Martial Arts That Aren't Useless

[spartan231490]

(I'm not sure if martial art is the broadest term, but basically, I'm just talking about any style of fighting.)

I want to get fit and I figured that I may as well learn a useful life skill while I do it, so naturally, I thought of learning a martial art. The only problem is, all the martial arts that I'm aware of (Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Tai Chi, Yoga, Sudoku, etc etc etc) seem to be about as useful in a real life fight as training in Baseball (or so I'm told).

So, my question to you is, do you know of any fighting styles that actually have a practical application.

In honour of the upcoming Brazil Soccer World Cup, which I'm sure we're all super excited about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie], have some Capoeira.

I don't know who told you that, but Karate and Tae Kwon do, as well as almost every other martial art, are very useful in a real fight. Frankly, I think anyone who told you they aren't is trying to sell you something, so to speak.

That said, if your primary goal is fitness, pick a class that's local enough that you'll go often, and you probably want the longest class available. That said, if you want to lose weight, you should try to get weight training in, it's the best way to lose weight and keep it off.

And, it's not a terribly popular opinion, but I think if you're doing it for self-defense you should go for a striking art, like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, instead of a grappling or throwing art like aikido or ju jitsu. As I said, any is useful in a fight, but I think striking arts are more applicable. You should probably also try to avoid a true traditional school, modernized schools are more likely to cover self-defense in real world situations. I would avoid boxing or MMA or any other sport fighting style. Yes, they would help you in a fight, but they're more designed for very specific circumstances, 1 on 1 fights in a controlled environment. Self-defense can happen anywhere, with any number of attackers, so I feel that it's unwise to rely on a style that doesn't account for that.

Lastly, as a martial artist myself, the best thing for converting martial arts training into self defense is to practice the fundamentals on your own. A strong stance and a good punch will serve you better on the street than being able to do a tornado kick.

 

[Wyes]

I don't know who told you that, but Karate and Tae Kwon do, as well as almost every other martial art, are very useful in a real fight. Frankly, I think anyone who told you they aren't is trying to sell you something, so to speak.

The issue with those arts is not the arts themselves, but that there's very few people out there training them in a fashion useful for anything besides tournament fighting.

And, it's not a terribly popular opinion, but I think if you're doing it for self-defense you should go for a striking art, like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, instead of a grappling or throwing art like aikido or ju jitsu. As I said, any is useful in a fight, but I think striking arts are more applicable. You should probably also try to avoid a true traditional school, modernized schools are more likely to cover self-defense in real world situations. I would avoid boxing or MMA or any other sport fighting style. Yes, they would help you in a fight, but they're more designed for very specific circumstances, 1 on 1 fights in a controlled environment. Self-defense can happen anywhere, with any number of attackers, so I feel that it's unwise to rely on a style that doesn't account for that.

Out of curiosity, why do you feel a striking art is more appropriate for self-defence? You said yourself that self-defence scenarios can happen anywhere, and a great many of those are going to involve grappling. I would go so far as to say that the majority of fights involve grappling and striking - I wouldn't neglect either of them. This kind of bears out historically - grappling arts are much more common and the striking arts seem to come later. Not an expert on that topic though. Otherwise I agree about the problems with people who only train for the ring or for sparring.

Lastly, as a martial artist myself, the best thing for converting martial arts training into self defense is to practice the fundamentals on your own. A strong stance and a good punch will serve you better on the street than being able to do a tornado kick.

We certainly agree on this!

EDIT: As to all the people recommending guns. My 2 cents;

Guns for self-defence (i.e. CCW etc.) are not legal in most countries.

Secondly, they can only be used to kill. That is not always appropriate for self-defence.

 

[Wyes]

Given that single punches have been known to kill people, especially when targeted at the head, the idea that any situation in which serious force is warranted deadly force is not is ludicrous.

To be honest I find the idea of guns for the purposes of self-defence lacking regardless (most of the time you have to defend yourself from a serious threat, you don't have the luxury of drawing your weapon first, and I'm hardly the first person to point this out). My point though is mostly that there are many situations where I am entirely justified in defending myself, but shooting them is going to be considered excessive force and I will go to prison.

There are also plenty of other scenarios where a gun just isn't going to be helpful. Say a family member has lost their temper and are doing something stupid - I'm not going to shoot them now, am I? I'm inclined to wrap them up until they calm down.

However, most of all, in most places you cannot carry a gun on your person unless you are a police officer.

 

[grey_space]

Okay. Let me put it to you in plain English. As a member of the Bujinkan myself, I can tell you for certain that you don't know shit.

Well, Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. But I bet he knows that ninja's don't exist.

