Whether it’s combat sports like MMA or RBSD, many people who study eastern martial arts(With exception of Muay Thai) will look down on western martial arts.
Today I saw a guy I respect, who generally has intelligent takes, exclaim how offended he was that MMA now has mainstream acceptance as Boxing. Says it’s offensive to people he knows devoted to combat sports and martial arts. Maybe he if was talking about MMA twenty years ago. But today? Amateur boxers, dutch kickboxers, lots of Karateka and kung-fu guys who do Sanda are showing up at the highest levels of MMA more and more. If anything you see more Kung-Fu and karate doing well in MMA than boxing, which he did give respect to.
What, so those arts he loves sucks now because they have success in MMA? He praised boxing but also took shots at the ruleset of MMA being bad. But boxing only allows striking with the front of the fist. MMA allows much more than that. What exactly is combatively bad about MMA in that sense?
Another guy I talked to was offended that people who study Chinese martial arts and Karate would dare to find benefit in RBSD or western arts. This I find very strange, as modern combatives has actually validated traditional martial arts to me more than blasphemed against it. I study Kata for exploration of movement and structure not applications as they are traditionally taught, but RBSD does put some of this ‘library’ view of kata into perspective. So much of Kata applications make sense when you look at how modern military and civilian defensive tactics look like, whether interceptors or close quarters combat.
Most kata is for close quarters combat, you learn that by looking at RBSD or military combat, because the movement and mechanics of the forms match that more than the long distance game of tag so many traditional arts play with. Traditional arts already close range learn how to drill them better through both combatives or MMA.
Why is any of this a bad thing?
It’s foolish to think looking at another cultures military and sport combat has nothing to offer. The masters so many Kung-fu people love, like some guy named Wing Wan Wu or some Karate fighter named Goshi Nakamura often looked to other styles, even other cultures and how they fought. They were never content to look for all wisdom only in their traditions.
All these Okinawan karate guys getting mad people look to modern martial arts like Combatives or combat sports fail to understand that Savate and boxing greatly influenced modern karate before it was again influenced by Muay thai, MMA and reality based self-defense.
That’s just normal guys.
I’m surprised this is even something that has to be argued.
I personally got nothing against the Karateka in the picture. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, maybe knows some cool shit. All that jazz.
But I really cringe when I see BJJ bros go in a circle and say “What has Jui-Jitsu done for you? What has it taught you about life?”
Or you have people who say their life only exists for Karate or doing Tai chi or something, especially when they say it gives their life some meaning.
I personally would not do martial arts if I didn’t see it help me in my everyday life. It certainly gave me self-esteem, it helped me realize I’m not as stupid as I originally thought I was, not as weak. Not as incapable.
But the thing is, if I had fallen in love with art, Math or Engineering, I would have a similar sensation of confidence. Maybe I wouldn’t feel as strong, but it can have similar enlightening effects.
Martial arts is not unique in being able to uplift the soul.
What’s worse, is the same people who think there is some special spiritual quality in martial arts or worse in a specific art only, they think it equals worldly wisdom and moral virtue. Just because martial arts can make you more assertive, confident, and less afraid doesn’t mean you’re actually more wise than anyone else because of it. Martial arts taught me I wasn’t as dumb as I thought I was told I was, but it didn’t make me smarter. It just made me realize something that was there. But you see in both western and traditional martial arts organization where students listen to the head or a black belt on random things like they are sages. I got nothing against Jordan Peterson in particular, but he’s very popular among them, and only because Joe Rogan and other figures in the combat sports community push him.
Lets examine some of these.
This above is blatantly untrue. I’ve played possum while rolling with both low ranks and high ranks. I’ve changed my energy and how I rolled many times, and I fucking suck too. I’ve changed my style doing striking or full MMA sparring. I picked some days I play dirty others more by the book.
Okay so, do I even have to point out how this is blatantly false?
Just google “Gordan Ryan Jui jitsu” or any number of high level black belts in the sports that are utterly arrogant.
Look up Dillon Danis and his antics.
Really? Then why are the best masters often not good people? Why did they develop during times of war? Why was the criminal under class in asia and all over the world involved in the creation of martial art styles? Because criminals want spiritual development? Bouncers? Body guards? It’s certainly a great vehicle for it, but that’s not it’s original purpose.
Wow ignore the opinions of others right? You mean like doctors and subject matter experts?
This is how anti-vaxxer shit starts, everyone thinks they understand medicine better than the actual experts. Think they know how to sift through information.
You’re damned right I consider the opinions of others, because I know I am a human being, I am not a god. I have limits in my understanding that perhaps others don’t.
Guess kung-fu makes you ignorant?
What is the point of this all?
In classic times people loved their hobbies no doubt. A mason took pride in what he built, brick by brick. A farmer took joy in yielding and producing good crops. Warriors were proud of their fighting prowess. People even identified with occupations and hobbies, and did write and wax poetic about their love of these hobbies.
For many parts of the world historically, people turned to Buddha, Moses, or Jesus and Mo for deeper philosophical and metaphysical concepts
. AKA “All ya’ll motherfuckers need jesus”
Meaning was not seen in your identity as a writer or fighter, but as some kind of deeper truth. There was not the secular existentialist concept of ‘we make our own meaning’ which leads to people using identities and hobbies as vehicles for meaning and guidance.
In non-religious ancient societies like ancient Greece, you went to a philosopher, a Rhetorician or a stoic for guidance on life and metaphysics. Wrestlers and warriors were highly respected, but no one really said shit like “The art of pankration has taught me to walk with grace. My life is just pankration, for only pankration gives me meaning” or “This spear is my destiny! I love my spear! I stick it up my ass!” like we do see in the modern martial arts world.
Turns out this is a fake quote.
Sun Tzu was a general, but he didn’t go on about some ancient kung-fu giving him the guidance and wisdom he needed, didn’t talk about some primordial tai chi forms filling him with light, and he was a warrior, he probably knew good Wushu/Kung-fu.
Confucius straight up did not even like martial artists and warriors, much less talked about how learning Chin Na and chinese grappling gave him and others some inner peace.
The ancient world had many more grapplers, hand-to-hand, and melee weapon artists than the modern world.
Yet only in Japan was martial arts seen as a special virtue on a philosophical level, but like Sparta, Feudal Japan was a strong noble class that formed a military government. The legitimacy of their rule rested on their warrior class, the Samurai. They wax poetic about this stuff simply due to the fact their entire society was organized on it. But look at how we live today, is that true in our context?
I realized this when I started another hobby other than martial arts. When I say hobby I don’t mean “I like to sit and watch movies” or “I play video games”
By hobby I mean something to create or to do, art, math, history, philosophy, sociology.
In my case it’s writing (Clearly not editing and revising based on this blog eh?)
When your identity is not bundled in a single passion but many passions, you’re less likely to frame your sense of self and your life based on a single purpose. Find joy in many things and you will not be a slave.Study more than one aspect of living and you will not be a slave.
I promise you, there are more reasons to live and find joy than LARPING in a dojo or a Gym thinking you’re a warrior. And if you really are a warrior, there is more to life than simply ending others.
I follow a left leaning MMA and martial arts group. They are too far left to me, and even among people far left they have some extreme views. But they do a very good job at documenting the history of unsavory crap many martial arts organizations and fighters do and have done which is not publicly talked about. For that reason I follow them.
Due to their rather extreme views, they often post things that rub me the wrong way, but rarely on the topic of martial arts itself.
But recently they made one post that kind of stuck out to me, motivating me to make this blog post.
