Who it trained better for a real self-defense attack?
Those trained in combat sports such as: Boxing, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Wrestling, MMA (cagefighting), etc. Where it is purely a sport but, produces tough athletes who can fight.
Or…
Traditional Martial Arts: Aikido, Japanese Jujutsu, Kung-Fu, Karate, etc. Those that train primarilty for street self-defense only and not sport.
Or a 3rd choice: Those who do it 50/50 like: Judo, Brazillian Jiujitsu, Tae Kwon Do, etc. Those that have a martial art side but, also have a pure sport side too.
Which do you think prepares someone better for the realities of a street attack?
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20 Responses to “Who do you think has more realistic self-defense ability: Those who do combat sports or traditional M.A.?”
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From a purely self defence point of view, I would say the first one.
Before i start…I would like to express an opinion about karate:
It is NOT as self defense martial art. It is primarily a sport now a days. I’ve seen classes train, they don’t do self defense. They learn how to balance on one foot and fake kicks until they get a few hits in sparring. I have yet to see self defense training taught in the Do jo.
I think the 50/50 is better. You CAN use martial art strikes in a real combat situation. *Most blocks are very effective as they are powerful and easy to do.*
In the fifty-fifty, you not only learn traditional martial arts, but you also learn how to defend yourself. I know u know this, but it combines a mixture of the two and creates an effective combination.
But if you really want to lean how to street fight, like REAL street fight (knives, guns, baseball bats, whole nine yards) I would study the 100% self defence, especially **Krav Maga**
looking at this in general without going into the individual and the quality of their training, I would say Traditional MA for the reasons you said, they train for self defence. You fight how you train, if your training to rules of a sport, you may find yourself limiting your ‘street’ defence, I’m thinking of groin strikes and eye gouges and the likes.
My answer may sound weird but here goes:
I think traditional martial artist have a better a chance in a street fight against average Joe’s, but a traditional martial artist would loose against a sport oriented person.
Traditional best for street
Combat sport best against trained opponents(even on the streets)
But then again it all depends on the fighter and not really on the art.
I would categorise those martial arts differently.
Frankly I don’t think 50/50 arts work, there is always more emphasis on one type of fighting unless there are separate classes altogether.
I think tradition martial arts work best. The only problem is that you can’t have a fully resisting opponent because someone WILL DEFINITELY get hurt. No way you can practise an eye gouge and arm break on a regular basis. Sometimes self defence classes do things on too many assumptions. I’ve been to self defence classes, they better ones are the ones that has contingency attacks. e.g. it’s not usual for a rapist to wear a cup, what happens when you go for a groin kick combo and doesn’t work? a good self defence class will look at all the messy ends instead of trying to make techniques work and neat. I love my karate class because the instructor had a go at everyone for thinking too much about stance, cleanness and perfect technique when we were doing street applications. He said no one was judging and you must always be in a position to move from one technique to the next. If you watch real fights, they are never ‘clean’ technique wise because both opponents are struggling and usually similar ability.
I have no respect for mma nor ufc fighters it’s not self defense and real martial arts is best.Traditional Martial Arts: Aikido, Japanese Jujutsu, Kung-Fu, Karate, etc. Those that train primarilty for street self-defense only and not sport.
Doesn’t matter…. Either can produce good realistic self-defense ability as long as the practitioner and the teacher train with the Rules of Street Self-Defense in mind.
Rule #1 – There are no rules. (All is fair…. Hidden weapons, multiple attackers, eye gouging, chokes, biting, etc.)
Rule #2 – When in doubt about what kind of attack you may encounter, refer to rule #1.
Rule #3 – Your main obligation is to use only enough force necessary to survive attack and stop the attacker so you can get to safety. If your attacker(s) are willing to continue to attack you, refer to rule #1.
As long as you train with this in mind, the method you choose is less important than how well you train. Someone can train an advertised “street” self defense like Krav Maga or you can train a traditional martial art like Tai Chi Chuan. Every method can offer something to help the practitioner.
It’s not WHAT you train that counts, but HOW you train that counts.
Be well.
