The Effectiveness Of Martial Arts In Street Fighting

One cannot argue that for centuries Martial Arts in their various techniques have been at the forefront of self-defence around the world, but with our changing society and the continued increase of knife and gun crime in both the east and the west are Martial Arts becoming, as a defensive entity, obsolete?

As our society descends into an increasingly politically correct the training level of combat skills will decrees; this is due to the loss of traditional methods of practising the various fighting techniques that exist. For example you will become much more skilled at knife fighting if you train with live blades as the consequences of making a mistake are much greater and therefore you push yourself into a heightened sense of awareness, this is the same for many Martial Arts, including Karate Ju-Jitsu and Stick Fighting. Essentially one rule runs through combat training; the more realistic the training the better the resulting fighter.

Now let us look at the situations that Martial Arts may be used in and how they stand up to the gang cultured hit and run attacks of today's thugs. Beginning with the most wide spread of them all - Karate. Taught all over England and the world as a self-defence method despite its obvious attraction of the vicious punches and head high kicks these moves require room, and an opponent who will stand and fight with you face to face, not only that but the effect mentioned in the previous paragraph the popularity of this Martial Art has in effect made it 'playground friendly' which in turn reduces its effectiveness as a real working self-defence method where what you truly want is the agility to quickly dispatch and attacker encase he has friends. With another popular Art; Judo the street effectiveness is limited to their position and how they act (unless you are a very, very high level).

However it is not all doom and gloom for the continued existence of Martial Arts as a method of self-defence, usually the more effective ones are those that have not succumbed to the continued 'softening' effect of our society. These mainly include things such as MMA, Ju-Jitsu and, a personal favourite and one that has served me well in the past Bill Underwood's Defeno. Although personally I would advise against most knife fighting techniques as (first paragraph) we today cannot attain the skill of those who used them years ago. MMA is a good Martial Art for a group on one attack, where more than one person needs to be taken down with aggressive assaults, it also becomes useful for grappling, which again is most likely to occur in a group attack. Ju-Jitsu and Defendo, I have found, can both also be used in group situations but due to the near breaking bones locks of many of their moves this will result in some of your assailants receiving server injury; which in turn may not go down well with the authorities. They come into their own when used to restrain or incapacitate a single enraged attacker, allowing you to escape what would have been, with out the skills, a strait punch up.

The point of this article is not to demean the value of Martial Arts in self-defence but to inform people that they are not the be all and end all of defence. Instead I am trying to put forward the idea of not relying on a single form of Martial Arts, instead expand and develop your armoury of skills and thus balance out the effect of modernisation on western schools of Martial Arts.