Learning How to Fight | Starting Strength Gyms Podcast

[Yngvi]

After years of foreign terrorist attacks on the Australian homeland.
After reading about the gulags in Soviet Russia.
After everything that has happened the last two years.

After all of this, Australians still think they will survive if they comply with their enemies' demands and politely decline to fight?

[Jovan Dragisic]

This is semantic argument. But the important question is: how do you train for "self defense" without learning to fight? Self defense is application of fighting skills with the goal of winning in the context of a fight you didn't agree to be a part of. But learning and practicing violence requires serious skill in basic fighting systems like BJJ, boxing, and wrestling - even for people who's primary means of self protection is a gun or knife. In the absence of learning how to effectively hit and wrestle with someone, a "self defense practitioner" is just pretending using imaginary opponents and scenarios. This is the domain of all the super deadly self defense focused martial arts guys who don't actually know how to fight and think their pretend ninja shit will dazzle and overwhelm their opponents in back alleys and sketchy bars.

Haha I know a guy who trains ninjitsu. He says they teach them to go for the balls in an actual situation. Like, dodge the punch or kick and go for the balls with your whichever hand or foot is the closest to the balls. He said he used the tactic once, with success. The guy might be lying, but maybe there are some martial arts schools with a bit of intelligence.

[George Christiansen]

Haha I know a guy who trains ninjitsu. He says they teach them to go for the balls in an actual situation. Like, dodge the punch or kick and go for the balls with your whichever hand or foot is the closest to the balls. He said he used the tactic once, with success. The guy might be lying, but maybe there are some martial arts schools with a bit of intelligence.

I was once forced into a fight with a good friend of mine that I did martial arts with. The big kids told us they'd kick our asses if we didn't kick each others', so we fought.

He was a few belt levels above me and stronger and we were being relatively nice about things until he baaarely grazed one of my nuts with a roundhouse kick. The next moment he was on the ground in the fetal position being repeatedly kicked until the big kids pulled me off.

Moral of the story: don't miss.

[Jovan Dragisic]

Moral of the story: don't miss.

All the street fights that I have seen and participated in were about who threw the first punch that landed. The rest was pretty much just the windmill technique. It works really well when you don't know how to fight.

[dpinsen]

Haha I know a guy who trains ninjitsu. He says they teach them to go for the balls in an actual situation. Like, dodge the punch or kick and go for the balls with your whichever hand or foot is the closest to the balls. He said he used the tactic once, with success. The guy might be lying, but maybe there are some martial arts schools with a bit of intelligence.

In the '80s, ninjas were hugely popular, so a local Tae Kwon Do instructor put "Ninjutsu" in his Yellow Pages ad (this was the '80s equivalent of a website, young folks). When prospective students asked him about ninjutsu, he'd say, "First, learn Tae Kwon Do."

[Phill]

I have quite a few years of ninjitsu under my belt from far too long ago, and yes, I watched too many movies as a kid.

Disappointing lack of jumping backwards onto rooftops and disappearing into smoke clouds but most of the training was based on hurting people quick enough, for long enough, to effect an escape from the situation because hanging around is always a bad idea.

Couple that with some disarming techniques (The big fat red magic marker lets you know how much you suck at this) and it ended up being useful despite the connotation based on the name.

Certainly not the worst methodology if staying alive is the focus but I never took it seriously enough to want to test it out.