Which is better for effective self defense?

This is actually something I've been looking into a lot lately, and picking up various insights and observations. I am of the mindset that sparring is a very important tool for self protection, and since most "combat sports" spar/roll they do a much better job of preparing you for a real life encounter than a lot of the less dynamic methods of training. However, sparring in and of itself is not the only tool and has inherent flaws when comparing it to a real life encounter.

I've been fond of saying that training in a "combat sport" for self protection is like putting a round peg in a square hole. It may leave some gaps, but it sure fills up a lot of it. The problem is, exclusively training with a sports mindset continues to leave these gaps, and we all know that a gap in your guard is usually the one that gets through.

To compare why sparring and real life encounters are different, we'll take a quick look at the following: distance, timing, and mindset (I'm avoiding rules just for the fact that it's a tired issue and EVERY drill has rules to it, static or dynamic, traditional or modern, which is an inherent flaw in any training where you are trying not to seriously injure your partner).

First off is distance. Depending on the art, we typically stay in that range that allows us to most effectively use the art when sparring as our opponent is doing the same thing. This uses a much different distancing than an assault, as they typically happen in the infighting range, a lot closer than a lot of MAists like to be. Fortunately there are many arts that have the capabilities to train infighting well, but just because they have the capabilities doesn't always mean they do it. Infighting is also a complex area, so even though you can fight from there (i.e. Judo with throws, trips, and sweeps) you may not be covering everything you require for that range (i.e. sport Judo's lack of striking).

Timing is a huge difference. Sparring is a lot like a chess match, and even in pro boxing fights if you look at the amount of strikes thrown it is usually far less than what the fighters could be doing on a bag during half that time. Conversely, in an assault type attack, your opponent is blitzing you with everything he's got, a total offense if you will, as they want to incapacitate you as quickly as possible. It's a different ballgame than the typical back and forth of sparring, when in some cases you can even see fighters who almost seem like they're polite enough to let their partner have "their turn" hitting back!

Next is mindset. Sparring is a mutual encounter, whereas being assaulted or ambushed is not. That makes a huge difference between the two not only psychologically but also physiologically. When sparring, you have that preparation time to get your adrenaline up and get excited, because you know you're going to have fun. In an ambush or a fight, you don't often get that slow gradual build-up but rather a huge adrenal dump of hormones and emotions. And you can never tell when or why it's going to hit. I had a guy rush me from underneath a stair well once and I reacted well, managed to take him into custody, and wasn't even breathing hard by the end of it. It barely phased me. Another day, I was merely telling a small group of young juvenile kids (barely 100 pounds each) to quit fighting and causing a scene and get their butts back in the house. Despite the fact that I handled the first guy well, for some reason this second time I felt that adrenal dump and my right leg was quivering in anticipation. Why? How the heck do I know? In the first case, I was actually attacked. In the second case, they were just fighting with each other. But for some reason, emotionally and physiologically the two almost seemed flip flopped.

Sparring can also develop some potentially dangerous habits for a real life encounter if you're not careful. One of which that I'm guilty of and trying to work through is the idea of "take one to give some back." I know I can take some punishment, so if my partner doesn't have enough power to stop me in my tracks, I used to take one so right after they just hit (before they can even start retracting or setting up the next strike) I am launching strikes of my own. In a sparring situation, that's fine. In a real life encounter when I'm fighting some froot loop on a dark street, I see a fist coming and decide to just take it, I could have the nasty surprise to realize that the guy I'm fighting had a shiv hidden in his hand and now I'm stabbed.

There's a lot more we could potentially cover between the two, but for the sake of keeping things short I'll shut up for now. I will say that the best solution is to combine sparring with scenario training as then you are getting the best of both worlds. A lot of what we do as martial artists can potentially get our butts out of a jam, the main thing is just being aware of the flaws of what we are doing and how to correct them.

 

Full co tact fighting works a treat too. The step up from club sparring is huge.

 

Of course he thing I haven't considered, not unusual with me is the overkill factor of a decent MMA or MT fighter. They're not just going to beat their opponent (unless suckered) but the damage they'll inflict in short space of time is going to need some explaining.
Oh noes! Too deadly for the street! They still spar and fight within the same rules and contact level

 

Not as much as a ring/cage fight but it's still a big step up from club sparring.
A tournament style comp (K1 aside) is pushed as enjoying yourself and doing the best you can (I know for the chosen few this can alter and become much more like a fight) a ring/cage fight is all about winning

 

Yep, it's a whole new ball game as they say! When you step out on that mat and hear the shouting you get a rush of nerves! Disappears once you start to fight mind. I did some light continuous comps but they were far from light! I not sure what the step up to full contact would be like though...

