"You won't rise to the occasion - you'll default to your level of training." - Barrett Tillman.
"Train like you fight." - Randy Cain (and others)
These quotes are the two most important thing you need to know about how to train for self-defense. In a self-defense situation the brain is overloaded by adrenaline and falls back on what it knows the best, in short, you respond with what you have trained. If you have had little or no training, you will do little or nothing. If you have trained to pull your strikes as in point-sparring, you will not deliver the most powerful blow you could have. If you have trained to throw fast, powerful, fight-ending strikes, as Koo Self Defense students do, that is what you will do.
Koo Self Defense teaches exclusively techniques that are directly applicable to real life on-the-street self-defense. The KSD student learns no "bad habits" associated with the rules to a sport or style. When I was point sparring I learned to pull my strikes, when I was boxing I learned to stop fighting in a clinch and to never kick, and when I took Judo I was taught knee and eye strikes are not allowed. These bad habit were passed on to the self-defense I used on the street. I am not saying I would never have used techniques outside of the rules of the style I was studying, I am saying the use of these techniques was not instinct. When I was boxing, I would wrap and tape my hands when punching. This protection became a crutch that I used in place of proper punching technique. This resulted in hand injury when I punched with bare knuckles.
KSD students learn how to punch a solid target HARD without heavy wrapping or taping of the hand or wrist. The result is dramatically fewer injuries to the hand on the street. Most martial arts teach bare-foot kicking. KSD teaches kicking with athletic shoes on. The two are quite different. I personally am never without shoes on the street, and rarely without even when home.
In conclusion, KSD will teach you how to defend yourself realistically on the street. You will not train in any manner that teaches bad habits. If you have to defend yourself (and let's hope you never have to), you will react instinctually to deliver fast, powerful, fight-ending strikes. Your adrenaline addled brain will not be falling back on practiced, ingrained "sport" techniques, but on effective, realistic self defense.
"The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental." - John Steinbeck