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When most people hear the words “self-defense,” they immediately think about the worst-case scenario.
Someone attacks you. You’re put in a dangerous situation. You have to protect yourself or someone you love.
And obviously, that’s a huge reason to learn self-defense. We hope you never find yourself in a situation where you actually need to use what you’ve learned. But if that day ever comes, having some idea of what to do is a whole lot better than trying to figure it out for the first time while you’re scared, overwhelmed, and full of adrenaline.
But I think we sometimes miss something important when we talk about self-defense training.
The benefits don’t start the day somebody attacks you.
They start the day you begin training.
You don’t have to wait for some “maybe someday” situation to benefit from learning how to protect yourself. Good self-defense training can change the way you carry yourself, introduce you to an incredible community, and give you a completely different way to exercise.
Here are three of the biggest benefits I’ve seen from learning self-defense.
There is something incredibly empowering about knowing you are better prepared to defend yourself.
Most of us probably take our personal safety for granted to some degree. We go to work, walk through parking lots, go shopping, travel, and live our lives without constantly thinking about what we would do if someone tried to hurt us.
Hopefully, you never have to find out.
But learning self-defense gives you tools you didn’t have before. You learn how to move, how to react, how to create distance, how to escape certain situations, and how to function when someone is putting pressure on you.
That can build a different kind of confidence.
For some people, self-defense training helps them gain confidence they’ve never had before. For others, it strengthens confidence that was already there. And for someone who has experienced violence, abuse, bullying, or another situation that left them feeling powerless, training can sometimes be one part of rebuilding confidence that somebody else took from them.
I think that last one is especially important.
Self-defense isn’t about walking around looking for a fight or believing you’re invincible. In fact, good training should teach you the opposite. Avoiding a dangerous situation is always better than having to fight your way out of one.
Real confidence is knowing that you’ve trained, you’ve practiced under some pressure, and you have more tools available to you if something does happen.
This is one of the benefits people don’t always think about when they first walk into a self-defense class.
You’re surrounded by people who showed up for many of the same reasons you did.
They want to learn. They want to become more confident. They want to get healthier. They want to be better prepared to protect themselves and the people they care about.
That’s a pretty good recipe for building a healthy community.
Self-defense training also requires you to work with other people. You need training partners. You practice techniques together. You learn to control your movements so your partner can learn safely. You encourage each other when something is difficult, and eventually the people who started out as strangers become the people you look forward to training with every week.
Over the years, I’ve watched friendships develop through martial arts and combat sports that extend far beyond the gym.
There’s something about learning difficult things together, sweating together, struggling through a technique together, and getting better together that connects people.
You may walk into your first class looking for self-defense skills and end up finding friends and workout partners along the way.
Not everybody wants to spend an hour running on a treadmill.
There’s nothing wrong with traditional workouts. I own a gym full of weights and cardio equipment, so I’m obviously a pretty big believer in them.
But sometimes people need something different.
Self-defense training gives you a reason to move that isn’t simply “I need to exercise today.”
You’re learning.
You’re practicing techniques. You’re moving with a partner. You’re reacting. You’re drilling. Your heart rate goes up, you’re sweating, and before you know it, you’ve gotten a workout while spending most of your time thinking about the skill you’re trying to learn.
That makes exercise a lot more engaging for people who get bored doing traditional workouts.
Depending on the class and the type of training, self-defense can challenge your conditioning, coordination, balance, mobility, strength, and body awareness. And because there is always another technique to learn or another skill to improve, there’s something that keeps pulling you back.
You aren’t just exercising for the sake of exercising.
You’re getting healthier while learning something useful.
So the next time you think about learning self-defense, don’t look at it as another chore you “should probably do someday” because something bad might happen.
Hopefully, that bad situation never happens.
Instead, think about what training can give you right now.
It’s an opportunity to better yourself. To gain confidence or regain some that you’ve lost. To become more capable. To meet people and build friendships. To challenge yourself physically. To get in better shape without doing the same run-of-the-mill workout you’ve done a hundred times before.
And yes, along the way, you’ll also become better prepared to protect yourself if you ever need to.
That’s a pretty good return on an hour of your time.
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