What do you think about MMA? - Health, Fitness, and Sports

WP Members: > 70,000

New Today: 19
New Yesterday: 34

What do you think about MMA?

Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Next

Wrong Planet Autism Forum Index -> Health, Fitness, and Sports

Fern
Deinonychus

Joined: May 07, 2011
Posts: 376

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:25 am Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

1. I'm a shotokan brown belt under the JKA, and I've never been taught anything in karate that would be useful against multiple opponents attacking me at the same time. In fact, most of it is useless against just one person. 2. You'd be hard-pressed to beat a capable attacker without one if you practice karate or some other form of playfighting. If your opponent has a weapon, run; if you can't, swat it aside, go for a head punch. 3. A padded surface is a huge disadvantage for an MMA fighter vs a karateka/traditionalist as he will be much better versed in takedowns.

Ah, I see. I don't really know why you want to argue, as I already said that I like MMA as training alone. Also, since there are several very successful UFC fighters that are both MMA and JKA, they are clearly both beneficial for that purpose. So what I am about say now is really just to clarify a few things. Please know that my opinions on this matter do not reflect those of any other individual or organization mentioned here or otherwise. I am simply stating my own personal view.

1. Well if we're going to boast about ranks, I'm a 2 dan in JKA. That's too bad that you've never trained fighting multiple opponents. In my dojo we do those sorts of drills starting from the beginner level. I guess dojos are different depending on where you go.

2. Interesting. I take it you speak from experience? Have you ever been attacked by someone in real life? I have. Karate saved my life. To add to that, I am a small female and my attackers were neither of those things. But, you know, different things work for different people. Maybe karate just wasn't the martial art for you. That's fine too. You have to do what works for your body, and learn to accept that the paths others choose can be different, yet still valid. (And between you and me, playfighting karate drives me crazy too)

3. In my dojo we do train takedowns, just without mats. Instead we use hard wood floors, carpet, concrete or grass. However, if you meant to type "groundwork" then yes, I'd say without a doubt that MMA fighters are much better at that. That, in particular is what makes MMA so effective against one person: there are a wide selection of ranges in which to fight. However, most groundwork is only realistic if you are fighting one person. The second guy can just walk up and kick you in the head if your arms are twisted around the other guy. That's just my personal observation: If you work harder to stay on your feet, it makes fighting multiple people easier. As I said, we train with multiple attackers sometimes so this is something I have just noticed.

I agree that JKA tournaments leave much to be desired in terms of realism, but really, anything that turns a fight for your life into entertainment will have that effect. That is why I praised MMA and mock UFC. The same is true for karate: training = more realistic, tournaments = not realistic.

Icyclan wrote:

Fern wrote:

In the meantime, I like my karate just fine.

You shouldn't. In karate you stand wrong, block wrong, punch wrong and kick wrong. Karate is useless.

Well WOW. I just don't even know what to say to that. I've already tried to discuss in a civil fashion what I personally find to be the strengths and weaknesses of both martial arts. I would never consider saying anything so disrespectful about ANY other martial art.
_________________
This is me.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:29 am Post subject:

It seems like integration really cleans up a lot of the caveats that come from styles being diluted by trademarking and family name, ornamental use, etc. etc.. There's also a very big difference between how US and other western practitioners relate to the material, teach and use it vs. how its taught in Asia. I mean, I have to say this again - MMA in the UFC sense is great for conditioning, if you're learning Jiu Jitsu you're getting good ground game if you have a good instructor, if you're doing Muay Thai with it then you're getting good striking. To practice all of those things BUT also include things like Judo, Karate, Wing Chun, Kali/Escrima, Arnis (all of which have empty hand translations for everything), Panantukan, Silat, etc. you're not selling yourself short - especially true if you're learning from an instructor who's a natural at integrating these things.and who has been in countless fights and knows what works vs. what doesn't. As for if someone's coming at you with a knife and you don't have one - yes, get out of there. If you can find something like a bottle, a wrench, etc. and can attack the weapon and you have training in things like knife and palm stick, your odds may be better than theirs depending on how much training you've had and how realistic your senses are on what you're up against. However if you're cornered and they have a weapon, I'm sorry, punch to the face is terrible advice. You need to get that hand past you and use your other hand to grab both sides of their trachea up around the jaw area, squeeze, and push in - assertively. If they bicycle backward you step on a foot or kick their base out.