They had a post up saying that most people who teach self-defense assume most violence can be solved by simply being polite and walking away, but ethnic, political and sexual minorities are often targeted and the violence is sudden, fast, and often they can’t run away since they are being hunted, not sized up. This simply is not true, the leading voices and leaders of combatives and self-defense often categorize violence and talk about victim profiles.
That isn’t to say this approach isn’t around, I remember talking to a guy who runs self-defense classes for the city. He said violence men face often can be dealt with verbally and is solved by walking away, but woman it’s more sudden violence. He noticed a difference in the types of violence men and woman face, but purely attributed them to gender. When in truth there is violence that is a disagreement, looking for status. What the Violence dynamics people call a monkey dance, popular among men yes, but woman can experience a form of it. And then there is sudden violence toward men, as men often get mugged, jumped, or targetted for perceived weakness.
But as much as I can rant and rave about bullshit people say about self-defense, including stuff people offering classes for it say or do, this is not a valid critique because it’s very common for them to talk about sudden violence. Sometimes discussing the inability to walk away or run away is mostly an excuse to keep fighting, because in the funnest parts in a dojo, gym, or training facility usually is all the fighting. It’s fun to punch people until they give up or are knocked out(Consensually) it’s fun to grapple and control folks with them trying to escape and do the same to you, it’s fun to hit people with sticks or poke them with false knives. It’s just fun, and running away and backing out of a fight is boring to practice to most people.
Yet regardless of motive, the fact many forms of violence involve not being able to back out is the norm. ALmost every martial arts gym says “What if you can’t run away?” because running away or de-escalation is almost always brought up by people saying “What’s the point in even learning martial arts?”
The reason this left wing martial arts organization mentioned that self-defense doesn’t mention the inability to run away is because they want to highlight the unique problems of minorities. They assume this because they rightfully notice RBSD culture is super politically conservative, and the furthest left they often are is just libertarian or Jordan Peterson types. This isn’t a wrong observation, but these seem libertarian and ancap martial arts are not stupid, even if their politics could be seen as wrong. They know their clientele, and ancap or not, they don’t look at traumatized woman or a gay man coming through their door and think “Man I just won’t research her problems” when they very often do. I agree with the leftist argument that most racism, sexism and homophobia isn’t “i hate black people/gays/trans/woman but rather little subtle things. But while I agree with this statement, even most conservatives libertarians admit people are often picked off due to identities they have. They know hate crimes are a thing, unless they really drink the Kool-aid.
You’re more likely to hear talk ignoring victim profiles in MMA/combat sport gyms than places specializing in self-defense and RBSD. Combat sports schools will often advertise self-defense. ANd while they will teach lots of useful stuff, they really do a terrible job with victim profiles a great deal. There is little talk on how to intellectualize and organize violence.
For instance, violence happens in either close range or moments of spaces. It’s constantly shifting, controlling range helps but it’s far more likely to change than in a duel. You’re not going to control the distance for a long period of time and peck away. If you’re at a distance, you will end them or they will end you, or you’re going to get in close and maul them, or you will maul you. There is no addressing the nature of what these attacks will be. And an ambush will not be like a kickboxing, or MMA match. On the ground it could be like BJJ, but you sure as hell would not butt scoot or have anyone pull guard on you.
They absolutely think you’re either walking away or dueling.
But my intention isn’t to slam combat sports, more so to defend them.
Now the misconception about combat sports that bother me were not triggered by anything specific, just trends I noticed.
The main one is the fact everyone goes full contact all the time in combat sports gyms. Once upon a time this was true, back when MMA was more niche and the sport science was much less studied. But today? Sparring can involves actually landing with good commitment in the strikes, much more than touch contact karate or TKD. But otherwise no one wants to cause concussions when doing any form of striking in boxing, kickboxing or MMA. It’s usually only fighters that go hard, and even then when guys are going hard to prepare for an upcoming fight, a sparring partner getting punched in the head hard enough to stun them usually stops the action. The sparring stops and is adjusted. If a guy gets hit hard more than once without defending, they stop it and check exactly what the hell is going on. They don’t continue that kind of fighting, not in most gyms.
There are exceptions, some gyms still spar hard all the time, TJ Dillashaw spars hard all the time, even when he’s not sucker punching partners and ruining their prospects for a fight(Yeah he’s a dick)
But most are not idiots. Muay thai is one of the most brutal sports, but even preparing for a fight they spar very controlled.
THe grappling equivalent is BJJ. No slamming is allowed, and the culture greatly dissaudes putting on submissions at rapid speed.
Wrestlers will still grapple hard, but even they are starting to learn the wisdom of flow and slow rolling when not preparing for a competition.
Another misconception is that the rules exist because outlawed tactics and techniques are fight enders. Lots of people think some kung-fu guy could beat a thai boxer because of groin kicks and eye pokes, something the thai boxer would be open to since it’s not allowed.
Thing is these things are not fight enders. Personally if someone kicked me in the balls, there is a chance that woudl stop me. I hope not, but it’s possible. I’ve never been hit there full force since puberty. But I know others who have been kicked hard in the balls, and they could keep fighting. Randy King had a great tweet where he said anyone who lived a physical life accustomed to pain can fight through it. And thai boxers? They know how to work through pain and discomfort. An eye poke or gauge can again end a fight if the person is not accostomed to a life style of pain and discomfort, and it can also cause permanent damage. Don’t let people damage your eyes. But once again, if someone lived a ‘physical’ or violent life, they can ignore that and end the fight.
Yuki Nakai got his eye gouged, ultimately going blind in that eye. But he beat the crap out of the guy that blinded him on one side, then won three more fights after that. It was long term damage, but it didn’t stop him in the moment.
Throat shots can fucking kill a person, so never mind the legality of it in court, but once again it often doesn’t always work, and it takes time for the throat to swell up enough for someone to die. You can literally get stabbed to death or knocked out before the opponents wind pipe swells and he suffocates.
Shit i’ve been punched in the throat, and it hurt for a month. But I finished the sparring session. If my big fat brown pussy ass can take it, a seasoned criminal probably could.
Other than the brain stem, most targets effective in finishing fights quickly are legal in combat sports. The chin, sides of the neck, liver, stomp to the knee.
I would even argue that an art like Muay Thai hits strategic targets more than most Kung-fu, karate and RBSD schools. WHen they train sensitive targets like eyes, throat, groin, it’s often very mechanical, very rote, the energy is dead. Reason is to avoid injury. Even ‘street’ martial arts schools don’t target eyes and throat when doing any kind of dynamic training like sparring or alive drilling, they don’t want to risk injury. Most of them tend to basically hit the same target as MMA gyms would.
My karate school had some drills where we had pressure and broken timing where it’s safe to attack throat, groin and eyes, but usually with people we really trust, the progression is careful. I have not seen many martial arts schools try that.
Fact is, if you can’t hit someone in the face with a gigantic sixteen ounce glove, you’re probably not going to hit their eyes. People who can dodge giant ass big mitts coming at their faces can dodge a badly practiced eye poke. ANd it probably will be badly practiced, because it’s hard to train it against a live opponent.
Hell Jon jones and Daniel Cormier probably have more experience aiming for peoples eyes under pressure than most traditional martial artist.
The reason it’s so easy for his cheating ass to do this, is because he already has the timing to land strikes on the face with his fist, he knows how to post off the head with his hands when people close on him. He can touch your head with big easy to see mitts.
Notice the pattern Jon Jones uses to poke the eyes is either a post of the arm as taught in Muay thai(and Uechi) or it’s similar to a jab. It’s literally using the fundamentals of striking rather than anything significantly different.
He has good fundamental martial arts principles and habits, which thus makes it much much much easier to poke people in the eyes.
