I am interested in learning basic fighting skills, for self defence.

My policy is the best defence is to not get into a fight. And if a fight is about to occur, diffuse the situation, or run. I've never gotten into a fight in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Today I was with my girlfriend. I was in the passenger seat, she was driving. My girlfriend goes to take a left in the parking lot. A slightly dirty-looking silver Corvette (looked like a 10 year old 2006 lease) speeds on in front of my gf. The Corvette was going 50km/h in the parking lot. The Corvette driver honks at my gf. I yell "slow down you're in a parking lot!". The guy in the Corvette stops, opens his door, and yells "fuck you". I respond "Buddy you were speeding in a parking lot." He responds (as if he says it many times in a day) "What are you, a cop?" Then he proceeds to taunt me to fight him. He looks like he's in his mid 50's, and either does construction work or deals drugs. Looks like white trash sitting in a Corvette. He opens his door, puts his foot out, but doesn't get out of his seat. I say "What's wrong with you?" At this point he says "Step out of your car." He looked like he might have something in his hand since he kept his left hand down the entire time & used his right hand to open his door. I wasn't going to fight him regardless. I don't respond at this point. He gives me a "that's right pussy" sort of look, and drives off. His prositute-looking woman in his passenger seat is fingering us the entire time, he fingers me, and he keeps going. I did what I would've done even if I could fight: not engage in a fight... but I was bothered by the fact that fighting wasn't even in the cards for me.

Anyways, in a situation like that, I wouldn't fight even if I were a world class MMA fighter. He looked like he might have a weapon. But, it made me realize that I would've felt better about the situation knowing I could've held my own in a fight.

Just for the principle of it, I would like to pick up self defence. Krav Maga looks interesting. Note that I am not interested in fighting as a sport (or weird technical things that are rarely useful). I am interested in learning the basics (throwing a punch, grappling, basic holds & how to get out of a hold), as well as some more advanced things (more lethal forms of fighting like Krav Maga, rather than suppressed rules of MMA). Granted, I'm not interested in being amazing at fighting... I just want to know what sort of place I should go to in order to learn the most relevant skills for a hand-to-hand street fight.

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Nov 10 2016 06:56pm

Boxing is prob the most practical striking art using hands...

Maybe I'll take up boxing first then.

Interesting

from reading your story it seems like you're in a difficult situation. Surely you understand it is impossible for you to know that if you were in that exact same situation but was a trained fighter that you wouldn't have acted any differently. It seems like you are concerned with not looking like you are backing down.. I don't know any statistics, but I'd bet that it is more often than not the case that having no fight experience or training leads to less fights. Not sure though. To illustrate the point imagine how many people ARE STILL going to be willing/ want to fight a guy on his knees crying, apologizing profusely and begging not to fight? At that point most people are going to probably laugh at you and let you go unharmed. This shows pretty clearly that the fear spurning the desire to learn to fight is not borne of necessity but from a lack of being willing to be dominated. Obviously there are situations where there is absolutely no way out and you would have to fight (how often do these come up though? you've said yourself that you've never been in a fight, and you've been alive how many decades? Why would you need these skills all of the sudden?) but failing those very rare cases knowing how to fight is going to lead to fights that would otherwise not have happened.

Fights happen because of egos. If you're not spending a lot of time walking down alleys at midnight, you probably don't need to learn to fight as much as you need to learn to let go of your ego. Even responding to the speeder at all was an ego move. If you are amiable, apologetic, submissive and deferential, there are very few circumstances in which it will come to blows.

I mean I'm sure I'll get flamed for what I wrote but it's really hard for me to believe an average person who takes up boxing or something and then does it for several years is going to be "big enough" to turn down a fight in a situation like you described. Are there people? Sure, but, a priori, I wouldn't think many. Professional fighters are notoriously willing to fight people, if verbal admission is an acceptable metric (not to mention how many pro boxers and MMA fighters have had actual issues)

If you don't know how to fight, basically the only time you're going to fight is if someone attacks you and there is no other option. If you know how to fight the exact same conditions must be met (they're attacking you) PLUS others now come into the equation because you have new skills

lolwtf i wish u woulda recorded that

not necessarily, for this kind of situation. though i love boxing and have 4 years of it under my belt, i couldn't honestly say it's the most practical to learn for real self-defense situations.

sure, learning how to properly throw punches and dodge punches is useful. however this is like 10% of what boxing encompasses. you can train to be proficient at basic punch/dodge maneuvers in just a few months if you have a buddy with mitts.

you can't disable an enemy with striking unless you seriously injure them. knock them out, break something. when it comes to a situation like OP described, we all know seriously injuring somebody is something you should avoid.

when it comes to throwing punches, unless you're a very skilled boxer, your opponent can always get lucky with a wild punch. if you're trained in jiu-jitsu, luck is much less of a factor and you can embarrassingly outclass any untrained person.

it's easy to take an untrained person to the ground, and most fights seem to end up on the ground anyways. i think jiu-jitsu is most practical. plenty of things you can do to disable your opponent without seriously injuring them.



these are the same people who get into the sports because of their rough temperament to begin with... true, that is a lot of them. a dude i used to train with was charged with assault and had to pay some heavy fines because of his lack of self-control. though this seems to be a nature over nurture situation, in my experience good trainers make some sort of effort to teach responsibility and self-control.

This post was edited by Wretch on Nov 10 2016 08:30pm

Take a firearms classes and get your cpl

No amount of fighting will stop a bullet


With that being said wrestling and boxing would be your best bet in hand to hand altercations.

yea i was gonna mention add wrestling or bjj/gjj to ur ground game cause most fights end on the ground with the other dude bigger than u

Muay Thai is probably the best form of real world fighting mixed with BJJ if it is inevitably drawn to the ground

Muay Thai is fucking vicious if it's utilized properly