Critisizm

[jones786]

I agree with criticism so long as its constructive. For example, posting "Akido is for gays" wont help anyone. However, there is sensible advice that should be given just as there is bad advice that should be corrected.

So to get back to the original topic. Good fighters win fights. It sounds simple but a lot of people who claim to teach self defence can't fight for shit. A good figher must be skilled in standup, clinch and groundwork. You may never want to go to the ground in a fight (due to broken glass/hard floor/needles/snakes/lava pit/army of skeletons waiting to kick you in the head) but unfortunately that's just the way it goes sometimes. If you are facing more than one person, you are pretty much screwed anyway. The odds are heavily against you wether you are fighting on your feet, in the clinch or on the ground.

Also, as human beings grabbing and pulling is a lot more natural to us than striking. That's why so many thugs will end up grappling with you if they fail to knock you out. In the fray of a fight, when arms are flying all over the place you are almost definately going to clinch and then probably go to the ground.

Saying that you don't need to learn how to fight from the clinch or grapple is pretty much bad advice in my oppinion. Also, it's not like getting decent grappling or clinch skills will take you a lifetime either. You should be able to pick up some decent skills within a few months. Which is more than the average heathen on the street has. And at the very least you will be used to defending such things.

[Aefibird]

jones786 said:

Saying that you don't need to learn how to fight from the clinch or grapple is pretty much bad advice in my oppinion. Also, it's not like getting decent grappling or clinch skills will take you a lifetime either. You should be able to pick up some decent skills within a few months. Which is more than the average heathen on the street has. And at the very least you will be used to defending such things.

I have to say, I agree.

Grappling and ground work isn't my primary aim in MA - I prefer striking. However, saying "I prefer striking" is all very well, but if I get into a situation and end up on my butt then I'll need to know how to get out of that situation. I don't necessarily need to train in grappling to be able to be of UFC or BJJ black belt standard - just enough to "get by" and be able to defend myself realistically against any possible attacker.

This is the point where the ol' chestnut about "what if you get attacked by someone who also knows grappling". Yeah, and what if a BJJer gets attacked by a trained boxer or a blackbelt karateka? Obviously, it's not gonna be worth defending against someone like that, same as a karateka couldn't possibly defend against someone who has a bit of grappling knowledge...

You can't prepare for all the "what-if's" in life, but by training sensibly and keeping an open mind then you can help yourself to have an advantage in most situations.

Anyway, I'm rambling so I'll shurrup now... ;D

[maskedman]

It is a bad idea to groundfight in a real situation, but throwing and grappling need to be weapons in your arsenal, along with joint locks and strikes....maybe not many people need to defend themselves against highly skilled Judoka, or BJJ practitioners...but somebody will have to...are you prepared for it to be you?

*bows repsectfully*

[darkstar]

i can see both sides of this.

any MA is obviously better than not doing one. and it is probably also true that you are on the whole less likely to have to fight highly skilled MAs on the street in the first place.

but Angela said

They have been brainwashed by their instructors into believing their MA is the one and only “one true way” and that everyone else has an MA that is inferior in its self-defence capabilities, its physical fitness capabilities, is Zen capabilities...etc

to this i would say who is this more likely to apply to? ..those who train at different systems and master what is effective and useful from each, or those who stick to one system?

an example of this is the "one shot one stoppage" philosophy a lot Karateka seem to have. if your opponent has any skill at all it is usually pretty difficult to stop them with one big reverse punch however big your kiai is. big karate shots require maximum commitment, and with that comes risk if it turns out to not work as you've been led to believe.

in comparison to that it's pretty easy for an unskilled big thug to soak up your shot, entangle, grab on to you and stumble over with you.

what then? this is where skilled people can come apart dramatically, once they're outside of their normal training environment & patterns.

[AngelaG]

The one shot one kill is not that you do one shot and then step back in the hope that you've neutralised your opponent, but more that every single thing we do should have that intention of "one shot, one kill". However you carry on until the job is done.

