What is wrong with most self defense and street fighting techniques videos?

Choosing a good self defense or street fighting techniques video can be very confusing and frustrating. They all claim to have to best system and teach the most devastating techniques. Since most of us can't afford to buy them all, what do we do?

In my quest over the years to put together the best possible and most effective system of self defense, I have reviewed dozens if not hundreds of videos and books on the subject. Some really good and others... well!

It continues to amaze me the kind of products I find out there. Some of them are produced by excellent martial artists who, I believe, would fare very well in most street situations. The problem is the techniques and maneuvers they are teaching are so involved and complicated that A) You could never learn them from a video, and B) Even if you could, they would take many years to perfect in hopes that you would be able to pull them off with the full adrenal rush of an all out street attack.

I find others that are teaching old style traditional martial arts that would never work in a real situation in the 21st Century and maybe wouldn't have worked several hundred years ago either. Some of these videos are just someone filming the technique that they were taught years ago.

Some are teaching just plain garbage. Techniques that look flashy in the studio but would be plain useless in a real self defense situation. Things like high kicking, involved wrist manipulations, complicated multi-step techniques and flashy multi kick combinations that require jumping and spinning, etc. This stuff if for the movies, not the street!

A good self defense video will contain techniques and moves that can be learned by the average person, in a reasonable time with a minimal effort. Sure for anything to be effective you must practice it enough times so that it's comfortable and flows easily to you. Most people who purchase self defense videos are not interested in committing a lifetime of study to learn. They are looking to get up to speed quickly and with something that has a reasonable chance of working.

It must have direct and effective techniques that have a high percentage chance of stopping an attacker quickly. It must eliminate all the fluff, all the complicated techniques that require pinpoint hitting (like pressure points) because you probably won't be able to hit very accurately under a strong adrenal rush.

Take a look at Street Self Defense 101. I think it's the best out there for effective, easy to learn self defense that really works.