This topic has been rehashed over and over again. Let's state some principles to work with to start our discussion.

The Chinese boxers of old, like Sun Lu Tang, conditioned a lot on their own and generally had harder lives in a physical sense since cars didn't exist. Conditioning is a great tool to have under your belt because it augments your techniques. Instead of practicing a technique a thousand times every day so some push ups and then come back to the technique to see how it's changed.

Sparring is important because it allows you to test techniques in a non-cooperative environment. This is how spontaneity is developed and fear is thrown aside. Techniques become alive. Sparring with different sized people helps you to learn about different body types.

Apply your power/body weight where the person is weak. This is, theoretically, where the Chinese martial arts supposedly outdo others. They allow the smaller person to take down the bigger person.

Above are the principles. Here are some critical thoughts to consider. Conditioning is important sparring is, and not forcing techniques too. But are these all utilized in the competition setting? Sort of. In the competition setting there are body weight categories.

Why are there body weight categories? My friend is a bjj fanatic. I asked him why they have weight classes. He said, "Cause if you try to wrestle with someone bigger than you he'll just lay on you until you get tired and then submit you."

Is competition fighting helpful for self defense in general or self defense against people in your weight class? Undoubtedly competition helps to hone skills and build confidence but these skills aren't "tested" against larger opponents. I'm not talking specifically about bjj. This applies to boxing, judo, karate, etc.
In many of these competitions women do not compete against men. Why is that? It's because women are weaker and smaller, in general, than men. There is no political correctness in the world of martial arts and self defense.

Size matters in fighting. The smaller person is at a disadvantage. The supposed skills of the soft arts(Chinese arts, bjj) are stated to be useful against larger resisting opponents. My teacher is fond of saying, "This is how a woman defeated the shaolin monks. She used superior technique and ferociousness to overcome strength." Either that isn't true at all, people who run tournaments don't believe it, and/or it has yet to be proven because weight classes prevent real competition. It would make sense that competition is a safe way to prove or disprove whether or not martial skills can be utilized by a smaller person against a larger. Why don't they do it then?

Until competitions get rid of weight classes teachers shouldn't push the idea that a smaller person is able to defeat a larger person cause clearly they don't since competition is between two people of similar weight. Would Georges St. Pierre do so well at taking down a light heavy weight or heavy weight? We'll probably never know.

Do smaller people beat up bigger people in street fights? The characters that Joe Pesci has portrayed in classic gangster movies like 'Good Fellas' and 'Casino' point to an example of a midget beating up giants. His characters may have been based off of true people but the way the movies portrayed his fights leave doubt to the validity of him being David versus Goliath. He was always surrounded by other thugs ready to help him AND he usually had weapons on him. Those are hardly fair odds.

I generally post my really important questions on this discusiion board because the quality is better. While others offer many more replies the quality is worse. I really like this discussion board. Good job, guys.

Who wins a fight depends on several variables. Size, strength and physicality are very important, but will not always be most important.

My philosophy of success in a real fight is: Mind set is most important, physicality is second in importance, technique is last in importance.

No matter how big, strong and skilled a person is, if he doesn't have the will to fight, he will lose to the opponent that does.

Techniques can only be practically applied if a fighter has the power to apply them and the endurance to get the chance. It's important to note that superior endurance will often work in the smaller fighters favor.

Technique allows the fighter to amplify his force, the more force he starts with, the more technique will increase it. I have a ratio of strength to technique: If fighter X has decent technical skills and is 50% stronger than fighter Y, who is 100% technically superior to X, Y will most often lose the fight (a good example is the Matt Hughes vs. Royce Gracie fight, or the reason Kramer is the champ in his Karate school http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t8xwpW8gJQ).

You will find smaller, well trained, well conditioned fighters defeating much larger and stronger but untrained fighters every day in any BJJ academy. But when the larger and smaller fighters are anywhere near the same level of technical skill, and both are equally determined to win, the larger fighter will most often prevail. That is why there are weight classes in combat sport martial arts (with the exception of professional Sumo. Sumo is a good example of this theory, occasionally, a "smaller," technically superior wrestler will do well and move into the higher ranks, but he will never make it to the very top).

