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Other/Mixed Picking the right Martial Art

Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)
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spc said:
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Fun fact: Imi Lichtenfeld was basically one of the true pioneers of MMA, he was a national champion in wrestling, boxing and gymnastics. He was basically the Slovak version of Dan Hodge, a few decades earlier, and probably not the guy Joe Rogan should have picked a fight with ;) He also seems to have maintained a pretty healthy outlook on the matter as long as he was alive. I've heard form a (retired due to the political mess in the federation after Lichtenfeld's death) Krav Maga instructor in Germany, that back in the 80ies and 90ies, you needed to be a Judo black belt in order to qualify for the Krav Maga instructor course. Lichtenfeld also apparently very much enjoyed the early UFCs and encouraged his instructors to cross train with these guys.
Also, I think Joe Rogan's outlook on "fighting" is somewhat limited - he always seems to envision basically a duel, and what he seems to think of as far as "unfair tactics" mostly appears to be limited to stuff they teach in self defense classes. He doesn't seem to even consider professional levels of violence - numbers, weapons, trained dogs... As a side note, a number of people I trained with occasionally (as well as some of my opponents in competition) had a more or less extensive criminal record, mostly armed robberies, one case of protection money extortion, one case of gang retaliation against the bouncers of a club who had refused one gang member the entrance, and three cases of attempted murder (one of those guys was supposed to wrestle me, but couldn't make it due to being put in jail shortly before that). In case of my training partners, they were caught after we trained together, because that ended their wrestling careers as far as I know; at least one of my opponents however had gone back to wrestling after serving a one year juvenile sentence. All of them were national level wrestlers, some of them full pros, some also had amateur MMA fighting records (so much for the assumption that all thugs are untrained...). And in all of the cases I am aware of, they were using weapons. In only one case, that was baseball bats (in a larger group), in all the other cases, it was firearms. I also vividly recall a meeting of our national wrestling federation in 2014, where one coach stood up and said that they had had an abysmal season - five (!) of his wrestlers had gone to Syria, more were apparently contemplating to go there (in fact, two underage kids from his club were later stopped by the border police, not before smearing propaganda all over the wrestling hall) and one more had gone missing and was spotted as a combatant in the Krim conflict. All model citiziens, no doubt.
 
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Period said:
Also, I think Joe Rogan's outlook on "fighting" is somewhat limited
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I think so, too. You don't go to a fight and bite someone. But if you can't do anything else.. I'm sure you let go, if someone bites you with full force. And If you are able to place a finger jab to the eye of a so called "black belt killer" - that man will be blinded. The reaction is that you cover your eyes with both hands and you can't see. It is very effective. And you can't open your eyes. They cramp closed.
Even more so, if you didn't expected it. You basicly break down, holding your eyes and try to open them. (And we trained that alot - with security glasses. You will hit the eye! And it happend to me. It was awful as discribed above. Out of order for minutes. Absolutely relieable technique. And I've seen it in a brawl. Small guy, big bully. He poked the eye of that guy like Oliver Hardy would Stan Laurel and then headbutted. Finish...)
Knife attacks? Just take a marker and pretend it's a knife. It's not possible to come out of sparring without marks. So it may help to know, how to grab an arm/hand wich holds a knife and bring it down with your bodyweight and disarm.... In Krav Maga, though, there are "sacrifice" principles. You sacrifice your arm for example to save your life..
I would say it depends on how dedicated you are to win. (My trainer used to say: "If someone decides to bite off your nose in a fight, he most likely will do it.")
But I also admit, that a pro fighter who trains daily for hours with different partners has a hughe advantage in a fight. Sure.. No doubt.
Still - training in a somewhat save enviroment is completely different from a real situation. On the mat you know you're not going to end up in hospital or even die. On the street you will feel fear. That changes everything. I was always totally confident in the gym. Even with much stronger guys. You try and nothing much can happen. In a real fight you think different.
In conclusion: Train all. Stand up, ground/grapple, weapons, "unfair" techniques, de-escalation techniques.. Stay away from alcohol. Shut down your ego. Most of the times you don't need to fight.
 