And anyone who claims to be studying a form of combat based on ninjutsu/jitsu/whatever as a 'good' form of martial arts really shouldn't come off so smug.

OP: Listen to Wyes he's talking a lot of sense.

 

[Wyes]

Your first point is not borne out by any of the surveys done, government or private. Your second scenario is one in which serious force is not used. In which case dogpiling would be an acceptable tactic. If you need a trained martial artist in your situation, it is not at all a minor temper flare.

Point 1: Really?

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Still, even if that is not the case (this was just from a brief google, I certainly haven't done in-depth research on it so I may be very much wrong), guns are not legal to carry in most places, so it rules it out as a self-defence option in most places.

Point 2: I'll concede that one. It's not a good example of requiring serious force.

I was trying to say really that martial arts skills here give you other tools to use (because dogpiling somebody who doesn't want to be dogpiled is not as easy as it seems). This is something that comes up a lot, strangely - I've encountered a lot of instructors who at some point have had to defend themselves against somebody who they can't harm.

EDIT: I'd just like to clarify that I'm not trying to say guns are completely useless for self-defence. I do think it's important to have other options.

 

[Wyes]

Ah yes, Hemingway. Always amusing to see studies posted which refuse to actually expose their methodology and data sets. Of course, given how the anti-gun crowd gets seriously burned every time they do, that's not particularly surprising. See Kellerman and Bellieses.
http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2006/does-anti-gun-researcher-david-hemenway.aspx?s=%22Harvard+University%22&st=&ps=

Look, I'm not interested in getting into a debate about this, there would be no point, so I'll say two things and leave it at that;

1. Why would I trust a biased source from the NRA anyway? Maybe this Hemingway chap is biased too, but I have no reason to believe an NRA source wouldn't be just as biased.

2. You haven't addressed the real main point in that guns are not legal everywhere.

Please understand that, while I do not personally think guns are particularly good for self-defence in many situations, and it baffles me that they're not controlled more than they are in the U.S. (when there are plenty of examples out there showing how well gun control works), I am not anti-guns. I would actually enjoy taking up shooting as a hobby, if it weren't prohibitively expensive for me.

 

[Wyes]

]Did you even read the NRA source? What, do you think they asked Hemingway for his data sets and exact methodology, he gave it to them, and then they lied about him not giving it to them?


As for gun control being effective, that's a real laugh. The only place it's 'effective' is Japan, and that's because the criminal culture itself frowns on gun use. Not because of any laws.

You misunderstand me - my point was not that the Hemingway source was valid, but that the NRA are no more likely to be unbiased. They clearly have a vested interest. This is not me saying that the NRA are lying about Hemingway, it's me saying that they have no reason to promote any valid research against guns for self-defence anyway. The point is - the effectiveness of guns for self-defence is not cut and dry. If you would like, I can find a video of a knife wielding lunatic stabbing three or four police officers of a dozen or so (in I believe South Africa?), all of whom already had their pistols drawn, before they finally inflict a wound that drops him. That's a situation that should heavily favour the police officers. Now, this obviously isn't going to happen all the time, but it's certainly not as simple as 'have gun - can defend self'.

As for gun control - I live in a country where gun control has been extremely effective - Australia. There are of course other examples, but we're not debating gun control here. It doesn't matter whether or not its effective (for the purposes of this thread), it matters whether or not you live in a country where you can get a concealed carry permit anyway.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler: SNIP

]Did you even read the NRA source? What, do you think they asked Hemingway for his data sets and exact methodology, he gave it to them, and then they lied about him not giving it to them?


As for gun control being effective, that's a real laugh. The only place it's 'effective' is Japan, and that's because the criminal culture itself frowns on gun use. Not because of any laws.

You misunderstand me - my point was not that the Hemingway source was valid, but that the NRA are no more likely to be unbiased. They clearly have a vested interest. This is not me saying that the NRA are lying about Hemingway, it's me saying that they have no reason to promote any valid research against guns for self-defence anyway. The point is - the effectiveness of guns for self-defence is not cut and dry. If you would like, I can find a video of a knife wielding lunatic stabbing three or four police officers of a dozen or so (in I believe South Africa?), all of whom already had their pistols drawn, before they finally inflict a wound that drops him. That's a situation that should heavily favour the police officers. Now, this obviously isn't going to happen all the time, but it's certainly not as simple as 'have gun - can defend self'.

As for gun control - I live in a country where gun control has been extremely effective - Australia. There are of course other examples, but we're not debating gun control here. It doesn't matter whether or not its effective (for the purposes of this thread), it matters whether or not you live in a country where you can get a concealed carry permit anyway.

