I’ve spoken to a few people now that have tried one martial art or another, but then dismissed it because it “didn’t work” for them. I’m always interested to dig deeper when I hear this, to understand what specifically it was that the person felt didn’t work for them.

Usually, it goes something like this: “Oh well I tried X technique, but it’s not realistic to do that on someone bigger than you. So I quit because the art isn’t practical enough.” It’s always too bad to hear that a person dismissed an entire self-defense system just because a move didn’t work for them. Here are two reasons why that might have been the case.

Different strokes for different folks.

A well-rounded self-defense system will feature a wide variety of techniques meant to be used in many different situations. This could include close-range combat, mid-range combat, standing up, grappling, groundwork, weapons defense and more, but the point is that different techniques are meant for different situations.

The important thing that many newer students don’t think about is that different techniques are also meant for different body types. When the masters of old first created their style of martial art, do you really think they did it being like “Yep, this works for me against people my size, therefore it will work for everyone always?”

No way Jose.

They knew they would need to teach people who were larger and smaller than them, for defense against people potentially larger than them. So they created a whole bunch of techniques, some of which work better for smaller or short people, and others which work better for larger or taller people.

You’ll naturally gravitate to the techniques that work best for your body type… the kicker is that you need to stick around long enough to experiment and learn which ones they are.

Maybe it’s not the technique, but your technique that’s the problem.

Sometimes people just haven’t built up the physical conditioning required to execute some of the techniques in their system. Rather than own up to that fact and do something about it, it’s easier to take the lazy route and blame the art itself.

Sorry, not good enough guys.

Look, I’m not a big guy by any definition of the term. I turn sideways and I practically disappear. So when I say that there are some techniques that you need to work out a bit to pull off, you’re hearing it from a guy that had to go through it first. When I first started training, I couldn’t do 10 pushups non-stop. Now I can do 60-70 at a time, and I’m aiming for 100.

By the same token, I also couldn’t execute some of the techniques – especially the throws – without first strengthening my body and preparing it to put the work in. After spending a few months focusing on that, some of the techniques I couldn’t pull of before all of a sudden started to come together.

Wrapping it Up

It irritates me when people dismiss an entire self-defense art because they were too lazy, impatient or narrow-minded in their approach to their training. The good news is that it’s a rare occurrence. If you’re one of those people that have walked away from an art claiming it “doesn’t work” though, I’d encourage you to ask yourself why. Is it truly the art, or was there something you could have done differently?