5 Tips for Improving Your Self Defence Abilities

Self defence is an important skill to have. Even in Australia where crime rate is relatively low and the escalation into physical violence is rare, having fairly good awareness and knowing how to defend yourself is a vital skill to have.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your self defence, or are interesting in learning how to defend yourself, this guide is for you. Townsville’s leading martial arts provider, UMF Academy have put together 5 essential tips for improving self defence skills:

How to Improve Your Self Defence

1. Take a self defence class

If you’ve found yourself Googling “How to defend myself”, chances are, your current self defence abilities probably need work – no shame in that! Learning how to defend yourself is not something that we are taught as children or at school. For many, improving self defence will start with enrolling in self defence classes for beginners. 

Learning some basic self defence skills like blocking, striking, and escaping can go a long way in ensuring you have the necessary tools to handle an attack, and give you the confidence to be able to defend yourself if you’re in a vulnerable situation.

As with anything, self defence techniques become more natural and instinctive with practice. Here at UMF Academy, we provide FREE self defence classes for beginners through our BeSafe Corporate Program. For intermediates looking for real-world techniques and skills, we provide a reality-based self defence boot camp (+15). You can get a free trial for our bootcamp today – book in with UMF online or by giving our team a call.

2. Improve your situational awareness

If you’re wondering how to improve self defence, one of the best things that you can do right away is to practice paying attention to your surroundings. Paying attention to your surroundings means that you’ll always be aware of potential threats, allowing you to anticipate any danger, and take the necessary steps to protect yourself.

3. Stay in good shape

Ensuring that you’re always at a reasonable fitness level will give you the confidence that you and your body can handle any emergency situation. Being physically fit will also provide you with the endurance, strength, and agility to fend off any attacks and defend yourself.

4. Improve your body language

Body language says a lot about how a person can handle themselves in a dangerous situation. If you have bad posture, avoid eye contact, and do not have a strong, confident tone of voice, you may make yourself a bit of a target for potential attackers. How to defend yourself? Start by entering every situation with upright posture, maintain eye contact, and show others that you are aware of your surroundings and not an easy target.

5. Keep calm under pressure

If you’re able to keep calm, carefully analyse the situation, and not crack under pressure, you’re on your way to being able to handle any form of physical attack. 

When faced with danger, our body naturally releases hormones like Adrenaline, and we tend to be very intuitive with the natural fight or flight response. A calm and analytical mindset helps you to assess the situation better and use your judgement to determine the best way to respond.  Analysing the situation with a calm mind allows you to respond appropriately, and reduces the risk of being injured, as it minimises the chances of making the wrong decision on your fight or flight instinct. 

Wrapping Up

All in all, it is clear that there a number of things that you can do to improve your overall self defence skills. However, if you’re wondering how to do self defence, we strongly recommend that you engage the services of a professional and attend self defence classes. Whether you’re a beginner or you’ve previously dabbled in martial arts, learning how to do self defence in real-world scenarios is extremely valuable. Not only will you learn effective, powerful moves, but you’ll also leave with the confidence that you can trust yourself to handle a dangerous situation.