Icyclan
Sea Gull

Joined: Jun 20, 2011
Posts: 206

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:18 pm Post subject:

Fern wrote:

Ah, I see. I don't really know why you want to argue, as I already said that I like MMA as training alone. Also, since there are several very successful UFC fighters that are both MMA and JKA

I can only think of Lyoto Machida, and even that would be a stretch.

Fern wrote:

1. Well if we're going to boast about ranks, I'm a 2 dan in JKA.

I wasn't boasting at all, holding a rank in Shotokan doesn't mean much to me. I just mentioned it to indicate that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to karate, having invested several years in it.

Fern wrote:

2. Interesting. I take it you speak from experience? Have you ever been attacked by someone in real life?

Back when I only knew karate I was attacked and pushed to the ground and punched until bystanders broke up the fight. I was a bouncer for a short while (not a job at all for an aspie) and BJJ/MMA served me very well during that time. About the knife defense, I was never attacked with a weapon myself, but that's what the head bouncer who I worked with told me. He had been a bouncer for almost two decades so I'll take his word for it.

Icyclan wrote:

Fern wrote:

In the meantime, I like my karate just fine.

You shouldn't. In karate you stand wrong, block wrong, punch wrong and kick wrong. Karate is useless.

Fern wrote:

I did not mean to come across as disrespectful, even though I realized that is how it would be perceived. I wanted to conclude my post with the first word that came to mind after thinking back and summarizing my karate training. 'Useless' just happened to be that word.

I considered writing 'nearly useless', because I once defended myself succesfully with a front kick I had learned in Shotokan class. I'm sure many people have similar experiences. However, how many Shotokan people have lost fights due to attempting one of the many useless techniques? Fights that they otherwise may have won. Some techniques in Shotokan make you a worse fighter, as they may get you hurt. As an example, uraken is just one technique that comes to mind. I have tried several times to land it during MMA training, and it's next to impossible. Hitting someone at the exact moment that you whip your fist sideways is just too hard against someone who is moving around. If you don't land it perfectly, it loses all its power and you're left wide open.

I'm not small nor a female, so I can't speak for you. Maybe if slugging at your attacker isn't an option then the self-defence drills in Shotokan have some merit for you, I don't know. What I do know is that, having spent considerable time in both Shotokan and BJJ/MMA, the latter is the better option for anyone looking for self-defence; big, small, male or female.

Icyclan
Sea Gull

Joined: Jun 20, 2011
Posts: 206

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:32 pm Post subject:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

However if you're cornered and they have a weapon, I'm sorry, punch to the face is terrible advice. You need to get that hand past you and use your other hand to grab both sides of their trachea up around the jaw area, squeeze, and push in - *assertively*. If they bicycle backward you step on a foot or kick their base out.

As I said in the post above this one, that's what I have been taught by someone who had been working as a bouncer for nearly twenty years at that time. I trust the word of someone who's actually encountered armed attackers over the word of some paper tiger grandmaster who's good at marketing himself but has never been in an actual fight.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:35 pm Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

You're also essentially learning from the equivalent of a rent-a-cop really with even fewer protections, which means if he's on duty and squeezes someone's trachea like that his odds of going to jail for excessive force are pretty good.

Icyclan
Sea Gull

Joined: Jun 20, 2011
Posts: 206

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:56 pm Post subject:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Icyclan wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Sure, but I hardly think he would use an inferior technique when his life is on the line, even if the judicial consequences would be more severe. I don't know about US laws, but over here a bouncer would have to mess up a knife-wielding attacker pretty good before a judge would send him to jail. Bouncers are given a lot of leeway. A guy I worked with, a complete psychopath, used to regularly fight with patrons and as far as I know he was only arrested once.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:23 am Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

