Is Combat really Evolving? Or are we just rediscovering it?

[juszczec]

IMO:

REAL DEAL ---> McDojo ---> Back to REAL DEAL

[Wizard Whateley]

Hey Wiz, I think you and I need to realize that we aren't even arguing the same things and are pretty much on the overall same page. I'm saying it works as a reference point. That's it! Same goes to you Sophist! Reference point! Not perfect, it is what it is. There is not direct translation from any of these practices to a true, random, violent encounter. And if you think I'm such a Brainiac, why do I keep forgetting where I put my cellphone, making me call it from another phone just to find the damned thing?!?!

Cullion, good point!

Agreed! I just wanted to elaborate on my own point, which was namely that what may account for a large part of what separates winner from loser in sport is a much smaller part of the equation in "real" combat.

[Wizard Whateley]

If you two brainiacs would stop to think a moment, you'd realise that men engaged in desperate, to-the-death battles tend to bring weapons to them. It's been a hallmark of our species since about the time we got round to standing on our hind legs. Your twelfth century nobleman packed a sword and a dagger. The police force and effective mass disarmament are relatively recent inventions.

Historical fighting systems tend to be linked to prizefighting, with the rules that entails, or the battlefield, in which case you see last ditch grappling against an armed foe. (And don't delude yourself: if someone with an edged weapon comes at you even years of training aren't going to make a lot of difference to your survival chances.) The best documented surviving battlefield tradition is koryu jujitsu, as the western martial arts largely died out after gunpowder hit the mainstream, and koryu jujitsu is usually cited here as a cautionary tale after its brutalisation at the hands of judo.

Beyond this, you need a suitable testing ground to develop an art. Real life situations are hopelessly various; you need some kind of abstraction to work from. We understand this well, living after the development of the scientific method. In fact, it's probably we have a better theoretical basis to use to develop systems than anyone else in history.

So: unarmed vs unarmed arts are evolving, because the only previous venue that pushed people to fight with a truly minimal ruleset was pankration, and they had a much smaller fighter pool to draw on. Arts involving assault with or defence against melee weaponry aren't evolving, because wars are now fought with guns. And the use of anything likely to appear in modern warfare is developed to a high standard: guns, bombs, missiles.

Yes, of course weapons were in play, that was one of my prime points, even if I didn't go on about it because it's so obvious. But nonetheless the nobleman's sword and dagger did him little good if he was suddenly attacked while urinating by the roadside (which was exactly the sort of time those out to get him would choose to strike!). He needed to be able to buy himself enough time to bring his weapons into use, and so unarmed skills came into play. It's no different today. Real life situations are endlessly various, but how a person deals with this factor counts for the better part of avoiding or surviving a real, lethal attack. That's why saying if XY&Z is what wins an MMA match, then XY&Z is what will save your ass on the street is a gross misunderstanding. It's akin to saying that the guy who wins a long drive competition is certainly the guy who's going to win a regular medal play tournament. A good drive is unquestionably very important, but there is whole, whole lot more to deal with in a real game of golf than just driving the ball far. It ain't that simple.

I'll give you a good example. A kid I work with who trains in an eclectic MMA geared style saw two guys arguing in the parking lot and it escalated to one of them getting a steel pipe out of his car and threatening the other. So this kid runs out there and tries to break things up. But the guy with the pipe ignores him and instead goes at the the other guy, turning his back to the kid and thus giving him a chance to get him in a rear choke hold. Luckily, he pulled the guy back, strangled some sense into him, got him to simmered down, and all turned out well. But what if the guy with the pipe had turned out to be some complete psycho who instead came at this kid with muderous intent? Now, there were plenty of things right at hand that this kid first could have effectively armed himself with, including a nice, heavy, three foot long 1-1/4" oak dowel, but he chose instead to just run out there. OK, so things turned out well, but they could also have turned out very, very differently. My point is that his training may given him a good and useful choke hold, but it obviously sure as hell didn't teach him to react to this situation the way he ought to have. He got lucky, plain and simple. He could have just as easily wound up with a fractured skull. To his credit, he realised subsequently that he had acted very rashly, but if he was a meathead he could just as easily have taken the whole situation as a validation of how badass, street effective his training is.

[Sophist]

Yes, of course weapons were in play, that was one of my prime points, even if I didn't go on about it because it's so obvious. But nonetheless the nobleman's sword and dagger did him little good if he was suddenly attacked while urinating by the roadside (which was exactly the sort of time those out to get him would choose to strike!). He needed to be able to buy himself enough time to bring his weapons into use, and so unarmed skills came into play.

Yes, but, much as is the case with the modern military, these unarmed skills were seen as a relatively minor part of fighting. There's no evidence to suggest that the ancients had a more advanced knowledge of unarmed combat than we do.

It's no different today. Real life situations are endlessly various, but how a person deals with this factor counts for the better part of avoiding or surviving a real, lethal attack. That's why saying if XY&Z is what wins an MMA match, then XY&Z is what will save your ass on the street is a gross misunderstanding.

The equation is usually seen the other way round: if XY&Z proves to be an ineffectual technique under controlled circumstances, it will likely also be ineffectual outside these circumstances.

Now, there were plenty of things right at hand that this kid first could have effectively armed himself with, including a nice, heavy, three foot long 1-1/4" oak dowel, but he chose instead to just run out there. OK, so things turned out well, but they could also have turned out very, very differently. My point is that his training may given him a good and useful choke hold, but it obviously sure as hell didn't teach him to react to this situation the way he ought to have.

