Fight Science! Did anyone watch this?

[Megalodon]

What you need are examples of people who never trained full contact yet could win real fights.

Sorry to butt in, I thought this should be made clear to you:

Stimpy didn't claim that not training full contact is good, on the contrary

Carry on...

 

[Wudang]

Nitpick - Ettish was trained a traditional Okinawan karate. not kenpo.

BTW - any evidence that people who don't train to professional level in MMA can fight? Genuine question.

 

[Megalodon]

BTW...

TMA (whatever that is) is bad, MMA is good... But where did the MMAs Get the MAs to mix to begin with?

I think what we all can agree with is that MacDojos are bad. I would go to the extrem of claiming that they are counterproductive, since they will give the practitioner a sense of competence that is way off reality. That might get them in very big trouble.

However, it is silly to say that someone who doesn't practice MMA doesn't know how to fight. Actually, it's silly to say that someone practices MMA to begin with, since different fighters will practice different sets of MA.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Kevin,

You should be aware that this is exactly the argument Tai Chi is reduced to in the other thread. You aren't in good company here.

I think if you unpacked this argument for yourself and tried to name examples of "people throughout history whose skills were proven in real combat" that proved your point, you would realise quickly that it just doesn't work.

What you need are examples of people who never trained full contact yet could win real fights. Not people who fought a lot and were good at fighting.

Well, if I were trying to claim such a ridiculous thing, I agree that I would need examples of that. But I am not. where on Earth did you get they idea that I am claiming that somebody without any fighting experience (either in the form of full-contact training or actual fighting), is going to be a good fighter? That is just silly. Why do you keep attacking a position which I have not only not advocated, but which flatly contradicts the position I have advocated?

Well, since I have never argued against this point, I don't see why you keep repeating it. Like I said before, the system I do does have full contact sparring as part of its training. But it is not MMA, and it is not all the same stuff you are going to see in the ring at an MMA competition.

The point I am making is that you have no full-contact unarmed training, thus you have no advantage over a scrub of equivalent physicality in an unarmed bout. Unless your weapon skills translate, which is possible although it strikes me as unlikely.

I don't see why it should strike you as unlikely. Anyway, I have seen extensive evidence that it does translate quite well. Of course that does not mean that I am going to be equal in an unarmed fight with somebody whose experience is in full contact unarmed sparring. I won't be, just as they will not be my equal in a weapon fight.

The fact that some senior people in your system do have real unarmed skills does not magically imbue you with them.

I never claimed otherwise. I do not consider myself to be a good unarmed fighter. And while I do think that my experience (both in terms of my non-sparring training in unarmed combat, and in terms of my full-contact training with weapons) would benefit me in an unarmed fight, I do not pretend that it would be a good substitute for actually doing full-contact unarmed training. Again, I have no idea where you got the idea that I was claiming otherwise.

Again, you are twisting what I said to the point of absurdity. The fact of the matter is that the techniques you are referring to here have been proven to work in real combat time and time again. The fact that a bunch of "dojo potatoes" with no actual fighting experience can't make them work, is utterly irrelevant. They can't make "duck and cross" work either. They can't fight.

Oh really? Who proved them to work, on whom, when, and where is the video?

Police. Military. Bouncers. People I know personally, including some of my teachers. I never claimed to have video. Real fights are not typically video-taped.

I think it's virtually certain that details matter at the high end of performance. A MMA puncher would probably do better on a slippery surface in street shoes than an MMA kicker, and a grappler would probably do better against a weapon than a puncher, and I'm sure we could speculate further in this vein at length.

However if a given class of training systems (everything but full contact) fails utterly to function in a ring, even when there is no reason why most of its techniques should not work perfectly well in a ring, then you have to think that maybe it is going to utterly fail everywhere else too.

If your "training system" lacks full contact training, then you aren't training to fight. You are dancing. And again, I am not advocating any such nonsense.

You don't seriously think that MMA competitors invented full contact training, do you? Are you really unaware that such training has been a componant of so-called "traditional martial arts" from the beginning?

Fred Ettish was a 5th Dan in kenpo karate who entered UFC 2. To his credit he entered on very short notice to replace someone who pulled out with an injury. However, the point is that he got beaten down shamefully while curling up into a fetal position because, not having trained full-contact, he had no idea how to deal with full contact.

