Well, I go on vacation and come back to see a thread I'd have love to be involved in from the first page....It sounds to me like you're friend wants to learn how to fight, rather than learn self defense.
If this is true, I suggest he gets his head examined. Fighting hurts, a lot. It's also usually entirely unnecessary if your self defense skills were up to the task. Self defense means literally that - doing what it takes to avoid injury. Avoiding situations where that can happen (like fighting ) is the easily best way of achieving this. Martial artists often fall into the trap of thinking that they have the skills to protect themselves in a fight. Sometimes this is true to a certain extent, but ego often grows faster than ability does.
The key is to develop good awareness and social skills. Running is the option to take when those fail. I agree with the sentiment though, soOriginally Posted by David Franklin
Onto other random thoughts that might provoke thought....
Multiple opponents are a real threat, and I only know of one school (in Australia) that tackles them sensibly. I know of a lot of schools, so that that's saying something. If you're thinking about how best to fight multiple opponents - you need to change your line of thinking. A much better line of thought is how to survive against multiple opponents. As soon as you start thinking about winning the ego tends to take over and gets you in trouble.
The style isn't nearly as important as the teacher. There are frauds and inflated ranks everywhere. There are belt factories and poor standards everywhere. There are also good people just about everywhere if you look hard enough. They may not advertise or have large classes however.
The weapons of today are not the weapons of yesterday. Neither are the tactics. Those who regularly use the weapons of today aren't using unarmed martial arts of yesterday. They sneak up behind you in greater numbers and don't give you a fighting chance. If they really want to hurt you.... they will.
If you try to become just as nasty as the people who might do the above to you, you'll only succeed in getting their attention. This is the exact opposite of what you're looking for.
There is of course more since this is a pet topic of mine, but my girlfriend is tapping on my window looking sad, so I think I'll add more tomorrow if the threads moved along at all.
For what it's worth, this is the opinion of a Jujutsu instructor with slightly over a decade of practice under his belt. It's what I teach my students, and I think it's the only responsible angle I think anyone can take if they claim to teach self-defense. Martial arts are a much wider topic than just self defense in my opinion though.
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