Be Your 911
Teaching both sport and street martial arts for the past 40 years there has been a lot of crossover. What I mean by that is a lot of my techniques and strategies that I've been teaching for the street can easily be crossed over to sport, and that's one reason my students have been able to switch between the two. Chuck Ladell started off as just a martial artist for the street, and he ended up becoming a UFC icon and MMA legend. On the other side of that coin, I have had a handful of students who started off, wanting to be a sport fighter, kickboxer, or MMA fighter, but have been jumped in the street, and been able to be successful by using their martial arts, that they learned for the cage or ring. Sport and Street martial arts are very similar in techniques, and in training, and the similarities by far outweigh, the differences, but the difference far away the similarities.
The two main differences that far outweigh the hundreds of similarities are 1. there is no referee or cornerman to stop the fight when you are in a vulnerable position and unable to defend yourself. 2. Your man, if not only goal when training for a sport martial art is to win so that you can get more stuff., Buy more stuff, I mean, money, prestige, popularity, trophies, or world professional titles. You have to do a lot of training to get there, but that is your main goal, that is what you are striving for every day and training. You don't necessarily care about, in fact, you would much rather not hurt your opponent, you just wanna win the fight.
Training martial arts for the street, your goal is very different than in sport martial arts. Your goal in street martial arts is to stay alive, period. Knowing that you have to realize a very important factor when training to stay alive, no one is going to come to help you. As much as the police are heroes, there's only about one cop for every 6000 residents. Even though the cops want to be there to protect every single one of us, there's just not enough of them. Can you imagine being in charge of 6000 anything, much less people you're supposed to keep alive and on injured, it seems like a kind of impossible task for me to understand, and that's one reason why we have to recognize the fact that we are responsible for our own health, safety, and life.
And if you honestly think you don't really need to train because they'll always be the police to save you, let me give you a few reasons why that is a very silly, irrational, and untrue idea. I'm going to go by doing a little bit of research and a little bit of personal experience. I live rural, as do most of my neighbors, and I once thought I had a trespasser with a weapon. I got a hold of my weapon and secured a good position for myself and my daughter in the house, then I immediately called 911, I'm not sure why I started a stopwatch after I called, but I did. It took 29 minutes even though I told the 911 operator that somebody was on my property with a gun. So I know if you live rurally, you need to be able to protect yourself and your family because the response time is a lot longer, but with that said in most suburbs, the response time is 10 minutes. In other words, if you called 911 and your attacker started shooting you with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol with a standard 10-round magazine. You would get shot about 1500 times before the police got there, and I am counting reload time.
And here are some other weapons that you could be attacked with, and I am adding in how many times you will get attacked with a weapon with your average 10-minute response time.
35-pound Cinder block, 280
Pistol 1500
Hammer 625
Baseball bat 360
Brick 700
Axe 300
Shovel 276
Now & arrow 80
Golf club 360
Screwdriver 1200
Shopping cart 22
Straight razor 1250
Knife 20
16 pound sledgehammer 200
Punches 1800
Soccer head kicks 480
So, as you can see, as much as the police are absolute heroes and want to protect all of us, there's just not enough of them, and that means we have to be responsible for our own life and safety. Whether it is protecting your wife while in a restaurant, protecting your children at the shopping mall, or you here in the Truter at two in the morning in your rural home, realize that you are your own 911. You are your own bodyguard. You need to be willing and able to protect yourself and your family. Go train! And don't let anybody take your lunch money.