I am not surprised. I have no idea why anybody without full-contact experience would be foolish enough to even enter such a competition in the first place, nor do I understand why any respectible teacher would give somebody their 5th dan without them having proved their fighting ability in full-contact.

Now maybe you're thinking "Yes, well, maybe he was a 5th dan, but my style is the real deal and that would never happen to me".

It would never happen to me for two reasons:

1) I would never be stupid enough to do something like that.
2) In order to achieve the equivelent level in the system I train, I will have had to have done quite a bit of sparring, including full-contact.

If so it's highly likely that you're wrong. I'm sure kenpo karate has just as many amazing anecdotes of effectiveness as your style does.

I am also sure that not all kenpo karate schools place so little importance on actually being able to fight...

I also find it odd that you seem to think that full-contact training in MMA will benefit you in other types of fights (such as fighting with weapons), but reject the idea that my full-contact training with weapons would be of benefit enough for me to be able to unarmed beat somebody with a bit of a clue. In my experience, translating from weapons to empty hand is actually easier that going the other way. But I guess my experience doesn't count for anything, since I am not an MMA competitor?

On this point I cheerfully admit that I am guessing. I guess that the correct responses to unarmed attacks are sufficiently different to those for armed attacks that your trained responses won't be much use. I could of course be wrong, and I look forward to any video of people whose sole full-contact experience is with sticks engaging in unarmed combat that may show up.

Well, I've seen quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. For one thing, I know from personal experience that the opposite is not true. Experience in unarmed combat definitely helps when fighting with weapons. People with fighting experience, but no weapons experience, do much better with weapons than people with weapons training but no fighting experience. (Of course, people with fighting experience with weapons do even better). I also know quite a few people with extensive experience in fighting both with and without weapons, who are quite convinced that weapon skills translate quite well to unarmed combat. In fact, much of the Inayan training methodology, which was developed by people with extensive real fighting experience, is based on this. Call it anecdotal if you want, but I consider what people with lots of real fighting experience have to say on the matter to be good evidence.

Because they aren't particularly useful withing the confines of those competitions. The Dog Brothers use all sorts of techniques you won't find in an MMA competition (an obvious example being whipping strikes). Are they just being silly?

No, because strikes that would be ineffectual with an empty hand are dangerous or deadly with a stick or a knife.

Thank you for conceding my point. Like I said, some techniques which are not useful in MMA competitions are still useful for fighting. I rest my case.

Really? What if the fighting I am preparing for is something like what the Dog Brothers do? I think I can pretty safely say that in a sword, or even stick fight, I would tear apart pretty much anybody who hasn't done some fairly extensive weapon training. I don't care how good they are at their style. If they don't have experience with weapons, they are going to lose.

No kidding. Relevant full contact experience is a necessary condition for any fighting skill at all.

That is exactly my point. What is relevant for MMA competitions is not necessarily relevant for all types of fighting, and what is relevant for some particular type of fighting may not be relevant for MMA competitions. Different types of fighting call for different types of training, and different techniques.

If by "train like MMAers do" you mean train with full contact, then if you want to learn how to fight under any conditions whatsoever then you need to train like MMAers do. The idea that training without a significant full contact component gives you any fighting skills at all has been comprehensively debunked.

Well, obviously that is not what I mean by "train like MMAers do", as should be quite clear from what I have been saying. Again, what I originally objected to was the assertion that anything that isn't useful in an MMA competition, is useless in general. That is simply, and demonstrably, false.

You might train different techniques than the MMAers use. In practise I think you'd quickly discover that the techniques MMAers use are the ones that work, but I'm willing to be surprised on that point.

Well, it should not be surprising at all. You already saw some examples with the Dog Bros. And several other examples which should be painfully obvious, have also been raised. When you can't be sure that your opponent doesn't have a knife, your tactics have to change. When you have to worry about multiple attackers, your tactics have to change. When there are obstruction and/or uneven terrain, your tactics have to change. You can dismissively poo-poo these things all you want, but the fact remains that these are real situations which fighters throughout history have had to deal with, and martial arts training reflects this. It would be extremely naive to think that the subset of techniques and skills which are optimal for the very specific type of fighting you do, would be optimal for everything.

