The most effective discipline for street fighting “What’s the best martial art for self defense?” This is one of the most common questions asked when comparing different martial arts. This article will attempt to answer the more specific question: Which is the most effective martial art to learn for self-defense? That is to say which discipline may be the best to practice with street fighting in mind. In the interest of practicality, we’ll just focus on the disciplines most often offered in local gyms: Muay Thai, Western Boxing, Brazilian-Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling and MMA.
Competition: Mental Conditioning
You’ll notice that all disciplines listed are ones that you can actually compete in. Krav Maga is arguably the most effective discipline for street fighting, but you can’t truly compete in the sport. It was developed specifically to neutralize i.e. kill or severely injure your attacker with efficiency. This includes targeting the most vulnerable body points, using knives or objects and continuing to strike opponent until he or she is completely incapacitated. For this reason, it’s obvious why there are no legal, sanctioned Krav Maga competitions.
The reason we’re only discussing sports you can actually compete in has to do with the mental conditioning one can develop through competition. This is an often over-looked component of martial arts training that may actually be your greatest ally in a street fight. The truth is most people simply are not conditioned to the stresses of physical violence or even the mere threat of physical violence. The brain immediately kicks into fight or flight mode. Even if they do choose to fight, their thinking is emotional, reactive, rushed and impulsive. The result is a panicked mess of limbs with zero guiding intelligence in the attack or defense.
This doesn’t mean that those who respond in a state of panic with zero strategy are less than or stupid or cowardly. Their brains simply aren’t conditioned to think logically under that kind of stress. This is why competition matters and more specifically, training in a martial art that allows for competition matters. You can drill techniques all day and learn the most effective combinations and moves, but without regularly experiencing the real life threat of another person trying to hurt you, it’s nearly impossible to condition the mind to maintain clarity and respond with intelligence.
An Overview of Common Disciplines
So let’s take a look at each discipline listed above and try to get a better idea of which may be the most effective to learn. It’s important to note here that this article is not attempting to prove any particular discipline is ineffective or less than the other. It’s just a brief overview of common disciplines and how they may translate into street fighting and self defense.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Chokes and Holds
We’ll start with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). BJJ is a grappling-based sport. It doesn’t start on the ground, but that’s where most of the fight occurs. BJJ is great because it doesn’t rely on strength or size to submit your opponent. Along with its use of chokes and holds, this makes it very effective for street fighting.
The core problem with it, however, is that it focuses on ground fighting. In a street fight, you never want to go to the ground. Ever. For one, grappling on concrete isn’t the same as on wrestling mats, and that’s not even considering the broken glass and other things you could be rolling around on. More importantly, is in consideration of multiple attackers. As soon as you’re on the ground, it’s too easy for another attacker to blindside you. You always, always, always want to maintain situational awareness: sight of everything happening around you. And you always want to maintain the option to run.
Wrestling: Leverage, Takedowns and Defense
The next discipline to address is wrestling. You run into the same problems with wrestling that you do with BJJ: it’s ground-based. As discussed, you don’t want to go to the ground in a street fight. But this shouldn’t disqualify wrestling as an extremely effective, versatile skill-set to have in relation to street fighting. Most noteworthy is its use of leverage. Similar to BJJ in that it doesn’t always rely on strength and size, one can use leverage to throw and submit a bigger, stronger opponent.
The most noteworthy aspect of wrestling is its training in takedowns and takedown defenses. You never want to go the ground on the street, but that doesn’t mean your opponent understands that. Wrestling and throwing someone to the ground is more instinctual than striking which is to say it is a more common response to physical altercations. It’s safe to assume most aggressors in a street scenario are not trained and therefore more likely to rely on instincts than skills. We’ll discuss this more later in the article.
Western Boxing: Range, Angles, Timing
Moving on to striking, we’ll first discuss Western Boxing. Boxing is an incredible craft to learn for anyone interested in any martial art or combat sport. Boxing is very limited in its use of weapons: two hands…more specifically the knuckles of two hands. It’s the simplicity of the sport that paradoxically creates so much complexity in the sport. Any beginning boxer can tell you after their first time sparring how much harder it is to connect with their opponent than it looks! Landing punches in boxing relies heavily on range, angles and timing. No other discipline develops these better than boxing.
So boxing definitely has its place in the development of any trained fighter, but given its limitations, it’s not the most effective for street fighting. One issue is that the human hand isn’t equipped to handle a hard punch to another’s jaw or head and can easily break. Another is that boxing requires some space (or range as referred to before). You can’t always rely on having that in a street fight. An attacker may be on you, grabbing you by the shirt, pushing you against a wall. Boxing doesn’t really train stand up grappling i.e. the clinch. This brings us to the next discipline: Muay Thai.
Muay Thai: Elbows, Knees, Clinch
Muay Thai is often referred to as the art of eight limbs given its use of kicks, punches, knees and elbows. Kicking is a huge part of Muay Thai but is arguably its