I’ve trained martial arts for years and my quick take is that YES they can help but you have to train for longer than 3 months. Remember, you might have 3 months of karate but that mugger might have 25 years of mugging experience, plus jail time.
One exception to the must-train-for-years rule are certain self defense classes that use padded “muggers” in scenarios that combine both physical assault with verbal abuse. I took this class and subsequently employed the responses it gave me to successfully drive off a purse-snatcher.
Martial arts training can keep you safe even if your attacker is the ground, i.e., you fell down or something fell on you. I fell down a huge flight of stairs and was able to catch myself on the stair railing because of the conditioning classes I’d been taking. I have also heard many personal anecdotes from my old training partners of how their training helped them to survive in dangerous situations. This includes surviving car accidents.
The one thing any serious combat training will give you is a clear sense of your own vulnerability. Suddenly it’s not about unrealistic extremes: either I’m a defenseless worm or I’m an invincible superhero. Instead it’s about gaining an edge bit by bit but you could still lose the fight - just not by as much. A good martial arts class will give you a strong attitude which is where all successful self defense begins.
And remember, if you survive the encounter, you won.
Amen to that. The only thing I learned back when I was taking karate that I’ve ever put to practical use, and probably one of the only things I still remember how to do, is how to fall. I can’t even remember the last time I managed to hurt myself slipping on the ice or whatever.
Unless your training involves full contact though, and you know you can take a solid hit, your main advantage is going to be in fitness and flexibilty, and they are no help if someone has got in close to you and is punching you in the face.
Ivan is correct. You can have all the training in the world, but if you don’t know how to take a hit, you’re in trouble. If I was training to be a boxer, I wouldn’t just be hitting the speed bag, but be sparring full contact as well. Also, the opposite is true as well as people don’t know how to hit. When you spar in many martial arts classes, you hold back. You get in the habit of pulling your punches, so you don’t hurt your fellow student. Yes, you break boards, but hitting bone is different. You’ll encounter resistance, which can hurt you and put at a you disadvantage.
I’ve experience this personally during a fight defending a friend, when I noticed my opponent wasn’t hitting me. At first, I thought they were feints, but began to think they weren’t. So, when he threw another punch, I threw one myself, fist hitting fist, and well, that was it as he retreated in pain. If weren’t for the pain from his injured hand, the look on his face probably would have been shock.
If you go to the site, Bullshido ( http://www.bullshido.net/ ), you’ll read similar stories as well as stories of people who thought they were prepare to defend themselves and realized they weren’t.
Well, at the school I went to, in order to earn each belt, you had to take a kick directly to the torso, unblocked. It was a more powerful kick each time, and I think I took them pretty well. Of course, it’s different when you know to expect it, and when you’re confident that the instructor won’t actually break any ribs or the like.
Jormungander, did you actually hit the guy directly on his fist? That seems like it’d be an awfully difficult target, and for a relatively low payoff. It must have been pretty impressive, though.
As with the other things in the fight, he was either throwing punches at shoulder level or at my stomach, probably out of force of habit ( a very bad habit he hopefully dropped). I had stepped back a little and he attempted to throw a punch coming towards me. I was intending to block with that arm, when I, in split second, jumped back and threw it.
Against an inexperienced fighter (say, an office drone who has one too many) martial arts training, even just a few months, will come in handy.
Against a street fighter/mugger? Agree with the above. If you don’t train for real (and in my experience damn few people train for real), you will likely get your ass kicked/killed. One of the main things that distinguishes an experienced street fighter is that they are not afraid of taking a hit. They won’t even flinch unless you do serious damage.
The one thing that marital arts will do is let you keep your head and wits about you (as you calmly hand over your wallet) so that you can give an accurate description to the cops afterward.
True! However, I’d add that high-intensity training does not have to involve getting beat to a bloody pulp 3-5 times a week in order to be effective. The few times I did get involved in an incident - whether it was a fall down the stairs or getting mugged - I didn’t feel any pain. I was somehow already worked up enough that I could do what I needed to do without going into shock. Since I’m normally a timid person, this was astonishing to me, even at the time.
I’ve also taken kicks and blows in class that felt light as a feather even when I went flying into a wall, that would normally have made me start crying. This is the “adrenaline state” that etches everything you do during this state deep into your memory and into your body, and part of good training is learning how to call this state up at will.
This type of high intensity training requires skillful and responsible instructors and training partners, and it means that in a real situation, the feeling is almost one of relief: “At least this person isn’t SENSEI X!” or what one of my instructors reported during a tournament fight after he’d trained up with a partner named “T” - “NOBODY hits as hard as ‘T’!” is what he said to me.
This type of training can be emotionally harrowing because you are being pushed to your mental and physical edge. It should only be done with a trustworthy training partner who can read your signs but someone that you really trust to push you past your limits without actually causing injury. (And, since there is always risk, someone you can trust to scrape you off the floor and get you to a doctor if you do get injured - hopefully non-fatally).
I do agree that some level of full-contact training is necessary and even more important, it’s within the reach of everyone, not just iron men. The human body is very versatile and even old ladies can learn to kick ass.
Especially against someone who is used to their victims turtling up and just taking a kicking. You don’t need to be trained up to take on an MMA fighter, just sufficiently enough not to panic when it happens, and to know how to cause them enough pain to give them pause to think about continuing their attack.
From Cecil’s page -
That’s because they are the type of people muggers least expect to fight back. Bullies and muggers hate being surprised.
I call that the “Glory” moment. In the film, the soldiers are training to fire their rifles and one is doing very well. Col. Shaw (Matthew Broderick) asks for a demonstration. As the soldier is loading his rifle, Shaw takes out his revolver and begins to fire it, causing the soldier to become flustered and drop the rifle. He admonishes the major to train them properly.
A word of caution - Bullshido may have started out as a serious site trying to debunk bogus martial arts schools, but it has degenerated into a troll-hole, with the resulting insults and dick-waving about how “my martial art is supreme and you’re a pussy because you don’t train in it.”
Somewhat similar to watching the monkeys in the monkey house at the zoo.
Sigh. It’s not just on the Web. That’s pretty much every school I walk into. Some of the schools ARE very good but this attitude just annoys me. I don’t care how good they are. I care how good I can get by training there.
I’ve had people walk into my school and challenge me because of that attitude. I just laugh at them and tell them they’ve watched too many bad kung-fu movies.