Indeed, it would be just as naive as it would be for me to think that my experience with weapons would make me a match in unarmed combat for somebody with comparable experience in that. Contrary to your previous assertions, I am not that naive. I know quite a few people who have less actual fighting experience than I do (meaning things like full-speed and/or full contact sparring), who would tear me apart unarmed. I also know quite a few people with considerably more fighting experience than I have, who I can beat rather easily in armed combat.


Dr. Stupid

 

[T'ai Chi]

Why do some sport/entertainment fans believe the results in it determine the results in real self defense situations?

 

[T'ai Chi]

Fred Ettish was a 5th Dan in kenpo karate who entered UFC 2. To his credit he entered on very short notice to replace someone who pulled out with an injury. However, the point is that he got beaten down shamefully while curling up into a fetal position because, not having trained full-contact, he had no idea how to deal with full contact.

See my 'they do silly things like hype fighters based on one event' point above.

An obvious point is that even competitors trained in MMA can get 'beaten down shamefully while curling up into a fetal position because'. So what? We're back to it being about the person again, not the style.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Well, if I were trying to claim such a ridiculous thing, I agree that I would need examples of that. But I am not. where on Earth did you get they idea that I am claiming that somebody without any fighting experience (either in the form of full-contact training or actual fighting), is going to be a good fighter? That is just silly. Why do you keep attacking a position which I have not only not advocated, but which flatly contradicts the position I have advocated?

If you scroll up, you can see how we got here. You argued that a one inch punch was a useful technique, and that the evidence for this was that someone with no full-contact unarmed experience (you) got it to work on someone else with no full-contact unarmed experience (that you mentioned) in a non-full-contact arena.

My point was that unless someone can pull it off in a full-contact environment, there's no evidence it is a useful fighting technique as opposed to a party trick.

Your first response was to say "Well, my experience differs", and I responded by pointing out that pre-UFC all sorts of people claimed to have different experiences but it now seems overwhelmingly likely they were just wrong.

Then you shifted ground to something of a non sequitur and attempted to refute this point with the rhetorical question "So let me get this straight. All those people throughout history whose skills were proven in real combat don't amount to jack squat?". Exactly how you meant this to be relevant was not clear. If you were defending your original claim it had to mean something like "Lots of people throughout history trained like I do and proved their skills in real combat", and that was the interpretation I was criticising.

If I have misinterpreted you, I can say in my defence that you were terribly unclear about what you meant, and that the argument you seemed to be making is one I've seen many times before from people who want to believe non-contact training does something.

I don't see why it should strike you as unlikely. Anyway, I have seen extensive evidence that it does translate quite well. Of course that does not mean that I am going to be equal in an unarmed fight with somebody whose experience is in full contact unarmed sparring. I won't be, just as they will not be my equal in a weapon fight.

I never claimed otherwise. I do not consider myself to be a good unarmed fighter. And while I do think that my experience (both in terms of my non-sparring training in unarmed combat, and in terms of my full-contact training with weapons) would benefit me in an unarmed fight, I do not pretend that it would be a good substitute for actually doing full-contact unarmed training. Again, I have no idea where you got the idea that I was claiming otherwise.

I got the idea from the way you claimed your personal anecdote as an authoritative source. The issue at hand is whether someone with full-contact experience with sticks and armour can speak authoritatively about unarmed combat on the basis of their own experience. I don't know the answer for sure, but I don't think the armchair opinion of a hockey player about what works in rugby counts for a lot. Especially if it totally contradicts what we see happen in filmed rugby matches.

Police. Military. Bouncers. People I know personally, including some of my teachers. I never claimed to have video. Real fights are not typically video-taped.

Well in that case my information comes from pirates, ninjas, Shaolin monks and robots, some of whom I know personally or have trained under. Unfortunately their epic battles have not been recorded on video, however you can take my word for it that they know all there is to know about unarmed combat, they are totally honest and they are infallible.

Thank you for conceding my point. Like I said, some techniques which are not useful in MMA competitions are still useful for fighting. I rest my case.

