judo for self defense

Tony Dismukes

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I for one have practical experience with koryu jujutsu

one should have obtained 'practical experience' from their koryu training
Maybe it would help if we spent a little time defining what we each mean by "practical experience."

Practical experience can mean a lot of different things in different fields. But since we're talking martial arts rather than plumbing or politics, I'm going to define it as experience actually executing the methods of your martial art (kicks, punches, chokes, throws, stabs, cuts, whatever) against someone who is honestly doing their best to prevent you from succeeding while also doing their best to execute their own techniques against you. If you have a different definition, please offer it, but I think it's a reasonable starting point for discussion. I also think it's at least pretty close to what drop bear is referring to when he uses the term.

I'm going to break it down a little further and talk about practical experience in a specific context vs practical experience in a broader context. Specific skills, tactics, and techniques may or may not be transferrable to different situations.

I'm also going to talk a little bit about individual practical experience vs collective practical experience. If a single person has successfully used their art in 50 fights, it tells us something about that individual and possibly a bit about the quality of their methods. If thousands of people have used that art in hundreds of thousands of fights, it probably tells us something more about the effectiveness of the art as a whole.

So, let's look at some examples...

First, let's consider collegiate wrestling. The primary skills and objectives of the art are to be able to control another person's body, to establish dominant grips, control their posture, take them down, move them into the positions you desire, and pin them, while preventing them from doing the same to you. (All generally within the confines of a particular sporting rule set.)

An experienced college wrestler will have participated in hundreds of tournament matches and thousands of sparring matches with well-trained, highly conditioned opponents who are doing their best to shut down all of his techniques and simultaneously impose their own will. He will have many, many incidents where a specific movement worked or did not work and opportunity to reflect on why that happened and how to improve his success rate. That's one individual. Since collegiate and scholastic wrestling are fairly widespread, there is also a fair amount of collective experience that coaches and athletes can draw upon to evaluate what works under what circumstances - literally hundreds of thousands of matches which can be learned from.

That is, of course, in a specific context - a sport with a certain ruleset. Do we have any experience with how those wrestling skills might generalize to a wider context? What about other grappling sports? What about mixed martial arts? What about street fights? Do these skills carry over at all?

As it turns out, there is a fair amount of evidence that they do. Many collegiate/scholastic wrestlers will cross over and try competing in other grappling sports. Many have made it into MMA. Many have gotten into "real" fights outside of a sporting arena. (You can find plenty of examples on YouTube. I personally remember almost 40 years ago seeing a wrestler and a Kung Fu practitioner of my acquaintance go at it - the results were decidedly one-sided.) The general results seem to be - the wrestlers do pretty well. If they want to compete at the highest level of MMA or different grappling arts then they have to adjust their technique a bit, but the fundamentals carry over quite nicely. (In fact, many of us in BJJ are working to absorb the lessons that said wrestlers have to teach us.)

Now, let's take another example. Let's say HEMA longsword (Meyer, Fiore, whatever school, it doesn't matter). The fundamentals skills and goals of this art are to be able to cut or stab an opponent with a sword, while preventing them from doing the same to you. What practical experience would a high-level practitioner have?

Well, they would probably have a fair amount of sparring with blunted swords both in a club and tournament setting, trying to hit without being hit, while using the techniques laid out in historical manuals, and attempting to judge whether the strikes would have been of sufficient quality (proper edge alignment, sufficient force, etc) to inflict a disabling wound if the swords were sharp. This counts as practical experience in the practice of hitting someone with a weapon while preventing them from hitting you. However it should be noted that the quantity of said experience is significantly less, on average, for HEMA practitioners than for collegiate wrestlers. HEMA is a niche hobby, typically practiced by adults with other demands on their time and there are far fewer tournaments available to compete at. There might be a handful of HEMA practitioners worldwide with as much sparring/competition experience as a typical D1 wrestler. However, the competition talent pool is much shallower, so the level of challenge they will have faced in their experience will be less.

Next comes the question of how well the skills gained might translate from the actual context of practical experience (sparring with blunt swords) to other contexts. In this case, the most relevant context might be the actual historical circumstances that the arts were designed for - dueling or self-defense with actual sharp swords. And the answer? We really don't know. There are a lot of variables in a real sword fight that we don't get to experience in sparring. The fear of actually being killed or maimed. The willingness to actually kill or maim another person. Knowing exactly how much of a wound you might inflict with a particular blow you land. Knowing whether that wound would incapacitate your opponent and if so, how long it would take before they stopped fighting and trying to kill you. Having the internal fortitude to keep fighting when you've been wounded and don't yet know how bad it is. Having the experience of actually wearing a sword on your person as you go through your daily life. Recognizing the situations where you might need to deploy your sword quickly and how to do so most efficiently and knowing when not to deploy it and knowing the legal ramifications of using your sword in a society where such weapons are common. That's a lot of stuff that we don't have a good way to replicate - and frankly most of us wouldn't want to. If I had access to a time travel machine or fantasy portal which could take me to a time or place where I could get truly complete practical experience in sword fighting, I wouldn't even consider it. I'll settle for developing my skill at bonking people with a blunt sword while keeping them from bonking me.

