After reading the various “Martial arts expert vs whoever” threads, listening to people who study the martial arts and having dabbled in them myself, I have come to this conclusion:
Martial arts, as taught and studdied by most Americans is mostly bullshit as a legitimate fighting style.
An coworker who apparently is a black belt in something or other was telling me about how the more he learns martial arts, the more he learns NOT to fight. I don’t need to study for years how to do that. It’s called not being a loudmouth arrogant jerk who picks fights. If I want to study a fighting style, I want to learn how to FIGHT and KICK FREAKIN ASS in the unlikely event I do get into the shit.
Here’s the problem as I see them:
All the perfect technique in the world goes right out the window as soon as you get punched in the face.
Most martial arts training seems to make the assumption that your assailant will be down for the count after you hit him with your KIA!!! KIAA!!! KIA!!! combo. What if he isn’t?
An hour training course a couple times a week does not prepare you physicaly for a FIGHT. Compare that to how boxers, colegiate wrestlers and kickboxers train.
Wait, modify that. You may indeed be right, but it’s the failing of your schools, not the form.
My kid’s school emphasized avoiding fights, but also how to win them once avoidance was impossible. At 9 years old, after only 1 year of training, he took out a full grown man at a party who grabbed him without warning. We’re talking 6’3", 250 pounds, ex-Marine down on the grass, wind knocked out of him, tears down his cheeks. Asshole. Teach you to grab my kid.
I felt a lot better about letting WhyKid out of the house alone after that!
My husband had to take martial arts training for his job at the prison. (My memory insists it’s called “Akita”, but that’s a dog.) He took a week-long course at the beginning of his employment and gets a refresher once a year.
On two seperate occasions, it has saved him from serious injury. On both occasions, he managed to disable his attacker within moments by using only a couple of moves.
I took martial arts for a while, and i learned somethings that i think would at least help me in a fight, technique aside.
-How to punch, and hit people using my first two knuckles, as opposed to breaking my hand
-How useful knees and elbows are
-Once you get the first hit on someone, you don’t stop hitting them until you think that the fight is over
-Fighting is not about fairness
-Standing at an angle gives your opponent less of a target
-Holding your hands directly in front of your face is a bad idea, instead, hold them out a little
-Where to hit people so it hurts
Like many pursuits overrun by hobbyists, martial arts attract those who enjoy the lore and legend as much if not more than the actual craft. Thus you get people who sit around regurgitating mystical bullshit about chi, about the zen of avoiding conflict, apocryphal stories about opponents who defeated each other using nothing but mind power. In other words, they have so much fun talking the talk that they forget to walk the walk…
OTOH I don’t idealize what I’ve seen of Judo teaching in Japan. The typical Japanese way of repeating a task over and over and over until it is physically automatic just doesn’t cut it either; a lot of these guys will get their arses kicked by a creative opponent who focuses on kicking ass instead of the perfect execution of the backwards fall #37.
So really, it’s not the fault of the art or the culture if the practitioners mess it up. Martial arts can be used for anything from self-discipline to a way to get out of the house for two hours on Wednesdays to a way to really kick the shit out of somebody. It all depends on what you want to learn and who you try to learn it from.
That’s it, though I think you could probably call the style he was taught “Practical Aikido” since the spiritual aspects were absent. It’s mainly techniques involving pressure points and like the link said “some throws and joint locks”.
To expand on my previous comment, I don’t consider “effective martial arts technique” to include punching some unsuspecting person in the nuts after they startled you. If your 9yr old can take out a 250 lb ex Marine in a straight-up street fight, then I will bow down to his superior Kung-fu.
Guinastasia - I guess that is a more accurate statement. It is the belief than many practicioners have that their martial arts training somehow makes them an asskicking machine even if they have never gotten into a fight that I take issue with. People who say “lucky for him I didn’t use my Karate”.
When I took martial arts as a teenager, a freind asked me if I could kick anyone’s ass. I told him of course not, it would just give me an edge against someone about the same size and physical conditioning as me. One of the dorky brown belts in the class happened to get his ass kicked by some football player later that year. Witnesses commented to me that he did throw a couple good blocks.
Going back to some earlier threads, I would take a stong, in shape guy whos been in a lot of street fights over an untested black belt any day.
I don’t think most martial arts students do it to improve their fighting ability. They do it for purposes of conditioning and discipline. From what I’ve heard about the subject the bouts between classmates in the dojo are not intended to be actual fights, but still foster quick thinking and the ability to deal with suddenly changing circumstances in a way that solitary forms of exercise cannot.
