“But why should I pay to get slapped?” This Don Abbondio style question with his famous “Carneade who was he?” is quite recurrent in discussions with friends about self-defense classes.
Let’s disprove a false myth: in self-defence classes you don’t get hurt! Or rather, one shouldn’t get hurt! Because safety depends on the instructor, that’s why it is important to choose the right instructor!
The professionalism of the instructor is the best guarantee to attend self-defence courses in which at most you go out with abdominal muscle pain and not with bruises or worse fractures! And who says that in this way you will never learn to defend yourself in the street I say: “Do you get hot in the street before a fight? Do you have time to warm up all your muscles before kicking without the thought of stretching or tearing?”… let’s be serious: the physical conditioning to resist the micro-traumas inflicted by the blows does not pass from exhausting exercises in which the student is asked to hit the partner who exercises the blocks at 360°! In that case one thing is sure: pain, bruises, inability to train afterwards and disaffection to what is the purpose of self-defence, that is to give everyone the right to know how to defend themselves.
Today there are several protections that if worn allow you to exercise without pain and, above all, without having to wear long sleeves in the following days to hide bruises maybe at work or at school, still passing as “hotheads”.
There are also training methods aimed precisely at physical conditioning, methods that allow you to “accustom” our body to better withstand the blows inflicted without suffering trauma. Also in this case what was written at the beginning is valid: only the professionalism of the instructor is able to direct the training towards these particular exercises.
A good instructor, in fact, before making the high-impact techniques without the protections, must be able to create a training path for his students through which, day after day, they can condition their own physique and become able to face a real attack in the best way.
For this reason, the President of FDKM Massimiliano Marsala wanted to include the Conditioning Specialist (CS) course, directed by Dr. Nicolò Ragalmuto, a professional in the sector as well as a lecturer and national FDKM instructor. No student of a qualified FDKM instructor will have to get hurt in the gym because, as everyone can imagine, getting hurt means not being able to train for some time. Given the importance of the topic, the CS course is open to all FDKM athletes, martial arts enthusiasts and experts in combat sports.
And remember, however, that self-defence does not teach you to attack the aggressor but to prevent the aggression!