Unless you're some sort of 5th dan black belt champion, you never kick above the knee in a real fight. Kicks to the knee and foot sweeps have their place though. Especially front kick to the knee because you can break the knee and that's a fight ender. Punching and grappling is mainly the way to go, and by grappling I don't mean wrestle them to the floor, I mean grab an arm, throw them to the ground, but remain standing, optionally break their arm(good move if they have buddies, one less combatant).
Martial Arts That Aren't Useless
- Thread starter BanicRhys
- Start date
If a particular style interests you enough to commit to it, then go looking for that. But ultimately there aren't really many bad martial arts, just bad teachers and bad training.
I did Karate for several years, which cops a lot of flack, but the Dojo I trained at and the people I trained under were dedicated and a strong community. That's the only real experience I can share.
People think of Karate as Kata, or patterns. They are drills, and a good exercise and a good tool for loading the building blocks of the style into your muscle memory. Kata and physical training is what I did a majority of the time in the beginning, and if you find a good karate school prepare to do a lot of it. Physical training is a good sign, if you see running, pushups, crunches, bagwork, etc. in every class from white belt to blacks that will be the most practical thing you'll have work with in terms of your confidence and ability to defend yourself.
We also did grappling, and sparring from open hand light contact for footwork and reflex, to fully geared contact.
The thing about practical martial artists is that they are dedicated and studious. There are no good black belts who think they have mastered their art. they study, they train, they work together to develop their styles and discern their weaknesses, and they're not afraid to learn from other styles. They learn the line between the sporting and performative elements of their style and the practical, violent and defensive elements.
I honestly didn't get into karate for self-defence initially. It was just exercise with a regimented and disciplinarian aspect that kept me focused and interested. After about two years give or take, I still hadn't graded to the point where the full contact sparring was allowed. That was when I was attacked by a group of about five guys around the end of high school. it wasn't in anger, but for their enjoyment. Their plan was to run up while I was alone in the open and each get a punch in and run off. I saw it coming and I pretty much resigned myself to it, I figured I wouldn't be able to fight one of them let alone the group and I wasn't fast enough to run. They had broken another guy's nose with the same game a day or two earlier.
The first punch was thrown and I deflected. Another came and I defended myself again, and then a flurry I absorbed with my forearms. The momentum had stopped and they were all standing there a little deflated, spat and muttered and walked off. My forearms were bruised but I had defended myself against what I thought was going to leave me in a puddle.
the point isn't to boast or suggest that is a surefire way to defend yourself or that karate is the style that lets you fight off five bigger dudes. If they wanted to fuck me up after I had disrupted their expectation of an easy victim they absolutely could have. The point was that all the training and repetition had allowed me to defend myself even though I didn't take it seriously and was absolutely not prepared. The thing about a real fight is that there is no "now I'm going to use this technique" or "he is punching with his right so I'll step left and cross to the jaw, then sweep the leg". Real fights are quick, violent, reflexive moments and commitment to a martial art gives you martial conditioning that might just allow you to react effectively in that moment. Whatever one you pick just make sure it can give you that conditioning and the physical training that will let you use it effectively.
I did Karate for several years, which cops a lot of flack, but the Dojo I trained at and the people I trained under were dedicated and a strong community. That's the only real experience I can share.
People think of Karate as Kata, or patterns. They are drills, and a good exercise and a good tool for loading the building blocks of the style into your muscle memory. Kata and physical training is what I did a majority of the time in the beginning, and if you find a good karate school prepare to do a lot of it. Physical training is a good sign, if you see running, pushups, crunches, bagwork, etc. in every class from white belt to blacks that will be the most practical thing you'll have work with in terms of your confidence and ability to defend yourself.
We also did grappling, and sparring from open hand light contact for footwork and reflex, to fully geared contact.
The thing about practical martial artists is that they are dedicated and studious. There are no good black belts who think they have mastered their art. they study, they train, they work together to develop their styles and discern their weaknesses, and they're not afraid to learn from other styles. They learn the line between the sporting and performative elements of their style and the practical, violent and defensive elements.
I honestly didn't get into karate for self-defence initially. It was just exercise with a regimented and disciplinarian aspect that kept me focused and interested. After about two years give or take, I still hadn't graded to the point where the full contact sparring was allowed. That was when I was attacked by a group of about five guys around the end of high school. it wasn't in anger, but for their enjoyment. Their plan was to run up while I was alone in the open and each get a punch in and run off. I saw it coming and I pretty much resigned myself to it, I figured I wouldn't be able to fight one of them let alone the group and I wasn't fast enough to run. They had broken another guy's nose with the same game a day or two earlier.
