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Letter To A Young Man about Relying On Strength In A Fight | Martial Artists: Practice What You Preach | Muscle vs. Martial Arts

While this can be true, odds are seriously against it. Why? To start with, usually the more force you try to hit with the harder you're going to push him away. Now if you're expecting for him to hurt himself from falling over ... well now you've got a chance. Because falling down usually does a much better job of creating A+B than your punch on steroids.

If you want to cause damage, you NEED condition B. Condition A will hurt like hell, but it won't stop an attacker(2).

We tell you this because there's a dogma out there that strength and physical conditioning is critical for 'self-defense.'

Unfortunately, many people have twisted the term self-defense around to mean anything they are teaching (instead of what self-defense really is). In fact, the effectiveness  -- if you can call it that -- of these systems is almost entirely dependant on strength and physical conditioning.

Simply stated, strength is NOT needed for self-defense.

However, I again I can speak from experience, it IS needed if you're fighting. It's also needed if it's your job to control someone without injury to them. Where it is MOST needed is in sports competitions.  But all of those are SERIOUSLY different than self-defense. Specifically the goals of these  other activities are different than self-defense.

There are all kinds of mixed martial arts instructors/fans, grapplers, Crossfit franchises, reality based self-defense forums and other keyboard warriors who will tell you that your physical conditioning is critical to 'win' in a self-defense situation. What's worse is that most so-called 'combative' systems are basically relying on the same thing -- watered down sports techniques. But that isn't the only lie they are telling you. What they are also telling you is
a) fighting is the same as self-defense (it isn't)
b) strength, not skill or strategy, is what will save you.

Bottom line, if you're training to fight in a sports context, then what they are teaching not only works, but it works well. And there you really need to be in good shape. However, if you're training to fight outside the ring (but calling it self-defense), then what they are teaching you isn't so hot. That's because if you don't have the physical conditioning to patch the holes in what they are teaching, then you're going to get your ass kicked.

Or ... if you find yourself in a situation that isn't some macho, middle class fantasy about how violence happens ... you'll get killed.

Beginning to see why you shouldn't rely on strength alone if you're thinking about taking your training outside of the sports ring?

Letter To A Young Man about Relying On Strength In A Fight
Below is the response to the young man who inspired this page. He'd asked me about a multitude of issues but it basically boiled down to 'MA instructors say train and develop skill, but strength seems more reliable.' Here is what I told him...

Your question is a serious, 'which came first, the chicken or the egg' question.

Here's the good news, strength DOES win a good number of fights. Bigger, stronger, in better shape will carry the day in a majority of conflicts. That is so, as long as you carefully pick and choose WHO you fight ... being big and strong will pretty much guarantee you victory.

Now mind you, I just said if you're careful to only pick on smaller, weaker people, you'll do fine relying on strength. Except we have a name for that, it's called bullying.

The down side is that in many ways, a strategy of relying on strength, physical conditioning, sloppy technique and -- well let's face it -- aggression is likely to get you killed in the real world. There are a lot of reasons for this end result.

First is that you ain't always going to be able to pick your fights. Sometimes the dude who comes gunning for you is bigger and stronger. If you've always relied on strength, you won't have anything else to fall back on.

Second, it is a VERY narrow socio-economic/cultural/situational set of circumstances where people use empty handed violence. As I say about where I come from: We used our empty hands to beat our women, children and punks. If you were serious about hurting someone, you used a weapon.

Bottom line, in a lot of  situations size and strength will get it done for you.  BUT there are JUST as many situations where the smaller guy is going to look at the bigger guy, shrug and reach for a weapon. Now maybe if you stay in a certain social class, you'll never see this, but out in places where the shit gets deep, that is a fact of life -- and death. If you are involved in violence on a regular basis, this WILL eventually happen. Strength cannot overcome weapons.

Third, is sooner or later, strength fades. Helio Gracie is famous for saying "Train as though you are an old man, because one day you will be." What carries you to victory in your youth, won't be there when you are older and fighting a younger, stronger opponent. That's why developing skill that is NOT reliant on strength is important.

Fourth, skill and superior strategy go a LONG way to undermine strength. That's why instructors tell you to train. A friend of mine sums it up as "Martial arts are designed for weakness to overcome strength." If you understand the basis of strength, then you will also learn how to pull the rug out from underneath it.

Fifth, is violence is frowned upon in society. Now a lot of people try it and it doesn't turn out well, so they try some other way to get what they want.

However, most is not all. Let's say that physical violence is only committed by 10% of the population. However, in that 10% there are some folks who are seriously GOOD at it. A lot of them have a combination of strength, skill and experience. That stacks the deck 3 to 1 over someone who only has strength alone.

