Ever since I have been into martial arts (of any form) I have been listening people say that Martial arts is useless in real fight situations or on the streets.
Well, sure enough, lets have a look at it and see why people think like that, or more accurately, if it is useless, then why is that so?
What is Martial Art:
First question to ask is, what really is martial arts? Well martial arts is art of war. And a warrior don’t go about killing and beating people in the street. So keep this thing in mind first, if a martial artist don’t break bones in street fight, it don’t mean what he learnt was useless, it simply means he knows how to control his skills.
But here comes the part, what if in a street fight, against the evils, he gets his own bones broken? well then, probably what he learnt was just a game, not an art or he was very junior in it.
Not trained for streets:
Most so called martial arts clubs are training for “ring” fights, a sport. Which is a total controlled environment.
When a game points base trained athlete goes in a real street fight, he obviously can’t handle that situation. Why can’t he? well that’s a different discussion which I will be posting soon. So thing is, a martial artist should be trained for real fights too, which is a complete art in itself.
Fear … of damaging others
Believe it or not, most martial artist fear damaging the opponent more than getting hurt themselves. Not only in streets, but in ring too. Please note, here i said they just fear that they might damage the opponent. It doesn’t necessarily mean that what they might be thinking is right too. Maybe their most powerful kick can’t even move the opponent. So the student should be trained on removing the fear of hitting the opponent too, whenever needed.
Training for streets is additional training to the ring one. So it should be given proper time too!