Every large BJJ tournament has an "Open Class" where competitors of all weight classes compete together. Sometimes a lighter, exceptionally skilled competitor will win, but usually the bigger athletes win, because when other variables are equal or close to it, the larger stronger man wins.

Unlike sport fights, in a "real" fight, strategy and the element of surprise will often go a long way in determining who wins the fight. A smaller, determined, skilled fighter can often win a fight
when determination and skill are aligned with a superior strategy.

This is the promise of any legitimate "martial art" to the smaller practitioner; if you have the proper mind set, are well conditioned, have command of sufficient practical technique and understand the proper strategy in violent encounters, you will have a good chance of "winning" or at least surviving a fight with a larger and stronger opponent.

In a real fight there are many factors you will not find in a sport fight. The major ones being:

Weapons
Numbers
Surprise
Environment

These things don't factor into sporting event because of their very nature. So they will always remain hard to train for.

However sport martial arts are the very best (in my opinion) way to train the factors we can work with. Sport martial arts give you the correct mind set (I'm going to win/survive this engagement), Physical conditioning, and a useable skill set.

There are other areas outside of sport that are great to train, I personally practice quite a few of them. But finding a way to train against live resistance is key to martial arts training. Sport is a phenomenal way to do just that. Without live resistance everything you do is just speculation and masturbation.

"...However sport martial arts are the very best (in my opinion) way to train the factors we can work with. Sport martial arts give you the correct mind set (I'm going to win/survive this engagement), Physical conditioning, and a useable skill set.

There are other areas outside of sport that are great to train, I personally practice quite a few of them. But finding a way to train against live resistance is key to martial arts training. Sport is a phenomenal way to do just that. Without live resistance everything you do is just speculation and masturbation..."

Well stated!!

Martial arts and "street fighting" are two different things. One is not necessarily training for the other.Tim and Chris both noted some things here - realize that strategy and surprise and management of the variables that come into play in real life is a skill set that can be improved as well.

Even many of the martial systems that supposedly are for combat and rely upon strategy are based in dueling paradigms - two practitioners, squared up, and the engagement begins. Very little real fighting or combat begins that way.

Training for "real fighting" should look like this:

Awareness, Situation Management, Confrontational Dynamics. Verbal interactions combined with position and timing. Decision making - most encounters will not be physical, practitioner has to decide when to "go."


Default tactics - instant response tactics for when "I wasn't ready" or that "end the fight" quickly. Systems like WWII combatives are based on this idea. Most traditional martial arts that were supposedly about "combat" are also based in this. Xing Yi is an example - immediate, powerful, "knock down and take out" tactics for ending the fight right away. These work well if they work, or if your adversary is a pussy.


Often they don't, especially the bigger, tougher, or better trained your assailant is. Combat Sports play an important role here, because they teach you to continue when things don't work, link stuff together, when to abandon stuff that isn't working, etc. They also provide excellent combat conditioning typically lacking in the "end the fight right now" type training because, well, the fight ended right now, so no need to keep going. Many combatives and traditional martial artists lack this conditioning because they have inculcated an "idealistic" belief in their end-the-fight-now tactics that has affected their training.

Combat sports build some bad habits for real fighting, so you have to balance that out with experience with confrontational dynamics and other training in force-on-force with weapons, multiples, etc. to reveal where some of those problems are (hint:jumping to guard is bad for real fighting, especially with multiples. Being conditioned to jump to guard when under tremendous pressure in combat sport *may* translate to doing so almost subconsciously when under tremendous pressure from multiples in a real encounter, because that is what your brain most naturally accesses under similar pressures). You have to train somewhat realistically to identify this kind of stuff.

