MMA vs TMA

[SENC-33]

For the same reason I wouldn't just haul off and bust the guy up, if it wasn't warranted. The drunk idiot who is, well, being an idiot, might not need his arm broke, eyes gouged, or teeth knocked out if he simply puts his hand on you, when a simple controlling method would work. Assess the situations accordingly. If the situation warrants busting the guy up, then do so.

A drunk isn't getting me to the ground period. I have handled drunks for many years.....When I worked the doors you had legal ramifications to consider as I still do when I do an event security job. In that situation I go open hand all the way. Big hits from a fist don't look good on cameras in a court room

 

[Steve]

Don't take this the wrong way but the guy working with you wasn't trying to hurt you or kill you. Granted that is a difficult thing to simulate......I am able to do it but everybody has to go with what they are confident with

Psst. Here's the big secret. The guys working with you aren't trying to hurt you or kill you, either.

 

[SENC-33]

Agreed. Situational awareness is key, and it's amazing how many people I see when I'm out, that have their head in the clouds. Too busy texting or having the phone to their ear, to notice potential hazards. To each their own I suppose. For me, it's just another tool in the box. If all else fails, and all I have is a limb or something the guy is presenting, well, I'd rather lock, choke or try to break something.

I would agree about the lock or choke if it weren't for the ever present multiple attacker scenario that you can't always see. I have seen some brutal outcomes in my lifetime that permanently instilled in me that worse case scenario.

 

[SENC-33]

Psst. Here's the big secret. The guys working with you aren't trying to hurt you or kill you, either.

You ever fought competitively? You train like you intend to fight why would that be different in self defense? It's difficult to physically mimic brutal strikes and techniques but mentally there is no barrier which was my point.

 

[RTKDCMB]

What was this thread about again? I forget.:idunno:

 

[Steve]

I know plenty of chokes. I can do arm bars, ankle locks the whole nine yards. Why would I in self defense? What would a black belt in BJJ do when he is choking a guy out and 2 guys rush in to kick his skull in?

Now you're alleging to be a competent grappler. The internet is truly amazing.

But, who's advocating submissions on the ground? No one. While there have been references to chokes and I think I mentioned wristlocks at one point, the entire genesis of this line of conversation was referencing some whackadoo ideas about escaping from under mount. And, speaking just for myself, the emphasis in every response I've written has been escaping mount and getting safely to one's feet. I wouldn't even be involved in this conversation at this point unless there were some significant misconceptions about what happens on the ground, specifically from mount.

And while, in general, we can agree that being on your feet is preferred in a "real" self defense situation, where we disagree is on how best to get there. And, just for the record, I've never asked you guys to provide any details. You volunteered them, and they are exactly the kinds of things one would expect from people who have never done it. They seem reasonable until you try them. For example, how would you kick someone with your instep to their head from under mount, particularly with enough force to do anything more than amuse them?

Kicks to the kidneys... someone mentioned that. How would you execute that technique from under mount? Answer: You can't. When Royce Gracie did it, he was in guard.

 

[Steve]

What was this thread about again? I forget.:idunno:

LOL. I have been wondering the same thing. I apologize for my part in derailing it. It's become RBSD vs BJJ, I think.

 

[MJS]

A drunk isn't getting me to the ground period. I have handled drunks for many years.....When I worked the doors you had legal ramifications to consider as I still do when I do an event security job. In that situation I go open hand all the way. Big hits from a fist don't look good on cameras in a court room

I would agree about the lock or choke if it weren't for the ever present multiple attacker scenario that you can't always see. I have seen some brutal outcomes in my lifetime that permanently instilled in me that worse case scenario.

For a short period, I worked in Corrections. Unfortunately, you're always out numbered and the importance to be aware of what's going on, is high. As for the cameras...yeah, big brother is always watching..lol. As tempting as it is/was to smack the **** out of some of these people, well, like I said, BB is watching. And no, I'm not advocating smacking the **** out of them, just saying that if a use of force issue came up, you have to make sure your bases are covered.

 

[MJS]

What was this thread about again? I forget.:idunno:

LOL. I have been wondering the same thing. I apologize for my part in derailing it. It's become RBSD vs BJJ, I think.

LOL! Yeah, it's taken a different path now, but I will say this is one of the longest threads I've seen in a while.