I guess you have to take "victories" where you can find them.

If your point was only ever that MMA training methods and techniques are not the last word when it comes to medieval swordsmanship, duelling with sixguns or tank warfare then you could have stated that much more clearly much earlier. No one would have argued with you either.

What would be illegitimate would be if you tried to generalise from this "victory" that all the techniques taught in woo-MA work, just not when video cameras are watching.

That is exactly my point. What is relevant for MMA competitions is not necessarily relevant for all types of fighting, and what is relevant for some particular type of fighting may not be relevant for MMA competitions. Different types of fighting call for different types of training, and different techniques.

Evidence?

Well, it should not be surprising at all. You already saw some examples with the Dog Bros. And several other examples which should be painfully obvious, have also been raised. When you can't be sure that your opponent doesn't have a knife, your tactics have to change. When you have to worry about multiple attackers, your tactics have to change. When there are obstruction and/or uneven terrain, your tactics have to change. You can dismissively poo-poo these things all you want, but the fact remains that these are real situations which fighters throughout history have had to deal with, and martial arts training reflects this. It would be extremely naive to think that the subset of techniques and skills which are optimal for the very specific type of fighting you do, would be optimal for everything.

Actually you would have to be very naive to think that techniques that simply do not work with ideal footing and a single unarmed opponent are going to work against multiple armed ninjas .

It seems eminently logical that the techniques that work in the most difficult cases would be a subset of the the techniques that work on a lone, unarmed target, not some entirely different set of techniques

 

[thaiboxerken]

The one-inch punch really is a useless technique. I've learned it, but it really has no decent application. Yea yea yea.. I know the "trapping" applications of it, but those applications really fall through when sparring full contact.

 

[pipelineaudio]

What strikes me is the notion that practicing blocks, hits and punches wont help in self defense the way practicing guitar scales will help guitar playing

 

[thaiboxerken]

It depends on the type of blocks, hits and punches as well as learning useful application of such techniques. The high forearm block of karate was practiced by many, many people and it really only got those karateka clobbered. If you learn to punch with one hand on your hip, you're asking to get KO'd. If you learn to kick with your hands limp (like TKD people), then you'll get KO'd as well.

The guitar scales analogy simply doesn't apply, because people can learn "techniques" in martial arts that simply don't work in a real altercation.

Learning the application and timing is also a vital part of learning the technique. Parrying the air really won't help me learn how to parry against a person who's really trying to punch me. Neither is standing in front of each other punching and parrying in a static/dead pattern.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

What strikes me is the notion that practicing blocks, hits and punches wont help in self defense the way practicing guitar scales will help guitar playing

A better analogy would be that woo-MA is to fighting as playing air guitar is to guitar playing. You can spend years playing air guitar and you might even put on a good show but you won't actually be able to play when faced with a real instrument.

 

[pipelineaudio]

TMA must have changed a TON in the last 20 years. I dont remember learning any of this useless stuff, unless you consider bowing as you come into class useless. I mean, sure, that wont help you in a fight, but were really coming off the subject here.

I DO remember doing drills of blocks, in repetition, to learn he movement, then having to block random punches from the teacher, getting trickier and tricker as the weeks went by. This is no different than learning scales then putting them to use by improvising over random music

And it worked well, in a self defense application

 

[qayak]

(1) Yes my punch was more powerful than the bat or crowbar (around 10, 000 lbs)

Yeah, right.

I try to maximize the “fluid shock transfer” by pulling the fist back towards me just before impact.

Your technique is not maximizing the fluid shock transfer, it is minimizing it. A simple fact of physics. The human body has a speed limit and the most effective way to get power into a punch is to get as much mass behind it as possible at the highest speed possible. You do neither. Here is a man who was an expert at it: http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/showpost.php?p=679385&postcount=1

I think that the major problem with the explanation of Qi, Chi, Tao etc is the fact that the names are taken from one language, then roughly translated into others. This forces (in some cases) the real meaning to be lost.

No, the problem is that martial artists will not simply admit that qi/chi were simple names to express concepts that ancient people did not fully understand. Instead they add to the mysticism with bogus claims and pseudo-scientific explanations that impress other, equally ignorant, martial artists.

