This morning, I was invited on Cork’s Red fm to some advice about self defense on the streets. Anyone who knows me will know that I jump at the opportunity to be on camera or on microphone so of course I agreed straight away. Here’s the clip from the show courtesy of Red fm.
http://audioboo.fm/boos/441114-liam-og-on-redfm-s-victor-barry-show-self-defence-advice
As a martial artist, I’ve been trained in “Self defense by numbers” – in other words, if someone does this, do that and so on. My personal feelings on self defense though are not quite as black and white as that. Unfortunately, real world violence is rarely scripted and if you were to learn (or try) the millions of possible attacks and their defenses, you probably wouldn’t have time to be attacked in the first place – you’d be in the gym your whole life!
Most traditional and sport martial arts have a self defense element to them – this is true – but in my opinion, real world self defense is a totally different kettle of fish. There are some arts that come a bit close to real world stuff including Qin Na (which is one I mentioned in the interview) or Krav Maga (made popular by Jennifer Lopez in her film “Enough”). Colleagues of mine in West Cork do a system which they call “Real World Defense Systems” and if Self Defense is your ultimate goal, you should definitely be talking to these guys.
We do have a course on self defense which we run from time to time called “Street Smart Martial Arts”, which is where I got the material such as F.I.R.M. Action which I mentioned during the interview. On this course, we cover a range of things, including psychology of violence, legal issues of self defense and also a study of real-world cases.
If you’re interested in Self Defense classes with any of the class types I’ve mentioned, just drop me a message and I’ll send you in the correct direction.