I believe (and teach) that the best way to prepare oneself for real encounters, (including weapons,suprise,environment and numbers)
is to stand peacefully in a park and slowly move ones body through movements of the Thai CHi forms.

sparing, sport fighting and "mixing it up" will cause one to suck.

keep the dream of the ancient masters alive.
wave your hands in the air like you just don't care.


Bob#2

Tim,
Good post. But as you stated the smaller opponents SOMETIMES beat larger opponents who aren't as well trained or because of other factors.

Knowing whether or not an opponent is better trained than another is too subjective. How does anyone really know how two opponents are trained unless he taught both people or he is an all knowing god.

Unless they get rid of weight classes in competitions and smaller opponents start beating larger ones on a regular basis, I believe my point still stands that martial arts teachers shouldn't profess that smaller people will be able to beat bigger people using said style in competition testing this.

I'm not talking about anyone here or anyone in particular. I'm just generalizing from ads I see and from what I've heard from instructors along my martial arts path.

A guy I know was having this debate with his teacher. His teacher was saying that one doesn't need to train in multiple styles to be good. One only need to train his style. My friend was arguing that you need to study multiple styles to be a good fighter and that smaller people need to learn how to hit really hard to be able to stand with larger people. My friend is a product of multiple styles as is his teacher which makes this a strange topic of conversation. Even though the teacher in the story trained in my styles he only teaches one. Anyway, my friend said to him, "If that's true than train a small woman only in your style and have her come kick my a$$." The debate ended there.


Principles of leverage won't work if you're a weak little girl. That's the basic message I'm getting here and I agree. I think competition is the best way to safely test the principles discussed in my original post but that test should be seen for what it is. A smaller guy loses...how can you tell if he was better trained than the bigger guy? What if you were training him and you knew he put in 180% into his training and still lost? Did he lose because he didn't train 250% or because his training couldn't traverse the physical differences involved? Now I'm repeating myself.

If a smaller guy puts 180% into training and still loses to a bigger guy, he will never beat said bigger guy no matter how hard he trains.

Rickson Gracie will never submit a gorilla, and Anderson Silva will never knock out an elephant.

"Knowing whether or not an opponent is better trained than another is too subjective."

Subjective doesn't enter into it, the point is you will never know how well trained an opponent is. Outside of a sport fight where you know your opponent's background and fight record, in the street you will have no way of knowing how well trained, motivated, dangerous, armed or unarmed your opponent is or how many in the group are his friends. If confronted, you simply have to make the decision to run or fight, and if you choose to fight, you need to maximize your advantages (surprise, terrain, available weapons, correct choice of technique etc.) no matter how big or small your opponent is.

Having realistic fight skills isn't magic, you will never develop the clairvoyance to know what your opponent is capable of, or how far he is willing to go. Actually, size is a secondary consideration in real fights, the bigger guy might be a cream puff, and the smaller guy might be a psychopathic Bruce Lee with a weapon. This is the primary reason it's never a good idea to fight unless you have no choice.

Brilliant!

I will be putting up a review later this week on my blog, but I cannot suggest this book enough:
"Meditations on Violence" by Rory Miller

Read it, re-read it, and keep it for future reading!

Cheers
Jake

Amen Tim

It doesn't get any more clear then that.

I would say first and foremost, stop thinking about a "fight" as a "fight." Two (or more) guys squared off and in an agreement to throw down.

Start thinking of them as "assaults," in other words you are being assaulted by one or more persons, often by surprise, and you are a step ahead of the curve in terms of preparing for real violence.

And don't just read books (I would strongly recommend the Gift of Fear by Gavin Debecker), read the news on what happens in your local area. All sorts of information on how these things go down is available there.

I recommend "The Gift of Fear" as well.

Also, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book "On Combat."

Little Black Book of Violence


One of my favorites

I recommend "The Gift of Fear" as well.

It's required reading in my self-defense class.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Marquez is excellent

As promised:
http://threeharmonies.blogspot.com/2010/04/meditations-on-violence-book-review.h tml

Thanks for the lead on that book Gift of Fear. I ordered a copy.

take care,
Brian