When I learned how to attack the eyes and throat, it was working on how to express with the fingers, and often you could get people in the eyes when they came in on you.
During my years learning fundamental martial arts, I learned to land open hand strikes and fists to the face, and my teacher then simply built off that skill to attack the throat and eyes.
And combat sports athletes have these base skills.
Rules do affect how combat sports athletes fight in real life violence or crossing over to other sports. But not ‘vulnerable’ points of attack.
Now that brain stem though, that stuff is dangerous and can destroy a persons life.
I try to follow many martial artists, combat sports folks and self-defense experts on social media.
One thing I noticed is either directly or indirectly they constantly talk about how hardcore they are, how hardcore their training was, how hardcore their life experience was. They want to convince the world they are super-badass. And that by not training or agreeing with them, everyone else is not badass.
Sometime even if they aren’t cutting others down, they are constantly trying to communicate how tough they are or their students.
Now sometimes it makes sense, a teacher has to communicate how some of the stuff they are teaching works. That’s what most of them are doing. So I don’t even begrudge martial artists for bragging or humble bragging about shit they have scene, matches they have won, etc etc.
I do however have a problem when it’s to cut down everyone else that has also proven to teach useful stuff or at least helped people. I am not saying there is no such thing as martial arts that arn’t pure and utter crap, there are. But sometimes different people train for different goals, or martial artists bullshit is another’s gold.
For instance, touch contact point sparring has really gave Karate a bad reputation, and often for good reason. The world and the internet is filled with stories of a dude with six months of boxing beating the shit out of a touch contact sparring champion, or even people with no training. We have the first few UFCs and Thai boxers challenging the shit out of Karateka and smashing them.
Now point sparring is a complex topic, as old school point karate involved actually hitting and staggering a person to score a point, though that was not without it’s problems. Either way the point system was a detriment to karate overall.
I personally believe it was a net negative.
Yet Henry Cejudo and countless MMA fighters either use Karate training from their backgrounds to score an intercepting strike(Sen no Sen) and then get out to win fights, and score clean damaging hits. Some don’t even do karate, but would mimic point karate style fighting.
I personally don’t find it very useful, and for most people it is not. But MMA fighters at the highest level are now finding it useful. Perhaps point karate fighting isn’t foundational in MMA, but it is providing a useful skillset they are using.
And this is despite the fact point karate people often are not ‘tough’ unless they went into karate badass, or they cross train in kickboxing or another hard fighting art. It still has some use.
No one looks at this guy and thinks ‘bad ass’
My own experiences are another example.
Currently my Uechi-Ryu teacher Rick and my MMA coach Calen are my biggest influences in the last five years.
Rick has experienced some violence and dealt with it using his own violence, but I’ve trained with people with far more violent encounters than him, and my MMA coach isn’t what anyone would call a badass, though he commands respect.
Thing is, I’ve learned more from them than some of the most biggest and badass people I have trained under or trained with. One of my students is an ex-con that has been through violent encounters, and both my coaches could beat the shit out of him. He taught me stuff in the sense I could ask him questions about real violence, but otherwise as a martial artist I didn’t learn much from him. Another coach I had taught me a few things I found very useful, gave me a good training environment. But he taught technique based teaching, stuff he has not evolved in years, and his training methodology is outdated. He’s fucking scary tough
Meanwhile Rick and Calen(my MMA coach) have consistently evolved over the last five years, and keep on doing it. I can consistently go to them for advice or examination of things. Even with COVID there is evolution and growth.
And that’s the crux of it. Badassery matters a bit, but being able to think, analyze, critique and evolve what you are doing and other people are doing matters far more than how tough you are.
Now what about tough guys with tough students?
My answer to this question is simple:
DId the teacher make these guys tough, or was the training environment a place that attracted people that were already tough guys?
There are two ways gyms posess great fighters. The first is that you have to be tough to even stand the training or tolerate it, what Rory Miller would call ‘selection’ and thus you have a boxing gym where everyone spars hard all the time, with only young, fit, aggressive and athletic young men reside.
Or you have a place where all sorts come in, weak or strong. But the training methodology builds people up until they become tough, and then they can stand and bang with the best of them.
The first example is only useful to have sparring partners, but often learning in those environments can be limiting. People going hard all the time are afraid to experiment with their sparring and integrate new skills under fear of getting injuries and concusions. Such places makes it too easy to do what is comfortable and safe. It’s hard to personally evolve.
The latter gym often is a culture where hard sparring is more to test out skills already integrated, but the contact and energy is progressive. People go only as hard as needed to create success or failure to integrate new skills. Once new skills are integrated the hard sparring is a test. Rick has an entire concept on how to teach regarding learning, conditioning and testing.
MMA gyms like mine or associations like Straight Blast Gym have a training methodology that is similar. You create movement, broken timing and light resistance, but only enough that a person is on the verge of success or failure. When they can make that work, then increase resistance etc.
Going hard all the time does not allow those zones of learning that Straight blast gym or my karate teacher talk about.
Tough students sometimes are a terrible indicator of whether someone is actually going to teach you something.
If you’re a fat balding middle aged man recovering from a violent attack or a skinny teenage catholic school girl tired of harassment, going into a gym where they try to take each others heads off might not benefit them at all. If they have the gumption to stay, they probably will only go too far. Most likely they will just give up.
They are better off going to a teacher that can progressively cater the training to their needs and build them up to the level to take violence and discomfort.
A good teacher is not tough or simply has tough people training with him. A tough teacher must transmit skills and build you up. A tough teacher takes people who were never tough and makes them into something else.
So I pointed out many flaws in RBSD. How it’s taught by cops, bouncers, soldiers.
Occupations where they are all walking into situations where there is no surprise there is violence. Sometimes the moment they put the uniform on, the body unconsciously prepares and dumps chemicals. It most certainly does so for cops arriving somewhere after a call, or soldier engaging in a mission. THe element of surprise even in an ambush might not entirely be a surprise, at least no physiologically.
I point out the same can be said about the Dojo, that surprise attacks in the dojo can never be real.
But here is the thing, if you TRULY care about counter assault, the dojo should still try to simulate surprise even if it’s not perfect. Because what? We give up because we can never simulate it?
My school was very concerned about simulating surprise. There are a number of drills we do to largely simulate all the chemicals of genuine surprise. I don’t think I’ve seen even other RBSD or Krav Maga schools do anything like it, not even close. Even ones that integrate modern aliveness and training equipment didn’t do this. Even some really acclaimed teachers don’t make these things part of the curriculum.
But my school did. My school would do stuff like this consistently. We have what we call ‘soft’ adrenaline and ‘hard’ adrenaline drills. Different progressions for when blindsided, and then we fight until we get a good position or we think someone is neutralized.
I would point out however that before you focus on getting shocked into an ambush, you should generally have dynamic and alive training. I don’t mean statically learning techniques and then just doing hard sparring or rolling. I mean learning, then conditioning the response under light pressure(My MMA coach would say ‘don’t make him look good and don’t make him look bad’) and then finally drills or sparring with full resistance.
If you do not have training that has broken rhythm, timing, movement with a threshold of failure, you should not do any drills simulating the hard chemical dump of an assault. You will get bad habits and you might get hurt. Especially if the ‘attacker’ doesn’t really offer resistance, it’s creating a false sense of security. Or the ‘attacker’ does resist fully, but because there is no aliveness in most of the training, someone gets hurt because there is no sense of how to handle chaos, it’s a panic response more than a predatory one. But if any of this happens, it’s only a sign to go a step backwards and work on fundamentals. These drills exist to make a predatory response and good skills come out under a surprise attack more than actually teach such skills.
