All

I wonder to myself many times why do traditional arts or those claiming to be "real" martial arts STILL use the following attacks in the Dojo to train their students? In all my years I have never been attacked this way and neither have any of my students. Have you ever been attacked this way in "real" situations etc?

I've wondered the same thing, Dobberskysan. I think the old obverse punch attack is just easier to use in training.... Not practical. We all should be so lucky if attacked in the manner that are depicted in those pictures.Hey, I would be fairly tough if I only had to defend against lunge punches and low strikes like that.We all would. The problem is there are some karate people that only train this way. It becomes quite robotic and doesn't prepare one for the real world of self-defense.

No never and I never will probably unless I insult a traditional karateka enough times.

Most ''attacks'' come unexpected.

And most confrontations leading to violence will happen at a fairly close range (unless you stop the person from getting close to you which isn't always possible) and most people will draw back their arm and throw a wide swing at you like a haymaker type... A lot may try to headbutt you if they get close enough and so on... I don't feel like 90% of traditional karate teaches anything related to self defense or even good strikes...

I still am a purist I believe that what really is karate is quite amazing but the last 100 years or so have really given birth to something very odd and not martially accurate in my opinion... And that type of karate is more popular.

Rigid forms and certain mystery akin to kata, bunkai and what else draw in people who were raised on BS Martial Art movies.

And even if not it's always easier to believe in something a bit mysterious such as doing a kata and fighting an imagined opponent will make you able to fight against a real person. Than hard work in the form of drills, mitts, bags, spars and physical training.

This isnt a problem just with Karate, but with Many TMA. TKD for example. What I offer is this. At some point, if you are serious about MA, then you have to take an objective look at what your doing and decide if it is appropriate for your needs. If your needs are self defense, and you have looked at your style without bias, and you still practice this way, well then you probably were never gonna be the next chuck norris anyways.

MA should always teach self defense if it doesn't then it isn't a Martial Art...

What we mostly have these days is Martial SPORT.

And unless it's full contact it teaches pretty much nothing about self defense.

Even full contact doesn't teach you everything about self defense. At least half of self defense should deal with being attacked without warning, weapons & the possibility of multiple attackers.

I agree Matakiant. The flow of martial sports (Going after your opponent) to "score more" or "knock out" is a totally different mind set. It's a cumulative group of techniques under a given set of rules. The means to an end is to win the contest. Most of the techniqes don't fare as well in a self-defense scenario.

Mark

Theproblem with that is that many"sport" guys dont agree,stating that they could use there art for defense. These places are often blackbelt factories, which is why it means so little now.

I agree...... I was one of them.

Very much agree with this statement!

It s like you either have to train for competition OR train for self defence, different ethos different way of doing things different rules set etc.

I suppose this is why you never see Aikido and Hapkido in the Cage as they are not Competition focused

To me full contact means scratching, groping, hair pulling, shoving your thumb into someone's eye sockets, spitting, smacking across the head with a heavy object, growling like a rabid dog and biting, etc. In other words if you feel you're in serious danger in an unavoidable confrontation, everything goes. However if you can, first try to avoid the confrontation like maybe running away. Any serious study of the martial arts requires serious study of the use of weapons. One of the main points about learning weapons is that if attacked with a weapon, you have a better handle on how to defend yourself against that weapon if you understand the strong and weak points about that weapon.

Now if you look at those karate illustrations above, put a knife in the hand and then it changes the picture totally ... thrust to the head or body and a downward slash to the artery on the insides of the thigh. It doesn't take a lot with a bladed weapon to do a lot of damage. Also most karateka who have trained for a long time will not fight as shown in those illustrations ... stances will be so much shorter or probably with just a half turn of the fist. Those moves in kihon or kata are training purposes to help build speed, agility and power. If they still think one fights like that, then they need to find another instructor.

There are many things TMA teaches you (countless blogs on this) and self defense is just one aspect of it.

Hello Colman

What you are describing is true. Its fighting. I think the point trying to be made was that the sparring should be harder than that of competition arts, to reach efficiency in self defense at a quicker rate of study. The techniques you describe are indeed "full contact" but those things cant be practiced in a sparring match.

If the purpose of your sparring is to gauge the ability to defend yourself, then you must be able to go hard, at all ranges, with techniques that you can use safely against a resisting partner.
If you can do that effectively then its likely that you wont have to resort to eye gouging or hair pulling. (Neither of which have ever proven to be very effective.)

As for the knife reference,any weapon escalates the danger, for all parties involved. With that said, A skilled knife fighter isnt going to let you see the blade until you feel it, and he certainly isnt going to have to fully extend his arm as in the illustrations.
In fact he is going to try not to do that, in most cases.

