Hacker News Reader

Comment by peatmoss | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art:

Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art.

Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo. And now we have MMA that is a sport that tolerates fairly severe injury of combatants. I can't say I like the direction MMA has gone here. Every time I see it, I kind of get a sick feeling like I'm watching some kind of Roman spectacle.

I trained for a while in a style that taught techniques designed to kill. And, as a pacifist, I was okay with that because they were taught as forms, and the art is not practiced in competition. Clearly MMA had to decide on a tolerable level of violence between "no competition" and "fight to the death." I just wonder how that point of acceptable violence came to be what it is--from the article, broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight. I think I know the answer: maximum injury that won't result in death / legal problems. And I find that a bit troubling.

View on HN

I will be the sole responder who agrees with you that promotions like the UFC cross the line in terms of acceptable injury to fighters.

Most professional MMA fighters with a few years in have severe debilitating injuries. I am not talking about a bad knee of slipped disc, I am talking about severe chronic pain and brain damage, something that is the inevitable result of the kind of punishment they deal with. Just look at someone like George Saint-Pierre who suddenly forgets what he has been doing for the last six hours.

It doesn't matter if fighters participate of their own free will, I could probably go into the slums right now and get two people to fight to the death over a $50 bill. There's a reason we have laws to prevent exploitation and don't just leave it to people's "free will".

I very much like MMA as a sport, but I wish there was a way to protect the fighters better. Headgear? Who can honestly say that they enjoy a fight where the fighters are bathed in each other's blood, not to mention the health implications (even the ref wears gloves).

One might argue that MMA crosses the line in terms of acceptable injury, but it would be quite unfair to single the sport out as "the sport that crosses the line".

Boxing, Kickboxing and Football are arguably as bad as MMA in regards to brain damage, and many other sports in regards to chronic pain of some sort.

Calling MMA out specifically on this issue is a convolution of the perceived violence and the degree of injury. (I don't care if fighters bathe in each other's blood, as long as the blood stems from a cut)

The problem is that protecting the fighters is not simply a matter of adding Headgear (you can get knocked out easily with headgear as well btw) in fights, as a lot of fighters accrue their injuries in training.

If it would be only the fight that could cause harm, I would argue MMA would be safe. But the lifestyle of a fighter as a whole is extremely unhealthy.

Can you link the info about GSP forgetting the last 6 months, didn't hear that one.

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/joe-rogan-gsps-alien-abductio...

he mentioned it here originally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFsUV5ICKk

his theory is that he was abducted by aliens, but it sounds like brain damage...

"Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo."

Sincere question, but when did that happen? I suspect that you're conflating Gracie Jiu-Jitsu with MMA. The art of jiu-jitsu seems to me to be as passive as it ever has been. There've always been choke holds, and armbars, and while the techniques evolve over time, none of that has changed in BJJ.

A punch is not a BJJ technique, for example, but a boxing, or Muay Thai, or whatever technique that gets incorporated into part of a competitor's MMA toolkit... but that doesn't make it BJJ.

When I first read that sentence, I was reminded of having sparred with a BJJ practitioner way back in the mid-90s. He practiced a brutal form of BJJ that I had never encountered. To be fair, BJJ wasn't popular back then, and there certainly weren't gyms in every city, so it was a bit foreign. Long story short, even though it was just a competitive sparring competition, I lost, and I lost in embarrassing fashion because he used some kind of pinky lock that made me want to cry. So, reading about re-brutalization, my first thought was that they were teaching the small joint manipulation again, but I haven't heard of anybody doing that, which is kind of sad, because it's super effective as a defense. But they wouldn't, because the gaming commissions won't allow small joint manipulation techniques in the octagon, so there's not really any point in teaching it outside of shops specializing on self defense, and even those can't be trained effectively because you can't employ those techniques against other humans without a severe risk of injury.

> Sincere question, but when did that happen? I suspect that you're conflating Gracie Jiu-Jitsu with MMA. The art of jiu-jitsu seems to me to be as passive as it ever has been. There've always been choke holds, and armbars, and while the techniques evolve over time, none of that has changed in BJJ.

Fair question, and I'll readily admit I have limited experience with BJJ. However, at my first judo dojo, we shared space with a BJJ club, and I watched them perform locks on joints that are verboten in judo as practiced today--the reason being safety. Funny enough, aikido even has joint locks (wrist) that aren't done in competition judo due to the potential for injury when applied during shiai. As Wikipedia describes it, however, the presence of some of these techniques is due to BJJ forking early from Kodokan judo. So, I have my chronology a bit wrong. BJJ didn't (in this traditional form) re-brutalize judo; it forked from an earlier more brutal form of judo, and judo evolved toward less injury.

In terms of small joint manipulation, I don't know about BJJ. However, I studied for a while in Danzan Ryu jujitsu in a blessedly not-testosterone-fueled environment. And that style very definitely had finger and toe locks. They were often combined with pins and were left in place as the final application of submission hold on someone you intended to extricate yourself from--mainly to make sure they weren't going to get up as you were trying to put distance between yourself. That escape aspect might have been my instructor's own flourish from aikido / Daito ryu training though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu#Divergen...

