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Martial arts: theory and practice

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BeoPuppy:
Aikido has no immediate application as a self defence thing (largely, depends on style, aiki-budo, for instance, will take your head off)
but it's so much fun and surprisingly good for cardio. Lots and lots of rolling and throwing, though. Be prepared.

Excellent opportunity to show you an old time favourite:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG_tnefyOcc(Neither of these gentlemen is me, by the way.)

GarandMarine:
If you want a solid no nonsense self defense system I recommend you find an accredited Krav Maga school. Stuff is brutal.

Akima:

--- Quote from: GarandMarine on 06 Jun 2013, 15:26 ---Kicks to the head are dangerous in an actual self defense situation, leaves you exposed and off balance for too long, knees and groins are much better targets.
--- End quote ---
Even kicks above the knee can be questionable, especially if you are shorter than your opponent. It makes my hair stand on end when I hear some self-defence advice given to women: "Just kick him in the nuts!", because:

1) Men learn early in boyhood that a blow to their genitals hurts a lot. Typically they have very well-established defensive reflex actions.
2) Only a small turn of their body, or step into your attack, will let them take the blow on their leg, and probably body-check you off balance.
2) A kick to the groin is well within "grabbing range", leaving you vulnerable to a throw.

Just take a look at this video (Soundtrack NSFW). OK, it is not intended to be serious, but presumably the computer self-defence training programme featured is. Note how off-balance the groin-kicker is. If the attack fails to disable the opponent, the kicker is completely uncentred. That is not to say that a groin-kick is impossible, given good technique, timing, and preparation, but a knee-kick is lower-risk and if anything more disabling than a groin blow.

GarandMarine:
Yep. Honestly? If I'm in my boots I find scraping the shin with the edge of my boot and stomping the foot is a really fun way to distract the hell out of your adversary. Hurts like hell, doesn't cripple any one, and should give you a nice opening to put some hurt else where enough to incapacitate and run for it.

I will say though that assumption 1 is a little off, while men do learn that blows to the genitalia hurt, it's not considered "fair" in a fight and thus doesn't happen very often. This is of course connected to the fallacy that there is a fair fight besides the fight you just won but the defensive reaction isn't as great as you'd expect it to be.

Akima:
Having stepped onto the mat, as it were, I should probably introduce myself in this thread. *wushu bow*

I practice taijiquan, which is often shortened to taiji, and known in English as "Tai Chi", in Chen style. I do this mainly as a physical and mental discipline (the slow forms are sometimes known as "moving meditation"), and to connect to my cultural heritage, but I study under a shifu (master) who takes the traditional view that neglecting martial training denies the practitioner the full benefit of the art. I started "training" when I was about four years old by imitating my Grandma's moves in the yard behind the block of flats we lived in then. I will leave aside the health benefits claimed for taiji, which are rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine, but I know that I definitely feel better after doing my daily forms. I certainly can't blow holes in brick walls with my qi the way they do in the movies, though!

For people who are only familiar with the slow forms you see performed in parks and other open spaces wherever there is a significant Chinese population, I should perhaps say that taiji is a "full-service" martial-art, in the sense that it includes strikes, locks, throws, and weapon-use (I focus on taijijian sword forms), and so can be seen as both "hard" and "soft", but the philosophy is essentially internal and soft: "Stillness to defeat motion, softness to defeat hardness." It is not an art that is quickly or easily learned, but that is to an extent true of all traditional Chinese martial-arts, since the assumption was that the practitioner would begin training in childhood.

Is it any good for self-defence? Well, I don't carry a sword in daily life, obviously, and like BeoPuppy, I prefer to avoid situations where I might have to put my training to the test. It is far better to avoid trouble than to be forced defend yourself against it. Martial arts training certainly can help you defend yourself, if your training includes realistic elements to prepare you for combat, physically and psychologically, but it is only in the movies that petite women can casually flip around burly goons twice their weight. The sheer shock and speed of a big man's onset in an "honest attack" is not at all easy to handle, no matter how many years you have spent practicing to use an opponent's weight and momentum against them. Realistic training carries a definite risk of injury, and if it did not it would fail in its purpose, but if you shrink from a blitz attack by a larger opponent on the practice-mat, what do you think a real assault will be like?

Ego-driven, power-trip fantasies are the curse of martial-arts, and normally I stay far, far away from internet forums devoted to them. We have spoken in the firearms threads about crazy "Orange Shirt Guys", but there are too many people like that in martial-arts also. As I once heard a shifu put it to some young pupils, "You can't control the world; you can control yourself."

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