Self-Protection Archives
Karate/streetfighting
Tommy asked:
Sorry for the length but I wanted to get across what is behind my question
which is wayyy at the end.
I'm stubborn and have my own views on things.
I know you have a bad taste for karate and I can agree on many points
although I have a slightly different view. I think that karate at its basic
element, as it may have been before being split into schools would have been
just about fighting. I think that the techniques/tools and weapons are there
but it is the method of training that is lacking and is disconnected from
real fighting. But, on the other hand there are those (myself included) who
have an interest in the extra baggage that comes with karate. If one wants
only to learn how to fight, there are better and faster ways than karate or
many other martial arts. Karate is for the extras with fighting being a
choice and if you want to fight then you’ll have to extract that from the
training and adapt it.
You yourself have mentioned the discipline needed for fighting taught
through martial arts training as well as the body tempering/withstanding
pain etc. Before your first karate class you had been training on your own
from what you learned from books (if I’m not mistaken) so what you used to
kick the shit out of the karate guys you trained with was your
interpretation of the karate you studied via books and such. “That’ is what
I believe karate is at its root, interpretation. It is a progressive method
that unfortunately stopped progressing years and years ago. Once it became
stylized it became training in fighting in a stylized manner rather than
free expression. If we dump all the extras I think the techniques can be
usable. Trying to apply a specific technique to a specific situation is, in
my opinion, a mistake and a misinterpretation. I think you have to learn how
to fight and internalize all the techniques using the principles rather than
the exact movements.
I have been attacked on another forum for constantly talking about
principles with the poster saying I use that term to mask a lack of
knowledge or understanding. I stand by my belief that what is important is
the understanding of the principles of technique and stances so that they
can be imported anywhere rather than being stuck in a one size fits all (it
doesn’t) quagmire. One example is stance. People learn a stance as a freeze
framed photo posture. I think that is a misinterpretation stemming from
books and photos. I think stances in motion would look similar to (as an
example) your own “probing foot/slide back out” type of movement. When you
slide out your lead foot would become light, when you slide in to probe it
transitions through equal weight to a more forward weighted movement etc.
The important point is the center of gravity….centering. Stances are only
positioning IMO, completely mobile and fleeting.
If you played a little bit of guitar and were at a party someone might say,
“Tommy can play this song, show em’ Tommy.” Now I may play along with the
song in some exact method learned in a shallow manner and play note for note
with my mind fully focused careful not to make a mistake; everything exact.
But if I were fully learned in the principles and internalized my playing I
could play the song with my eyes closed and play it any which way I wanted.
I could fit myself right into the song itself in no stylized manner and go
with the song if it changed. I could jump in and play with anyone at anytime
even if I don’t know the particular song because I have learned “music” and
made it my own. I think it’s the same with fighting and karate except that
people don’t practice that way.
OK, after my long winded digression, what I’m getting at is this. I have
always believed that no matter what it is you are learning as long as you
learn to “fight” everything else will fall into place. Some want to
specialize in self defense and others MMA while others are looking for
something in between. I believe that even if you never trained in anything
you can still be “the wrong guy to fuck with.” That is what I think is
needed rather than some specialized method. Like the difference between
Shotokan and Kyokushin. Shotokan tries to have a certain look and
method/styling to there fighting while Kyokushin doesn’t concern itself with
form, only getting the job done.
If you can fight then self defense takes care of itself, work from the top
down.
Temper yourself, condition yourself, hone your kicking and punching, work on
your clinching and takedowns, defenses of takedowns and ground work and just
be an all around scrapper and you’ll be fine. If a technique or defense
learned is supposed to do “A” it shouldn’t end at “A.” Understanding the
principles will take it to “B” or even “D” if your opponent gets a hint at
where you are going for instance and changes up on you, or mounts a defense.
So this was a long way around my question: Do you think that just training
hard and becoming a good all around scrapper, no matter what you want to
call your method or training, would cover everything? Wouldn’t the self
defense take care of itself?
I ask because I saw a common question posted here also. “Does this translate
into self defense?” or “does he teach self defense also?” I see SD as
something you teach woman and old people who aren’t fighters. Don’t you
think that if you become a fighter that everything else falls into place?
I mean I’m 50 years old, which isn’t old by any means. But I’m not going to
jump I MMA ring anytime soon, I’m only training at this point because….well,
it’s just what I do. But if I get into something on the street, why would I
need specific self defense techniques? Wouldn’t just being able to “fight”
be enough? The "techniques" are principles and just "happen" during the
fight rather than being planned or applied to specific situations. It all
depends on what your opponent gives you. But my first thing is that I want
to overwhelm him and beat the living shit out of him before he has a chance
to breath.
Understandably if you wanted to compete you would need a little more
specialization, but there again, wouldn’t self defense, street fighting fall
into place? Just kick ass.
Steve's answer:
Tommy, with respect to the karate stuff, you're free to
e-mail me about it as you've done in the past, although I think I've made my
position pretty clear and what more is there to say? I'm not going to tie up
the forum discussing the pros and cons of karate. I didn't join the forum to
do that.
About your question: it doesn't seem like a question. It seems like a
statement.
I would agree that the term 'self-defence' is a negative one and implies
that one is a victim; I'm much more of the predatory mindset. And no, I
don’t support the idea of training specialized moves in isolation.
However, I am a martial artist and a trainer and it’s my job to cover all
angles of the fight. No two scenarios, situations, or opponents are going to
be the same. And when it comes to the 'street' the environment can be
extremely variable as well.
I recommend MMA because it allows you to build the fighting man. But you'd
be stupid to think he can deal with any situation just because he's an MMA
fighter. In the same way, anybody who thinks that because he’s been
successful so far, he can take on anybody or anything just relying on his
experiences, is taking a hell of a gamble.
The whole point of training is to prepare for the worst, not hope for the
best.
What I do, I train the guy to be a one-on-one, unarmed fighter,
multidimensional. That gives me the basic tool to work with. As he becomes
more competent in this, I’ll then begin to introduce new, unfamiliar
situations. And these can be widely variable. I’m training this guy to
adapt. To assume nothing and anticipate everything.
Is it enough to ‘just kick ass’ as you put it? When we were in
And that’s when I started to watch fights, not for their entertainment
value, but for those ‘dogfight’ moments that I keep talking about, which I
could use as references for different scenarios and situations. I needed a
method, an approach, by which I could create drills which would enhance the
skills required for a scenario/situation, but then test those skills in
forms of conditional fighting. Where I couldn’t reference video recordings
as I can today, I had playfighting which was experimental and exploratory to
produce possibilities which again had to be tested in conditional fighting.
I had to break the fight down so that we were covering all aspects of the
fight rather than just fighting and hoping we were going to learn.
That’s my method. That’s my approach.
Being an all-round scrapper? It helps. And if that’s what you personally
believe and practice, then who can argue with that? But as a trainer my job
is to take guys who may not be natural fighters and make them into fighters.
And if they’re a fighter already, my job is to make them better. More
adaptable. That’s the business I’m in. That’s my job.
If I believed ‘just training hard and becoming a good all around scrapper,
no matter what you want to call your method or training, would cover
everything? Wouldn’t the self defense take care of itself?’ then I would
have wasted the last 40 years of trying to define this thing called the
fight and finding ways of training people to understand it.