Having experience in both, there are far fewer injuries in BJJ than Judo.

While BJJ does practice takedowns, it is not the primary focus of the sport, where Judo always starts standing.

You rarely, if ever, get injured from a joint lock, even when rolling (sparring) or competing in a tournament in BJJ.

Wrist locks and heel hooks are mentioned and practiced early on in BJJ, but they are not permitted as techniques to use on or by white belts while rolling. It is certainly a riskier submission, as you don't tend to feel it before it's too late, but I have never seen someone injured by a joint lock in years of training when it wasn't admittedly their fault (ie: they didn't tap when they should have).

But I have seen quite a few shoulder injuries from takedowns, in both Judo and BJJ. People need to learn how to fall properly, but accidents do happen.

> Having experience in both, there are far fewer injuries in BJJ than Judo.

I'd actually be curious to know what the stats on that are. I certainly don't think either of our anecdata are sufficient to answer the question.

However, as noted in the wikipedia article I linked earlier, the judo's banning of various joint locks that are not banned in BJJ was done from a safety motivation. In principle, I'm open to the idea that these modifications of judo were not effective in their intended purpose to reduce injury. However, given some knowledge of (non-arm) joint locking techniques, an observed reduction in injury seems highly plausible.

In short, I'm open to the possibility that the locks in BJJ don't constitute a significant additional risk above and beyond judo. However, judo's ban on BJJ-sanctioned locks does not strike me as particularly ill conceived.

Stats would be interesting. I rarely see injuries in BJJ, whether that's at the gym or at a tournament. Even then, it's most commonly due to an overextended armbar and someone not tapping soon enough.

You also don't spend a lot of time in Judo attempting to submit or defending a submission. There's a lot of talk that Judo's bans have really watered the sport down, including things as fundamental as what sleeve grips are allowed, such as being unable to break an opponent's grip with two hands. It's becoming a point-fighting martial art in competition.

Heel hooks are dangerous because they don't hurt and someone untrained in them (and particularly hard headed) may not tap in time.

You can feel most joint locks, such as knee bars and arm bars, so it's safe to know when it's time to tap.

Wrist locks aren't very common in BJJ. Aikido does far more wrist locks. We don't train them in BJJ very often because they aren't very effective and are easy to get out of.

Most blood chokes, including arm and leg triangles, are easy to tap to and low risk. Sometimes someone may put on a choke that is a trachea choke, but the worst you have there is a sore throat. Neck cranks are also no-no's for lower belts.

Shoulders are, by far, the most common place of injury.

The most dangerous subs are usually shoulder locks, such as Americana and Kimura, as people have vastly different flexibility. And, as I mentioned earlier, getting injured from takedowns.

> There's a lot of talk that Judo's bans have really watered the sport down, including things as fundamental as what sleeve grips are allowed, such as being unable to break an opponent's grip with two hands. It's becoming a point-fighting martial art in competition.

That's fair. To be honest, the competition aspects of judo are what ultimately made me give it up. I respect that Jigoro Kano was trying to find a place in the world for these techniques, and that sport was one way to carve that space out, however I'm not in martial arts for competition.

Truth be told, I'm not really in martial arts for self defense either. The reality is, that there will always be someone with the capacity to bring greater violence to a situation than I can defend against. Even if I'm really great, there are always knives, guns, car bombs, and nukes that I'm probably not going to walk away unscathed from.

On a related tangent, my Danzan Ryu sensei had a self-defense illustration that has stuck with me. Just about the time we felt pretty good with our tanto (wooden knife) takeaways, she'd have us practice our knife fighting with sharpie markers. Lesson learned: even if you're really good, you're going to get cut, and it's probably not going to be trivial injury. If someone flashes me a knife and asks for my wallet, my wallet is theirs. The only time I would consider a knife / gun takeaway would be if it was very clear that the person wielding said weapon was utterly intent on using it. I suppose if some random person were to try and beat me up on the street, my martial training would be somewhat useful in avoiding injury, but I'm most definitely not training for this scenario.

These days I train aikido, but do so for the fitness, the mental challenge, and the camaraderie of the dojo. Unlike judo or BJJ, I can imagine myself training into later life. That said, my first judo sensei was an old hippy who trained for many years in Korea and Japan and claims he never suffered anything worse than a sprained toe. So, maybe I'm just a nancy--a label I'm very happy to wear ;-)

> You can feel most joint locks, such as knee bars and arm bars, so it's safe to know when it's time to tap.

Arm bars, definitely. However, I've been told there is a significant percentage of the population that actually cannot properly feel a knee bar before the point of damage. When we trained them in DZR, we applied them very carefully, especially with people experiencing them the first time, in order to make sure we were dealing with someone who properly felt pain in advance of damage.

> Aikido does far more wrist locks. We don't train them in BJJ very often because they aren't very effective and are easy to get out of.