To answer this simply it is how you train.
i practice these sort of street drills in my class, but it isn’t under intense pressure & i am aware that that could be my downfall if i get into a sticky situation (ps my art is pure self-defence), my art if done at any fast pace by novices would end up with broken bones left right & centre if not careful.
alot of MMA idiots who take up the art generally aren’t trained or taught about street fighting & so they think that because they can beat somebody up in a ring that it will do good on the streets.
so although UFC blah blah has a more practical straight out sparring that prepares you for fights, it lacks in the fact that it is a sport & it doesn’t teach you how to deal with that sort of stuff.
Traditional arts: well its considered rude to say they are inneffective & as i stated it all depends on how you train, things such as Aikido i can’t see being very useful without ALOT of practice, its techniques are extremely complicated & couped up with the fact that they can’t spar (due to moves giving definite injuries) it lacks in an ”aggressive up in your face” style, now Aikido isn’t about beating the head off somebody but they can’t train in that enviorment too handily.
Sport arts: naturally just as i pointed out for UFC etc they are a sport & people should recognise that they are training in a sport enviorment.
i would agree with Judo helping you (i’ve seen it in action working very effectively) but BJJ & TKD focus mainly on one aspect of fighting (ground & long range)
TKD kicks aren’t handy to use where most street fights occur (pubs etc)
& BJJ is a ground game where generally in a street fight there will be more than one attacker (be it a randomer jumping in or his friend etc)
it isn’t to say that these arts are completely useless they at the very least offer you some sense of getting into fights, but well everything has its weakness.
the best way i can see to training is a mix similar to Judo, ie sparring ontop of a self defence situation but of course then you aren’t training how to deal with weapons etc.
its simple no matter what art you do its going to have its weaknesses & you yourself will have your flaws, if you are aware of those then that already is a good step forward.
in terms of training your mind: self-defence arts (pure self-defence) are the best
in terms of training somewhat for a fight: MMA etc
for learning an art properly in a sport enviorment: judo (but like i said it is a sport at the end of the day)
The so-called ‘traditional’ martial artist has the best chance in a street fight because that is what they are trained for! Knife usage, gun defense, stick defense, multiple attack scenarios, pressure points, small joint manipulations, eye gouges, skin ripping, vein yanking, etc. are all what traditional martial art teach you year after year. Boxers, wrestlers, mma types get no such instruction.
Those who train realistically against fully resisting opponents, that could be the first or the second option, depending on the school/teacher.
I think all of them have a degree of actual self defense. I myself have been in Boxing, Brazilian jujitsu and muay thai. Karate is the best for basic self defense. For more advanced levels of self defense in the real world, I suggest going for a mixture of several fighting styles. Bruce Lee knew
about eight different styles. This was how he created his own style called, Jeet Kun Do.
Anyone can create a style from many. Just remember, on the streets anything is legal and anything can happen. It is best to try and avoid the fight until you have no other choice. This will help you
as your opponent will underestimate you. Then you will be more successful in defending yourself.
Some answers here I agree some will always have a disagreement.
It all matters on how you train, the closer to a real fight you train the better you are going to be. Sport oriented Martial Arts allow them to compete against a stranger, who is trying to beat you, and is a full bore adrenaline based situation. The only solace you have is that there are safety measures in place to keep you from getting killed, and to a degree you know what you are getting. (i.e. 1 person, no weapons). But you have the ability to go all out against a stranger to test your skill, and a skilled stranger no less. Every single combat sport participant can tell you that they have fouled, or had to keep control to keep from breaking the rules. This is not a hinderance.
Few issues: “You can’t train with a FULLY resisting opponent, you can’t eye gouge or break arms”
No but you can simulate it to a very high degree. Joint locks are some of the best way to break joints period, dynamic strikes to joints often don’t actually work because a person can bend their arm, or move in any number of ways. People also don’t realize that attempting to break a large joint requires a lot of force and leverage.
But aside from that, there are ways to train eye gounges/rakes and every single “deadly” move there is within a given context of safety. In Israel, one of the things they did to emphasize the effectiveness over rakes and ineffectiveness of gouges was to have one person wear safety glasses and the other person to finger paint on their thumb and finger tips, and have you go at it. Guy with safety glasses does everything he can to avoid the gouge or rake, and guy going against safety glass man did everything he could to get to the eyes. Result.. most of the time you barely got any paint on the safety glasses, the times you did it was smudges from rakes…
Groin shots can be tested with cups, redman suits, etc.
