FMAT: BJJ/Combat Sports and Self Defense

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BJJ/Combat Sports and Self Defense
By NJMMADude - 11-16-2009 11:38 AM
Originally Posted at: FMATalk

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Hi Everyone,

I posted this on an MMA forum, but wanted to share it here in case anyone is interested in reading or discussing it. Have a great day and good training to you!

Mark

I studied BJJ and MMA for a few years, and I had many of the same questions that others have regarding self-defense and BJJ, MMA, and other combat sports and their role in protecting me in a violent altercation. I see this topic come up often and there are many arguments presented with valid and logical points. Last year around this time I stopped training only in BJJ and MMA and branched out into other martial arts (specifically FMA, which I had also studied years ago) as well as doing as much reading and research as possible. So, without further wordiness, here is what I have come up with.

Most of the time, when someone is asking the question about BJJ and its effectiveness against others in self-defense, I assume that the person is asking about its effectiveness against a criminal assault. I&#8217;ve heard/seen very few questions about manhandling drunken frat boys and road-raging goofs. I don&#8217;t think that anyone has any doubt about the credibility of BJJ or MMA against these types. Besides that, the combat athletes who I know don&#8217;t go around looking for that stuff, it's small minded and if you are concerning yourself with that, you need to do a self-check before you run into someone who does you in. So what we are talking about here, in short, is how BJJ would work against a criminal assault.

Assault is a violent crime, usually committed as an act that is used as leverage to obtain something from you (money, sex, etc) for themselves. Many times, and this is scary to me, these actions are used to fulfill a human need. So, just to cement this picture, usually criminal assault is use of force accompanied by, or used as a means to, another violent crime (robbery, rape, etc). Real assault is intense, frightening, and overwhelming, and more often than not the victim is caught unprepared.

Assault as a crime usually provides a warning or sign before the actual physical exchange. Sometimes the assault begins with a verbal or other exchange between two or more people that escalates, as in the case of a road rage incident or a fight over territory. These assaults are usually avoidable with intelligent de-escalation and an ego check.

A criminal assault, which is much worse, is a means to overpower and control a person, usually for a secondary crime. This type of crime follows a process. In short, the process begins when the assailant makes a conscious decision to obtain something by force. The person then prepares himself, which means that he usually finds an equalizer (weapon(s) or multiple attackers), finds an area or finds a way to control the environment, and then seeks a target. The criminal studies the target in some way, either by an &#8216;interview&#8217; or by studying their actions and vulnerability from a distance, and then puts themselves in a position to carry out the crime. Usually, unless someone is aware of what this process looks like, by the time these steps are completed, the person is already being attacked. Real violent assault is intense and usually carries with it the factor of the victim not only being physically overwhelmed, but psychologically overwhelmed as well.

I&#8217;m going to point the way to this website for more on this: www.nononsenseselfdefense.com. This is Marc MacYoung&#8217;s site. He has an incredible website which outlines this process in a hub entitled &#8216;crime is a process&#8217;. It&#8217;s a great read (as is the rest of the site). I also recommend the hubs which talk about the 4 types of violent crimes, how to escalate or de-escalate violent crime, and the alpha behavior hub. He outlines this much better than I ever could and his writing is straightforward and entertaining.

Just as a closing note on violent crimes in general: obviously, there are different types of violent crimes. The two absolute worst types of violent crimes are home invasions and abductions. These are crimes which are premeditated and in which an assailant can isolate you. Once isolated, you can imagine what leverage someone has against you, and how a crime that began as a simple home robbery or a carjacking can become much worse. These are the absolute worst-case scenarios as far as violent crimes go. If you are interested in learning to deal with things like this, there are good resources out there to learn more about them.

Now that I&#8217;ve outlined this, I want to differentiate between self-protection, self-defense, and fighting, which all could lie under an umbrella which we could call self-preservation.

I would define self-protection as a strategy and/or method of protecting oneself from bodily harm, nothing more or less. This method or strategy should revolve around recognition of dangerous situations, and then de-escalation, avoidance or escape of these situations. Awareness is the key tool here.

Self-defense is the use of force to protect oneself. This is fighting when assaulted by another to prevent yourself from being seriously harmed. Use of force in self defense should be as a means of fighting long enough to escape the situation, and escaping when the opportunity presents itself. Taking someone to the ground and running a submission clinic when they steal your parking spot is not self-defense. Dropping someone when they attempt to drag you into an alley is.

Fighting is the use of force to overwhelm someone in a physical engagement. This could run the spectrum from sport fighting, to honorable combat (two people agreeing to fight in an uncontrolled/unsanctioned environment), and all the way up to and including criminal assault. If your self-preservation compass is functioning, self-protection should take precedence over self-defense, which should take precedence over fighting.

If self-protection is your priority, your best tools are educating yourself as to the process of crime, becoming skilled at recognizing potential &#8216;interviews&#8217; or ways that people may try to distract you to set you up. It&#8217;s not difficult once you understand what you are looking at, and you don't have to look for it, because it approaches you with a flag raised high.

Many people feel that doing this sort of research and study (and having this knowledge) will make you paranoid or excessively vigilant. I disagree wholeheartedly. In fact, becoming paranoid or excessively vigilant would lower your awareness, which would be entirely counterproductive to what you are looking to do.