I would love to go into detail about some of these drills, but they are not mine to teach. If you’re a student of mine looking to certify or doing a private lesson I can teach them.
But if you want to learn them, go to wilson practical defense for the counter assault drills.
What I want to talk about more so is the fact that it’s strangely not acknowledged by many people who do personal protection training.
I remember in MEDITATIONS OF VIOLENCE where Rory Miller says everyone who has an occupation that experiences violence sees what it is through the lense of their own experience. Police see it in the context of what happens during arrests. Doormen through dealing with those drunks. It’s like we all get a piece of it, and that’s how we see it. The ‘counter assault’ they experience is different from what civilian types have to deal with. I stated above that they are always prepared for it. What I did not state is that they also have plenty of procedures and coordination for it.
Very few self-defense experts are civilians that got jumped, most are guys who have occupations of violence. I can see why, most civilians get jumped once, and most can barely remember it when it happens. They don’t know how to process it, much less teach how to handle it. Most civilians face violence as duels or fights for dominance more than counter assault. It’s rare to meet a person in a civilian role that got ambushed more than once, unless they live in a really terrible place.
Perhaps I am wrong, and I very much can be wrong. But because they do not face violence in the same way as civilians do, that most instructors end up having a bias in their training that reflects what worked for them, regardless of context. A great deal of them are not being attacked by bigger and stronger people. Sometimes incidentally they are, perhaps an officer going in to arrest a schizophrenic power lifter(A cop that trained with me had to do that) or by coincidence some drunk or high MMA fighter. But often facing violence against a stronger opponent is pure chance, they aren’t selected for that reason. If they get suckered, they get suckered going into a hostile situation, with a partner or two watching their back. Police and soldiers often have guns, bouncers are often dealing with people drunk and therefore uncoordinated. These men are not often hunted or stalked. The only ones that are often are soldiers, and that isn’t a sucker punch, rarely even a knife attack. Most of it is military vehicles against vehicles, rifle against rifle. The victimization of soldiers is vastly removed from a civilians context. Most of all of these men and woman require a certain level of physical fitness. They are never isolated, they are rarely unaware via the nature of their job, they have people watching out for them. Surprise, real surprise is rare.
A civilian on the other hand is going to be selected specifically because they are weak and isolated. Unless you’re two men bumping chests going ‘Come at me bro!’ chances are the person attacking you honestly believes they are superior. They know or at least believe you have no help coming. They very likely think you are unarmed.
Often most people who teach personal protection talk about this, many even address it very well and generally do teach people to fight from a disadvantage. Many are highly intelligent men, capable of problem solving and empathizing with those they are teaching. I say go practice with those folks.
But I bring this up because many turn to these guys because they rightfully view them as badass. We don’t often live violent lives, most of us never face situations where our lives are threatened. While they face it everyday. Of course they understand violence well. Of course they are worthy of respect. The same goes for Boxing/Muay thai/MMA/BJJ/Wrestling guys. They are badasses, often fighting full contact getting slammed, with powerful punches and kicks thrown to take their heads off. But that doesn’t represent most people, that is not the typical civilian. But like the soldiers, cops and others, they can be intelligent and empathetic enough to come up with some great stuff for people truly interested in personal protection.
I only want to point out that they have seen it from a perspective most of you never will, unless you enlist in the military or police. They had experienced it with a support system, something you won’t have.
Sometimes being trained by a fucking normie is a good thing, because maybe that normie will think “I’m a normie. What shit will I face?” and actually train for it.
My teacher Rick has actually faced violence in his life, some of it working jobs that could be seen as ones with an expectation of violence. But he also had instances where he was a civilian facing it, and as a result his specific slice of violence just happens to conform with that. This isn’t just a free advertisement for him, but to point out that you’re more likely to get good instruction for your own needs by someone teaching who comes from the same place as you.
I honestly think for this reason so much of his training to be comfortable with the physiological consequences. Because that frankly is the biggest detriment to personal protection for regular people. It’s very easy to teach the physical skills needed to defend themselves. Honestly assuming they don’t crack from the chemical dump of an ambush, most combat sports athletes would maul lots of pure self-defense people. But look at the caveat, if they don’t crack, which many do.
To be honest I’m shocked more people have not come up with similar drills.
His arm is only moving as much as it needs to. Most of the punch is driven almost purely by his body movement. By anywhere but the arm joint.
Rick my karate teacher used to say this, and he still often says this to me. And for a long time it drove me nuts. Not because he was correcting me, but because I didn’t understand exactly what it meant. I knew it meant not literally moving the arm separated, but had a hard time understanding HOW to not move the arm separately.
Thing is, I was always over thinking it. I used to wonder ‘How exactly do I move my arm with other mechanics? It’s not like I wasn’t trying?”
I wasn’t wrong to think this, how to do something is just as important as why. I knew why the arm was supposed to move as little as possible, a limb expressing itself seperately is weak and flimsy, but with the whole body it’s stable and powerful.
But once you understand concepts like the six harmonies in Kung-fu or what my MMA called would call ‘marriage of the limbs and head’ or just ‘marriage’ finding how how to move the arms without moving them is easy. Once you understand limbs move together from the ground up, you simply put your arm in whatever position you want it to be to grapple or strike, and then simply create the motion from anywhere but your arm. Now are some places better than others? Sure. But move the arm where it needs to go, and let the body take care of the rest.
It’s not hard.
Yet I understand now why this is so foundational to what Rick teaches.
Because today I taught a lesson, the student hurt himself missing a punch because he punched only with his arm and hip. I did some drill for his expression and retraction in striking to come from his feet and knees. Not only was his power better, but he was less likely to hurt himself when throwing the strikes, more in balance, and far more powerful with far less effort.
It’s almost the perfect recipe for form. Good form for striking is for the movement to primarily be generated from anywhere but the limb moving.
The grappling application is even more simple. IN striking the arm needs to atlest move into position, it still has to expand and unfold outward, with the rest of the motion from the body.
But in grappling, just put your limbs where they need to be, and do the rest with your body. If your grip separates it’s line from the rest of your body, you’re probably moving the arm separate from the rest of the body.
Connection between body and arm breaking is what makes or breaks a good whizzer.
Based on reading Maija’s books(ADHD has bad memory, so I have to re-read them to confirm) a big part of her system is being so good at defense that basically you can attack freely without worrying about getting killed, it allows for a focus on attack.
One of her biggest critiques of most weapon systems is they focus on hitting the person first, but then get hit on the way out, either their limb or another part of their body. First hit doesn’t matter if there is an exchange, and in blades it’s mutual kills.
She points out most duels involved mutual injury or kills, but the best dualists rarely got injured during duels or wars.
Musashi fought in both war and duels, and so did many european fencers. It’s obvious cutting someone down without being cut down yourself is a useful skill on both social and anti-social violence.
Here is a clip about attacking someone while still protecting your hand from a cut or strike.
Seems pretty straight forward right?
Thing is though, in martial arts not dealing with weapons, attacking without getting hit back rarely involves protecting the limb that is attacking. Usually when we attack without getting hit, it’s our head or core we protect. People will counter punches by kicking the legs, but not the legs when they are kicking. The tool used to attack is often not vulnerable in non-weapon combat.
Limb destructions are not a mystery, but they rarely are a game changing strategy for fighting in unarmed combat, even in systems like Silaat and FMA. And even then the limb destructions are a result of both arts having the weapon and empty hand system being largely the same that the tactic shows up. But panatukan or other FMA unarmed drills and fights don’t focus on punching the attacking limbs, it’s a supplemental tactic.
In weapons, ‘defanging the snake’ or cutting/clubbing the weapon hand is very important.