In terms of ground fighting, I'd reckon that's definitely true. Aikido doesn't do much of that, and so wrist bars are done more dynamically. My judo intuition about wrist bars makes me a very cautious aikidoka on these things. On the other hand, the vaulting throws from kote gaeshi sure are purdy! Like most things with aikido, I suspect it becomes reasonably "effective" after a decade or two of training.

> Most blood chokes, including arm and leg triangles, are easy to tap to and low risk. Sometimes someone may put on a choke that is a trachea choke, but the worst you have there is a sore throat. Neck cranks are also no-no's for lower belts.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Same as judo. Even a blood choke that results in unconsciousness isn't crazy dangerous if the person isn't also falling. Blood chokes shut the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain, and restore it instantly, so the risk of brain damage is low compared to wind chokes that deoxygenate the blood. There are similar rank restrictions in judo competition for chokes (and arm bars).

> These days I train aikido, but do so for the fitness, the mental challenge, and the camaraderie of the dojo. Unlike judo or BJJ, I can imagine myself training into later life.

These are the same reasons I train BJJ. There is nothing quite like rolling in terms of exercise. I also train with a lot of older guys (into their 60's, some 70's) who are very healthy and continue to train, drill and even roll lightly.

The thing with most martial arts is that you take out what you put in. If you don't want to compete, you certainly don't have to. I do tournaments, but I do it because I think it's fun--not because I plan on being a world level competitor.

There really is nothing like being able to put what you've learned to the test. That's what I have found BJJ offers me that no other martial art has--an outlet to really test what I am doing without no real risk of being hurt.

You can't spar with full force in Muay Thai or Judo. But you can roll and sweat and lose and walk away better than you arrived in BJJ. And it's completely optional.

> "Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo."

This isn't particularly true. I think the poster was thinking closer to Vale Tudo (and, of course, MMA), which BJJ has close roots with.

BJJ is a descendant of Judo in that it essentially takes Judo to its logical conclusion. Judo (and BJJ) begin standing. But Judo ends with a simple series of points (take down into, maybe, a submission).

BJJ goes until someone taps. That is, you start the roll standing (or kneeling, which is more lax) and continue sparring until a submission is performed. Judo would stop after the take down and quick sub attempt.

The Gracies, however, did initially use BJJ as a form of self defense. It's still very much an aspect of rolling to go for position over submission. While you can submit from traditionally vulnerable spots, you can also nullify your opponent's offense, such as in guard.

Ultimately, however, you want to mount them or take their back. In a street fight, this dominate position would let you strike and choke with ease.

In fact, a lot of early BJJ schools would have people from other martial arts who would dojo storm. There's a pretty well known story where one BJJ teacher (I forget who off hand) told his students to not strike with fist. Only slap.

So they would mount the opponent and slap at them until they could choke them.

I enjoy doing BJJ because I can train and spar at whatever intensity (light, medium, hard), and even go compete at tournaments, without injury. You learn your limits and tap early and often.

> This isn't particularly true.

We may be disagreeing on what constitutes more or less brutal. And I freely admit that my experience with BJJ is limited. Quoting:

> one BJJ teacher (I forget who off hand) told his students to not strike with fist. Only slap.

This suggests to me that this was in contrast to the norm, which would be to mount and then strike with the fist. However, in judo, I know of no competition in which atemi waza (striking techniques) are permitted.

To me the application of strikes to a controlled opponent is more brutal / violent than judo, where those things do not occur. Actually, I've only ever seen atemi practiced in judo as part of kata.

There is no striking in BJJ, just like there is no striking in Judo.

End of story.

> This suggests to me that this was in contrast to the norm, which would be to mount and then strike with the fist.

This was a dojo raid situation, which, believe it or not, used to happen quite a bit. A gym (of whatever martial art) shows up and challenges your gym because they say their art is better. So a lot of times schools would accept for whatever reason, and they'd have a fight. A different era, etc.

Say what you want about whether or not you agree with the challenge fighting, but schools would fight schools--Judo schools included. The point of my story was that they were able to defeat the school without striking.

On to a another point: if you are defending yourself on the street, you'd be an idiot to restrict yourself from striking if the situation is truly dangerous.

"if you are defending yourself on the street, you'd be an idiot to restrict yourself from striking if the situation is truly dangerous"

Not necessarily. If you're a 100 pound woman being attacked by a 180 pound man, there's really very little point in striking if you aren't able to kick or knee genitals.

And before it comes up, BJJ and judo techniques, even without striking, work pretty well on street combat situations, at least in buying you time to get away from the danger.

The rules of MMA have become fairly well defined in recent years. With the goal of minimizing the chance of life changing injury (remember injury and potential death is possible with many popular sports). Which make it quiet different from a Roman spectacle.

A fight can be stopped by a referee if the fighter is deemed to be unable to protect themselves effectively in order to prevent excessive injury. A fighter can stop the fight at any time if he is not comfortable with the pain.

