But bro, they aren't trained to KILL

jdturner11

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This single sentence is a pet peeve of mine. It and it's numerous variations, when stripped down, form the basic thought that some martial artists can kill and some inexplicably can't due to a Pavlovian response to competition rules. I think the fallacy in stating ANYTHING similar to the thread title is that I know of no sparring sessions or class schedules that have "TO THE DEATH" as a criteria. So, from military to krav maga, I doubt ANY have proficiency in hand to hand lethality.

As for the techniques, I don't think it takes a genius to understand that if you step on someone's neck, poke at their eyes, punch the base of the skull, and even more: you will increase deadliness tenfold. If you're a grappler, just ignore tapping ;). I feel that some pressure points are also a bit psychosomatic, akin to the students who crumbled to that one Instructor's "invisible punch" (y'all remember that? I can't find the video.)

I honestly wouldn't post about this if I hadn't seen some intelligent posters signing on to that fundamental. This whole thread is made while acknowledging that putting different combat arts in a street fight scenario is ultimately silly. I'm not trying to be a dick about anyone training in a martial art that claims this or joining the military, I just like my fluff to be ironed out publicly.




So, what do you guys think?



EDIT: As an aside I was REALLY proud of making that Pavlov pun, until I realized not all competitions are started with a bell. I feel super disappointed.
 
Not sure what your asking specifically. However, the difficulty of training humans to kill when not a result of rage or accident is well documented. Training the specific motion repeatedly is one technique.

The only two styles I have encountered that trained specifically to kill were: Toyama Ryu, iai batto jutsu; where because most attacks involved a 3ft razor blade, a simple movement would lose an opponent crucial parts of their body and there was a degree of mental conditioning pared with actual cutting practice which was taught as part of its recent practical military history. With this style and weapon the opponent would be parts on the floor before you worried about it.

The other was in the terratorial army, mainly that involved gun use, point and click. Much easier psychologically than hand to hand.

Specifically with hand to hand in mind, the clubbing or choking tech of sport styles are probably the most effective methods to kill, like you say, you'd just not stop to make it lethal.

What the people questioning sport styles lethality are doing is questioning intent. Unless you are a psycho, or subject to accident the actual killing of someone is not something we want and requires a great level of motivation or arousal to engage in. This is a useful trait, killing is not a desirable objective. Which is why I'll not be wearing my katana until society falls, or of course, home invasion and zombie attack.
 
I'm not really asking anything specifically, I'm just raising a topic for discussion.
 
There is no way to make a perfect martial art. I think it is an art rather than a science, because the optimal path is obscured and the best success comes from personal expression.

I'll start this by saying that people don't usually rise to the occasion - they fall to the level of their training.

There are plenty of local bits of annacdotal evidence about sport fighters under performing in the street. They grapple and let go when the person taps. They tie up their own hands against a weapon. They fail to make a decent fist and break their hands. They wrestle one guy and get their head kicked by another.

On the other hand, I know an mma fighter with no weapon training who just recently had a knife pulled on him and pushed kicked the guy into the wall - finishing him with punches.

This is the disconnect: if you train only safe and sport applicable moves, you probably will not spontaneously develop lethal military style moves in a life or death fight, but you will be very good at those moves.

If you train lethal moves like punching people in the neck or throwing them on the point of their head, you will have better ideas than a sports fighter, but lack the means to apply it because you can't use it on your training partners full speed without injuring them.

I think the solution is clear - do both and hope for the best. Train BJJ but practice Silat. Then, you have some high performance skills and if you are lucky, in a life or death the reptilian fighting brain will believe in and call on some of that Silat while you are grappling. Some people are born full of suck and won't manage it no matter what. Other people are vicious without training. Most people in the middle benefit from martial arts.
 
There is no way to make a perfect martial art. I think it is an art rather than a science, because the optimal path is obscured and the best success comes from personal expression.

I'll start this by saying that people don't usually rise to the occasion - they fall to the level of their training.

There are plenty of local bits of annacdotal evidence about sport fighters under performing in the street. They grapple and let go when the person taps. They tie up their own hands against a weapon. They fail to make a decent fist and break their hands. They wrestle one guy and get their head kicked by another.

On the other hand, I know an mma fighter with no weapon training who just recently had a knife pulled on him and pushed kicked the guy into the wall - finishing him with punches.

This is the disconnect: if you train only safe and sport applicable moves, you probably will not spontaneously develop lethal military style moves in a life or death fight, but you will be very good at those moves.

If you train lethal moves like punching people in the neck or throwing them on the point of their head, you will have better ideas than a sports fighter, but lack the means to apply it because you can't use it on your training partners full speed without injuring them.

I think the solution is clear - do both and hope for the best. Train BJJ but practice Silat. Then, you have some high performance skills and if you are lucky, in a life or death the reptilian fighting brain will believe in and call on some of that Silat while you are grappling. Some people are born full of suck and won't manage it no matter what. Other people are vicious without training. Most people in the middle benefit from martial arts.

