Self defence for dummies

In My Humble Opinion
81

sproing grrrrrrr…sproing

As always, the middle path is best–cross-training. Ideally IMO, learn BJJ or judo, and Wing Chun. Martial arts skills blend and support each other, like blues and rock, and are not diametric unmixable opposites, like jazz and country.

Your goal with wrestling/groundfighting is to control a ground situation as rapidly as possible and then get back to your damn feet before other people pound you. Striking arts allow you to attack and defend while still maintaining an escape route. Your feet are your most valuable defense because they allow you to run. Build a toolbox, and don’t rely on an absolutist viewpoint of striking vs ground.

I also agree that Krav Maga is often just 80s ninjutsu repackaged. What I’ve seen is fairly highly choreographed and very highly dependent on the quality of the school or teacher. It is a young system with a lot of fly-by-night adherents.

82

If you say so. Not sure how you came to that opinion, but I won’t begrudge you of it.

WTF? I can’t think of two more disparate styles. You either haven’t trained boxing or you haven’t trained Wing Chung.

Boxing is an effective, informed, battle-tested style that works and has been proven to work. Wing Chung is mental masturbation passing itself off as a fighting style thats failed every time it’s been tested.

Yes, charlatanism annoys me, I admit it. I have no problem with the people who train Wing Chun (or Aikido, or any of the other ineffective styles) as a hobby. But to hold them out as effective self-defense styles is frankly harmful, akin to recommending homeopathic treatments to a sick person. Wing Chun is a fun hobby, but it’s a shit fighting system. If you think it’s at the same level as boxing THEN GO STUDY BOXING. Boxing’ll cost significantly less, and if you recommend it as a self-defense style I won’t jump on your case. Well, I might still argue that judo is better, but I’d at least respect you.

Three responses to this:

First, the judo practitioner can choose to throw his opponent to the ground while remaining standing. In fact, that’s probably the best way to handle any physical confrontation.

Second, if you don’t know judo (or wrestling, or BJJ, etc.), you’re probably going to the ground whether you want to or not. Either your opponent will pull you down or you’ll fall down. What happened to the two preeminent practitioners of Wing Chun when they got into an actual fight with each other? They ended up flailing around on the ground with each other within seconds. (What makes this especially funny is that both of them made lots of money teaching “anti-takedown” techniques to thousands of their victims, I mean students)

Third, judo (and BJJ) focus on submissions, takedowns, and pins because submissions, takedowns, and pins work. If you study judo you have a range of responses to any situation, from the gentle (hold them down until they calm down) to the aggressive (thrown them down hard or break their arm), to the deadly (hold the choke until they die). Even if Wing Chun worked it would only give you one response to any situation.

83

You’ll have to forgive the bumping of an old-ish thread, hopefully it hasn’t started to putrefy yet.

Update; I’ve been cardio-ing it like no tomorrow and reading a few books on the subject, as well as focusing on the exercises that strengthen the triceps and abs.

A new class has just opened up in my area; what’s the general consensus on Muay Thai, in terms of the credentials in the OP?

There’s also a franchise club nearby, the Matt Fiddes brand. The interwebs give a conflicting view; apparently the chap was the bodyguard of the late lamented Wacko Jacko, although his clubs apparently vary quite a lot in quality. I’m going along soon to check it out, but thought I’d ask if anyone had any experience of the brand. Martial Arts forums warn to be wary of ‘McDojos’ or ‘Bullshido’ which take lots of money but teach you jack squat, but hand out belts like they’re going out of fashion.

Also; did we ever settle the Krav Maga debate? Overrated crap or serious shit? Can’t be both!

84

Scotty, I love you, and I’m a wrestler myself, but if you don’t see why this is a huge problem then I can’t help you here.

85

Muay Thai is a great sport oriented martial art with very good practical self defense applications, particularly in getting feedback with what works for you and what doesn’t in sparring, learning how to do real damage with fists, elbows, knees and kicks, and in fighting in the clinch. Being in the clinch of an experienced Muay Thai fighter is an absolutely sickening experience, and the kicks are like baseball bats. In addition it’s a gut busting, dry heaving workout.

86

Muay Thai is a serious martial art and extremely effective once learned. It does have a high level of physical conditioning/ punishment involved in toughening the body to endure the strikes used. The shins in particular are often targeted to the point of insensitivity to normal pain levels as they are used for many strikes. Certain moves are quite brutal so expect to train hard and hurt often and deeply in any serious school. Many schools are focused upon competition, (which CAN but usually is not, lighter contact than pro fights) so be certain that this one will be teaching the whole art, not just “badass fitness”.

