how many self-defense instructors have or will watch this documenary?

Let this be a real warning for those of you who insist on the following in every single training session:

1) "Aliveness"

2) "Full contact"

3) "Head shots"

4) "Going hard"

Nobody is trying to cheat students out of authenticity by setting limits in sparring, and in competition. If they are trying to cheat anything, it is injury, illness and/or death.

I'm surprised that you seemed to not have been aware of such things. High school football players have died after being tackled and they wear far more protective padding plus helmet than someone fighting in the street. When I was in grade school, a schoolmate died after a fight and we are talking about little kids not some big high school teenagers.

Any hit to the head has the potential to cause cerebral hemorrhage and a strike to the chest with sufficient force can generated enough hydrostatic shock to the heart to cause it to go into arrhythmia or damage the valves so they cannot close or open properly. All this can happen to a healthy individual so imagine how much more likely for someone with a congenital disorder such as a weak blood vessel in the brain or heart condition.

This video while well meaning is like most news articles in that they portray something as a startling new discovery when we've known for a very long time. Why do you think in martial arts strikes are directed to certain areas of the body? They are called critical areas or vital areas for a reason. Anyone who is not aware of the potential lethal consequence is not qualified to teach martial arts.

I would watch it given the chance but watching the trailer it is nothing new to me. I was 'raised' in the martial arts by students of Robert Trias and that was hard core stuff. I have seen what it can do. Noone was ever killed and but accidents were common and the injuries many, some of them permanent. Now looking back I feel very lucky that none of us were ever hurt more seriously. The school produced really good fighters but now looking back a lot of stuff we did was reckless and I now question if it wasn't really an excuse to brawl without getting arrested/paying the price for fighting in public by simply closing the doors and brawling. I do not teach like this but all my students who needed to use their skills have stood their own. To me this proves that in training contact is absolutely necessary, excessive contact is not. There is always a happy medium and extremes either way are never good.