I have trained at many different clubs in my time, and even recently while away with work or travelling, and a number of them claim to teach “Self-defence” but their idea of self-defence was almost entirely built around fighting and fitness, that mindset wasn’t unique to them either. I’ve seen it many times before.
At another club, a student – seriously overweight – told me that if he was about to be attacked, he’d just use his weight to crush them. The instructor, also quite overweight, didn’t correct him. Again, the same theme: fight first, no strategy, no awareness of context. Just the belief that sheer weight will solve everything.
And all of this was being taught under the banner of “self-defence”.
Let’s be clear, which many people really need to understand: fighting and self-defence are NOT the same thing.
Fighting is consensual – you both know what’s about to happen. You both expect it. It takes place in a space where rules or control usually exist.
Self-defence is about chaos, panic, and real consequences. It’s often sudden, messy, possibly more than one attacker, maybe weapons – and it has nothing to do with proving your ability to trade blows, and there are certainly NO rules to protect you.
This is a really important point – it is not a street-fight – which again, is both of you agreeing to fight with whatever rules you both decide upon.
When people are told they’re learning self-defence but are only being taught how to fight, it’s not just misleading – it’s dangerous. They walk out with confidence but no context. No understanding of escape, de-escalation, or legality. No grasp of what it means to not get drawn into violence in the first place.
Self-defence is about awareness. It’s about prevention. It’s about survival. We should be helping people stay out of fights, not teaching them to stand toe-to-toe and hope their weight will save them, because in most cases, it will not.
It’s time we stop dressing up sparring or competitive fighting as self-defence and start being honest about the differences.
I don’t care what your reason is for practicing the martial arts – whatever it is, that’s fine by me. I personally enjoy many parts of it, not just self-protection, but that is my priority.
It just seems that lots of clubs advertise that they teach self-defence. And I will bet you, they don’t. What they teach is fighting.
I know I come back to this subject a lot. But that’s because I’ve seen the consequences of getting it wrong. And if speaking up helps even one person ask better questions, it’s worth repeating.
And I get it – clubs need to keep the lights on. But if you’re taking people’s money under the promise of self-defence and only teaching them fighting, you’re not just misrepresenting what you teach – you’re giving them a false sense of security.
You can teach fighting. You can teach self-defence. But if you don’t know the difference, or worse, you do and choose not to care – then you’re not just lying to your students. You’re lying to yourself.
At Impact martial arts Marlborough and Tidworth, We do offer kickboxing and self-defence, and any student that has been with us for any amount of time will know we talk about de-escalation, awareness, how to avoid these situations in the first place, plus the law and self-defence, and how that applies to what we do. We want everyone to have the tools and knowledge to defend themselves if the need arises, but in the hope that they never have to use it.
Credit to Adam Carter – Shuri Dojo who wrote this original post, I have just modified this to make it relevant to me and what we do.