I think the distinction between sports violence and criminal violence is that both parties are well informed, consenting and aware of what is happening and that its happening in a controlled environment where the risks are minimized with doctors on hand.

Whether or not sanctioned informed violence is personally to your taste or good for society is a different question.

"Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury."

I think is not strange. This oscillation is normal. There is a tension in all the martial arts that serious practicants are very aware of.

If you practice only the form, where you can practice everything, you are not really practicing, because you are not used to what means a real fight. In the other hand is impossible to practice in a total realistic way because is dangerous and not healthy.

The same tension translate to competition. When you start making rules it stop being a real combat, but without rules is impossible to have competition.

In the Brazilian Jujitsu combats, for instance, there are a lot of things that are forbidden and you never train for (attack the eyes, break fingers..) but you would find in a "street fight"

As the bio mechanics are the same for all the martial arts, we are all humans after all, I think that one of the more important things that determine a martial art "shape" is how it solve this tension between form and combat. The other more important being where your focus is (for instance stand up vs. floor, or grappling vs. punching).

What you describe is the natural movement in those axis.

I've done about one month of Pencak Silat many years ago, and in that month, I learned to attack the eyes (a whip with the fingers to cause pain or temporarily blind) and how to rip out a throat. It was obviously not done as sport. And yet this was also a fairly defensive style where every move started from a dodge and you never attacked with a fist. But it was a very aggressive defense.

The problem with "deadly" styles and moves is known as Kano paradox (after Jigoro Kano the judo founder, not the Mortal Kombat Kano ;) ), or alternatively a randori paradox.

It boils down to that: you can learn eye-gouging, but you can't really practice it, so it ends up less effective than more "modest" and safer techniques.

Learning to rip out throats without actually ever ripping it lacks lacks in the so-called aliveness aspect: https://youtu.be/imjmLWj5WCU

Additionally to that, it's also not particularly useful in most situations even if it can be performed effectively. Unless you're truly in imminent danger for your life then killing someone will likely be a hugely disproportionate reaction, especially if done in such a brutal way as ripping out throats, and will lead to some serious consequences like long jail time, getting sued for medical bills, etc.

There's a common (apocryphal?) story about an untrained guy who got into fight with an experienced grappler. The grappler got the takedown, got on top and was beating on him a little to show he'd won. Then right when he was about to stop and let him go, the guy tries to stick his fingers in his eyes. He ends up getting completely brutalized by his now really upset opponent who had already won and wants to punish the loser for trying to permanently blind him rather than just accept he'd lost.

You basically stop being the victim and become the aggressor at that point, so it's good to be able to de-escalate a fight without having to severely maim the other person. Having a small repertoire of techniques that can only be used to kill or maim someone leaves you vulnerable in a huge number of self-defense scenarios.

No. The part about "and was beating on him a little to show he'd won" tells me that the guy on top is now the aggressor.

The guy getting beat on does not know when the other guy will stop, or even if he will ever stop. Given that he got "completely brutalized" for using a maiming technique in self-defense against an opponent that clearly outmatched him, my hindsight judgment is that it would have been justified for anyone present to threaten lethal force to stop the fight, simply to prevent further injury to the loser.

This is why you avoid fights in civilized society, and disengage as quickly as possible if you cannot. The best fighter in the world is the one who can run away the fastest.

I can certainly see why someone would find the entire story disgusting, and the point isn't to imply fights are fun tests of machoness. The point is not to escalate a fight if you're going to lose it anyway. To continue your example, if someone had chosen to threaten lethal force, they would have been escalating it yet again, and may have just as well ended up getting killed themselves. (For example, if the other person had an armed group of friends nearby.) The entire hypothetical thing is an example of how things can get out of hand really fast.

The main reason I brought it up was that a lot of people think of eye gouges and groin shots as a "get out of jail free" card in a fight, and doing so has a good chance of getting them seriously hurt against someone who will not be stopped by it.

That aside, I certainly agree with this part:

>This is why you avoid fights in civilized society, and disengage as quickly as possible if you cannot.

You can't de-escalate a fight unilaterally. You can try to surrender. But if you tap out and the guy keeps hurting you, what do you do? Let him? Way to go, Gandhi, but you're still bound for the hospital.

In certain fights, surrender may be equivalent to suicide. You would need to know something about the character of your opponent, when you are probably only acquainted with his fists. If you are in actual fear for your life, you should be trying to incapacitate your opponent by any means at your disposal, whether it is likely to piss him off [more] or not. What would he do? Beat you to death twice?

Since escalation can be unilateral, and de-escalation is usually not, that produces a ratcheting effect that few people can afford to crank up. You never know if the other guy is going to be a grand-master fighter. Or a psycho. Or both.

I stand by my opinion that beating on a guy who is already defenseless represents an escalation, and the loser is not able to meaningfully de-escalate from there.

Your initial point makes sense, but:

> There's a common (apocryphal?) story about an untrained guy who got into fight with an experienced grappler. The grappler got the takedown, got on top and was beating on him a little to show he'd won. Then right when he was about to stop and let him go, the guy tries to stick his fingers in his eyes. He ends up getting completely brutalized by his now really upset opponent who had already won and wants to punish the loser for trying to permanently blind him rather than just accept he'd lost.

