If you were to have five martial artists watch a demonstration of self-defense techniques and then ask them for their opinions, you would get about 3 responses. One martial artist would say “That is interesting. I’ll have to play with it, and see how it works.” or something of the like. The second would say something to the effect of “Not bad, but I would have done _____________.”. The other three would almost inevitably say “IT WOULD NEVER WORK ON THE STREET!”. In this aspect, martial artists are our own worst enemies. We all promote our individual arts and tell almost everyone we meet why other skills would never work in a “real” situation. I call balderdash.
Let’s think about something for a moment. What industry, trade, or military in the world does not utilize some form of training for new recruits? Answer: NONE! In some form or fashion, anyone who wants to do anything in the world must have training. Maybe it is just a verbal rehearsal of the job to be done. Maybe it is a computer based training module. Maybe it is 8 weeks of intensive physical and psychological stress and repetitive training. Maybe it is 4-8 years of collegiate education. Whatever the method, training is required! That realization leads us to ask why.
There is a simple answer, but since so many people seem to doubt it, I will explain things from a more in-depth perspective. Let’s take the skill of driving in heavy traffic. Do we simply take a 15 year old, drop him/her behind the wheel of a sports car and say “Head through down town Chicago during rush hour.”? Of course not. That would be suicidal for the teen and likely to cause damage to many others. There is a process for training a new driver. First, they must complete a course of educational material that familiarizes them with the most common regulations, indications, and conditions. After that, they are placed in a relatively demure vehicle and taught how to operate it in an environment mostly free of major obstacles and moving hazards (i.e. a parking lot). Finally, after many hours of preparation, the student is allowed to drive on city streets. We give them all of this training because they need building blocks to achieve the skills for driving in heavy traffic. If this training didn’t work, we wouldn’t still be doing it. The simple answer to our previous question is “because it works”.
If you have a student read the driver’s handbook, you don’t expect it to be the completion of their training or experience. So why would you expect traditional martial arts training to be exactly like a “real street fight”? Let me break it down for you. Traditional martial arts training consists primarily of 3 parts, forms (kata, poomse, etc.), Kihon (linear technique repetition), and sparring (various forms and intensity levels). Each of these acts like a step in the training of a new driver and they are intended to sharpen the necessary skills of the individual for use in an ACTUAL confrontation.
Forms are like the driver’s handbook. They teach the movement, balance, body alignment, and flow that are needed for use in hand to hand combat. They are not necessarily prescribed techniques for a response to a specific threat, but they do contain the basic parts of almost all the drills used in your style. They are not (in my opinion) designed to mimic actual physical combat. They simply give you a useful set of information to be used in further training. Studied in depth, they can provide an experienced practitioner with effective responses to a number of attacks. Some even say that each form is a complete index for the primary movements and philosophy of an individual style, but that is a discussion for another time.
Kihon is like the parking lot. It takes a lot of time to develop the sensitivity and “muscle memory” to operate a motor vehicle smoothly and precisely. In a similar fashion, it takes many repetitions to perfect the skills of kicking, punching, blocking, footwork, and throwing. Kihon allows students to repeat an action many times with little to no danger of injury, and a lot of time for self-evaluation. Each student gets to watch the teacher perform the technique with a high level of skill, and then practice it to attempt to mimic that skill.
The final piece of the puzzle is sparring. Sparring, just like driving, has many different difficulty levels and conditions. The most basic form of sparring would be partners working on a technique together. They attempt the technique on each other in a controlled format with proper supervision. This is like driving on the back roads outside of city limits. Some restrictions and hazards, but limited interruption and a relatively low difficulty level. Next, students move up to light contact sparring or low speed grappling. This is like driving in a suburban area where there are plenty of other drivers, but all moving at low speeds and with few outside distractions. Finally, students are exposed to high speed and high intensity sparring of various types. This is like driving in the city during the early morning or late evening. High intensity sparring isn’t intended to be a “real” fight. It is supposed to allow the student to prepare as much physically and mentally as possible BEFORE encountering true criminal violence. Students who are experiencing high intensity sparring should be aware that there is another level. One that requires more skill and exertion as well as a heightened state of awareness and the ability to overcome pain.
If you are asking “would it work on the street”, you may be asking the wrong question. Instead, ask if the techniques could possibly be a useful preparation for something that might occur “on the street” in one form or another. We in the martial arts do not attempt to train ourselves or our students with a patent response to every possible situation that could occur. Instead, we work to learn and teach the basic skill set that can be applied in most altercations. We sharpen those tools until they are as good as (and hopefully much better than) those of the average criminal. We do not seek to provide ourselves and our students with the perfect solution to each problem, but rather give them the advantage in choosing the most useful response at the time and executing it with speed, skill, and accuracy. Returning to our analogy, would you rather be the person who has never driven before and gets dropped into rush hour traffic, or the guy/girl who has been practicing on back roads and small towns? Also, don’t blame the instructor when a student who has been training for six weeks gets into a fight and loses miserably. Skill doesn’t grow by osmosis. It takes time and effort to develop.
So next time you see a technique and wonder how effective it is, consider that there may be more to the demonstration or applied skill that you may not understand from the outside, and give the practitioner some grace in critiquing his skill. Particularly if you aren’t currently training. If you aren’t, go try it. You might learn something that could be useful someday, even if you don’t train “like the street”.