MMA Catch All Thread.

It's really easy to get into the mindset that fighters are pretty indestructable. MMA, in particular, does a pretty good job of maintaining that illusion by stopping fights very quickly once an outcome is assured. The number of serious injuries in MMA have been remarkably few in comparison to, for instance, boxing or football.

That said, it's important to recognize exactly how much force these folks are generating at one another. A properly executed leg kick is literally (in the true sense of the word) as powerful and damaging as getting hit with a baseball bat. Smack a baseball bat against a more solid object like a fire hydrant (or a mailbox filled with concrete) and your results will be pretty predictable.

You'll notice that they didn't really show him landing on it. Stuff like that almost always results in an external fracture (breaking the skin). Folks just don't want to see stuff like that.

Sort of right there with you. I got my blood work back the other day and I have a pretty acute Vitamin-D deficiency. My doc told me that's pretty common nowadays because everyone is paranoid about getting skin cancer. I'd recommend getting yours tested as well so you'll know if you need to start taking boosters.

I've seen forearm breaks, but they are less frequent than the shin breaks. Ironically, it is because there is less mass to your arm than there is to your leg. Swing a baseball bat at a tennis racquet and, unless it is braced against something, you're most likely just going to knock it away rather than break it in half. Swing two baseball bats together and you're likely to break one of them. Even still, you don't want to take the full force of a Thai head kick with your forearm under any circumstances. That's why you learn to tuck and let the lat muscle or shoulder take most of it. Remember to tuck the chin into your shoulder. Any exposed neck is going to be majorly rocked if it gets hit.

I'm currently doing a lot of Muay Thai, but plan on doing more judo, ground fighting, and Silat once I get to a fitness and competency level I'm happy with. Groundfighting is still a foreign language to me and I don't want it to be straight panic defense if I ever encounter it. I don't need to be great, but I don't want to be pathetic.

Silat, in particular, is a whole lot more practical than most of the other stuff I've seen. At 42, I'm getting a little old for all the falls (judo) and breaks (MT). The brutal throws, small joint manipulation, and straight up ugly takedowns are definitely not the stuff of a sport form. Imagine Chinese Tan Lang Chuan meets Ninpo Taijutsu or Daito Ryu Aikijutitsu and you've got a general idea.

The point my kru emphasizes with the difference in the applicability of each system is that Silat is something you are far more likely to use in a real life situation than MT. Unless you're competing, you're not often going to get into situations where you get to square off with an opponent. Far more frequently, you're going to have to deal with getting suckerpunched.

Part of what attracts me to the Southeast Asian martial arts like Kali, Silat, Muay Thai, Bando, and Escrima is that they aren't all that far removed from the brutal laboratory of true combat. When martial arts become highly stylized, sportified, or, worse yet, spiritualized into something that exists mostly to preserve culture, elevate the status of teachers, or otherwise obscure the true nature of the art, they become pretty boring to me.

There is a whole lot I like about the Wing Chun sticky hands drill. There is a lot of that in Silat system as well. Especially when you're trying to bridge distance while maintaining contact, knowing where the person is without having to rely on your eyes/ears is a pretty powerful thing. Working a Silat flow drill really helps you reduce the claustrophobic panic that comes naturally with being in bent arm punching range.

I still admit that ground fighting is a bit of a foreign language to me. I'm getting better at it, but I'm still frustrated by it. I'm confident, however, that my striking, stand up clinch, and small joint manipulation would mostly keep me out of trouble since most wrestlers aren't used to getting hit by someone who can actually hit or getting locked by someone who knows finger and wrist locks. The stand up clinch work really helps as well. If you can reliably draw someone up and make him eat straight knees, he's going to think again about going for the running double. I'm also convinced that much of ground fighting is very "sport". Without things like small joint manipulation, elbows to the back of the head, or holding and hitting to the head (all things forbidden in MMA rules), going to ground looks a lot more attractive. I'm convinced, for instance, that the guard (a staple of MMA) is entirely a sport position. Someone tries that in any fight I'm in and I'll either walk away or start throwing rocks.

I looked at Krav Maga but wasn't altogether impressed with the quality of instruction. I like the aggression, but have to say I've met basic H2H instructors with less than 2 years of training with better actual technique. If that's what I'm paying for, I might as well just purchase sparring gear and start an underground amateur fight club.

I don't want to give the impression that training in ground fighting is unnecessary. Going in skill-less against an experienced groundfighter is a very bad idea. That said, there are a number of restrictions that favor the grappler in MMA competition.

The "no holding the cage" restriction was a direct response to Kimo's "defense" in his match against Royce Gracie in UFC 1. Royce could not take him to ground and couldn't seem to figure out a way to hurt him while he was standing up. His being a one-dimensional fighter didn't help. Since UFC was really set up to be a showcase for BJJ, something needed to be done to prevent that tactic from being a future problem.

My understanding is that you can not elbow to the head while holding it in place in UFC. I understand the restriction as it could actually result in very serious injury. Incidentally, it is also a restriction in sport Thai boxing. Though, in a fight for my life, I would not hesitate in using it.

No argument that being mounted, side controlled, or armbar submitted sucks ass. And you are right that there are limited applications in real life environments where the guard is preferrable to the alternative. That said, I've seen numerous MMA matches where folks go to ground and prefer to stay there when the real life situation would have called for getting up.

Agreed. The school I attend isn't the most expensive in the world but isn't cheap either. If I'm going to spend real money to learn something, the instructor better damned well know something I want to learn. Luckily for me, he knows a hell of a lot more.

edit: I guess I should also add that there has been a steady arms race in MMA fighting that has emphasized the need to really learn it all. The original UFC was really set up as sort of a rigged showcase to promote BJJ and, in particular, the Gracie schools. Luckily for the sport, however, it managed to attract folks from enough disciplines that it became a relatively wide open laboratory. Wrestlers gained early dominance, but were supplanted by ground and pounders. Concurrent to that, folks got really good at takedown defense, thus making stand up striking a hell of a lot more potent. Standup grappling and clinch is getting a lot more important now as folks like Carlos Condit have figured out formulas that work (CC's high knee knockout from the clinch, for instance). Other folks (eg: Yoshimitsu Maeda) are now starting to see the virtues of judo style takedowns without the immediate "go to ground" as well. In short, it's not enough to be any one thing anymore. You really do have to have a working knowledge of enough of it to hold your own.

I sort of feel the same way about Brock Lesnar. He's a Paulson student and has participated in events my school has been part of, but I can't get myself to like him.

This isn't exactly a sport that attracts gracefull, well-educated folk though.