Human Weapon - Krav Maga and "Aliveness" implications

I will admit that the more I watch this show, the more I like it.

Watching the Krav Maga episode, I couldn't help but think about the implications on the "Aliveness" debate as well as the "sport vs street" debate. In the very beginning of the episode, Jason, the MMA guy, got ready to go up against a guy armed with a training knife, while voice over said (paraphraing), "It was time to find out how my 9 years of professional fighting would hold up against a trained commando armed with a knife." Needless to say, he got stabbed over and over again. It was brutal. The difference in mentality was marked. Jason popped out a front kick, the guy slid in and when Jason tried to clinch, he got "killed." Bam. That was it. Notch one up for the street vs. sport guys. His sport mentality got him "killed." The trainer looked at both of the hosts and told them in no uncertain terms that they new crapall about self defense.

That was very interesting to me... but what really got me thinking was how quickly he seemed to adapt. I'm very interested in hearing from you guys about this. Over the course of the week, his MMA training seemed to serve him very well. His instincts were good, as was his attitude. He just seemed to be refining techniques he'd already learned and adding a few new concepts to his arsenal. While the test at the end was clearly not as hard as it could've been, he did extremely well, IMO. I wonder how he might have fared had he not had over a decade of training in an alive manner.

Do you think that his sport training in MMA was a detriment to his self defense training or a benefit?

Mods: I posted this in General Discussion because it's really not as much about the tv show as it is about training methodology, but of course it can be moved as you see fit.

 

I didn't see the show. The important question for me is "how did the other guys do against the knife in comparison to the MMA guy?", because it seems to me that the guy with the knife had such a ridiculous advantage that it's not fair to discount his training based on his apparently poor performance.

 

I think his sport gave him the skill and ability to Self Defend. But his sport mentality screwed him over. He clearly found the idea of more than one opponent difficult (more so IMO than Bill) and as you said he got completely slaughterd at first and had difficulty with knives most of the way through again. Later on he got better and became very good with the gun disarms and taking at holds etc.

 

I agree the sport mentally made him do things that would be good for a fight but not for defending a knife. Basically, he didn't rely on instincts he relied on training.

The problem with training for fights is that you are conditioned into defend sports based attacks. You aren't trained to be dynamic. Generally in MMA you train for the most likely ring scenarios and when a fight comes up you prepare for a specific fighters best weapons and how to defend your weaknesses.

 

Didn't see it but:

Doesn't surprise me at all. Good for him.

As has been said... this is hardly a fair test. Obviously certain sport tactics are inadvisable against a blade, but even so... no one unarmed will be able to prevail against someone at an equal skill level in blade fighting. If they do, there's something very wrong with the blade system.

 

Well, it's not so much a show about style vs. style. It becomes an interesting experiment, however, in that one of the main hosts is an MMA guy and all that implies. The other guy is a former wrestler/football player.

To answer your question, I don't know how anyone else would do. I'd be very interested in how Hatsumi or any of the traditionally trained Taijutsu guys would do. As it is, though, it was clearly an epiphany for Jason. While I'm sure he didn't expect to kick butt, I don't think he was prepared for how quickly he was taken out. It was ridiculously easy.

But I do think you touch on the heart of the matter. It really seemed to me that his MMA training served him well. It seemed like the guys were genuinely impressed with his aptitude and how quickly he picked up what they were showing him.

I guess in my mind it comes down to this. I think that his training in MMA gave him a solid foundation upon which to build the practical self defense skills he was learning. In contrast, I believe that someone without alive training would have had to unlearn much of what they had learned and then start from scratch.

 

totally

 

Okay. Check it out if you can. If you'd seen it, I didn't get the impression that this was so much a "blade system" type of demonstration. It was really more of a "determined guy aggressively stabbing an unarmed man" scenario. And again, to be clear, the result wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was the ease with which he was overwhelmed.

 

Yep. In real life I agree that fights are often unfair in such a way. However if you don't test someone's skill fairly you have no basis to say that they're worse than you.