Now let&#8217;s talk about the physical part. Assuming that you failed to initially recognize that someone is positioning to move against you, escaping from a situation in which you are assaulted should always take precedence over engagement. I am saying this because with all of the possible variables in a criminal assault, it&#8217;s in your best interest to escape.

There is no single answer for all situations and, for some situations, there is no answer because of the aforementioned variables. Most of these variables are psychological or strategic. In other words, and going back to the process of crime, criminals will find a way to exploit a weakness and open some sort of hole to jump through. They will not jump through it if they do not see the hole.

Many of these tactics exploit what I would call &#8216;basic trust&#8217;.

Examples are someone who bumps your car from behind and someone else (who you saw standing on the street corner but never thought that they would be a factor) jumps in and takes off when you get out to check. Another example is someone simply distracting you by asking for the time, or asking where you got your shoes, or asking if you saw his son (while showing you a picture). This hole is your weakness, and this weakness is what they exploit when they go from positioning to attack.

Now on to the question as to whether BJJ is effective in a self-defense situation. Assuming that we are still following the self-defense definition as meaning use of force as a means to escape, I would say that the answer could be yes and it could be no. I don&#8217;t say no because I feel that BJJ is not an efficient martial art. On the contrary, I think BJJ is an extremely efficient martial art in regards to its combative philosophy. However, to answer the question of effectiveness, I have to counter with the question &#8216;effective for what?&#8217; The tool has to match the task.

BJJ is extremely efficient and based on physics and some people stand on the argument that if it works on the mat it will work anywhere, which is true. The laws of physics don&#8217;t cease to exist on street thugs or criminally insane maniacs.

If you are tangling with an unarmed assailant in a one-on-one scenario, he's yours, hands down. BJJ naysayers counter with the glass and lava scenario, which, although not impossible, is rather unlikely. My argument for or against whether BJJ is applicable here is to go back to our priority of escape in these situations.

If you have failed to recognize that someone is positioning against you and have found yourself in physical engagement with someone, then you are faced with the need to use force as a method of escape.

There are only so many ways that a person can physically assault you, and can be classified as striking/attacking with a weapon while you are both standing (unattached), clinching/tackling (attached), striking or attacking with a weapon when you are down and he is standing (unattached), or grappling/striking when on the ground with you (attached).

In the unattached situations, creating greater space and escaping are your priorities. In the attached situations, your ability to manipulate position, while standing or on the ground, is your friend. Your ability (and tendency) to try to control position and attack from that controlled position while on the ground or while standing is the mistake that can work against you.

Takedowns that spike someone on their head are great if someone is after you with very bad intentions, and will work efficiently. Can you tie up briefly enough to perform the takedown and then run? If so, it&#8217;s an effective tactic. The pieces of BJJ that would work in this situation, if your priority were to escape, are the pieces that facilitate the escape. Methods of controlling someone physically are not the pieces that you want to use. You cannot control and escape at the same time.

This is something that you can drill with a partner a few times. No actual modification of the techniques are necessary, you just have a different priority now. Instead of using BJJ techniques to control someone else, use them to prevent someone else from controlling you.

Practice breaking from the clinch when someone is trying to hang on you to drag you down instead of them shooting with a perfect double. Practice grip fighting when someone has the sleeve or lapel of your gi, but now you are trying to run away and they are holding you back. Practice throwing, then escaping. Practice escaping from bottom and sprinting. We all do most of this anyway in sport training, we just don't put these techniques together in this aspect.

I am not suggesting to not control the person because a BJJ player will be unable to, I'm suggesting that the stakes, and the risk, are too high in these situations because it's the second assailant that will hurt you, it's the knife that you don't see that will hurt you, and it's the environmental variables that the person who attacked you may have put into play before the assault that you don't know about that will hurt you.

I can think of a parallel with some of the knife tapping, checking, clearing, disarming, etc in FMA. Sure, the stuff works (sometimes) if pressure tested, but it's the knife that I don't see that would be my downfall. Someone presents a knife and I take off running anyway (happened to me in Atlantic City a few years back).

As far as the physical tools necessary to survive a high-stakes physical confrontation, I'd say that basic boxing, basic BJJ and a little clinch and MMA work are more than enough. They give you the conditioning and the attributes to work through the first few seconds of a violent assault and get out of there.

I think if someone is really serious about self-defense and self-protection that they should learn more about the process of crime, read more about how to use awareness as a tool, and generally educate themselves on the topic. You don't have to spend any money; there are good resources out there online and in the libraries.

I am not suggesting going to RBSD seminars and stuff, because in many cases they over exaggerate things and sell their material based on fear, scary scenarios and stories, etc. Scary things do happen, but in many cases the solution is based on the simple formula of escaping the situation at any cost.

As a final thought, I think that you are much more likely to die from cancer, aggressive driving or a heart attack than from 3 boogeymen coming after you armed to the teeth.

Staying physically, emotionally and mentally healthy by training in combat sports like BJJ takes you much farther as far as self-preservation is concerned than worrying about situations that, with some awareness and common sense, you are not likely to be involved in anyway. Have fun and good training to you!


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Stan

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Thank you for posting this. I want to be clear that I did not read it as a slam against BJJ, and I hope others, including BJJ practitioners, don't read it that way either.

I really like the point that it is unlikely that most people will get attacked, and to train for this purpose and this purpose only is to embrace tunnel vision.
 

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