All this "deadly" bullshit needs to die. For example, punching someone in the neck/throat is a low percentage move that isn't always even effective. I've gotten punched in the throat a few times and each time I just coughed and moved on with the sparring. I would have taken worse damage had the shots hit my chin.

Punching someone in the face, kicking them in the ribs, taking them down on concrete and pretty much any move used with regular success in MMA are damaging techniques that can be "lethal." What do you think happens when someone doesn't let go of a choke, keeps punching after someone is out, or double leg slams someone on a sidewalk? Does it suddenly become ineffective because it's "sport fighting?" Just because Silat or Ameri-do-te are "designed to kill and maim" or whatever doesn't mean they're more effective than arts that are trained constantly against live opponents.
 
^^

If I want to learn deadly techniques, don't you think it would be more effective to learn them from a place that teaches "deadly techniques", vs a place that teaches you how to be a sport champion?
 
Of course that statement is silly, TS. You don't need any training to be "deadly". That is a savage, dare I say deranged, mindset. The great majority of guys who engage in deadly attacks are not trained at all. Yes, we get our occasional "Judo slams mugger on head, leaves him dead" stories. Virtually all martial arts can be applied in a deadly way. I think what some people are saying is there are deadly techniques, which should really just be left to Kung Fu movies, where they belong.
 
Punching in the throat? A few too many Jet li movies? Hit a bloke hard enough in the head, or liver and you could end him. Nothing extravagant, if anything pretty basic and crude. King hits are great example of one hit kills and unfotunately happen too often in AUS.

Or kick him in the nuts and leg it if you have to...

Next, what the frick would one have to hypothetically be doing to get his dumb ass in a situation where he needs 'deadly technique'? If anything martial arts has taught me that the best self defense is having the humility and discipline to avoid conflict outside of training and bouts in the first place. And you'd have to be a pretty dumb Cnut to land yourself in situations which call for 'deadly technique'

For instance, I practice Muay Thai. why the hell would I risk my spotless criminal record, my future and wellbeing beating some chumps head in over paltry shit? Yea it'll help you win the fight hand to hand, but what if the chump pulled out a glocc and just shot me without a second thought? He's not that much of a chump now is he?
 
There is a degree of truth to sport tournaments conditioning out the ability to be lethal effective. While not true for full contact combat sports like MT or boxing, when you look at the typical strip mall Karate Point Tournaments were all you need is to just make contact this is very much true. The difference being that the one trains to throw full power on reflex the other teach to either pull the shot or throw weak shots on reflex.
 
^^

If I want to learn deadly techniques, don't you think it would be more effective to learn them from a place that teaches "deadly techniques", vs a place that teaches you how to be a sport champion?

No. First of all, most "deadly" techniques really aren't that deadly. Second, how can you practice eye gouges and nut shots against a resisting opponent? You can't.

Jigoro Kano solved this problem over a century ago. Trying to win a fight by using "deadly" moves when you don't know how to fight in the first place will just get you in trouble. Training in relatively safe "non-deadly" combat sports against a resisting opponent will train your timing, reflexes, footwork, depth perception, balance, etc. Much easier to apply "deadly" techniques when you can actually control the fight.

Who do you think has a better chance of pulling off an eye gouge in a street fight?

Roy Jones Jr who has never once learned how to do eye gouges, or some kung fu nerd who has never once sparred full contact?
 
^^

If I want to learn deadly techniques, don't you think it would be more effective to learn them from a place that teaches "deadly techniques", vs a place that teaches you how to be a sport champion?

Not if the sport techniques are also effective self defense tools that can be deadly if they are needed to be. I'd rather go to the place where you can actually train instead of the place where you're told, "If they do this, do X, and if they do this, do X, Y, and Z, then stomp the groin" without actually practicing your "deadly" moves. Just because someone says their secret moves are teh deadly doesn't mean that learning them will teach you how to fight, only live training will do that.
 
All this "deadly" bullshit needs to die. For example, punching someone in the neck/throat is a low percentage move that isn't always even effective. I've gotten punched in the throat a few times and each time I just coughed and moved on with the sparring. I would have taken worse damage had the shots hit my chin.

Punching someone in the face, kicking them in the ribs, taking them down on concrete and pretty much any move used with regular success in MMA are damaging techniques that can be "lethal." What do you think happens when someone doesn't let go of a choke, keeps punching after someone is out, or double leg slams someone on a sidewalk? Does it suddenly become ineffective because it's "sport fighting?" Just because Silat or Ameri-do-te are "designed to kill and maim" or whatever doesn't mean they're more effective than arts that are trained constantly against live opponents.

