Points MMA

Discussion in 'General Martial Arts Discussion' started by thinkingbody, Oct 9, 2017.

  1. thinkingbody

    thinkingbody Valued Member

    Hey so let me give you quick run down of my MA history so you guys know where i'm coming from. I studied kung fu for six years from about 15 to 21 years of age. Then, when I started getting in fights at night clubs and pubs I realised that kung fu was nearly totally useless. So I started doing boxing and mauy thai and some BJJ. I did that for about two and a half years, but then i started to get really concerned with the amount hits to the head I was taking, so i had about a 2 year break from martial arts and pursued some other goals. I started doing martial arts seriously again a couple years ago, starting with krav maga but I soon found that although the principles might be good, krav mana instructors tend to know little about actual fighting in my opinion. So I started doing more BJJ, which I am still committed to having recently competed a couple times and earned my blue belt.

    Now, something I think about all the time is that striking martial arts, in my opinion, are only really worth pursuing if your only goal is to be the best possible fighter you can be. They are also incredibly useful for self defence, but, and this is a big but, if your only goals are to be as healthy as possible and learn some self defence then striking martial arts will contradict the first goal because accumulated trauma to the brain is pretty unhealthy. But if your not striking then your not really getting the most out of self defence training, so there is a tension here between what is healthy and what is good self defence.

    I've been thinking about this for a while and trying to come up with a way to train striking in a realistic way without causing undue brain damage. One way might be an MMA type rule system only you can only win either by points or submission, so no KO wins. But what's to stop someone from just beating you up and then submitting before you get knocked out right? Well I have two answers to this question which I'm not really that sure would work, but here goes anyway.

    1. A gentleman agreement not throw heavy blows. This is likely to break down in the heat of the moment as anyone that has done sparring knows.

    2. Fighters wear full head gear with plastic face mask, and that's it, no gloves, no shin guards etc. I figure the hard plastic face mask can help to prevent the big shots because fighters will hurt their hands in the process of throwing that heavy blow, so instead they will save their hands by throwing lighter shots and gaining points. I'm thinking here of the RDX face mask which has a kind of grill over the front which wouldn't be very nice to punch. Kicks might be a different story, they might require a bit more conscious control by the participants.

    Obviously I'm not going to try and market this is as the 'new MMA' or anything crazy. This would probably never work as an actual combat sport. But it might work for casual martial artists like myself that only want to pursue the two goals stated above i.e. be as healthy as possible and learn some self defence.

    So what do the knowledgable people at martial arts planet think? Again, I'm not trying to evangelise or win converts here, I'm just looking for some constructive feedback. Cheers.
     
  2. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    About to leave but my quick rebuttal thoughts are:

    1. You can regulate how hard people fight, interclubs do it all the time. You get warnings then you get DQ'd

    2. You may want to do some research into headguards. They're fairly rapidly falling out of favour because research suggests they cause far more trauma than they prevent. Great for stopping cuts, terrible for stopping brain trauma.
     
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  3. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    If all of your training partners aren't to be trusted, something about the culture of your gym needs adjusting.

    You do need hard contact, but at the right times, when you both know it's coming.

    But your right, striking arts have a limited amount of time they can be practised, often people go super hard at the start of their career and only calm down once the damage is done, that's also partially true of judo too, but to a much lessor extent, and obviously not brain function but a collection of knee and shoulder injuries, of course BJJ can be terrible for your spine and knees too.
     
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  4. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Southpaw nailed it.

    Also, you can train striking safely. Training in Thailand, the Thais hardly ever spar full contact. In fact they don't even spar with gloves on. Most of their work is done on the pass and bag.

    Even if you didn't want to train that way, you could still become good at striking by training normally and only sparring at medI'm intensity once a week or even once a month. Brain trauma is a very real possibility but onlying if you are training like a pro fighter. If you're training two or three times a week and you sparring once with not much intensity I wouldn't be too worried.
     
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  5. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Sounds like you have reinvented Sports Ju Jitsu :)

     
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  6. Rataca100

    Rataca100 Banned Banned


    I thought that was because you have to hit the head more to knock someone out? Kind of like the gloves meaning people strike the head more as there is less chance of you damaging your hand/wrist and thus more serious trauma in boxing.

