I can tell you that in a full contact fight, pressure points arent really an issue. Especially when you train to deal with that kind of confrontation. It might work on your average guy on the street, but then again it might not.
Aiming for areas that hurt and do more damage than other areas are never a bad thing. Grabbing areas that hurt and do more damange than other areas arent bad either. I dont see where it falls short?
Pressure points arent the areas you want to attack if you really want to damage a fully resisting opponent. If you are squeezing someones pressure point there is probably something that you would rather be doing with that hand. There are some very rare exceptions, but they all have some strategic advantage that is acheived by inflicting the pain, the pain itself is not the goal.
If you can offer any situations that occur in full contact fight that are best dealt with using a pressure points I'd love to know what they are. I'm not saying its impossible, but generally I have found it to be extremely ineffective
Punching at someones chin, at someones temple, at someones sternum, at someones groin, at someones nose...
"Punching at someones chin, at someones temple, at someones sternum, at someones groin, at someones nose..." Well if this is what is meant by pressure point attacks in ninjitsu id say its no indication of weakness in its training. The sternum attack generally isn't a good attack against stronger guys, who are typically the kinds of people that fight, but even the army teaches it so that certainly contestable. It takes one hell of a fighter to pick and choose temple and chin and nose shots, so if you can manage more power to you.
True, ground fighting has evolved but this has been known for around the last 15 years. The result of the evolution is todays MMA and it will continue to evolve as new fighters bring new methods along. Its well known you need a ground game to be a complete fighter but its upto the person to learn the arts that cover the ground game.
Yeah everyone can choose their own base of techniques to use after a fight hits the ground. But if MMA is really a test of what works, then BJJ has proven mandatory to compete. Nothing else can say this. For some people MMA might not be the test, and I can accept that, but i think its foolish.
If you miss, you still hit them in the face. As for the sternum (i meant just underneath the sternum), hitting someone there will knock the wind out of them.
"MMA is a test of what works in MMA. Period." Well I can't think of anything that even contends as a better test for what works in a 1 on 1 fight. I'd even say its the best test of your general fighting ability, though its not perfect. What do you do to test your abilities in Ninjitsu that is a better indication of your fighting ability? Its been my experience that Ninjitsu Dojos rely on the sensei's assesment of a students abilities, and that typically the sensei observes students performing drills, demonstrations and katas, but very little full contact fighting. It is my opinion that competing against a fully resisting opponent provides the best test of ones abilities, and that relying on the judgement of a master as an authority allows for a great deal of error in judgement. If I have completely missed the mark when it comes to your general approach to testing ones abilities then i appologize, but from what I've heard talking to Ninjitsu practitioners in my area, the sensei determines who has the best skills.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned this? MMA is a sport and Ninjutsu was never meant for sport-like applications. Hatsumi himself has said that Bujinkan was never meant to be used in a ring. One does not try to break limbs, strike at eyes, bash in "unsportsmanlike" areas, or throw weapons in a sport, full contact or not. It's already been mentioned that there is a heavy focus on weapons training in Ninjutsu. It makes sense, considering that a sharp metal edge (on any weapon) is generally more lethal (and therefore more likely to end a fight quickly) than a fist. Comparing Ninjutsu to MMA is rather like saying a football star's skills are less effective than a baseball players skills because if you put them both in a baseball game the baseball player wins. Now I'll admit that I have a limited understanding of Ninjutsu, but after just a few days of really examining the art, it's easy to see it's a lot more than just a system of strikes/grapples. So is BJJ and JJ I'm sure, but they focus more on these aspects than Ninjutsu, and that makes them great in the ring. I'm not one to default to the "ninjas are assassins" routine that's so common after their portrayal in the media, but Ninjutsu does involve a lot that's going to cause some real damage - the kind of thing that's expressly forbidden in a competition. This is, actually, one reason why some dojo's don't do sparring. It's considered very dangerous (more so than usual).
