03/14/2008 23:49:56

In the past few years I have struggled with the need to learn jiu-jitsu in order to become more well rounded as a fighter. I feel unless you plan on entering a Grappling or MMA tournament learning pure jiu-jitsu is not necessarily the answer. However, I completely agree that you need to learn aspects such as:
-Takedowns (Applying as well as defending them)
-Basic positions and how to protect ones self in each position, as well as how to improve your position (Guard, Half-Guard, Side-Mount, Full mount, etc)
-Submissions (Arm, Wrist, Knee, Ankle Locks as well as chokes)
As for certain aspects of BJJ like pulling guard they are obviously impractical in real life "Street" fights. Self-Defense needs to be about taking care of the situation as quickly as possible while minimizing the damage to yourself and maximizing the damage to your attacker. You don't know if they've got friends or a weapon and the last thing that you want to do is end up on your back, let alone purposely put yourself in that position by pulling guard. I may be a little biased but we compliment our TKD training with Hapkido for Self-Defense and I feel it is a very effective form of Self_defense and dangerous when combined with TKD training.

   "Hapkido  is a fully comprehensive fighting style and as such tries to avoid narrow specialization in any particular type of technique or range of fighting. It maintains a wide range of tactics for striking, standing jointlocks, throwing techniques (both pure and joint manipulating throws) and pinning techniques. Some styles also incorporate tactics for ground fighting although these tactics generally tend to be focused upon escaping, controlling, striking and gouging tactics over submissions and emphasizing the ability to gain one's feet and situational awareness over pins.

   Proper hapkido tactics include using footwork and a series of kicks and hand strikes to bridge the distance with an opponent. Then to immediately control the balance of the opponent (typically by manipulating the head and neck), for a take down or to isolate a wrist or arm and apply a joint twisting throw, depending upon the situation; Hapkido is a comprehensive system and once the opponent's balance has been taken, there are a myriad of techniques to disable and subdue the opponent."

Just my thoughts....

03/05/2008 06:04:25

I think you have the right attitude. You can add it to your bag of tricks without the need to switch your emphasis to grappling and disregarding tkd. I'm not going to claim that most or even a certain percentage of fights go to the ground, but a lot do. I know from personal experience.

Since pain is something you don't tend to notice until after the fight is over (in real self-defense, I mean)... I think concrete is a non-factor unless someone gets knocked unconscious by hitting their head on it.

I once had to defend myself against 2 attackers while on the ground and I knew no ground fighting at the time. It's actually why I began learning grappling... MMA came later. My TKD and Kenpo training was enough for me to survive, but it was clear to me that there had to be a much more efficient way to deal with the position I had been in. I wouldn't choose to go to the ground in a real fight, especially against more than one attacker, but I didn't have much say in the matter. So I believe that for the purpose of self-defense it is just as important as any other aspect. You probably wouldn't say that there's no need to learn to punch if you can kick or vice versa. In the same way, ground fighting is part of the whole.

At the very least a person should learn how to defend against takedowns, because anyone that honestly thinks that one or two kicks or punches to the head is going to be enough to stop someone from picking you up and slamming you on the ground is naive.

Jiujitsu isn't the king of martial arts, but it's still a very good one. Just another piece of the puzzle.

03/04/2008 21:16:36

When I hear something say that "most fights end up on the ground", I want to be the guy standing over the unconscious guy on the ground.

SB