Why relying on a weapon as your self-defense strategy may cause more harm than good.

Most people have some kind of self-defense plan, even if it’s not well thought out. And for a lot of people, that consists of some kind of weapon that you keep somewhere. Either in your purse, next to your bed, or even carried on your person. The thinking is “if something goes down, I can access a secret higher force that can surprise and overpower any attack.” 

Having that weapon is where the plan stops, and we don’t think much more about it. We just know where that weapon is, should I need it.

With that strategy if a sudden attack actually happens and the body and mind is flooded with stress chemicals, one of two things usually occurs:

1. The brain goes completely blank and you totally forget you had a weapon; you try to best to navigate this shocking unprepared situation as best as you can, then later you realize “Damn, I totally forgot I had a weapon!” Or even worse:

2. You have not trained actually accessing that weapon successfully under stress of attack, so you scramble to get it, failing again and again while you are getting attacked, because it’s the only plan you have and so you reach endlessly for that plan, and are not actually defending yourself at all.

With the latter, it would have been better to have no weapon at all, even with no training, because at least you would try and face the threat and use some of your basic survival instincts, defending with your hands and feet, and you may have some success in protecting yourself and finding a way to stop the threat or exit safely.

If you trained with your weapon, repeatedly, under stress of real attack so your muscles would take over when your brain is not working and successfully access the weapon and use it effectively to neutralize a threat without hurting yourself or others. Well then, maybe that weapon could serve as a good self-defense strategy.

Granted there is a fair argument for brandishing that weapon to intimidate, in the hope of deescalating an attack. But the problem is that if that threat suddenly became a real attack, that weapon could hurt your natural ability to defend yourself.

In addition, using a weapon or even brandishing a weapon can very quickly serve to escalate a situation, and if used, can take a physical encounter and make it much more violent, even with risk of death.

Even if we successfully defended ourselves, if we seriously maim or even killed someone to do it, what price do we pay then psychologically and emotionally in the aftermath.

Our body is always with us and includes many vicious weapons. If we can hone them to activate automatically under stress, they are efficient, precise, they do not jam or run out of batteries or bullets, and they cannot be taken away from you so easily.

With effective self-defense training, your body is your weapon.

We must be careful that we don’t approach self-defense training with that similar untrained weapon mentality though. That would lead us to take one or two classes, be introduced to the weapon, then think we have our plan and not train anymore.

We would feel like we have that weapon in our pocket now, and we are good. But the same thing is likely to happen under stress, and we would find ourselves again freezing, and flailing as we desperately tried to access that weapon and remember that one class I took that one time.

A successful self-defense strategy and toolkit does take a little time to imprint into the survival brain and muscle memory, where it will be accessed effectively by our body, even when our cognitive brain is not functioning.

Fortunately, Krav Maga provides one of the quickest ways to there. In only weeks you can get a handful of very effective techniques into the body. They will be there when you need them, and with minimal repetition the body can learn these well enough so they will be there forever afterwards, even if you stop training.

It’s different for every body, but I estimate at about 10 classes your body can know enough effective techniques to survive the vast majority of attacks, and after about 30-50 classes your body will have these techniques imprinted for life, always available, forever. At two classes a week, that’s 4-6 months for lifelong self-defense weapons that will always be there for you.

Now that is an investment in yourself that no one can take away.