One thing that is a bit of a pet peeve of mine is how it seems that many martial arts practitioners and instructors take the idea of “fighting” and make it one thing. It is not, never has been and never will be.
Fighting occurs in many ranges, this much is becoming realised. But it also comes in many forms. And very different techniques and tactics are required for those different forms.
The most obvious it seems, is a one on one fist fight. Both people know they are in a fight, both are fighting, and both are probably taking some damage.
Then others bring up multiple attackers, weapons, etc. Which is all well and good, but that is still the same basic type of fight.
But not everything happens like that.
Sucker punching for example, can be refined well beyond a single punch. You can train in many ways to drop an unsuspecting person before the “fight” really begins. Of course in a sport environment none of this is really relevant. That is not to say that a sport fighter can’t drop a person before they can respond, but tools specific to that task will likely not be trained.
You see a trained fighter will protect himself against a good many things, things that a untrained person, unaware that he was about to be assaulted would not guard against. His hands are likely not up, he is not in a fighting stance, legs probably not bent, etc. A lot of things that won’t work in a “fight” will work in this situation.
Or how about a person that is perhaps not fighting, but still needs to be controlled, or just threatened. A simple wrist lock can be secured and suddenly this person might be a little more willing to listen and play nice. Once again, there is not “fight” but physical force was used to obtain the outcome. A type of force that simply would be near impossible to use on someone actively fighting back.
Another thing to consider is skill. If someone throws a wild haymaker it is quite possible to hit it hard, with a traditional karate style block. This will leave there arm in a rather sore stateÂ… But trying this on a trained fighter throwing combinations and setups will likely result with YOU being hit very hard. But in the situation that you can do it, it is a good technique, and will likely make them less motivated to try and hit you again.
So there does exist a whole realm of “fighting” that exists beyond what can happen within a sporting environment. There are some very good techniques contained within the traditional arts for these uses.
But here is the catch, at any point, any of those other situations CAN become a “fight”, and all that stuff gets pushed aside for what is essentially “sport” fighting, but without the confines of the sport.
The basic movement principles of sport fighting, separated, clinched and on the ground, are like the fall back plan, or the general purpose stuff. If things go bad, that is the stuff you need. There is also enough stuff there to deal with those other situations as well, but perhaps not as well. Pain compliance stuff in MMA is no where near the level of Chin na or classical jujitsu.
So what do I believe to be the next step in martial arts for self-defence as a whole? A combining of the two methods, training people in sport (mma style) fighting as a base, then building on that base with more specialized skills.
But at the same time, I also believe that the two methods oppose each other in a sense, because for the most part practitioners seem to really only be interested in one or the other, but perhaps that will change as the benefits of the other are realised by both sides.
There are of course a good many other things that could be brought up, ok, a whole book could probably be written on the subject of types of force, fighting and integrating the skills that work best in different situations, but not by me today
So have fun ripping me apart
Fighting occurs in many ranges, this much is becoming realised. But it also comes in many forms. And very different techniques and tactics are required for those different forms.
The most obvious it seems, is a one on one fist fight. Both people know they are in a fight, both are fighting, and both are probably taking some damage.
Then others bring up multiple attackers, weapons, etc. Which is all well and good, but that is still the same basic type of fight.
But not everything happens like that.
Sucker punching for example, can be refined well beyond a single punch. You can train in many ways to drop an unsuspecting person before the “fight” really begins. Of course in a sport environment none of this is really relevant. That is not to say that a sport fighter can’t drop a person before they can respond, but tools specific to that task will likely not be trained.
You see a trained fighter will protect himself against a good many things, things that a untrained person, unaware that he was about to be assaulted would not guard against. His hands are likely not up, he is not in a fighting stance, legs probably not bent, etc. A lot of things that won’t work in a “fight” will work in this situation.
Or how about a person that is perhaps not fighting, but still needs to be controlled, or just threatened. A simple wrist lock can be secured and suddenly this person might be a little more willing to listen and play nice. Once again, there is not “fight” but physical force was used to obtain the outcome. A type of force that simply would be near impossible to use on someone actively fighting back.
Another thing to consider is skill. If someone throws a wild haymaker it is quite possible to hit it hard, with a traditional karate style block. This will leave there arm in a rather sore stateÂ… But trying this on a trained fighter throwing combinations and setups will likely result with YOU being hit very hard. But in the situation that you can do it, it is a good technique, and will likely make them less motivated to try and hit you again.
So there does exist a whole realm of “fighting” that exists beyond what can happen within a sporting environment. There are some very good techniques contained within the traditional arts for these uses.
But here is the catch, at any point, any of those other situations CAN become a “fight”, and all that stuff gets pushed aside for what is essentially “sport” fighting, but without the confines of the sport.
The basic movement principles of sport fighting, separated, clinched and on the ground, are like the fall back plan, or the general purpose stuff. If things go bad, that is the stuff you need. There is also enough stuff there to deal with those other situations as well, but perhaps not as well. Pain compliance stuff in MMA is no where near the level of Chin na or classical jujitsu.
So what do I believe to be the next step in martial arts for self-defence as a whole? A combining of the two methods, training people in sport (mma style) fighting as a base, then building on that base with more specialized skills.
But at the same time, I also believe that the two methods oppose each other in a sense, because for the most part practitioners seem to really only be interested in one or the other, but perhaps that will change as the benefits of the other are realised by both sides.
There are of course a good many other things that could be brought up, ok, a whole book could probably be written on the subject of types of force, fighting and integrating the skills that work best in different situations, but not by me today
So have fun ripping me apart 