There's always the possibility that he just doesn't have familiarity with Kuntao. The problem I try to run into with even explaining it is a) can't find viable Youtube support to bring words to visual, b) the stuff I'm learning, I literally don't have any place in my imagination to find impracticality in it; I can see a lot of McDojo stuff out there, I remember taking Tae Kwon Do and hating it, feeling like I wasn't learning how to deal with anything or even learning to fight worse, whereas with what I'm learning right now - the specific way we integrate Kuntao, Wing Chun, Kali, Arnis, Chi Na, and even Muay Tai and Jiu Jitsu - even by yellow belt I was feeling much more self-assured. One of my friends referred me to this guy, he himself was on the quest to find good martial arts, if there were any, in my area and he had a lot of people he went to including a pastor who's a black-belt in Jiu Jitsu, my friend himself I think is a black belt by now as well as a black belt via my current instructor, my friend never ran out of great things to say about Kali and to this day but unfortunately while he can find good Jiu Jitsu nearly anywhere (he's down in Miami now) he can't find anyone who can teach Kali right and he's complaining that even the masters down there are teaching some really bad/impractical techniques. My teacher has learned a lot about Jiu Jitsu from my friend but my teacher also has that other guy, the JJ instructor, come in and they're trading info - ie. more detailed Jiu Jitsu for my instructor in trade for him teaching the JJ instructor our system; which the guy and the other senior belt he brings with him are liking it a lot.

I guess this is why I'm having trouble really coming to grips with a lot of this conversation - as in I *know* better than to believe that straight on UFC is stronger in and of itself technique-wise unless they've got some kind of Kuntao or Gung Fu integrated at a minimum. I'll give it that you have much more inherently aggressive meat-headed guys going in there and that's a huge part of fighting but, my instructor is coming from that kind of place as well (albeit our classes aren't 'quite' like that), but I think my main argument is that a lot of these big, naturally aggressive guys you know who are bouncing - if they had my instructor's system they'd still see something pretty close to a night-and-day difference in their stand-up game. I think with the more traditional arts though its not that their useless, its that you have to know which ones have something to be gleaned from them and essentially trim the fat off on your own as they'll have a mix of both very good techniques and very poor ones. If you do meet an instructor who's gone to the trouble of doing most of that on their own and integrating, its a much different thing you're learning. The problem is though, even if you live in some place like London, Edinburgh, or Cardiff, you're likely to find one, maybe two, tops, of these kind of instructors. Its part of why even if I had to get a new job and took a pay cut because of lack of anything good available, I'd still stay here just to continue and finish out my martial arts; I really doubt that I could find the caliber of what I'm taking even in many other large metropolitan areas.

Icyclan
Sea Gull

Joined: Jun 20, 2011
Posts: 206

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 12:30 pm Post subject:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Icyclan wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I gathered from your previous posts:

- Your instructor doesn't believe in full-contact sparring or rolling
- he teaches 'organ-rupturing' strikes, and that a hard punch in the throat is a reliable way to kill someone.

Those are two huge red flags for anyone who frequently winds up in real fights. He wouldn't have any credibility with the bouncers I knew, no matter how good his stuff sounds in theory. As you said, naturally aggressive meatheads tend to gravitate towards MMA. The training methods mimic real fights much more.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 12:53 pm Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

- he teaches 'organ-rupturing' strikes, and that a hard punch in the throat is a reliable way to kill someone.

No, he just teaches means of sending/transferring your body weight and where to hit. He's never made a claim in that direction. When he even goes 10% on us though we could infer as much.

Icyclan wrote:

Those are two huge red flags for anyone who frequently winds up in real fights. He wouldn't have any credibility with the bouncers I knew, no matter how good his stuff sounds in theory.

No, I'd suggest you're still painting the kind of cartoon character in your mind that it seems you want to see for whatever reason.

Do me a favor though; point me to some videos on Youtube where you'd argue that the alpha techniques for MMA are being shown. I'd guarantee that we already have most of it in our system if its any good.

Icyclan
Sea Gull

Joined: Jun 20, 2011
Posts: 206

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:27 pm Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

- he teaches 'organ-rupturing' strikes, and that a hard punch in the throat is a reliable way to kill someone.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

No, he just teaches means of sending/transferring your body weight and where to hit.

That is fighting 101. Every striking art/sport teaches that.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Do me a favor though; point me to some videos on Youtube where you'd argue that the alpha techniques for MMA are being shown. I'd guarantee that we already have most of it in our system if its any good.

And it doesn't mean a thing if you don't practice it against a resisting opponent. I can teach a beginner an arm bar in a couple of minutes, but he will never acquire the sensitivity and sense of timing to get it on an uncooperative opponent unless he frequently rolls.