So if it’s important in armed combat but unimportant in unarmed combat, who cares? De-Emphasize attacking the limb when unarmed. Emphasize it when armed.
But the thing is, the concept still remains. People are able to strike at an attacking limb with a stick or knife regularly. Maija and Sonny spent hours making sure no one can strike their attacking limb because it’s so common. Many sword and stick fighters make careers defanging the snake.
In unarmed combat, most attacks on the striking hand are limb destructs.
But instead of trying to damage the attacking limb in an unarmed fight like we do a weapon, why don’t we turn it into a grapple? Sounds like trapping doesn’t it? And we all know that trapping often falls apart if used to try and catch punches out of the air.
But trying to hit the attacking limb without also focussing on striking or cutting the head and body is also a mistake. THe action of striking the attacking limb is just another target. It isn’t a strategy where you stake your life on, even if it’s common.
Rick B(my taiji teacher) and Rick Wilson my primary Uechi-ryu/Combatives teacher teach attack while evading. Not evade while attacking, but attack while evading. Often catching punches out of the air is a highly defensive thing. It’s defensive because it’s reactive, and it’s far quicker to act than react. This will never not be true because it’s physiology and brain chemistry. It’s simply how we are designed. The only time a reaction is faster than an action if you’re reflexes are unusually high, but that falls apart against someone equally athletic or gifted.
But what if catching the hand out of the air is not a reaction? What if it’s an act? What if catching the strike is to take initiative?
The drill in the video shows a man trying to land a strike without his hand being caught.
What makes this drill any different from throwing a jab, with your partner constantly trying to parry or palm it? Usually the fear of having your strike parried or palmed is the counter strike coming rather than the parry or palming itself. But with drills like stiking hands, or if you do Muay Thai or Lethwei that have a form of heavy hand fighting, the counter alone is not a danger, it’s the better position and control your opponent can take on contact.
I used to bother Rick a great deal on how to use our counter assault methods against a probing but damaging strike(bouncing jab that can knock people out but is fast, in and out)
Thing is Rick had given me the answer a long time ago. I just never realized it, I never had the means like today to try an drill it, nor the base of skill I have now to drill it.
But really nothing changes. You’re not catching the punch out of the air, you’re attacking the hand, and you’re not gonna give that limb back, it’s yours now.
As the whole club said once to my partner during my black belt test, nothing changes. They didn’t say it to me, but I should have listened.
You are not catching punches out of the air when you seize the limb. You’re attacking it.
It’s not simply trying to grab punches senselessly, such a strategy leads to failure. It should be just one of many possibilities, one opening of many, if your focus is to hit, tear, seize, you take what’s available. You’re not waiting for the limb. If it’s not there your punching the face, shooting a double, clinching or stabbing/cutting. IF the limb is there you’re defanging it or you’re seizing it with a stick. The mindset is different than waiting for someone to throw so you can catch a strike. YOu are not ignoring other means of defense or attack(Unless you’re doing a drill)
And the stupid part is, as long as you’re fighting fundamentals are present. It’s not hard to drill. Someone feeds strikes, they need to hit you without you touching or seizing their limbs the same as FMA weapon combat. The attacker learns how to strike in a ‘pure’ way that cannot easily be interrupted or turned against them. The defender learns to attack the weapon arm, learns to ‘see it’
Then simply make the drill more dynamic, add more targets. Allow Sen no sen to keep the defender from fixating on the limb. THe attacker now has to problem solve how to still get an attack off without getting punched in the face or his strike being used for control(Transition to CBI or sieze, rotate and step)
It’s not hard. And it benefits both sides doing the drill.
It’s basically the unarmed version of the drill in the clip.
Also what to do after the weapon arm is seized can be found in your system. But if you don’t know, check this out.
I get annoyed by Self-Defense people over emphasizing the shit out of how different street fights are from sport fighting. Thing is there are differences, and they are big enough differences to have to change training approaches.
This blog post will focus on specific tactics that are bad for self-defense, but the overall focus is more going to be about general training approaches more big picture critiques.
I wish I could match the sheer ranting emotion of the post attacking Self-Defense schools, but I’m more sad these days than irritated.
So here is one pointing out issues with claims and beliefs by Combat Sports people.
PART 1: Specialized combat sport tactics.
BJJ: It irritates me your random BJJ guy thinking he’ll fucking go to guard if someone takes him down in a fight, not realizing that get ups and sit outs from BJJ might benefit them more than constant attachment. Or a boxer that thinks he can jab someone’s face off when someone shoots on them. They forget we are creatures of habit. When under pressure we go to what’s most comfortable. I remember talking to a BJJ dude that said he only pulls guard in BJJ but in a street fight he would go for the take down. Thing is though, if you start on your knees or do guard pulls when threatened in competition and the gym, you’re probably going to do it when the pressure is on.
If you jump guard in a fight, you might do it without thinking in the street. And well, there is a catharsis of seeing guys get fouled for slamming BJJ players for jumping guard, and I support no slam rules in BJJ. But if you’re going to develop combatively bad habits by exploiting that rule, I have no sympathy for you. Guard pulling is great if you use it after a bad takedown, or if you get sprawled on. But not scooting around on your butt while someone else is standing. Guard jumping only is useful in a street fight if you blow a dudes knees out(which is common with guard Jumping) and even then there is a high probability you’ll still get slammed.
Ban slamming for safety by all means, but also ban guard pulling and jumping. Otherwise BJJ academies really shouldn’t say they teach self-defense.
Yet as much as I complain about bad habits, there are many good ones.
Thing is if BJJ players didn’t always start out on the knees and even had some distance management and footwork, it’s still very useful in a self-defense context. Pulling guard isn’t even bad if done in a way that steals balance. Hell you could screw up and end up on your back, why not pop the guys shoulder with an omoplata and get up? How else do you learn to get off or fight off your back? Wrestling is good for getting up, but often modified to MMA. Lots of them will turn the back to get up and get choked. It’s BJJ or Catch-wrestling that will teach getting up without someone sinking and RNC. Or sitting out after side control.
BJJ will always be an integral part not only in MMA but also even self-defense, because bad guys often are training, and BJJ is quickly becoming very commercial, resulting in many more people both good and bad getting familiar with grappling on the ground, people who may continue to fight or try to hold you down as their friends come.
Perhaps you’re fighting your drunk uncle, BJJ and wrestling will help pin him down without hurting him.
Problem is, while there are more good habits than bad habits, sometimes the specific bad habits are big ones.
This is my bias, but between BJJ, Judo, Wrestling, Catch Wrestling and Sambo, I think Catch and Sambo have the least bad habits to cross over to the street. BJJ, and Judo especially are going down a rabbit hole of being hyper specialized. Freestyle Wrestling is that nice little middle ground between them all. I certainly wouldn’t want to fuck with a freestyle wrestler.
Striking:
The striking equivalent is more subtle, though there are blatant onces such as touch contact sparring for karate, which teaches people not to follow up and throw out body mechanics that can damage someone in favour of very fast strikes that can touch, but often do little else, no grabbing or catching kicks. World Taekwondo Federation rules don’t score punching very high, so TKD practitioners often have no idea how to defend punches or even throw them, along with having so much protective equipment that renders throwing powerful strikes anywhere but the head as moot, and mostly only just kicks to the head, and once again no grabbing or catching kicks. All of these can develop just terrible habits.
And before you say it, yes I am aware the intercepting in and out punches and kicks of point karate are becoming more popular in MMA. But often karate fighters either have to unlearn years of bad habits as they pick up kickboxing for MMA, or they always did a form of fighting similar to kickboxing.
Good timing. But notice how if it wasn’t to a touch, she would still get hit even if she got there first? Notice the lack of hip torque? The lack of defense after the strike? All arm, and not even committed.
