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The problem is that out of this concern, some martial arts disallowed head blows in competition, only to fall out of grace due to how "unrealistic" they are in
by mastazi 4y ago
The problem is that out of this concern, some martial arts disallowed head blows in competition, only to fall out of grace due to how "unrealistic" they are in terms of self defence.
A large number of people who start practising martial arts, does that out of a self defence concern, maybe they have been bullied at school etc.
I don't have a solution to this problem (possibly head gear, but recent studies seem to indicate that it's not effective and might even make things worse)[1].
Of course one possible solution would be to mainly promote grappling-based martial arts, like BJJ or amateur wrestling, but then in a self defence optic you would still need some striking practice, at least in order to learn striking defence.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-wearing-headgear-anymore/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-wearing-h...
- mastazi 4y agoReplying to myself: in striking arts, one great solution is promoting a culture where light sparring (e.g. Thai style sparring) is preferred to hard sparring (e.g. Dutch style sparring). In most combat sports, competition is not that frequent and more than 99% of the time a practitioner would be doing either technical training or sparring.
- jvanderbot 4y agoYou've perfectly described every martial arts gym / training session that I've been part of. Touch / light sparring is reserved for intermediates, and reflex / defensive drills are a strong prerequsite, and under no circumstances is anyone allowed to go "full speed". Even in the grimiest of boxing gyms, unless you are explicitly training for a competition, I have never seen this rule violated.