 

I see what you're saying but all of those seem to be pretty well covered by being a well rounded sport artist who does compete in full-to-heavy contact competition. I wouldn't really call it a functional difference. I was more thinking along the lines awareness. Paying attention to what's going on and travelling in such a way that people don't end up within arm's reach without you being able to see what they're doing. That and dealing with knives and small contact weapons.
Guns are an issue but they're an issue that I think should be dealt with by weapon-specific training. I mean really, if someone with half a brain attacks you with a gun, you aren't going to close and disarm him without getting shot. Martial arts as we know it aren't going to save you. You need to find cover and fire back or get away, something clearly in the realm of LEO/Military training.

 

A lot of it would depend on what kind of competition though, wouldn't you think? If you're a champion Judoka, you're still going to be surprised when someone clocks you during a fight as it's outside of your normal training and a different sensation. The problem with real life encounters is there's a risk that when you experience a new sensation that is unfamiliar, there's a possibility you may freeze to allow you to process that information. The bad part about freezing is it really does nothing for you to defend yourself, and you need to consciously break it to get back in the fight.

There's a lot of documented incidents where guys with a lot of competitive experience had habits that transferred over to a real life encounter that actually put them at risk. Loren Christensen mentioned seeing a coworker who was a point fighter who had the habit of turning around and pumping his fist in the air after a successful point do the exact same thing in a fight against an angry suspect. He struck the guy once and had already turned around and had his fist halfway in the air when he realized what he was doing and managed to correct himself. Rory Miller mentions one of his fellow officers, a rather talented freestyle wrestler, who had to fight a guy for several minutes until he finally realized that while the entire time he was just going for the pin (as he had been taught), the inmate he was fighting was actually trying to kill him. Under duress you fall back on what you do, even if it doesn't make sense, and something innocuous in the ring can be bad outside of it. In an effort to keep their ranges clean so they could get out of there quicker, for a long time LA cops would put their empty revolver casings in their pockets before reloading. After several cops ended up dead with casings in their hands and pockets, that stopped pretty quick.

 

Oh I agree. When I say well rounded, I mean practiced and preferably "blooded" in all ranges, standing, grounded, clinch, striking, grappling. You can still be surprised by a new trick no matter how well rounded you are.
As for the last half, most of that is, again, a result of finnicky, narrow rulesets. I think training in all ranges would solve most of it. Some things you can't eliminate though. I know people who have let go of chokes in fights because the guy tapped. But what can you do? Letting go because he tapped is still 100% better than crumbling because noone's ever resisted before. And even that is generally exaggerated. Competitive grapplers and fighters don't let go till the ref stops it anyway. If people always mindlessly let go upon tapping under duress, it'd show up there, and it really doesn't.

 

I think he's looking for street skills.

 

I don't think BJJ has been effectively used against multiple opponents. In my experience, you do come up against multiple opponents at least 50% of encounters, the other 50%, the opponent is usually larger, making grappling unfavorable once again.

You shouldn't reffer to UFC when someone is looking for real life skills.

 

Sometimes you don't have a choice. I know I wouldn't - I'm with my wife and daughter 95% of the time, meaning they'd be the ones running whilst I stay and fight. That said, I havn't been in a fight for years, not since I was a teenager and before I was married. After I hit 20, my metabolism slowed and I gained 40 kilo. Since then, no one is going to mess with me because I'm just too big. But in theory, I'd almost always have to stay and fight in any encounter. Though it does pay to note - weight gain is an effective deterant and weapon.

You can beat multiple opponents, also, and again, being big helps (which is the reason why even multiple aggressors will shy away from single big guys). If you want to fight multiple opponents, forget grappling, you can do it with striking. You just have to have enough power and precision to put someone down in one or two punches. Most people can't properly defend their jaw, so it isn't so hard once you've been doing Boxing for a few years.