Full contact sport fighting isn’t without faults. In boxing for instance, people will block and cover relying on the gloves, making targeting very different, though many boxers would be harder to hit in a real fight with our without boxing gloves. Still, it’s a notable difference. Covering in MMA for instance involves more use of the elbows, much more rolling and parrying than boxing. Boxers tend to Philly shell, roll, slip, cover with globes more. MMA it’s more roll, parry, elbow block for a cover.
Both men don’t even try to generally cover to deal with a flurry. Watch how he covers. Different.
Old boxing guards that are considered outdated or specialized are far more common in MMA with smaller gloves. Long guard/Mummy Guard is often used, Cross arm and even reverse cross arm. People will use the Philly Shell though in transitions.
Not nearly as common in boxing as it was in the older era of Foreman etc.
The bigger issue to me is protective equipment. Gloves, wraps, and tape mean someone can just pour on strikes and not worry about breaking your hand. If you look at boxing and Dutch Muay Thai, the general strategy is to constantly be pouring on strikes, which strategically is good, the person acting always is in a better advantage than someone reacting. But one reason they can get away with this is they know they can throw as much as they want as hard as they want because nothing will break. There is much less picking of shots or looking for openings.
Now Mike Tyson is someone you don’t want to ever fight, and every street fight he was in since learning boxing, he completely wrecked the guys with a single punch.
But Mike Tyson broke his hand every time, taking weeks and months to recover. Chances are even if you’re a power puncher, you won’t know if your punch will knock the guy out, and if your hand breaks while your opponent is still conscious, or you dropped one guy and have two others, you’re now in a bad situation with a broken hand.
Although the skill level is much lower in Bare Knuckle boxing promotions, the strategy they use is more conducive to how one would strike in a street fight. They pick their punches, pressure is very much more ‘real’ in the sense if they pour it on, they truly know they won’t break something. And this is knowing a single punch to a forehead could change the whole tune of the fight against them.
Thing is I actually greatly value the use of boxing gloves and shin pads. Boxing gloves not only let you let loose a little more so you don’t hurt your partner(let loose within reason) but boxing gloves also greatly force a person to do Sen no sen(Hit them while they hit you) and body motion and evasion without relying on parrys. They also allow you to learn to roll with punches without marking up your face.
Shin pads are great, allows you to really experiment with your kicks without hurting yourself or your partner. But shin pads can give you the habit to constantly kick, even if they are blocked or checked. Take the shin pads off, and suddenly kicking must be done more carefully. One checked kick can stop you from throwing another one, or even lower your ability to check a kick yourself. A person does not need to snap their shin like Anderson Silva to have the fight ruined.
Lastly it’s the habit of basically waiting for the Ref to break the clinch. This doesn’t apply to Muay thai, as they spend a great deal of time in the Clinch before it’s stopped. The only negative maybe that could be said about Muay thai clinches is no driving double or single leg take downs, but they are able to lift and dump. As a result Muay Thai has an awareness of close quarters fighting and some sense of take down defense.
But boxing and Kickboxing tends to have guys fight where clinches are broken up regardless of who or how it’s initiated. ANd a common tactic is to just sit there and wait for it to be broken up. Sometimes they try to take little shots from over under. In muay thai they would be guarding against dumps, trying to swim for position and take control or break it. In boxing they wait for the ref, especially modern boxing.
Imagine what would happen if he didn’t know how to clinch?
Just like grappling combat sports, striking ones largely have more good habits than bad habits. And I dare say unless you’re doing touch contact competitions and Olympic TKD, most of the good habits outweigh the bad. There isn’t anything big and glaring that has ‘get yourself killed’ vibes like never starting standing up or scooting around on the butt. There is a sense of range, and if you do Muay Thai or Sanda, Lethwei you can probably even clinch and do some basic standing grappling. But there are notable differences that could really cost you in an altercation, such as a broken hand, or a cover heavy style that won’t work with bare knuckle or even smaller gloves.
Problems with MMA
Remember what I said about habits? Well ground and pound is great in many situations. But I have two anecdotes that highlight a change in tactics.
I talked to one MMA fighter who came to a gym (the one where you lift weights) all fucked up. Asked him what happened. He said he got attacked by a bunch of guys. He took one down, started pounding the guy, but then got booted in the head and they swarmed him.
Happened to another guy I know who did BJJ. He did a take down but got kicked in the head.
There are many videos on youtube showing the same.
In MMA and lots of combat sports, people are expected to have constant attachment with the takedown of the core. They follow the guy, they are committed.
What I try to do and teach is for people to go to Knee ride and scan once they get a take down, usually holding a limb. If the coast is clear, it’s safe to commit. If it isn’t, hit the bastard as you disengage.
This is not a habit often taught in combat sports, which is to scan after every take down, to keep from getting entangled.
Stalling andUSING THE CLOCK.
Both in striking and grappling competitions. There is always some who scores some points, then knowing they are ahead either hold someone in their guard until the timer runs out, or basically runs around lots with footwork until the clock runs out.
Here is the thing about both getting ambushed/counter assault and Monkey dances: If you have time to waste, you’re probably not really in a street fight.
The closest thing I can think of regarding someone stalling was a monkey dance encounter a friend online posted about. How basically a guy got mad and attacked him, and he just jumped around lots staying out of range of the guy, until eventually help arrived. But never heard of anything like that happening again.
Like firstly, you’re not in a fight. Not really.
Why the fuck are you staying there? Just run away if your feet move fast enough to make that distance. If you’re fighting a guy stepping up to you, you look like shit in that context too. Landing one more punch over the guy isn’t going to help.
For grappling, if you’re on the bottom and you’re stalling in a real fight, you’re going to get your face pounded in. Might take time, but gravity and position are against you. Less of an issue for a BJJ black belt, though if he sweeps or submits a big dude on top of him, he’s not stalling is he? He’s acting.
But holding them and that’s it? Shakeel O Niel got on top of BJJ black belts, no strikes allowed and he still mauled them because he’s fucking huge.
To be fair there are rules in many combat sports that punish stalling, though scoring points and just waiting out the clock in closed guard still happens in grappling.
And for striking, Floyd Mayweather is a thing. Not only does his tactic of letting people pound on his philly shell leave him badly open for take downs and low kicks(See above) but the fact is he loses a few rounds, stalls. Uses the clinch to get things reset. Doesn’t use a real grip in the clinch so he can feed shots until his opponent actually grabs him, which results in it getting broken up.
I’m not against someone with a disposition of being a counter striker or grappler, counter wrestler. But that isn’t stalling, that often is acting. People need energy to counter strike or grapple, and in ‘real’ fights energy is constant, you have what you need to act. If you don’t, then again I question if you are even really facing violence.
TUNNEL VISION:
Focussing exclusively on one person in front of you constantly. You tune out the crowds, you tune out everything but the opponent and maybe the referee. It’s natural, we humans use it when hunting. It’s one reason we have great coordination compared to apes, we can focus on something. Adrenaline can make us hyper-fixate.
Problem is a casual search on youtube shows dudes engaging in a fight, winning it. But then get cold clocked by the enemies friend they were not aware of or watched for.
This one can be very hard to avoid, since many people do martial arts through private lessons, or small schools with small class numbers. Even schools with many members have separate classes, different attendence or sometimes it might be a slow month.
It can be hard to teach and train multiple opponents. I certainly can’t play with it or work on it right now, I mostly teach private lessons and I teach an MMA class that isn’t focussed on multiple opponents. The people I have that want to learn self-defense don’t have the numbers, and the class with the numbers doesn’t want self-defense stuff.
