A Matter of Statistics

It was a greatly quoted statistics that said that 90% of all fights go to the ground. Yet, it was also the hardest statistics yet to find.

Not anymore. Thanks to the good people at Electronic Journal of Martial Arts and Sciences, we now have excerpts from a series of studies that supposedly stated the above. You can find the excerpts here.

And no honey, not 90% of all fights go to the ground. It was more like 62% of police actions requiring use of force go to the ground, and use of force in police terms sadly do not concur with what we call 'fighting.'

Anyways, that's not the point of this article. The point is this:

Of all incidents that require the presence of the police, a dazzling 1.7% required the use of force.

IOW, suppose that we equate 'incidents that require the presence of the police' as the whole spectrum that might require our self defence skillz, in only 1.7% of that spectrum we require to use physical means.

And we're not even fighting yet.

IOW, again (notice that I have a perchance to lead people around in reasoning. My bad), 98.3% of the self defence spectrum is non-physical.

It is reasonable then, to begin considering self defence from this point.

Here are some good web resources to consider:

rec.martial-arts Newbie Guide to Self-Defense

Marc "Animal" McYoung's No Non-Sense Self Defense

Keep safe.