Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

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I agree that quality is an issue in martial arts, and some are undoubtably ineffective. (Aikido anyone?) Also many that are not totally ineffective were not exactly designed for maximum effectiveness. For instance Capoeira. It is designed for a combination of fighting and dancing in friendly competition to music. Is it a surprise that it isn't the most effective way of hurting people?

Anyways the design goals of Krav Maga seem to me to be to make something that is easy to teach quickly to groups of people that is reasonably effective in nasty situations those groups are likely to encounter. Groups like military and police. The goal isn't to make great fighters. It is to help a police recruit with only 120 hours of training survive the guy who pulls a knife while resisting arrest. As long as it does that, it has succeeded. And right now most police departments and multiple military forces are convinced that it is good for that.

In terms of teaching MMA central ideas, I'm not sure how it could possibly do so. Since Krag Maga is derivative of virtually everything else, it doesn't really have many original ideas. Its focus on dirty strikes is not allowed in MMA. And professional fighters don't particularly need their lessons carefully broken down for ease of learning.

On your related note, I'm not sure why you thought it relevant. To make my point I talked about the MMA style that I thought would be least useful in the hypothetical bar fight. That doesn't mean that all MMA styles are going to be ineffective against multiple opponents. For instance kickboxing offers a lot of ways to take someone out of a fight fast without leaving a big opening for his friend to attack you. Therefore it is unsurprising that a pair of top kickboxers took out a much larger number of opponents in a fight.

For what it's worth, I do believe that Krav Maga and similar styles are potentially the most useful of any martial arts not used in MMA, for the reason that they fulfill a different niche (fighting in non-fair situations), as you state. It is very hard to compare such styles objectively, since you aren't able to practice crippling/disabling blows or fighting with weapons at full speeds unless you are willing to rapidly lose training partners. Thus we are left with endorsements, but that is the nature of the beast. Perhaps some military or police force could teach different groups different methods and measure who performs the best, but even then there would be too many variables to isolate.

However, for arts that claim to teach one-on-one unarmed combat, including all the ninja/master/sensei arts, there remains an effective proving ground and their absence from it is telling.

Somehow I think we're in basic agreement. How disappointing, it was shaping up into an interesting argument.

Anyways to answer your question about why less effective arts are popular, I think you already gave the important part of the answer. To be effective, the style must involving training at speed with real and continued contact. (Having protective padding is OK, but you need the contact.) If it doesn't involve that, then when you actually get hit in a real fight you are going to be in trouble really fast.

But your random Joe who wants to get in shape and be able to protect himself in the unlikely event of a real fight doesn't want to spar at speed with real and continued contact. And so will gravitate to the most impressive looking martial art that doesn't scare him.

As you said, if you're going to take a bunch of guys and gals with no interest in sport fight and put them through ~100 hours of training in how to defend themselves in real world situations, then MMA fighting is probably not ideal.

However, when I hear young adult males talk about how badass they are for training under some 19th-degree black belt ninja sensei, I get annoyed. I'm not afraid of their sensei. I'm afraid of boxers and amateur wrestlers.

Aikido is extremely effective, but its goal is not winning a fight, but to protect against an opponent. You are just using the same limited measure (winning a competitive combat) for all martial arts.

Aikido is extremely effective at protecting against the kinds of attacks that Aikido practitioners practice with. However those attacks are launched by people who are not really told how to hit, whose muscle memory is all geared towards the experience of throwing a punch then getting thrown all over the room. Those techniques aren't going to help you much against someone who is throwing a proper punch at full speed. You simply won't react fast enough, their reactions won't match your expectations, and (very importantly) the first solid hit they get on you will leave you in shock because your body is not used to it.

Seriously, if any of the ideas were at all helpful in real fights, they would be borrowed by other martial arts. But they aren't and haven't been.

Aikido is excellent form of exercise and entertainment which might help you when faced with someone with no training at all. Thinking of it as anything else could be a dangerous mistake.

> Aikido is extremely effective at protecting against the kinds of attacks that Aikido practitioners practice with

This is true of any martial art, when not on a MMA environment.

> You simply won't react fast enough, their reactions won't match your expectations, and (very importantly) the first solid hit they get on you will leave you in shock because your body is not used to it.

Again, nothing new here. If you are only practicing limited maneuvers, no martial art is of any advantage. True Aikido masters know how to handle the unexpected.

> Seriously, if any of the ideas were at all helpful in real fights, they would be borrowed by other martial arts

They have been, but I agree that they are not an advantage when you want to win a frontal combat. That is why the martial arts mentioned above are considered the "winners".

Then again that is true regardless of what martial art you practice. Without people who are capable of giving solid, well intentioned strikes you will learn little of any practical use. Although the likelihood of finding such people probably does vary by art, and having studied some Aikido besides the teacher and some of the more advanced students, most did not know how to (including myself).

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