On the Wrong Side of Reality

Many of the things that people teach — and possibly some things that you learned — in self-defense class are wrong. This should not be overly surprising when two things are taken into consideration. The first is that self-defense classes are based on martial arts curricula, and the martial arts were passed down as secret transmissions to be guarded from outsiders. The arts were intentionally mistaught to everyone except trusted “closed door” disciples, and to become a closed-door disciple required training with the same teacher for 10 to 20 years.

Walk into a dojo and instead of asking the teacher, “How long have you been in the martial arts?” ask “How long did you study martial arts before you began to teach?” Your next question should be, “How long did your teacher study before he or she began to teach?”

The answer is that, on average, people train for three years before they begin teaching. So