That sounds like the grappler making up a bunch of bullshit to excuse his own sadistic brutality. If someone has you pinned down and is beating on you "a little" (WTF?), a rational person does not assume that they're "about to stop and let him go". You assume they're going to keep on hitting you until their arm gets tired, and you take any measure necessary to save yourself from permanent injury or death. From the perspective of the guy on the ground, he was getting the shit beat out of him no matter what, so there's nothing to lose in trying for a gouge.

Perhaps I should have left that part out, but as I replied below, the moral is supposed to be that eye gouges and groin shots won't help much if you can't control the fight already. The guy already winning hands down is in a lot better position to pull those dirty tricks, so there is definitely "something to lose" by escalating it. The saying is "position before submission."

But a lot of people make money teaching unreliable self-defense stuff about how you can beat anyone with a quick eye gouge or groin shot, leaving people with a dangerous sense of self-confidence, imo. It's low percentage stuff, least likely to work on a truly dangerous opponent and mainly just good for hurting people who pose no threat to you anyway. Hence the story as a potential warning.

And don't forget the art of handgun disarming :)

Very much agreed; I tend to dismiss claims of "we study lethal moves, so we're more effective". You are good at what you train at. Training must be a close simulation of reality.

We didn't practice the throat ripping at all, obviously (except maybe feeling the spot behind the throat where you need to put your fingers), but the whip technique was really the standard strike. Only we did it to the stomach rather than the eye. But it's hard to tell whether your technique is any good, and aim is completely irrelevant. Maybe you could combine this with aiming at an eye-sized target? But it's always going to be a very crude approximation of the real thing.

Same thing with medieval fencing: injury is a big part of sword fighting, but you don't want to do that in real life, so you use blunt swords and lots of protection, so you have no idea whether your strike to the wrist would have been ineffective or would have chopped off the hand. And because protection is never perfect, you also train not to hit too hard, which is the exact opposite of what you'd want to do in reality.

Yeah exactly, so practicing sword fighting doesn't prepare you for real sword fighting as good as boxing prepares you for a real-life fist fight.

Because you can practice boxing at full force, and you can find out if you're able to knock someone down. Of course noone goes 100% on every sparing, but once in a while, or in competitions - entirely possible.

Every practice is an approximation, sure, but some approximations are (inevitably) orders of magnitude more crude than others.

Cagefighting came into existence as a way to test the efficacy of traditional martial arts. So much of what is taught is complete rubbish ("lethal techniques" that only ever practised against compliant opponents, etc.). All the beautiful movements and choreographed dancing of traditional martial arts fly out of the window when you face a skilled fighter that is trying to hurt you.

The fighters know exactly what they sign up for, and probably would not want it any other way. They are consenting adults having fun. :)

Regarding the brutalization of judo: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there. Thinking that a martial art should not be brutal reveals a special kind of first-world thinking.

> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas

The article paints a very different picture, an upper-class family dynasty developing the martial art.

Yes, he is mistaken. BJJ is certainly practiced in favelas, and there are people who use it to give youths something to do, as a way to keep them away from crime, drugs, etc.

See the Tererê Kids Project, for instance: http://fightland.vice.com/blog/social-change-through-jiu-jit...

No, it was not born in the favelas. The article is right. The Gracies were never poor and never lived in favelas. I'm a Brazilian with a pretty good knowledge of BJJ history (my father watched Helio's fights, etc).

> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there.

Do you know the difference between martial arts and martial sports?

Fundamentally if there is competition, it's a sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques. Also differentiate between lethal and brutal.

There's a lot of vitriol between people who practice different styles, with a lot of guys from traditional styles (karate, tae kwon do, kung fu, etc.) claiming combat sports are worthless in a Real Fight (TM) because it's just competition. Completely inaccurate in my experience - people who compete in full-contact combat sports will almost always beat the people who don't, other things being equal. The techniques don't have to be lethal to completely destroy your opponent, and BJJ was made for choking people out or breaking their limbs so badly they literally cannot continue the fight. Not to mention there's a plethora of illegal techniques ranging from neck cranks to spinal locks, removed from competition because they're far too dangerous and can kill or paralyze you. The best tournament practitioners are a lot more likely to know these and be able to apply them than people who sit around theorizing about them.

But there's still a lot of big ego'd guys who can't fight and like to impress and intimidate people with statements like, "This technique is far too dangerous for me to actually demonstrate, but I could use it to destroy sport fighters any time I wanted! Don't make me hurt you to prove it." It's a lot of BS, and easier to perpetuate because grapplers can still beat you without hurting you that bad, whereas if you challenge a boxer and he caves your face in people don't get right up and say, "One more try, I can do better next time!"