[darkstar]

so you've steamed into an 16 stone lump with your four or five best shots, and he's grabbed you (possibly stunned a bit) staggered back and you're both on the floor now...

what next? what i'm saying is that when the adrenalin is flowing in a real fight one shot one kill is a fairly unrealistic approach unless you're using nasty stuff, and how likely would you be to do the more unusual and obscure nasty stuff, compared to the more usual techniques you've drilled for years in sparring etc?

if you're at a high enough level of skill for your training to kick in automatically in a real life scenario and not freeze or stall as so many do, it's still going to be the bread and butter techniques that your voluntary nervous system has spent the last few years entraining and ingraining in sparring scenarios.

[AngelaG]

darkstar said:

so you've steamed into an 16 stone lump with your four or five best shots, and he's grabbed you (possibly stunned a bit) staggered back and you're both on the floor now...

what next?

Who knows? I don't have a predetermined strategy for every conceivable situation, but whatever I do it would be with full the intention that it would be my final technique. I'm sure that it would probably be a technique that has been practiced a lot, but the whole point of "one shot, one kill" is about mindset and intent, not technique specifics.

[darkstar]

angelag said:

darkstar said:

so you've steamed into an 16 stone lump with your four or five best shots, and he's grabbed you (possibly stunned a bit) staggered back and you're both on the floor now...

what next?

Who knows? I don't have a predetermined strategy for every conceivable situation, but whatever I do it would be with full the intention that it would be my final technique. I'm sure that it would probably be a technique that has been practiced a lot, but the whole point of "one shot, one kill" is about mindset and intent, not technique specifics.

yea of course, and that's definitely better than the other karateka reaction which is to automatically pull punches because of all the semi contact & points sparring they've spent so much time entraining to be their natural response to an opponent in front of them.

[AngelaG]

Ah but I feel that sweeping generalisations do nothing to help anyone!

[darkstar]

angelag said:

Ah but I feel that sweeping generalisations do nothing to help anyone!

ok point conceded. it should read

yea of course, and that's definitely better than the other popular karateka reaction which is to...

[random]

It’s part of the Shotokan idiom that one technique one finish, hence the ippon sparing, one point and the fight is ended.

In reality I think that it is more of a mental approach than anything, and one that a lot of students never really engage with, or at least not in the first few years of training.

That is why it is essential to get used to hitting something hard then at least the body is used to it. I think for a lot of students the reality of a fight is way off in the distance and I doubt it will ever happen, which is a good thing.

Isn’t this the dichotomy of all MA we train to maim and kill, hoping even knowing we will never have to use it, but knowing that if we do have to…then have to we will.

[darkstar]

random said:

It’s part of the Shotokan idiom that one technique one finish, hence the ippon sparing, one point and the fight is ended.

In reality I think that it is more of a mental approach than anything, and one that a lot of students never really engage with, or at least not in the first few years of training.

That is why it is essential to get used to hitting something hard then at least the body is used to it. I think for a lot of students the reality of a fight is way off in the distance and I doubt it will ever happen, which is a good thing.

Isn’t this the dichotomy of all MA we train to maim and kill, hoping even knowing we will never have to use it, but knowing that if we do have to…then have to we will.

agreed.

but wrt to hitting hard, i'm sure you understand that competence in real combat is much more than that, it's spatial awareness, interception of moving and un-co-operative targets, experience, and learning to read their movements, and needs to be practised full speed, full (or near to it) power, against real-world style attacks and for longer durations than it takes for the first technique to land.

in the real world it wont stop then, you've punched or kicked them once, not shot them.

i'm not talking about beginners here, i'm talking about people with good levels of skill in their art, but possibly lower levels of real world SD skills than they think due to only ever practising against each other and indoctrination of unrealistic training for long periods of time.

can you honestly say karate (some at least, not all Angela, before you ignore the question and smite me for generalising again )..doesnt suffer from this to some extent?

[Aefibird]

Some karate might do.

There's faults in ALL martial arts and I'm sure we're all grown-up enough on here to admit that. No system is perfect.

Added to that, there are also dodgy clubs and dodgy instructors in every branch of martial arts.

Shoddy teaching and poor understanding isn't always limited to Traditional Martial Arts - it's found all over the globe in all MA circles.

[darkstar]

indeed.

it's not so much the MA itself as the way it is trained. one of my preferred styles suffers from a similar kind of problem.

my point is that you can supplement what the trad methods of training give you with up-to-date pressure testing & training environments if you want to,

...assuming you are concerned with how useful to you all that training will actually be in a SD situation.

but how many actually do this?

[AngelaG]

We pressure test.