What I was implying is that his stories sound like scenes from B movies.
I think the OP has all the classic signs of a severe case of Ron-ism.
Did it have Lee Marvin in it, playing a shell-shocked ex-Marine who works as a dollmaker during the day and hunts vampires at night? Because I think I’ve seen it.
I’m sorry, but I’m a real martial arts instructor. If you train full contact to include eye-gouging, full punches, broken fingers, etc, you are going to run out of students very quickly as they will all be in the hospital and most of them will sue you.
If one is that incapacitated, one can’t retaliate in turn by body slamming the guy in such a way that would break his neck. If you are not incapacitated, I believe that the best thing to do is the least contact necessary to being the conflict to an immediate halt. That is what my senseis taught us (Shuri-ryu most recently).
**Do martial arts actually help defend a person in real attacks?
**
In a nutshell, yes. MA training does not make us superhuman. It does not make us “kung-fu killers”. It does make us people who have better reaction time, train for success under adversity and who have been hit and know how to work through it.
This!
There it is. Realistic self-defense training all resolves down to a simple formula:
- Control your environment.
- Distract.
- Release.
- Stun.
- Run!
I agree. Drawing my lawfully carried and permitted weapon will have a high likelihood of bringing the conflict to an immediate halt without further contact.
Well, -ish. I had a self-defense class in college - I was the only male student - and the instructor’s philosophy was “Use anything you can to disable your attacker, then get the hell outta Dodge”. Needless to say, and this of course is Lanzy’s point, he didn’t actually have us delivering instep blows and shots to the groin at full strength - he had us practise them slowly. (As the only guy, I was often cast as the assailant or rapist).
And I have seen footage of a self-defense teacher who dresses up in a giant foam-padded suit and lets his students beat the hell out of him as hard and as fast as they can.
Still, my teacher’s main focus was being aware of your surroundings and avoiding dangerous situations.
Unless, of course, someone else also has a firearm…
Powers &8^]
If the OP’s students managed to get blindsided in a bar on two separate occasions, perhaps he should have devoted more instructional time to situational awareness.
And more instructional time to choice of seat – always sit with your back to the wall!
Great - you acknowledge that it is possible to separate you from your weapon. Perhaps even in a robbery attempt where the goal is to take your purse even independent of the knowledge that there is a gun in there.
Good to know the truth about hidden carry laws - you rarely get this level of candor from those with the guns.
Czarcasm said:
I guess I should have read your username. :smack: 
Lanzy said:
Yes. You can train full contact in body strikes, punches, kicks. You can train full contact in grappling/throwing. But if you train full contact in joint stricks, throat strikes, eye gouges, etc, you will run out of [del]targets[/del] students really quickly.
Know you can condition for strikes by using targets, and condition for motions with controlled practice.
Another important tip: self-defense training should be as basic and instinctual as possible. It’s all well and good if you can spear finger the throat or joint-lock and control the wrist in controlled situations, but real attacks make things harder. Adrenaline throws fine motor control to pieces, aiming becomes a lot harder. Can you hit that target under pressure? Precision joint locks may be effective if done just so, but will you react under pressure with just the right move, and will it take years of practice to become adequately trained to have a shot at doing it correctly under pressure?
Practice is important to drill response and train “muscle memory” - instinctive reaction. The goal of self-defense should be to get away safely, not how much damage can you cause in the process. (Admittedly, causing damage can ensure you get away safely, but it isn’t the goal, only a means.)
Sister Vigilante said:
At first I had a similar thought about the description sounding like an overreaction, but on reflection I changed my mind. Note he was attacked in a bar, there were friends of the other guy handy. Sitting there and taking multiple blows is not conducive to good health. When confronted by mutiple attackers, incapacitating the first one is a good way to pursuede the others not to continue, and at least reduces the number of attackers left to deal with.
Clothahump said:
What does “Release” mean in this context?
So. A 62 year old, fat, out of shape college teacher throat jabs the snot out of a 15 (and a half) year old marine/college freshmen… I didnt know Steven Segal was teaching in college. So much for Fire Down Below 2.
Hilarious read, props the author. And to those of you that thinks its reality.
It was Chuck Norris.
I think there is a shock factor if you fight back. I was jumped by three guys and I was still standing and told them I was ready if they were. They laughed and left. They cracked seven of my teeth, but if they continued I’d have lost.
If five people pick on one, he’s gonna lose period. Those people just didn’t want to be bothered.
I’ve seen enough cases of a woman using mace or something and all it does is enrage the attacker.
I strongly believe martial arts can help in a fair or near fair fight, but once you get more than three on one you don’t have a fair fight, and unless your attackers are hopeless they can crush you by sheer weight.
This is why I am careful of people hanging around in threes.
