When people ask us about fighting, they are either looking to compete in the cage or they are taking their self defense extremely seriously. This may be after an altercation or as a result of threats from others that must be taken seriously and from people who clearly don’t respect law and order.
Balancing injury risk vs realism
We can immediately rule out dead pattern traditional martial arts where ‘attackers’ perform zero resistance, choreographed attacks as we frequently see in everything from Aikido and Kung Fu to Krav Maga. If there is no sparring, there is no timing, and the martial art doesn’t really work any better than a placebo and occasionally is worse if it develops a degree of confidence not backed by actual competence.
The best type of fighting gym is not like something from Fight Club either, which showed real blows but no actual skill development. It is not necessary to trade wild blows where the injuries incurred in training could be worse than what most of us will ever experience in a lifetime, were we to be sensible about avoiding certain zip codes or bars at closing time. And it is not the typical Brazilian Jiu Jitsu only school that focuses entirely on competition Jiu Jitsu either, where there are no meaningful strikes and classes almost always start on the ground.
There is actually a very happy medium where you can really learn how to fight, from striking to clinch and ground, whilst minimising the risk of head strikes (what we call ‘protecting the software’) and maximising your skill acquisition. We want to always minimise and mitigate injury risk whilst keeping training as realistic as possible. Also a good fight gym should not just assume that every confrontation resembles a UFC fight. Quite often individuals will attack you in groups and may utilise weapons as well. It is important that your fighting education isn’t limited to just one on one, hand to hand combat and should also include situation awareness: identifying exit points and ‘walls’, utilising distance management, improvised weapons such as your belt which can even be taken on a plane and passes airport security, etc.
At SBG New Braunfels, we would be delighted to help you develop your all round fighting skills in a clean, safe, friendly and effective fighting environment.