If you want to get good, it’s down to you, and the effort you put into your own training; and this means that the majority of your practice time, occurs outside of the dojo or studio. This doesn’t mean that you have to put in hours and hours of practice outside of regular class, but that regular, consistent solo training, is where you will progress and develop; it will be in class, training with others where you will realize and recognize that development. If you were to go back to school, you’d acknowledge that in a lecture you might be given a direction as to what you should be studying, and where you should be looking for information etc. however you’d recognize that it would be the time spent in the library, researching and reading on your own, which would actually be the biggest contribution to your education; having that work and effort validated and directed/redirected by somebody who is qualified to do so is important, but it is the time that you put in which is essential to your development and progress. Self-defense and the martial arts is no different, however for some reason it is often assumed that learning techniques provides a “shortcut” for dealing with violence, and once you have this “knowledge” you are fully equipped to deal with an assailant who is experienced and committed to causing you harm etc. In this article I want to look at how a small amount of time spent solo training can exponentially pay off in terms of developing fighting/survival skills and abilities.

How you see yourself is important. When I viewed myself as a “professional athlete”, even though I was working a full-time job to put food on the table etc. I trained differently to when I considered myself an amateur – even though the monetary rewards were basically the same. I am not talking about some 1980’s pseudo sales talk, or a fake-it-till-you-make-it idea. You are not trying to fool yourself into something that you are not, but developing an aspiration of who you want to be, and seeing yourself as that person, and then disciplining yourself to be them; and that discipline doesn’t have to take a lot of effort. If you attend Krav Maga/Self-Defense classes, you do so not just for purely practical reasons i.e. what to do if somebody attacks you etc. but for a myriad of other reasons linked to your identity and self-perception etc. Even if you do Krav Maga primarily for the fitness workout, there are reasons you chose to practice Krav Maga, rather than attend a spin class or a bootcamp etc. People are often embarrassed about these reasons, as they often mean acknowledging fear and/or what they see as a deficit in their personality. Whatever the reasons for you starting training were/are, building in solo training/practice into your lifestyle and daily routine, will help you become the person that you intend to be. Practicing, for a few moments, at intervals during your day will help you identify with how you want to see yourself e.g. a warrior, is not a thing you do twice a week, it’s a thing that you are. You will not always have people to train and practice with, and working on your own, should be part of who you are.

When performing solo training, don’t have unrealistic expectations of yourself. The smart phone has reduced our ability to concentrate, but rather than try and fight against this, we should acknowledge it, and initially work within our limitations. That may seem defeatist, but when starting out we should always be realistic e.g. if you haven’t run in a long time, developing a plan that sees you run 6-miles a day, only taking a rest one day in ten, is going to quickly see you fail. My suggestion for solo training is: little and often. Every couple of hours, do 30-seconds to a minute. Don’t initially allocate time for training on your own, as you will struggle to fill it, but do your solo-training in between other things. When I lived in the UK, I unknowingly broke the European Bench Press record for my age and weight. I wasn’t deliberately trying to, I just wanted to increase the weight I was lifting. In my house, I had a room that I set up as a gym. I had a bar that always had weight on it, set up over a bench. Every time I passed the door to the room, I used to bench press the bar, adding weight in small increments, once I was comfortable with the weight that was on it. I did this for years. Every now and again, I would get to a sticking point and have to do some other exercises to help me get over the impasse, but 95% of my routine was doing one repetition of the lift, multiple times in a day. It was only after a conversation with a powerlifter in a gym who saw me bench press that I found out that the weight I was lifting was significant. If you were to perform a few seconds of shadow sparring, or some movement drills every time you got out of a chair, you’d get a lot of training in, without interrupting any of your daily activities; and you’d start to become the person you intended to be when you first started training (that person is always worth revisiting, and it’s never too late to do so).   

Solo training can at first be a daunting, self-conscious effort, especially when your body isn’t doing what it should – and often people don’t do it because they are afraid of this “honesty”. However, having the discipline to stick to, and work at a drill, until you get it, is a rewarding experience; and one you can do without spectators. Don’t expect it all to fall magically into place. Throwing good punches and strikes into midair, whilst moving, can at first feel awkward, however as you learn to loosen up and move in a relaxed/natural fashion, you’ll gradually feel your body doing as it should. Humans were designed to work physically, and feeling our body move in a coordinated fashion is a rewarding experience, and perhaps the biggest reward is seeing the progress you make when you are training in regular classes.