It's just the whole older martial arts versus newer martial arts and style vs style. These same tired arguments were brought up when there was conflict in the KungFu schools of China, the dojo of Japan, or any schools or countries that had martial conflict. The only differences were: 1. 'Back in the day' people didn't have internet forums and constantly rehash the same topics. One school would fight another, and it would go back and forth, sometimes for years or more. 2. The same thing happened between countries, however when it's about your enemy's fighting system it no longer becomes about whose is better and why. It becomes whose wins more often on the battlefield, and what can I learn from my enemy either in way of techniques, tactics, or coming up with counterattacks. History is simply repeating itself, as it always does.
I'm not sure you have a basic understanding of submission fighting. When someone taps they typically do so to keep from passing out or having a limb broken or otherwise destroyed. There are plenty of instances of limbs breaking in MMA competitions (ex. Mir breaks Silvia's forearm with an armbar). Where is the evidence of ninjutsu even hurting someone? Weapons training in the form of drills and simulations maybe...how often do they suite up with protective gear and go at it? I think you'd find an aggressive and talented athlete would own a ninjutsu fighter in a weapons match as the ninja quickly discovers that confrontations aren't organized and sequential. Not quite. If you are talking about american football....its like comparing the nature of football to the nature of baseball and concluding that football players are generally better fighters than baseball players. Football is alot more like fighting than baseball. MMA is way more like fighting than Ninjutsu. Any dojo that doesn't do sparring is completely worthless. No one who knows what they are talking about will tell you any different. Again im wondering 'where is the evidence?' Ninjutsu fighters dont compete, they dont start fights, they dont even spar...yet I am to beleive they have truely deadly techniques? Its a bold claim, and it hasn't been backed up.
This is a different context (in terms of a fight). From a standing position, fighters in the MMA are not allowed to kick in an opponent's knee with enough force to shatter it, for instance, and that is not a submissive move. When I said bone breaking, I did not refer to merely submission. There are a lot more ways to break bones and a lot more bones than in your limbs. Your spine is a good example, and one that's exposed in your neck. That aside, one is also given protective gear (it is a sport) that lessens the lethality of blows to the head and other places, and those blows are constrained in power and technique by the rules. A well aimed punch to the neck is enough to kill someone. MMA is not real fighting, it's competition, and ninjutsu is not meant for competition. When you take something out of it's context (ie real, rule-less combat) and bring it into a context (ie controlled, limited MMA events) to compare it to something more suited to that context, you are taking up an exercise in futility. Yes, sugar is better for sweetening tea than salt. It's a moot point. Hurting in what way? Murder? Or just bodily injury? Check out the Ninjutsu forum; just recently a partially disabled kid took down an armed assailant. Generally when someone uses a martial art to kill someone, it just goes on record as blunt-force trauma, asphyxiation, or whatever the actual cause of death was. Show me a police report where BJJ is specifically mentioned as the technique used for the crime. Certainly if you pair an expert fighter against a novice ninja, the ninja will most likely loose. But if you pair an expert ANYTHING against a novice, the expert will most likely win. Moot point. Someone who is dependent upon organized combat (which considering there are rules AT ALL in MMA, is more it's result than that of ninjutsu training by a very long stretch) is a poor fighter no matter what the style is. Are you seriously claiming that all ninja's require a structured fight? Despite this being the exact opposite of it's principle of adaptability (well, in bujinkan anyway)? No, it really isn't. If you think fairness is an element of combat, you need to return to your basics. Your argument is much the same as claiming chess is an accurate simulation of real world combat. Certainly MMA is closer to fighting than chess to war, but many of the fundamental differences between chess and war exist between MMA and real-world combat. For instance, kicking sand is a common tactic wherever it's available. How much sand is kicked in MMA? Or finger nails dragged across eyes? Or Muay Thai fighters kicking the neck or skull with full force? Or shots-with lethal force-to the neck at all for that matter? Don't confuse MMA with real