One of my best MA memories was getting my ass kicked in 5 seconds by a guy half my size who was only using one arm because the other was broken in a recent grappling tournament. Don't fall into the "combat sports aren't real" mentality. BJJ, judo, and wrestling guys will mess you up if you're not trained in how to defend against them.

> BJJ, judo, and wrestling guys will mess you up if you're not trained in how to defend against them.

This has been made painfully aware to me on enough occasions that it feels ingrained as instinct.

That said, too many people assume that violence is an easily categorizable thing. Most people simply don't have a lot of exposure to the risk of a violent encounter between exactly 2, largely similarly sized, unarmed belligerents, that you can't talk your way out of or run away from.

Quite contrarily if you are going to experience violence outside of a military or professional context in most parts of the Western world it is overwhelmingly going to be either domestic violence or a surprise attack with multiple attackers and/or weapons. In many of these cases the absolute worst case scenario is ending up on the ground.

The point being that grappling/boxing/etc are fun activities and are great ways to win a fight, but honestly you aren't likely to get in a fight.

> traditional styles (karate, tae kwon do, kung fu, etc.)

those are all to some degree combat sports. Also most of those would be pretty useless in a street fight.

> Completely inaccurate in my experience - people who compete in full-contact combat sports will almost always beat the people who don't, other things being equal.

Can you explain to me why generally armies teach their soldier something like Krav Maga which doesn't really have competition rather than boxing or BJJ? Don't get me wrong, armies sometimes teach boxing or BJJ as well but it's definitely not the main martial art.

> The techniques don't have to be lethal to completely destroy your opponent, and BJJ was made for choking people out or breaking their limbs so badly they literally cannot continue the fight.

They also concentrate on fighting on the ground which is pretty fucking useless IRL. It's also useless against say multiple opponents. Or are you expecting them to wait for you to choke them out one by one?

> Not to mention there's a plethora of illegal techniques ranging from neck cranks to spinal locks, removed from competition because they're far too dangerous and can kill or paralyze you.

Yeah. So what? Are these practiced in BJJ or what? Because they are in other some arts.

> The best tournament practitioners are a lot more likely to know these and be able to apply them than people who sit around theorizing about them.

You have no clue how some of the more lethal martial arts are practiced. The good schools definitely aren't just 'theorizing' and sparring is an essential part of the training.

> if you challenge a boxer and he caves your face in people don't get right up and say,

A boxer learns to fight in accordance with some rules. With those rules being absent IRL, he's at a disadvantage because he's not expecting someone to say kick his knee out.

> One of my best MA memories was getting my ass kicked in 5 seconds by a guy half my size who was only using one arm because the other was broken in a recent grappling tournament.

What am I supposed to do with this statement. Maybe you are just a shit grappler.

I'm curious if you'd care to mention exactly what "more lethal martial arts" or "good schools" you're alluding too. I also specified "full-contact" previously, meaning live training - would be quite surprised to find legitimate schools practicing "lethal techniques" at anything close to full speed.

>Can you explain to me why generally armies teach their soldier something like Krav Maga...

The US military's combatives program is based mostly on combat sports[1], e.g. BJJ, judo, muay thai, boxing, wrestling, etc. The training is adjusted to their particular use cases, like trying not to lose your weapon, since soldiers with guns who can shoot are a lot more valuable to the military than ones who can grapple. That aside, and if you don't believe me fine, but most military guys will lose quickly to even an average BJJ blue belt. I've seen it many times, and anyone at an MMA or grappling school near a military base should be able to confirm as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatives#Modern_Army_Combati...

>They also concentrate on fighting on the ground which is pretty fucking useless IRL. It's also useless against say multiple opponents. Or are you expecting them to wait for you to choke them out one by one?

Except it's completely not. Sure, ground fighting works best (imo) in a one-on-one fight against unarmed opponents, but if you're attacked by a team of people with serious weapons you're probably screwed anyway. BJJ (if that's the one we're focusing on) also involves a lot of wrestling, judo, position control, etc. No one forces you to go to the ground, and a lot of the actual Gracie self-defense stuff involves standing escape type techniques - "break the grip and get away." And again, it doesn't take long to choke someone out, a few seconds if the grip is right, and even less to just rip a shoulder or break a wrist. You can finish a kimura standing, for example, it's just easier to get out of if the person knows how to defend it.

>A boxer learns to fight in accordance with some rules... he's at a disadvantage because he's not expecting someone to say kick his knee out.

Opening up leg strikes certainly changes the game, but experienced boxers will have extensive practice in controlling their position, distance, making angles and avoiding strikes. If this comparison is still between people doing full-contact styles with live training, versus people not, he still has a huge advantage over an opponent with no practice in an actual combat situation.

You seem to be alluding to styles where people somehow practice "lethal" techniques in an effective manner without neutering the effectiveness of their training, but provide no suggestions of what styles and schools those are. If you could provide some examples it would be more convincing.

>What am I supposed to do with this statement. Maybe you are just a shit grappler.

Maybe drop the attitude? It was one of my first days of class, against someone with years of experience. I'm not really interested in debating it if there's no intention to reach consensus and just toss insults instead.