Every single one of these techniques should be trained this way because in reality, none of them by themselves are fight ending techniques, including broken joints.
I think how someone trains is what prepares them… but very few if any can completely prepare you for the “realities of a street attack” because people rarely just get jumped into a physical hand to hand confrontation.
No matter what training you do, most situations are avoidable.. the thing most of us “train” for, is extremely rarely going to happen. i.e. guy jumps out of bushes and wants to physically assault you, and has no weapons.
I mean most situations we spend hours training for doesn’t really prepare us for getting hit in the back of the head, fighting while already dazed or injured or talking down someone who is just completely irrational.
I think what people define as “street applications” aren’t in actuality things they will ever encounter in the street. You are rarely going to be in all out kill or be killed sort of hand to hand situation that you could not have avoided. You are rarely going to be in a physical confrontation that you could not have avoided period, much less one in which your life is on the line.
And guess what, depending on the state half of what people think they would do in the street would get them arrested… “There are no rules, eye gouges, bites, etc” umm there are rules. We call them LAWS. If a crazy homeless guy jumps out of the bushes at you, and you gouge his eyes, kick his balls, and throat punch him.. you have committed assult.
If asshat in the bar pinches your girlfriend’s butt and you two meet outside and you go for eyes, nuts, or joints, he is 100% entitled to use deadly force on you in self defense. Going for eyes, balls, or joints puts what would be “willing combatants” into a “fear of loss of life or limb” scenario. Being the first person to go for a vital area makes you the aggressor period.
“Better to be judged by 12 then carried by 6″ is a damn ridiculous argument, because if it is a straight hand to hand, or you both are willing participants, your chances of getting killed or even proving that your life was in danger are pretty low. Every situation is different but still.. is it “better to be raped by 20 then get beat up by 1″? On a side note, in prison fighting for your anal virginity is definately grounds to use all those eye gouges and “street” moves…
I mean there is a whole lot to get into with all of that. The truth is real self defense is it exists in reality today is hardly trained period, while you might be prepared for a hand to hand fight, or even think that you can take on a weapon weilding person empty handed, or more than one person. The simple reality is very few people train for that properly period because of the unpredictable nature it comes from it is nearly impossible to do so. You can try to replicate it as close to possible.. but you can still be caught, still be surprised, and it is your own instincts then that save you or doom you.
Martial Arts are great, because of them working security and doing hand to hand stuff I do very well. I do well because I trained as close to the real thing as possible. Myself and any person who has worked Security or Law Enforcement will tell you that we use our heads and luck still plays a factor. I count myself lucky that someone I put down and out didn’t come to, go to their vehicle pull out a gun and come back in firing. Or that when I am walking out of the movie theatre with my wife that some moron driving by didn’t recognize me as that guy “that beat me up that one time” and run me over with his vehicle.
Or that the buddy of a guy I was choking out didn’t whip out a knife or gun and shoot or stab me.
Fortunately every knife I have had pulled on me was weilded by a total moron and not a prison hardened felon, otherwise I would have never seen it coming. (True Story: Guy pulls out a balisong, starts whipping it around, cuts his own hand open, puts knife away and starts to run)
Sorry for going off tangent.
Readers digest: I don’t believe in the whole difference between “sport” and “traditional”. Competetion was at the root of testing Martial Arts since it’s inception. While I see where people train “exclusively for the competetion” type aspect differ, the truth is even that is a great preparation. I did competetive Judo for years, that doesn’t mean when someone comes at me my first thought is to fight for grip, grab and throw… I am happy to be free of the rules that keep me from punching guys in the face when I have them down.
You have schools and instructors that train effectively and those that do not. If you are truly training for self defense you come as close as you can to the real thing that still allows for your to safely repeat it over and over again. This means timing, speed, resistance, intensity. Pantomiming attacks to vital areas does not build muscle memory that is going to come when the adrenaline is pumping and your brain goes into fight of flight.
