Be Your Own First Line of Protection: Self-Defense for Everyone

January 18, 2025 by Jack Kerwick

Things being what they are, Americans should assume responsibility for their own protection.

And this includes learning, within the limitations of the principles of physics, human physiology, their body types, and their own unique bodies, how to move with maximal efficiency for the purpose of prevailing over those who pose an imminent threat to them and/or their loved ones.

Each person is unique: Genetics and history conspire to ensure that we can’t all do the same exact things with our bodies. Nevertheless, barring extraordinary circumstances (like being comatose or otherwise incapacitated), all human beings are equally bound by the laws of the universe.

Within these constraints, we can continually refine our movement so as to achieve ever greater control over our equilibrium, subtle muscle development, and perceptual awareness. Anyone, regardless of age, sex, body type, or the limitations and challenges specific to their bodies, can do this. It is in this mastery over one’s own body, this efficiency of movement, that true martial development consists.

Of course, it’s true that there’s a number of skills, sometimes referred to as “soft skills”—like situational awareness, avoidance, diffusion, de-escalation—that can preempt a violent conflict from igniting. These skills can and should be acquired by all remotely reasonable, and reasonably decent, human beings.

Most instances of violence, what are conventionally characterized as “fights,” are essentially ego battles that can and should be precluded from the outset. These are the interpersonal conflicts that you’re likely to see on various sites on the internet. The players change, but the adolescent ritual remains constant: Upon exchanging insults and assuring one another that they are the baddest of bad asses, (usually) two males square off in a conventional fighting stance, each leaving their front and rear legs a county or two apart and their hands held high with clenched fists.

Then, they dance around one another, as if they are in a ring (or on a dancefloor), throwing jabs and backing away.

At some point, they may close the distance with one another, in which case the windmilling begins, and the lack of body mastery, of balance and equilibrium control, becomes glaring. In other words, besides being an exercise in stupidity, to say nothing of criminality, these YouTube “fights,” such as they are, epitomize wasteful motion on the part of those who are caught on camera engaging in them.

But, as I said, these sorts of conflicts, being consensual, are avoidable.

What, though, about those violent encounters that are not avoidable, that aren’t contests between inflated egos but, rather, situations within which one person regards the other as a resource to be preyed upon and exploited, regardless of the cost?

What does a person do when avoidance and de-escalation are not options?

Is a woman, a mother, say, or maybe a grandmother, supposed to square off with one or two younger males who awaken her in the middle of the night out of a sound sleep while they’re rummaging around her home? Is she expected to grapple with them on the floor? The reader should recognize both thoughts for the absurdities that they are.

Boxing, kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu—none of these are going to be of service to anyone, least of all a person like this woman who finds herself in these circumstances. To even the odds, she will need a weapon, certainly. But the effectiveness of the use of that weapon, regardless of what that weapon may be, will vary, and vary considerably, depending upon the martial prowess, the body mastery, of the person who wields it.

Being threatened with imminent bodily harm by anyone is a frightening experience. Being threatened by imminent bodily harm by home intruders by whom you’re awakened is off the charts scary. And it’s disorienting. The adrenaline dump threatens to be overwhelming—if you don’t train in advance to manage it for circumstances such as these.

If people train to master their bodily movement, to make themselves into natural weapons, then any instrument—again, whatever it happens to be—becomes an extension of their natural weaponry, themselves.

Of course—and this is key—in training to move subtly, you must be always moving to, if need be, kill the enemy. Too many people, including within the martial arts industry, still think of a “fight” as a mano-a-mano duel, a match between two “opponents.” This way of thinking is fundamentally wrong-headed. It is scandalously wrongheaded, to say nothing of reckless, for any self-defense instructor to entertain it. A real battle, the only one that counts as far as self-defense is concerned, is, potentially, a fight for one’s life. It is more akin to war.

Multiple, armed criminals who break into your home are not your opponents. They are…the enemy.

They aren’t your enemy, per se. They are the enemy. By virtue of preying upon innocents, predators make themselves the enemy of God and humanity, of all that is good and just. You just happened to be the innocent upon whom the enemy set his sights in that moment.

There are no guarantees of victory. Yet people who train to prevail in life-threatening situations by training to move their bodies against aggressors with brutal, ruthless efficiency, certainly improve their chances.

Self-defense, martial development, is possible for everyone, for it is nothing more or less than the cultivation of body mastery, of training to the principles of physics and human physiology, for the purpose of defeating those who prey upon oneself or one’s loved ones.

For those interested in learning more, you’ll do yourself a good turn by visiting Warrior Flow Combatives. It is the art in which I am a master-instructor. You can, and should, become your own first line of defense against the barbarians.

This art will help you to achieve just that.