 

[Steve]

The 2 bolded statements above show how little you know of striking

I know your response wasn't to me, but I will admit that I know VERY little about striking, although I have some limited experience. In the spirit of your response above, would you be willing to consider that you have made statements which show how little you know of grappling?

 

[SENC-33]

For a short period, I worked in Corrections. Unfortunately, you're always out numbered and the importance to be aware of what's going on, is high. As for the cameras...yeah, big brother is always watching..lol. As tempting as it is/was to smack the **** out of some of these people, well, like I said, BB is watching. And no, I'm not advocating smacking the **** out of them, just saying that if a use of force issue came up, you have to make sure your bases are covered.

Working corrections, event security or the door at a club is the best knowledge you can ever gain when it comes to "reality" and self defense. I have seen about everything you can imagine and it opened up my eyes to a dearth of possibilities

 

[RTKDCMB]

I know your response wasn't to me, but I will admit that I know VERY little about striking, although I have some limited experience. In the spirit of your response above, would you be willing to consider that you have made statements which show how little you know of grappling?

Here's basically what I know and what I don't about grappling;

What I know little of - BJJ grappling, Sport grappling, the low mount is relatively new to me (more used to somewhere between high and low mount) but I will be working on that soon.

What I know a bit about - multitudes of joint locks and breaks and escapes from holds, a few throws, defense of takedowns, takedowns, leg sweeps and trips and how to stop someone for getting on top of me (have done that in a real situation once, got neither mounted nor hit) and how to get up after being knocked down, like in the video of the technical standup (have done that in a real situation too), although the last 4 were not technically grappling per se.

All of the grappling that I have learned is from the standpoint of self defence, trying to avoid being on the ground in the first place and getting up before anything bad happens once I am there. Putting someone in a joint lock to persuade them from attacking me further and being ready to increase the pressure or break that joint if they resist, or if necessary to just break the joint straight away. The mount defence is not taught with a competent grappler in mind, just the average thug who wants to sit on your chest/stomach with his hands around your neck trying to squeeze your head off or punch you in the face. Now I am not entirely sure (that's why I said possible) how the striking and blocking will work during the high mount (I will have to test it out sometime) but it works just fine from the lower position. Now if I was ever to be attacked by someone I knew to be a BJJ guy I would do everything in my power to keep him from getting a hold of me to put me in any kind of mount because if he did he would have the advantage and that's just not acceptable.

It is a little difficult coming up with possibilities and/or conveying knowledge on unfamiliar positions based on one 2 dimensional representation of the top of your head, you really need to see them in 4 dimensions, but coming up with things on the fly is a very important skill to have.

 

[Koshiki]

This video is similar to some of the things I like to do in my training granted it's hard to understand when slowed down. I like to create space for strikes and roll if I can. If I am forced to roll over into a less than ideal position and the bad guy is still on top of me I try to buck, twist, arch up, throw elbows and mini kicks, anything I can do to keep moving until I can get in a better position or escape.

To be fair, there was very little in there about escaping from a mount, high, or otherwise. The entire first video was escaping from guard... Also, what there was looked like very competent ground fighting as learned and trained by a ground fighter, albeit with the strikes not allowed in general bjj competition. Seems to back up the point that to learn effective ground fighting or anti-ground fighting, you should refer to those you practice, well, ground fighting. Great videos though. Especially the second one.

You can train technique all day until you are blue in the face and I still do just like everyone else, but when the **** hits the fan, your life is perhaps on the line and everybody isn't aligned in a perfect position like they are inside the dojo you had better be able to improvise and rely on instincts and brute force. There isn't time to pick and choose in most situations. If I can bring you in long enough to get my thumb in your eye or strike your throat your will to continue will be broken and/or severly diminished. Strikes come naturally to me and are what I look for because I want to end it and get back up. If I wanted to stay on the ground looking for control methods I would train that way. I am always taking into consideration that more people could be involved. What do you do as a grappler when you are on the ground locking in an armbar and somebody you didn't see before charges in to kick your skull in?

Many times, in anti-ground fighting stuff that we do in my school, people will suggest, as a defense or escape, something like, "well, how about I strike the throat? Or poke the eyes? Or fish-hook and spread both cheeks?" The response is generally, "Ok, you do that and I'll snap this when I think you're about to. Ready? Go." These dirty tricks are; A. hard to pull off; B. harder to pull off from under a mount, whether for GnP or for straight up grappling; C. not guaranteed to do anything more than piss off the angry dude on your chest; and D. much better put to use as 'softening' techniques to help facilitate your game-plan, rather than as your game-plan. Anything in SD that relies on the "wait for the opportunity/opening," or the "sooner or later he's going to _________ and then I'll _________," is generally a bad idea. SD cannot be a waiting game. That's for sparring.

