I think you get a BETTER idea of your limitations when you do martial arts coz you see some people who are really kick arse at it so you realise its best to avoid a fight wherever possible. Also thats what you get taught to do, at least in kung fu.
If kids’ parents are telling them they can take on all the baddies now then that is problematic, but is not a problem with self-defence classes per se.
You are not completely wrong, just mostly 
The most important thing is the mental conditioning, which includes calm under stess and mental discipline. If nothing else, the mental conditioning is extremely helpful in life.
Skill matters. A friend of mine saw a frail old man took down four thugs without breaking into sweat. If these kids start at 12, they would have 20 years of practice when they are 32. I don’t care if you are the size of a football defensive lineman, you’re just not going to win this skirmish.
Style or school matters. Some art forms are better in the short run, while some others are better in the long run.
You also get to learn when to fight and when to run away.
Wrestling and boxing are more about brute strength instead of skill. More specifically, they are not about using skill to overcome strength, but use skill to supplement strength. It’s like watching two bulls locking horns instead of like a mongoose fighting a rattlesnake.
I have seen a 160cm, 44kg woman knocked a man over 2m tall with more than twice her weight out cold in two swift moves. A twist, a flip, and a kick right in the temple. He didn’t even know what hit him.
UR - spoken like someone who has obviously never boxed or wrestled. Or done much full contact sparring in many other disciplines as well.
Give me two people of roughly equivalent MA training, experience, and physical ability, and I’ll put my money on the bigger guy every time.
Quick hint: your guess is completely wrong.
Then I can’t imagine why you would think an experienced boxer or wrestler would even have to break into a sweat against a lesser skilled opponent, even if that opponent were considerably larger and stronger.
Please explain.
I, too, would like to know where Susanann is coming from. Again, I take escrima, and the tip of those sticks can move at about 130 mph. And that doesn’t even require too much more than the flick of a wrist. How the hell is this slow and a hinderance? And anyone who has training in a martial arts is really only good against someone with no training (or severely less training), because fights NEVER happen like sparring. If you’ve got some training in karate, and you’re going against average joe schmo with a baseball bat, sure, you’ve got a chance. If Joe knows how to use that bat effectively, I’m betting Joe’s going to beat your skull into pieces, ESPECIALLY if he has as many years training in that as you do in your MA.
Rule number one in my escrima class: If you don’t have a weapon and your opponent does: Run.
Rule number two: If you don’t have a weapon and your opponent does and you can’t run: Get a weapon.
Three. Can’t run, can’t get a weapon: Get his/her’s (or at least make sure they don’t have one).
These are important, because I really can’t think of that many scenarios where anyone who’s trained in a weapon will lose out to someone who is unarmed.
Weapons make a HUGE difference when it comes to a fight. What’s more important though is TRAINING in how to USE that weapon efficiently. As has been pointed out, most thugs/muggers who will show you a knife have no intention of using it. Why? Because they bought it for the fear factor. If you brandish a knife as well, and show confidence that you can use it, they will back off and look for an easier, more timid target. If someone knows how to use a knife, they won’t show it to you, and I don’t care if you can kick someone unconcious from three feet away, they will cut you, because you won’t see it coming. They may ask you if you’ve got change for the meter, or a cigarrette, or a light, and when you turn your attention to your pockets, you’ll get cut.
Self defence has it’s bonuses, because it does teach you to hone your reaction times, teaches you to be on guard and look out, and gets you to hone your reflexes. But anyone who thinks that makes you superman in a knife fight where you don’t have a knife is going to end up overconfident and dead. One guy in my class attended about two months, got cocky, got in a bar fight, and got hospitalized. Our instructor one day got jumped by three guys while walking his dog, and beat the shit out of them with a mag light.
That’s another point where self defense needs to be on the ball. Just because you feel you know more than others, don’t go picking fights. Fight only when you have to, and don’t go looking for trouble.
As for the wonderful power of guns, there are numerous tales of police officers and perps engaging in gun fights ten feet from one another, unloading entire clips, and never hitting once. Just like every other weapon, if you don’t know how to use it, it’s going to do you no good. Pulling a gun on someone, and not having the confidence in how to use it (something you get with training), is just going to have it taken away from you (unless the mugger is a coward, as is generally the case).
But all you people who feel that you’re better off without a weapon against someone who has one, you baffle me. EXPECIALLY if that person has any idea of how to use it effectively (i.e. doesn’t just swing a stick at you).
Alrighty, Urban Ranger, I despise the “quote and answer” game but here we go:
Important but not the most important. I can kick a mentally prepared toddler’s ass.
I don’t believe you. (Or him. Whatever 
)
Anybody who’s watched Ultimate Fighting knows that. I still believe I can take a petite female grappler.
Absolutely. That’s the most important thing. Run, mostly.
Negative. Especially wrestling.
Again, I don’t believe you. Or else he was very drunk or slow.
We’re going to have to set up a SDMB Royal Rumble to settle this matter once and for all.
My 1. was stupid, I take it back.
I can kick a mentally prepared middle-schooler’s ass.
Maybe I’m one of those people you’re refering to?
I never said that I was better off without a weapon than with. There have, however, been two occassions where I was attacked by someone brandishing a weapon and nonetheless disarmed my attacker and won the fight. I’d say that reflects more on their incompentance with their chosen weapon than any super-human skills of mine (fact is, I ain’t superhuman). So… while I’d prefer to have the advantage as far as being armed, even in situations where I am not I am not completely helpless.
