Been watching "IP Man" - a very watchable kung fu film, but it still suffered from the one flaw all such films have when the one hero beats up on 9-10 guys and that is that the meat heads gotten beaten politely wait their turn. I remember years ago reading about some guy who thought traditional martial arts training was ineffective at preparing the average person for self-defence as in an emergency the attacker/assailant would not be so helpful as to conform to the moves that their victim might have practised for years. This chap advocated a kind of orchestrated chaos appraoch to self defence. So what do people think -has anyone with martial arts training ever found it helped in fighting off attackers in the street?
martial arts is brilliant preparation (depending on the art) for confidence, technique etc, but streetfighting is unique, as in you never know how a guy will react. eg kicks and punches dont work if your on the ground i been doing martial arts for years and personally think its helped me not fight than fight i definately recommend martial arts for discipline fitness etc, which is often half the battle but i would recommend muay thai, boxing for preparation. no good being able to punch but not taking one
The jewish martial art would probably be quite good for fighting rabbles. Can't remember what is called though. Think its crab something.
That's the one. Its the only martial art I would bother learning but I find a good sprinting pace is the best defence from a beating.
When I was doing Karate Budokan I only ever had one fight and didn't use any of it. Just a good old fashioned shoing I gave him.
most martial arts have a street fighting element to them they did a contest once and found that most karate and kung fu guys got battered by the kick boxing muay thai lads, simply due to the fac that these guys regularly fought whereas the karate dudes did a lot of kata/form but very little fighting the krav maga is excellent, but its a pretty standard style taught to the military elite, its kind of like bruce lees jeet kune do, do whatever to get the guy down and dont be a stickler for form
Quite honestly, the traditional martial arts like Karate, Kung Fu, Judo and Taekwondo are good for 1v1, discipline and technique. In a street brawl, where visibility is limited and your opponents won't stick to the same rules you do - they're useless. There are a few martials arts such as Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that are good in such situations, but again you can't rely on them to keep you safe. The best thing to do is run, and if that's not possible then force them into a narrow space where you can limit the number of opponents and look for quick targets. The aim is to knock down enough of them at a time to run away, not to beat them all up because you can almost guarantee as you're fighting one person, another will sneak up on you. IP Man uses Wing Chun, and it is rather effective in individual fights and multiple targets, but when weapons become involved and more than 3 people you can almost forget getting out without a scratch. I also must warn you, to even attempt to use your training you must be well practiced and confident in your ability. I used to do some Shotokan Karate, and reached black belt. I quit not long after due to the extensive time it took to extend and train my technique. I read the paper one day to learn a 2nd dan who attended my club had been beaten to a pulp and was lucky to be alive after running into a gang of men. Just goes to show, doesn't matter how much you've trained or how strong you think you are - sometimes it can become useless. Note: Since then I've taken up Wing Chun, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Thai boxing and found Wing Chun to be my favourite to practice, but Thai Boxing is definitely the most brutal.
fighting is all about heart when it comes down to it and practise. basically the only way to learn is fight there is a theory i was taught (and believe), most guys dont go near the 'big' guy built like a brick **** house because of his size etc. they go for the little guy who looks 'easy' to beat. problem is the big guy probably gets this all the time so is probably the easier opponent as he rarely fights, the little guy probably had fights galore as he looked easy and is a probably a proper little scrapper of course things like drugs and drink make things more complicated, i have picked up a house brick and smacked it into a guys face, he was that pissed he got up and said 'come on'
There is a well known ex-gangster from Salford called Paul Massey who is a little guy, but with a MASSIVE reputation as a fierce fighter who could knock down blokes twice his size. I read a book about Manchester gangs in which he featured heavily, and he said that even he would be surprised in his early days at how he had managed to "kick" such hefty guys. It is as someone above said mostly about heart though, and out threatening your opponent. You're also right about practice. At school I had regualr fights but I haven't had one for over 25 years, so although I might think of myself as handy based on what I did in school I probably wouldn't last 10 seconds against most scrappers.
It doesn't matter if you're a good fighter that could take out opponents twice your size, when faced with 3 separate opponents all fueled on drink and drugs, it's 50% luck, 20% strength and 30% skill getting out of it unscathed.
It's widely accepted on the Internet, that I am indeed the best fighter on cyberspace. I can seriously fight like ****.
Not sure about you lot but any fight I see happening is usually at most 30 seconds long. Very little time to pull off slick martial arts moves when some drunk is pulling your shirt over your head and kneeing you in the face. But I agree with noname when he speaks about discipline. Quite a few of my mates are boxers and would never hammer the face off someone unless they were really pushing their luck.
