Theme of the Week: Defensive Choices

The fighting principle of defensive choices asks the question: what should you do defensively to insure the best chances of making it home safely?

It is, like all fighting principles, meant to have a broad application. If we examine it from a self defense angle, we might consider ideas like awareness and avoidance as good defensive choices. An example would be noticing the driver in front of you swerving in and out of their lane and choosing to exit the highway immediately and stay out of their way.

The application we looked at today in class was the division between a hard and soft approach to the drill 6 count street. These are two very basic defensive choices: should you crash in head to head with the incoming force or should you try and take a more nuanced approach? The answer, as it is so often in martial arts, is all about context.

Over the next week we’ll keep looking at the idea of defensive choices through a variety of drills and hopefully get everyone thinking about and playing with a variety of defensive ideas (which will, of course, affect our offensive choices as well).