As for Krav Maga, I stand by my earlier statement, that it is an easy, nasty, applied form that is simple for beginners and ubiquitous enough to be found in most areas. By no means is it the be all end all of martial arts, but it IS one that will focus heavily in self defense situations. Generally speaking, interdisciplinary forms will be superiour and more versatile in this regard.

87

Sums it up I think. There is a huge difference between someone who has never been in a physical confrontation and someone who has practiced what to do and experienced things like hitting and being hit. The first time you get hit in the face is a very surprising experience. The hundredth time, a little less so.

Many different MAs can and do teach the basics Chimera lists above. We can argue all day about which is best at this or that. Any training is far better than none.

88

Muay Thai is one of the most effective martial arts styles in the world. A well-taught class would be very good. I’m not familiar with the chain you asked about or the instructor, and that will make a huge difference; badly-taught Muay Thai is no better than any other badly-taught martial art, and would be a waste of your money.

Try asking here: http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/mma.cfm?go=forum.home in the training/kickboxing forum

Or here: Martial Arts Schools & Clubs - Bullshido - The Art of Fighting BS

Krav Maga may be a reasonable martial art (homeopathic medicine may cure disease), but Krav Maga hasn’t ever been demonstrated to work (homeopathic medicine hasn’t ever been demonstrated to work). This is odd, because there are plenty of forums for Krav Maga to demonstrate its effectiveness (this is odd because there are plenty of ways for homeopathic medicine to demonstrate its effectiveness). Until Krav Maga demonstrates its effectiveness, you’re probably better off staying away (until homeopathic medicine demonstrates its effectiveness it’s probably better to stay away). There will always be supporters of Krav Maga (there will always be supporters of homeopathic medicine), but real, effective martial artists don’t bother training it (real doctors don’t bother prescribing it).

89

I teach Taekwondo. No martial art is better than any other martial art. However, an individual martial artist may be better trained than someone else in another style.

The best defense is confidence and common sense. You don’t put yourself into potentially bad situations. You adopt body language that says confidence: head up, alert to the surroundings, making eye contact, etc. The bad guys profile for victims and they will pass over someone who shows confidence in their body language.

But you can’t control your environment 100%. If things go sour and you are attacked, the best defense is to run like a turpentined cat.

90

This is a very strong statement. Out of curiosity, could you provide any proof at all of this claim?

91

I studied Taekwondo for 6 years (blackbelt) when I was younger, and it was fun, but not real practical in today’s world. Out in some field in Korea where you have a bunch of room to move around, I’m sure it was great, but in a crowded bar where you can’t get the necessary 6-ish feet worth of empty space to do a bunch of kicks in, it’s not really optimal. Plus on top of it you have to keep your training up and be stretching your legs every day to be able to keep the leg flexibility needed for quick kicking which, as I get older and other things take more priority in my life, I can’t do anymore. I can still whip out fast low kicks and I can crumble someone with a quick back-kick to the gut/face, but even those I’m not in prime shape to recover from as fast as I could when I was training.

I did learn a lot of situational awareness (being able to tell when a fight is about to go down and paying attention to my surroundings to look for possible trouble (groups of drunk loud guys on a street at night, etc.) and escape routes and everything), and a lot about self-discipline and responsibility to try to AVOID a fight and talk my way out of it instead of escalating it…but those are things that you should be learning in any self-defense discipline.

I would say think about where you’re likely to get into a fight and build around that. I spend a lot of time in bars, so for me if I’m going to get into a fight, odds are it’s going to be in a bar where there are people all around me, sharp-cornered tables to fall back on, broken glass on the ground, and the guy starting a fight with me is going to be in my face an inch away doing the “You got a problem?? Huh?? You wanna go??” male tough-guy ritutal. He’s probably going to have friends with him and bouncers will likely jump in after a minute or so.

Anything ground-fighting is kind of out of the question because of the amount of room and the guy’s friends stomping my head in while I’ve got him in some awesome choke.

Anything too flashy like Taekwondo means I’m probably going to slip on a beer bottle or lean back into a table or hook my leg on a bar stool by accident as I go to kick.
Plus the guy is going to be way too close to me for me to be able to kick him because he’s likely going to throw his first punch from close-range.

As much as striking rules, I honestly don’t want to sit and engage a guy in a 10 minute fight to the death. I want to just distract him and run like fuck to a crowd of people or a cab or the cops or bouncers or someone that’ll help me or dissuade my opponent from attacking further. If I do strike, I’m not a big guy, I want my strike to count. I want to hit them in the throat, eye, kick a knee in, anything that’ll do a shitload of damage and give me a couple seconds to run like hell.

