Martial arts: Movies vs. Reality

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I want to preface by saying that I know next to nothing about martial arts. With that said, I do really enjoy watching martial arts movies, because I find it really impressive to watch how quickly the people are able to move and react in the fight scenes. Of course, these are movies so they are made for entertainment.

What I am wondering is: how much are the fight scenes in the martial arts movies like fights in real life? Between people who are experts in martial arts, that is. I ask because in the movies, there is always a lot of extremely fast movement, dodging, blocking, and such going on.

But, any time that I see people actually fighting outside of the movies, such as in MMA or boxing, it seems to basically turn into a hug-fest. 95% of the time. They just try to grab the other person and subdue him, and the fights seem to be almost nothing like in the movie scenes. I'll admit though that I don't watch this sort of thing much so I haven't been exposed to a lot of it.

As I said, I have no experience in any sort of fighting or martial arts, but I am just really curious.

Here are some youtube examples of what I am talking about, that highlight the differences I see:

Movie fight scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2A0Tvo9WjI
"Real" fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G8AnBNBs1Y

I dated a guy for a while that was some kind of high up black belt in Kung Fu. He was great at all his competetions he went to and everything. He did very well. I was impressed watching him spar and everything and he pretty much always won. I thought he was a badass. Then I saw him get in a real fight with a guy I knew who was an actual badass, over a motorcycle. Thats when I found out that martial arts usually only work in a fight when the person you are fighting is using them too. At least in a fight where the other guy you are fighting has real world fight experience and won't hesitate to put you in the hospital, which is kinda the situation where you would think you needed to know martial arts in the first place.

If you want to take some kind of martial arts to get confidence or coordination or in shape etc, then go for it. But don't rely on it to save your ass in a situation. Since that time I've seen several fights with guys who know martial arts and guys who don't. I have yet to see somebody kick somebody's ass using that stuff.

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MMA is as close as you'll come to 'real' fighting, and if you study it's history you'll see a real evolution of techniques and strategies to find what works and what doesn't. The grappling may not be as exciting to watch, but it takes skill and strategy to win, much more than brute strength. Now if there were a sport where one man faced multiple opponents you'd see a lot more striking and fancy moves. Someone should get on that.

Combat sports are about picking the person apart, and winning, in whichever way possible. Hug fests as you call them, is actually called grappling, and no it does not happen 95% of the time, it's just not entertaining to watch to you because you do not understand the complexity of these situations. Aside from that If one cannot keep the other from "hugging" them, then they lack sufficient skill, and it is no surprise why one would "hug" the other if they can get away with a win this way. Strengths vs weakness, come prepared or lose. Money, status, and health are on the line. It's a job and if you don't win, you could lose a lot more than a +1 on your record.

Martial arts vary in their effectiveness, and what matters even more is the efficiency of the person practicing the martial art.

Movies are flashy. An example, acrobat can flip, twist, and swing their body all at once, which may look cool, but that does not mean they will know how to throw a proper strike, or know how to grapple. Their athleticism surely offers great potential in being an effective martial artist, but that alone will not win them any fights against someone who knows what they are doing, unless they are lucky.

You wanna save your ass, use this guys info.

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

I've seen Kyokoushinkai performers kick the ass of much larger men than themselves, so it does transfer to real life situations. The concept of karate started out as a way for travelling monks to defend themselves against highwaymen--and since it worked, it also spread. Every man, no matter how tough, will be sent to the ground with a well placed kick to the head.

All of the most infamous leg breakers here in Scandinavia are typically skilled in ju-jitsu or thai boxing, to actually have a chance to stand a fight against equally powerful opponents.

Also martial arts movies are scipted and filmed in slow motion

The way I really understand it - no one is turned into superman or superwoman by martial arts. All too often as well people who are really 'street' prefer the element of surprise, ie. getting to gauge your opponent doesn't happen. The worlds best could be taken out by a punk if their visibility is limited and they get whacked in the back of the head with something. Even face to face the real challenge is seeing anything. My instructor actually prefers to not to wear his glasses because he trusts his kinesthetic and touch senses much more (of course he's clearly got a sense of body overture and distance otherwise he'd be in trouble with that). If someone can snap something out faster than you can see it, faster than your training can react, or if your training is wrong, it's a mess and also with each strike received your level of skill and training drastically reduces.

Martial arts if you're doing them for self defense and choose an actual self-defense friendly style IMHO is more about the confidence of knowing that the neighborhood adult-bully won't be able to slap you around; ie. it means you're more free to be your best self every waking day of your life whether or not that best self meets the criteria of the guy to the right or left of you as 'macho'. So long as you're not depending on it to save you in surreal circumstances you're pretty well lined up with reality.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRrpM1g5e8U&sns=em[/youtube]

^^^
Thats a good example of technique easily overcoming brute strength.Good find

It seems like whoever can land the hits is the person whose walking away at the end of the fight. The thing about someone whose trained is that they're trained to take full advantage of an opponent's shock or imbalance, guide them high-low-high-low in their reaction, and run em all over the place if they don't end it immediately with elbows, forearms, neck and sternum, etc..

The BJJ guy showed a lot of class in simply demonstrating that skill could get around strength if strength was untrained - as in I know they said everything outside of eye gauges and biting was fair game but I don't think either one of these guys desired to put the other up in the hospital. The striking stayed within bounds of the gentlemanly 'your bleeding' type of game. Also going inside on a much larger opponent (especially to the tune of 100 lbs) just wouldn't be the way go to, which he wisely chose not to do.