Thinking that what seperates you for preparing for “the street” is vital area attacks is patently ridiculous. Because in reality, the more likely you are to defeat an opponent without maiming or killing him, the better your chances are legally, civilly, morally, and just intellectually, especially if you want to avoid reprisals later on. If I am truly skilled I can knock a guy out without killing him. If I can strike an eye, then I can just as easily hit a chin, it is a whole lot larger of a target.
Unless I am in a warzone, or someone is truly psychotic, the need for me to “take no prisoners” isn’t really going to be there. If I am in a situation where deadly force is called for, I own Conceal and Carry Permit, I carry a knife EVERYWHERE but the shower. (legal 3 1/2 inch blade tactical folder) and if I am out a night I have a 280 Lumen taclight with a striking bezel. If for some reason the various weapons are not at my disposal, I am using sand, rocks, anything I can find to assist me, and I will be making as much noise as humanly possible.
Funny how that stuff is rarely covered in any Martial Art “traditional” or “sport”.
Just my take.
i’d say TMAs, because if they’re training traditionally they are training realistically and a TMA were the styles used for war and killing.
but it comes down to the quality of training in the end. many ‘TMA’ schools are crappy and just push students through as quick as they can, but i’m sure there are many MMA fad schools who do the same thing now.
and btw judo isn’t 50/50 it was created purely for sport.
Neither of these choices. The answer isn’t WHO or WHAT STYLE. The answer lies in HOW you train and HOW you think. If you commit yourself to addressing realistic self-defense you should have a better ability to adjust psychologically and physically in such situations. A lot of traditional martial arts address this. However there needs to be a fine balance between combat sports and simply throwing kicks into empty air. One needs to be able to train realistically without holding back punches in order to gauge proper response and develop attributes required to handle a self-defense situation. That means training based around scenarios, putting full power into focus mitts and pads, wearing helmets and armor and simulating real situations.
If training realistically is one half of self-defense, training psychologically is the other half. When you’re talking about self-defense you’re talking about everything as a whole – self-preservation as a whole. It transcends more than just winning an MMA fight in a ring somewhere. It’s more than just fists. Starting from the way you think and perceive threats before they happen, the way you walk and scan around your environment to what you should do to neutralize potential aggression and what techniques you should do to minimize the time you spend in order to extract yourself to safety. That means scrapping the ol’ put-your-dukes-up routine in favor of something like a quick eye jab and running away.
You’d be hard pressed to find MMA or traditional martial arts schools that incorporate this kind of training into their curriculum.
Many people assume fight sports are self-defense. While you certainly could triumph over an opponent outside of the ring, combat sports do NOT equate to self-defense. In combat sports you have a fixed monitored environment with rules and regulations. You are going against a single unarmed opponent (or in Escrima matches, a single armed opponent). You have no worries about surprises, unexpected elements as you would in a street situation. You could roll around all day in a BJJ match but in the street the ground is really the last place you want to be. If there’s more than one attacker, you will get a nice shoe job to your head. You can Thai clinch someone for an entire round but in a street situation, that could be asking for a hidden knife into the stomach. There are things you can take for granted in the ring that you shouldn’t do outside of it. Combat sports creates a misleading sense of complacency for the individual in that he becomes automatically conditioned to respond to a threat the same way outside the ring. For a lot of individuals that usually means arrogantly confronting a threat head on without thinking of the consequences. That’s called looking for a fight and that isn’t self-defense.
Keep in mind also, some people may never have had any formal training in martial arts, however, they can still outwit and outsmart an attacker and beat him to the punch. I’ve only met a few individuals like that who can look you in the eye, say something that can literally shake an attacker to the core or make him think twice before doing anything.
That’s self-defense of the highest kind.
It is all going to depend on how you train. Is your training realistic? If yes then it doesn’t matter. If not, just practicing kata after kata…. well you are in trouble for the surprise a street fight will offer.
I’m gonna throw a dangerous 4th choice out there. Neither.
If we want to get into a “closest to fighting scenario” peeing contest, then consider occupations where “fight or flight” adrenaline actually kicks in. It is NOT the same as getting pleasure out of extreme sports, be it snowboarding or cagefighting. That is called an endorphin rush. Completely different brain chemical. You get the same thing from chocolate.
