Being aware and being in a ready state is key to your self defence. Situations where you would need to use your self defence skills and training are hopefully rare, though this in itself is a double edged sword. How can you train properly and effectively for situations that are few and far between ?
Psychology has proven that mental rehearsal has a massive impact on performance. Top athletes use mental rehearsal, also known as visualisation, when preparing for events. So how do you apply this to self defence ?
What you need to do is create self defence scenarios in your mind and make decisions about what you would do at each stage – pre-fight, in-fight and post-fight. In an actual confrontational situation your thought process may be impaired with the onset of adrenaline. Planning through various encounters will make you feel like you have been in that situation before and dealt with it correctly and effectively.
Also, if you have ever been unfortunate enough to have found yourself in a self defence situation or a close encounter, think back and analyse what happened. What did you do right and what would you have done differently ? However, do not replay it in your head as if you were in some action movie!
There is some value in writing down the various scenarios you come up with. This will help you to think through your ideas and reinforce your training.
Physically you can prepare for an encounter through role play. Take the scenarios you have thought through and rehearse them with a friend or training partner. The level of realism you put into each scenario is your own choice. It would be best to start off slowly and methodically and build up from there.
Without being mentally and physically prepared it is unlikely that you will perform well. If you do not have the proper training you run the risk of either over or under reacting to the situation.
At Practical Self Protection we are committed to, and focus on, reality based self defence training. We focus on state of the art techniques and training methods that give you immediate results.
If you are considering learning self defence why settle for anything other than the best. Here at Practical Self Protection you will train in a proven and tested system that is effective, realistic and relevant to the world we live in.
Take your training to the next level and keep your training real.
