I have a gift for taking complicated subjects
and reducing them to easy to understand ideas.
If I can't do that, then you know it's
a REALLY big subject. Martial arts is a big subject.
               MM

On this page:
Martial Arts Training | Martial Arts Culture | Why We Do This

Welcome to the martial arts section of the No Nonsense Self-Defense page. Our primary goal is to help you take your martial art -- whatever style it may be -- and adapt it to work for self-defense.

We do this not by trying to sell you our ultimate fighting style or telling you why everyone else is wrong, but by showing you what components MUST be in your movement in order to effectively generate/deliver force and withstand/ avoid incoming force. While many styles claim to to teach you how to defend yourself they've lost the physics to do so. Before you end up spitting blood, we're going to give you the tools to test the physics of what you've been taught. And if the physics don't work as advertised ... what you need to fix the problem. But you can't fix it if you don't know what the problem is.

Our secondary goal is to help you (again, regardless of what style you practice) further understand the depths of what you are doing and its application. We offer this whether you are a student or teacher. We're not interested in teaching you OUR style, we're going to help you to understand and do yours better.

Our final goal is to warn students of all to common pitfalls, politics, lies, misconceptions, traps and sleazy business practices that occur in the business of martial arts. All of these are real life issues that will affect your training.

To achieve these goals we have broken the original martial arts hub into two smaller, related hubs:

      Martial Arts Training

      Martial Arts Culture

Although they are often presented as such, the two subjects are not the same. So what is the difference?

Martial Arts Training
The Martial Arts Training section addresses training issues, tips, advice and concepts to help you learn whatever system you are involved in more quickly, effectively and fully.

Despite what many accuse us of (because of what is discussed in the other hub) we really are here to help you become a better martial artist. The concepts provided will help you with common problems encountered in training.

Martial arts Culture
The Martial Arts Culture hub addresses personal, social, financial and conceptual  issues that you can -- and will -- encounter in the world of Martial Arts/Self-Defense/Reality Based Self-Defense/Women's Self-Defense/ Defensive Tactics (MA/SD/RBSD/WSD/DT). While there is a lot of good out in the martial arts world, there's a lot of bad as well. And you need to know about both before you plunk your money down.

After a collective time of nearly 65 years in the martial arts, we can state with utter assurance that you will run into these issues. And with that comes a warning. There is a lot of dysfunction, profiteering, bad behavior and dishonesty in the MA/SD/RBSD/WSD/DT worlds is hidden under the guise of training, tradition, focus and self-defense.

We're pulling the curtain back on these issues to show you if you are being 'taken for a ride' or not. To do this, we have drawn from fields outside the martial arts to show that:
    a) We are not making this stuff up and
    b) So you can check the resources out yourself.

We should warn you:
We routinely receive hate mail saying we are condemning 'the martial arts.' That isn't our intent. The attitude underlying the MA Culture hub is "the critique of organized religion is not a condemnation of god". However, many people don't realize this (or they don't want to). We are not here to "bash the martial arts," but rather to critically examine what goes on under the guise of training.

In this we lay bare many of the problems inherent in commercialized, modern martial art systems and organizations. While we're not slamming the martial arts, there is a lot of seriously non-kosher behavior going on in the MA/SD/RBSD/WSD/DT field. And if you have bought into this dysfunction, then the section is going to be very uncomfortable for you to read.

Why We Do This
We BBQ a lot of sacred cows about the martial arts. That doesn't make us very popular with a lot of people... especially folks who have invested heavily in the systems that pull the sheenagins we discuss on the martial arts culture hub.

You'll hear a lot of people on the Internet talking about our motivations for doing what we do. And boy oh boy, do they manage to get it wrong ...

Why do we do it? Well here's the answer.

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