Fighting isn't nearly as complicated as traditional martial artists make it out to be; stand up will generally be dominated by the fighter with the best hands, while the grappling aspect will most often be dominated by the fighter who can get the positional advantage. Athleticism and toughness are the other variables. You practice by sparring against people of your own skill level and you move up as you get better. As with every activity that requires you to overcome a competitor (be it in the ring or against a real life attacker), competition breeds skill and weeds out the stuff that doesn't work. In TMA this is completely absent; you learn a fixed set of techniques and you don't evolve them and you don't actually learn which of them work best for you by applying them in different situations.

You seem to think that I have no clue what traditional martial arts are about. I have trained in and studied enough traditional martial arts to know what I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, the reason I am so ardently defending MMA is precisely because I am so familiar with TMA. You, on the other hand, have you ever taken the time to lace up the gloves and spar against a 260 lbs. roidhead in your local MMA gym? It might shatter a lot of long-held beliefs that you always took for granted.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:53 pm Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

You, on the other hand, have you ever taken the time to lace up the gloves and spar against a 260 lbs. roidhead in your local MMA gym? It might shatter a lot of long-held beliefs that you always took for granted.

I actually want to do that in a few years time once I get my blackbelts in Kuntao, Kali, and Wing Chun. I know for certain that the pace is different, that I probably will eat some pretty good punches early on just because its a much different pace, however I'm quite confident in my training that after a few months I'd be looking great in the ring, lucky shots would be few and far between, and that nothing I've learned from my current teacher would work to my detriment. Even if I can't hit C1, C2, throat, neck, etc. or deliver elbows in certain ways - we have enough other tools that I'm okay with it for the sake of building fighters' intuition at the full contact level.

OTOH I'll clarify - my teacher wants to train all types and because of that we don't do full contact sparring; he's specifically against touch-sparring on the grounds that it puts people in the habit of not sending force through. We've got FBI, local law enforcement, even Sky Martials in our class, and I get the impression that regardless of whether they're making full contact or not they will not be in any kind of world of hurt with the techniques they're learning if they have any kind of common sense at all that if you're in a real fight you really need to be violent and overbearing. Obviously if they do the stupid thing, that a lot of pedestrians do, of punching and then pulling back to see what the results were or if they're okay, that they'll get their arses kicked. Thankfully I don't think we have too many people in our class who are that dumb or who would try to do a semi-complex throw or takedown on an opponent who's fully healthy and who they haven't landed several good strikes on already.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:55 pm Post subject:

Icyclan wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

No, he just teaches means of sending/transferring your body weight and where to hit.

That is fighting 101. Every striking art/sport teaches that.

It's still worlds different from TKD or any of the stuff my parents pushed me at as a kid. That stuff I felt vulnerable and like my strikes wouldn't work, with this I feel like my strikes could own someone easily. I might not have the full contact practice yet on people rather than standing bags but I know if I made contact it would do some real damage.

alex_br
Tufted Titmouse

Joined: Apr 17, 2012
Age: 36
Posts: 27

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 2:00 am Post subject:

I do it as a hobby and to stay fit. Nothing professional though, no going all out (although I do get into the ring and trade punches and all, just not looking to "kill"). Still, it's fun, demanding and keeps chalenging me (random minor injuries occur, but hey, it's inevitable, and they are really minor... so far). Surprisingly, I don't have such a big interest in the sport (or in any other). I'll watch a fight or two, but I can't sit through an entire UFC, nor will I ever attend to a live competition, with so many screaming, cheering people.

Joker
Sinn Fein
Phoenix

Joined: Mar 20, 2011
Age: 24
Posts: 7593
Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 4:04 am Post subject:

I love MMA it is one of my main special interests.

techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
SomeRandomGuy

Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14833
Location: A beautiful vector among many

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 10:21 am Post subject:

As this bears on I feel kind of bad about how I phrased things in my first post. I think a better term for my distinction - MMA (mixed martial arts), MTMA (mixed traditional martial arts) or better MITMA (mixed integrated traditional martial arts). All of the above are as strong as your instructor though so getting that right is paramount.

Wrong Planet Autism Forum Index -> Health, Fitness, and Sports

Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Next

Forums ©

Read more Articles on Wrong Planet

Wrong Planet is a Registered Trademark.
Copyright 2004-2013, Wrong Planet, LLC and Alex Plank. Alex does public speaking for Autism.

Advertise on Wrong Planet

Wrong Planet News Wrong Planet Forums