I do Muay Thai, an art being suggested here. I can assure you, it does not teach you to fight on the street. Although I know I could fight on the street, most of the skills that make me capable were not "taught" in the gym, but rather just learned in life. The sad but true reality we face is some of us are natural born fighters and some men are just not.

The only way I'm able to use Muay Thai effectively on the street is by backing it up with my natural character. People are misleading you when they use examples of professional fighters and try to say they prove the actual style works. There's no reason to think if any individual were installed with the skills of a top fighter that they'd be equally as effective - this is psuedo rubbish. Given this, some people with less skills than another can be more effective if their natural character is correctly aggressive. To give an example to it, use Mike Tyson - you don't have to watch many of his early fights to realize his main attribute and nigh single reason he was so effective was his natural character. Though sounds like some people here will be foolish enough to tell you Boxing works because Tyson was good, as if you can "learn" to be as aggressive as a savage dog.

There's also the problem of a real enviroment compaired to a ring. I think this is all pretty obvious, however.

But none of this helps you. I wouldn't suggest doing Wing Chun - I used to do that and it is a perverted style. Actual fighting is not on their agenda. Not in any dojo.

Go and do Muay Thai or Boxing or something if you want. If you have the right personality, you'll learn to handle yourself. If you're a sissy, too bad, there's virtually no hope for you then. In the end, there's no better defense than a knife in the boot, gun on your belt, and rottweiler in your hand. I have rottweilers in my home, and no one will come near them. Keeps the house safe.

 

Agree whole heartedly that certain rules systems will cause their practitioners to react in ways that may seem pecular. However, in such sports as MMA where the movements are highly diverse, getting caught out by an unexpectred move is much less likely.

I don't think any systems have consistently shown themselves to be effective against multiple opponants. So that argument is moot. Also I think you miss the fact that like the striking styles, BJJ and other grappling styles also possess techniques that are not used in the UFC due to the overwhelming dangers inherent in those moves. One of the most obvious being that grapplers cannot "pile-drive" (for a lack of a better term) their opponents head first due to the obvious spinal and head trauma such moves would cause. On the street, I'm pretty sure a grappler fighting for their lives would be well within their ability to slam their opponant into the pavement with sufficient force as to instantly end that confrontation.

 

Bite? That'd be like trying to drown a fish. If your opponent is any measure of dangerous, the only thing that will stop them is lack of conciousness - try that next time.

 

I practice biting through flesh 2 - 3 times a day. And yes, it is very intense if I'm hungry enough.

Not that I use the techniques, but how hard are they to do?

 

This is why I say natural character is important. When someone starts a fight, I get angry. When I get angry, I hit things. Couldn't be simpler.

This is just dodging the point - you simply cannot fight multiple opponents when tangled up with someone. You'll get stomped on. You can, however, keep throwing strikes regardless of how many people are standing in front of you. If you are aggressive enough and properly trained, you will be able to overwhelm any amount of opponents.

Don't use silly arguements like this just to escape reality.

 

It's not so much technique than it is sensation. If things do not feel familiar to us, it takes us a bit longer to process them as we have to compare them to something familiar before. This doesn't necessarily have to take very long, but the more unfamiliar a sensation is the longer it takes to process and the more likely you're going to be sitting there trying to think of how to react while your opponent gets free shots. Add in adrenal dumps, weapons, environmental concerns, etc. and there's a whole lot that's different.

A while back I had to wrestle a prisoner in the back seat of a patrol car who had managed to slip out of their cuffs. Granted they were just resisting, not actively fighting, but afterwards I realized how very different that was from a lot of things I have done and that I could have been better prepared for it. Fortunately it's already a drill I have in mind for sharing and working with some buddies of mine. I've fought in tight places before but fighting solely from my knees was an unusual thing for me and it caused me to fight below my potential in that situation as I was too concerned with the sensation of fighting from that awkward position because it was unfamiliar.

 

Anyone who uses biting for anything other than a last ditch attempt to save their butt is tempting fate anyways with all the blood borne diseases out there nowadays.

 

But what bite would be effective? You could try to bite the penis - the opponent may release you not due to pain, but simply out of crippling fear. Yet, a more practical bite, let's say you try to bite my bicep to get out of a headlock that I'm trying to choke you out with - do you think it is going to stop a large guy who is as angry as a bull with a bee up its ass? I think not. It would have no effect, the adrenaline smothers the pain in combat, and thus why only breaking bones and knocking people out really works.