Best Fighting Style for self defence

Pretty much - although if you use only enough force to disengage from the altercation by beating feet out of there, then it's probably okay. Unless you egged the guy on by bluster and aggravating posturing....

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Meh, if you finished it pretty quickly, you've got a damn good chance of getting out of there. Especially if it was self-defense.

If you can run fast and get to the other side of the block with nobody following you, you're good to go.

edited 14th Aug '12 1:22:05 PM by Barkey

Talking about awareness and mental preparation reminded me of this. It talks about Escape the Wolf, which I haven't read so I can't comment on the legit-ness or lack thereof.

Wise Papa Smurf, corrupted by his own power. CAN NO LEADER GO UNTAINTED?!

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/bestMA.htm

An answer to the thread question. Too long to copy-paste here, but here's a bit of it:

'Self-Defense vs. Personal Safety'

'To explain why "which martial art is best for self-defense" is an erroneous question, look at the subject of personal safety as a pie. A pie that is sliced into distinct and different sections.'

'At best, physical technique is only one slice of that pie. Other slices of personal safety include legal issues, social skills, deterrents, psychology, knowledge of how crimes occur, mental preparation and awareness of what you are facing. In short, self-defense is only one small part of the much bigger issue (The analogy we use is a pyramid of personal safety). And even though it is a subset of personal safety, each of these components must be included in effective self-defense training. The hard part isn't snapping someone's neck. That's actually rather simple. The hard part is knowing when and why it is time to do it OR — more importantly— when it isn't.'

'And the number of people who end up in jail for violence tells us that isn't as cut and dried as they thought it was.'

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

An excellent point. An often-overlooked dimension of self-defence is not going into bad areas in the first place (different from, but related to, running away from a fight).

Wise Papa Smurf, corrupted by his own power. CAN NO LEADER GO UNTAINTED?!

"Best Fighting Style for self defence"

I'd say gun fighting...unless you mean martial arts only.

I'm baaaaaaack

@barkey: aren't you a cop?

hashtagsarestupid

I'm a military cop. We have a firm tradition of only wrist slapping people who beat the living shit out of the initial instigator/aggressor in a fight.

In other words, if you start a fight, or you're being a huge dick and it gets your ass kicked, you deserved it and we'll pay lip service to punishing the person who whooped your ass.

Also, I'd like to add that the police are sensible, well-trained people too. Yes, they might went "Holy crap, you just beaten someone." at first, but later on they are going to find out that 1) the person you've beaten is an infamous mugger/gangster/been on the wrong side of the law multiple times/etc, while you are a law-abiding citizen and never been in trouble with the law before and 2) you have a really good chance of getting your charges dropped even if they decide to prosecute you because you are actually defending yourself. They are trained to look for social ques and whatnot to deal with this kind of thing.

Depends.

Three or four versus one is just about the best ratio for outnumbering someone. You can move and flank and harass and interrupt the loner, while still leaving enough room to maneuver. More than that, and multiple attackers start to get in each other's way. You have to be very good to take advantage of it, but if you can move around them and direct them into each other, the numbers start to work against them. And if they spend six seconds disentangling themselves after tripping over each other, that's a six second head start you have to run. If quarters are tight, you can force them to come at you one at a time; if you have space, there's more room to maneuver and a good improvised weapon you can swing (like a chair) becomes a more effective deterrent. I'm not saying I'd rather fight six guys more than four, but it is more complex than "more attackers=worse".

Of course, having a buddy on your side changes all those dynamics (is he trained enough to defend himself and help you? do you need to take care of him?). And all of the above goes out the window when you get to real mobs, groups of ten or more people, packed shoulder to shoulder. Mobs don't fight you, they trample you. It is physically impossible for the human body to fight that unarmed: you can't incapacitate the guys in the front row of a riot faster than the ones behind them can push forward. That's rugby match, not a karate match, and your only hope is to run or to fight the scrum with a team of your own.

All sorts of this. I feel self defense should be part of the school system from the elementary years just so that we stop training generations of victims.

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

It's also worth noting that if you take one or two people in a group attacking you down in a quick, efficient, and properly brutal fashion, the chances of the other two or more continuing are slim.

It's also worth taking into account the environment that you are in. Don't let the enemy surround you, and keep them all in your 180 degree frame of vision, and you cut down their numbers advantage. Strike as you backpedal and keep a proper distance so you don't have to grapple.