 

To be fair though if he had never trained for knife attacks he would be totally unprepared, which I know is an obvious point but alive training can be just as easily applied to knife defense, and there are few martial arts that do train knife defense in an alive way where the attacker can do whatever they want. With MMA they train to take a few punches, one sucessfull stab with a knife and it could be game over, totally different dynamic.

The simplest way to train is to use a large marker pen to represent the blade, the defender wears a white tshirt and every solid mark on them represents a sucessfull stab, which focuses the mind pretty well..training like that against someone who is really going for it would soon make what is effective defense apparent pretty quickly.

 

Quoted for truth.

The fact of the matter is that "aliveness" is key. He has reflexes, the ability to think on his feet, the ability to adapt quickly, and has been clobbered both in practice and in the ring and can therefore maintain a certain level-headedness needed for self-defense.

I'm not going to say that knife defense is simple, but I think the reason it's more difficult than it needs to be is because people inherently fear weapons. Plain and simple, they panic at the thought of one. One of the biggest keys to self-defense is the ability to stay calm. He has it. He had a great base for it as opposed to someone who just waves their arms around all day.

 

I bet if you gave me a knife and put me against an MMA fighter, I'd be able to kill him (talking purely about skill and disregarding the emotional content here) and I'm not even trained in blade fighting. I would like to know how an unarmed commando would do against an unarmed MMA fighter, and also as Tim said, how any other so called "street" MAist would have done in the same position.

This sort of reminds me of a video on youtube I saw of Randy Couture on some American show called "Pros vs Joes" or something. It was where some "Joe Public" types had to take on some pro athletes at their own game. One of the Joe's was apparently an army hand to hand combat trainer, and when he came up against Randy in a grappling match, he got absolutely dominated. I mean, he really didn't have a clue how to go about beating Randy, but then, he did do quite a bit better than the other guys who had no combat training at all. Kind of like the MMA fighter from the OP didn't have a clue how to go about taking on the guy with the knife, but still I imagine, would do a hell of a lot better than anyone who hadn't done live training.

Both of those tests were pretty unfair in trying to gauge whether MMA would be effective for self defence, but I can say completely honestly, 100% of the time, I'd take live training over any other kind for self defence. To answer your (the OP) question, I think his live training was very beneficial to self defence, but if you give the other guy a knife, you certainly can't blame sport training/lack of "street" training as the reason for him being beaten.

 

What they did in KM looks a lot like Wing Chun, or even Hsingyi! The physical movements. With exception to that stupid idea of 360 degree block thing.

The knife thing was some what expect out come. The guy that was showing them around goes and says," you just don't know what the hell your doing in a real fight."

That thing where they had a bunch of people attack them is a very good idea!

 

It's probably too obvious to state, but this example says nothing about aliveness training since aliveness refers to a method of training and not a skill being trained. There's an idea that "aliveness" = "mma", which is not true.

 

To be fair, I'd put even money on any of the Krav Maga guys in that episode. It wasn't about knives or street. It was about what works and what doesn't. Maybe I'm just buying into the propoganda.

That was a great episode. When Randy told them afterward in the locker room that he wasn't really even known as a submission specialist, I thought they were going to feint!

Once again, I want to be clear that this wasn't set up as a test of MMA vs anything at all, and I don't mean to cast it in that light. What I think is beyond debate is that he was shocked at how his skills were negated by a determined opponent wielding a knife.

What I'd be very interested in hearing is from one of the taijutsu guys, whether from the alive side or not, on their take on the episode.

 

What don't you like about the 360 degree block thing? Why is that stupid?

Not too obvious, as far as I'm concerned. While "aliveness" /= "mma" it's a generally held truth that MMA training is "alive." I have tried to be clear to distinguish between the training methodology (alive) as opposed to the specific skill set in which the host, Jason Stathom has trained (MMA).

So, I would disagree that this example says nothing about aliveness training, as my personal take is that it was the nature of his previous training that prepared him to do so well despite the fact that the skills he has trained in are "sport oriented."

 

No mater how fast you are, a person can setup that type of thing up!

