Self defense coaching:
How to teach self defense

Knowing self-defense techniques and tactics isn’t enough by itself. Self defense coaching needed to create ability to deploy those techniques and to adhere to those tactics.

Principals of coaching in self-defense aren’t any different from coaching in any combat sport or martial art or, in fact, in any other activity.

Coaching in civilian self-defense should take in account personality of the student and do not conflict with his primary activities. The key is to find student’s natural reaction in variety of assault defense patterns and adjust them to meet needed reaction.

Recognizing threatening behavior and “point of no return” in escalation of hostilities is the critical part of coaching. Coaching should address conflict de-escalation and develop reflective triggering events for each phase of conflict prevention and resolution: from avoidance to de-escalation to “point of no return” to exit from hostilities.

Coaching is a complex process and need to be individually tailored for each student. It’s a complex task and this is probably the main reason why it’s largely absent from most self-defense classes.

Absence of coaching in self-defense classes is mostly going un-notices because in the Western World most of the students aren’t using there physical fighting self-defense skills in the life-time as developed along-side awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation skills enough to provide personal physical safety.

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