Punching people in the throat isn't low percentage if they don't keep their chins down. I can do it easily, whenever I want, to anyone that doesn't keep their chin down and most people don't.

However, I'm not good at throwing people on the point of their head. I've never found a way to practice it. All my throws land people pretty flatly.

Kicking people in the ribs doesn't do shit most of the time. That's why kick boxers are able to fight for 20 minutes. You can have mad broken bones and ignore it until later. People fight with all kinds of broken bones. I've had broken toes and fingers in sparring and ignored it. I've watched people with broken facial bones and ribs spar. First hand.

But people seem to crumple in MMA when they get kicked in the nuts or poked in the eye. Are they faking it? I know I lose my fighting ability when I'm kicked in the nuts or poked in the eye, but those things are hard to train. Seems like the right idea for winning fights to me.

Some things are better than others, and some things are hard to practice because they are too good.

Edit: I'm not disagreeing with you totally. If you read what I said, I believe it is an art and that the best way is obscured.

Is it better to do sports fighting and be good, or is it better to set your mind on eye poking and nut kicking? I don't know. I think the best is in between - good sports fighting and a good eye to detail and tactics. When I kick someone in the leg, I always first imagine myself kicking them in the nuts, and then chose to change it to the leg. That way, I'm training my mental program and practicing the hit.

As far as the punch to the neck, was it a bare fist punch on the knuckle by someone with a good karate fist, or did they have the big safety pad on their hand to spread the force out? I am willing to bet it wasn't a bare fist right cross, thrown by someone who makes a good fist.
 
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Fighters mostly "crumple" due to nut shots and eye pokes in competition due to them knowing its illegal and will most likely get them points / a break / call the ref n judges attention to their opponent.
Rarely is it a full on "kicked a field goal with his ballsack" or "oh my lord Jesus , I've been struck blind !" kinda blows.

In reality , short of sucker shotting someone , it's actually pretty hard to grind someone's balls up.
I mean a CLEAN shot.
As for eye poking as a viable defense ?
If that was the case , 100lb nerds with thick eye glasses would be ruling it over the local bars.
 
There is no way to make a perfect martial art. I think it is an art rather than a science, because the optimal path is obscured and the best success comes from personal expression.

I'll start this by saying that people don't usually rise to the occasion - they fall to the level of their training.

There are plenty of local bits of annacdotal evidence about sport fighters under performing in the street. They grapple and let go when the person taps. They tie up their own hands against a weapon. They fail to make a decent fist and break their hands. They wrestle one guy and get their head kicked by another.

On the other hand, I know an mma fighter with no weapon training who just recently had a knife pulled on him and pushed kicked the guy into the wall - finishing him with punches.

This is the disconnect: if you train only safe and sport applicable moves, you probably will not spontaneously develop lethal military style moves in a life or death fight, but you will be very good at those moves.

If you train lethal moves like punching people in the neck or throwing them on the point of their head, you will have better ideas than a sports fighter, but lack the means to apply it because you can't use it on your training partners full speed without injuring them.

I think the solution is clear - do both and hope for the best. Train BJJ but practice Silat. Then, you have some high performance skills and if you are lucky, in a life or death the reptilian fighting brain will believe in and call on some of that Silat while you are grappling. Some people are born full of suck and won't manage it no matter what. Other people are vicious without training. Most people in the middle benefit from martial arts.

This made the thread worth reading right away.
 
Fighters mostly "crumple" due to nut shots and eye pokes in competition due to them knowing its illegal and will most likely get them points / a break / call the ref n judges attention to their opponent.
Rarely is it a full on "kicked a field goal with his ballsack" or "oh my lord Jesus , I've been struck blind !" kinda blows.

In reality , short of sucker shotting someone , it's actually pretty hard to grind someone's balls up.
I mean a CLEAN shot.
As for eye poking as a viable defense ?
If that was the case , 100lb nerds with thick eye glasses would be ruling it over the local bars.

I've been kicked in the nuts once when I was a kid in a fist fight, and I still remember how bad it hurt. It was terrible. I'll personally vouch for nut kicking as a defense.

I know someone who got poked in the eye in a street fight. He picked it with a wife beater in a Denny's parking lot by yelling, "hey asshole, if you are going to beat your wife, take it to the trailer." He was whipping the shit out of the guy, and the dude stuck a thumb in his eye and forced him off. He had a black eye and said that it sucked, "I'm sure he's done it before because he went right for it and dug down and in. It sucked."

I don't believe fighters on T.V. are faking how bad they are hurt by the blow to the nuts. I just don't. I've seen to many people rolling around on the ground in real life from it when there was no judge and no score card.
 
Punching people in the throat isn't low percentage if they don't keep their chins down. I can do it easily, whenever I want, to anyone that doesn't keep their chin down and most people don't.

However, I'm not good at throwing people on the point of their head. I've never found a way to practice it. All my throws land people pretty flatly.

