Learning How to Fight | Starting Strength Gyms Podcast

[stef]

Ray Gillenwater and Nick Delgadillo discuss learning to fight, training, and how to pick the best coach.

0:00 - Lift Fight Shoot
1:00 - Where should a beginner start?
4:12 - Physical size / Avoiding the situation
10:13 - Where to start after you're strong / How to layer the skill
16:30 - Fit to Fight / Krav Maga / Shiv Works / Jiu-Jitsu
23:00 - Jiu-Jitsu
29:01 - Goal of self-defense
32:52 - Striking recommendations
42:33 - Real-world situations / Things going bad
45:41 - Ego
50:25 - Percentage of men that are overconfident
51:30 - When to learn with weapons / Which weapons to start with
58:18 - Choosing a shooting instructor
01:01:23 - Get a coach / Just start

[Jovan Dragisic]

great shirt, Nick!

[Nick Delgadillo]

great shirt, Nick!

I like to class it up occasionally.

[dpinsen]

Interesting discussion. A few points resonated with me: you want a school where there's sparring, and where there aren't 12 year old black belts. And about the utility of jujitsu and Thai boxing.

A couple of thoughts from someone over 50 who's overweight and looking to get into this (after having done karate and judo as a youth). I'd been lifting, and started also riding a Peloton last summer. My plan was to get into MMA this year and burn a ton of calories. I did a trial class at one school that advertised they taught Brazilian Jujitsu and also Thai boxing. When I got there it turned out they no longer offered Thai boxing--something to do with COVID which didn't make sense to me, as there's a lot closer contact in BJJ. In any case, my knees were hurting for a couple of weeks from kneeling on the mats to get into position for the drills.

Tried a second school that advertised striking and BJJ, and this time I wore knee pads. That helped a bit but my knees still hurt afterwards. Caught a bad cold from training there, which kept me out of the gym for a few weeks.

To make a long story short, I found a third school that looks promising: It's primarily Thai boxing, but the main instructor also has a black belt in BJJ, and they have BJJ classes too. And one of their BJJ instructors is a UFC fighter I bet on a few months ago, and watched dominate her opponent on the ground. So my plan is to try to start with the Thai boxing and hopefully lose enough weight from that that the jujitsu becomes doable. Right now I'm doing a little preconditioning before signing up: jumping rope, stretching, and hitting the heavy bag at my gym between lifting weights and doing the Peloton after. So, if my knees cooperate, I'll dive into the Thai boxing next month and we'll see how it goes.

[Ray Gillenwater]

A couple of thoughts from someone over 50 who's overweight and looking to get into this

If you're squatting at least mid 300s and deadlifting at least low 400s, I recommend optimizing your diet to get the weight off.

If your lifts aren't there yet, I'd focus on strength training before getting into martial arts - with a high protein, whole-foods based diet.

Muay Thai is a brutal sport. The warm up alone can be a debilitating experience for the unadapted. Keep the "stress, recovery, adaptation" process in mind along with the reality of having 50+ year old joints and connective tissue. If the coach wants you to do 15 minutes of jump rope, 100 skip knees, and 50 round house kicks on day one, for example, see if you can talk him into dosing your exposure to stress more appropriately for your situation. Most gyms I've trained at are balls to the wall, 100% at all times, regardless of the trainee's situation. If this is your gym, you'll need to self regulate. If the coach is immediately pushing you to keep up with the 24 year old fighters, don't train there. Ease into this and pay close attention to your body. At 37, I'm an orthopedic mess and am in pain thanks mostly to this sport. Tread carefully.

You may want to consider making strength your #1 focus, nutrition #2, and lower impact conditioning (prowler, assault bike) as your third priority. If I was in your shoes, I'd do exactly that and would shoot 2-3 days per week (including day fire) for self-defense practice.

[Subby]

Real interesting podcast, I like the topics you guys go into, but this is the first podcast I disagree with on the whole. Fighting and self defense have very little cross over. Learning a combat sport is fun, but unlikely to help you in a self defense situation.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Fighting and self defense have very little cross over. Learning a combat sport is fun, but unlikely to help you in a self defense situation.

Explain.

[Subby]

Just to clarify most of what I am saying is paraphrased from Marc Macyoung and what I remember from No Nonsense Self Defense - Reliable information for dangerous situations.
Marc Macyoung is to the self defence industry what Mark Rippetoe is to the fitness industry. You’d be far better off reading from the source as he is far more knowledgeable and a far better writer than I.

In a nutshell, fighting is illegal, and by fighting you are engaging in an illegal activity. Without making judgements on society, outside of mutually agreed combat sports and as an agent of the state, citizens cannot use violence. Duels do not exist anymore, they still happen yes. Two guys fighting in a bar is as much as duel of honour as pistols at dawn is. But the fact remains that they are still illegal. And by partaking in a fight, you are doing something illegal.
Doing illegal things is rarely a good option.

I hate to be anal about definitions, no-one likes arguing on semantics, but self defence means keeping yourself safe in common parlance.
Self defence is also a legal term. It is a legal criteria which has specific criteria that must be met, depending on jurisdictions and events. It is also a confession that you did commit violence, but there are extenuating circumstances. Confessing to crimes is rarely a good strategy as now you have to talk yourself out of conviction, as opposed to tripping up the prosecutors who are trying to talk you into conviction. Except now the prosecution get to trip you up. Good luck with that.

Self defence as we know it, is keeping yourself safe. The safest method to avoid violence is simply not to be there or not to let the violence happen. That ranges from your lifestyle (Do you engage in criminal activity and hang out with dangerous people) and the physical/social environment (Where do you live/work) to your social skills in not pissing anyone off (are you an obnoxious drunk), down to defusing/avoiding violence as it’s happening (recognising when something in the environment signals danger and leaving) All of this happens before fisticuffs happens.

And as was mentioned in the podcast, if you fight someone, they’re probably going to be better at violence then you, the % of people that overestimate themselves in a fight is 100%.
“Which martial art is better for self defence” is like asking which martial art will help me fight a gorilla. Some may be quantifiably better, but at the end of the day it’s irrelevant.
As was quoted in the podcast, the best martial art for self defence (defined as keeping you safe from harm) is one that makes you less likely to feel the need to prove yourself and get into fights in the first place.

[Satch12879]

Explain.

Australia.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Satch is right, as usual.