I know there is another thread down the list on the same topic. I started a new one to bring some focus to the discussion, and hopefully cut out the goofyness.

Let's start by quoting one of Tim's posts on the work of James LaFond.

" James LaFond (an author of books on the reality of street fighting) has done something, to my knowledge, that no other author of similar works has done before. He spent a considerable amount of time and effort to collect statistics on real fights, how they started, what happened during the fights and how they ended. The following are his stats on 200 subjects that were involved in street fights:

Inexperienced trained fighters almost always had unsatisfactory first experiences with real violence.

Nonfighters also got negative results the first real fight.

'Punks' (referring to those that instigate violence) were victorious about half the time.

Women who fought back did suprisingly well defending themselves except when attacked by sober sexual predators.

Athletes in all categories fared better than nonathletes (they were in better shape).

Experienced, untrained fighters reported the highest ratio of indecisive encounters (and the firmest belief in weapons use).

Experienced, trained fighters were almost always successful in all of their violent encounters.

Violent criminals had an almost perfect success rate (won all their fights), and always selected vulnerable prey.

'Habitual' fighters were all exceptional pyhsical specimens, always fought while drinking and chose opponents that put up "light to pathetic opposition." (We've all seen these guys in bars).

The general consensus is that actual fighting experience is most important, and trained fighters with experience are the most successful.

A couple of other important points are that athletes that train and participate in combat 'sports' are almost always better able to defend themselves in real fights than martial artists that do not engage in noncooperative, contact sparring practices. And finally, when things are close to equal, size makes a great difference."

And address the components in turn:

Cont'd.

1.

" James LaFond (an author of books on the reality of street fighting) has done something, to my knowledge, that no other author of similar works has done before. He spent a considerable amount of time and effort to collect statistics on real fights, how they started, what happened during the fights and how they ended. The following are his stats on 200 subjects that were involved in street fights"


Dunno, as with any stats, they provide only generalities but we have to be careful about drawing specific conclusions. I don't know how he went about this study, but the results below seem to make sense to me.



"Inexperienced trained fighters almost always had unsatisfactory first experiences with real violence.

Nonfighters also got negative results the first real fight."

Probably true. I'd have to ask a lot of follow up questions.

"'Punks' (referring to those that instigate violence) were victorious about half the time."

I would argue that by and large they are probably victorious more than that. Most of the time.

Why? Because outside of a drunken brawl in anger, they choose their victims, they choose the time and place of the assault, and they attack first, usually by surprise.

The biggest difference between what we train in martial arts, and what happens in real life, is the concept of ambush, sucker punching, etc. To a certain extent, it is impossible to train.

Awareness, initiative and decisiveness are the components of countering the latter - martial arts goes only part of the way there. "Field stripping" our martial studies and applying them in the proper context can convert the useful elements of dojo study to real life.

Cont'd

2.

"Women who fought back did suprisingly well defending themselves except when attacked by sober sexual predators."

This is largely a factor of a bad choice by the assailant. He then bails when he realize he got a tigress and not a willing victim. The latter is far preferable not because he can't defeat the opposition - in many cases he may be able to do so - but because he doesn't want to draw attention, and the longer it takes and the more fight that occurs, the more likely he will be caught. It is a tactical decision to disengage, rarely one based on ego - in a stranger assault/abduction/etc.

Domestic violence, or other types of violence directed at women will probably take on a different pattern.

"Athletes in all categories fared better than nonathletes (they were in better shape)."

No argument there. Physical condition, and something else that comes from athletics - physical confidence is huge.


"Experienced, untrained fighters reported the highest ratio of indecisive encounters (and the firmest belief in weapons use)."

Hmmmm. I have a very firm belief in weapons use, have multiple real world weapons applications, and yet I am an experienced, trained fighter.

I think he is specifically speaking to a certain segment of the martial arts and "reality based self defense" community here, that:

Does not believe that athletics/physical conditioning is important.

Has a misplaced confidence in weapons use and application - to include at time bizarre ideas about how effective certain weapons might be.

Entire martial arts and self defense systems are based on these ideas, and their exponents are far more common than the combat athlete/skilled weapons person, because the latter requires far more ego-humbling work.

"Experienced, trained fighters were almost always successful in all of their violent encounters."

No argument here. Someone else did a study on fighter pilot aces, in which they determined that after about 5 combat engagements in which you were successful (the number that makes an "ace") your chances of not being successful dropped dramatically.

