The effectiveness of biting in self defense

Which is easy to say, far harder to actually do. Have you ever been in a violent encounter? If so, your experience may vary, I can't speak for everyone, but when I was I well and truly pooped myself and forgot everything. And I was an at least mildly experienced full contact fighter.

Most of your anecdotes seem to imply minimal contact is normal for your training. If you/your students aren't even used to punching/being punched, then there is no way in hell any of you are lethally responding to an attack.

Its all theory. And when you're giving that information to other people and filling them with false confidence, its dangerous and the height of negligence to pretend its anything other than theoretical fantasy.

 

Awesome! Sorry for getting the wrong end of the stick with regards to contact levels in that case.

That does bring me back to my other question though, which is how do you deal with giving your students the confidence and ability to actually use what you're showing them? How do you prepare them for the realities of an unexpected violent confrontation and tackle the issues of freezing and panicking that are so common and frequent, even among trained individuals? If you're telling people you're teaching them to protect themselves and instilling them with that confidence, how do you guarantee that they will actually be able to do it if they need to?

 

That's what I'm most curious to see how people tackle. Even something like JWT''s sim days, which I hold in very high regard and as the best I can think of, you still go into them knowing you're there to deal with violence. Going from Yay its Friday, suns out, headphones in, thinking "hmmm what do I have in the freezer for din- what the hell dude ow ow ow??!!"

Is something I'm genuinely curious to see how instructors can prep people for with any degree of reliability. Especially someone who admits having no martial arts credentials

 

That's all cool, but, aside from Pretty in Pink's point which I can't help but agree with,

You also run your blog and that seems to be your main self defence teaching method, by your own content and own admission on Quora. So how is any of that above being done through a blog, over the internet?

 

Also, "you forget techniques requiring fine motor skill"

But you're definitely going to do something like biting someone in the neck.

And another also, everything you've explained isn't wrong per se, but seems to all assume lethal force. The vast majority of violent encounters aren't lethal in nature. Even random jumpings are usually just about giving someone a beating for 'the bantz' or a mugging or whatever else have you. What nuance do you teach with regards to proportionately of self defence? You can't respond to a drunk squaring up to you by biting his neck or by breaking his legs, not unless that's worth jail time and a criminal record over, which it isn't.

In the vast majority of violent situations the average person faces, humans being social creatures with instinctual rules about not killing people in most fights, more fights are actually a lot more like a full contact martial arts fight in the techniques and intent of the attacker than they are like a Krav Maga or Kali fight where everyone wants to kill you. So how do you teach students to deal with social violence, and incidents where they need to defend themselves, but do so legally and not in a life/death situation?

 

Mod note: no need to get into personal attacks. I shouldn't need to tell long time MAPpers' that they are against our TOS. Personal attack was edited out.

Thanks

 

How does that qualify them? Are you really comfortable telling someone how to do something online and then letting them try to use it against a real person trying to hurt them? Are you willing to take the responsibility if someone does try to do what you've told them and they get hurt because all they know about it is a guide they read online? If I tell you on here, now, how to do a kimura, do you reckon you could do it on someone 100% trying to knock you out?

Because as far as I'm concerned, in that situation, you would be just as to blame for their injuries, including potentially their death, as the person attacking them.

It doesn't require skill, but it is still a skill. People can bite instinctively, but its not by any stretch a normal motor skill in fighting.

And why use those systems? You've established previously you don't rate grappling in self defence and called it useless, so why bjj?

You've criticised sport arts for training for unrealistic scenarios, and their techniques exist and are tailored to be used within the rules and competition systems those arts use. If training in those arts is useless for self defence, why use anything from those styles?