Kevin,
As I said, all the reliable evidence I am aware of points to the conclusions that if a fighting technique works in the MMA environment it works just fine everywhere else, and if it doesn't work in the MMA environment it doesn't work anywhere.
I do not see how the evidence could possibly point to that conclusion, unless this evidence you speak of includes numerous examples of people successfully using MMA techniques in a large number of different types of fighting conditions, and numerous examples of people with considerable fighting experience in other types of fighting, who only use the same techniques as MMA competitors.
Does your evidence include things things? Because from what you have said, it sounds to me like the majority (if not all) of your evidence is examples of skilled MMA competitors beating martial artists with little or no fighting experience.
Non-anecdotal evidence otherwise is always appreciated.
You seem to include everything short of video tape as "anecdotal evidence".
2) I do not think that video footage is the only reliable way of determining whether a technique should be taken seriously. When somebody (such as my teacher) who has proven his ability to fight in both full contact sparring and in real altercations, tells me that a particular technique is useful in a particular type of contact, I take that seriously. Put another way, one of the criteria I use for deciding who I want to learn from is whether or not they have proven their competency. If they have, then I am going to take what they tell me seriously.
Such people have been wrong in the past. I don't trust their word one bit unless they can step up and prove it on video.
Well, that sounds like an odd way to train. I would never train with somebody who I didn't trust. That trust is based on all sorts of factors, not the least of which is their ability to demonstrate their competancy.
Back in the eighties the strategy of finding someone who had actually fought and doing whatever they said was the best available. However I've known people who have been in lots of fights who still have all sorts of stupid ideas about how to train and which techniques work.
I never said anything about their just being able to fight being enough. Nor do I just blindly accept everything they say.
When my teacher tells me that he has relialy been able to make a particular technique work in either real fights or full contact sparring, I believe him, not just because I know he can really fight, but also because I have gotten to know him, and have come to the conclusion that he (1) really does know what he is talking about, and (2) is not being dishonest with me.
Now, would I expect anybody else to take my word for that, and also trust what he says? Of course not. But that does not mean that my own decision to do so is not based on reliable evidence.
On the other hand, if the teacher is somebody I don't know anything about, I am not going to trust him to teach me just because I have seen video of him using those techniques in a match somewhere.
I'm having a hard time resisting sarcasm. Everyone does light contact work as well as full contact work, and their full contact work benefits as a result. It's not news this works. What would be news is if you got better at full-contact fighting without ever doing any full-contact fighting.
Well then, we appear to be in agreement on this issue. Again, my contention is that it is ridiculous to equate training which does not involve contact with "traditional martial arts".
Please be more specific. Which techniques exactly do you think are optimal against a group, that aren't part of the standard MMA toolbox?
You are asking a nonsense question here. It all depends on the circumstances. My point is that it is ludicrous to expect that a set of techniques which were chosen specifically for their being optimal in a small set of fighting circumstances, would always be optimal.
As for things like trapping and wrist locks, those techniques are most useful against relatively unskilled opponents. Again, that does not make them useless. After all, sometimes you don't want to just beat the crap out of the person. If they are your match, or close to being your match, you don't have any choice in the matter. You do whatever works the best. But if you are an expert fighter, and some drunk swings a bear bottle at your head, maybe beating him senseless isn't the best approach?
That's an argument for grappling, not an argument for wrist locks.
Well, given that wrist locks are a basic grappling technique, I don't really see your point.
If you are an expert fighter and someone swings a beer bottle at your head, maybe fiddling around trying to apply a wrist lock isn't the best approach either?
If you have to "fiddle around" to apply it, the you obviously are not an expert with that technique. You clearly need to train it more.
There are higher percentage techniques which are less painful for the subject to boot.
Like what? There are basically two types of grappling techniques. Those which are primarily a function of strength, and those which involve specific technique, such as joint locks and timing throws. The latter are more difficult to do, but have clear advantages in a number of situations.
An observation: You don't see people training wrist locks with resisting opponents often. It's always "This hit will cause their arm to become a limp noodle, then you can faff around and apply the wrist lock. Nobody resist too much, after all, if you resist your partner won't learn the technique!".
This observation clearly indicates that you have never seen anybody train wrist locks beyond the very basic introductionary level. It is not a technique which you can train for a short time, and then begin using in fights with the expectation of being able to improve it through fighting experience. If you immediately discard all such techniques as being "useless", then you are throwing away an awful lot of demonstrably useful stuff.
The truth being, of course, that if you resist in even the most clueless fashion your partner couldn't make the technique work in a million years.
Only if your partner is a beginner.