> I'm curious if you'd care to mention exactly what "more lethal martial arts" or "good schools" you're alluding too.

That's actually a pretty complex question because I'm not sure I can really draw the line along the different styles rather than along different dojos/masters. I would say that generally e.g. Krav Maga, Japanese Ju Jitsu (including some of the derivatives like Small Circle Ju Jitsu), then something like Wing Chun, Musado and many others are pretty good. Note that minus Ju Jitsu, I have only limited experience with the others so my impression of them might be wrong but they seemed pretty good.

The most important question is whether they teach you e.g. where on the body to strike to kill and then prepare you physically and mentally not to freeze when you get into a situation when it's needed. Another thing I have noticed is that the better dojos are very eclectic and pick and choose from other martial arts if it makes sense.

> The US military's combatives program is based mostly on combat sports[1], e.g. BJJ, judo, muay thai, boxing, wrestling, etc.

The fact that they pick and choose is exactly why it's effective though. They don't teach pure BJJ because pure BJJ isn't that useful IRL.

> will lose quickly to even an average BJJ blue belt

I'm well aware of that. But remember, none of these matches were to the death (I assume).

> but if you're attacked by a team of people with serious weapons you're probably screwed anyway.

If they have weapons, your martial art should teach you how to get the fuck out of there ASAP. If they don't have weapons, self-defense is not unimaginable. Harder, but not impossible.

> Opening up leg strikes certainly changes the game, but experienced boxers will have extensive practice in controlling their position, distance, making angles and avoiding strikes

He's prepared for a different type of opponent. Boxer will do well in mid-range but not so well in a clinch or on longer distances.

> It was one of my first days of class, against someone with years of experience.

Right. So maybe it wasn't the best example to bring up if you didn't have much practice.

sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques.

A blood choke is probably one of the most lethal move in all of (unarmed) martial arts and is also one of the most standard techniques in BJJ and Sambo and also taught in Judo and most other grappling arts, all of which are "martial sports".

Cool. But there's like a billion others.

There are the neck cranks, but that's got a fairly low chance of actually killing someone. There's the curb stomp, but that's hardly martial arts "move". I suppose a piledriver onto a hard surface could kill someone. Other than that there really aren't any moves I can think of that can realistically be considered lethal with any sort of consistency, despite the claims some less reputable martial arts sometimes make.

Care to enlighten me?

Here's a couple of locations where to strike:

* temple of the head (and the head in general minus the forehead)

* "Rabbit punch" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_punch

* Adam's apple (and throat in general)

* solar plexus

* heart (if you punch strong enough you will confuse the heart in a way where the single muscle fibers won't be contracting at once and thereby stop the blood circulation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commotio_cordis

I said a billion because there's a ton of ways to cause trauma to these.

> can realistically be considered lethal with any sort of consistency, despite the claims some less reputable martial arts sometimes make.

Yeah, it's not 100%. But for example the Rabbit punch is extremely dangerous.

You're moving the goal posts, from "lethal" to "painful with a small outside chance of death or permanent injury". For the throat and solar plexus I can't even find any serious indication of them causing deaths in healthy individuals, and a strike to the heart is only really deadly for children and young teenagers. Hell all of those except the rabbit punch are perfectly legal in most full contact martial arts competition and hardly have a history of causing death or even serious injury. A solid Muay Thai kick to the head as a greater chance of killing than a strike to the solar plexus, and thousands of those land in sporting events every day without incident.

Yeah, it's not 100%

It's almost certainly not even 1%. If your martial art teaches that a move is "deadly" and the move isn't a blood choke, then they are almost certainly at the very least greatly exaggerating.

> You're moving the goal posts, from "lethal" to "painful with a small outside chance of death or permanent injury".

I never moved a goal post. I still maintain that the chance of death is pretty large ~80% for some (it's pretty low for the heart).

> For the throat and solar plexus I can't even find any serious indication of them causing deaths in healthy individuals

You most definitely can kill people by punching them in the throat. Google around, the consensus seems to be clear. E.g. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/865277-overview

> Hell all of those except the rabbit punch are perfectly legal in most full contact martial arts competition and hardly have a history of causing death or even serious injury.

E.g. throat punches are considered fouls in UFC and K-1.

> It's almost certainly not even 1%. If your martial art teaches that a move is "deadly" and the move isn't a blood choke, then they are almost certainly at the very least greatly exaggerating.

Google around first.

Classifying Gracie Jiu Jitsu as re-brutalizing Judo isn't the term I'd use. To be completely honest, it's simply wrong to describe BJJ as such. Brutal is the last word I would use to describe it.

Jiu-jitsu lends itself much more to the preservation of the health of both combatants in a self-defense or sport scenario as compared to other martial arts. Certainly more so than striking based systems. I would argue that the main focus of any jiu-jitsu practitioner is to end the fight via choke. Look at sport jiu jitsu such as the ADCC or IBJJF. They aren't gladiatorial. The injuries suffered in these contests are as severe as those in any non-combat sport such as soccer or baseball.

