Most Important Aspect for Self Defense Striking

I was sparring a guy the other day who must have done some kind of knock down karate or something. We were sparring in a narrow part of the crowded mat where there wasn't room for side to side movement unless we wanted to go into the weights or heavy bags.

He hit really hard and was way faster than me. He could bounce in, hit or kick me, and back up before I could counter, and he was hitting me pretty fucking hard.

Unfortunately for him, the reason that he was so fast is because I outweighed him by about 80 pounds (260 vs. 180) and he was not able to take ground or drive me back. I never stepped back.

I knew he couldn't clinch or grapple. I would have smothered him if he got to close. So this is how it went. He would step in and hit me, then step back. I would step forward. He would react by stepping back. Hit me or not, each time we engaged he lost ground. I was able to back him into the wall at will and when he was forced to trade hits he lost every time.

It was a pretty realistic set up when you think about it. It is easier to fight someone with infinite room to move around. In that situation though, he didn't have that luxury. He HAD to engage me at some point and he wasn't equipped for it.

While it goes against the normal martial arts practices of controlling the range, cutting angles, picking clashes, and so on and on, none of that was possible and I wonder if that is a major cause of martial artists losing fights with ordinary people.

Is blitzing, trading blows in close, clinching and in fighting, and straight up brawling more important for SD than being good at moving around the ring, or at least as important? I understand that those things (brawling and infighting) seem base and are less fun for most people to train. I don't think there is a way around it if you want to be good.

 

Sounds like you got grossly outstruck and are trying to rationalize to fit your ego

I dont think there's one answer to the "best" self defense other than defense itself.
If you're in a confined space, clinch. Get a collar grab, get some wrist control, neck control.
If you're in an open space, move.

I think either being too close for them to step into a strike or too far for them to hit is the best bet, but as I stated, all cases are different.

 

Id still take experience in the gym over an aggressive "blitzing" street brawler any day of the week. When the distance becomes to close for straights, technical hooks, upcuts, and clinch work pwns windmill, chin in the air "blitzing."

Ive said this in another thread and Ill say it again, I think a lot of you guys need to have more confidence in your training. Think about how easily you can bully around larger less experienced people during sparring, and then add in the fact that in a street fight you're going to be throwing full power. There is a reason that the techniques we are taught are taught to us... because they are proven effective.

 

Well, as far as fixing my ego, I get beat up by people better than me all the time. We weren't playing tag for sport. We were training for self defense and he was trying to hit me hard enough to drive me back / hurt me. If he crumples when I corner him I still win, especially if all his hitting doesn't scare me. I adapted and overcame his advantage because the terrain suited me, which is what I would have if I decided to attack him in real life.

I don't know if I agree with the clinch / wrist control / neck control comment. Bigger people have such an advantage in the clinch and too many people have experience wrestling. Realistically, you can't count on fighting people you can stand up to physically. I used to train with a 430 pound guy who could move around like a normal person and who would squash me in the clinch even though I knew more than him, so I didn't try if we were sparring seriously.

Of course being too far away to strike was normally best, but he didn't have that choice. He tried it for a while and then ended up with his back against the wall. Then, he had to either go through me, clinch, or try to force me off by brawling at close range without much room to move.

Tactically, his situation was fucked. I think the weapon he needed for that situation was better brawling skills.

 

Well, blitzing can be disciplined. Your strikes can be accurate and each hit can cover your chin. You can still move your head offline while you are throwing. I'm advocating the blitz and brawl as a technical skill for smaller people who don't want to get flattened in a clinch until they have to and don't have room to move against a grossly larger / stronger enemy.

 

"better brawling skills?"

And there are Thai fighters that you outweigh by 100 lbs that would fuck you up with an over-under clinch.

I'd rather someone with "Wrestling experience" try to take me down and tire themselves out because i have control of their head, than have a drunk asshole throwing wide shots at my jaw.

 

Kick 'em in the groin, pull out there eyeballs and eat it in front of them.
One at a time, so they can see you eating the first one.

Seriously though, its very hard to off set a natural strength advantage when speed isn't viable. Other than pressure points and maybe joint manipulation (if your opponent is untrained) I'm at a loss at how to do it. Other than what I said above tbh.

 

Oh, I'm sure there are small people that can fuck me up. Some people are amazing. I've been beaten up in sparring by lots of kinds of people.

But I know a lot of guys with 10+ years of wrestling that won't tire out, and some of them are the people who like to fight in public, in large part because they win all the time and they are assholes. Most of them still do p90x and shit. It isn't too most peoples' advantage to clinch with them, given any other possibility.

I think you are reading things into my opinions and posts that aren't there. I never said the enemy was a drunk. I never said he was throwing wild punches or that he would be physically manageable.

I'm also not especially emotional about this. I'm just talking.

So you think the best self defense is to just apply yourself to techniques that were designed for 1 on 1 even weight sports fighting until you become so sweet that you can smash large people with them, and you advise this for everyone interested in self defense?

 

I think the best technique is to grab someone collar, poke them in the eye, step on their foot, hit them in the jaw and run, but that's the part of me that doesnt want to run the risk of being stabbed.

 

No doubt. A lot of grabs and holds someone might put on you don't actually cause any damage and leave both your hands free to tear parts of them off like a chimp. That's good.