All things being equal yes, the bigger, better trained, and well-armed opponent has the advantage - but in real life “all things” are never equal. Which is why the little, untrained, unarmed person sometimes wins. Not all the time - but you only need to come out ahead in your “one time”.
Skippy for you. But if you let your guard down and a toddler punches you in the nuts without warning you’re going to your knees, Bruce_Daddy. So what does that prove? Are you talking about self-defense or boxing matches?
In many cases, the attacker is not expecting the attackee to fight back - in other words, the attacker is mentally unprepared to be challenged. THAT can give an advantage to the defender, IF the defender knows how to/is able to deliver one or more disabling blows in a very short span of time.
A “petite female” who grapples with an average size or larger male is being really stupid - which is why competant training teaches small, petite women how to avoid grappling. I don’t grapple, it’s not a good strategy for me.
Nice we all agree on something.
Yeah, what if he has a gun pointing at you?
Like a woman with a black belt in Judo?
Greco-Roman wrestling or Mongolian wrestling?
You must not have seen what a <em>Taichi</em> master can do to others.
Ugh! I hate it when SDMB doesn’t accept HTML tags.
Quickly, UR, I’m dead, yes, H.S. and Olympic, correct.
In summary, I content that I can kick everybody’s ass here, no matter if you are [fat bastard] a little baby[/fat bastard] or Jet Li. Email me for my home adress and I’ll split the difference in air fare. You have to clean the blood off my driveway though.
[Bruce does the little Neo hand wave ala “come here”.]
when I took martial arts classes, there were rules.
It was a Chuck Norris studio. They showed us an interview of Norris when he was asked what he would do if 6 guys confronted him and demanded his wallet.
“I’d give 'em my wallet” he said.
The moves we were shown were to be used when we could not get away. But that can be problematic as well.
As I said in another thread, there is a difference between knowing how to do damage and having the will to do damage. I know a quick move that will break a man’s jaw if done correctly. I could do it correctly, but…I may lack the will, either by not wanting to hurt someone, or not beleiving I’m in that much danger.
No, you seem to have your head straight. But there have been a few people here who have made comments like “I’d much rather have my hands free than have a weapon” because weapons either “make you slower” or “I can grab with an open hand.” Grabbing with open hands is nice if you’re in close and grappling/disarming. Personally, I like having an open hand for that reason as well. But if someone’s coming at me with a baseball bat, I’d like to have something other than my open hand to deflect it so I can use my open hand more effectively. What’s better for disarming: a weapon and an open hand, or a broken hand and an open hand? My bet is on the former.
In my class, we spend some good time working unarmed against someone with a stick or a knife, or sometimes even two weapons. I know that it’s possible to disarm someone rather easily if they don’t know what they’re doing. If someone started taking swings at me with a baseball bat, I feel confident I could get it out of their hands and possibly into mine. With a knife, not so confident about the disarm, but I do know I can avoid getting cut very well. And I know a lot of people who are better trained than I that will have little trouble whatsoever disarming an untrained assailant who has a knife. They also know to avoid getting into scenarios like that is the best policy, though.
Another distinction between martial arts and self-defense is that self-defense has less bullshit.
For instance, Dillman and his pressure point nonsense, which is based on[ul]
[li]Student auto-suggestion[/li][li]Simple fakery[/li][li]Redefining things that work for reasons unrelated to foolishness about the “ch’i” or “ki”, like the idea that a hook to the head works because it hits a particular “pressure point”[/ul][/li]Pressure point manipulation does not work in a real fight. When people who go into a fight with the idea of hitting someone’s fourth liver meridian pressure point on the underside of the arm enter martial arts tournaments like the UFC, they get their asses kicked with depressing regularity by people who practice basic techniques that do work - takedowns, chokes, and ‘ground and pound’.
Real fighting is neither elegant nor pretty. It does not lead to spiritual enlightenment, and has no resemblance at all to what Jet Li did in his last movie. It is crude, ugly, and usually unnecessary.
Training against someone who wants to learn with you is radically different from defending against someone who wants to hurt you. Which gives the average bar fighter with a thrice-broken nose and scar tissue all over his knuckles an advantage over the average strip mall dojo champion. Maybe I got more trophies. But he has more street fights.
Said every karateka Royce Gracie ever faced.
Regards,
Shodan
Where’s Arnold S when you need him?
Bruce_Daddy you have some really serious ego issues if you’re picking fights on a public message board.
What you’re talking about is sparring, a boxing match. It’s not self-defense.
If you’ve been listening, the first principal of self defense is to avoid trouble. That means not answering fight invitations from jerks on the Internet, among other things. Anyone stupid enough to take you up on your offer probably derserves a thumping - and if some 7-1/2 foot tall 300 lb linebacker shows up and hollers “I’m here - have at me!” you’d better have the goods to deliver.
Good gracious, I hope I never tap you on the shoulder to ask you the time.
Lol I thought about posting a similar statement to see who would take the bait…
I used to fight a bit when I was younger. Won most, but not all. There were a couple of occasions where I could’ve done better. Alcohol almost always seemed to be involved, hmmm. I’ve learned that cooler heads prevail and drinking and fighting don’t mix well. No fights since. I quit hanging out in bars as well.
I remember one fight in particular.
A guy came at me hard and fast. He threw several punches and tried to kick me twice. I blocked every attempt without countering. He just stopped and looked at me. Nobody got hit or hurt at that time. It was quite impressive actually.
I’d like to say more but I gotta go work, see ya later.
Peace