fighting. In a real fight, there's always the threat of getting shot, stabbed, ambushed, and really, really hurt. I did not make the claim that Ninjutsu fighters do not spar. You really need to pay attention. The word some does not mean or imply all by any degree. It can mean most, 1/2, 22, or any other arbitrary number. Plenty of Ninjutsu fighters spar, but obviously they cannot employ the specific techniques that are DESIGNED TO KILL A PERSON against a living human. They can do parts of them, enough that they are able to finish the technique at will when necessary, but they never train using full force in a lethal move against another person. That, my friend, is called MURDER. As for your other claims, plenty of Ninjutsu fighters compete... but the nature of the competition drastically reduces their effectiveness. If you train a man with a gun for all his life, then throw him into a knife fight and he losses, are you going to claim that the man is not deadly, even with his gun? Fallacy at best! And about starting fights, that's more of a personal matter. A vast majority of martial arts teach it's students to get out of the mentality that they are for use on a regular basis. Many students walk out of a dojo looking to pound some poor kid flat, however. Ninjutsu teaches not to start trouble, but this does not mean that they never fight or start fights. It's, again, personal. Moving on, I'll return to an earlier analogy about sugar, tea, and salt. Would you argue that salt is useless? Provide evidence of it's use in sweetening tea. By your logic, you can't and therefore salt is useless. That is another logical fallacy.
Zyphial - I think you may be underestimating the power of bones. Bones are not easy to break at all, especially with strikes. In fact, I can only think of very few incidents where a single strike caused a bone to break. As a majoriy, grappling is more likely to break bones. Kicking to the knee is not going to shatter it. It may tear some ligaments, or even break part of the joint, but it will not shatter it. The word shatter implies the total obliteration of a bone/joint. It is very unlikely to see this with any strike, unless you are using a weapon and are swinging it very hard. On average, it takes between 1200 to 1700 pounds of pressure to break a human bone. Of course this is dependant on the bone. Two martial artists (one a physicist) called Feld and McNair found that beginniner students could throw a karate chop at aproximately 20 feet per second– which is more or less just enough to break a one-inch board. But a black belt could on average chop at 46 feet per second, which we convert to a force of up to 2,800 newtons. This is al very impressive. However as stated above, to break an average bone it takes anywhere between 1200-1700 pounds of pressure. When we convert pounds of pressure to newtons, we can deduce that 1800 pounds is roughly 8000 newtons. Now that karate chop generated only 2,800, and that is taking into consideration the likelyhood of the telegraphic nature of such a strike when being tested for its power. A more applicable strike would be somewhere in the region of about 2000 -2200 newtons I would imagine. It is also very hard to kill somebody with strikes. It happens a lot, no doubt, although more often than not they are the result of either the opponent falling and hitting his head, or one throwing an abundance of strikes to the head area. When you talk about killing somebody by hitting the neck, I imagine you are referring to striking the hypothalmous. This is possibe, although again very unikely. At best you may get a knock out and some slight trauma to the neck/brain stem. But death is very hard to induce from such a strike. Your claims seem to be based on blind following. Putting the techniques into practicality though, it is very unlikely. And then there is the obvious problem of getting to apply these techniques. This isn't a testament to the art, but rather the student. The only master is experience. Em
Zyphial your language is extremely forced and pretencious. So where to begin.... "fighters in the MMA are not allowed to kick in an opponent's knee" yes they are "one is also given protective gear (it is a sport) that lessens the lethality of blows to the head" the gloves in MMA are there to protect the fighter's hands and they make strikers more dangerous by allowing them to throw harder strikes without breaking their hands "blows are constrained in power and technique by the rules" its full contact buddy "MMA is not real fighting, it's competition, and ninjutsu is not meant for competition." what is ninjitsu meant for? "Yes, sugar is better for sweetening tea than salt. It's a moot point." like most of your analogies, this one is a streatch "just recently a partially disabled kid took down an armed assailant....Show me a police report where BJJ is specifically mentioned as