As for the rest of your post, I agree. TMA has plenty to offer as means to self defense and many good things can be learned from them. Also,its almost always about the artist,not the art.

With that said,I have to reiterate whats already been said and thats if your school is geared more towards competition then you may want to train elsewhere if selfdefense is your primary concern.

Respectfully,
CZ

Of course weapons must be trained with! It offers insight into body mechanics and necessary knowledge you must have as a martial artist. But if the question is in unarmed attacks then the form should correspond to it and if you wanted to stick a weapon in any of those pictures the forms would still be wrong.

Also

I'd like to see the guy who can stick 2 fingers in my eyes in a full paced street fight - if he could he could probably just knock me out flat anyway.

I'm just mentioning this because often you'll get those TMA mostly Karate guys who say this stuff about how they would poke eys, grab/kick groins in a real fight and so on.

The truth of the matter is somewhere in between this murky swamp that has been born out of fiction, business and fake mysticism.

You need modern training methods you also need spirit in the traditional sense and respect for your art - those things are actually there in full contact competitive sports but again self defense is different than a ring fight.

In the real world there is only 1 round with no time limit no referee no points no rules and no protective equipment. You also do not know the situation like you know a ''fight'' ahead; i.e like a pro boxer, MMA fighter, kickboxer etc has time to reserach his opponent and make preparations (not always but 99.99% the case in pro circuits)

So it's natural that you can never get the real thing training - we can't brutalize our students; it's not sane or legal and most of all it isn't effective in the long run.

What the ring teaches you is technical skills and PRESSURE this is the most important aspect of training there has to be some kind of mental pressure because the adrenaline you get hit with in a real situation can numb you easily.

''Kihon'', ''Kata'' don't offer these things in reality. Technique is hollow if it isn't tested! And hollow technique isn't technique at all.

Strong technique - the only good technique.

I know I'll bring the holy wrath upon myself here so let me elaborate my perspective... What kihon or kata may offer is theory truly and that is actually not for beginners but for intermediate-advanced students who are far enough that they can work out what works best for their body - there is no universal blueprint that fits every person of every age and bodybuild for throwing any kind of technique.

But then again I'll flat out say I don't believe you can develop a technique that involves using your limb to hit someone without actually hitting something. So striking the air doesn't really teach you anything usually it ends up teaching bad form.

Speed, power, flow, courage! These are the things that make a fighter be it in the ring or protecting himself on the street.

Speed to deliver your techniques. Power to make them count. Flow to keep 'em coming and most important the courage to use them.

All of your technique is useless if you can't deliver it. I'm sure we've all read/heard the stories where experienced practitioners we're struck down on the street by muggers or even single assailants doing the exact thing the practitioner had been practicing to beat for years maybe even decades.

Courage = confidence. True confidence is built through experience - hard practice hard spars and lots of sweat. It's when you know that what you have is real that you really acquire confidence.

Throwing punches in the air. Doing weird forms of ridiculous kumite or just practicing kata with the belief that it will make you capable of ''fighting'' may make someone seemingly confident but that confidence is like a house with a foundation made from match sticks - in truth it's naive arrogance resulting from unknowing the truth of the matter - something a true teacher is supposed to make sure doesn't happen.

And this is how we have men who practice a TMA for 5, 10 maybe 20 years who sometimes come to a realization that in reality they don't really know a thing about MARTIAL ART other than MARTIAL ACROBATICs that fit their own style.

I'm off on a huge rant here... But yeah...

It's fairly simple if it doesn't offer full contact it doesn't offer true martial training.

And if it claims that their full contact is so deadly it can't be practiced then it's a piece of crap McDojo and you need to get the hell out of there.

My worthless two cents follows:
My first six years in Aikido was drilling the "test" moves. Over two dozen attack defenses in pure muscle memory. Attack me in a way done in the "kata" and Aikido happened. My only personal input was to control deadly force.

Nice to see everyone’s different perspective. From my perspective, I was following up on Dobbersky's statement "Have you ever been attacked this way in "real" situations etc?".

Concerning eye gouging, I was merely trying to point out that these things are not allowed in competition and can be useful in the street. The correct way to use this is if for example someone grabs you in a front bear hug, to slide your hands up his face and with your thumbs feel your way into the eyes sockets. The idea is to create enough of a distraction to get out of bear hug. Seriously I don’t know anyone who believes that poking your fingers in someone’s eyes in a full frontal attack actually works as the eye is such a small target.

