Best Fighting Style for self defence

So me and a friend were having a good natured argument about the best fighting style/form for self defense. This is of course, beyond the "all martial arts utilized correctly will do" kind of answer. So tropers, in your opinion, what is the best style for self defense against an unarmed assailant meaning you grave bodily harm?

And I want to hear from weird bizarre styles like northern shaolin or something.

Krav Maga's supposed to be good.

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Seconding Krav Maga. It's one of the first styles that popularized techniques designed for countering the types of attacks you might expect from would-be assailants on the street, in order to give yourself a window of escape, rather than a defeating a trained opponent in the ring or a battlefield. It's also rather intuitive and easy to learn.

There are other, similar styles, but you won't find anything approaching an objective answer on which one is the best.

Krav Maga is supposed to be good. As is whatever the current acronym that they're teaching marines.

Fight smart, not fair.

Ok, depends on how you define "best".

Krav Maga is effective but extremely brutal, and will very likely make you get charged with assault due to "unreasonable violence". In general, grappling styles are good for self-defense because you can control how far to go, ie you can limit how hard to throw your opponent to the ground because once he'e on the floor he pretty much lost the fight (n to mention he will be in pain). However, wrestling takes training whereas striking styles like boxing are much easier to do right, but they make it harder to use "self defense" in court.

That said, most Asian martial arts style have both.

Shameless self-promotion time: we have a thread over in Yack Fest specifically on martial arts and there are people with more expertise than me there.

I was taught Jujitsu as a child by my father. These days the only thing that remains is a selection of instinctive blocks. This causes people who attack me to assume I'm holding back and could kick their arses without effort. I let them think that. To me, this is the best form of self-defense available.

Krav Maga, bar none.

It's really hard to find a good school that legitimately teaches Krav Maga though, there are a lot of fakes out there or half baked schools.

Krav Maga is bar none the "best" martial art for self-defense if the goal is surviving or keeping yourself from bodily harm. Without talking about the legal ramifications of severely hurting an assailant, it really is the best.

I studied Jiu Jitsu for several years, and that's helped me in my role as a cop significantly. The problem is Jiu Jitsu isn't necessarily that good if you're in a standing fight with someone who won't let you take them down.

At the end of the day there's martial arts where they teach you how to do something in an ideal environment to show you how to do it, then there's real life applications where someone who is doing everything in their power not to let you control the fight is keeping you from putting them down. There's a very big difference. I don't believe any martial art that is safe to use competitively and safely against others is really fit to be in the top tier of being considered "the best" for self defense.

Are you really likely to be prosecuted if you, say, break a muggers arm, if you keep it to one movement?

edited 13th Aug '12 4:04:04 PM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Depends on the legal system. In the UK, if it was one strike then that acts in your favour.

And I think it depends on the situation as well. Breaking someone's arm because they are threatening you with a knife is very different from doing the same thing when they are already down.

If I remember it right in most countries self-defense is a defense that you use to persuade the jury that what you did was justified in that situation. Hence why there is a myth of "martial artists are regarded as weapons" because it is harder to persuade the jury that you had to punch the guy to the hospital when you're a master of fighting and expected to be able to control your blows.

edited 13th Aug '12 5:06:43 PM by IraTheSquire

If they're already down then it wasn't one strike.

By "down" I include "they've already given up the fight" like running away or "I surrender!".

Indeed. If they're not attacking you then you will have trouble explaining why you hit them.

They only weren't attacking you if someone is around as a witness to say so. Just sayin.

Yeah, but if you hurt them too badly it still will be very difficult to convince the jury why you hurt them so though, even when there're no witnesses and no evidence that they are not attacking.

Depends on how you articulate it. If you state that they hadn't gone down yet, were still fighting, and that you feared for your life, you have a shot at it.

Still more difficult than just stop and not go further after they've surrendered.

Avoiding the altercation altogether is much preferred.

Barring that, running towards the lights and noise.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Whatever works with your body type, reflexes, and physical history.

I'm serious; you have to find the match that works with you, then train intelligently and diligently. The advantage of Krav Maga and MCMAP is that they're taught coming out of a culture that emphasizes pragmatics, so there's a lot of attention paid to the psychology of conflict resolution (attention, attention, and more attention). But that psychology is independent of any particular "style". I've trained in Aikido for over 10 years, and my first reaction? Check the environment before the possibility of a fight shows up so that I won't miss a potential threat. A lot to pick up from body language and the like. My second reaction? Spit in the eyes, throw something in the eyes, feint with an improvised weapon so you can make like you're hitting them in the eyes, or whatever else I need to do in order to trigger a flinch reaction. Combined with moving out of their field of vision. It helps if I have a liquid of sorts, preferably something hot; a steaming cup of coffee is a highly underrated self defense mechanism.