I watched some guys fight at the club the other day where both of them had one hand chokes on each other and were punching with their other hands. It was pretty severe. They were so worked up neither seemed phased by the chokes. Pain compliance doesn't always get the response you want. Unless it is paired with world view changing damage, sometimes it just gets these nuts going, especially sense they are all high as shit when they start fighting.

 

I think his point is that there is no defined " brawling" style as far as self defense is concerned. When most people hear brawl, they tend to think anything goes, wild swinging, unexperienced, etc. I think that anytime you take away someones strengths in a situation ( ex. backing the more agile fighter into a corner to take away mobility ) you will gain an advantage. Only thing is, last time I checked, people don't exchange information in regards to what the are good at prior to a street altercation. That being said, if you are stuck in the unfortunate situation where you need to beat up someone who is 160 lbs lighter than you, seems like you got it figured out. ( just hope he doesn't have a gun. )

 

Whats your definition of brawling? Because honestly, the most important aspects of self defense is understanding angles, distance, range and timing. More than any technique. Its important in every field of fighting including combat sports. When you consider weapons from the Filipino martial arts, theres corto (cqc), medio (medium) and largo (long range) and understanding where someone can hit you and if they can is important in reducing the possibility of damage during the encounter. Or lets talk about takedowns, understanding the angles of attack from several takedowns and when to sprawl or counter or the timing to get out of the way. If we went to striking, understanding his position in relation to you, or having multiple attackers, their distances all relative to you. Knowing at what distance you need to move, counter, or to determine the necessity to block.

If he was that much faster than you, then he should have disrupted your balance when you were advancing to push you back. Haha, if it was true self defense he should have used the environment to get away from you since he was so much faster, but I understand your point.

Developing infighting skills is definitely important, but more so in the mental aspect, to avoid having your technique degrade so badly when met with intense pressure and at the same time dealing with tons of adrenaline. Biggest issue I have when I train others in such close quarters type training, is the tunnel vision they seem to have. And that gets lost in instruction more times than I would have liked to see from other instructors. Its different when its a combative sport where your focus is on just destroying the other guy. You don't have to worry about the ref pulling a knife on you haha. People who tend to focus on smashing each other and seeing the pain inflicted on their opponent because they devolve to rage or other emotions lose sight of their goal which was to escape the situation in the first place, not brawl.

 

You seem to think that walking through his sparring punches means that he couldn't hurt you. Keep in mind that he isn't going all out and could probably hit you much harder.

 

True enough. I think I'm really good at reading people though. Most people telegraph their style with how wide they keep their feet and hands, how far away they try to stand while they start showing signs of working up to an attack, how much they bend their knees. In the gym, there are people who suck at grappling, who try to stand like wrestlers to intimidate their opponent into not shooting, or great grapplers who won't go for it until they are successful boxing. But in real life, I've never seen that. It could happen, but most people are really obvious.

I'm not super worried about my skill at beating up smaller people. I'm more worried about fighting larger and stronger people, because how I beat up the smaller guy is a model for how I can be smashed next time Mr. 430 pounds comes back into town and wants to train.

Sinister, being the online doctor of martial arts striking, wrote an article on closing the gap I'm reading right now, which is so applicable it hurts my head.

 

A little, but not much. Even when he hit me I could still cover, block, turn and step to take the heat off, even without giving up ground, and he wouldn't risk staying in to follow anything because he didn't want to be hit back. I should say that I count being forced to block, being hit, a failure on my part.

 

My definition of brawling a guess is bravely standing in front of the other person, using a strong offense as your best defense, to counter without moving out of range and to continue to hit despite his counter blows. To throw fast and hard to discourage the counter and to try and drive him back.

Understanding angles and distance is important for two reasons. If you know where you are, you know what hits you can expect and deliver, and you can put yourself in the space where you have an advantage, whatever that is.

The problem with close quarters is that your understanding of angles and distances becomes a lot more linear - "he's getting closer and I can't go to the side, fuck." So the numbers of places you can find advantage shrinks, and because most people can come forward faster than you can go backwards, and you can only go backwards so far in limited space, your options start to shrink to zero unless you provide so credible a threat that he will not choose to take up the space.

I agree that escape can be a prime goal, and should be most of the time, but if we are playing with the assumption that it isn't feasible in this case, you have to train fighting. Training escape is important to, no doubt. In the hallway case, you still have to go through the guy.

 

Elbow to the throat brah

 

When you fight in a ring, backing the guy up into the corner and just blasting away is a strategy often used by the trained professionals. In Kung Fu sanshou, you can drive your opponant to the edge and push him off. That is a legit tactic. In a dojo, you can drive your guy up to the mirrors or the seating area where the shoes are, and now he is trapped.

Cornering an opponant, and trapping them in a spot are tactics trained in traditional martial arts, and combat sports too.

And yes of course having a quick defense so fast that you can stand there and deflect anything coming at you without moving away is always an advantage. But I guess in your case, the opponant also has to be strong enough hurt you seeing as you are bigger.

 

So assuming a very narrow alleyway with a deadend, then yes if thats the case, then close-range fighting is very important in deed

 

I agree...if a guy blocks while I didn't land the way I wanted to; I still landed, an my strikes were effective enough you had to resort to your last line of defense...I.e. blocking/covering. Which is better than gettting hit, but still a failure..to a degree.