Punching For Street Fighting Reality

Fighting on the street is not recommended. You should try to avoid a confrontation on the street as much as possible. Training in boxing or martial arts will help you in many situations, including a street fight. Thai Boxing, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Jiu-Jitsu, all will help you, and by training in those arts most people will develop the mindset of trying to avoid a confrontation unless there is no other option but to defend themselves.

Obviously there are exceptions and some people want to learn Boxing or Martial arts for the wrong reasons. This post is not for promoting violence, It's for people that want to be prepared to defend themselves if the worst happens, and also to help in lessening the risk of injured hands in order to see a fight through to the end. In a street fight or self defence situation you need both hands, what if you throw a punch, land the punch incorrectly and can't use that hand again within the fight because it's swelled up like a balloon and hurting bad. You have just become hindered by injury, now your chances of coming out of that fight in one piece have been lowered considerably.

Some people say that you shouldn't punch in a street fight. In some ways this is good advice. One of the methods behind this madness is that your hands are not tough enough to withstand the force of punching someone in the face or head.  Street fights are unpredictable and in the heat of the moment your punching can be wild. This means that in a real situation you won't be able to land the perfect punch every time. Sometimes you end up landing a punch and you will connect with the smallest two knuckles (The end two). Connecting with the last two knuckles on someones face bones, teeth, and specially the head will almost certainly result in those knuckles becoming instantly swollen. Connecting at funny angles with the weakest knuckles, hitting tough bones in the face, teeth and the head, will happen in a street fight that lasts longer then a few seconds.

In fact, even one punch can result in damage to your hand if you throw a punch and it doesn't land on target correctly. Using a flat palm can be a very effective strike in a street fight, along with elbows, kicks and knees. Using these less fragile parts of the body to strike with can obviously lessen the risk of injury to your hands. However, most peoples instinct is first and foremost to throw punches.

If you want to minimise the risk of injuring your hands in a street fight you have to make your hands and knuckles as tough as possible. Boxing training can help but in boxing you always wear gloves and hand wraps when punching anything. And as much as this will still make your hands reasonably tough, it will not help that much in a real street fight situation where you have no hand protection at your disposal and it's as real as it gets.

This is where we have to look to some of the training methods used in Karate. Certain forms of Karate dedicate big chunks of their training to making the hands and knuckles solid. If you have ever seen a true Karate practitioners hands that trains in the forms of Karate that have a focus on tough hands you will see what I mean. Their hands are solid, like a pair of weapons. Lump Hammers I call them. This type of Karate training focuses on self defence and has the objective of ending a confrontation with one, or several, solid, full force direct strikes. Also with Karate, the focus for some strikes is more on landing a strike / punch with the toughest two knuckles, the two closest to the thumb. If you can train, and make it Instinct to consistently strike and land the two hardest knuckles when you punch in a street fight you will reduce the risk of damaging your knuckles immensely. And at the same time do maximum damage.

In Karate the students will punch / strike some very solid objects like wooden boards, bricks, blocks, and wood with fabric wrapped around. A normal person wanting tougher knuckles and hands for self defence protection and reduced injury does not have to go to such extremes. A good heavy punch bag will do the trick. With one sacrifice, you have to punch it wearing no protection at all. Also, to be safe it's recommended that you start this type of training by punching the top (the softest and more hollow) part of the bag to begin with. Get your hands, wrists, and knuckles used to this first. After a while as your hands, wrists, and knuckles will get used to the solid impact. Your knuckles will start to become tougher.

After a while training like this adjust the height of the bag to make the bag higher, or hit your bag lower so that your now hitting the bottom of the bag, the toughest and most resistant part of the bag. With this training you would want to connect with the two weaker knuckles at times as well and not just focus on the two biggest and strongest. That's because in a street fight, no matter how good and accurate you can punch the chances are that you will connect with the weaker knuckles at some point. So it makes sense to focus on toughening the fists as a whole.

One method that can be beneficial for replicating punching in a street fight is to have a heavy punch bag which is not attached to the ceiling or hanging on a bracket. Place this bag on a ledge at a side angle. Then do up to 6 x 3 minute rounds of bare knuckle punches. Because the bag is at an angle it will get your wrists and knuckles used to landing punches at strange, awkward angles, like what will happen in the reality of a street fight.

Do not jump straight into doing this type of training if you haven't been doing any punching / striking training for a while. You have to work your hands up gradually before going full force at a heavy, barely movable, rock solid, punch bag bare knuckle. One word of warning: Do not use a canvas fabric type punch bag for any of these type of exercises, you will rip your hands to bits. Use a leather cow hide or plastic type material punch bag. Although nothing beats training with real training partners, a heavy, unattached punch bag is also great for strength exercises like lifts, squats, take down practise, and not forgetting ground and pound. Even basic ground fighting techniques like certain position transitions, side control striking, full mount fluency, triangle submission drills. But that's another post.

Nothing is definite and no matter how tough you make your hands it will still not be 100% that you will not injure one or both in a street fight. Street fights are just too unpredictable. But by training the hands in this manner you put better odds in your favour. I wish you every success in gaining your lump hammer fists. For defence purposes of course!