Now when you say "one should have obtained 'practical experience' from their koryu training", exactly how much time are you spending actually executing your techniques against someone who is really trying their best to stop your techniques and defeat you?
I've not been in any 'duels to the death using real swords', but I have confronted a hatchet wielding home invader with a wooden sword. And I'm sure my koryu training helped me there - despite my opponent not being a 15th century Japanese warrior.
There you go. That's a bit of actual real-life practical experience. It's something you can learn from. And I'm sure your training did help you.

Now consider. That's one incident, against an opponent who probably wasn't even trained in his weapon. What percentage of your technical repertoire did you have the opportunity to use and test out? Assuming that whatever you used worked successfully, do you feel that you now have a sample size to judge how often those movements will work under what circumstances? Compare that to the thousands of matches a collegiate wrestler has had - all the successes and failures and opportunities to see what needs improvement.
Look just find some video of live sparring where anybody uses these ideas you are saying work.

What do you mean 'working'? Why is it that you can't follow a linear conversation? Why did you completely ignore my suggestion that you contact a teacher, who is in your area... and maybe actually gain some experience around something you claim to know about?



No problem:


And because Tony mentioned him:

We seem to be having a failure to communicate here. Drop bear asked for live sparring. You presented videos of two-person kata, which is definitely not the same thing. There can be value to two-person kata, especially when you allow for the possibility of a bit of improvisation or resistance to check the technical correctness of the movements. I sometimes use similar drills, although not formalized and standardized the way they are in koryu arts. But they are not sparring. The Tenjin Shinyo Ryu video was entirely cooperative and scripted. The video with Amdur Ellis showing Araki Ryu had a bit more improvisation and testing of structure (especially the bit with the naginatas in the bind), but they were still not really trying to hit each other.
 

Hanzou

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What do you mean 'working'? Why is it that you can't follow a linear conversation? Why did you completely ignore my suggestion that you contact a teacher, who is in your area... and maybe actually gain some experience around something you claim to know about?



No problem:


And because Tony mentioned him:


I think @drop bear is talking more along the lines of this;


or this

 

BrendanF

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Practical experience can mean a lot of different things in different fields.

Hey Tony - great post, apologies for the delayed response.

Absolutely. This cuts to the heart of the point I was trying to make.

I'm going to define it as experience actually executing the methods of your martial art (kicks, punches, chokes, throws, stabs, cuts, whatever) against someone who is honestly doing their best to prevent you from succeeding while also doing their best to execute their own techniques against you. If you have a different definition, please offer it, but I think it's a reasonable starting point for discussion. I also think it's at least pretty close to what drop bear is referring to when he uses the term.

Sure, that's well written. Your further comments about context were even better.

There you go. That's a bit of actual real-life practical experience. It's something you can learn from. And I'm sure your training did help you.
one incident, against an opponent who probably wasn't even trained in his weapon. What percentage of your technical repertoire did you have the opportunity to use and test out? Assuming that whatever you used worked successfully, do you feel that you now have a sample size to judge how often those movements will work under what circumstances? Compare that to the thousands of matches a collegiate wrestler has had - all the successes and failures and opportunities to see what needs improvement.

Yep - that's one incident I've mentioned. I have had a few.

In these thousands of matches the collegiate wrestler has had... how many of those included his/her opponent swinging a weapon at them?

The reality is - for all of these thousands of wrestling matches, the collegiate wrestler has received zero training around weapon use, retention or defense.

Similarly, plenty of martial artists trained in and skilled with the use of weapons.. may be completely ignorant of critical knowledge or training in the use of or defense against firearms.

Plenty of wonderful pistoleros have no knowledge of combat shooting tactics, troop movement, and the myriad other factors which come into play in a firefight.

Context is critical, and the blanket statements made by Drop Bear that essentially boil down to "BJJ/wrestling/MT > anything and everything else" ignore that, and stem from a fundamental lack of understanding of the breadth of contexts out there, and the training methodologies which can be effectively used to approach them.

The entire 'liveness' discussion too ignores these contextual variances at worst, or projects principles inappropriate to different contexts at best.

