Self-defence is often presented as a collection of techniques: what to do with your hands, where to move, or which tool to carry. Dawid Fajer starts somewhere else. Before technique comes responsibility. Before physical action comes assessment. Before fighting comes every reasonable attempt to prevent the fight.
Dawid is the lead instructor at Warsaw Tactical, with more than 20 years of tactical experience and more than 15 years teaching combat and operational systems. In the Polish-language podcast episode Jak obronić się przed zagrożeniem?, he discussed what responsible preparation looks like when stripped of fantasy: how people behave under pressure, why sport and real confrontation are different, what physical readiness contributes during a crisis, and why possessing a weapon can never replace judgement.
This is not a catalogue of techniques from that conversation. It is the philosophy connecting them: develop awareness, build capability under controlled pressure, and retain enough self-control to avoid using force when another option remains.
Why must responsibility come before self-defence skill?
The first lesson in self-defence should be responsibility because increased capability also increases the consequences of a bad decision. Technical knowledge without judgement can make a person more dangerous without making them safer. A responsible training progression therefore begins with awareness of what the student is learning, when it may be used, and where defensive action must stop.
Dawid described that order directly:
“The first point is awareness and responsibility. Knowledge and skill come immediately after that. This is the path I use with everyone I teach: first understand what you carry in your mind and in your hands, and what your capabilities mean.”
This principle challenges a familiar assumption: that the purpose of training is simply to expand the number of actions available to you. More options are useful only if you can select among them intelligently. A trained person must still distinguish discomfort from danger, aggression from an immediate threat, and a lawful defensive need from an emotional reaction.
That is also why responsibility cannot be added as a short disclaimer after the physical curriculum. It has to shape the curriculum itself. How pressure is introduced, which scenarios are used, how the student is corrected, and when an exercise ends all teach something about judgement. The instructor is not only building physical responses; the instructor is defining the conditions under which those responses belong.
For prospective students, this is one reason the instructor’s background and teaching philosophy matter as much as the list of drills. Dawid Fajer’s instructor profile explains the experience behind Warsaw Tactical’s approach, while the Warsaw Tactical course progression shows how skills are separated into appropriate levels rather than compressed into one dramatic experience.
Why is real confrontation different from combat sport?
Combat sport develops timing, distance, conditioning, resilience, and the ability to function against a resisting person. Those are serious advantages. But sporting rules also create deeply practised boundaries: a known environment, a defined start, prohibited actions, a referee, and an opponent participating in the same framework. A real assault provides none of those assurances.
The mistake is not training a combat sport. The mistake is assuming that sport automatically produces every response required outside sport. Dawid’s point was that behaviour does not appear under stress merely because it would be theoretically useful:
“Even when there are no sporting rules, your response still has to be trained. It has to exist in your mind and in your body. If you never practise beyond the rules of your sport, you should not expect those responses to appear for the first time in the middle of extreme stress.”
Under pressure, people tend to return to familiar patterns. That can be helpful when those patterns include balance, movement, controlled aggression, and experience against resistance. It can be limiting when the person unconsciously waits for the shape of a sporting exchange: a recognisable stance, one visible opponent, or an opportunity to reset.
This does not produce a simple ranking in which one martial art always defeats another. Context matters. A strong boxer, grappler, or MMA practitioner has capabilities an untrained person does not. A reality-based system such as Krav Maga asks a different set of questions about escape, weapons, multiple threats, and actions that have no place in competition. Responsible self-defence training should understand both the value of combat sport and the gaps created by its rules.
The broader framework is covered in self-defence for EU civilians: situational awareness, unarmed capability, and firearms competence solve different problems and should not be treated as interchangeable products.
How should self-defence training introduce pressure?
Pressure should be introduced gradually, deliberately, and without sacrificing the student’s health. The goal is not to overwhelm someone for entertainment. It is to preserve enough difficulty that the student experiences interference—reduced attention, discomfort, time pressure, uncertainty—while retaining a training environment in which correction and learning remain possible.
Dawid explained how he approaches that balance:
“I use uncomfortable and difficult exercises, but the pressure is always graduated for the student. The conditions interfere with what they are trying to do and bring them closer to the outside world, while their health and safety remain essential. The purpose is to help them function when stress begins to take control.”
A civilian learner and an experienced service member cannot be placed under identical pressure simply because the instructor wants the exercise to look realistic. Their experience, physical condition, expectations, and reasons for attending are different. Credible training accounts for those differences instead of using stress as a performance.
Graduation matters because excessive pressure can hide rather than reveal learning. If a beginner is overloaded before fundamental actions are stable, the exercise proves only that the beginner is a beginner. Useful pressure is calibrated closely enough to expose a specific failure: attention collapses, communication stops, movement becomes careless, or a mechanical action that appeared reliable at rest is no longer available.
That gives both student and instructor something actionable. The next repetition can address the actual weakness rather than celebrating that the exercise felt intense. Force-on-force training has value for the same reason: not because realism is automatically good, but because controlled resistance and uncertainty can reveal whether a skill remains usable when the environment stops cooperating.