The first punch was thrown and I deflected. Another came and I defended myself again, and then a flurry I absorbed with my forearms. The momentum had stopped and they were all standing there a little deflated, spat and muttered and walked off. My forearms were bruised but I had defended myself against what I thought was going to leave me in a puddle.
the point isn't to boast or suggest that is a surefire way to defend yourself or that karate is the style that lets you fight off five bigger dudes. If they wanted to fuck me up after I had disrupted their expectation of an easy victim they absolutely could have. The point was that all the training and repetition had allowed me to defend myself even though I didn't take it seriously and was absolutely not prepared. The thing about a real fight is that there is no "now I'm going to use this technique" or "he is punching with his right so I'll step left and cross to the jaw, then sweep the leg". Real fights are quick, violent, reflexive moments and commitment to a martial art gives you martial conditioning that might just allow you to react effectively in that moment. Whatever one you pick just make sure it can give you that conditioning and the physical training that will let you use it effectively.
Fencing, and I suspect just about an martial art, is actually useful. Not because of the skills you gain - being handy with a sword has been an utterly useless skill for over a century after all - but because of secondary effects. General fitness is improved along with balance and flexibility. You gain a better understanding of fairly subtle cues of body language. And, unlike most martial arts which tend to restrict actual use of the skills on one another at combat speed do to risk of injury and death, fencing actually teaches you about psychology. While ultimately a physical sport, fencing is often referred to as physical chess. It's less about skill with a sword than it is about bluff and counter bluff.
If you looking to martial arts for a useful set of skills derived from the violence aspects, you are absolutely going to be disappointed. The set of conditions in which any of those skills would come in handy are so very rare for the average person that they are not even worth considering.
If you looking to martial arts for a useful set of skills derived from the violence aspects, you are absolutely going to be disappointed. The set of conditions in which any of those skills would come in handy are so very rare for the average person that they are not even worth considering.
This. This, so much this.Zira said:
Honestly, if you're looking for a martial art only for fitness and so you can perform 'practical application' then that basically takes most east Asian martial arts out of the equation, as there is so much more to them than getting fit and being able to take someone out. The main question is why do you want one just for fighting? Are you looking for/getting into fights all the time, because if so doing a martial art isn't really going to help the situation much.
I'm a black belt in a south Korean martial art called kuk sool won, and honestly, if I got into a fight, a lot of what I learnt probably wouldn't work very well because the fight just wouldn't go as I would want it to, but that doesn't make it any less challenging, enjoyable or makes it 'useless'. I believe it has made me a better person than had I not done it. You have to think carefully and really think what you want to do. Let's say you did boxing for example, even boxing requires more than just getting fit and punching someone in the face. It takes a lot of heart, mind, effort and passion to understand it well. It takes years to understand just one martial art, and a lot of people fail to understand that.
It's all about the person, not the style of fighting. Training can give someone who has the right mentality and abilities an edge over someone who doesn't have it, but as a general rule people do not go out, take a few years of karate, and go from victim to barefisted war machine unless their mindset changed as well, along with of course getting into decent enough shape to make use of the skills (which in most cases goes with the training, but out of shape martial artists tend to be just like any other out of shape guy for the most part, again it coming down to mentality).BanicRhys said:
It's true that most organized schools of fighting do not teach you much that is useful in a real fight, most teach people to get ready for tournaments and such. Training with a focus on "self defense" typically teaches you what you need to get away, as opposed to being able to take people down.
As a basic rule in a fight you don't think, you just react, if your stopping to think you've already lost for the most part. What martial arts training is good for is practicing repetitive motions so when you react instinctively you tend to do things that happen to be effective. Specific ways of reacting when you block, ways of striking when you attack, etc.. when you fight you go through your trained routines. At a certain level there is some truth that martial arts training can be a disadvantage as people trained at the same schools by the same people (it's more about the instructor than the style) tend to do things a specific way. Even if it's not fully conscious knowing what someone is going to do can give you an advantage. If you say know some guy was trained at "Jimbo Jo Fu's Dojo Of Kung Fu" and you know Jimbo teaches his guys to say throw a specific combination from a certain position, and you know that's coming, you can of course counter it. This of course sometimes gets in the way when you get into schools that compete, where say a regional tournament might see the same schools putting their students up against each other constantly, and instructors training people specifically to try and beat the students of other instructors without necessarily explaining this, and this can lead to people learning to react like garbage in a general sense.
That said I'm not big into martial arts, I have my own style it's called "Just Plain Mean", not that I get into many fights mind you. I've talked to people who are though, and really, other than that, I've noticed a tendency for people who study martial arts to get themselves into trouble. It builds confidence (as the instructors will point out) but in many cases it's confidence that gets one into stupid amounts of trouble. In reality for example some dude isn't going to take down another guy in similar shape that's twice his size just because he knows some kung-fu. That guy can be tough to talk down and stop to get antagonizing people in a heated situation in a club or whatever, because he's convinced he's King Kong.