MMA on the other hand is by definition violent. The connection between MMA and BJJ is of course undeniable; the fathers of modern MMA are the children of the father of BJJ. However, they are VASTLY different things.

Watch the very first UFC tournaments...the ones where Royce Gracie won. You'll see something much different than what you see now. Modern UFC training is a blend of BJJ, Kickboxing, boxing, and other disciplines. Royce didn't use much of that, if any.

There are pure BJJ tournaments and they are the opposite of brutal. It's all technique and people don't get injured that often, unless Rousimar Palhares* is part of the tourney. He's famous for holding submissions far longer than he needs to, and causing damage. He's the exception, not the rule.

* http://fightland.vice.com/blog/rousimar-palhares-is-a-leg-lo...

Two things:

- the article you link has Rousimar doing (apparently legal, fight-winning) leg locks. These are not allowed in judo on safety grounds.

- holy crap--the idea that there are people allowed to participate in multiple tournaments after not letting up on a tap strikes me as insanely irresponsible. Yeah, at that point, continuing to apply a technique after submission is bad bad bad. But, allowing a sociopath back into your dojo to potentially injure your other students is equally bad bad bad.

Yeah, he seems to move from promotion to promotion. Seems like he should have been banned, for life, after the first promotion kicked him out (after multiple instances of holding the sub too long).

Not interested in the discussion, but just to correct:

"-from the article, broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight. "

That's not true. When a referee sees a serious injury, they will stop the fight. Of course the web is full with clips of fights with lots of blood and stories of winning fights with broken bones, but that's selection bias - nobody talks about those hundreds of thousands of fights where neither participant has more than a few bruises, if that.

>broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight.

That is just wrong. In any professional MMA organization, fights are called at this point to prevent permanent injury to the fighters so that they can sustain a long career.

Jon Jones was allowed to keep righting with a hyperextended elbow... and he won. He had to take a big chunk of time off to recover afterwards but he was fighting again.

Josh Koscheck suffered a broken orbital bone at the hands of Georges St Pierre in the first round at UFC 124. The fight went the full five rounds.

Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context.

Just to be clear, Judo was created by taking only those parts of Jujitsu that could be actually practiced at full power and strength. It wasn't about creating a sporting variant.

> broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight

There's MMA, and then there's no-holds-barred (or vale tudo, literally "anything goes").

MMA in the western world today is an organized sport, with rules to protect the fighters, and has little to do with how the Gracies used to fight in Brazil. Yes, you can still find nhb events, and you can still find MMA events that are freakshows, but events like UFC, Cage Warriors, Bellator, etc. are very well organized, and fighter safety is important.

They didn't "rebrutalize" judo, although admittedly bjj stayed closer to the requirements of real-life fights in compare to modern judo which neglected less spectacular aspects (such as ground fighting) for the sake of more flashy stuff (throws look way better on TV).

I'm not a aikido-ist, but I've had some friends who were very high level. They explained to me the origin of aikido was as a technique that policemen could use with plausible deniability. When people watch someone fight against an aikido-ist they see: "The guy charged at him and something happened and then the guy ran right into that lamp post and knocked himself out".

Whether that is really true, or I misinterpreted what I was told, I'm not sure, but I always find it an amusing thought.

I hope for your friend's sake that they just misinterpreted the origin.

Aikido has a Paul Bunyan creator that I would say is analogous to Yoda. He was from the stories I heard, from a direct student of his Roy Suenaka of Wadokai Aikido, pretty much a modern Miyamoto Musashi and I'm sure no one will ever get completely true stories today. He started his life as a farmer, served in the Japanese Army during WW2, and had a spiritual awakening eventually leading to the creation of Aikido. He's an interesting person due to when he lived and the life he lived.

Aikido has soft (spiritual) and hard (martial) techniques. A lot of sensei's only subscribe to one or the other and there are two major societies, Ki and Aikikai. When I practiced, we subscribed to both, so we even made use of things like choke holds and punches to initiate.

One of the things I enjoy about Aikido is that many of the techniques have "nice" and "not so nice" variations. The ikkyo technique can put an opponent on the ground with a minimal amount of pain. The nikyo technique is similar in some ways but can hurt a heck of a lot more because of the way the wrist is manipulated. I am guessing your friend(s) was illustrating that aikido has some nice ways of inducing compliance and some "not so nice" wrist breaking ways of inducing compliance.

A Gracie practitioner once told me that he felt MMA was safer than boxing for the competitors' long-term health. His explanation was that boxing matches typically run much longer and involve many more head strikes per match than MMA matches, which means the boxers are more at risk for brain damage.

This was also part of the UFC's argument to help regulate MMA. They kept a small number of rounds, a point system, and refs who could call a match when someone stopped protecting themselves. This, along with no strikes to the back of the head, made UFC on average more safe than boxing (unless you get head kicked, in which case you're definitely worse off).

Perhaps you should watch other sports then. I try to avoid watching things I don't like to watch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com