90% of fights go to the ground?

[bushido_man96]

Philosophies, in my experience, are almost always individual outlooks or ideals that others try to impress on everyone else, especially those wanting to learn something that they know.

[dwarf2]

I myself being a martial arts person appr. age 12 now 50 and at the same time a guitarist for even longer, by what i have seen i would not want to go to the ground unless i had to. My reasoning is from seeing and being in fights in bars where they have people to stop fights who don't , sometimes you just cant get out of the way of it and you can't trust people around you, even friends will walk away and i think if you are ready for the ground, i think you already understand what can happen. If the guys stand up skill is better than yours going to the ground is a serious asset in a real fight with someone who wants to hurt you, just a observation from my youth.

[bushido_man96]

There is a lot of talk in this thread about "going to the ground being a bad idea, and it should be avoided." I think everyone agrees with this. In fact, I think everyone agrees with the fact that getting into a fight is a bad idea, period.

Here is the deal, though.....you don't always have control of what happens in a fight....and even if you don't want to, you can end up on the ground. So, regardless of whether going to the ground is a good idea or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that you CAN end up there, even if you DON'T want to, so its good to be able to fight from there.

[JiuJitsuNation]

Here is the deal, though.....you don't always have control of what happens in a fight....and even if you don't want to, you can end up on the ground. So, regardless of whether going to the ground is a good idea or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that you CAN end up there, even if you DON'T want to, so its good to be able to fight from there.

[bushido_man96]

Here is the deal, though.....you don't always have control of what happens in a fight....and even if you don't want to, you can end up on the ground. So, regardless of whether going to the ground is a good idea or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that you CAN end up there, even if you DON'T want to, so its good to be able to fight from there.

I thought you might like that.

[dwarf2]

I think the situation that a person finds themselves in, will make you make choices on what you do a lot of times. Such as, am i dealing with someone who is trained or is this person just a person who is going to swing away. Also people who train a certain way ,will they instinctively do what they have trained. When i worked for the state we had a certain way we had to do things and after a while it was like being on autopilot . Its funny how people really act while they fight, when i was younger i use to watch them while we waited for the police to show up, then it really got interesting. I do not see anything wrong with going to the ground, just like i don't see anything wrong with stand up, but i do think a person should while training realize what can happen with both and train accordingly.

[JiuJitsuNation]

Lets flip it. What if we knew for positive that 90% of fights stayed standing. What would the questions and debate then be? I often hear the argument of weapons and multiple attackers. I have a fair amount of experience getting my eyes swollen shut way before I started any type of training. I have had people take pop shots at me while fighting their friend, I have been on all fours getting kicked in the face and It's very strange to say that I have been threatened with weapons and hit a few people with some random objects. However the vast majority of my experience has been one on one. I'm not asking anyone about what ifs. I want to know how many people are getting jumped and guns shoved in their face. Seems to me the majority of the time it's domestic. A neighbor, friends, some drunk cat or whatever. Leave all the what ifs out. What is your experience?

[evergrey]

Lemme see...

Gun pointed at my head, late high school- my friend drove his minivan too close to a random hatchback that was clearly trying to hide something. Fun times!

Shot at, early high school- gotta love being the wrong color in high school on the border! I didn't know them either, and thankfully I was far enough away and they were crappy at aiming, or just wanting to scare me. Could have been either one.

Beat up, without weapons, multiple times growing up. See, wrong color in the wrong place. I wasn't in a gang, so I didn't deal with the really nasty stuff. Sure had to dodge it a lot though! They had jump-ins in the Jr. High cafeteria. The principal tried to stop it once. He got beat, bad.

Other things during early childhood I'm so not going into on here, also strangers.

Adulthood- the guy with the gun WAS someone I knew, and you know, I was not all cool and brave. I hid in the guest room closet, gripping my sword, ready to stab anything that opened the door, and then when the neighbor distracted him, I hauled my butt out the kitchen window and took off to San Francisco to hide at a friend's place until the dude cooled down. We... aren't friends any more.

Assault without weapons- one person was someone I knew, who I brought home with me because he was too drunk to drive. He was also too drunk to understand the word "no," but thankfully The wall and his head had a discussion, with my hand providing impetus for discourse. After a while, "no" started to sink in.

Otherwise, it's mostly been attacks from strangers on the street. To be fair, they probably WOULD have "gone to the ground" if they'd managed, but for a different reason, since these all happened when I was walking to my car alone at night, as a female.

One of those, I happened to be carrying an x-acto knife, as I was an art student at the time. It was a couple of frat boys who gave the cliche "hey baby, where's the party?" line and tried to back me into an alley. I pulled out the x-acto knife and offered a free vasectomy. No takers, and I was able to continue on my way.

Two men tried to grab me on the way to my car, and both times I managed to run for it, get in, and lock my door before they could get at me. One of them got his foot ran over. The other one clung to the hood for a while, but eventually rolled off. I love my Saturn.

One other time, I was at a private party in a warehouse, and only part of the warehouse was being used for the party. The neighbors managed to talk their way in, and one of them grabbed at rather inappropriate portions of my anatomy and tried to drag me back to an unused portion of the warehouse. I don't have an entirely clear memory of what followed, except that everything really DID turn red, I hit his chest and thought "his shirt is very soft," then he was flying through the air, and then I guess I was hitting him and kicking him and screaming until he fell down, at which point I continued to punch him until the door man came and dragged him out of the club.

Incidentally, in that last one there were probably 30 or 40 people who didn't see what he originally tried to do, but did see me flip out. The music stopped, and most of them just froze up. You can't necessarily rely on others to take action to help you. A few people who didn't know what was going on tried to pull me off him, but I didn't even register their presence. Adrenaline and PTSD are a pretty potent combo, yo.

In conclusion, the best way to win a fight is to not get in the fight, and get out of there if you can.

[JiuJitsuNation]

Wow. Lots of people live this way. However the majority do not and as you said get out if you can. I'm sure you highlighted the most dramatic times for us. I will not however because there were MANY more that fall into the lesser categories. Even in high crime areas you are more likely to have to deal with one whacked out unarmed individual than than the other scenarios. And normally the people who do are listed amongst statistics. All of these extreme situations are a result of decisions we made that got us into it in the first place. As I have recently stated in another post, taking responsibility is crucial to survival. It's good to hear that you have learned and relocated. My point is that it makes more sense to prepare myself physically for the most likely and survivable scenarios and use common sense for the rest.

[brickshooter]

I've been in three fights all my life. Hey... I'm a diplomat. The first was in the 2nd grade. The other two fights were in college. Both were street fights. Both fights ended up looking like a riot. It wasn't even clear who's side I was on.

It started when my friend and another guy was 1-on-1. Then it really escalated and looked like 10-on-10. To this day, I had no idea who the other 6 guys on my side was.

The other fight was a precurser to a full on riot. In fact, riot police were called out. And they clubbed the hell out of everyone in their path. That was interesting because every just ran.