This is guaranteed to work!!!!

Yep,  I say it all the time when I show off my Saiga 12, 20 round Simi auto 12 gauge clip loaded.  Every shot with 00 takes off a limb "Guaranteed"

But with almost anything in life.  Nothing is Guaranteed.  I shoot for highest probability.

Dom

I tell my students, all you are doing is improving your chances at prevailing or at least doing better than you would if you didn't train at all. That's how I see it - as a continuum of chance.

If you didn't train at all, your chances of a positive outcome (no serious injury, escape, or disabling the threat) are at a certain level determined by your age, health, fitness, size and any other variables that consitute your ability to defend yourself.

Learning a martial art improves those chances - and that's all.

Even karateka, who have not seriously looked at budo and train fairly superficially, probably improve their chances. In fact, I know people who would fall in this category that have successfully defended themselves (all women as it happens). 

And we have all heard stories of black belts getting pasted. In fact over-confidence might even reduce chances as a result of MA study. I'd suggest though, a half-decent experienced practitioner ought to consider that they have significantly improved their chances, but there is never any guarantees. A lucky punch, something unseen and unexpected, freezing - any number of things could mean that encounter could end badly for the the experienced MA. It's just that you would expect or hope those random elements to be trained for to some extent improving the MAs chances of not being confounded by them. It's a raffle in which you want to buy as many tickets as you can - but there is still a chance yours won't be the winning ticket.

The thing is, as an instructor its your job to be skeptical. A new martial arts student doesn't even have the tools to be skeptical in a productive way yet. If you are dealing with someone who has never been in a fistfight, let alone experienced anything more serious, it's a long term thing to get the wheels churning about that kind of stuff.

It seems like the real issue is just how things are phrased, we want people to have confidence in what we are teaching (and honestly, if it's ever going to "work", some of that confidence has to be there), but understand all the caveats.

I'm lucky enough to get some training with Kris Wilder, one thing that has always impressed me learning from him is that pretty much everything you learn he has a drill that is a kind of "proof", it actually shows you not that only that what you are doing works as advertised, but more importanly it shows why it works as advertised. This makes a huge difference in long term understanding. It brings real confidence instead of just confidence in the theory behind the technique. I do my best to emulate this type of teaching in my own class, i'm sure I don't come near it, but i'm aiming in the right direction at least.

Zach Zinn wrote:

I'm lucky enough to get some training with Kris Wilder, one thing that has always impressed me learning from him is that pretty much everything you learn he has a drill that is a kind of "proof", it actually shows you not that only that what you are doing works as advertised, but more importanly it shows why it works as advertised. This makes a huge difference in long term understanding. It brings real confidence instead of just confidence in the theory behind the technique.

So people don't jump to a wrong conclusion, should mention that although Kris teaches that way, he still won't use the words "guarantee that it will always work". He's been around too long and seen enough that he won't make that claim. One of the things I like about him.

swdw wrote:

Zach Zinn wrote:

I'm lucky enough to get some training with Kris Wilder, one thing that has always impressed me learning from him is that pretty much everything you learn he has a drill that is a kind of "proof", it actually shows you not that only that what you are doing works as advertised, but more importanly it shows why it works as advertised. This makes a huge difference in long term understanding. It brings real confidence instead of just confidence in the theory behind the technique.

So people don't jump to a wrong conclusion, should mention that although Kris teaches that way, he still won't use the words "guarantee that it will always work". He's been around too long and seen enough that he won't make that claim. One of the things I like about him.

Wasn't really worried about that, I thought my post was fairly unambiguous. the mention of Kris' teaching method was meant to contrast with saying things like "guaranteed to work", not the other way around.