We had another amazing experience teaching Everyday Self Defence at the CNE this year!
For the fourth year in a row, we had the opportunity to share practical self-defence skills with young people at the CNE. This year, we worked with over 100 participants, and the sessions were fun, energetic, sometimes challenging, and always interesting.
Every year we go in hoping to teach people something useful.
But every year, we learn something too.
Self-defence isn’t just about learning how to escape a grab, throw a strike, or react to someone getting too close. A workshop also teaches you a lot about attitude, pressure, communication and how people respond when they’re asked to do something unfamiliar.
After four years of teaching these workshops, here are five lessons that continue to stand out.
Lesson #1: You Get Out What You Put In
This might be the biggest lesson of all.
You don’t have to walk into a self-defence workshop believing that every technique is going to work perfectly for you. You don’t even have to feel completely comfortable doing everything.
But you do have to be willing to try.
The participants who get the most out of our workshops aren’t necessarily the strongest, most athletic or most confident people in the room. They’re usually the people who are willing to participate, listen, experiment and maybe even feel a little awkward at first.
Self-defence is information you hopefully never have to use.
But if you’re given an opportunity to learn something that could one day help you or someone you care about, put something into it.
You might be surprised by what you take away.
Lesson #2: There Isn’t Always a “Right” or “Wrong” Answer
This is something we emphasize constantly.
Real self-defence isn’t a choreographed martial arts demonstration.
There is no referee.
There are no points.
There isn’t someone standing beside you holding up a scorecard.
Under real pressure, you are going to do what you can with what you have.
Maybe the technique isn’t pretty. Maybe you forget half of what you learned. Maybe you yell, push, run, strike, freeze for a second and then react.
That’s reality.
The goal of self-defence isn’t to perform the perfect technique.
The goal is to survive the situation, get yourself to safety and get back to the people you love.
If you accomplish that, you did it right.
Lesson #3: ASK QUESTIONS!
Some of the best moments in our CNE workshops came from questions.
“What if they grab me this way?”
“What if I’m smaller?”
“What if I can’t get my arm out?”
“What happens if this doesn’t work?”
Great!
Those questions make the workshop better for everyone.
Sometimes a question takes us in a direction we hadn’t planned on going. It makes us demonstrate something differently, explain why we’re doing something, or explore a completely different scenario.
And very often, if one person is wondering about something, several other people are wondering the exact same thing.
Self-defence shouldn’t be taught as:
“Do this because I told you it works.”
You should understand what you’re learning.
Ask why.
Ask what happens if it fails.
Ask what happens if the attacker is bigger.
Ask what happens next.
Those questions often create the most fruitful lessons of the entire workshop.
Lesson #4: Be a Good Partner
A huge part of learning self-defence involves working with another person.
That means your partner becomes part of your learning experience.
Be a good one.
Give your partner good energy. Give them enough resistance that they can actually understand the technique, but don’t turn every drill into a competition.
Be firm. Be fair. Communicate.
If you’re giving absolutely no resistance, your partner may develop a false sense of what the technique feels like.
If you’re fighting them with everything you have, they can’t learn the mechanics.
There’s a balance.
One of the best things you can do in any martial arts or self-defence class is help the person standing across from you improve.
When you’re a good training partner, both of you get better.
Lesson #5: Simple Is Usually Better
You don’t need 25 different techniques to have some basic self-defence skills.
In fact, under pressure, you’re probably not going to remember 25 techniques anyway.
That’s why we believe in keeping things practical.
Create space.
Protect yourself.
Use your voice.
Move.
React.
Escape.
Get to safety.
The more complicated something becomes, the harder it can be to recall when adrenaline takes over.
Our goal isn’t to turn someone into a martial artist during a short workshop. That’s impossible.
Our goal is to give them a few ideas, a few physical tools and—most importantly—a different way of thinking about their own safety.
Sometimes one simple idea that you actually remember is far more valuable than ten complicated techniques that you don’t.
Four Years of Learning at the CNE
After four years of teaching Everyday Self Defence at the CNE, one thing has become very clear to us:
Self-defence is about much more than fighting.
It’s about awareness.
It’s about decision-making.
It’s about asking questions.
It’s about being willing to try.
It’s about helping the person beside you learn.
And ultimately, it’s about giving yourself the best possible opportunity to get home safely.
We want to thank everyone who participated in our workshops this year, asked questions, volunteered, laughed with us, challenged us and gave the techniques a try.
We hope you never need to use the physical skills we taught you.
But if you ever do, remember:
It doesn’t have to look perfect.
It just has to help you get home.