from the conflict and seek help from the emergency services or a responsible adult.  Never wait for applause or support.  Move on with your life do not give that minute any more power over you than necessary.  Once you are safe you can call the police and report the incident. 

The young people really enjoyed the various situations, we had them working hard sparring with plastic bottles to defending against multiple attackers.  There was little need to give them specific techniques for they would be unlikely to remember then in 6 months in a pressure situation.  However we worked on simple movement that began to develop muscle memory and a heightened situational awareness.  Getting them to read a situation before it becomes a crisis is far better.

 

Prevention is better than cure.

 

Once they stopped falling over their own feet we could add a few extra tools to their armoury.  How to punch and block effectively using the whole body.  Understanding that their likely opponents may well have studied mixed martial arts and try to take them to the ground.  We worked on simple counters.

To finish we had a question and answer session with the young people discussing the issues they faced and feared and how we could develop stratagems to avoid problems in the future.

As always we learn as much from our students as they learn from us and it was a privilege to help them feel a little safer in their everyday lives.  Whilst the likelihood of facing a potential abduction is low understanding that you never get into the car is important.  Fight tooth and nail to avoid getting into the vehicle make yourself too inconvenient a  target as possible.  Anything to get you noticed and slow an attacker down and give you a chance to flee.  Once in a car the search area for the authorities looking for you increases dramatically and your changes of escape are reduced.

 

Forest Knights believe knowledge is power and with the application of knowledge and a positive attitude then any situation should be managable.  Having a sound knowledge of Bushcraft and Survival is a great foundation but to be truely prepared one must also have a solid understanding of human behaviour and be able act effectively in a crisis. 

 

Forest Knights instructors run training courses in self defence, conflict resolution and can provide training solutions for all your travel needs into hostile environments.

 

Contact us for bespoke courses to meet your organisations needs.