If you read the Crime Library you can see woman can put up vicious fights if need be. They wind up dead but they can give as good as get.
There’s no doubt martial arts help but it’s it ain’t gonna help a 90lb dude over a 300lb guy.
After a certain amount of time posts on the prowess of martial artists in a fight start to sound like a bad penthouse forum
I’m sorry folks but they have a way of proving this and it’s called Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). MMA has shown over time that you’re better off taking a big strong determined athletic person and teaching them a little martial arts than you are taking a lesser equipped martial arts “master” and putting them in the ring.
Aside for a few rules, anyone can fight in any style in MMA and it almost always comes down to pinning someone to the ground and beating them about the head until they are defenseless. Yes a little training in submission moves and submission defense helps but really you can point to former bar room brawlers as well as boxers and wrestlers who have succeeded in MMA. Really the only common factors between most successful MMA fighters are that they are in super shape, aggressive and determined. The Type of training comes last.
While I don’t disagree that size and aggressiveness plays a significant part in the more common success of experienced streetfighters over trained martial artists, there are two points to consider here. First, MMA, while closer to a real brawling fight than what you’ll find in most dojos or self-defense schools, is still somewhat artificial in that the competitors are constrained to a ring and are limited in the types of strikes they could throw, particularly those that would most effectively injure or drive off a real attacker (i.e. no eye clawing, tearing off ears, et cetera). The goal of most striking arts is to remain on your feet and either open up distance, or close inside the guard and deliver a series of debilitating strikes that prevent an attacker from taking you to ground or making effective use of weight and size. When cornered and taken to ground, it is without question that the larger opponent can wield more force and accept more damage than a smaller one.
Second is that while most MMA fighters are not experts in a particular style of fighting, most ranked MMA fighters are hardly untrained, and while groundfighting and Brazilian-style ju-jitsu isn’t as formalized as some martial arts (particularly the Oriental martial arts that have largely been dressed up for sale to American clientele desirous of ranks, belts, and other accouterments that serve as completely artificial indications of accomplishment), there is definitely technique involved in escaping from and into “The Guard” and the different mounts. Weight and strength help, but an ability to use technique to avoid getting trapped in a hold and wasting energy struggling out is a substantial portion of the training that differentiates competent and successful fighters from merely aggressive ones.
Stranger
Well said.
lol… here is my counter story…
When I was in High School one of my best friends was known to be a tough guy, most people who were his friends knew that he had only been in a few fights, but he had a scary look to him.
Now, there was another kid we went to school with that was a bit of a nerd… skinny kid, not intimidating in the least… but it was well known that he had many years of martial arts training and was preparing to earn his Black Belt…
So… sometime in Senior year, black belt boy got into an verbal altercation with my friends mother… he said that she almost hit him while he was crossing at a stop sign… but he had some very choice words for her including the big C word that women don’t like all that much…
This had happened during lunch and later that day after my friend found out about the incident he confronted black belt boy…
From the moment that they were within ten feet of each other black belt boy was a timid little frightened mouse… he couldn’t even look my friend in the eye and just stood there with his head down mumbling that he didn’t say anything to my friend’s mom (it had been witnessed by more than just black belt boy and my friends mom)… For all his training black belt boy did not even try to block or dodge when my friend punched him in the face… he immediately fell to the ground where he began his first defensive maneuvers, which consisted of flailing his legs at my friend in a somewhat kicking motion… my friend spun him around and gave him a few more shots before he stopped… all the training in the world would not have helped him against a bigger stronger, and most importantly, a more determined opponent.
I’m not saying that Martial arts don’t build confidence, but they certainly cant change a lamb into a lion… If you have never been punched really hard in the face, I don’t care what discipline you are trained in, you will not react well the first time it happens to you… Strength, speed and Skill can be trained… “toughness” cannot…
For all the anecdotes that you read in this thread about people successfully using martial arts to defend themselves, there are dozens of untold stories were the “trained” person froze or just got his or her ass kicked by some street thug… they don’t mention the unsuccessful use of martial arts in those stories…
Other thread Issues:
To the OP:
How exactly do you train eye gouging, finger breaking, and biting full contact???
To Sister Vigilante:
As Una Mentioned… getting punched in the head is not laughing matter… a grown man can do serious damage with a single punch to an unsuspecting victim… in a bar environment when something like this happens you cannot temper your response… you have to fight like you are fighting for you life or you will end up the victim… what is the old adage… better to be judged by twelve than carried by six…
having said that I doubt the person from the anecdote in the OP was intending on breaking the attackers neck… the shoulder throw is a basic defensive move that can be very damaging if the person who is thrown lands the wrong way… certainly he was trying to incapacitate the guy, but not kill him…