Me: I'm curious as to what this move is. How come we step and block like this? Is there some sort of application for it?

Teacher: Well, we do it because (insert VERY LONG pause) well, we do it because that's the way it's done in the kata.

Me: (Insert LONG moment of silence, while I try to comprehend the BS that I just heard) Ok. Thanks.

Psst. Here's the big secret. The guys working with you aren't trying to hurt you or kill you, either.

Oh golly. This sounds like a certain school I've been playing at lately... MOST FRUSTRATING THING IN THE WOOOOORLD.

What was this thread about again? I forget.:idunno:

LOL! Yeah, it's taken a different path now, but I will say this is one of the longest threads I've seen in a while.

I don't know WHAT this thread WAS about, but it's gotten mildly more interesting. I feel like feeding it just because I think it has the potential to reach 100+ pages, and that would be awesome. Someday I hope there's a film based on this thread...

 

[SENC-33]

Zack

My approach when "mounted" (if the person can even pull that off) is to get the person the "F" off of me and END THE CONFRONTATION. I can grab and pull them to me, try to wrap them, try to turn them. There are lots of things I "could" do including strikes which is my greatest strength. If I became a BJJ expert with all the skills in the world and wrapped up with another BJJ expert ON THE STREET what is going to happen is a grappling match on the ground where I have seen people mangled from 3rd parties many times over. I am a big, strong, agile guy so perhaps that gives me an advantage in this situation but locking up with somebody on the ground for any period of time past a few seconds is dangerous. Is dirty fighting difficult to pull off in the mount? Sure it can be but what value do you see in staying down there?

If I was an average Joe at an event or bar and you and I got into a tussle with you getting on top of me what would you do if I got my legs around you in the guard or somehow grabbed you and held on?

Now what would you do if the 3 guys with me you didn't notice started kicking your skull in because you were trapped on the ground?

 

[K-man]

I thank God that I finally found a teacher who makes corrections, is a stickler for perfection, and not only explains, but shows why things are done a certain way. How refreshing after 20+yrs of NOT seeing it.

Same, same. Twenty years of not knowing but I've made up for a lot of that time now.

 

[K-man]

What was this thread about again? I forget.:idunno:

Mainly about Hanzou, about 50 pages of it. But it has become a better discussion thanks to thread drift.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Zack

My approach when "mounted" (if the person can even pull that off) is to get the person the "F" off of me and END THE CONFRONTATION. I can grab and pull them to me, try to wrap them, try to turn them. There are lots of things I "could" do including strikes which is my greatest strength. If I became a BJJ expert with all the skills in the world and wrapped up with another BJJ expert ON THE STREET what is going to happen is a grappling match on the ground where I have seen people mangled from 3rd parties many times over. I am a big, strong, agile guy so perhaps that gives me an advantage in this situation but locking up with somebody on the ground for any period of time past a few seconds is dangerous. Is dirty fighting difficult to pull off in the mount? Sure it can be but what value do you see in staying down there?

If I was an average Joe at an event or bar and you and I got into a tussle with you getting on top of me what would you do if I got my legs around you in the guard or somehow grabbed you and held on?

Now what would you do if the 3 guys with me you didn't notice started kicking your skull in because you were trapped on the ground?

You keep coming back to this, even though the BJJ practitioners in this thread have said repeatedly that we agree with you regarding the importance of escaping and getting back to the feet as quickly as possible. It's almost as if you aren't reading what is actually being said and are arguing with some straw BJJ man in your head. Where we disagree is on the safest, quickest, and most reliable methods to achieve that immediate goal. Certain of the techniques that you've claimed you can pull off are ones that we've seen fail time and again under pressure. Of course, you've changed your story a couple of times now about which techniques you could use/have used in that situation. My best guess so far, based on reading all your posts and presuming complete honesty on your part, is that you are a big, strong, athletic guy and when you get mounted you just go berserk trying to get out with any old movement that comes to mind and that has worked for you so far. This is plausible - it takes a certain amount of skill to hold down a wildly thrashing opponent who is much bigger and stronger than you. It's possible that none of your training partners has that level of grappling experience. What we're telling you is that there are techniques for escaping and getting back to your feet that are much safer and more reliable and don't depend on being bigger/stronger/more athletic/more psycho than your opponents.