*blinks* And if I had linked to studies by them you might have a point. None of the studies I was referring to saying that guns are useful in defense, even when not fired, were funded by the NRA. I merely was pointing out your *source* was too chickenshit to release his methodology and data sets. As there is NO monetary interest implicit in his keeping those data sets and his methodology private, the only remaining possible conclusion is that they would not stand up under scrutiny.

As for your video of the police officers getting their asses handed to them, the average gun owner in the US is both a better shot and better trained than the average police officer in the US. Anyone that could be considered a 'gun nut' is better trained by several orders of magnitude. I somehow doubt those SA officers even shoot more than once a year.


As for your vaunted 'successful australian gun control', between the fact that your biker gangs are manufacturing their own closed bolt submachine guns that are professional quality and the fact that the murder rate in Australia did not decline any faster at all than the US murder rate over the 10 years post the Port Arthur shootings, it seems pretty damned clear that said gun control did jack shit at keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals.

Spoiler: SNIP

]Did you even read the NRA source? What, do you think they asked Hemingway for his data sets and exact methodology, he gave it to them, and then they lied about him not giving it to them?


As for gun control being effective, that's a real laugh. The only place it's 'effective' is Japan, and that's because the criminal culture itself frowns on gun use. Not because of any laws.

You misunderstand me - my point was not that the Hemingway source was valid, but that the NRA are no more likely to be unbiased. They clearly have a vested interest. This is not me saying that the NRA are lying about Hemingway, it's me saying that they have no reason to promote any valid research against guns for self-defence anyway. The point is - the effectiveness of guns for self-defence is not cut and dry. If you would like, I can find a video of a knife wielding lunatic stabbing three or four police officers of a dozen or so (in I believe South Africa?), all of whom already had their pistols drawn, before they finally inflict a wound that drops him. That's a situation that should heavily favour the police officers. Now, this obviously isn't going to happen all the time, but it's certainly not as simple as 'have gun - can defend self'.

As for gun control - I live in a country where gun control has been extremely effective - Australia. There are of course other examples, but we're not debating gun control here. It doesn't matter whether or not its effective (for the purposes of this thread), it matters whether or not you live in a country where you can get a concealed carry permit anyway.

And thus, the thread was derailed.

I think everyone would appreciate it if this was dropped.

 

[Wyes]

And thus, the thread was derailed.

I think everyone would appreciate it if this was dropped.

Indeed. If we continue it shouldn't be here. I was trying to avoid the gun-control debate but I didn't do a very good job of it.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Okay. Let me put it to you in plain English. As a member of the Bujinkan myself, I can tell you for certain that you don't know shit.

I'm the pope. How could you know? Because I told you so over the internet.

Killing people is illegal in most countries, therefor organisations teaching people hwo to kill others would be illegal. Or do you think all the "here's how to kill people" is held in an illegal basement somewhere.

No, anecdotal evidence isn't worth shit, especially when it goes against common sence.

Would you make a distinction between "This is how you kill someone, avoid this!" and "This is how you kill someone!"?

 

[Boris Goodenough]

I very much doubt they're teaching you all numerous ways to kill accidently murder people wiht your own hands, and then go "oh, and please don't do this". if I were to guess, it's the same old "if a fucker punches you, this is how to use the force in his punch against him and throw him to the ground". It's not illegal, it's very effective and you actually don't fucking kill people.

Honestly, in your first example, how would that even work? Would they be like "Ih you punch here and here extra hard, his brain goes off, don't do that" or "if you touch his knee like this, which anyone can do, he dies. Don't do that". Are they working to avoid kills by accident? Because otherwise it'd be kinda pointless to teach someone how to kill someone else, and then go "nope, please don't".

Such things as punches/knees to the neck can cause paralysis/death, quick powerful chokes (hits) on the jugulars can cause a heart failure, stomp kicks to the head when they are ground, throat punches and so on.

Getting it shown can be a good way to avoid doing it.

 

[Krantos]

It depends entirely on who teaches you and for what purpose

^This.

I study Jujustsu, but our focus is on form and structure rather than fighting practicality. That's what I wanted, and is why I chose the Dojo I did. However, I know for a fact there are more fighting oriented dojo's in my area that someone could join if they wanted to learn to fight.

It's not that many of the Arts are useless; most of them originated for the sole purpose of fighting; it's the way they are taught that lessens their practicality in a fight. That doesn't make them useless, it just means it's not their purpose.

