If you’re preparing for your first year of college, there are many concerns that might come to mind — will you be able to keep up with your studies, how will you adjust to living away from home if you’ve moved for college, will your friend group stay in touch as your lives take you in different directions? One issue that can easily be overlooked but is vital to a great college experience, especially in your first year, is the role of learning self-defense strategies.
As you become more independent, you’ll need to take responsibility for your own safety. Overall crime on campus has decreased, but the last data available has shown an uptick in the rate of all crime on campus. While making good judgment calls and avoiding risky situations are important aspects of staying safe, preventative actions like learning self-defense are a proactive way to take your safety into your own hands. Learning a self-defense technique through the study of martial arts can provide you with the crucial ability to protect yourself in a dangerous situation.
Studying the martial arts to train yourself for self-defense offers more benefits than just being able to protect yourself if the need arises. Self-defense classes are becoming a popular choice for many college students as a method for gaining an increased sense of self-confidence. For students who are in a new environment and still learning to navigate the many situations that arise, the boost in self-confidence that learning self-defense strategies offer them is often mentioned by self-defense trainees. It’s not until we realize how unequipped to defend ourselves we are that learning self-defense takes on another layer of value.
Particularly in the case of women, knowing that you have some kind of recourse and have undergone preparation for handling a dangerous situation by learning self-defense offers a huge increase not only in self-confidence but in their sense of relief. As college campuses across the country have come under scrutiny for high rates of sexual assault — up to 32% of all campus crime is categorized as a sexual offense — female students can take their safety into their own hands and find more comfort knowing they have self-defense skills to rely on.
Self-defense offers students the freedom to know that they aren’t completely at the mercy of a dangerous situation; this training gives students more options and a sense of control as opposed to just playing the odds and relying on good luck. Although no one wants to anticipate a dangerous situation, making sure you have more options for what to do if such a situation should occur can offer just a little more peace of mind and confidence in navigating any environment.
As with training for any of the martial arts, learning self-defense is a great way to protect yourself will enriching yourself by increasing your discipline. Self-defense training programs are an excellent choice for anyone who wants to improve their discipline, a quality that students, especially in their first year at university, stand to gain tremendous benefits from. Developing your discipline is an investment in yourself that transfers across many different aspects of your life. As students, discipline is one quality that will help you get ahead in your studies and thrive during your time at university. Learning self-defense is a fast way to build up your discipline so you can better achieve your goals in other areas of life, whether in making diet changes, learning new skills, or cutting down on your procrastination. The manner in which learning self-defense boosts your discipline is one quality that makes it extremely popular with students.
Many universities have begun to offer self-defense classes on their own campuses in light of the numerous benefits that this training offers students. Not only does self-defense training increase your self-confidence, discipline, and safety, but it also improves your ability to set and achieve goals as well as increase your self-respect. As with many physical training methods, studying self-defense requires adhering to a schedule of practice in pursuit of a goal, whether that goal is learning a new move or simply spending time practicing. By staying dedicated and diligent in training for self-defense, you’ll be able to practice goal setting and achievement, a skill that makes a world of difference in the success that people experience, whether in college or in the workplace.
Self-respect is a concept often associated with the martial arts and self-defense is no different. Through studying methods for self-defense, you steadily build up your self-respect. This important quality for emotional and mental health can be thought of as how well you trust yourself; a person with high self-respect trusts themselves to make good decisions and follow through on their commitments. Through studying self-defense, you can reap the benefits of increased self-respect that comes from regular practice and trusting that you now have an increased ability to depend upon yourself.
One interesting quality about self-defense is the way this training changes a person to the point that they exude a certain atmosphere that discourages malicious people from starting trouble with them. The increase in self-confidence, self-respect, and the knowledge that you’re more prepared to act intelligently in a crucial moment all come together to create the kind of self-assured attitude that aggressors try to avoid. Just as with bullies in grade school, aggressors seek out the meekest individuals in hopes that they won’t put up a fight. The qualities that being trained in self-defense creates in a person are the exact same qualities that aggressors avoid, making self-defense training a protective factor even if the training never needs to be utilized.
As first-year college students prepare for a major life change that involves a new, more independent lifestyle, it’s important to consider what can be done to make the college experience as pleasant as possible. As many campuses struggle to deal with crime and sexual assault, in particular, students can take their safety into their own hands by training themselves in self-defense. At Premier Martial Arts, we want everyone to have all the tools at their disposal to keep themselves safe. Self-defense training is a great method for staying safe and investing in yourself for increased confidence, self-respect, and discipline.