And of course, like any other technique, training of it needs to progress from the basic level of "going through the motions", through the slightly more advanced level of doing it with light contact and/or moderate resistence, and eventually into the realm of full speed sparring, and full-contact. If your training
doesn't do this, then of course the technique isn't going to work in a real fight. But the same goes for
any technique, not just wrist locks.
In fact, I think that one of the reasons why so many so-called martial arts instructors
don't include sparring as a major component of their training, is because they know full well that a lot of the garbage they are teaching won't work anymore when that level is reached. But when the teaching methodology of the system includes sparring and full-contact training as a core part of the system, then you can be much more confident that the stuff you are learning at the lower levels
is something that really works in real fights.
OK. Wrist lock. It fails miserably against trained martial artists because (A) they have trained to attack and defend in a way that minimizes their vulnerability to them, (B) because they are very difficult to do properly, and (C) because trained martial artists know how to escape them. But not all fights are against trained martial artists. Now you could argue that against such people the stuff that works in the ring still works, and is easier. And you are absolutely right. But that is not the point. Like I said above, the effect you are looking for in the ring may not be the desired effect. The wrist lock gives you additional options. And yes, they do work in real fights. I have seen them work in real fights. They just don't work very well against trained martial artists. Oddly enough, I do not know anybody who has ever been attacked (outside of sparring and competition) by a trained martial artist.
What advantage do you think a standing wrist lock has over a throw or a figure-four arm lock?
I don't see the sense to this question. They all have advantages and disadvantages depending on the circumstances. A wrist lock can be a throw, as can a figure-four lock. And in my experience, wrist locks are not any harder to make work than figure-four locks. In fact, I am much better at making a wrist lock work against a resisting opponant than the figure four lock. It requires less "fiddling around" to get.
The only real use I know of for them is as a convenient come-along hold you can apply if you utterly outclass your opponent and you don't like them very much.
That says an awful lot about why you don't find them useful. Did you know that they form the basis for the majority of disarms? I suppose you will tell me that they are useless too, but again, this seems to me to be just a matter of dismissing anything that requires a significant amount of training
before it can be used in sparring, as useless.
The same goes for limb destruction. Against a relatively unskilled, but armed opponent (which is still a major threat, even for a skilled fighter), they can easily become the optimal solution. Sure, you could stick with what works best in an MMA competition, but that could mean putting yourself at much more risk than using a single (although difficult) technique which immediately neutralizes the weapon.
One more time. Evidence please? Not anecdotes, not theory, evidence.
I don't have any video of this, so I guess all have is anecdotes? Never mind that these techniques are regularly used by law enforcement in real altercations.
The anecdote is to illustrate the point that as soon as people start fighting full contact, what they do very rapidly evolves into something that looks very much like existing full-contact sports. In the case of IPSI competitions what they do bears only a very slight resembance to what Kelat Nasional Perisai Diri people do in non-contact classes.
There aren't that many effective ways for humans to move, and it doesn't take that long to discover them.
I don't find this in the slightest bit surprising, nor remotely relevant.
Full contact training works. The question is, do all techniques work if you train them full contact? As far as I know the evidence is that full contact training in and off itself Darwinises the rubbish very quickly.
It also Darwinises anything that is not easy to do, or which requires considerable training to make work, even if that extra effort would pay off in the long run. It also Darwinises anything which is primarily intended to be used against a typical attacker, rather than a trained martial artist. And if you only do one type of full-contact training, then it Darwinises anything which is not optimal for that type of fighting, with no regard to how useful it may be in other situations.
You only see really silly things in martial arts styles if those aspects of the style are generations removed from regular, open, full-contact competition.
Then don't train styles which do not include full-contact sparring as part of their training. I don't.
I don't know of any style that does that, so I don't see your point. My own teacher often reminds us that in a real fight, 90% of what you end up using is basics, so that is what we spend the most time training.
You don't know any style that spends time on them? You just admitted yourself your own style does. Reread what you were replying to.
Perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you meant styles which spend most or all of their time on such techniques. I see absolutely no problem with spending a reasonable amount of time on techniques which have a limited range of situations they are useful for. Especially if your goal is to become a good martial artist in general, as opposed to being the best competitor in one specific type of competition that you can be.
When you are competing, your goal is to win that competition. So obviously you focus entirely on the things which maximally work towards that goal. When you are training martial arts, your goal is to learn how to accomplish a broad number of goals which may arise in a variety of different circumstances. It's not as specific. So you spend time on things you would not spend time on if you were just training for competition.
It is just a matter of specialization. How specialized is your training? If you are competing in a very specific type of fighting, you would be a fool to not specialize your training for that type of fighting. And it would be equally foolish to think that this specialized training will also be optimal for other types of fighting.
Dr. Stupid