I did a little wrestling in my high school years (not that I was super-wonderful at it, I was never a champion or anything), and honestly I'd recommend that as a foundation for a lot of people looking to learn how to fight. One thing you'll notice in MMA and such, is that a lot of the very successful guys have come from a Wrestling background (serious Wrestling). For example, Lesner was a REAL wrestling champion before doing the WWE thing, which is why he got jumped right to the top to fight big name people when he went into the UFC. While the end result was mixed he was the first guy to defend the title twice if I remember, then he got sick, and there is all the financial/contractual baggage that might have lead to him throwing his last couple of fights that occasionally gets mentioned here and there. To put it bluntly, outside of kung-fu movies, in a real fight things rarely stay at striking range or look fancy. Although to be honest being able to avoid or defuse fights is a more valuable skill than being able to fight well.
Martial Arts ..."seem to be about as useful in a real life fight as training in Baseball (or so I'm told)"...
Then why learn them? The very fact that you wrote this shows how ignorant you and your 'friends' are. If you are serious about learning an art, find an instructor who is willing to teach you how to defend yourself without rules. If the school is one that concentrates on point tournaments, RUN, Do NOT pay a single $ to these schools. Find something combat orientated. This can be any style as long as what they focus on is FULL CONTACT sparring. I grew up in Japan and studied a couple of Karate styles where the tournaments were full contact, no pads, no gloves, mouth guards if you wanted them, and you HAD to wear a cup as that was also a valid target. There were only 2 choices in these, either learn to take hits and return them, or you quit. I then moved on to Muay Thai as an adult and it was the same way other than now I had to learn how to fight with gloves.
As long you find a school willing to teach full-contact fighting, you WILL learn valuable skills. If there is no full-contact sparring, you won't learn anything of real value...
Then why learn them? The very fact that you wrote this shows how ignorant you and your 'friends' are. If you are serious about learning an art, find an instructor who is willing to teach you how to defend yourself without rules. If the school is one that concentrates on point tournaments, RUN, Do NOT pay a single $ to these schools. Find something combat orientated. This can be any style as long as what they focus on is FULL CONTACT sparring. I grew up in Japan and studied a couple of Karate styles where the tournaments were full contact, no pads, no gloves, mouth guards if you wanted them, and you HAD to wear a cup as that was also a valid target. There were only 2 choices in these, either learn to take hits and return them, or you quit. I then moved on to Muay Thai as an adult and it was the same way other than now I had to learn how to fight with gloves.
As long you find a school willing to teach full-contact fighting, you WILL learn valuable skills. If there is no full-contact sparring, you won't learn anything of real value...
Actually, isn't this what Krav Maga is all about. Its not that the point is to maim and kill. It's that the goal is to eliminate any hostile as efficiently as possible, which could involve maiming and killing. And frankly, if you are the instigator and you introduce a weapon to a fist fight, you deserve to die.SecretNegative said:
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.Aramis Night said:
Unfortunately this is only possible in a small subset of countries.tgbennett30 said:
There is a lot of truth here. Of course, I recommend supplementing this with martial arts training. Just find a school/teacher that encourages this mindset.White Lightning said:
A million times this. Going to the ground any time it's not one on one is going to get you messed up. Stand up grappling is the only way to go, if you're going to grapple.mistahzig1 said:
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.Eclectic Dreck said:
Anyway, OP, here is my advice;
First of all, read a book called 'Meditations on Violence' by a chap called Rory Miller.
He's a prison guard (+ some other stuff) and has seen a lot more hand-to-hand fighting than anybody you're likely to talk to here.
The important thing to take from that book is not which art to train, but how to train, which is by far the more important thing.
Just about any martial art be made to work if being trained the right way and taught by the right person.
Otherwise most of the advice in this thread has been pretty good - avoid McDojos, make sure you train striking and grappling - even boxing and wrestling, despite being 'sports', are going to be immensely helpful. There are some arts that do both - (Japanese) jujutsu is one, but the focus is definitely on the grappling and not on the striking. The rest should be easy to find with a little searching.
I'm not.Wyes said:
I stated a simple fact in response to the OP, and this guy starts spouting off a bunch of BS like he knows anything of the subject, when clearly he doesn't. Given that I'm personally familiar with it, I tried to enlighten him to the notion of not mindlessly accepting everything on Wikipedia at face value.
He failed to grasp it, soooo plain English.
*shrug*
It's not so much for his benefit as everyone else, just so they know the value of his "opinions".
Comment: Karate is legit if trained correctly, but it's often not.
Boxing and Muay Thai are both good, Wrestling is also good.
Jiujitsu is pretty useless in a street fight with 2 exceptions
1) You're 100% sure the person you're fighting doesn't have a friend who is coming over to stamp on your head.
2) You've got into a fight with someone who knows enough about Wrestling to actually put you on the ground.
Boxing and Muay Thai are both good, Wrestling is also good.
Jiujitsu is pretty useless in a street fight with 2 exceptions
1) You're 100% sure the person you're fighting doesn't have a friend who is coming over to stamp on your head.
2) You've got into a fight with someone who knows enough about Wrestling to actually put you on the ground.
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.BanicRhys said:
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.
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.spartan231490 said:
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.
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.
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.ravenshrike said:
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.