UFC Jujitsukas. Dumb Question

Yes, true for the most part. But when they dropped or broke their weapon? Do you think they just stood there and waited for someone nearby to die so they could get another weapon? Or do you think they might have known some quick strikes and throws designed to disarm an opponent and preferably kill him with his own weapon? If you were disarmed you quite often wouldn't have had time to find another weapon before needing to defend yourself against an armed opponent, so locking throwing and striking were taught as a collective secondary art which became known as jujutsu.

Not as simple as that. If you train them enough they work very well for most encounters. Odd that you say they don't work when a fair few people I know have successfully defended themselves using such techniques, including snapping on a wrist lock so hard the attacker got a badly broken wrist for his trouble. They don't work too well in things like the UFC etc because most of the competetors know they're coming and know how to counter them. I don't watch many of that kind of event, but I also be you don't see many turning-in Judo style throws either, yet people who support the UFC always say how good they think Judo is. Why is this? Perhaps because again, the counters to such techniques are fairly simple IFF you train hard at countering such techniques. Any technique can be countered if you work hard enough at learning your counters, but most people you meet on the street/in bars/etc will not have trained to that level of expertise.

My point is really this: don't assume you know everything. You trained for less than a year in an art that uses wrist locks, and if I recall correctly there are a lot of schools out there that refer to themselves as Daito-Ryu with no real connection to the original art. You've had MUCH less training in arts that use these principals than a lot of people on this forum, myself included, and I personally will continue to train using such techniques until someone conclusively proves that they don't work, which may be a difficult task given their successful use in self defence.

 

Would you like to rely only on having a knife to defeat a swordsman? Or would you prefer to be able to fight unarmed as well? It's a matter of being as prepared as possible for a situation. I imagine there were enough lost tanto on battlefields to warrant an unarmed art if nothing else.

Never said they didn't. What I said was that a lot of techniques don't work as well when the opponent can counter well. In some fights a single standing punch can be a fight ender, but in the UFC it's not too likely because everyone there knows how to minimise the damage caused by one. Does this make training in punches useless? Hardly.

As I mentioned, I don't follow any of these competitions. If you'd like me to look at these guys, could you provide a link? Even if they do use a fair few hip throws, it doesn't invalidate my point. If you take Yama-Arashi for example, that throw would be very unlikely to be seen in a contest. But it's not a useless throw, as it makes a very powerful defence against 2-handed swinging weapons (baseball bats, chairs, swords, etc). It's never going to be seen in UFC, but that does not make it a useless technique. The UFC and other such events are not the be all and end all of martial arts.

Not really no. It was intended as advice, nothing more. There will always be more out there than you can know about, and just because you have an opinion doesn't make it true. As I said, there are a lot of people out there with more experience in these techniques than you, don't you think some of them would have noticed over the years that their techniques don't work?

No offence but you can't have been taught them all that well. If you have difficulty doing wrist locks on someone because they're sweaty, your grip mustn't have been right. If you have trouble putting a wrist lock on an opponent because he's resisting, either put a different technique on them or use your wristlock as a distraction for a strike, which might then allow you to put the lock you wanted on. If not, try something else again.

Wrist locks are part of an arsenal of techniques, they are not generally intended as stand-alone methods for defeating an opponent, rather they are a means to an end. If the wrist lock doesn't work as a stand-alone technique, mix it with something else. Adaptation is the real key to making wrist locks work for you.

Very true, pardon my logical paradox

I disagree, you can show them ineffective in a specific environment against opponents that know how to counter them (after all, wrist lock counters aren't all that tricky to learn), but they have their use outside that environment As I said, I know people who have used these techniques to defend themselves and in doing so have send their would-be assailent to the hospital with a broken wrist. To me that doesn't sound like an ineffective technique.

I'm sorry if you find my tone patronising, it's not intended to be.

 

Not really, but to be honest it doesn't matter. I've seen enough sources that conclude that jujutsu was developed as a secondary art to whichever weapons-based arts the samurai cared to learn that I am convinced of the accuracy of that history of jujutsu. Whether or not you agree is a fairly moot point in this discussion as we are talking about the effectiveness of certain techniques, so let's agree to disagree on this point.

Can't say I've read Draeger's stuff, but from a member of a Daito-Ryu research group from e-budo: "As Draeger has pointed out with, I believe, some evidence, the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate resulted in a gradual decline of the martial arts as combat arts." ie/ The martial arts started to have less to do with battlefield roles and more to do with self defence. The discussion in question then carried on defining various jujutsu ryu-ha. Some of the ryu mentioned in that threat predate the Edo period, though by how much is not mentioned. However, a ryu is only a collection of techniques all taught in the same place, and the techniques were originally formed as a part of the swordsman's learning rather than a complete martial art in and of itself. Hence the original jujutsu ryu would have drawn on techniques older than jujutsu itself. Again, not particularly relevant to this discussion.

Because not everyone knows the counters. Because it gives you more flexibility in your range of techniques. Because it gives you options when you have to control the hand, like when a knife is in it. Because they actually do work if used well. Because often you've done something else as a distraction first.

Doesn't surprise me, sumi-gaeshi's quite a good technique for ripping someone out of a fairly strong stance, and doesn't require a gi to hold on to.

Yes, there is. It's because Yama Arashi is a poor choice of technique to do on someone UNLESS they attack you with a 2-handed weapon either swinging it at you roundhouse-style or using an overhead swing. Then it becomes a very useful technique, flooring an opponent with very little effort but maximum effectiveness. It also allows you to use both arms to control the hands swinging the weapon, allowing for an easy disarm on the ground, leaving you with the weapon and (one of) your opponent(s) on the ground.

I think the fact that it works in self defence situations is more than enough proof.

Yes, true, but I find it very difficult to believe that no-one would spot that techniques don't work until recently. Yes this may be "anecdotal", but there is enough evidence of their effectiveness for me to continue training with them. If they don't work for you, very sorry. Maybe it was your training method?

Wrist locks don't use the gi, so the second comment was unnecessary. If you kept slipping with your grip, your grip was wrong. If you kept having your hands slip off your opponent when trying a double leg takedown you wouldn't blame the technique, you'd find out what you were doing wrong and correct it. Same with these locks.

But I know that they do work, so it's not something that never works. If something doesn't ever work (like trying to use a chi-ball to get rid of your opponent) then you could conclude that the technique should be abandoned. But the wrist locks I've trained in work, and even if the opponent stops them we have techniques that link in well with them.

Granted. But you never specified which worked and which didn't, so I assumed you would mean things like Ikkyo work (wrist lock submission on the ground for example) while techniques like kote-gaeshi, ikkyo, nikkyo sankyo, shiho-nage, etc wouldn't work standing up

I'd quite like to see that clip, and also to do some investigation into the credentials of this aikido "master", as he obviously wasn't very good at what aikidoka specialise in more than any other martial art. Anyway, that's hardly proof they don't work, if anything it's proof that the guy was full of himself.

But it does help to show that they're effective if you have repeated examples of such techniques working in real situations. Especially if these stories come from people you trust not to brag or exaggerate. I know this is again only anecdotal, but I have no "hard evidence" to offer and it's unlikely I'll find any, barring someone jumping a jujutsuka in front of a CCTV camera and me getting hold of the footage.