Hi PhotonGuy,
A couple of things occur to me. First, your assertion that everyone would adopt high-percentage moves. But ask yourself "high percentage for what?" Since we're talking about MMA, we're talking about hitting and submitting people in some fashion. Which is really the goal of anyone interested in being combative. We may quibble about what constitutes submission, hitting, etc. (e.g., someone could say that judo isn't interested in hitting people or submitting them, but I'd suggest that slamming an opponent into the ground at high velocity is a form of hitting). We don't need to agree on the semantics, as long as we can agree that application of moves on a resisting opponent is the point there.
Yes it does have to be specified exactly what is meant my high percentage, but I think when it was brought up in this thread what was meant was, as you point out, high percentage for hitting and submitting people or for ending fights. In other words, techniques that work the best in fights. I was not the one who started the discussion on high percentage techniques so I can't say for sure what was meant when it was first mentioned.
There are plenty of martial artists who train without that intention. They may tell themselves they're training for that, but how often are they really putting themselves in direct opposition with a resisting opponent?
People take up the martial arts for many different reasons. The martial arts is done by people from all walks of life and for all sorts of reasons. Not everybody does it to be able to take down a resisting opponent.
The real value of MMA isn't that it faithfully recreates reality. What could ever do that but reality itself? And reality is such a broad concept that it's hard to fit into a training paradigm. The value of MMA (outside of competition) is that it affords people to employ as many modalities as are really feasible. And, even if you don't give a monkey's about competition (like me), the principles that make MMA viable as a sport can be used in coming up with a format that makes the same allowances in training other styles.
Embrace chaos to the point that you can without unnecessary risk to life and limb, because I think we can all agree that a "real fight" (difficult as that is to define in detail) is chaotic. The different modalities in MMA mean that you're contending with a wide range of possibilities. Surely you can see the benefit in learning how to keep calm in the face of that.
I agree that MMA does have value in that regard but I like to learn other arts first. The way I see it there's two types of martial arts, arts that focus on striking and arts that focus on grappling, and then there's MMA which is a combination of the two. I would like to learn a striking art first and a grappling art first and then maybe do some MMA, but that's just me.
Second, you can actually see the high percentage movements that carry through all styles of a certain type. If a style punches, you'll see the reverse punch/straight cross. If it kicks, you'll see some variation on the round kick and front kick. More importantly, to someone's point upstream, when it comes to sparring, a lot of the stylistic variation you see in forms fades or vanishes entirely. What you tend to be left with is a smaller set of movements that can be reliably employed. And the people who have spent more time working on those things tend to flourish.
Yes that's true and the "high percentage" movements are usually the most basic movements, the first movements you start learning as a beginner, from my experience, but even among the basic high percentage movements there are some techniques that work better for some people but not for others, depending on the person.
For instance, Bruce Lee and Don Wilson made very good use of the sidekick but just because they made it work doesn't mean that everybody will make it work the way they did. The sidekick was a high percentage technique for them but not necessarily for everybody else.
Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida make very good use of the front kick, scoring knockouts with it, but just because the front kick is a high percentage move for them doesn't mean its high percentage for everybody.
Mike Tyson made really good use of the uppercut, a very basic technique in boxing but that doesn't mean all boxers make it a high percentage technique the way Mike Tyson did.
Finally, I agree (unsurprisingly) with Tony. MMA does some of the distillation for you. I don't train in MMA personally, but surely it stands to reason that generations of fighters ahead of you trying things out might have some insights on which ones worked. That shouldn't be taken as an end to the question, but it's guidance that could be considered. There are people who make things work even after the world as told them it can't. The UFC told us that high kicks couldn't work until Maurice Smith said "hold my beer." But he was an experienced full-contact kickboxer.
Yes, however those people who do make things work are usually the exception not the general rule. Aside from Maurice there are not that many people to the best of my knowledge that make high kicks work in sport fights or self defense situations.
What you're proposing (which is fine if you want to spend your time this way) is in-depth training in multiple arts, then more years spent synthesising them.
Yes, although when we're talking about martial arts I like to put them into two categories, striking arts and grappling arts, and MMA is the synthesis.
Do you not think there's some value in considering how other people have already answered those questions?
Im sure other people have their own answers and they might've found stuff that works for them that's different than what works for me, to that I would say good for them and to each their own, we've all got to find what works best for us individually.
). But setup well, they can definitely be a ending kick. It really depends on the kicker and their experience, just like any other technique.