Yes, I train in that Aikido. The way of peace and harmony and all that.

The point is, you train in what work for your body. The point of physical training is to hone reflexes, and those reflexes should feel natural to you. So try a few gyms and dojos out, and if you find stuff that you honestly enjoy doing, practice that. You'll love it, and that will keep you coming back to the mat, and that's what counts. In the meanwhile, as you train your body, remember to train your mind. Read up on self defense literature, local law in the case of assault, the psychology of combat, and so on. Learn to read social situations, body language, and other cues. Understand what the human body looks like when it's off balance, when it's in pain, when it's capable of ignoring pain (high pain threshold, drunk, etc.), and other physical tells. These will be handy regardless of what you practice. If you like what you're doing on the mat, but they don't teach that, then you should acquire it elsewhere.

You have to make something that fits with you. "The best style for self defense" is a marketing gimmick. One size just does not fit all.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Krav Maga and Mauy Thai are probably the most practical "hard style" martial arts for street use. Both are effective, allow you to wuickly disable an opponent, and Krav Maga specifically trains you for dealing with situations involving knives, multiple attackers, etc. Edited to add: all that said, Radical Taoist is certainly right, and what best fits you will depend on a lot of things to do with your body type and ways of dealing with stress. Someone with a blocky build and low center of gravity will do much better in Judo than in Tae Kwan Do, for example.

A few notes I want to make; first, as others have said, avoiding confrontation works a lot better than any martial art style. Any sensei worth his salt will tell you that the best way to keep your life if you're being mugged, for example, is to give the guy your money and walk away afterward. Even styles like Krav Maga note this, and they often train yourself to be able to defend yourself or disable your opponent just long enough for you to run to safety.

Second, it takes years worth of time and practice to train yourself to instinctively react in the right way to dangerous or surprising situations. You have to wonder whether that investment is worth it for most people.

Third, any sort of training will help you immensely against people who don't have it. As much as I love the sport of boxing, it's gotta be one of the worst for practical use. You don't train to use your feet, knees, elbows, or head as weapons, you don't learn holds or throws, you're trained only to fight other boxers, etc. probably the one major advantage it has is that it places much more emphasis on sparring than you're likely to get at most dojos. But a trained boxer going against a someone without training is going to have a massive advantage, take for example this somewhat well known clip from Turkey of a boxer taking on three guys in road rage incident and repeatedly knocking them out and beating them up. Link

edited 13th Aug '12 8:01:25 PM by TheWanderer

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |

Aikido is great. When I start studying martial arts again, (something I've been saying for years, admittedly) it's one of the styles I plan to learn.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |

I will add a vote for Akido, if one has the patience to master it.

I remember a charter school I went to had a physical education course regarding that particular style. The instructor was a pleasant, soft-spoken hippie guy who had a seemingly endless reservoir of patience for early-teen bullshit. He endured endless amounts of crap about how his martial art wasn't as "cool" as stuff that actually taught you how to hurt people.

One day, he asked the entire class to try and pin him. We did try. He won. There were twenty of us. Granted, we were all about 13, but without hurting anyone he managed to avoid getting disabled in any way. Looking back, it's the "without hurting any of us" part that impresses me the most.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

Jujutsu and its descedant styles Sambo, Judo, Akido, and Hapkido.

MCMAP Marine Corps Martial Arts Program is very flexible and broadly useful.

Krav Maga is more useful then some are making it out to be. It is an agressive style though.

Sambo is a Russian martial arts that is similar to MCMAPS and Krav. There are stylistic differences in the three.

Personally I liked learning MCMAPS and Jujutsu Pressure Point Control and Manipulation. Add in various stunning and joint lock techniques and you have some moves that are well suited to self defense in a wide range of situations.

edited 13th Aug '12 9:01:43 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

That's the real reason I train. I am 6'3" and in good physical health. I want to know how to end conflicts without causing major harm; once you figure out the weak points the human body is really kind of fragile, and I don't like hurting people.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Running. Or Parkour, perhaps. No unarmed assailant can cause you any harm if you can run away from them.

Truly, the Rincewind Defense is unbreakable

edited 13th Aug '12 10:37:23 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.