The Okinawans got it right several hundred years ago. They talk about "chinkuchi" which literally translates to bone/sinew(muscle)/control. In other words, they talk about body mechanics.

They discarded all the flowery, chi cultivating crap from the Chinese and replaced it with weight training http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/023/eng/012/index.html and body conditioning exercises http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/023/eng/011/index.html.

 

[qayak]

The one-inch punch really is a useless technique. I've learned it, but it really has no decent application. Yea yea yea.. I know the "trapping" applications of it, but those applications really fall through when sparring full contact.

That's funny. . . that's the one that worked for me to end the last altercation I was in. Nobody even knew I hit him!

 

[thaiboxerken]

That's funny. . . that's the one that worked for me to end the last altercation I was in. Nobody even knew I hit him!

Against an untrained person, most techniques will work, even the most retarded ones. However, you're just lucky you didn't face off against a trained fighter or someone who is just tough.

 

[qayak]

Against an untrained person, most techniques will work, even the most retarded ones. However, you're just lucky you didn't face off against a trained fighter or someone who is just tough.

"There is no luck. There is trained and there is untrained." (I got that from Denzel Washington in Man On Fire.)

Perhaps you should be saying that my opponent was unlucky to run into a better trained fighter than himself.

 

[thaiboxerken]

"There is no luck. There is trained and there is untrained." (I got that from Denzel Washington in Man On Fire.)

Ah yes, quoting pop culture films as authority. Nice.

Perhaps you should be saying that my opponent was unlucky to run into a better trained fighter than himself.

No. I'm saying that one can train for bad situations and one can train for not-so-bad situations. If I decided that only girl scouts would attack me, I'd only to kata all day as well.

You are simply lucky that you didn't get attacked by a tough guy or a decent fighter.

 

[qayak]

Ah yes, quoting pop culture films as authority. Nice.

Nobody said it was an authority. Do you feel it was an authority? Do you often have these delusions?

No. I'm saying that one can train for bad situations and one can train for not-so-bad situations. If I decided that only girl scouts would attack me, I'd only to kata all day as well.

You are simply lucky that you didn't get attacked by a tough guy or a decent fighter.

So, do you know the guy I fought? Can you describe him for me to make sure it is the right guy? Can you tell me his name? No? That's because you're blowing smoke out your butt. You don't know either fighter or the circumstance of the altercation. You don't know anything.

But let me guess. . . YOU are the baddest dude that ever walked the Earth?

 

[thaiboxerken]

Nobody said it was an authority. Do you feel it was an authority? Do you often have these delusions?

You're the one that quoted the movie, it's obvious that you think it has some relevance.

So, do you know the guy I fought? Can you describe him for me to make sure it is the right guy? Can you tell me his name? No? That's because you're blowing smoke out your butt. You don't know either fighter or the circumstance of the altercation. You don't know anything.

Ah yes, this is exactly why anecdotes really mean nothing in such a discussion.

Thanks for proving my point.

Just to drive the point further:


So, do you know the WHAT I SAW? Can you describe THE GHOST FOR ME? Can you tell me THE GHOSTS NAME? No? That's because you're blowing smoke out your butt. You don't know either GHOSTS or the circumstance of the SIGHTING. You don't know anything.

 

[qayak]

You're the one that quoted the movie, it's obvious that you think it has some relevance.

Relevence certainly, as an authority, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Ah yes, this is exactly why anecdotes really mean nothing in such a discussion.

Thanks for proving my point.

Just to drive the point further:


So, do you know the WHAT I SAW? Can you describe THE GHOST FOR ME? Can you tell me THE GHOSTS NAME? No? That's because you're blowing smoke out your butt. You don't know either GHOSTS or the circumstance of the SIGHTING. You don't know anything.

I don't see how this makes your point further. It just makes you look silly.

You made statements based on zero information except for the fact that you can't get a short, lead arm punch to work for you. Do you have enough fight experience to know that a short lead hand punch is also known as a "jab?" Are you telling me that with all your great fighting prowess, you can't make a jab work?

Go back and read the article I posted on Rocky Marciano, there's a guy who knew how to punch. I also recommend Jack Dempsey's book where he discusses his "jolt" punch.