So I’m thinking of taking up Wing Chun. Ya, I’ve seen the “two wing chun pros rolling around” fight and I know Wing Chun doesn’t work in MMA or in long sparring matches with other styles. You have to consider that Wing Chun isn’t something you can do with big padded gloves on and helmets and chest-protectors and rules that say "no poking the eye or grabbing the throat or manipulating small joints, etc. so it’s hard to really record a “Wing Chun fight”…it’s not designed for 3 rounds of 3 minutes of padded fighting and scoring points, or getting into a 5 minute slug-fest outside a bar, it’s designed for efficiently deflecting a couple punches, disorienting your opponent, and running like fuck.

The actual concepts behind Wing Chun are pretty solid. The system was designed for smaller people to defend themselves against bigger people, and is very very defensive (VS something like TKD which is very offensive/aggressive). It’s very close range, very fast and efficient, and you can do it if you’re big, small, out of shape, etc.

This is a demonstration, but you have to figure THIS guy would be pretty damn difficult to get a hit on. And I mean, this is a fat old man. There are 70+ year olds that can do this stuff. He’s just built up incredible reflexes and has really good knowledge of body mechanics (“if his shoulder moves this way, his hand will end up here, and I can redirect it here, which I know will leave an opening here”):

Like I can’t see a way that guy is going to NOT be able to handle the drunk guy at the bar throwing a generic haymaker/cross combo…he doesn’t need to stick around and fight to the death, just deflect/dodge, get him off balance or disoriented, and run. Handling multiple attackers doesn’t seem like it’d be that difficult under this system either since you deal with them so quickly.

The downside to Wing Chun is I imagine it would take a VERY long time to learn all the nuances and have them be instinctual. I’d imagine a solid 2 years of training before you were really competant…but once you ARE, I mean, shit, that old guy is just manhandling people and it looks so effortless haha And the plus side is you don’t have to dedicate a lot of time to being able to do the splits or building up giant muscles…it’s all body mechanics, speed, and efficient logic.

(incidentally, since I started studying martial arts I’ve never actually gotten into a fight. I’ve been in a lot of situations that could have turned INTO fights, but I either avoided putting myself in situations that could lead to trouble, or I talked my way out of fights because I was taught the best way to win a fight is to not be in one)

  • TWTTWN
92

If your attacker wants to ‘give’ sure, you’ve done your job.
When I was younger, I got into a fight with a jerk. I didn’t want to hurt him, so I just pinned his shoulders to the ground. After I let him up, he tried to kick me in the crotch. I pinned his shoulders to the ground. Same thing. A third time, and some of his friends came up. If i had cleaned his clock, immediately, his friends would never have showed up.
A pin doesn’t do well against a real A-hole.

Best wishes,
hh

93

Those videos look really cool, but that’s the way it is: The mediocre stuff looks cool; that how it survives. The effective stuff looks boring, difficult, and a lot like hard work. The human animal being what it is, the crap classes are packed and the good classes struggle to have a dozen people a night show up.

The “it’s too deadly to be used in a cage” claim is a typical cop-out that doesn’t survive scrutiny. Wing Chun didn’t do so well even in the days of no rules, no gloves, and no referees.

There was nothing in that first video that couldn’t be used in a cage, and most of it could even be used in a boxing match. Which raises the question: Why don’t boxers or mixed martial artists do that stuff?

The answer is that it only works when you know what your opponent is going to do, or he’s moving nice and slow for you and letting you push him around. If you tried to trap like that in a real fight your opponent would fake a shot to make you react, then punch you on the chin once you reacted to the fake.

Real boxing, where the trainers get paid only if their fighters win, train their fighters to keep their guard up, because they know that trapping a) makes you vulnerable to fakes, and b) only works if your opponent is slower than you. Wing Chun only survives because the vast majority of their students are middle-class white men will never get into an actual fight, and thus will never learn that they’re paying thousands of dollars to learn bad habits that they’ll have to unlearn if they want to actually be good at fighting.

94

Right, I went down to the franchised branch (on the cards it said karate & kickboxing, so I though either/both of those styles would be pretty good). Despite turning up for the later adult class, I knew pretty much immediately that I’d made a mistake.

Including me, there were about five people there over the age of 18. One of whom I think thought he was Bruce Lee because he had an orange belt. The rest were, I shit you not, between about 6 and 13. Bloody hell, I thought. Of course, it would be rude just to walk out straight away so I stuck it out in the hopes that the kids would go off and do there own thing, alas nay.

The second thing that brought up a red flag was; with the above, comes no sparring. Even for the advanced student(s). All pad work and running about in bare feet. The teacher was really friendly and all that, but I could tell straight away that it wasn’t for me.

