I will start by simply asking some questions, maybe someone else will get started answering these.
What should be your strategic goal in a fight?
Obviously that is somewhat of a loaded question, but it is a fair question. What are the factors that will influence the answer to that question?
Here are some other questions that might influence the answer to the first question.
- What are some of the ways that you can finish a fight?
- How can you best avoid being hit in a fight?
- Where is the safest place to be in a fight?
- Where are some of the worst places to be in a fight?
- In order to control your opponent, is there a best position you can put your opponent in?
- Are there certain types of attacks that you should be more prepared to handle than others?
- Train for speed is good, but Bruce Lee said once that there were a lot of people faster then he was, but what made he win a fight was not speed but unpredictability. CarlosAB 2007-08-06
Ground Fighting:
The ground should be avoided at all costs!
[References/Support needed here]
The odds of ending up on the ground.
I completely agree that the ground should be avoided at all costs, but wouldn't you agree that it is a significant possibility that one would end up there?
Do you want to fight on the ground? Are you looking for justification for ground training? How can you make sure that it is NOT "a significant possibility that one would end up there"?
How can you avoid ending up on the ground?
What if you misjudge the amount of force used and get caught in a "tussle"? Grappling, I have found, has become a very serious skill to know both when techniques DO and DO NOT get properly executed.
Are there techniques that are more or less likely to "get properly executed" and end with you tied up and possibly thrown/taken to the ground? Can your strategy be changed to avoid the use of techniques that have a chance of getting you caught in a "tussle"?
What should you do if you end up on the ground?
What if you slip on something on the street?
Still looking for a reason to train on the ground?
If being on the ground is a really horrible place to be, wouldn't the most valuable skill you could develop for the
unfortunate chance that you ever end up on the ground be
the skill to get back up safely?
Train to avoid being hit if taken down while immediately getting back up. While this may not be as much fun as wrestling on the ground and training submission holds, it is much more valuable.
What will your opponent(s) do if you end up on the ground?
Why train for ground fighting?
If the ground should be avoided at all costs, then why would you train to fight on the ground? Wouldn't your time be better off spent training to avoid every being thrown on the ground? Or better yet, shouldn't your strategy be adjusted to avoid ever being thrown on the ground? It really depends on how strongly you really believe that the ground should be avoided in the first place!
Responding to the above points by JRabb:
integrate into The odds of ending up on the ground:
A fundamental truth however, is that no matter the intent, fights have AT LEAST a 50/50 chance of ending up involving grappling at some point. And 50/50 is quite curtailed in my opinion.
I am not willing to accept this as a fundamental truth quite so easily, but I think it is a valuable line of discussion. What really are the odds of ending up on the ground? Where and when are we talking about ending up on the ground? Against a mugger, on the battlefield, in the ring, on the street? While you probably mean on the street, I think that all of these different scenarios have vastly different probabilities and we should be clear and distinguish them. If we are talking about street fight, I think we should be able to find some studies or articles about this.
Martin
integrate into Why train for ground fighting?
Whether you are conditioned to get hit a certain way, whther you are able to withstand cetain amounts of pain, or even if you are trained to keep your balance very well, there is still one excellent reason to expand one's awarenes into ground work. Namely, that anything is possible in a fight. No one can say that, in the heat of the moment, someone won't fall over etc.
integrate into The ground should be avoided at all costs!
Also, another good point is that for better or worse, there are plenty of grapplers out there who will TRY to bring you to the ground because most people are not comfortable there. Despite the logic against it, if a mugger is more proficient fighting on the ground, he may be able to withstand a strike or 2 to tackle someone and bring them into a mount/guard.
I think it is upsetting to think that a muggers mentality (especially in rape scenarios) is more geared to bringing someone on their back than keeping them on both feet.
integrate into Why train for ground fighting?
I think that the ideas mentioned above are very noteworthy...people do not spend enough time on issues like how to regain balance or standing upright again. But that doesn't mean the art of fighting on the ground should be neglected...there are simply too many reasons that a fight may end up there. The martial arts are a life study, no doubt about it, better to have more to study than to find reasons not to spend at least a few months on any given concept. = )
integrate into The odds of ending up on the ground.
And lastly, responding directly to the question of "How can you make sure that it is
NOT "a significant possibility that one would end up there" (the ground) The answer is, there is no answer...because you can never be 100 percent sure of the area where you will be mugged/jumped/attacked. So there will always be SOME chance that there is an oily patch, a bottle or you misjudge the sise of your opponent and he drops you. Instead of appealing to some utopia like "i will always avoid dark alleys and only train on mats," better to be prepared for the possibility that one might trip, or become stunned etc. If one learns to deal with those possibilities, one stands a better chance of responding to them if they occur. After all, we will not be fighting in a dojo with clean mats in a controlled scenario...
To be clear, I never asked: how can you eliminate all chances of ending up on the ground? I asked what can you do to make it
NOT "a significant possibility that one would end up there?" Since we have not clearly identifed (or agreed on)
The odds of ending up on the ground., let's continue the discussion like this: How can you avoid ending up in a ground fight, (not just on the ground)?
Martin