    (agreed anyway)

    You could just wear thinner gloves and a head guard though, so they require more technique with light sparring being the goal. They also do those protective suits which if you wear gloves and do light sparring would mean the chance of injury is mitigated further. :p
     
  7. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    That was one reason was the fact there's padding means people hit harder. It was also because you're padded you protect yourself less (like NFL players using their helmet to hit), and the padding cutting off peripheral vision so you get hit more especially with hooks, and its thought hooks are the worst punches for whiplash and brain trauma.

    There might have been more reasons but that's what I remember off the top of my head.
     
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  8. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    IIRC there's also that they add extra weight to the head, allow more leverage/torque when a punch lands (because the head is now a couple of inches wider) and punches that would have slid off or partially landed on a naked/sweaty head actually land more squarely by hitting the larger headguard.
     
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  9. Smaug97

    Smaug97 Valued Member

    Anybody know which association runs that? I've been looking into sports ju jutsu associations/tournaments mostly for myself and also i think it'd be good for my club to do some competitions.
     
  10. Knee Rider

    Knee Rider Valued Member Supporter

    if you are in the UK then PM the member 'big red dog'. He is the team GB captain for sport jujitsu.
     
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  11. Dan Bian

    Dan Bian Neither Dan, nor Brian

    Is kungfu useless, or was your training just ineffective??
     
  12. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    The thing is the thais compete a lot and regularly so they don't need to spar hard . The problem with sparring light all the time is you end up with unrealistic techniques and being unused to dealing with the adrenaline dump that hits you when you realise it's for real and the fact all technique goes out the window when you heart rate spikes because its your first time getting hit for real

    Those two things were highlighted big time in the early UFC's and they are still true today

    I honestly can't see anyway round the need for a fighter to do a lot of heavy sparring if they want to be a good fighter
     
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  13. axelb

    axelb Master of Office Chair Fu

    You need to have some hard sparring regularly (not necessarily every week) to keep it real and keep your practise live.

    Hard doesn't mean 100% and in some cases you can set the rules for power in class to 80% body and 50-60% head, which was a common value used in 2 different Kickboxing clubs and MMA club I trained at.

    I much prefer without a head guard after seeing the research to suggest they not much better.
    I would take a look around if the club's you were at are sparring hard too often; did you find yourself getting concussed or sparked frequently in the 2 year's training there?
     
  14. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    This one has been done to death. I'll take my six years of MMA over any 6 years of traditional kung fu.
     
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  15. Rataca100

    Rataca100 Banned Banned

    Does anyone have research on said issues with head guards? I fancy a read. :p
     
  16. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    Why ?? seriously if your not going to train why bother wasting your time reading about it?
     
  17. Dan Bian

    Dan Bian Neither Dan, nor Brian

    Yep, that's absolutely fine.
    But again, is that not because the majority of kungfu is taught in an unrealistic manner, rather than particular styles being inherently "useless"?

    But as you say, the discussion has been done to death, but as a kungfu guy myself, I just wanted to raise the point. :)
     
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  18. thinkingbody

    thinkingbody Valued Member

    I'm familiar with the research on head gear, but the difference that I am proposing is that you use a hard face mask against bare knuckles, the idea being that people will hit lighter in order to save their hands. So, its not necessarily the head gear, but the implications of striking a hard surface which leads to less powerful shots being deployed.

    Maybe I'm just being a bit cookie, but its an idea i've been thinking about anyway.
     
  19. thinkingbody

    thinkingbody Valued Member

    It's not about trusting or not trusting people, its more about human nature in my opinion. Sparring will gradually get harder the longer it goes on, its just kind of the nature of it. If your looking at minimising the impact on the brain then you probably need to implement more than a gentlemen agreement, you need to create incentives for not hitting too hard. DQ could be one, but I wouldn't rely on only DQ and a gentlemens agreement, but that's just me. I think I might be a bit more sensitive (or maybe paranoid) about this sort of thing that most martial artists.
     
  20. thinkingbody

    thinkingbody Valued Member

    That looks like a toned down version of MMA to me, those guys are still eating some big shots...
     

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