the technique used for the crime" I offer a documented television event, you give us a story from a forum, and you are demanding more evidence? Where is your police report? "Certainly if you pair an expert fighter against a novice ninja, the ninja will most likely loose.....Are you seriously claiming that all ninja's require a structured fight? Despite this being the exact opposite of it's principle of adaptability (well, in bujinkan anyway)?" I'd take someone who makes it through 6 months of MMA over a lifelong ninjitsu master any day. Ninjas dont exist. Ninjitsu nerds require structure in a fight because all they do are drills and simulations. You fight the way you train. "How much sand is kicked in MMA?" How often do ninjitsu fighters kick sand in each other's faces? "Your argument is much the same as claiming chess is an accurate simulation of real world combat" Your rediculous analogies have reduced this line of argument to absurdity. Chess, football, baseball...lets try to stay on point. "Or Muay Thai fighters kicking the neck or skull with full force" Muay Thai fighters use full force, Muay Thai is full contact also. "Plenty of Ninjutsu fighters spar, but obviously they cannot employ the specific techniques that are DESIGNED TO KILL A PERSON against a living human" couldn't agree more "That, my friend, is called MURDER." I'm not your friend "As for your other claims, plenty of Ninjutsu fighters compete... but the nature of the competition drastically reduces their effectiveness. If you train a man with a gun for all his life, then throw him into a knife fight and he losses, are you going to claim that the man is not deadly, even with his gun? Fallacy at best!" Ninjitsu fighters only compete against each other, and theres a reason for that. You don't see ninjitsu guys in open competitions because, frankly, they suck. And again, your analogies are absurd and mean nothing. "Moving on, I'll return to an earlier analogy about sugar, tea, and salt. Would you argue that salt is useless?" You are the only person that thinks the properties of salt are relavant. And to answer your question, no i do not think salt is useless, it is a vital nutrient.
If it sounds that way, that is unfortunate. Quite frankly this is the way that I speak. Note, by kick-in I do not mean strike I mean deliver a blow to the knee with the specific intention of tearing the ligaments and dislocating the joint either by applying significant force to the side, or causing the knee to hyper-extend in the event that an opponent extends his knee and leaves himself open for such a strike. Are you honestly saying that this is legal? Actually this was based on footage I had seen, but on reflection I may have been wrong here. I am not so arrogant as to be unable to concede a point when I am wrong. If indeed I was correct (specifically in that helmets and tooth guards are utilized), however, my point still stands. How many run around with helmets on all day? How many fights include such helmets? As a biker, I know that a helmet wont prevent all the injury a blow would cause, but it does reduce the amount of damage one receives by distributing the forces involved. Only within reason. Their goal is not to achieve actual victory, it is to force submission (indeed, one may argue that by the rules this is victory, but in reality those whom you force to submit can quite easily return to strike again, or betray any agreement that lead to their release and strike immediatly). That aside, I also have a question. Is it legal to bite, rake eyes, tear ears, break jaws, or kick groins (I know this is not an end all maneuver, but it is still painful and considered "unsportsmanlike")? I can list more, but these are all common things employed in real-world fighting. I do not claim to know all of Ninjutsu's philosophies, but my limited understanding suggests combat, survivability, and incapacitation. Only if you cannot understand what I mean. Salt, like sugar, is used to sweeten tea. If we consider the act of seasoning gourmet foods combat, and the act of seasoning one's morning tea MMA, the analogy becomes quite clear. Comparing the use of salt in tea is the same as comparing Ninjutsu in MMA. It's just not meant for that purpose. You are putting far too much faith in MMA. Don't get me wrong, I do not claim it is not accurate so far as it can be, but the fact that there are no guns or knives in MMA is proof that it isn't "what to expect on the street." A untrained ten year old with a gun can bring down a lifelong master of martial arts on the street. Now, I wont claim that Ninjutsu teaches one how to use a gun (I've heard that forms some do, but that's hearsay and I do not include it as part of my argument), but it does teach significantly more elements that may appear on the street. To be honest, it was a cop out. I have better things to do than browse the internet for some