Self–Defense Archetypes

A long time ago I wrote an article about a concept, I taught as stun and run. This is probably the best example of what I call the self–defense archetype. While using multiple self–defenses from the same archetype is generally frowned upon at my school and may not be counted on the tests, archetypes are a very good thing to learn for self-defense.

For example, with stun and run it is a single motion that can eliminate the majority of single grabs. Rather than learning and memorizing each self–defense one by one. You can teach them one escape and how to reapply it to different scenarios effectively minimizing the necessary memorization and quickly increasing the number of situations they can defend from.

Overall if you’re from my school you do not want to test using a series of archetype self–defenses however you will want to learn how to reapply the defenses you already know. Archetypes also make it so that the defender does not need to think as much in an actual self–defense situation making escapes faster and more efficient.