Yup. Last thing you want to do is break your foot trying to kick somebody in the balls.
It’s just so hard to do a lot of these under pressure unless you’ve been training for a while. It’s why civilian courses in Krav Maga rely on teaching gross motor skills. They’re easier to teach and use by lesser trained people.
What KM classes should focus on more is familiarizing people with getting hit. Even if you do exactly as your KM teacher says, you’ll probably take a shot or two while defending yourself. If you’re unfamiliar with the sting of getting hit, you’ll flinch in the moment of truth and that’s that. IMO, any school that doesn’t put you into full-contact sparring as soon as possible isn’t worth going to.
Not that it’s very available to adults, but wrestling is good to have in the arsenal. You control where the fight takes place (feet or ground), so it complements a good BJJ or boxing game very well. Plus in many cases you can show who’s boss without even having to inflict harm (though that’s definitely an option too), so in that regard wrestling is good for avoiding fights. And it’s incredible for cardio.
When it comes to boxing, you can learn a decent amount just by sparring with people, even without training. At least, I seem to have. Not in my cerebral understanding of it, but my instincts and reactions are much better (which you don’t have time to think about anyway).
On the subject of dirty hit-and-run tactics, I think a punch to the trachea would really suck. I suspect it might also pose a risk of collapsing their trachea and killing them (which might not happen immediately after the punch). I’ve heard stories like that about BJJ athletes who got trachea choked too hard and then an hour later they couldn’t breathe and died. When I spar another noob in BJJ, my rule is no trachea chokes (only blood chokes).
And you can also spar at close to 100% wrestling. Probably my old man fight club would be mostly wrestling. So far it looks like LFS is down for food-not-bombs, but I think he’s ducking out of old man fight club at least for now.
I did a very little bit of boxing training and the workouts were like 3 minutes of intensity and 1 minute of rest and it was ridiculously hard. If a person is skilled enough to stay in a fight without getting damaged for a minute or two and is in real boxing shape, they can probably get away with barely hitting anyone and waiting the minute or so until they collapse from exhaustion.
This is good advice if you are in shape. There are so many fatsos that talk shit that would be holding their chest in a real fight that wasn’t just a bar brawl with a bouncer jumping in.
Those two things can’t be possible at the same time. Whether you’re sparring or fighting for real, getting punched in the face is the price to pay for being a good boxer.
I remember sparring against somebody who was some regional amateur champion at cruiserweight. I had some weight on him and clearly wasn’t in shape like he was. We definitely hit each other quite a bit but I was the one with swelling and a cut above my right eye after a few rounds.
Sure makes you respect people who do it professionally. It also makes me think that they’re completely insane.
I’m not proud to say it, but I got in a small scuffle this summer. Nothing really came of it, dude pushed me, I pushed him back and he took a spill. I followed behind him as he was tumbling and he put up his right hand to guard the left side of his face (I had my hands up and he was protecting against my right), time like stopped and I saw that he was totally exposed to a left hook. He wouldn’t have seen it coming at all.
I backed up bc I’d made my point (and I don’t want any problems) and I had little fear of him if he’d come back at me. I haven’t been in a fight forever but yeah, it felt like when I’ve been in car wrecks before and everything is so slow.
The last scuffle I got in was in 7th grade and the last real fight in 5th grade. That’s not counting fights with my older brother. We fought almost daily and it didn’t really stop until I was around 20 years old. He was twice my weight. He would just come into a room and say “wanna fight?” Basically “yes” was the only option if you wanted to keep any pride. It was never at 100% though. Rarely any blood, never any broken bones, and only broken walls or furniture a couple times. We are pretty close in age. My younger brother who is a few years younger didn’t have to fight that much.
One reason I was any good at wrestling was because I had younger brothers to train on when they tried to gang up on me. If BJJ had been around then I’d be a god damn master. I know a little still.
One of my best friends is a 5’6 or so bad ass mofo. I’ve seen him pretty much have to jump to knock out fools like Glass Joe. He grew up fighting his older brothers while his parents recorded the fights on Super 8 video haha. No gloves, punches to the face, etc. Now he’s been through Special Forces training, knows BJJ very well and has trained with MMA fighters.
haha their family is crazy af. He was training at the same gym in MN Lesnar was for a bit. Not together or anything like that, just the same gym. His size and abilities make a lot of big people talk shit and put their foot in their mouth and eat pavement.
Oh definitely, I wouldn’t get into a ring with Pacquiao but I’d get on the mat with anyone without fear. There’s a kid I wrestle sometimes who’s got like 50 lbs of muscle on me. He doesn’t hold back but I’m never in danger of getting hurt (granted I know how not to). He pretty much sucks at wrestling but has just enough formal training to mop the floor with me.
Shit, look at me referring to a 26yo as a kid. Being past 30 has already gotten to my head.
Unstuck fight club? Sign me up!
In fact let’s go the whole 9 yards and reboot Project Mayhem. I’ll move into my RV and mastermind the operation. Our first target: ICE. Yall think I’m playing?
grunch
just change schools a lot. you either learn to fight well or develop a good skill for talking your way out of situations. possibly a bit of both
I moved a ton as well. I don’t think it was 25+, but I went to like 12 elementary schools. I think maybe Aussies fight more than Americans though. I was only in one fight and one little scuffle at school. There were other problems though, like not having friends :( . It was pretty good at some schools though. My parents did make an effort to keep us in one place longer when we were in Jr. High and High School though. My dad took a new job my last year of HS and he moved from Oregon to California on his own and we followed him after I graduated. My little brother was just going into HS that year, so he made a cleaner break too.
I had zero social skills. Home schooled until 5th grade so I honestly had no idea what I was doing… and like most kids who’ve been abused I didn’t have the best impulse control when I’d lose my (considerable) temper. End result was a lot of fights. I really wish I could claim that I was in the right more often, but I honestly just didn’t know how to handle it any other way. At least we moved a lot so I got to keep trying again. 5th-7th was like a Lord of the Flies themed groundhog day for me basically… except the day would start over every 3-4 months lol.
The weirdest thing about the whole era was how little trouble I got in. I think I got suspended for fighting twice? The 90’s were a weird time. I eventually got myself jumped toward the end of 7th grade and figured out that leading with my fists was a bad idea.
As a teenager I trained Tae-Kwon-Do, fought in half-contact tournaments and couldn’t avoid to get in a few fights.
The answer to what to do will widely differ on what kind of fight we’re talking about: subdue random drunk guy, fight a couple of aggressive loudmouths or actually fight for your life?
With the latter eye gouging, elbows to the back of the neck, stomping the throat etc. become options and you definitely don’t want to do that in a random bar fight.
You also don’t want to get on the ground in a UFC style grapple when fighting more than one more person.
Most fights are over pretty quickly. You won’t get into multi round bouts.
In general, I don’t think it matters much what you practice. The most important thing you will learn is confidence which will help you not to panic when a fight starts or when you get punched in the face and to not turn your head. This and not flailing wildly with your arms is already a pretty solid foundation to not lose a fight.