The fault here would clearly appear to be the kid's, not his training. He was so obsessed with particular tools he'd been given that he ignored other ones that were potentially more useful. Making people smarter under stress isn't a straightforward thing to train for. You yourself missed the very smartest move of all - not getting involved in an argument between strangers.

It's worth also mentioning that MMA doesn't typically bill itself as self-defence. There are self-defence experts and organisations who share MMA training methodologies but with certain necessary strategic shifts, such as Geoff Thompson and the Straight Blast Gym.

[Wizard Whateley]

The fault here would clearly appear to be the kid's, not his training. He was so obsessed with particular tools he'd been given that he ignored other ones that were potentially more useful. Making people smarter under stress isn't a straightforward thing to train for. You yourself missed the very smartest move of all - not getting involved in an argument between strangers.

It's worth also mentioning that MMA doesn't typically bill itself as self-defence. There are self-defence experts and organisations who share MMA training methodologies but with certain necessary strategic shifts, such as Geoff Thompson and the Straight Blast Gym.

I hear what you're saying, but a typical person with no training at all even might likely have armed themselves first. Not that I'm telling you anything you don't know, but arming himself first before possibly having to take on another weapon wielding and possibly crazy man should have been an unconcious reflex, but it didn't even register, and it's not even like he had to go out there. He had the luxury of a little time to consider things a bit first. And, yes, the manager also wasn't too happy he got involved, but the kid was of the feeling that what was he going to do, just sit there and watch some pencilnecked guy get his head beat in? So he erred on the side of altruism.


You're right, too, that it's not a fault of his training, but to compete at a high level in sport you need to specialise in it and the precise circumstances under which it's competed.
There's only twenty-four hours in a day. A person can't be doing it all. If they're concentrating on being an MMA champion, then by necessity countless other things that have no part in it are going to be ignored, and that's no fault at all of MMA competition or the arts that prove most effective in it. But there does seem to have arisen a growing cadre of knuckleheads who don't seem to get this and seem to simply take it for granted that if a particular art isn't able to compete on a level with BJJ or Muay Thai within the very restricted milieau of MMA, then it "sucks" in preparing for real life encounters. The real truth is that, while many of them are indeed worthless, others, especially the some of the more traditional ones, spend a great deal of time dealing with preparing for the vagaries of real life encounters, and of course this can't but come at the expense of developing every little nuance that is needed to compete at a championship level in MMA.

What you said about thinking is really the gist of it all, honestly. George Silver in his Paradoxes discusses how many times he had seen well trained men who were accounted to be masters of defence get their asses handed to them by strong, fit, and what he calls "valiant" men, but who had no formal or systematic training at all. If a person can't quickly both think under stress and think outside the box, then all the formal training in technique in the world can count for next to nothing in dealing with all the vagaries of the real world. In fact, there are many times and circumstances where it can actually work against them, which is a closely related point Silver tries to drive home.

[Sophist]

I hear what you're saying, but a typical person with no training at all even might likely have armed themselves first. Not that I'm telling you anything you don't know, but arming himself first before possibly having to take on another weapon wielding and possibly crazy man should have been an unconcious reflex, but it didn't even register, and it's not even like he had to go out there.

No, it shouldn't have been an unconscious reflex, because the whole damn situation was something that a lot more conscious thought should have gone into. It would be possible for someone in that situation to think it over, and contemplate going out there with something big and heavy, and consider the likelihood of being nailed with an "assault with a deadly weapon" charge even if it went as he hoped (you lose either way).

But there does seem to have arisen a growing cadre of knuckleheads who don't seem to get this and seem to simply take it for granted that if a particular art isn't able to compete on a level with BJJ or Muay Thai within the very restricted milieau of MMA, then it "sucks" in preparing for real life encounters. The real truth is that, while many of them are indeed worthless, others, especially the some of the more traditional ones, spend a great deal of time dealing with preparing for the vagaries of real life encounters, and of course this can't but come at the expense of developing every little nuance that is needed to compete at a championship level in MMA.

And this is the tricky bit. Specifics, here. Which arts are you thinking of? What situations are you thinking of? And what evidence have you that their preparation for these situations is useful and effective? It's far too easy to slide in bullshit via the back door with this kind of claim. I assume you're talking about unarmed arts, here, because I've yet to hear a knucklehead claiming a weapons art would be useless against BJJ/Muay Thai/MMA.

What you said about thinking is really the gist of it all, honestly. George Silver in his Paradoxes discusses how many times he had seen well trained men who were accounted to be masters of defence get their asses handed to them by strong, fit, and what he calls "valiant" men, but who had no formal or systematic training at all. If a person can't quickly both think under stress and think outside the box, then all the formal training in technique in the world can count for next to nothing in dealing with all the vagaries of the real world. In fact, there are many times and circumstances where it can actually work against them, which is a closely related point Silver tries to drive home.

And yet Silver was selling his own form of training, and would most likely vehemently have disputed that those he trained would have their training work against them. This is an argument that's usually oversold, and while it's got more than a grain of truth in it, it can't be allowed to pass as the common case; at least, not in the case of arts whose training bears a close resemblance to fighting. Anyone can be taken by surprise, or thrown into a situation where they're outgunned or outnumbered, and while having some extra tools may not help in all situations, it generally helps in more of these than it hinders them. Certainly it tends to be observed that in an even situation where these tools have the potential to be helpful, they generally are.