[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:
[quote]Ranzo wrote:
I would just like to say that I have trained in Traditional Karate, Krav Maga, and other arts. I think part of the idea of what the OP is saying is that TMA’s by and large spend much time in the “art” side of things. ie. kata etc… They do not spend a lot of time “fighting”. When I did kumite in Okinawa it was punches to the chest and body. Not to the face, you could kick to the head but not punch.
We trained for competition rules, even though my sensei is known to be a great fighter even from his youth. I will say if you hang around long enough you will learn more cool stuff.
As for Krav Maga, I did and do learn lots of stuff that is very useful, however even those guys mostly don’t like to fight or spar. Seems lost of Doctors and Lawyers and typically white collar…I don’t know how to say it tastefully…types are attracted to Krav.
After training for over a year and taking a MMA fight I realized that I was walking around with a false sense of security about my skills and abilities in a real situation, even though a cage fight is not at “real” situation that would occur on the street. This made me train much different than I ever had in the past.
so to surmise I would say that if your mind is open and thinking about what really happens in a fight you can focus your efforts on that and come out ahead. If you think that doing x blocks and horse stances in the mirror is making you a great fighter then you are mistaken, but those principles definitely contribute to being effective with your strikes and movements.
Nothing in martial arts comes easy or fast but I think modern RMA’s take instinctual movements and transfer that to great defenses and attacks and that is superior to traditional style arts for the most part. Training anything is better than nothing though and if you don’t get ate up with “my art is the best” type of mentality then you will progress and if you fight long enough you will learn the best answer is to just leave most situations.[/quote]
Yeah, you pointed out a lot of the things I was thinking about as far as martial arts go but i was thinking along the lines of sport vs non sport, not TMA vs RMA (judo is TMA i suppose, some people might argue against this for historical reasons, changes in rules etc, but to be sure, it is definitely a sport)
you’re right, if someone does Taekwondo, then theoretically they just have to kick someone in the head, their neck breaks and they’re dead. In theory
and in reality, when an opponent gets kicked in the head by someone that bought a black belt, he is going to get back up. then what?
Free sparring in a system where the rules are strict enough but not too strict (its not just a free-for-all, but still a huge variety of techniques to be applied) teaches you a lot about the decision making process in combat in general. Also the practice enables you to use in an actual fight without thinking or fumbling around. Any self defense technique is going to be useless unless you practice it.
The other thing is athleticism. Judo is fucking hard. Its a rough sport. This point is fairly self explanatory. Look at this way, any judoka, MMA fighter, football player, hockey player, strongman competitor, etc is going to fare a little better in a street fight than most people that just took a self defense course, TKD, etc, that haven’t regularly had to take some damage.
But the main thing I was thinking of was that judo would be very easy to employ in the street compared to other forms of fighting. I’m assuming you’re not fighting other skilled combatants, and thats not unreasonable to assume. Some drunk guy throws a wild haymaker? Easy ippon seoinage. Gets in your face and grabs your shirt and pushes? Whatever’s easiest, koshi guruma, hiza guruma. Multiple guys? Its iffy but a throw does some damage and a lot of guys wont get back up right away. The fact that throws have so much power, are pretty much never going to get countered or resisted effectively by a “tough guy”, and most importantly allow you to stay standing while your opponent goes down make them pretty applicable in the street
But even a good boxer is gonna take some damage fighting bare knuckle in the street, and BJJ practitioners are gonna take damage if they have to roll around on the pavement with somebody. those were some of my thoughts[/quote]
I don’t really think categorizing Judo as a TMA is accurate. TMA’s are arts which are essentially haven’t evolved (or evolved so little that it’s negligible) since their creation or at least for quite some time. Judo on the other hand would be a SMA (Sport Martial Art) primarily. SMA’s are generally not traditional/crystallized by the fact that the practitioners of the sport are constantly trying to develop ways to improve the art and gain advantages over their opponents. They are still somewhat limited by the rules of the sport of course, but the art is still evolving nonetheless.
I do agree with what you said about free sparring being a good practice. IME though if we are really talking about preparing you for real fighting though, the sparring should gradually become more and more free (maybe it starts out as just pure grappling or pure striking, then goes to MMA style sparring, then adds in stuff like biting, eye attacks, nerve attacks, and body handles, and finally all these unarmed elements and environmental weaponry) as you increase in skill as well as be practiced in multiple environments (on grass, gravel, ice, snow, in the rain, at night, in the blazing sun, on inclined surfaces, etc…).
As far as your comment about Judo being easier to apply though, no, not necessarily. I’m not arguing that you couldn’t just grab some drunk fool and throw them to the ground. But you could just as easily punch them in the face via boxing skills, knee them in the testicles/solar plexus and drop them with Muay Thai skills, spin them into a Rear Naked Choke and put them to sleep with BJJ/GJJ skills, lock their wrist, fingers, elbow or shoulder and escort them out of the bar with Small Circle Jujitsu or Japanese Jujutsu skills, kick them in the knee or groin via Wing Chun, JKD, Pananjakman, or any number of different effective techniques from different arts. But then beating up stumbling drunk people isn’t that difficult.
Against a sober, relatively athletic, experienced street fighter though, all of the above tactics are going to be dependent on range, angle, the art of surprise, height, and a whole list of factors.
I do think that Judo is a great art to add to somebody’s tool box though and one of the most practical grappling arts for real world combat.