So out of all points, this is the one is the most understandable. We naturally gain tunnel vision, and it only is through habit that we break it. But sometimes it’s hard to break that habit in a school, both sport and RBSD.
Dealing with the freeze.
You read news stories of woman who are police officers and security guards get abused by their husbands, partners etc. Or you sometimes talk to people in law enforcement and violent professions that in their professional life constantly fight but can be victimized when they are not working.
This applies to martial artists as well. Men and woman can be really good, really skilled, and if they are ‘on’ really tough. But when shit hits the fan they are useless.
If you saw the picture above, you know I’m talking about fight, flight, freeze. It’s natural like tunnel vision.
You can have perfect technique, you can be really strong. You can even probably take a shit load of pain.
But very few combat sport schools teach how to deal with freezing. Freezing can happen to anyone, though past trauma makes it worse. One thing is though, only training and familiarization of chaos and discomfort can make the freeze shorter, makes it easier to break it.
The reason male and female officers/soldiers/bouncers can act clear headed and without hesitation when facing sudden violence is because they are expecting it. From the moment they enter a police car, sit at the door of a bar, arrive on scene or even the moment they put on a uniform. They are not truly caught by surprise, they are in many ways waiting for it. But in civilian life they let their guard down. They are not used to surprise, because a good LEO or any similar professional should walk in expecting trouble.
The freeze can happen to anyone. But it isn’t an unbeatable power.
Now many RBSD schools don’t really teach it. They talk about it, but many don’t have drills for it.
But I was fortunate enough not to worry about that shit
My karate/self-defense teacher had great drills for this. They simulate getting sucker punched by delivering a shock to the system, and instead of freezing or cowering and running, you must fight. Almost everyone freezes in these drills for at least a few seconds, even if you know it’s coming.
But do it enough times and you gain good habits(Remember that word) such as acting immediately and using the strike or impact as information, a trigger.
The only thing we haven’t covered is a stab, the sensation of getting stabbed or shot as a trigger. But give us 800 bucks and some shock knives and we can figure it out.
Steve Morris apparently also has drills that deal with getting caught with a sucker punch of tackle, to train acting quick and decisively to condition out the freeze.
Thing is, in defense of typical RBSD they atleast have scenario training. The expectation in many RBSD schools is you don’t get surprised because you understand the signs of oncoming violence. But I’ll save the best for last.
More habits: Always executing violence within a range of rules.
Of all my critique of combat sports, this is by far the weakest. They say to learn to fight, go for targets and do things that are illegal.
Thing is though, eyes, throat, groin are often banned. But if someone is tough, even a kick to the gnards an eye pork or even a throat shot won’t reliably end an attack. Those tactics are great stacked with fundamental combat principles and a general sense of how to move is ingrained, but not by thesmelves. And even when someone who knows how to fight uses them, they sometimes can be ignored.
I was punched in the throat hard, it hurt for a month when I swallowed. But I finished the sparring round.
There was a fight between a savate fighter in Japan vs a catch wrestler. The savate fighter gauged the eye of the catch wrestler, to the point that after the fight, the catch wrestler went blind in that eye.
Yet despite the aftermath, he largely just took the pain and basically choked the savate guy out, then fought two more times, winning his next match to ultimately get defeated by Rickson fucking Gracie himself.
BUUUUUT I wouldn’t bring this up if there wasn’t validity to this critique of combat sports. Sometimes the rules don’t exist for fighter safety. Frankly there are bad habits formed from rules.
Infact my above critiques of BJJ guard pulling/Jumping and striking styles and the clinch are purely based on rules.
Guard jumping relies on people not being allowed to slam, while breaking the clinch exists only to make fights more entertaining for spectators, nothing else.
Slamming is banned due to safety, and because it is easy to do in a fight. So slam.
Clinching, dirty boxing is very effective. So dirty box.
In Judo they are not allowed to touch the legs. Not because of safety, but because they wanted to distinguish themselves from wrestling, Judoka were using them too much.
Well guess what? IF it’s banned because it worked too fucking good, you probably should learn leg takedowns. In BJJ leg attacks can be dangerous but are high percentage. Learn how to leg lock.
Most notable is head butts.
People say head butts are banned due to safety. But if you get a concussion from a head butt or a fist, which one is worse? I don’t think your brain cares what body part caused it damage. Punches should be banned for the same reason.
But headbutts are very effective, and if you have any wrestling training, it should come easy.
Even boxing doesn’t allow headbutts, but notice where he places his head? It would be so easy. But for some cosmetic reason, it’s banned.
Here too a headbutt would be very easy, it would end the fight right there. But it’s illegal in MMA to throw a head butt.
And when headbutting is allowed, it changes how people clinch, how they strike, how they enter. ANd as you see in this GIF, it even changes hand fighting.
Don’t get me started on hitting the back of the head and brain stem. That shit is easy to hit and it’s ended peoples careers, put people in permanent wheelchairs.
Now as easy as it is to hit the back of the head, I totally agree with making it illegal to strike. No one should die because someone wanted to win a prize fight, no one should be crippled either.
Punching, kicking, grappling, knives, sticks and gun skills are all just a piece of a bigger pie.
This part here is the most important point on what MMA and combat sports schools are missing regarding ‘street’ violence.
Based on the RBSD people I have talked to and trained with, the mechanics of violence are not the main picture. Self-defense is much more than being able to win a fight.
The reason why Combat Sambo folks and competitive MMA fighters are so good at the physical act of fighting is because that’s all they do. It’s all about developing the tools and getting damn good at them.
Tools for combat and using tools is all they ever do. Of course they will do physical acts of violence better.
Traditional martial arts schools on the other hand are concerned with preservation of a system and a perfection of a specific way of moving than producing fighters, even if they SAY they want to teach people to fight and defend themselves.
RBSD tackles actually stopping people from being victimized, not just winning fights. Yes they neglect physical skills more than a Muay Thai or MMA gym, but they also deal with everything leading up to a violent encounter. Woman who are combat experts will face domestic abuse from husbands, because the relationship is the problem and there is the freeze(Remember that) which is not dealt with. The woman could be fucking Rhonda Rousey, but if her husband if Fedor, she won’t kick his ass, and probably doesn’t want to because the relationship is complicated. A woman going to a martial arts class for self-defense is better off learning how to set boundaries and learn to leave bad situations than a mean overhand right.
For men it’s not as bad, it’s often social for men. The whole ‘hey bro, what the fuck you looking at’ type thing. Verbal de-escalation skills are more important than fighting ones. Knowing what makes social violence work, knowing that posturing and looking strong can make social violence work but in ‘anti-social’ violence it is a deterrent. You might be an old man or a part of a hated demographic. You have to know it’s coming.
Dealing with an ambush is very good to know, learn to deal with worse case scenario. But what RBSD often focuses a great deal on is recognizing everything leading up to it. Knowing your victim profile, what would make you a victim. Why you may be selected. Or why someone would want to challenge you if you’re too damn alpha to be a victim.
It’s about recognizing pre-attack cues.
Hell even running away is a skill. People think running away is easy, that we know how to do it. I hear this both from TMA people or a combat sports athletes.
But if you do any pressure training that requires escaping to win, it takes surprisingly long just to know where the escape route is, or recognizing it without people blocking you.
Randy King has a great drill where he walks around with his hand up. Peope must finish the drill, or disengage from an attack, find randy among people running around, and then slap his hand. It simulates looking for an escape route.
Forget escaping properly, how many combat sport schools even have escaping as something they do? how many BJJ schools that have ‘LEARN TO PROTECT YOURSELF!” in advertising teaching sitting out and booking it?