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spc said:
But I also admit, that a pro fighter who trains daily for hours with different partners has a hughe advantage in a fight. Sure.. No doubt.
Still - training in a somewhat save enviroment is completely different from a real situation. On the mat you know you're not going to end up in hospital or even die. On the street you will feel fear. That changes everything. I was always totally confident in the gym. Even with much stronger guys. You try and nothing much can happen. In a real fight you think different.
In conclusion: Train all. Stand up, ground/grapple, weapons, "unfair" techniques, de-escalation techniques.. Stay away from alcohol. Shut down your ego. Most of the times you don't need to fight.
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In terms of the physical and technical aspects of unarmed fighting as well as reflexes, speed, specific power etc., any pro fighter will stand head and shoulder above pretty much anyone else. Full contact fighters also tend to look the part (arguably, a number of us probably wouldn’t be the types that people want to mess with even if we never took up fighting. In my experience, people also underestimate how good most pros are at fighting dirty – the best eye pokes and head butts I’ve ever seen were on the mat, not in a self-defense class. And the perception of physical violence will tend to be different – while for a normal person it’s an out-of-the ordinary situation, for a pro fighter it is basically just work, since the possibility of injuries is always present in his world. However, self defense is unpaid “work”, and so if the unlikely scenario happens that a pro fighter is physically attacked by someone who thinks he can take him without weapons in a “duel”, our fighter will likely be pretty unamused about that.

Funnily enough, in my experience the one aspect of being a pro fighter that might keep you out of trouble is that very likely, most of the local thugs will know who you are, some from training with you (see above), others from watching you fight. They might even greet you with a handshake and a hug (I’ve seen that plenty of times), because being seen “on good terms” with the tough guys is always good for their image. I personally don’t know of a single case of some gangster challenging a pro fighter to improve his reputation – some gangs fight among them quite heavily, others don’t, but the pecking order seems to be established mostly within the gang, at least based on my outside perspective. They don't mess with fighters unless it's business, there are easier people to shake down.

On the other hand, pro fighting most definitely isn’t self defense – for one thing, fighters are A LOT more likely to get hurt fighting than any normal person ever, and most guys I know have some long term aches and pains from it. Secondly, the scenario is different, and it’s not what we train for. Plus, I should mention that at least in some parts of the world, the mob directly plays a hand in what happens in pro sports – it can even happen at junior level, such as here Turkmenistan: young athlete was killed for refusing to lose to a relative of the President

As I said before, I think self-defense is mostly about situational awareness and footwork – not in terms of fighting footwork, but in terms of “don’t go where you know you’ll find trouble” and "stay out / get out of bad relationships". That much is the same for a pro fighter and a normal person – because self defense in my book includes not having to go through legal troubles because you reflexively threw some guy so hard head-first on the pavement that he will never walk again. No way I get paid for that, so I try to avoid doing it.
 
Alan Mackey said:
Self awareness, parkour and a fast 1K are the best “martial art” for self-defense.
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I remember hearing a funny story from a guy in South Africa - one of his friends was held up by two guys with knives, turned and ran for about two kilometers before he ran out of air. Turned out that his robbers were better distance runners than him. When they caught up to him, they were apparently somewhat amused and said something along the lines of "Now, will you PLEASE give us your money?"
 
Xcal said:


I have always loved martial arts training, any style and all styles. I personally did Karate and Kung Fu. but my Self Defense training has been motivated by this scene...after getting scratched by a pen in a fight in primary school when I was a mid-level belt in Karate. you can't avoid every situation, but you can avoid most.
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An adaptation of a famous story about the 16th century swordsman Tsukahara Bokuden
 
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Bokuden, like many samurai of the times, was traveling around Japan to test his martial skills. One day, when crossing Lake Biwa on a ferry boat crowded with passengers, he was challenged by a ruffian, who in a loud manner had been boasting about his skill with the sword. Only Bokuden, who was feigning sleep appeared to ignore the braggard. Rudely waking Bokuden the ruffian demanded to know, “What Ryu are you from, what is your sword style?”

Bokuden calmly replied that his style was the “mutekatsu” style. He explained it was the highest form of skill possible with a sword, for it relied on the use of no hands.

“Rubbish” shouted the ruffian, “How can your sword defeat me if you don’t use your hands?”

Enraged, the ruffian demanded that the issue be settled immediately by a duel. Bokuden agreed, but to save injury to any passenger, suggested that the ferryman row them to the nearest island, which was in the centre of the lake.

As soon as the boat touched the beach, the ruffian leapt ashore and brandishing his sword yelled at Bokuden to come and show his “no hands style” of fencing.

At this Bokuden stood up and removed his jacket in preparation for the fight. But to the great surprise of all, especially the swordsman waiting on the shore, Bokuden quickly grabbed the oar from the ferryman and pushed the boat back into the lake. As he did, he called out in a calm and clear voice to the ruffian, now stranded by his anger and haste, “That is how the no-hands style defeats its opponents”.
 
