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What martial arts is best to learn for straight of street fighting?

Should I start doing them? They will probably cost quite a bit, and with my gym membership (£30 per month) my protein shakes and yoghurts, also phone contract (£45 per month). I am most likely gonna have to get a job as my parents won't get anything else for me without me getting a job.

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Reply 1
Peace and blessings,

By street fighting, I presume you mean the martial arts most immediately practical to street level violent encounter, right? (:smile:as opposed to you wanting to go out in the streets and do fights like the late Kimbo Slice did.) I would recommend several ones to consider. You must likely will hear about Krav Maga being at the top of the list. Then also consider, I would suggest, Tomiki/Shotokan/Sport Aikido, which features atemi (strikes) and is more readily usable (in terms of its design structure, all Aikido is usable in combat, its just a matter of the time it takes you to get to that level of competence, depending on the structure and design of the course. Shotokan Aikido is very practical in this way.) As opposed to Brazilian Ju-Jit-su-I would instead recommend starting out with the root in Ju-Jut-Su, and also, I think a good one that has a blend of elements with strikes, kicks, and yet aspects of grappling, is also Hapkido.

Original post by Ryanthom100
Should I start doing them? They will probably cost quite a bit, and with my gym membership (£30 per month) my protein shakes and yoghurts, also phone contract (£45 per month). I am most likely gonna have to get a job as my parents won't get anything else for me without me getting a job.
Anything but aikido.

BJJ is the most effective.
Original post by luq_ali
Peace and blessings,

By street fighting, I presume you mean the martial arts most immediately practical to street level violent encounter, right? (:smile:as opposed to you wanting to go out in the streets and do fights like the late Kimbo Slice did.) I would recommend several ones to consider. You must likely will hear about Krav Maga being at the top of the list. Then also consider, I would suggest, Tomiki/Shotokan/Sport Aikido, which features atemi (strikes) and is more readily usable (in terms of its design structure, all Aikido is usable in combat, its just a matter of the time it takes you to get to that level of competence, depending on the structure and design of the course. Shotokan Aikido is very practical in this way.) As opposed to Brazilian Ju-Jit-su-I would instead recommend starting out with the root in Ju-Jut-Su, and also, I think a good one that has a blend of elements with strikes, kicks, and yet aspects of grappling, is also Hapkido.


Thanks for the detailed reply, is I'll defo look into these later
Reply 4
You're welcome. :smile:

Original post by Ryanthom100
Thanks for the detailed reply, is I'll defo look into these later
Reply 5
You would not draw a distinction from Sport/Tomiki/Shotokan Aikido, and say, Aki-Aikido?

Original post by Notorious_B.I.G.
Anything but aikido.

BJJ is the most effective.
Original post by Notorious_B.I.G.
Anything but aikido.

BJJ is the most effective.


BJJ is literally one of the worst. It's based on grappling and being on the ground. In a street fight you lost if you go to the ground. You need to incapacitate someone quickly and get out or move to the next guy. If you are busy putting someone in a lock on the ground, his mate will come up to you and stomp on your head or whatever.
Original post by Notorious_B.I.G.
Anything but aikido.

BJJ is the most effective.


BJJ isn't that good for street fighting imo. While I agree it's is excellent to learn and know I would say somthing like a combo of kickboxing and wrestling ie anything that doesn't involved taking yourself to the ground aswell. Going to ground on the street when multiple people are likely to be involved could be problematic.
Original post by yudothis
BJJ is literally one of the worst. It's based on grappling and being on the ground. In a street fight you lost if you go to the ground. You need to incapacitate someone quickly and get out or move to the next guy. If you are busy putting someone in a lock on the ground, his mate will come up to you and stomp on your head or whatever.


Grappling in itself in stand up combined with dirty boxing can work if you can move your opponant in clinch but, as you say which I agree with, going to ground on the street is a no no.
Original post by Guru Jason
Grappling in itself in stand up combined with dirty boxing can work if you can move your opponant in clinch but, as you say which I agree with, going to ground on the street is a no no.


Fair point can even use him as a shield that way I suppose.
Reply 10
first of all I would like to point out that the notorius_B.I.G is completly incorrect in my opinion in saying that Brazilian Ju Jitsu is the most effective martial arts system to use in a real combat situation as BJJ is primarily based around ground fighting and grappling immediatly putting you at a disadvantage in a defensive situation where ideally most of the fight will likely be taking place standing or fighting from a clinch.