What happens before a confrontation becomes physical?
The most valuable self-defence decision may happen before anybody touches anyone. Assessment begins with the environment, the other person’s behaviour, possible exits, the distance involved, and the effect of your own words and posture. If the interaction can be prevented from escalating, that is a successful outcome—not a failure to demonstrate skill.
Dawid framed this as the first stage of the encounter:
“The first point is assessing the situation and assessing the threat. The contest has already begun there, before any physical movement. Before an incident escalates, I want to guide the interaction in a way that prevents the situation from developing at all.”
This is where situational awareness becomes practical. It is not a permanent state of suspicion. It is the ability to notice relevant information early enough to retain choices. A blocked exit, unusual fixation, a sudden change in group behaviour, or a conversation becoming harder to redirect can all change the decision without requiring an immediate physical response.
Assessment also stops self-defence from becoming a collection of universal commands. “Always run” is incomplete if you do not know where you are running, whether you are responsible for another person, or whether the aggressor can close the distance. “Stand your ground” is equally incomplete when leaving safely remains possible. Good judgement is contextual by definition.
The purpose of situational awareness training is to improve this earlier part of the problem: recognising and interpreting what is happening before options disappear. Physical training belongs later in the sequence, not because it is unimportant, but because it addresses the moment in which earlier layers have failed or were unavailable.
What does physical fitness contribute during a civilian crisis?
Physical readiness is not only about fighting. During a prolonged disruption it supports movement, evacuation, carrying essential items, coping with reduced sleep, and continuing to make useful decisions after the first surge of adrenaline has passed. It also determines whether you can help another person without immediately becoming an additional casualty.
Dawid connected fitness directly to clear thinking and collective usefulness:
“A healthy, strong body matters when you face prolonged effort or the need to evacuate. It also supports clear thinking and the ability to help not only yourself but the people around you. The stronger you are physically and mentally, the more useful that becomes in a crisis.”
This is a less dramatic but more durable view of preparedness. A crisis can last for days or longer. Equipment may help, but it cannot sleep for you, regulate your emotions, carry another person, or preserve your attention when you are exhausted. Basic health and repeatable physical capacity remain useful across almost every emergency scenario.
The same principle applies to ordinary life. Training, recovery, nutrition, and sleep are not separate from preparedness; they are its least specialised layer. They improve the person who must use every other skill and tool.
For a broader European context, civilian defence training in Europe examines the difference between owning emergency supplies and building practical capability. Urban survival training considers how awareness, mobility, and sustained decision-making fit together when normal infrastructure is disrupted.
Can carrying a weapon create false confidence?
A weapon may increase capability, but it also introduces handling risk, legal consequences, emotional pressure, and the possibility of escalating a situation. Possession alone says nothing about whether the person can operate the tool safely or make a sound decision about using it.
Dawid reduced the issue to two requirements:
“Owning the tool is one thing. First, you need the skill to handle it without harming yourself. Then you need the awareness and self-control not to use it in the first situation in which you happen to feel threatened.”
This distinction applies to firearms, knives, sprays, and improvised tools. “I have something” is not the same statement as “I can use it safely, lawfully, and proportionately under stress.” In some people, possession may even increase tension because they are conscious of carrying an option they are not psychologically prepared to use.
Training should therefore reduce dependence on the tool as a source of confidence. It should make limitations more visible: how quickly control degrades at close distance, how uncertain an armed confrontation is, and how much judgement is required before physical capability becomes relevant.
This is why Warsaw Tactical treats equipment as an extension of capability rather than a substitute for it. The personal security training framework begins with awareness and avoidance, then places physical and armed responses later in the system. A firearm cannot repair a failure to recognise risk, regulate emotion, or leave when leaving was still possible.
Is fighting ever the objective of self-defence training?
No. The objective is to remain safe, protect life, and retain the ability to act when avoidance and de-escalation no longer work. Physical resistance may become necessary, but treating the fight itself as the desired outcome reverses the logic of self-defence.
Dawid’s conclusion was unambiguous:
“Fighting is a last resort in my life. The first objective is to resolve a tense situation as peacefully as possible and let it end without violence. Only when there is no other option should you be prepared to offer active resistance in a controlled way.”
That final condition—being prepared—still matters. Peaceful intent without capability may leave a person helpless when another individual chooses violence. Capability without peaceful intent creates a different danger. Responsible training tries to hold both ideas at once: avoid the confrontation wherever possible, and develop real skill for the situation in which avoidance is no longer available.
The resulting mindset is neither passive nor paranoid. It is attentive without living in permanent alarm, physically capable without seeking opportunities to prove it, and familiar with weapons without treating them as answers to every threat.
That is the standard behind Warsaw Tactical’s training philosophy: responsibility first, pressure introduced with purpose, and force reserved for the moment when safer options have genuinely ended. To see where that progression begins, review the current Warsaw Tactical courses and choose the level that matches your actual experience rather than the image you want to project.