To get an actual adrenaline response, you would need an occupation where your well-being is actually at risk. Soldiers, police officers, firefighters…something to that effect. They are the only ones who are truly prepared for what it feels like to defend yourself. You wouldn’t want a true adrenaline rush- it’s not a pleasant feeling. And if you “practiced” under the effects of it, you would become highly paranoid all the time. Have you ever heard of a non-paranoid gang member?
That is not to say, for example, that traditional martial arts does not have techniques that work, or that combat sports don’t put you in a good shape, because they do. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking because I study XYX, I am 100% prepared. No one ever is.
As many posters have pointed out, it’s about how you train…
But personally, I believe traditional (real, authentic, traditional martial arts trained the way their founders envisioned it) has the advantage…
Why?
First of all, competitive styles are designed based on the assumption that the “fight” will be one on one, on relatively equal terms (no weapons, no handicaps, etc.), each combatant is well aware of his/her opponent (i.e. no ambushes), there are safety measures in place, and participants are basically aware that it is a controlled environment, with mostly predictable variables.
Traditional martial arts were developed in societies where violence, and sometimes combat, was a real part of everyday life. And just as it is today, having to defend yourself often means facing more than one attacker carrying weapons, who prefer to ambush and overwhelm you when you are at a disadvantage instead of loudly challenging you to a fight. Thugs/muggers rarely operate alone, and always try to carry the biggest weapon available. At least the successful ones do; the stupid variety you do not need to worry about.
Back to traditional martial arts; again, they were designed in times when violence was much more prevalent than today, and often more brutal, and thus dealt a lot with facing multiple opponents, situational awareness, and fighting from a disadvantaged position. For instance, take any of the basic shotokan karate katas (just to be clear, I am not a karateka; I just think that these are the best examples), and watch the bunkai: These were designed to face multiple opponents, coming at you from different angles, while requiring the practitioner to maintain constant awareness of his/her surroundings and the position of each and every opponent. The same thing goes for the concept of zanshin and randori as practiced in aikido: be aware of all of your opponents and finish a form ready to immediately face the next attack; under the assumption that there definitely be another attack.
Basically I have nothing against MMA or sport-oriented martial arts. I have known enough people from these styles to know better than to doubt that they have the possibility to be effective in self defense. But I still believe that traditional martial arts were originally designed to face “the realities of a street attack”.
It’s trully about how you priactice in my opinion. This is one reason I really love Krav Maga. They get out of the traditional dojo setting and practice in parks and parking garages and up against people using knives and sticks etc. I would also avoid Martials that train as a sport like Tae Kown Do for example if you’re looking to learn self defence. Now I train in TKD and believe you can use it for self defense but I would suggest something else anyhow for those people looking for serious self defense arts.
My answer to this question is a question.
If we all take martial arts for the right reasons, our own personal reasons, does it really matter?
I can post links upon links of the “sport” martial arts working in real life and probably even more of the “traditional” martial arts working as well. Oddly enough there are to many elitist on both sides that don’t care what the ACTUAL facts are and that they both work. Every time I have posted links I get the “they couldn’t do that to me because I do (name an art)” These answers come from both sides!!!
I don’t give an edge to either side. Each side has more in common then they have differences so again I ask:
If we all take martial arts for the right reasons, our own personal reasons, does it really matter?
Of course since I am TMA I will be biased….
There is no one way to answer this question. There is no cookie cutter answer for this. Yes mma is a sport, but it doesn’t take away from their ability to fight or defend themselves. But it would depend on the the school and the training that is done in those schools. I would love to say TMA would be best, but many TMA schools teach crap. Many are teaching correctly. Then there are some mma, bjj and other schools that teach more than the sport and the teach self defense. I can say from personal experience that when I was a teen and learning judo my instructor also included self defense techniques. We were taught how to turn a punch into a throw. We were taught how to turn a knife attack into a throw, etc. We were taught how to take one attacker and use them as a shield while we defend ourselves against other multiple attackers. This is not the norm for all judo classes, but it was common for us.
I believe that any fighter with training stand a very good chance of surviving an attack on the street. I also believe that it doesn’t matter if it is sport, tma or other as long as you are trained correctly and have the ability to transition from one technique to another you should be able to defend yourself fairly well if attacked.