None. It’s always about winning the fight, never leaving it. Running away is only given lip service, and that’s all.
And even that is directly related to situations.
So much of self-defense classes need to be about boundary setting and building healthy relationships, so people know you’re not going to be taken advantage of, or that you’re not easily isolated, that if you die people will be looking and asking questions. If you’re some meek drug addict in a corner who even homeless people don’t want to talk to, you’re an easy target, they know if you disappear there will be few questions. They know you may let them get close to you.
I know at least three RBSD schools that work on these non-combat skill related tiers. Randy King and Rory Miller are one of them, another is WPD, Wise Warrior Gym deals with it. So does some city funded RBSD here in my home town, I talked to them about their program and they state recognizing types of violence and much of what I stated.
None of the combat sports schools I have seen address any of these topics.
One thing I will give combat sports is the fact they teach resilience. To fight through pain. One reason kicking someone in the balls to end a fight isn’t always reliable is many criminals live violent or physical lives, they can push through pain and grind through discomfort. MMA, wrestling, BJJ and even some karate schools deal with pushing through discomfort. Building resilience, and resilience is an important part of personnel protection. We sometimes die because we ‘give up’ fighting. We fail to commit to a course of action when it gets messy.
Lots of people who want to claim that Kosen-Judo(Judo before the olympics fucked it up) was still inferior to BJJ in terms of the quality of it’s overall grappling and ground work. Never mind Kimura, Mifune, Maeda were doing De La Riva guard and X-guard long before modern BJJ players did it, they simply don’t want to admit they understood NeWaza before BJJ.
Often they attribute Kimura beating Helio due to the fact Kimura was much bigger than Helio was. And yeah, Kimura was big. He’s wasn’t just big, he was basically really muscular too, making it easy to understand how Helio could be technically better on the ground, but Kimura just smashed him.
Okay I can grant that.
But again, much of BJJ history though openly available to the public, you can find this information on Wikipedia with plenty of citations, and then googling much of the Wikipedia information about these guys tends to yield more articles.
Yet it isn’t generally well known even to most BJJ players. There are guys much more technically skilled than me, black belts and world champions that don’t even know there was a lineage of BJJ that wasn’t related to the Gracies.
Part of that ignorance is the fact that Helio wasn’t the only BJJ black belt that Kimura defeated.
Valademar Santanna was a BJJ black belt under Helio Gracie. Who fought Helio in a Vale Tudo match and knocked him out. Santanna wasn’t weak and frail, and he wasn’t small. Santanna had defeated Helio by defending against submissions and literally kicking Helio in the head and knocking him out, because Santanna was also a boxer and capoeira practitioner. He could strike.
Kimura has a submission win against Santanna, and has one draw.
Helio vs Yukio Kato
This is a fight Helio officially won. But there wasn’t the typical result where a Gracie basically held someone down in guard, slowly working to a submission. Helio had a hard time getting anything done.
THe first time Kato fought Helio it was a draw. Helio couldn’t get any submission on and Kato generally seemed to stay on top. Kato isn’t that much bigger than Helio. This wasn’t a Kimura vs Helio situation or a roided out ken Shamrock vs Royce Gracie (I totally side with Royce over Ken Shamrock.)
The second fight, Helio won was because both fighters went out of the ring. The referee tried to call them back, but while Kato was stunned, Helio choked him unconscious. The foul wasn’t recognized and Helio was declared the winner.
Not only was the victory contreversial, but Kato wasn’t floundering on the ground or outpowering Helio. He threw him around and generally got good positions.
What’s the point of this?
Functionally Kosen Judo is largely dead. The ground work of Kosen Judo is found more in modern BJJ gyms rather than Judo schools. One can argue Sambo has also largely preserved Kosen-Judo techniques. We just never saw them until recently because western exposure to Sambo even in the 90s wasn’t high skilled guys, mostly Olympic Judoka that dabbled in it. Only recently are we seeing some really qualified people teaching the art, particularly Combat Sambo.
But that’s sambo not Judo.
The reason this topic is even worth talking about is the fact that no one has created anything new. What seems to be new in martial arts is almost always rediscovery. Or things falling out of fashion, forgotten, until brought back, and we think it’s new.
I have a book on Chin-Na(Chinese locking) from the late 1800s that shows guys doing closed guard and sweeps from guard, translated by Tim Cartmill.
I have another book also translated by Tim Cartmill on Chinese wrestling. No ground work here. Just a Tai chi/Hsing I/Pa Kua guy using grappling techniques which looked a great deal lot like No Gi Judo.
I have a Kushti-Wrestling book that shows leg locks, submissions, what essentially looks like Catch Wrestling but goofy looking desi brown dudes rather than British and American wrestlers.
McDojo life basically made a video attacking a clip of Rory Miller doing his one step drill. He received backlash so he did a follow up clip having BJJ experts, MMA fighters and combat experts all smashing the clip. One theme was many didn’t like the nature of slow motion training, including Sensei Seth whom I actually like very much.
This puzzled me, because I did martial arts all my life since I was 12, but I never gained any ability to actually fight until I started training with Rick Wilson at 19.
Rick did both slow and fast training, and I benefitted the most from the slow motion training, to the point my unathletic ass could beat more athletic strikers to the punch, and general fighting.
So why did I have so much success with slow motion training, why did it help me, but generally does not help other RBSD and traditional people? Steve Morris who I actually like does not like slow motion training either. Yet why did I benefit?
I think the answer is simple: Slow motion training is good for playing, learning to see timing and position during movement, create perception. What Rick would call the LEARNING ZONE. But slow motion training is NOT good during the TESTING or CONDITIONING ZONE.
Many self defense and traditional schools have no dynamic training, they will do scenario work and psychological conditioning in slow motion. If anything, they often have no pressure testing at all.
Rick on the other hand would make us do slow motion work, then slowly speed up and break rhythem. We do scenario work by drills to simulate going off a strike, stab or attack called SLAM and BLAST which generally we can go faster but controlled(Because even Muay Thai and boxing gyms don’t try to kill their training partners) which is a hard adrenaline drill, simulates the chemical dump of a real assault and the shock and awe.
Thing is the BLAST and SLAM are not drills where you’re learning new movement or techniques, they are drills for learning to integrate skills and make them come out when needed.
Slow motion is amazing however when actually learning something. We have a drill called Night of the LIving dead which is between learning and conditioning. It’s learning because generally it’s done slow and thus we can ‘see’ snapshots in the fight as they happen. But it’s a conditioned response drill because it teaches an attack indset and to control our chemical dump because we force ourselves to move slow even as someone mauls us, what Rick calls soft adrenaline.
While I don’t know if that crazy bastard Steve Morris would see our training and like it, I personally believe our school hits many of his requirements for what good self defense is. We learn to work and get information from an initial strike when we are ambushed, we have drills for that. We do problem solving under pressure. We pressure test.
The only thing we do he wouldn’t like is slow motion during the learning stage, but that isn’t our pressure checking. It’s a very specific purpose.
In defense of Rory Miller, yeah that clip of him doing the ONE STEP drill holding coffee was not a good look for him in a professional DVD, and his partners were too compliant. But I’ve done seminars with him, trained with him. He pressure tests all the time with his INFIGHTING sparring and his one step can be very useful for problem solving and learning with a partner that doesn’t just fall over. It was just a bad clip to put out into the world. Tom Deblass and Kit Dale and Angela Hill really didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t teaching a fighting technique but teaching thought process.
And that’s the thing, as much as I suck the dick of fully resistant combat sports, they sometimes are so dominated by young men and woman with aggression, they fail to appreciate a cerebral approach to martial arts.
What's the deal with Adeel? 