 

[Ryan Minns]

I'm not sure if this has been asked but... what's your build? Most martial arts can help train your mind as long as you have a decent teacher but different body types react better to certain styles if you need to use them for self defense and want to be more effective

 

[Flames66]

I am a practitioner of Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu and I would recommend it if you are looking for simple take down techniques and dirty fighting. It includes use of pressure points, joint locks, punching, kicking, grappling, throwing and a small amount of ground fighting. There are usually warm-ups and cool-downs, but fitness is not the focus.

What it is good at

Techniques to quickly immobilise an opponent and render them unable to continue fighting. This ranges from gently restraining them to breaking an arm or knocking them unconscious.

What it is not good at

The training is mostly between a defined attacker and defender with little free form sparring. This means that practitioners may be at a disadvantage against people who spar regularly unless they to extra training.

Edit: As an amateur-ish boxer myself I have to add though that boxing has some problems in a bar fight or similar scenarios. What separates the hand techniques of boxing from other martial arts is how you stand. But the way you stand in boxing requires a lot of space in your pants, very light, thin-soled shoes and is comparatively wobbly (boxers don't need to stand firm like an oak tree because they don't kick).

Clothing is the bane of most traditional martial artists too, kicking in skinny jeans is freakin impossible

This is something that annoys me about modern clothing. I do not own a single pair of jeans and haven't for over a decade because they are so uncomfortable and motion limiting. I don't understand how anyone wears them. I can comfortably kick to head height in all the trousers I own.

Snip

Dude, you got wrecked by the first link. Try to actually say something that doesnät come from your own ass. Don't act smug when you've actually been proved fucking wrong by a wikipedia link.

And yes, killing and maiming people are actually illegal in most countries (unless you're part of law enfrocement or military, of course).

I am fairly certain you have not trained with any Bujinkan clubs. When doing weapon work the training can include how to stab with a knife to quickly collapse a lung, making little noise and avoiding getting blood on your clothes. This is in the context of historical assassins.

 

[Wyes]

snip

I didn't really want to address this because it's not always a side of martial arts that people want to talk about, but it does exist.

Martial arts are, by definition, martial. With very few exceptions, any martial art that's been around for a while was designed to let you disable or kill people. Some arts place more focus on this than others. Sword arts for example are almost exclusively based around killing people, because that's what a sword is for. However, training in a sword art is perfectly legal.

This applies to the hand-to-hand arts too, although all these 'pressure point kill spots' are pretty much full of crap. The person who started my particular ryu only two generations ago killed people for a living and was for all intents and purposes not a very nice man. That does not mean that the art has no other applications. It's important to realise the roots of your art and the context it was developed in (e.g. jujutsu was developed for fighting people in armour on a battlefield).

 

[Ieyke]

Snip

Dude, you got wrecked by the first link. Try to actually say something that doesnät come from your own ass. Don't act smug when you've actually been proved fucking wrong by a wikipedia link.

And yes, killing and maiming people are actually illegal in most countries (unless you're part of law enfrocement or military, of course).

I am fairly certain you have not trained with any Bujinkan clubs. When doing weapon work the training can include how to stab with a knife to quickly collapse a lung, making little noise and avoiding getting blood on your clothes. This is in the context of historical assassins.

No no. Some guy in Sweden said it's not true. We're imagining all of it.
What we practice is clearly rendered untrue because he says so.

 

[Childe]

Useful is an awkward word. Karate, Tai Chi, etc., while now sports or recreational were developed for fighting and used to fight. What useful actually comes down to is how much you practice and using the right move in the right place at the right time. If the person you are fighting is a 300 pound linebacker your not going to throw a roundhouse kick no matter how much you have practiced it because it would be completely useless. In the same way if you take two people, who are practicing the same Martial Art and put them against the same opponent, of the two the one who will be better off is the one that worked his butt off practicing. So my answer is find a Martial Art that: (a) you like, (b) fits who you are as a person, (c) a martial art you are willing to practice at home if you want to use it to fight.
Remember what Bruce Lee said: "I'm am not afraid of the man who has practiced 1000 kicks one time, I'm afraid of the man who has practiced one kick 1000 times."

 

[Aramis Night]

I like sword-fighting myself. Sure it's not as effective as an unarmed combat style when your unarmed, but I do think its cute when people come at me with a knife. When you grow accustomed to dodging a 3 ft. long razor coming your way, the site of a knife in the hand of some street person doesn't even quicken your pulse. Unless they have been trained in its use(you will know by the way they handle it), odds are good you'll have little trouble disarming them.

As a fellow swordsman, I completely disagree with this. Knives scare me a lot more than swords do - they're easy to conceal, they're easy to deceive with, and even a dumb brute can completely mess with what most places are teaching as knife defence.