I would also not recomeend Aikido personally as although it does have a strong foundation in many different fundemental combat areas including striking, grappling, groundfighting, weapon disarms and fighting multiple opponents it has come under scrutiny in recent years due to many of its moves having limited real world application.

I would therefore personally try and focus not on martial arts but on an actual self defense sytem such as the previously mentioned krav Maga or a more uncommonly silat or my personal preference russina systema.

If u wish I can provide a further post detailing some of the basic fundamental concepts of these 3 systems how they differ their strenghts and weaknesses and provide links to some great sites and channels which may help you make a more informed choice.
Krav Maga.
Okay okay okay, first of all, this is THE question that every single martial artist thinks about every day, and that every single one has figured out the answer to, and the answer is obviously MY ONE!

Everyone will sell you their own idea and present it as fact (and I'll do the same below). Don't listen to anyone. Use your own logic.

You probably want to know a few overarching skills and practice them and they don't fall into one martial art. Paying some boxing club to regularly damage your brain is a stupid idea. You want to somehow practice punching hard (buy a punching bag, get private lessons etc) and quick. You want to know how to knock a person to the ground without any fancy lay up (so parts of wrestling, judo) you want some BJJ for strangling. You also want to have enough calm to remember to do nasty things like breaking fingers, biting, etc. if you are fighting. So you want to spar too to get used to acting in adrenaline. But becoming perfect at a carefully controlled sport is a waste of time imo.

Anyway, fighting is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. Permanent face injuries, brain damage, hard falls on concrete, paralyzing, broken windpipes and knuckles, either to you or because of you. You want to have enough situational awareness to know if a fight is inevitable and keep a distance if someone looks like they might punch you, and stuff like that.
Don't buy protein shakes eat natural sources of protein like meat fish lentils and buckwheat
Don't listen to them best for steet fights is kickboxing
Reply 15
From someone who moved to Japan to continue his study of martial arts...

If you're interested in self-defence then martial arts are a bad investment. It takes a lot of time and money to get good, it's very hard to train with enough realism for it to be effective, and no matter how good you get, luck, the element of surprise, weapons and so on can override years of training experience. Self-defence is much better served by learning when to leave a situation, how to de-escalate, not putting yourself in unnecessary danger, and generally looking after yourself.

But the original question is an interesting one so I'll do my best to answer it. Martial arts are designed with a purpose and philosophy in mind. Krav Maga is for military combat, boxing for sport, aikido for spreading 'harmony' (和 / wa), jodo for defeating a sword with a 4-foot stick, etc. Basically none of them were designed for 'street fighting'. Most of them are designed for either killing, or for sport, and there's not a lot in-between.

There's a reason why martial arts aren't designed for the 'street' though. From the perspective of old school martial arts, violence is a serious business and you're not playing around. There's no ego, no friendly scuffle, no posturing, no "teaching someone a lesson", no half-measures of any kind - if you use it, someone is getting seriously injured. But the world is a lot less violent than it used to be, so martial arts had to adapt to keep their relevancy and many of them became combat sports. All the lethal techniques are thrown away, as well many other self-defence considerations such as one-on-many drills, weapons, realistic clothing, 'fighting dirty' tactics like biting, scratching, concealed pre-emptive strikes, etc., etc. So that leaves an aspiring street fighter in a difficult position.

In modern society you're bound by law not to use excessive force, so you have to ask yourself, what do you want? You could learn a Filipino martial art using a butterfly knife, be an amazing street fighter but the first time you defend yourself you go to jail for over a decade for knife crime. Or you could learn a sport based martial art and try to mash it into real world situations, and as soon as you're in a confined space, sitting down, someone grabs a pool cue, or anything you didn't cover in your sport, everything goes out the window.

Street fighting requires a mix of realistic elements plus restrained elements (assuming you don't want to kill or permanently injure), so if the question is which martial art is the best for the streets of Britain, taken alone they're basically all terrible because it's not what they were designed for. You have to build it yourself from your own experience, which is typically what street fighters do. They mix everything together, gain experience through real world scrap ups, and end up with completely unpredictable, wild fighting styles.

But if you don't want to become a street fighter this kind of question is totally academic - unless you're in a gang or something, street fights are largely avoidable. If it's not academic, then I can't say I recommend it, because even putting the legal and ethical issues aside, I've met some of these guys and their bodies are messed up. Missing teeth, chronic pains - street fighting gets you injured.