And you can train yourself to deal with multiple attackers: get a bunch of friends; for starters have them come at you like zombies with a fist out in front. Your job is to dodge and try to get them into each others way without getting touched by their fists. Once you've mastered that upgrade to have them actually punch at you gently.

My stepdad told me a story about a fight he ended when he was a kid. There was a gang of guys in elementary school, one really mouthy little son of a bitch and one generally pissed-off looking kid who had a reputation for getting into fights, plus like four or so hangers on. They cornered him one day and the mouthy guy started talking smack and egging the angry kid on. So my stepdad-to-be steps up and proceeds to rock the mouthy guy one right in the face. He goes down hard, and the rest of the gang - angry kid included - just stares as their would be opponent walked away.

Moral of that story is "take out the instigator quick". I'm curious as to how well it applies to adult self-defense situations.

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

^

Pretty well. I'm sure you can all guess how clannish the military are, and how they often show solidarity when their friends get into fights.

A baton strike to the hand followed by a hard punch to the face with the baton as a fist pack will put most guys down, and if you put the right guy down, you might just dissolve the entire confrontation from step one.

I think your best chance against a mob of people might be morale shock. That is, if you can take down two or three of them with enough force, the others will hesitate. Then you can get away.

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

Muggers and gangmembers generally do not fight like elementary school bullies, sadly, so I doubt that such tactics will work. You've just ticked off the friends of the mouthy trash-talker and escalated the situation - they've cornered you, so you're already screwed.

Going up against a group? I'd train for that by having all your friends attempt to encircle you. Kind of like reversed-tag. If they can box you in, you lose. If you can escape to some designated safe spot, you win. Or more accurately, you survive.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

If there was a best style then muggers would learn to counter it. There will always be an element of luck as to whether your style will work well against this specific group.

The cross section between muggers and people interested in martial arts enough to learn counters are extremely small. And on top of that, they will have to find a master/instructor who is blind enough/unscrupulous enough to train them for a long time, shrinking that number even further.

edited 14th Aug '12 4:41:48 PM by IraTheSquire

You guys realise that muggers don't really have a burning, driving desire to mug you in particular, right? It's a means to an end. If you are a 'hard' enough target, they'll probably move on to someone else - unless you provoke them into fighting you for real.

Of course, the best defence is not being there to be mugged; failing that, twenty-to-one numbers in your favour.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

OP here. At the end of conversation me and my friend narrowed down to two personal preferences.

He chose Boxing as the best at self defense with Wing Chun being the worst.

I chose Krav Maga as the best with drunken boxing (zui quan) as the worst.

I also chose hung ga as non break-your-face alternative.

I would say that both Krav Maga and traditional boxing are the two best choices, I agree with both of you.

In a one on one fight against some guy? Boxing. Easily. Boxers are the most prepared for situations like that, a boxer capable of knocking a guy out while using gloves can do tremendous damage to someone without them.

But on the other hand, Krav Maga is going to be your best bet outnumbered, because of the brutal quick efficiency. It's a martial art purpose built for those situations.

The cross section between people interested in martial arts and people who could fight out muggers is at least as small, I think. Habitual muggers may not generally have martial arts knowledge, but they have more experience in real life fighting than just about everyone but professional soldiers and perhaps policemen...

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

I doubt it. How many people would actually fight muggers back instead of just give them the money? They're muggers, not bikies/gangsters who fight other bikies/gangster for turf, and those guys would more likely be making more money by selling drugs and running brothels or other illegal businesses than to bother spending hours and taking risks to stalk and intimidate a random strangers who may or may not have money. Even those guys won't be fighting regularly (at least, not to the point of a fight every week which s how often most people train) unless there's a turf war going on and they would be armed to the teeth for that.

Also, just "interested in martial arts" is different to "interested enough to learn the counters properly". The latter needs to take the time and effort to get and be trained.

I'll say that most muggers, if not all, would be armed in some way though, if only just to give them confidence and an edge.

edited 14th Aug '12 11:46:31 PM by IraTheSquire

Krav Maga sounds like the style to learn for those who are properly willing to go ripshit on someone when defending themselves, while a Jujutsu variant sounds like a better style for nonfatal takedowns.

It all depends on your goals as a person.

Someone tries to mug me, I'm going to break a bone of theirs just out of spite alone.