While I would have trouble caring less what your opinion of me or my anecdote, I will elaborate a bit further and say it wasn’t “a punch in the nuts” (It was several hits to some nerve clusters and a kick to the knee) and the guy wasn’t unsuspecting. He was talking with WhyKid about his training, and said something to the effect of, “A yellow belt, huh? Let’s see what you got!” (Or maybe green belt, I don’t remember. Not very high, though.) WhyKid, used to people saying such things and expecting a demonstration of forms (which he didn’t feel like giving), turned and started to walk away. Idiot grabbed him from behind. WhyKid reacted mostly without thinking, but the look on his face was one of fear, not anger. So while WhyKid wasn’t expecting it, the guy was.
I watched the whole thing from about 15 feet away.
But if you’d rather ignore data points that don’t fit your thesis, then go ahead and discard everything Lissa and I am flash and Brain Wreck and I and anyone else have to offer.
There’s a difference between saying that martial arts will turn you into a killing machine (it won’t), or will make you the meanest, toughest guy around (it won’t), and saying that it will help you defend yourself against an average attacker. It will.
In the other threads, the question has usually been posed as something like, “Who’s tougher? A street fighter or a guy who learned Karate?” And I generally take the side of the street fighter.
But consider a typical altercation between you and some random drunk guy picking a fight, or some irate college kid who thinks you’re eying his girlfriend, or even with some scared kid trying to mug you. Having Karate training in a situation like one of these may make the difference between winning and losing.
In other words, all else being equal, a person with a black belt in Karate will in fact be a much more effective fighter than someone without it. So Karate helps you move up the ladder of bad-ass-ness, it just won’t put you at the top.
Martial arts also improve physical coordination, strength and speed, all of which make you more effective even if you never learn any of the techniques. And they also tend to give you more self-confidence, which can make you look like a harder target and keep the punks away without you having to lift a finger.
So martial arts training is a good thing. It’s just doesn’t make you a guaranteed man-killer like the movies portray.
The problem is, nobody has yet invented the real-world montage.
The moment I’m able to shift automatically from one training scene to the next without the need of food or sleep, all the while with an awesome soundtrack playing, is the moment all those bustas had better watch themselves.
Nice. First you make a dismissive claim, then you follow up a point against it with a single dismissive word.
To address the original point, the way most martial arts are taught in big franchise studios is not condusive or directly applicable to a real world confrontation. That doesn’t mean that its useless or can’t increase someone’s ability to defend themselves, but it does tend toward overconfidence of one’s abilities. A good martial art will teach, in adition to go-style karate kicks and strikes, sweeping and grappling manuevers that are useful in the sort of fights that generally occur outside the do-jo, i.e. the ground scrabble that two guys trying to impresses their girlfriends get into. Even Wing Chun gung-fu–which is mostly a striking art–has a signficant body of grappling and takedown moves. Kenpo (Okinawan “karate”) is a combination of ju-jitsu and gung-fu that (if properly taught) emphasizes practical, simple moves.
Any art or instructor which teaches elaborate, multi-operation moves, emphasizes “form” over balance, or pushes weapons form before empty hand skills have been learned isn’t preparing a student for reality. A study that concentrates on building upon simple, easily repeated moves, constant balance, and awareness will improve the student’s real-world ability more-or-less regardless of the particulars of the form.
As for moves to bring down a larger opponent, there are a few areas of the body that will bring down a large, fit male aggressor. I’m not talking about groin strikes (which are uncertain in any case–they’ll case pain but won’t disable an experienced fighter), but strikes to the solar plexus, the side of the neck, the knees and instep, and others that can allow a much smaller defender to bring down an attacker. A 9 year old taking down an adult but unprepared aggressor is not outside the realm of possibility.
He wasn’t expecting to get kicked in the knee or whatever and I’m sure he wasn’t trying to hurt your kid. Big difference.
Yeah…I guess you’re right. There have been plenty of times where I have been able to use my limited marital arts experience to harmlessly deflect some fat drunkard.
That’s a big dog. You’d likely throw your back too.
It’s best to throw the Akita in the other direction, with your back turned to your attacker - so that when your effort causes discs to shoot out out of your back, they’ll strike your assailant.
Stranger On A Train - What are your thoughts on sparing?
The individual I spoke with was telling me how they train by coming in close contact with each other without connecting in sparing. Personally, I don’t think that provides adequate training. You need some kind of contact (with pads unless you are hard core) because punching people and getting punched is TIRING. I can air punch you all day but neither one of us learns anything.