Martial Arts Training

Martial Arts Training

There are so many different types of Martial Arts Training, from Judo to Karate, Jiu-Jitsu, Kick Boxing, the list is very long and there are new forms of Martial Arts being introduced all the time.

However, some Martial Arts Training methods are more effective in real life situations then others. In many ways all Martial Arts can be helpful for many things, including self confidence, Inner peace, and for many other things including self defense. I would say everyone has their own martial art that they would prefer to practice, or that suits them better as a person. But if we are talking about what Martial Arts Training is the most effective against a real life, LIVE opponent, then you have to look closely.

In my opinion if you have been studying any of the Martial Arts training methods and are totally fluent in it, you should be able to use it in a real fight, but this isn't always the case.

I personally have seen a real street fight between a Judo Black Belt and a normal guy on the street, Guess Who won? The normal guy got into a clinch with the Judo Expert, but the normal guy was able to twist his body and land on top of the Judo Black Belt on the floor, after that the normal guy totally punched the face off the Judo Black Belt until he gave in.

This is just one example to teach you one thing. Never limit yourself to one type of Martial Arts Training, if you do you are going to be weak in another area.

In my opinion the best type of Martial Arts Training for use in real life situations is something that focuses on all types of fighting, ground game, stand up, and all the things in between. This Martial Arts training is known as MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), or Vale Tudo (very similar to MMA) Vale Tudo stands for "anything goes" in Portugese.

These two Martial Arts Training methods are very good in many ways, one being time, if you work and socialise, like most people do, you will find it hard to attend mutiple lessons like a boxing lesson and say a Jiu-jitsu lesson if they are on the same day or if they are on a few times a week, you might not be able to free up that many days or hours of your time. With MMA or Vale Tudo the classes focus on everything so there is only one place to attend to learn everything (in time of course). These two Martial Arts Training methods were specifically developed with being able to use them in a real life situation.

Mixed Martial Arts Training will learn you everything, ground fighting, wrestling, submissions, punching, closing the distance, this will give you the best chance, in my opinion, of being able to effectively deal with most real fight situations.

Because with the example above, in this case it's the true story of what i witnessed between a Judo Black Belt and a normal street fighter who trained in no Martial Art or Boxing. Obviously this does matter on the individuals as people, not the art, but in general you have to think, for example, with Judo they practice specific moves over and over in a controlled environment. Your not allowed to try and prevent the move being done on you, in real life there are no set rules, even in Judo sparring your not allowed to do moves that would occur in a real life fight situation, a person in a real fight will tense up and try their hardest to make you not throw them.

So how can you really practice for a real life situation using these methods? In order to practice for real life situations you have to train for them. MMA and Vale Tudo do just that.

Remember, whatever Martial Arts Training you do, never limit yourself to one style. All Martial Arts can be good in their own right but some are way more useful to know in a real life situation.

Don't think im saying Judo is no good, it is very good, but in real life Judo is slightly limited for use as an all round defense system. Doing Judo and Boxing would be much better for real life situations, but if your going to do two, it's great if you have the time to spare, if not go for MMA or Vale Tudo, you get the best of both worlds in terms of time and learning many Martial Arts rolled into one.

Street Fight - Can You Defend Yourself?

Street Fight - Can You Defend Yourself?

In general, street fights unfold in a few certain ways. Theres either an extremely quick knockout, loads of swinging punches between the two fighters, or the fight goes to the ground after a while. Street fights are very unfair in some ways, they take no prisoners. The feelings that go through your mind and body when you know you have to fight can be scarey. You feel shakey and weak, not forgeting nervous. Your adrenaline takes over. These feelings are actually helping you, although it may not seem like it at the time.

This is your bodys way of preparing you for a fight or battle of some kind, so don't be scared of it. Everyone feels like this, or has done at some point. These feelings can be controlled, you can use them to your advantage. The fear factor can save you, keep you alert. If you do a Martial Art of some kind, or boxing, you don't feel the same scared feeling, your still nervous but in a different, more prepared kind of way. You feel more alert towards the situation rather then really shakey and scared. This nervous feeling can be overcome with the right mindset, no problem.

Like i have said before, the more you practice fighting, whether it be Boxing sparring or Martial Arts etc, you will be much more at ease when you know a fight is going to happen, rather then it be totally alien to you. It's the same with anything in life, a new job, after a while you get more experienced and become able to do your job better.

If you keep on feeding and working on the thing your scared of, throwing yourself into the fire, you will become so used to it, that after a while it becomes second nature. We are creatures of habit. In order to conquer anything you have to face it full on. The more you face it, the more you become less fearful of it. So then a fight doesn't seem that scarey anymore and it's down to the fact that by training in boxing or martial arts, your confidence has out grown your fear and you know you can defend yourself.

Always try to stay out of a street fight, they are bad news and should be avoided if possible. Never set out to learn to fight just for the purpose of fighting for no reason, just because you know you can. You will never find inner peace, or make many friends this way.

Avoiding a fight should be at the top of your list, but if it can't be avoided, you have to know how to defend yourself, because at some point, it will be needed.