street fights-tell your story

[sensei8]

I would also respectfully disagree with RW.

I've not wasted my entire life in a pursuit of emptiness and ineffectiveness. I've trained hard and I continue to train even harder because my imperfectness demands it of me daily.

I seek to perfect every technique, including kiba-dachi, not because I want them to look pretty, but to be as effective as I can make them, and in that, I'm very complete in my totality as a MAist.

It's not the Martial Arts that's ineffective, but it's that some Martial Artists are ineffective for one reason or another.

[evergrey]

OSU, to be fair, Sensei8, it is sometimes also the instructor who is ineffective, and who passes his flaws on to his unsuspecting students.

This is especially prevalent in schools that do not allow their students to train or compete outside of their school or group of schools.

[sensei8]

Again, I believe that it's not the martial arts that's ineffective, it's the martial artist that's ineffective.

[bushido_man96]

Martial arts do NOT prepare you for a street fight.

Martial arts are either a sport (like olympic TKD or Judo) or a way of living (Budo .martial arts with a philosophy, discipline, etc.) or plain simply, martial arts.

I mean, a neko ashi dachi stance or a kiba dachi stance are probably the worst things you can do in a fight. Yet martial arts practitioners will spend hours and hours perfecting these stances.

Do you think that having a more aesthetically pleasing or correctly performed tekki shodan kata will help you in a fight?

I'm not bashing karate, I mention the above because that's the art I know the best.

I could also say how it is irrelevant whether someone can achieve the ultra low kung-fu stances, "crane wing" movements, etc.

The more sports-oriented arts aren't exempt from this issue: Try bobbing and weaving like in boxing in a fight, and see a knee smash onto your face. Try that fancy footwork, and see if the other guy just sweeps your feet and makes you trip.

Now even MMA is exempt... the easiest thing to do is to knee someone in the nuts while in the clinch, or headbutt ot plain bite your nose off from the guard position.

Plus a street fight is not a controlled environment... the other guy will have friends, or a weapon, or grab a stone, or try to bite or something...

I have to respectfully disagree with you. I'm on the same page with tallgeese in that the MAs, first and foremost, should be preparing you for self-defense. As an instructor, I'd rather have a student tell me he was able to successfully defend himself in an attack as opposed to seeing them win a tournament sparring division. I think that good self-defense should be a part of every MA out there, and I think most of them, even the sport-oriented ones, do a decent job of preparing their students.