"Violent criminals had an almost perfect success rate (won all their fights), and always selected vulnerable prey."

This relates to above: target selection, taking and maintaining initiative.

"'Habitual' fighters were all exceptional pyhsical specimens, always fought while drinking and chose opponents that put up "light to pathetic opposition." (We've all seen these guys in bars)."

This relates strongly to the above. Different type. You see the same guys picking and choosing the cops they choose to resist/fight as well - cop killers always report similar things - they knew they could take the officers they killed based on a variety of factors.

Cont'd

3.

"The general consensus is that actual fighting experience is most important, and trained fighters with experience are the most successful.

A couple of other important points are that athletes that train and participate in combat 'sports' are almost always better able to defend themselves in real fights than martial artists that do not engage in noncooperative, contact sparring practices. And finally, when things are close to equal, size makes a great difference."

I cannot agree more strongly with this.

The whole TMA/RBSD vs. sport MA/MMA is kind of a moot point, really. None is real fighting. All have something to offer someone interested in developing self defense ability for real fighting.

What separates most of them is "do they train against a non-cooperative opponent in an exercise based on opposing goals." I.E. do they free fight in which one participant has the goal to "win."


Most sport MA/MMA covers the latter nicely. They tend to be clueless on awareness factors, threat management/confrontational dynamics, use of force factors, weapons factors, etc. because they tend to focus almost exclusively on sport and what tend to be odd rules evolutions. Judo and BJJ are great examples of arts that have suffered a lot in their combative application because of this rules focus - in some respects actually promoting approaches that are less than optimal, if not near suicidal in real fighting due to a focus on sport.

Most TMA/RBSD that do not contain a freefighting element have some things to offer: at least an approach to awareness, some element of confrontational dynamics, weapons factors, multiple opponents, etc. They squander this useful knowledge by not training in a free fighting manner, thus losing a sense of realism that is critical in addressing these issues in real life. The absolutely ridiculous weapons defense and multiple opponent demonstrations we tend to see from some types of martial arts are a great example of this. They don't do "real resistance" demos because those usually end with the attacker at the bottom of a dog pile and don't look very cool.

In other words, they are too real.

The folks/systems that combine the useful elements of both approaches are far, far ahead of the pack when it comes to self defense, real fighting, police and military applications, etc.

Cont'd.

In my view, and the way I conduct my training, is to explore all possible venues that might be of use. I have settled on core training in closely related arts (judo/BJJ and prior studies in their forebears) that I couple with extensive weapons training (modern weapons: short blades, short impact tools, handguns, and shoulder fired weapons), what is called "force on force" drilling and scenario work, and a lot of work on integrating what I learn in martial studies to the needs of practical street application: both from a fully "kitted out" law enforcement perspective to the civilian self defense perspective.

I don't cleave to a particular weapons method because it comes from a particular tradition. "Style bias" is dangerous in real life. Not because someone may not be able to make, say XYZ art's "Crescent Moon Knife" method work in the real world, but it simply may not be the most efficient application of knife work for modern self defense. Likewise, it may not integrate with proven empty hand applications, or firearms applications, if one carries a gun.

Martial arts for self defense is much more involved than simply putting time in at the dojo. If that is all one is going to do, one should be training in a full contact combat sport: any one of the components of modern MMA. Against many threats the average person who can afford regular training in martial arts faces, that will be enough. Some of these might at least offer a smattering of self defense (but buyer beware: BJJ "self defense" is basically old school judo/jujutsu kata, with varying degrees of practicality), but it is a far cry from the total package.

Since all expereienced trained fighters are athletes, how much of their success is determined by fighting skills as opposed to physical fitness and confidence?

How can one measure confidence?

Alien

I think the attributes all coalesce, I don't think you can separate out the one from the other. You can't really have effective fighting skills without confidence, and against someone who is a committed adversary, you won't be very successful without physical fitness, once the event has turned physical.

If you can keep it from getting physical, thats a different story.


Jake

Here is how I measured physical confidence:

After about 8 years of traditional martial arts study, in methods which were "combat oriented," but trained non-resistively, other than a small amount of occasional sparring (and some TKD I had done as my first martial art), I took a job working plainclothes security for a major hotel chain.

