Happy 2013! I Resolve To Avoid Self Defense

It's been almost two weeks since my last lesson due to the holiday period. For four days I did no training and felt terrible with aches, pains and worry. Worry that if I didn't practice I would regress - and I have so little to regress from. I also had an image of returning to my karate class in a much improved state. My hours of solitary practice obvious to all. Utter rubbish of course, but on the fifth day I started to train - basics, combinations and my two kata, no more than one hour a day, sometimes less and mostly in the kitchen while cooking (I am blessed with a kitchen large enough to accommodate a kata). I can't spar with myself and have so few fighting skills that I cannot practice kumite technique. Curious, I did however trawl the internet for instruction. This yielded a world of weirdness. Strange men (always men), often fat who had obviously watched "Don't Mess With The Zohan" and all of the Bruce Lee Collection too many times and believed such a character could exist for real (I know Bruce Lee was real and amazing, but most people realize he was exceptional).  Out running them would be my first tactic and probably the only one required. However, the consequence of these great lumbering beasts actually landing a punch would be devastating. To be fair, there were some decent examples of karate kumite or other martial arts, but the world of self defense if clearly an unregulated free for all, like holistic therapy is to medicine.

Looking at the examples of people (usually women) getting themselves out of totally impossible aggressive situations with other people (usually men) looked persuasive, but deep down I don't believe it. I'm five foot tall with no strength. So let's fast forward five years and assume I keep on training and turn out to be blessed with some ability. OK, I'm now a black belt with a body (all five foot of it) like iron, how well will I do with 120kg of unwanted male attention lying on top of me? I suspect not too well, except that I may have to deal with the added distress of believing I actually could and should have done something. I really want to be wrong on this one, but perhaps some self defense experts should be a little more realistic. Women have other ways of negotiating, not open to men. In some situations it may be better not to defend - after all hitting and hurting, but not actually stopping, an aggressor may antagonize them and make matters much worse. Even worse, I or you, may do things and go places we would not have done, now that we are armed with our new self defense skills, leaving ourselves open to danger we would not have otherwise encountered.

I don't know if my efforts over the festive period will be evident to my instructor, but I do know I'll never be the next Lara Croft.