The point I was trying to make in posting the clips of those demonstrations of kata was precisely that - these are 'live' practises, just in varying degrees. Any idea that those Tenjin Shinyo ryu folks are 'cooperative' with each other is way off base. They do Judo in addition to their jujutsu studies, for one thing. Same as the koryu jujutsu I study.

There is a reason that experienced, intelligent martial artists do not all simply do mma/BJJ. There are benefits to be gained from other things.

That is, of course, in a specific context - a sport with a certain ruleset. Do we have any experience with how those wrestling skills might generalize to a wider context? What about other grappling sports? What about mixed martial arts? What about street fights? Do these skills carry over at all?

Of course they do. But decreasing as one moves further away from an unarmed, single opponent fight. I would argue that crossover application to other grappling sports or mma is a significant distance from 'street fights'. And while of course one can find plenty of footage of wrestlers smashing people 'in the streets', one can also find footage of them being shot and stabbed.

I'm reluctant to engage in these discussions because the restrictions imposed by writing on these forums results in back and forth, polarised debates where folks feel put upon. I would hasten to add that I am all for 'aliveness' in training. I do think it is essential. I just don't think that the only appearance it can take is the 'mma/bjj' paradigm, and so to dismiss other arts one is clearly ignorant of is not only offensive, but foolish. Particularly where weapons enter the chat.
 

Tony Dismukes

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In these thousands of matches the collegiate wrestler has had... how many of those included his/her opponent swinging a weapon at them?

The reality is - for all of these thousands of wrestling matches, the collegiate wrestler has received zero training around weapon use, retention or defense.
That's quite correct. Effective wrestling skills are an important aspect of using and fighting against weapons, but someone who has only done wrestling as a sport will have to learn a bunch of extra stuff to apply those skills in a weapons context. I will argue that an experienced grappler will have a head start in that aspect of training when they start weapons training, compared to someone who has no such background. I believe that Ellis Amdur requires new Araki Ryu students to have some background in a close range grappling art (i.e. wrestling, Judo, BJJ, Sumo, etc rather than something like Aikido) for just that reason.
Context is critical, and the blanket statements made by Drop Bear that essentially boil down to "BJJ/wrestling/MT > anything and everything else" ignore that, and stem from a fundamental lack of understanding of the breadth of contexts out there, and the training methodologies which can be effectively used to approach them.
I think you are missing DB's basic point. Yes - he's a big advocate for MMA, but his bottom line is that he believes in training against resistance and techniques which have been shown to reliably work against resistance. In terms of weapons training, I've never seen him badmouth the Dog Brothers or HEMA practitioners or anyone else who can show their methods working against people who are trying to not let it happen.
The point I was trying to make in posting the clips of those demonstrations of kata was precisely that - these are 'live' practises, just in varying degrees. Any idea that those Tenjin Shinyo ryu folks are 'cooperative' with each other is way off base. They do Judo in addition to their jujutsu studies, for one thing. Same as the koryu jujutsu I study.
The Tenjin Shinyo Ryu folks may very well do non-cooperative live randori, but the clip you posted was not it. In every technique shown, the uke made no attempt whatsoever to prevent tori from executing his movement nor did he make any effort to defeat tori with his own movements. If you consider that "live", then I think you are using a very different sense of the word. Perhaps you could explain the definition you are using and we can come up with a common vocabulary to communicate better.

The Araki Ryu video was closer to something like sparring, and had some improvisation, but it's not all the way there. You might consider it a sort of middle ground between purely cooperative kata and actual sparring. That can have benefits, but if you never do actual sparring then it can also have the risk of leading you into some bad habits and misunderstandings of how things work.
I would argue that crossover application to other grappling sports or mma is a significant distance from 'street fights'. And while of course one can find plenty of footage of wrestlers smashing people 'in the streets', one can also find footage of them being shot and stabbed.
Once guns and knives enter the picture, then anyone can get shot or stabbed, including people who train in weapons use and weapons defense or even people with significant real world experience in firefights or knife assaults.
I just don't think that the only appearance it can take is the 'mma/bjj' paradigm, and so to dismiss other arts one is clearly ignorant of is not only offensive, but foolish. Particularly where weapons enter the chat.
It depends on what you mean by "the mma/bjj paradigm." You can certainly have legitimate arts where the technical foundation doesn't look like MMA or BJJ. However you still need to do live training against resistance. If you are training with swords, then you should have people legitimately trying to hit you with a sword while preventing you from countering. If you are training for escaping multiple opponents, then you should have training where a group of people who know what they are doing actually trying to get hold of you and keep you from escaping. (Not just coming at you like uncoordinated zombies and taking easy dives the way you see in many videos of "multiple attacker defense.")

