I used to do Krav Maga but don’t have a huge amount of experience in it. I stopped when I moved away and couldn’t find a decent KM place near me. I went to a few classes of BJJ but I haven’t had the time or energy to go as of late.
Anyway, most fights can be settled with a quick kick to the balls followed by running away. Honestly, I have no interest in being macho in a fight. I’m interested in ending the fight as quickly as possible followed by running away from danger. Most of KM’s work centers around hitting people in the groin. So it’s perfect!
Hitting that specific area in a life-threatening situation is extremely difficult. Your adrenaline rushing reduces the accuracy of your attacks. You’re more likely to endure a bone-on-bone strike with a kick targeting there which is very painful even for the person kicking.
Kicks to the groin are quicker and more effective as you don’t even need to hit the groin perfectly to cause substantial damage. Eye jabs are also useful for temporary blinding or at minimum obscuring the vision of your opponent. A quick, disarming strike that’ll open up a kick to the balls and allow you to run for it.
I’m a relatively weak puncher. Using kicks in a fight plays to my strength. Targeting the thigh and the shin also has value. Ideally, I’d want to weaken him first before hitting the knee.
I’m also not a very fast runner, so I feel the need to incapacitate my opponent. A groin strike is a setup for either taking out a leg or a blow to the head.
You’re talking like a mean who has never been kicked in the balls.
Unless you’re up against Bas Rutten, a proper kick to the groin will incapacitate your attacker for a solid few minutes. Even if you aren’t a fast runner, your adrenaline will have you pumping hard enough to be at least a 1/4 mile away before he recovers.
The benefit of the eye jab is its quickness, efficiency, and how little power you need for it to have an effect. As long as you are using the right technique (attack with four fingers, do not straighten them) it’s very accurate and effective.
i was a bouncer for maybe 2-3 years or so. couple scrapes but mostly with drunk people. had to kick a few people in the knee/leg to get control of them while throwing them out but that’s about it. have been in like maybe 2 real fights in my life as a teenager/college student… i’m a fairly large human by default so nobody ever really has bothered me about anything. im the size that people generally rush to apologize when they step in front of me at a bar, let alone bump into me. it’s pretty nice, everyone should get to be 6-6 300 for a day or so.
eta- on the learning to fight part, i think that would be pretty cool… i hate running/jogging so i generally try and just play basketball/kickball/beach volleyball to get some sweat in. but that would be another way to do cardio with out actually just running. good luck in the endeavor. and give us a TR.
It’s actually been over twenty years since I’ve been in a fight. I really haven’t come close in a long time. I’m mostly non-confrontational, but I feel like I can be a target with the way the country is trending. Plus, I am often carrying $5K or more to and from the poker room.
I’m a pretty good boxer but I really, really hate getting punched in the face. That’s sounds like “duh, who does” but people who’ve trained might know what I’m talking about.
Point is: once you get a good grounding there are tons of solo boxing drills that are great workouts and will help you know ‘how to fight’ in a manner of speaking.
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.