01/12/2026
Here at Taylorville Martial Arts, I teach more than just self-defense and fighting skills, but try to impart wisdom. It would be irresponsible to teach fighting skills without also imparting the wisdom to use such skills responsibly.
Last week we discussed humility. Humility is the recognition of our own limitations and flaws. Without humility we are arrogant and when arrogant we put ourselves risky situations we are not actually able to handle. This results in negative consequences for us which ideally teaches us humility. With humility we not only learn from our mistakes, but avoid making mistakes in the first place as we recognize the potential for negative consequences before taking rash or reckless actions.
Secondly, I emphasized that a person lacking humility is more likely to be wrong yet speak with false confidence. For this reason it is important to be warry information from people who lack humility as they will present their ideas without consideration that they might be wrong. Just as we can not know everything, neither can others and so we must be warry of anyone who seems overly confident but can not give reason for their confidence.
A humble person learns from their mistakes and avoids mistakes by recognizing their limitations. A humble person is a trustworthy person because they will avoid speaking with confidence when confidence is unreasonable.
As for physical training, among the things we covered were maintaining distance from a potential threat and creating distance. Defending one's self is difficult when a threat is allowed to close distance on their terms, and so we trained a basic neutral but defensive posture in order to be ready for aggression, and preventing an aggressive person from moving into ours pace with verbal assertions and strikes. Incase the distance has already be closed we trained clench control for either safely creating distance or putting an attacker on the ground as a means to safely disengage. Situations are not all the same which is why I teach a mixed style. Sometimes striking is the best options, sometimes escape, sometimes control. Any style that solely relies on a single tactic for all situations will leave you either under or over prepared for a situation. My philosophy is minimal necessary force with as much force necessary. This means both aggression and gentleness have a time and place.
