recent Macyoung article: TMA and "reality"

[Laughing Cow]

Hey Guys and Gals.

Found this over on the " Street/Reality Fighting" and decided to post it here as not everybody visits that forum.


Here's a great Marc Macyoung article about traditional MA and "real" fighting.

The article is recent.

It is titled: Traditional Martial Arts vs. "Real" Fighting

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/traditionalMA.htm

Like with many of his articles he expresses ideas & views that I have had for many Years.

Cheers.

[chen zhen]

Nice

[NorthernMantis]

In these times I met true "masters" of these arts; eighty year old men who could mop the floor with my young -- and supposedly bad -- ass. What really shocked me was exactly how unimpressed they were with themselves for possessing this skill. What was to me of overwhelming importance was literally a "so what?" issue to them. It wasn't until I began to understand what I am about to tell you that I realized why kicking my ass wasn't that much of a significant accomplishment to them.---- Marc Macyoung

May not know who this person is but I like him already.

[NorthernMantis]

"1) If you end up on the ground against someone trying to seriously hurt you, you ****ed up
2) Get up immediately
3) Submission fighting is to be used only on people who you want to control, *not* hurt (e.g. a drunk friend)"

Now I really like this person:D

[Ben Gash]

That was a serously intelligent piece of writing.
You know, I was thinking just today that maybe we should do more stuff on situational awareness, conflict resolution and avoidance. I know that my MA skills have gotten me out of many fights.
I've also been fortunate to train with many guys who have discussed the legal aspects, the consequences of getting it wrong, and stopping to ask yourself if it's worth it.

[Samurai Jack]

"The problem is that many of so-called "reality based" people are never getting to that twenty-one stage where they are seeing that the world is more complex than what they think it is at "fourteen." In other words, they never see "how much dad learned in those seven years." As such they go on endlessly about "how this teacher doesn't know what he is talking about, " how ineffective "traditional" martial arts are for fighting or "how in a "real fight" you have to...." etc., etc., ad nauseum."


MacYoung is the bomb! This guy has something to say that hardly anyone else is willing to even consider saying 'cause they can't make money, or stroke thier own ego's if they tell folks: "My martial art will teach you to be a better person and avoid trouble...".

The next time some NHB bada$$ tells me aikido isn't any good for fighting, I'll proudly tell him he's right! Thanks for enlightening me, I really needed to read this.

:cool:

[rogue]

I've also been fortunate to train with many guys who have discussed the legal aspects, the consequences of getting it wrong, and stopping to ask yourself if it's worth it. Ben, I've been working with one the "less than lethal" systems for the last couple of months. One thing that they say is that we train for occurances that will rarely happen (mugging, terrorists attack, being attacked by a Gracie, etc) but rarely for ones that we'll most likely encounter (drunken uncle, breaking up a stupid fight, the out of control martial arts student during sparring). Things where we don't want to really hurt the other person. It's nice having a set of tools that I can use first to try to de-escalate a situation.

The first was me. I was living a violent life and all I cared about was the fighting application.
...
Third, and this is where the observation about abusers looking for an excuse comes into play: How many of the people who are decrying that "traditional martial arts aren't good for fighting" are actually objecting to the idea that if they follow that "path" they wouldn't get to "go off" on someone?

In otherwords, if a guy is looking for an excuse to fight, how well is he going to accept conditions and standards that will keep him from doing it?

The answer is "not very well." Living a violent life, what many VTG sadly fantasize about.

[Ben Gash]

Yeah, your chances of being attacked on the street are less than 1 percent. I once read an interesting piece (I think it was in Budo International as it was then) that said that martial artists tend to over-react in self defense situations because the only training they do is in response to an attack. Therefore if someone is aggressive to them they immediately respond with physical force.
Obviously when I'm attacked at work often the assailant is not in the best shape (although I've just taken a senior staff nurse post in ER, so young drunks could be getting some serious "zero tolerance" :D) so a non destructive Chin Na defence is often the most desirable solution.
Do you remember all those "MA against terrorism" articles from late 2001? That's exactly the kind of stuff he's talking about.
Although spookily enough I was on a flight from Chicago to London on September 10th 2001 (I walked through my front door as the first plane hit) and I found myself thinking "What would you do if a knife armed terrorist tried to take over the plane?"
I thank God I never had to find out.