I had several scrapes, including the most serious physical confrontation I have ever been involved in. My martial arts training was useful, but the fact that it was not in a primarily resistive environment had a certain effect on my abilities and confidence during actual confrontations. My experience in "listening" was confined to cooperative push hands, not to seriously dynamic, violent movement against a man not trying to do the same thing I was doing. In other words, a lot of stuff wasn't there under pressure, and the fights quickly got to very close quarters - the range that arts like Taiji and Xing Yi are supposed to be good at. They probably are, if trained that way.

I started submission grappling near the end of my tenure there. I kept at it a few years until I got hired in law enforcement. During my training phase I started getting in the occasional scrap.

There was a night and day difference. My training approach was now mostly resistive drilling and grappling. My comfort level at close quarters, even against strikers, was palpable, and my ting jin skills under real pressure made the difference between getting control of people very early, and quite easily, versus having to play catch up during a real fight.

I also developed a confidence regarding when to take physical action, and to move decisively when it was time to do so. Many, many people, including police officers, are unsure of their ability to "take" someone when faced with that possibility in real life, and are unsure of their legal standing when a confrontation is in the offing that they hesitate when faced with imminent confrontation, or they start off very ineffectually at the moment the physical engagement commences. This is very dangerous. Instead, through combination of street experience and regular sparring and grappling training against people of all shapes and sizes, I developed the confidence to move on someone decisively and control them early on, at a minimum to prevent them from hurting me, that really makes a difference in real world situations.

Kit,

One of the best threads ever here.

I appreciate you taking the time.

Thanks Tim. I'll keep going if you think its worthwhile.

We have to adapt our martial practice to "real life" applications, IF that is what we think is our primary focus.

This is not the case with all people. Many are perfectly content spending their time "celestial posturing" and others are fine doing combat sport. The latter, as I noted, are significantly along the way toward self defense skill in the vast majority of circumstances so long as they remain somewhat aware. I have no problem with this, so long as people don't a) get confused as to what they are actually doing, and b) then try to teach other people that what they are doing is "for the street."

For a *combatives* purpose, its a different story. By combatives, I mean a specific system in which all facets are geared toward maximum efficiency (there is that concept again!) in real world, modern day self defense applications, as opposed to simply martial arts. The breakdown of such a practice would then look something like this:

Awareness and Threat/Subject Management Strategies

Movement/Body Disciplines

Integrate close quarters hand to hand

Integrate contact weapons

Integrate shooting disciplines (for those who include firearms in their total self defense/combatives approach)

Weapon retention (mainly for those carrying firearms)

If this were 400 years ago, the only difference would be in the weapons.

A pet theory is that outside of ritualistic/competition oriented wrestling and boxing methods (which were art, sport, and did serve as combative "basic training") ALL martial art at one time was purely for utilitarian reasons. It was only later with relative peace, more leisure time, etc. that one could practice a martial art without the primary consideration being combative efficiency - even when one thought that was what one was doing.

Basically what I think happened is with time, individual pieces of the overall combative focus became the primary practice of martial arts training, for its own sake. So, some folks, for example the extreme qi-oriented types, have essentially turned Subject Management and Movement/Body Disciplines into a fetish in of itself, and very little practical training is included in their practice. Others have chosen to emphasize physical tactics, but done so either in a totally sport or completely controlled manner (due to their "deadliness," of course) so that they have lost practicality in that way) Still others spend so much time training with reproductions of ancient weapons that they have little time left to concentrate on training with that folding knife clipped inside their pants pocket - something they carry every day. Or, they train competitive firearms in a way that removes
much street practicality due to carry methods, "gaming" the rules, etc.


More later...

Excellent job!

I'm copying this for my LEO training and Women's self-defense training!

Thanks!

"...others spend so much time training with reproductions of ancient weapons that they have little time left to concentrate on training with that folding knife clipped inside their pants pocket - something they carry every day." -- Kit Leblanc

I agree -- I hated wasting a lot of time training with items that I wouldn't have on me or at hand in a contemporary setting (unless I were attacked during a martial-arts class, of course)... sure it was sometimes fun & even a bit interesting, & there was some possible transfer to other, more modern items, but far too much time was spent on this kind of stuff in my opinion... & having to lug all that stuff around to & from classes was such a drag (esp. when riding on a bus).

A Kali master?

http://www.break.com/index/lion-attacks-woman.html

On a diferent note; Don't think that was an attack, seemed more like play behaviour, just rougher than people are used to. I suspect the cat saw the womans movements as an invitation to play. Wrong weight class though.

Remind me never to play with lions.

Tim:
never play with lions

Just a friendly reminder

Jamie