It also seems like you're framing this whole discussion in terms of who is tougher or more badass. Neither Steve nor I have claimed that we are more deadly than you or that we could beat you in a fight or that our art is better than yours or anything of the sort. (In fact I've specifically disavowed any such claims.) All we are saying is that with regards to one particular position we have seen and experienced a whole lot of people try a whole lot of techniques and the ones that you initially described are not the ones that we've seen be successful in most cases. Maybe you're the exception and can make things work for you that do not for 99.5% of the people out there. I'm going to stick to training and advocating moves that work for more than .5% of the population.

BTW - you seem to be attaching a lot of importance to the whole "forget technique, focus on all-out survival instinct and fighting fury" approach. You never did answer my question (back on page 53) on how you would go about ingraining that mindset in someone who didn't already have it. Care to offer any suggestions on the topic?

 

[SENC-33]

You keep coming back to this, even though the BJJ practitioners in this thread have said repeatedly that we agree with you regarding the importance of escaping and getting back to the feet as quickly as possible. It's almost as if you aren't reading what is actually being said and are arguing with some straw BJJ man in your head. Where we disagree is on the safest, quickest, and most reliable methods to achieve that immediate goal. Certain of the techniques that you've claimed you can pull off are ones that we've seen fail time and again under pressure. Of course, you've changed your story a couple of times now about which techniques you could use/have used in that situation. My best guess so far, based on reading all your posts and presuming complete honesty on your part, is that you are a big, strong, athletic guy and when you get mounted you just go berserk trying to get out with any old movement that comes to mind and that has worked for you so far. This is plausible - it takes a certain amount of skill to hold down a wildly thrashing opponent who is much bigger and stronger than you. It's possible that none of your training partners has that level of grappling experience. What we're telling you is that there are techniques for escaping and getting back to your feet that are much safer and more reliable and don't depend on being bigger/stronger/more athletic/more psycho than your opponents.

It also seems like you're framing this whole discussion in terms of who is tougher or more badass. Neither Steve nor I have claimed that we are more deadly than you or that we could beat you in a fight or that our art is better than yours or anything of the sort. (In fact I've specifically disavowed any such claims.) All we are saying is that with regards to one particular position we have seen and experienced a whole lot of people try a whole lot of techniques and the ones that you initially described are not the ones that we've seen be successful in most cases. Maybe you're the exception and can make things work for you that do not for 99.5% of the people out there. I'm going to stick to training and advocating moves that work for more than .5% of the population.

BTW - you seem to be attaching a lot of importance to the whole "forget technique, focus on all-out survival instinct and fighting fury" approach. You never did answer my question (back on page 53) on how you would go about ingraining that mindset in someone who didn't already have it. Care to offer any suggestions on the topic?

Not missing your point at all. If you and I locked up (with your grappling experience) and following your "safer techniques" you think I could just get up without you attempting to pull me back down to the ground? Would you just allow me to stand back up on my feet? You seem to think like a grappler who will always be fighting a grappler who will choose to battle you on the ground.

If I followed your advice to get back to my feet safely what the hell would you do? Stand up where you aren't as comfortable? NO you would attempt to get me back on the ground.

As far as my techniques I'm not changing them....I could write a small novel on all the variables but discussions go in different directions. That's just how it goes

 

[K-man]

BTW - you seem to be attaching a lot of importance to the whole "forget technique, focus on all-out survival instinct and fighting fury" approach. You never did answer my question (back on page 53) on how you would go about ingraining that mindset in someone who didn't already have it. Care to offer any suggestions on the topic?

Actually, thus is a really good point. I'm not so sure about the 'fighting fury' but I agree totally with the 'forget technique' and just use what comes to hand. But that is top level training. It just is not possible to teach that to a beginner, IMHO.
:asian:

 

[SENC-33]

Tony

As far as ingraining survival instincts into people that is natural. One upping the natural part to add "fury" I don't have a textbook message for other than to train with people who do have it. But don't forget I am not a teacher with a class of students. I haven't told a single person here to train the way I do. I do local seminars from time to time and cross train with other gyms when asked but the core group of guys who train with me are like minded individuals. All but a couple of them are prior military who stayed in North Carolina after their service was up.