Self Defense Conditioning
When it comes to self defense conditioning do you really need the mental fortitude, endurance and strength of a professional MMA fighter. Absolutely not! The fact that most violent encounter are over within 5 seconds reinforces this point. Also the chances of you being attacked by a trained martial artist or MMA fighter are minimal seeing as only something like 2% of the population have any kind of formal martial arts training. With self defense you are not conditioning yourself to compete for 15 minutes of all out fighting. You certainly do not have to prepare yourself mentally to disembowel and slaughter an entire village either. Does it help if you have some strength, flexibility, endurance and mental toughness? Absolutely. The two main areas for self defense conditioning are your mind and your body. When it comes to self defense conditioning, you will ideally want to have a foundation of core strength and mobility. When it comes to conditioning your mind for self defense you will need to be able to look past your social programming and be able to act with 100% commitment on destroying the person who is between you and the exit sign. You will also need to be able to harness the adrenaline cocktail coursing through your veins. Self Defense Conditioning - Strength & Mobility I have two recommendations for developing explosive core strength which can give you the upper hand in a violent altercation. No body building, freakish chest and arms are needed. In fact the cost of equipment can be next to nothing, and no gym membership is required. The two self defense conditioning recommendations that I have when it comes to strength & endurance conditioning are kettlebell training and bodyweight training. My favourite are kettlebells! I recently started using them and they are effective and completely addictive! Once you've gone through a kettlebell training session, you will just see that ball of iron sitting there and it feels as though it is screaming out at you to pick it up and start swinging it around. For those of you who don't know a kettlebell is a cast iron weight which is round and looks basically just like a cannon ball with a handle attached to the top of it. A proper kettlebell routine give your lungs a workout, your legs, back, shoulders, arms, abs all get a real good workout. You will develop dynamic core strength, dexterity and balance with kettlebells. As an added bonus your grip and hand strength will also improve by leaps and bounds. The starter kettlebell I purchased cost $85.00 USD which included shipping. That was for just one 35 lb. kettlebell. I ended up ordering another one because once I tried the first one out I was happy with it and wanted to progress into some double kettlebell exercises. So you can put my total starting cost at $170.00 which is still a lot cheaper than a barbell set, bow flex, treadmill or annual gym membership! I purchased my kettlebells at www.lifelineusa.com and was completely satisfied with the product and the service. So there you have it! I fully endorse and support kettlebells. When it comes to body weight training I'm not talking about your fathers old traditional sit ups and push up. Bodyweight training does include push ups but there are a number of different variations. It also includes plyometrics for explosive power. No fancy equipment here. In fact the fanciest thing you will need is a chin up bar which can be found at any local school yard jungle gym. Just think of the meanest S.O.B.'s out there. Are they hurclean huge? No! The meanest S.O.B.'s can be found in prison and the really scary ones are locked down most of the time and their workouts consist of bodyweight burpees, push ups, hindu squats, box jumps and pull ups. By using simple principles of leverage you can either increase or decrease the load and difficulty of each bodyweight exercise to challenge yourself. When it comes to self defense conditioning bodyweight exercises make sense. You get an aerobic element coupled with strength and explosiveness building. The standard measure of fitness for enrollment into military and law enforcement is usually based solely around bodyweight exercise and aerobic testing. If you can easily pass a combat physical readiness test, you are probably in decent physical condition! If you're fitness levels are good already you can always find a way to challenge yourself with bodyweight exercises. Just check out the videos below and how these guys are taking bodyweight exercises to the extreme and having a whole lot of fun doing it! Self Defense Conditioning - Psychological Conditioning Dealing with the psychological issues of fighting for your life is half the battle. At the end of the day being prepared to take a shot is just as important as learning how to dish it out. If you have it set in your mind that you are defending yourself, that is exactly what you are going to do...defend until you get injured! You need to have the mentality of a predator and that since it is now officially on, you are the attacker. A useful self defense conditioning exercise is to always incorporate your stress into your training. The only way to prepare fully psychologically for a life or death altercation is to hit the mats, over and over again until you are completely bored to death over each situation that you role play. Incorporate multiple attackers into each training session. Make the training as real life as you can. Pull out the training knives, guns, clubs and other improvised weapons. During training and during multiple attacker role plays have the attackers yell, scream and swear at you so that you get a dump of adrenaline into your system. You need to be prepared to dish out violence and come to accept it. You need to accept that you will get hit, cut and that guns will discharge. The autopsy reports of murder victims almost always describe the defensive wounds found on the victims arm because they were shielding themselves and not attacking. Likewise the reports of victims of rapists that have been murdered almost always contain DNA evidence under the victims fingernails from scratching the rapists face while they were being choked to death. The sad thing is that if they were able to scratch the face they would have been within reach of gouging out an eye ball. The aversion to killing another member of your own species is found in just about every animal in the world. Humans are no exception, however there are the "sociopathic" members of our society that somehow lack this genetic predisposition. You need to be able to go "sociopathic" if the scenario dictates it! Accepting this fact and stress indoctrination through routine training is the best way to prepare for violent altercations. Check Out My Review Of Kettlebell Workout DVD's & Videos
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