McDojos and the Art of Bullshit

Post by Ivan

If there is one piece of advice that I took from the army, it is a no bullshit attitude. I hate bullshit and the martial arts realm is full of fraudulent charlatan teachers that affects our community. This affects us in a way that waters down our achievements and credibility. It’s to the point where I distinguish martial arts and combat sports. I think the martial arts community would do best if we change the language. There is nothing wrong with wushu and aikido, as long as you understand the applications of these martial ARTS, rather than advertising it as a combat sport that can effectively defend yourself against opponents. Let’s not kid ourselves here, you’re better off running than fighting with wushu. Combat sports like Muay thai, boxing, judo, bjj, etc focus on LIVE FULLY RESISTING SPARRING WITH PROVEN TECHNIQUES.

Edmonton has it’s own fair share of “realistic defense” clubs that advertise self-defense techniques that would outright get you killed or maimed. What is a shame is I know people that have bought into poor training and a self-entitled attitude towards “combat sports” like Judo. They claim, combat SPORTS are unrealistic and have rule-sets that are not found on the “streets.” Did no one bother to examine the first UFC or Vale Tudo – which literally means anything goes? Grappling was a key fundamental skill. Hard sparring as close as the real situation permits is also important and the Roman/Greek Army trained in wrestling and a proto-type of MMA that focused on boxing/grappling. There are no short cuts and there are no miracle set disarms, but hard work, sweat and sparring. Another point Jason raised was the fact if you can’t compete in rule sets, how can you hope to survive outside of rule sets?

I bring this up now because someone posted this in response that I thought their club should invest in mats.

“We have roll outs for throws. But it tends to be impractical when a guy is coming at you with any sort of weapon. Besides, Mats are just an excuse to train for the use of the mat. If you take down anyone on the street you must assume there friends are jumping in. Well your forcing an arm bar your getting booted in the head.” [SIC]

“we are realistic in theory and combat. There are no mats outside.”

A) Multiple attackers never end well. I don’t know anyone that can successfully fend off multiple attackers.
B) Weapons are incredibly hard to disarm, Jon fitch demonstrates this and anyone with a pistol will leave sufficient distance.

He also implies that jiujitsu and judo are ineffective at knife defense and multiple assailants, which is completely false. Knowing how to escape from ground positions and being able to stand quickly back up are HALL marks of judo and BJJ. Judo and BJJ are not all about armbars. What’s also ironic is in his video that focused on “realistic self defense training that only works in the streets” is that it was hilariously unrealistic. When they went in for a double leg attack, they never fully committed in taking down the defender. The defender never actually hit anyone, but just pretended to and the knife attacks were pitiful at best. In general, they let the defender do what he wants and it looked good to the untrained eye. I don’t have the video, but here’s realistic training with Jon Fitch.

Also Jon fitch demonstrates the effectiveness of knife defense and the ability to control the knife hand using jiujitsu. They also show it’s not fucking easy or fancy. Just like real combat sports and self-defense, it’s physical, dirty, aggressive and more importantly simple. It won’t be a fancy knife disarm. And before you can question his training, he is not only a successful grappling martial artist and UFC fighter with great conditioning and reflexes, but he also took the MACPs, which also closely resembles to MCMAP, a system used by the U.S. Marines. You don’t fuck with the U.S. Marines, if they feel like grappling and throwing should be incorporated then you know it has been proven in combat situations. Notice, how it resembles judo and bjj? BECAUSE IT FUCKING IS.