I’ve been trying to get hold of the Muay Thai guy, because that looks like it would be something far more up my street (I’ve read enough books and seen enough videos by now to see that if accosted, I’d get my ass kicked no matter how many pads I kicked with 10 year olds). No luck so far, but it definitely looks like that’s the primary option for now.

95

It’s not too late to post in this thread is it? I just read it and there’s a couple of anecdotes I’d like to tell.

A good friend of mine begun taking Krav Maga classes a few months ago. The other day he was demonstrating to me some techniques he’d learned to get out of different holds. I’d simulate the hold and he’d break free of it, sometimes saying stuff like “here I headbutt your nose” or “here I’d poke your eye”. My father was seated nearby and after my friend was gone pulled me aside and demonstrated to me the judo moves he’d use to get out of the same situations. They were universally simpler, quicker, more economical and more effective. A couple of times I almost fell down and had to be supported by my dad even though he was showing me stuff at half-speed and almost no strength. Now, my dad used to be a very good judo player when he was a kid, but that was almost forty years and 70 pounds of fat ago and he hasn’t used any of that stuff in as much time.

A couple of weeks later I was among friends and another guy joked about how I was a wuss for complaining he was punching me too hard in Muay Thai practice. We were both beginners and just learning how to block hooks to the head. My guard was wrong and my friend’s first punch came too fast and too strong; he hit my hand and my hand hit my mouth. My friend knew that he’d messed up and apologized and we kept training. The Krav Maga friend heard the story and said that in practice one should always go at 100%, that’s how they did it where he practiced. I said he was crazy and that training stuff full power before knowing very well what you were doing was an excellent way to get injured and that some stuff you actually shouldn’t practice full strength unless you wanted to go pro or something. The discussion went on for a bit and then I realized he hadn’t understood I was actually being punched and actually blocking the stuff. I asked just what the hell he thought we were doing then and he answered that he’d thought we were hitting pads. “Hitting pads? How can I learn to block a punch by holding a pad? We weren’t practicing hooks, we were practicing hook defense!” The guy then explained there was no actual sparring on his classes and that techniques were never used on people for risk of injury. He was talking about going full on on punching bags and such. We then changed the subject.

Now, it maybe my friend just wasn’t very good and it maybe the place he took classes was bad, but I just wasn’t impressed. The place he goes to seems to be legit and was well recommended, but if you can’t practice the stuff against other people then you won’t be able to pull it off in a fight.

My experience with Muay Thai was great and I can recommend it as a sport but wouldn’t know how effective it is as self-defense. I did it just for exercise and it forces you to be in great shape. The warm-up exercises before my first class were the single most intense 15 minutes of physical activity I’d ever gone through and I just couldn’t finish it. Latter I found out I’d been lucky and that the warm-ups were usually even more intense, but in a few weeks I got the hang of it. The classes were fun, if exhausting and I had great teachers. I was very lucky because the place I go to is very cheap and you can have as many classes you want for a flat monthly fee. Some of my teachers were state or national champs and the place actually trains a few pro fighters, both in mma and straight thai boxing, so I understand it wouldn’t be easy to find another like it, especially in the US. (Fun story: the first time there I trained with an actual pro fighter we were practicing a jab, right straight, knee to the body combo. One guy would hold the pads and the other would practice the combo; after a few repetitions the partners changed places. I was left without a partner so one of the fighters offered to hold the pads for me. I thanked him and we started practicing. When it was over my hands were hurting from how hard he hit my hands with the pads when I punched, even though I was wearing wraps and boxing gloves!)

96

Respectful disclaimer, I have been taking KM for 2 years.

A lot of folks are banging KM by saying it’s not proven. What would prove it?

  • Heavily used in cage fighting? (not possible becuase 1) KM is a “self-defense” sytem first, e.g. eliminate threats and run as fast as possible, and 2) it relies heavily on no-rules fighting like groin strikes and headbutts)

  • No crappy online videos? (not possible, every style has crappy online videos)

  • Adoption by a modern military? (check)

  • Basic effective standup and ground techniques? (check)

  • Aggression and stress training standard during practice? (check)

  • Easy to learn (check)

  • Data proving it’s effectiveness (not possible, if disagree, cite relevant studies and data sources please)

What else is there? Just asking for some objective criteria if folks are going to dog a style.

Regarding the comments on it being a “heavily choreographed” style, I have not found that to be the case at all. Yes, there are basic techniques to practice, as with every style. But the training also involves stress testing, awareness, and understanding that a lot of self defense happens in environments that are less than optimal.

I recognize this is only from my personal experience and perspective, but certainly it has as much (hopefully more) validity as “I saw an online video of it and I think it sucks.”