Self defense is like health insurance--you think its a waste of time and money until your life is in danger and if you wait until you're in that situation, its too late to go back and prepare yourself.
That is one reason why I'm always promoting the concept of short-format combatives training. I think its wonderful when someone tells me that being able to defend himself is so important that he is willing to spend any amount of time and money to learn to do it "the right way." When asked what the right way is, I'm normally told that he or she has decided to dedicate years of his or her life to training in martial arts or combat sports.
"Great, but what will you do if you're attacked tomorrow, after just one day of training?"
"Yeah, then I guess I'd be in trouble."
"What will you do if you're attacked next week or next month or in six months or before you've had years of training?"
"Yeah, I don't know. I guess I can just hope that nothing will happen until I'm ready."
"Of course you can, but if you're going to depend upon hoping and praying to save your life, why don't you just hope that you're never attacked. Then you wouldn't need those karate lessens at all."
"These days, you can't depend upon luck to stay safe. You watch the news. You know that people are being attacked all the time, even in the quiet neighborhoods. What else should I do."
That is usually the point where I show him how easy it is to learn to damage an attacker and actually make those movements work in combat, without having trained extensively on them. I show them how easy it is to stomp a knee joint, smash the nose bone (no, not the cartilage, but the small bones where the nose meets the skull) or render someone unconscious. Just a few minutes of me showing him examples of how to injure another man, with him saying things the whole time, like "Wow, that's easy!" or "I never thought of that!" and he's sold on the idea of spending a short amount of time learning a few simple concepts that he could use immediately, if necessary.
The bottom line is that you need to learn today how to fight now, using tactics and movements that will still work in ten years, even if you don't actually practice at all until then. Those tactics and techniques exist and a good trainer can teach them to you in a very short period of time, or even in a video, you just need to be careful what you learn and from whom.