Forced to grow up on the outskirts of the ghettos (called townships) in South Africa during the Apartheid era, I've seen enough fights and actually got involved in a couple. All I can say is not to expect trained moves ... expect the unexpected and sometimes the awkward ones are the most dangerous. Looking back, getting involved was really stupid on my part because I could have really got seriously hurt. Anyway in many of these fights, anything went and a lot of times any weapon that was handy was used such as knives, sticks, bricks/stones, etc. Usually it happens like this: men get paid on Fridays, they buy booze, got drunk, then fight over women and/or money ... all because they lived in such depraved conditions.

As I’ve said in my post, kihon or kata are training tools to help build speed, agility, coordination and power. Most serious TMA folks understand that and don’t believe one really fights like that. I’ve never seen Latoya Machida fight with the moves like he is doing in this kata Sochin http://youtu.be/NouSD4OMEac but I’m guessing that he does practice some kata once in a while. It is how one trains one’s kumite that becomes important especially with the use of weapons. A natural outcome of that thinking is Krav Maga or Systema.

Regarding unarmed combat, training in MMA is probably the best way today to make you the best unarmed fighter but where there are rules, there are limitations. If I was younger, I probably would be cross-training in MMA if it was around then, but frankly at 60 next year, I don’t think I should be getting into the ring.

Anyhow my main point is to think of weapon first by the attacker and anything goes in any confrontation. If there is a weapon involved, then you’ve allowed to it go too far then you better do him in first before he does you in. It is better and so much harder to apologize in the beginning and walk away.

Agreed.

One thing to think about here, if we can define what is unrealistic about this attack, we can figure out whether there was ever anything here to begin with, or whether it's just nonsense altogether, with no redeeming value.

What is unrealistic about it ot me is the deep stance, the 'chambered' hand, and the staccato timing. Someone simply stepping in from a hands down position and trying to hit you with their lead leg is not nearly as ridiculous, nor is someone entering in by grabbing you with the lead hand, with the other hand cocked back. - which is the whole point of the chambered hand in single attack kumite, all your actions have to take into account the second attack coming from the cocked hand, eventually you work against two attacks, continous attacks etc.. and the point is for your first movement to help you gain time. It's not meant to be free kumite, it's meant to isolate the moment where you can move to gain initiative.

Keep in mind that the whole point of practicing against single attacks is to kind of freeze a point in time, so by nature you are practicing with some artificial timing, to make this kind of training valuable you have to move with actual intent and commitment, and the training is no good if you don't, or if you don't understand what it is, and isn't meant to do.

I don't like the way ippon kumite is normally done either, Japanese and Korean styles are some of the worst offenders, no offense to anyone..

The worst is when people start from so far away, and even kiai before they move!

Looking at the postures themselves, IMO dismmissing them outright is also missing on some fundamental training IMO, if you "real" them up, they are just fine...it's the stylized, ritualized nature of the way they are normally presented that is a problem, not the positions themselves. Like alot of things it;s just another example of where someone's silly demo became an actual practice method.

Naturally this is just talking about a limited form of training for a specfic purpose, and like anything if youa re doing it to look a certain way instead of help build a certain skill it's going to be worthless. Somewhere along the line most mainstream Karate lost the plot with ippon kumite..but there are people out there doing something more useful with it.

[quote=Dobbersky]All

I wonder to myself many times why do traditional arts or those claiming to be "real" martial arts STILL use the following attacks in the Dojo to train their students? In all my years I have never been attacked this way and neither have any of my students. Have you ever been attacked this way in "real" situations etc?


Because you teach what you know.

Here is how I tell between self defense and sport mindsets-
1. When possible get out of the way of the attack,move behind the opponent and finish the fight.
2.Train to finish the fight in 30 seconds or less.
3. If you are caught on the inside, attack the attack, and fight your way behind the opponent. See #1
I learned this in my kata and my bunkai. Traditional Okinawan karate for 30+ years, cop for 20+ years and it has worked just fine against opponents who outweighed me by over 100 pounds. One guy 6'9, 350 pounds found that a traditionally conditioned shin against an unconditioned shin means you fall down and go to jail.
Sport doesn't translate well on the street because you are trained to fight by the wrong set of rules. Are you writing from experience or theory?
"The person with experience is never at the mercy of the person with a theory."

Duane

Thank you all for some really excellent responses, Its enough for any reading this post to maek a formal decision on ones own training.

TMA does have a lot going for it, it uses the best resources in confined spaces of the DOJO with the vast array of students but one must realise that although Kata and Kihon should be practiced as close to the original as psossble, NOTHING says you can not adapt it to any situation