As the sport of MMA keeps growing, more and more people are training 'UFC' style. You are now far more likely to face a person on the street who wants to shoot in and take you down for some ground and pound. This was extremely rare in the past but is becoming much more common.
Mixed martial artists are talented athletes and plenty of them are tough as nails. Without getting into the debate of mixed martial arts vs. traditional vs. reality based systems, the main limitation of MMA for street fighting is the rules.
MMA athletes train with rules. You fight as you train.
Knowing this, to prepare myself for the increased likelihood of facing an MMA trained individual in the real world, I have a couple of options. I could cross train for several years in MMA, learning to fight within a ruleset, or, I can train in all the things that are against the rules.
This is not a discussion on being able to adapt MMA to the street, but it is food for thought on an approach to training that deals with the realities around us.
J.C. has an interesting related post on this topic. Check it out at Bujutsu: The Path.
On an unrelated topic, my last post discussed some lessons learned or re-affirmed when some new students visited our dojo. My original post is here.
Sue C over at My Journey to Black Belt left a comment on my blog. I discovered a post of hers entitled Honouring technique. It touched on several of the areas I discussed in my last post and some I discussed in an earlier post here.
You can find Sue's post here. A worthwhile read.
Thanks for the link!
ReplyDeleteThis is the sort of issue I've been covering in my blogs entitled 'The Insidious Effect of Training Methods'. There is a lot of hype surrounding training methods, natural responses, and types of attacks being referred to these days. However, the argument is never taken to its logical conclusion.
ReplyDeleteSue,
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure
John,
I really enjoyed your series on training methods. I've noticed that some martial artists are really good at fighting someone who takes the same art, but their skills don't always translate against an opponent from another system. Interesting stuff.