Besides, the real benefits of martial arts are discipline and becoming a better person. This is kind of wasted if you use it to become a street fighter.
Original post by yudothis
BJJ is literally one of the worst. It's based on grappling and being on the ground. In a street fight you lost if you go to the ground. You need to incapacitate someone quickly and get out or move to the next guy. If you are busy putting someone in a lock on the ground, his mate will come up to you and stomp on your head or whatever.


Paradoxically, most street fights go to the ground anyway. A few punches are thrown, you get tired and grab your opponent. It is very rare that once you've thrown to disengage, allowing for a continued striking fight.


Original post by Guru Jason
BJJ isn't that good for street fighting imo. While I agree it's is excellent to learn and know I would say somthing like a combo of kickboxing and wrestling ie anything that doesn't involved taking yourself to the ground aswell. Going to ground on the street when multiple people are likely to be involved could be problematic.


UFC 1 would disagree. BJJ is defensive too. It is the best way to statistically improve your chances of being unharmed from a fight, while ensuring your opponent is defeated.

Kick boxing isn't going to place you in a very good position to repel a group of people either. The level of kick boxing you'd need to even compete one-on-one, and have a reasonable chance of success, would be quite high. The best advice is obviously to not fight, to calm the situation or leave it altogether. Rambo only exists in the movies.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by ward47
first of all I would like to point out that the notorius_B.I.G is completly incorrect in my opinion in saying that Brazilian Ju Jitsu is the most effective martial arts system to use in a real combat situation as BJJ is primarily based around ground fighting and grappling immediatly putting you at a disadvantage in a defensive situation where ideally most of the fight will likely be taking place standing or fighting from a clinch.

I would also not recomeend Aikido personally as although it does have a strong foundation in many different fundemental combat areas including striking, grappling, groundfighting, weapon disarms and fighting multiple opponents it has come under scrutiny in recent years due to many of its moves having limited real world application.

I would therefore personally try and focus not on martial arts but on an actual self defense sytem such as the previously mentioned krav Maga or a more uncommonly silat or my personal preference russina systema.

If u wish I can provide a further post detailing some of the basic fundamental concepts of these 3 systems how they differ their strenghts and weaknesses and provide links to some great sites and channels which may help you make a more informed choice.


It would be awesome if you could do that, is it possible to learn these defence systems at home solo or would i need a partner? I have a lot of free time at the moment, i also go to the gym and they have a mma section, when i feel comfortable enough i could start to use there equipment.
Reply 18
no problem.

Silat.
first of all in the case of silat is actually technically an umbrella term for various forms of the martial art much in the same way karate or ninjitsu is and was developed primarily in malaysia. its name roughly translates as lightning which is likely due to the core concept of the style being the art of fast and competent killing/incapacitating. most westerners will remeber as the martial art used throughout the movie the raid.

concepts.
the various silat styles all vary slightly but all of them tend to include a fair balance of swift leg and arm striking, usually to various vunerable tendons as well as ground work and being aware of your surroundings at all time. many forms particulaly the Harimau or tiger style place great emphasize on ground work and maintaining a low center of gravity when striking making it ideal for shorter combatants as this lower center of gravity will make them more difficult to off balance. the system like many others aso places a great emphasise on striking areas such as the nose and groin as like most self defense rather than competition martial arts its movements are generally considered more swift and brutal than most.

street fight viability.
almost all silat styles place an emphasise on fighting multiple opponents training to be able to keep track of the positions of multiple opponents at the same time. training usually consists of fights involving 3 to 7 opponents. strikes and loose grapples desinged to take down, off balnce or tye up the opponent will be used. long lasting grapples and locks are dicouraged as the ability to disengage one opponent to defend against another is considered vital in these situations. strikes are used soften the opponent or incapacitate with strikes to weak areas. once one opponent is incapacitated the fighter is to crouch to a low center of gravity and assume the guard position ready for another opponent. downed enemies should still be considered a threat as silat trains that if downed feign injury to gain the element of suprise on your opponent. this has led to silat developing the "overkill principle" in that you continue to strike a downed opponent until they are no longer able to pose a threat.
Military style combat/fighting dirty.
Use rocks, sand if you can. Punch in the balls and poke people's eyes too.
Try to overwhelm your opponent then get the hell out of there.
Start boxing/kickboxing.

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