Has MMA surpassed traditional MA in its effectiveness

whats your opinion on this ...

 

I don't think so. I'm not knocking MMA in anyway. I've trained in Krav Maga and Army Combatives which is similar to BJJ, but I have also trained in both traditional and contemporary Chinese arts. I'm not saying MMA isn't effective in terms of self defense. But I think that any fight that has rules and gear no matter how little, isn't an accurate display of its ability in self defense. There is no small joint manipulation, nor groin strikes in MMA fights.

I also feel that traditional arts bring something MMA and a lot of contemporary arts don't. There is something to be said for being part of a tradition, for learning something that has been passed down for a long time. I personally have a sense of pride in learning traditional CMA from my Sifu. I like that I can trace the lineage of my Hung Gar back to the founder of the system Hung Hei Goon. In addition, MA are constantly evolving. People cross train, add and subtract techniques that work and don't work. I'm no expert by any means, this is simply my opinion on what I am sure is going to be a pretty hot debate.

 

mma=sport

sport does NOT equal self defense


end of topic

 

Nope

 

QFT!

Effectiveness at what by the way?

MMA is the best at.....wait for it.....MMA!

 

If you mean effectiveness in self defence then I personally don't think so. I would say that a good traditional school with hard, full resistance and reality based training can better prepare a student to defend themselves in a real self defence scenario. I say this purely because there is more scope to drill and prepare for a greater variety of scenarios such as ambushes, multiple attackers, weapon defence etc.

However, as we all know there are plenty of traditional schools that don't train hard enough or with enough variety of combat ranges to prepare their students effectively for self -defence. We also know that a student of MMA will learn to fight from all combat ranges and will compete at full contact with full resistance. Therefore, it would be fair to suggest that a fit MMA competitior is better prepared to handle themselves in a self defence situation that an overweight traditional martial artist who has never tested his skill under stress and has no idea of how defend themselves against a competant grappler.

So in my humble opinion it is not so much that MMA surpasses TMA in its effectiveness for self defence it actually all boils down to how realistically it is trained and whether the TMA is utilising all of the scope in diverse scenarios and combat ranges available to it. For self defence, I would personally choose a good traditional school every time over MMA. However, if there was not a good traditional school available but only "fluffy" ones then I would probably choose an MMA gym.

 

Bas Rutten could kick my *** and break my spine so MMA can be good for self defense.
Tanemura sensei could do all sorts of highly interesting things to me and break my spine so TMA can be good for self defense.
It all depends on the person and how he trains, not what he trains. As someone mentioned earlier: an experienced carpenter is probably a very deadly person if he can defend himself with his hammer.

 

You're, of course, wanting to know if MMA has surpassed TMA's in effectiveness for self-defense.......WHICH TMA's?

Taekwondo? Judo? Karate?

The question requires quite a few definitions in order to even begin to be answerable. Some folks will jump in and say 'Well, MMA is a sport....' But, then, so is Taekwondo and Judo..........furthermore the UFC may be new, but the style of fighting is actually very old and predates most modern 'TMA's'.......at it's core it's the fundamentals of unarmed fighting.......Boxing/Kicking/Grappling/Wrestling........an old theme with a new name, devoid of and stripped of formal trappings.

I'll defer, again, to Bruce Lee

A punch is a punch and a kick is a kick..........the formal trappings of many TMA's is the only thing that separate them from what many practicing MMA or even RBSD are doing..........the later have merely stripped away the formal trappings of asian culture, and westernized the practices in to pure study of mechanics........which, I suspect, is what REALLY offends some people about MMA/RBSD and the like......the stripping away of those formal trappings and rituals.

 

Suicide, are you going to post an opinion yourself or just throw out random questions?
Your question is an open one, effectiveness for what? Some posters are assuming you mean self defence, is that what you mean or is it something else? the effectiveness of getting students in the door, making money,fighting fitness or what?

 

we already know the answer to this tez.

i do think though that generally speaking most sport styles have more effective training methods, meaning their methods are the fastest way to develop the target skills, often while developing athletic ability as well.

jf

 

I know lol but thought I'd try to get an answer. :ultracool

 

What is a "fluffy" school?

 

In order to judge effectiveness you need an objective by which you can measure that effectiveness.

Is a hammer effective? No, it's quite useless if you are tying to play a MP3.

The different martial arts do different things, if they didn't we wouldn't have different martial arts. There is overlap, as most of them do a few things and some of those get shared between multiple ones.

Some are like hammers, fairly specialized and the best thing available for a select set of common objectives. Others are more like a swiss army knife, doing a lot of things, but none of them as well as others do, yet still extremely useful and convenient.

 

Ah sorry I couldn't think of a better word for it. By fluffy I mean a school that is afraid of a little contact. When I first starting looking for a martial arts class I came across a couple where it was nothing but air punches between students with techniques stopping shot of touching each other. Nothing against this sort of past time as everyone there was lovely but it was just a little light and fluffy for my tastes.

 

I think that the "live" pressure testing and ruleset in MMA is the most realistic way a young, healthy advanced martial artist can spar in a safe manner. I think this is a great training tool for those who are ready for it, but in of itself it's not the peak for self defense. Using it with other aspects of training found in TMA's and RBSD would be of great value. Also many in the MMA game neglect many intermediate steps taught in the TMA's that would be of great value to their overall effectiveness IMO. My guess is that in time, many drills from the TMA's will be adapted into MMA training to plug these holes. Both sides can learn from each other and as things evolve, I'm sure this will be the case.

 

I have been having this debate of recent with some locals in my area who are hugely into MMA and the styles that frequently win at it. It all comes down to who you ask and what the individual likes. I also just had a rant in another thread about this subject. There are people on another forum that will put down anything that is not in their way of doing things or those that out-rank them. I know they justrecently attacked a member of this board without justification and are doing everything they can to destroy him. At what point did we all turn on each other?

Not trying to jack the thread, but come on. All this does is create more problems then it solves. Effective depends on the situation and who is involved.

 

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