RBSD

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Reality Based Self Defense (RBSD) is a blanket term for an approach to self-defense training that focuses on practical application. RBSD practitioners emphasize training that directly relates to the most dangerous of all possible situations. To accomplish this, training includes but is not limited to scenario and weapons (including guns, knives, and batons) training. In RBSD training a premium is placed on gross motor skill training, these are simplified tactics. Furthermore RBSD schools minimize or eliminate completely the formality, ceremony, kata and other peripheral trappings of martial arts.

RBSD practitioners believe that overall efficiency and effectiveness for the average person will override any consideration of style. That priority should be given to those tactics which allow the unarmed individual to safely and efficiently arm themselves as quickly as possible during a confrontation. This is a much higher-percentage solution than attempting to prevail by virtue of one's H2H skill and training.^[1]

"For citizens, any time one enters into a physical altercation there exists a distinct threat of imminent great bodily harm or death (to oneself or others). You are acting because there are no reasonable alternatives to fighting."

Gross motor skills - are simple, large-muscle group actions like a squats, pushups and push/pull-type movements. This includes basic fighting skills like a straight punch, a hook punch or a Thai boxer's knee strike for example. Unlike fine and complex motor skills, gross motor skills DO NOT deteriorate under stress. In fact, they are enhanced by the affects of fear and stress.^[2]

RBSD is sometimes positioned as antithetical to or incompatible with mixed martial arts.^[3] Scott Sonnon (Consultant for US ARMY Combatives School) described this in several articles in his online RMAX^[4] magazine: "Sport systems, say the combat systems adherents, are single, unarmed, and take place in a protected environment, whereas combat is plural, armed, and takes place in a hazardous environment. Sport systems adherents complain that often the techniques of combat systems are not proven in practical application, nor tested against resistance." Both points of view are wrong, Sonnon stated, because the two camps are both right. Combat systems offer reality to sports -- and sports offer competition, trial against an uncooperative opponent, to combat systems. The two should be combined and integrated to yield effective training for fighters, counsels Sonnon.^[3]

Most RBSD exponents would agree with this at least in theory; whether most of them put it in practice is a matter of speculation. Much RBSD training is seen as every bit as empty and exaggerated as the worst and most commercial martial arts, the exception being that Eastern traditions have been supplanted with paramilitary uniforms and military terminology. Defenders of RBSD training admit that these misguided interpretations of it exist, but argue that these are the exception rather than the rule.