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This clip is the first of a series of shorts presented by Synergy Martial Arts. The purpose of these clips is to provide practical tools of self-preservation in the event of an attack. This particular clip demonstrates several different methods by which to escape from an attacker who has achieved top mount. Please enjoy!

What is the Best Martial Art??

The Best Martial Art

I often am asked by people, “What is the best martial art?” They probably expect me to say Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, any number of the Filipino Arts, or, of course due to popularity, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ).

 

My reply is always: “Why do you want to train?” This question will generally lead to talking about the person’s background likes and dislikes. And, this is more important than the actual system.

 

If he or she wants to train for sport, then they should go find someone to teach him or her sport training emphasizes, whether it is point competition or mixed martial arts (MMA). If the person wants to train for self-defense, then he or she needs to find someone who wanted the same thing when beginning to train. Maybe he or she wants to train for the beauty of the art; this is something totally different than the other two reasons.

 

We at Synergy Martial Arts believe that there are no superior martial arts, only superior training methods. Even Jeet Kune Do, if you take the base of what Sijo Bruce left us, is a little outdated. Facts are facts: Sijo Bruce didn’t have weapons training in the curriculum, and the ground skills that were far ahead of everyone else who did striking arts then are really below average today.

 

Sijo Bruce knew this; that is why he was always changing his training methods and the program that Taky Kimura, James Lee, and Dan Inosanto were teaching.

That is why we supplement our training methods with ones from other arts, conditioning programs, and movement therapies. There are things I learned about grappling and joint locking that I didn’t learn from martial arts; they came from being a massage therapist.

We always want to look for magic in a bottle, but really, excellence comes from a good solid foundation—and then exploration.

 

Your training is only as good as your training methods. If you are training for a marathon, and you run, and your friend tells you the best training method is a quarter of a mile a day, then on race day you can only run two miles. Where is the real problem? Is it the protein that you were taking for recovery? Or maybe it’s your shoes or your shorts. These factors may tangentially influence your performance, but really, you couldn’t run the marathon because you didn’t practice for a marathon: you should have trained in distance running to be able to run a great distance.

 

In closing, your training methods will always dictate the outcome of your performance. As the old saying goes: You play the way that you practice.

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Self-Defense and Martial Arts: What’s the Difference?

Self-Defense and Martial Arts: What’s the Difference?

At Synergy Martial Arts we are often asked the above question. Our response is simple. We are not trying to create champion tournament competitors or preserve an art or a Lineage; we are giving you the tools you need to protect yourself, and your loved ones, in case you are attacked.

Can you learn self-defense from a martial arts program? Sure, but it will take you many years to put together the skills that you need to defend yourself. Martial arts programs are designed to teach you stylistic versions of combat; when someone studies them, he or she spends a lot of time on refinement and self-perfection—the sense of reality, and the threat of injury, is lost.

Can you learn self-defense from mixed martial arts (MMA) or another martial sport? Again, the answer is very similar to the one above. Yes, you can. The problem lies again in the training method of the sport. Many people look at MMA and think that it looks very brutal; in reality, there are many rules in place to keep the participants safe. Participants cannot strike the eyes, groin, throat, base of the head, spine, and many other places that any self-defense program worth its salt should teach.

So in our opinion, when you evaluate a self-defense program, you should hold certain principles to be mandatory:

· The program must be comprised of methods that can be applied by a majority of the population, i.e. a kick to the groin is painful to most people, male or female, and the groin is located anatomically in the same place for everyone: Between the legs.

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· Escaping should be the most emphasized component of the program. The last thing that anyone wants to do is to engage an attacker. If you have a choice, you must get out of the situation in the quickest, safest manner possible.

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· The instructor must not have you performing one, lone technique to try to end an attack. You need to be able to hit an attacker many times, in rapid succession, in order to stun him so that you can escape.

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· Weapon training must be taught but taught in a very pragmatic manner. You need to understand that, if the attacker has a bat or a knife, you are going to get cut or hit. Once you understand this, you are working to reduce your chances of injury: learning to cover a knife attack with your forearms, instead of your wrists, reduces your chances of getting cut across parts of your anatomy that will bleed profusely.

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· The instructor must teach you the tools that will do the most amount of damage, in the shortest amount of time, so that you will be able to escape in the quickest manner possible. These tools are elbows, knees, head-butts, finger-jabs to soft areas, and palm-strikes. These tools take a very short amount of time to learn and require very little time to practice so that they stay familiar.

We are teaching you to be able to preserve your own life if you are attacked. In this month’s Men’s Health, they ranked the most dangerous places for men to live: unfortunately, Detroit was high on the list. If this is true for men, you can bet that it is true for women as well. Even though we live in a suburb of Detroit, and violent crime is a low incident in our area, many of the people in Livingston County commute to Detroit and the areas surrounding it.

Bruce Lee was quoted as saying, when someone asked him why he practiced Martial Arts:

BL: Do you have car insurance?

Q: Yes.

BL: Why?

Q : In case someone hits me?

BL: That is one of the reasons I practice martial arts. In case some hits me.

Also if you are looking for a Martial Arts or Self Defense Instructor please read the previous blog. How to choose a Martial Arts Instructor.

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