Yeah.. that’s how the story goes. But with many samurai and old kung fu they may be somewhat apocryphal in nature.
 
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North Coast Miller said:
My Kali instructor once asked show of hands how many students carried small EWs for self defense, about half the class. "Unless you're the aggressor, you'll need to survive a few seconds or longer to access it." We did almost zero knife work that wasn't open hands vs knife.
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We spar with training knives and practice knife against knife defence. But we do a lot of empty hand against knives as well. Our teacher, who has survived knife attacks while working the doors, makes it clear that what he's teaching is damage limitation. If someone attacks you with a knife, chances are you'll get cut. The aim is to finish the fight without taking a life-threatening wound.
 
NormanOsborn said:
We spar with training knives and practice knife against knife defence. But we do a lot of empty hand against knives as well. Our teacher, who has survived knife attacks while working the doors, makes it clear that what he's teaching is damage limitation. If someone attacks you with a knife, chances are you'll get cut. The aim is to finish the fight without taking a life-threatening wound.
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Years ago Scott Babb at Libre ran a project using an attacker template taken from hours of captured video assaults. Nothing fancy mostly, prison type rapid fire, short stem, control with the alive hand - taught some of his students to adopt this. It proved frightfully effective against a great deal of what they had been using.

I've also seen Mercaida discuss this in a few videos. The difference between art/tradition, basic effectiveness, and (the very narrow strip) where the two overlap.

Mobility is incredibly important...
 
@NormanOsborn

I get a chance I'll start combing through some chat sites I used to be on that might still have the links, on off chance they're unlisted instead of private or deleted.

Some stats he compiled were average # of hits per second, and how that number increased if they managed to maintain contact with an alive hand (nearly doubled). Had links to the videos used to construct the attack template and how executed and defended by his students under a variety of free movement conditions and attempted defensive technique.

In my life I've recalibrated twice how I look at SD, once was after a brief period in my life when trouble found me more often than it should have, and the second was watching the results that came from that trial. And since under pressure you tend to lose a lot of executive function and default to your conditioning, result in both cases I scrapped a lot of technique I was practicing lest I use it and get myself hospitalized or killed.
 
Not other way to find out.
I had this once. A well reputated Wing Chun school. The founder trains special forces and police groups, for he developed a unique style which makes use of batons as well. He has several gyms. He was just coming along every couple of weeks to show up and to drink a coffee. Had a brief talk to him and thats it. Would have loved to train with him and learned from him, but he was already grown too big. Really a shame.
 
One of the craziest truths about self-defense is really how much being in some sort of shape plays into it. Now obviously, training seriously in wrestling or grappling will put you in great shape. The oddity is that most people who actually train seriously are never really the aggressors. And most aggressors, at least in my experience are never really in that great of shape or are drunk. This is where fitness plays a role because after that initial 40 seconds, the other guy is winded and you are still fresh and have some skill.

So the first rule of self-defense is to get into shape. Then you can pick a style that suits you. Some are better than others depending on the application. BJJ, Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, and Muy Thai have been proven to be extremely effective. Krav Maga and FMA are also good. TMA can also be effective depending on techniques. But all are way more effective when the practitioner is also fit.
 
Suxatkettlebell said:
One of the craziest truths about self-defense is really how much being in some sort of shape plays into it. Now obviously, training seriously in wrestling or grappling will put you in great shape. The oddity is that most people who actually train seriously are never really the aggressors. And most aggressors, at least in my experience are never really in that great of shape or are drunk. This is where fitness plays a role because after that initial 40 seconds, the other guy is winded and you are still fresh and have some skill.

So the first rule of self-defense is to get into shape. Then you can pick a style that suits you. Some are better than others depending on the application. BJJ, Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, and Muy Thai have been proven to be extremely effective. Krav Maga and FMA are also good. TMA can also be effective depending on techniques. But all are way more effective when the practitioner is also fit.
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Its probably worth noting that BJJ has become a victim of its own success. Many BJJ schools are turning really hard into the sport aspect and train exclusively to win BJJ tournaments. So an art formerly known for its effectiveness is beginning to focus on winning tournaments and the rules within those tournaments instead of practicality...
Kinda like what happened with Karate.
At the end of the day you have to find a good school that meets your goals. That school might have BJJ on the door, it might have Wing Chung, heck it might even have "Jim-Bob's Fightin Skool" on the door.
 
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