Kicking people in the ribs doesn't do shit most of the time. That's why kick boxers are able to fight for 20 minutes. You can have mad broken bones and ignore it until later. People fight with all kinds of broken bones. I've had broken toes and fingers in sparring and ignored it. I've watched people with broken facial bones and ribs spar. First hand.

But people seem to crumple in MMA when they get kicked in the nuts or poked in the eye. Are they faking it? I know I lose my fighting ability when I'm kicked in the nuts or poked in the eye, but those things are hard to train. Seems like the right idea for winning fights to me.

Some things are better than others, and some things are hard to practice because they are too good.

Edit: I'm not disagreeing with you totally. If you read what I said, I believe it is an art and that the best way is obscured.

Is it better to do sports fighting and be good, or is it better to set your mind on eye poking and nut kicking? I don't know. I think the best is in between - good sports fighting and a good eye to detail and tactics. When I kick someone in the leg, I always first imagine myself kicking them in the nuts, and then chose to change it to the leg. That way, I'm training my mental program and practicing the hit.

As far as the punch to the neck, was it a bare fist punch on the knuckle by someone with a good karate fist, or did they have the big safety pad on their hand to spread the force out? I am willing to bet it wasn't a bare fist right cross, thrown by someone who makes a good fist.

lol I can attest to that, repeated bare knuckle punches to the throat are extremely painful. Not to mention it really disrupts breathing and focus. As for kicking someone in the leg, I use it less for damage, but disruption of their balance, so clinching, takedowns, and throws become much easier. "Long range kuzushi" As for learning to throw people on their head, is a matter of ratios of how much upper body technique and lower body technique you use. Reap high, drive linearly instead of circular. An over the shoulder type of throw, starts circular, but if your grips are altered to reduce how much rotation their body goes throw, and instead drive your arms down like you were sticking a flag into the ground while crouching. You reduce the time their are in the air to rotate, and increase the speed at which their head connects to the ground first.
 
lol I can attest to that, repeated bare knuckle punches to the throat are extremely painful. Not to mention it really disrupts breathing and focus. As for kicking someone in the leg, I use it less for damage, but disruption of their balance, so clinching, takedowns, and throws become much easier. "Long range kuzushi" As for learning to throw people on their head, is a matter of ratios of how much upper body technique and lower body technique you use. Reap high, drive linearly instead of circular. An over the shoulder type of throw, starts circular, but if your grips are altered to reduce how much rotation their body goes throw, and instead drive your arms down like you were sticking a flag into the ground while crouching. You reduce the time their are in the air to rotate, and increase the speed at which their head connects to the ground first.

No doubt that you are right about your throwing technique.

My issue with it is you can't use it in sparring this way. According to the legend I was told, Kano selected the throws for Judo that resulted in the safest landing because those are the easiest to practice, and his students used them to beat everyone with more deadly throws, because they couldn't actually use them.

Intellectually, you might understand how to throw someone in that way, but I would bet dimes to dollars, unless you have a history of real and terrible violence or a natural killer instinct, you won't do it that way. You will do it the way you normally do it in randori. It is possible that receiving instruction in deadly throwing like you described here on top of normal Judo training might let someone spontaneously do a killer throw in real life (which would be the best possible outcome), and indeed that happens sometimes, but you can't count on it unless you have actually done it before. Most people don't know themselves that well.
 
No doubt that you are right about your throwing technique.

My issue with it is you can't use it in sparring this way. According to the legend I was told, Kano selected the throws for Judo that resulted in the safest landing because those are the easiest to practice, and his students used them to beat everyone with more deadly throws, because they couldn't actually use them.

Intellectually, you might understand how to throw someone in that way, but I would bet dimes to dollars, unless you have a history of real and terrible violence or a natural killer instinct, you won't do it that way. You will do it the way you normally do it in randori. It is possible that receiving instruction in deadly throwing like you described here on top of normal Judo training might let someone spontaneously do a killer throw in real life (which would be the best possible outcome), and indeed that happens sometimes, but you can't count on it unless you have actually done it before. Most people don't know themselves that well.
It's completely true what you said, you can't train "street-version" throws because there isn't a bailout possible if you can't stop the throw in time. I am not sure I would even want to resort to that style of throwing in a street fight just because the risk of making someone a paraplegic is so high.
 
The legal nature of using some tech also makes people hesitant to use them; most people don't get into self def situations; they get into fights (mutual) and claim self defense when someone presses charges.

An the point that pokes or groin strikes can turn a fight is a valid one; but as stated before how good can u be at those things since you don't train them in live sparring, even if you get the mechancis or setups of a tech. How good can you be at applying it effectively consistently if you don't use it really time against real resistance.

Finally training to use dirty moved doesn't make u more likely to defend against them or resistant to them; what I mean is groin strikes bites attacking joints is effective against anyone.
 
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