This is why your question is such a 'which came first...'  In MOST situations, size and strength when mixed with aggression WILL bring victory ... but only against a smaller weaker opponent who fights the bigger person head on. While that is usually what happens, if you change ANY of these factors, it's going to be a total crap shoot.

And if the shit is really deep, the dice are loaded for the guy who goes for the weapon. This is because big, strong guys tend to rely too much on being big, strong and able to take punches. With this attitude they don't just walk right into weapons, they're left with their dicks flapping in the wind. I've seen and known a WHOLE lot more big guys who got stabbed and shot than smaller weaker guys.

There's a lot of damned good reasons why you shouldn't rely on strength alone -- even though it looks like the fastest and easiest way to 'win.'

M

To Martial Artists: Practice What You Preach
In all fairness I must also point out a serious counter point to all of this.  There is a reason strength and size so often does overwhelm your training. And that is:

In order for your 'training' to defeat superior size and strength
you MUST be able to perform effectively those elements that WILL
render those advantages ineffective.

And straight up, most martial artists don't walk their talk when it comes down to it. They talk about how their superior techniques will defeat a bigger and stronger opponent, but then the fail to do the absolutely most important element to counter those advantages. This especially means when it comes to getting out of the way of a charging opponent.

Putting this into a visual, there ain't no 'superior technique' that is going to save you if you insist on standing on the tracks against an oncoming train. In a head on collision, the laws of physics are with the train.

You can talk all you want about how your superior techniques will overcome strength, but if you can't perform them while a big bruiser is barreling down on you, then you're going to get creamed. It ain't no superior technique if you can't perform it under pressure.

This is why I recommend you get some scenario based/adrenal stress training to introduce you to the effects of adrenaline on you and your martial arts. And THEN start practicing DOING the techniques under adrenal stress. And the number one thing you need to learn how to do while being attacked is to get the hell out of the way.

If you don't, then you are fighting the bigger and stronger guy's fight ... and he WILL win. That's because if you don't get off line, your 'superior technique' isn't. You will get plowed over by someone charging in and using strength.

Muscle vs. Martial Arts
Having made that last point, I need to stress to the muscle heads reading this: It isn't that 'martial arts are inferior' to MMA, combatives or reality based self-defense.

It's that there's a big difference between saying you have a superior technique and actually being able to do it. So while a 'hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle' strategy based on strength will work against an inferior opponent, all the problems that we've discussed on this page still apply.

You need to develop those same 'superior techniques' that you currently scorn as ineffective. That's because

• You're going to get older and lose your strength; relying on muscle is a young man's strategy (read, a short term strategy)
• You'd damned well better have something else to fall back on when you run into a situation where muscle alone isn't enough.

Is muscle and physical conditioning a good thing to have? Yes. There are all kinds of health benefits to it other than just fighting. When you're in good physical condition you really do feel better and have more energy.  That's reason enough to be in good shape.

Is it going to help you in a self-defense situation? Well, no not really. But that's because self-defense isn't fighting. They are totally different animals. And if you believe the marketing of the guys who are selling you a fighting system under the false label of self-defense, then not only are you likely to get arrested for fighting, but in an actual self-defense situation, you're likely to get killed. That's because criminals, dangerous people and people from different cultural/ethnic/socio-economic backgrounds aren't there to 'fight you' at all.

And if you don't know how to behave, it doesn't matter how big and strong you are, you WILL be attacked. There's a lot of reasons for violence that you aren't going to learn in your gym. The problem is that a lot of people buy into what these programs that promote muscle are selling want to believe the simplistic lies about violence, life and being a stud that these programs are selling.

It ain't that simple. There's a whole lot more to being safe than just how big your muscles are or what kind of mixed martial art you study.

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1) Using techniques that were not watered down. By this I mean the elements that assisted in creating serious injury were not removed from the technique for:
a) sports/sparring application
b) teaching to children
c) insurance indemnification
d) the safety of the participants
Removal of these dangerous elements make it so that -- no matter how hard you do these techniques -- they are not likely to create physical injury in your classmate, sparring partner or fellow sport fighter. There is a word for this, it's called 'safety.' It's what you practice to stay in business.  Return to Text

2) Want proof? Ask yourself: Why do boxing matches, UFC and MMA bouts usually last for such a long time?
You might say because both participants are in such good shape, but that actually proves my point. These guys ARE in good enough shape to endure a barrage of extremely powerful, but, in the end, non-injurious techniques. This as opposed to combat where you need to have your enemy on the ground dead and dying within seconds -- or it will be you doing the dying. Now ask yourself do you REALLY want your self-defense' to take as long as the average mixed martial arts bout before it finally gets around to working to save you? Return to Text

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