It has to do with as was stated a conditioned response that becomes to mechanical can be to your detriment. The reason I would not do it, that is just the arms moving and it's easier to read what the arms are going to do when there is limited body movement. I am not suggesting a counter attack this but just the opposite happens. A person can see the muscle memory in another person as well as in the eyes. The thing is as a kid I learned to read the attack by watching certain areas of the body and I was taught to see when it was muscle memory or a counter control move. Like this, when the person uses a small specific circle like in the shoulder to move the arm than that means trained response. If it is a large catch my eye movement that my eyes gravitate to I know it is a setup.

In fact part of why some kung fu systems do not do thing like that is because one can gauge the opponent. Most jujitsu system focus on how not to allow this to happen to.

Here is what you are doing blocking on the 360 degree meaning only large looping attacks. That are aimed at the outside. This is to much area to cover and not enough simplified logic to stop this type attack. It is ok if the opponent is only dedicated to that one stick though. If he is using that attack to create a control opening than the fight will end with you losing.

They lack in KM, is forward intent(energy) into the opponent that can be used both as a control and a attack. This works best so that you do not get stuck in a repetitive fight that has you constantly blocking the 360 degree.

What is needed more than anything for fighting in any system is a way to control the emotions. This will allow one to brake another's control in a fight.

I hope that gives some idea what I am suggesting.

I would go through the attacking arm of the opponent even if they had a knife with my body weight. Less swing in the arm.

 

I think you are looking too much into the 360 defense. The 360 defense is a training technique used in the larger context of Krav Maga. It is not meant to be taken in isolation as the only way to block. Even in the show they demonstrated techniques where you block and attack in the same movement.

That is a bad thing about martial art documentaries. You only get a small glimpse of what the martial art is.

I think this is one of the greatest strengths of Krav Maga. KM stresses the importance of the "survival" instinct and dealing with the unexpected situations. A large portion of training focuses on creating scenarios where you are out of your element and learning to control your emotions to handle the situation.

 

I think I partially misunderstood your first post, hehe, and I did kind of lose what I was trying to say while typing aswell.

I think a lot has to do with what you actually mentally include in your training. Like, I know for a fact that a hell of a lot of people training in something like MMA will just train purely for the ring/cage, and not even think about or consider things like weapons etc and outlandish attacks that aren't seen in MMA. IF they do that, they won't be able to deal with anything outside of their own mental zone and will get caught with a lot of things that they might not have, had they even just considered throughout all their training that they may need to apply these things to a lot of different situations.

Another example I can think of is on the last ultimate fighter series, where the two guys had a "streetfight" in the back garden. They ended up standing to fight, and one guy gave the other a free shot, which he took....sort of.... He had a free shot to a guy who wasn't at all resisting and he hit him with a really weak shot that barely rocked him. In my opinion, if you've commited yourself to a fight, and you get a free shot, you need to be knocking the guy out, otherwise, what's the point in fighting at all? He obviously didn't have the mentality to deal with it, and all of his MMA training didn't really help with that. He also got another free shot, where he kicked the guy in the head (standing) and he still never even knocked him down (not to mention the other guy seemed just as stupid, giving someone a free shot like he did....)

I think the best way would be to do MMA style training, but making sure you always remember that fighting isn't always restricted to organised rings and cages (unfortunately) and you should be making sure you consider as many different possible attacks as you can, including ones outside of MMA rules.

As far as what works and what doesn't, I'd still go with punches/strikes mostly, as they definitely work. Or a knife of course

 

Peis, you suck. Cause now I have to go dig up this episode and watch it.

Having not watched it yet though, I'll just say that I find putting someone unarmed regardless of background against a person with a blade (especially one such as an Israeli commando trained in how to effectively use a blade) doesn't prove much about anything other than how having a knife and knowing how to use it is a good thing.

I'd hope that they showed how this commando deals with blades while unarmed, and then allowed someone outside of his training group to attack him unchoreographed in a realistic manner as he did to the host of the show, to see how well HE does in such a situation.