You do have a point with this. It is just that in my experience, they always seem to brandish the knife first in an attempt to intimidate. You can see the sense of power they seem to derive from it and they want you to know it. Usually because their intent is rarely just to kill you, but more to get you to do what they want. They give up most of the advantages that a knife offers right away. All subtlety gone. But again, that has just been my experience.

I have actually found my sword training (albeit it's not sport fencing) to have been immensely helpful in developing the way I look at martial arts, which is probably the single most useful thing to learn.

Not a sport fencer either (too limiting imo). I 2nd this. One other thing I would recommend is when looking for a dojo, find a place that has the least rules about restricted hitting areas. When sparring, it is really counter-productive to have parts be off limits. What is the point in learning self-defense if you never learn how to effectively defend your whole body from harm. Especially since many places have rules in place to not strike parts of your body that you really don't want harmed(groin for example). And yes I have taken a bamboo sword to the groin.

 

[spartan231490]

I don't know who told you that, but Karate and Tae Kwon do, as well as almost every other martial art, are very useful in a real fight. Frankly, I think anyone who told you they aren't is trying to sell you something, so to speak.

The issue with those arts is not the arts themselves, but that there's very few people out there training them in a fashion useful for anything besides tournament fighting.

I think there are more schools than you might think that don't just focus on tournament fighting. In my general area, there are more non-tournament schools than tournament schools.

And, it's not a terribly popular opinion, but I think if you're doing it for self-defense you should go for a striking art, like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, instead of a grappling or throwing art like aikido or ju jitsu. As I said, any is useful in a fight, but I think striking arts are more applicable. You should probably also try to avoid a true traditional school, modernized schools are more likely to cover self-defense in real world situations. I would avoid boxing or MMA or any other sport fighting style. Yes, they would help you in a fight, but they're more designed for very specific circumstances, 1 on 1 fights in a controlled environment. Self-defense can happen anywhere, with any number of attackers, so I feel that it's unwise to rely on a style that doesn't account for that.

Out of curiosity, why do you feel a striking art is more appropriate for self-defence? You said yourself that self-defence scenarios can happen anywhere, and a great many of those are going to involve grappling. I would go so far as to say that the majority of fights involve grappling and striking - I wouldn't neglect either of them. This kind of bears out historically - grappling arts are much more common and the striking arts seem to come later. Not an expert on that topic though. Otherwise I agree about the problems with people who only train for the ring or for sparring.

I'm not sure I agree, I've been in more than a few self-defense situations and never even needed to use a grab escape. I'm not saying you shouldn't learn some basic grappling, like grab escapes, but I just don't think grappling and throwing are as well suited to combating multiple attackers as striking arts. For any grappling or throwing technique that is going to be reliable enough to use in a street situation, you need to devote both hands and a lot of time/attention, leaving you virtually unable to defend yourself, at least for a short time. The also require you to be up close and personal with your attacker, where it's harder to get away and a lot more can go wrong. If my attacker blocks a punch or a low kick, we're back to neutral ground. On the other hand, if he slips out of a joint lock or worse knows enough to reverse the technique, it puts me in a very bad position.

Lastly, as a martial artist myself, the best thing for converting martial arts training into self defense is to practice the fundamentals on your own. A strong stance and a good punch will serve you better on the street than being able to do a tornado kick.

We certainly agree on this!

EDIT: As to all the people recommending guns. My 2 cents;

Guns for self-defence (i.e. CCW etc.) are not legal in most countries.

Secondly, they can only be used to kill. That is not always appropriate for self-defence.

also, this statement is inaccurate. The vast majority of gunshot victims survive, 80% for single shot from a handgun. Even more important, in the vast majority of cases, just pulling a gun will scare off an attacker without a shot even being fired. That doesn't mean you should rely on it for self defense, you shouldn't rely on any one thing for self-defense, whether that be martial arts or CCW.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

(I'm not sure if martial art is the broadest term, but basically, I'm just talking about any style of fighting.)

I want to get fit and I figured that I may as well learn a useful life skill while I do it, so naturally, I thought of learning a martial art. The only problem is, all the martial arts that I'm aware of (Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Tai Chi, Yoga, Sudoku, etc etc etc) seem to be about as useful in a real life fight as training in Baseball (or so I'm told).

So, my question to you is, do you know of any fighting styles that actually have a practical application.

In honour of the upcoming Brazil Soccer World Cup, which I'm sure we're all super excited about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie], have some Capoeira.

ProWrestling.

If you ever become trained at any place halfway decent, they'll explain that ALMOST everything they do is legit just made to "work" or "Look Nice".

I had great trainers. They'd show us how to do stuff Shoot/Legit, and then they'd show us how to make it look good.