"What's The Best Technique?"

"What's The Best Technique?" is a really common question that martial trained people get from well-intentioned people curious about self defense. To put the answer in immediate perspective, we should ask them first "What's the best driving technique? Is turning right best or turning left best? Should I speed up, stop or go into reverse?" They will say "Well of course it all depends where you are IN CONTEXT, in the flow of traffic and so on, so I can't really answer that question!" And so it is in self defense. Also, your car does not drive itself; it requires your learned cognition specific to that skill, even if it now seems automatic. A Ferrari may be an amazing car, but it can be driven badly, so one can't say they practice some "proven and effective" system and assume that makes them somehow safe by association. Any system of self defense still requires that we do enough work to "own" the skills and not just know about them. A saying in Jeet Kune Do is "It's not what you know that counts, it's what you can do."