Self-Defense Classes: Training for Skill Application

Rob Pincus addresses a question he is often asked: Why don’t self-defense classes have a test at the end? The primary answer is because students come to these courses for life-and-death defensive skills, not to meet an objective standard. They are trained to survive an event that will be unknown, unpredictable, and unchoreographed. If students are trained in self-defense classes to perform well at a choreographed drill, the risk is it will embed behavior that may or may not help the students in the unknown events they may face.