obscure case where they happened to mention the art used in an assault. You say yourself that ninjutsu practitioners don't usually compete - that eliminates the primary source where mentions of the specific art were made. As I said, more often than not a case is marked down as a direct cause of death, or at the very most "martial arts were used against victim" or some such statement. It's actually very hard to tell afterwards what art was used, unless there is video footage. Right. Well, I'm very tired of flame wars so I will try to remain civil, at least on this point. You honestly believe that without rules or constraints and with the full intent to kill, Hatsumi couldn't handle a 6 month novice? You said, specifically, a "lifelong Ninjutsu master" (with spelling corrected). I am no expert, or indeed in anyway "well versed" in Ninjutsu, but I am aware that part of the technique includes throwing sand (well, fine, sand-like powders), but that's a little old fashioned. Still, there is nothing against it, so when it's available, it's used. If you cannot understand the use of analogy then you should learn it. If you wont do that, then I pity you. I wasn't clear; I meant in an MMA match. I have nothing against Muay Thai, in fact I have a great respect for it - I have seen many of it's techniques and personally witnessed the result of their conditioning. I meant an MMA fighter is not allowed to strike an opponent with lethal force to the neck. No one is legally, but the rules are against it. Strikes to the neck may well be allowed, but not with full force. There is a difference between full contact and lethal force. And if I took this line out of context, I could make you agree to anything I've ever said. That's a useless strategy. Given the context, I was saying that they cannot do so legally. To say that the study of an art prevents someone from killing someone else is ridiculous at best. As a fighter, you should know that you can kill a human being quite easily, trained or not. A properly angled wrist to the nose, a sufficiently deep strike with a key to the neck - humans are actually quite vulnerable. Verbal irony is apparently beyond you. You fail to address my analogy completely, and then claim it means nothing? Do you have any understanding of logical argumentation? I shall demonstrate. Let's examine the logical process behind argument, shall we? You claim that Ninjutsu fighters do not compete in open competitions because they suck. By this, you quite obviously claim that Ninjutsu fighters suck... and yet your basis for this argument is that they do not fight in open competitions. This is cyclical. You therefore lack a logical argument. I am displeased to have to say such a thing, but it's apparent that you have a hard time with abstract concepts. You attack my use of figurative language, irony, uncommon diction and analogy without basis. Given human nature, this indicates a deficiency - people are prone to attack those who demonstrate or have that which they lack (in far more ways than one). If you accept, however, that salt is useful, then your logic is inconsistent. I have already laid out the parallels between salt, seasoning, Ninjutsu and MMA. If you still fail to see the connection then that is unfortunate, but no concern of mine.
Just as a point of interest, I found this extract of an article: So, lets break this down. The elite boxers had a Psi punching measurement of 4,800 on average. If 4.45 Newtons = 1 Psi, 4800 Newtons = 1079 pounds per square inch. This may indeed be enough to break bone when we consider that it takes approximately 1,200 to 1,800 psi to break an average bone. The intermediate boxers had a Psi punching measurement of 3722 N, which equals about 836 Psi. Nt enough to break most bones, but enough to break bones like the collar bone and fingers, etc. The novice boxers had a Psi punching measurement of 2283 N, whcih equals to 513 Psi. Same as above. Now when we consider that these measurement are taken from straiht punches and the findings of Feld and McNair are taken from circular karate chops, the Psi of these punches are quite impressive (esp the elite - Mike Tyson was estimated to have a Psi of about 1800). I have no doubt that the boxing guys can punch a lot better than the karate guys, and the ounches of the karate elite tested I'm willing to bet would be closer to the force generated by the novices just down to physics alone. However, even though the force to break bone may be there with boxers like Tyson, not taken into consideration is movement from the opponents limb. Even if the opponent is immobile, the only way of breaking a bone with a single strike is to have another force acting against the strike i.e. if an arm was punched against a wall. It's 5:30 in the morning now and I'm too tired too work out al the physics of it, but I'll come back to you all with figures on that. Em