In addition, if there are aspects of what you are training for which can't really be simulated accurately in live, resisted training and which you don't have opportunities to carry out in real life, then you should acknowledge that these are aspects of your training that you can't know for certain how well you would be prepared for. In my original post I pointed out a bunch of the limitations of my HEMA training with regards to the reality of a sword fight. Those same limitations also apply to any koryu sword art.
 

BrendanF

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Yes - he's a big advocate for MMA, but his bottom line is that he believes in training against resistance and techniques which have been shown to reliably work against resistance. In terms of weapons training, I've never seen him badmouth the Dog Brothers or HEMA practitioners or anyone else who can show their methods working against people who are trying to not let it happen.

I do understand his point. Neither the Dog Brothers or HEMA practitioners 'show their methods working against people who are trying to not let it happen' however. They are engaged in a game which is far from genuine combat, in the same way kendo does not accurately replicate a sword fight. If they were showing methods 'working', someone would not be there to train the next day.

the clip you posted was not it. In every technique shown, the uke made no attempt whatsoever to prevent tori from executing his movement nor did he make any effort to defeat tori with his own movements. If you consider that "live", then I think you are using a very different sense of the word. Perhaps you could explain the definition you are using and we can come up with a common vocabulary to communicate better.

I know what you mean - perhaps I can explain my thoughts better. Sure, in those public demonstrations there may be less or little resistance provided by uke. But training in those kata properly involves the senior practitioner (uke) providing resistance. In early stages the resistance should be (if the senior is good) matched to tori's capacity. However training should progress to involve pushing tori with significant amounts of resistance - attempting to prevent tori from executing his movements, defeat tori with their movements, and 'breaking' the kata and using different technical approaches to the mandated circumstances. In other words, genuine kata training does involve full resistance training. It just is not 'sparring'.

That can have benefits, but if you never do actual sparring then it can also have the risk of leading you into some bad habits and misunderstandings of how things work.

Sparring can have benefits, but can also lead to bad habits and misunderstandings of how things work.

if there are aspects of what you are training for which can't really be simulated accurately in live, resisted training and which you don't have opportunities to carry out in real life, then you should acknowledge that these are aspects of your training that you can't know for certain how well you would be prepared for. In my original post I pointed out a bunch of the limitations of my HEMA training with regards to the reality of a sword fight. Those same limitations also apply to any koryu sword art.

There are no weapon arts that train leaving practitioners dead at the end, so by definition there isn't anyone 'simulating accurately'. And ultimately almost none of those training in archaic weapon use these days will ever be in a position to use their training as intended.. so we are genuinely engaged in navel gazing, in these discussions. It is clear, some people seem to think wearing padding and sparring is the only effective method for training. In Japan, where this discussion has been ongoing for the better part of a millennium, koryu weapon arts tended to prioritise kata training. I believe with the obvious understanding that folks would engage in rough-housing on their own time.
 

Hanzou

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Those are some nice collar chokes, but those are tough to pull off in a SD situation unless your opponent is wearing a thick shirt or a jacket. You're better off with chokes that don't require the gi, like RNCs, Guillotines, Triangle, D'arces, Nogi Ezekiel, Head and arm, etc.
 

drop bear

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Those are some nice collar chokes, but those are tough to pull off in a SD situation unless your opponent is wearing a thick shirt or a jacket. You're better off with chokes that don't require the gi, like RNCs, Guillotines, Triangle, D'arces, Nogi Ezekiel, Head and arm, etc.

Paper cutters? Loop chokes And the like are supposed to work with T shirts.

Nobody let's me destroy a t shirt trying.
 

Hanzou

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Paper cutters? Loop chokes And the like are supposed to work with T shirts.

Nobody let's me destroy a t shirt trying.

Yeah, I just prefer to not rely on material they're wearing for the choke. It can lead to consistency problems. I find that I can slap on no-gi chokes far more quickly and more consistently than gi chokes. Some of the no-gi variants of loop chokes aren't bad either.
 

caped crusader

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Those are some nice collar chokes, but those are tough to pull off in a SD situation unless your opponent is wearing a thick shirt or a jacket. You're better off with chokes that don't require the gi, like RNCs, Guillotines, Triangle, D'arces, Nogi Ezekiel, Head and arm, etc.
Agree 100%
 

Ugh

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The judo instructor that teaches at the club I'm familiar with doesn't actually start teaching 'self-defense' moves, or street applications of judo until shodan.
What the hell are you doing until then, patty cake?
 

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