Gurps says: don't learn karate

[seycyrus]

As a society are we really devolving in our understanding as to what makes a martial art effective?

What makes a marital effective is practice against resisting opponents. At partial speeds and power and at full speed and power.

It is NOT pretending that your "death" strikes practiced against compliant ukes are useful against anyone besides compliant ukes.

I have taken traditional martial arts for the majority of my life. I have also taken BJJ, Muay Thai and boxing. One group is MUCH more effective in a real life encounter than the other (hint: It's the latter).

The gracies in the 60s - 80s had open invitations to no rules, anything goes fights. The gracies won, the ancient masters lost.

UFC 1 was pretty much no rules (no biting or eye gouging), and we know what happened. The immediate fights that followed were pretty much the same. Nowadays, there is money to be made by both the combatants and the league(s), so yes there are more rules now, but the lack of success of fighters who ONLY use traditional martial arts shows something.

Before we begin the tired old cliche of, 1) "The real masters don't participate because there is no Honor in such spectacle.", and 2) "It's not a real fight if you can't do your death strike, or your eye gouge etc.", let me reply.

1) Surely there are partial masters, or true masters that have fallen from grace and would be motivated by such things as money, and or glory. Or are we going to pretend that no such master has ever been motivated by base desires?

2)
A) No rules, open challenges still exist. There were no rules in the beginning - we know what happened.

B) If using your style successfully in a real fight is dependent on things like eye-gouges and biting, then it isn't much of a style after all. It's biting and eye-gouging. Likewise, if you can't use your style in a fight effectively UNLESS you can do your death strike ...

The MMA guy who fights against resisting opponent on his feet, on the ground, in the clinch, every day. That is the guy doing who is doing Karate Combat.

Those wushu guys doing their flashy, choreographed dances are doing karate sport or karate art.

Unfortunately, so are the wizened masters who are doing their katas, bunkai and kiso that are full of "hidden techniques" that have never been used against a resisting opponent. They are doing karate sport or karate art.

30 years later and this bullshido stuff is being resurrected, jeez. A whole boatload of Kuchi Waza.

Back in the day we had rec.martial arts to fight the fight against bs, but that forum quit being relevant 15 years ago. Luckily other bastions of truth still exist out there. One of them is, https://www.bullshido.net/

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

I have taken traditional martial arts for the majority of my life. I have also taken BJJ, Muay Thai and boxing. One group is MUCH more effective in a real life encounter than the other (hint: It's the latter).

Um, I'm afraid that I find your sentiment unclear. When using "former" and "latter" it works best to have a singe set of alternatives and you have at least 3 and maybe 4.

Even trying to parse your statement as is it's "boxing" that's the latter and that seems unlikely after your praise of the Gracies and co.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Um, I'm afraid that I find your sentiment unclear. When using "former" and "latter" it works best to have a singe set of alternatives and you have at least 3 and maybe 4.

Even trying to parse your statement as is it's "boxing" that's the latter and that seems unlikely after your praise of the Gracies and co.

Its pretty clear to me:

I have taken traditional martial arts for the majority of my life.

I have also taken BJJ, Muay Thai and boxing.

One group is MUCH more effective in a real life encounter than the other (hint: It's the latter).

"Latter" is clearly the second sentence. If they had written:

I have taken traditional martial arts, BJJ, Muay Thai and boxing.

One group is MUCH more effective in a real life encounter than the other (hint: It's the latter).

Then is wouldn't make much sense. Though traditional martial arts is a group, we can then speculate that the other 3 are a separate group.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by seycyrus

[…] What makes a marital effective is practice against resisting opponents. At partial speeds and power and at full speed and power.

It is NOT pretending that your "death" strikes practiced against compliant ukes are useful against anyone besides compliant ukes.

I have taken traditional martial arts for the majority of my life. I have also taken BJJ, Muay Thai and boxing. One group is MUCH more effective in a real life encounter than the other (hint: It's the latter).

Sorry to say it so frankly, but this is a common misunderstanding of traditional martial arts. Of course, a master of such a martial art won’t ever win against a MMA fighter or any other specialist of competitive fight. Because as soon as there is a competition, there are rules, and enforcing these competitive rules to someone who learned to fight without them is like enforcing a boxer to fight with only one hand.

When I’m saying that traditional karate techniques are too dangerous to be used in competition, I’m not speaking about eye-gouging and biting only. That is caricature. I’m speaking about kicking the groin, striking the top of the skull with a vertical elbow strike as soon as someone bend over to grab your legs, striking the throat, tearing off the Adam Apple, hitting the spine with a knee strike, kicking the knees or the ankles, kicking someone who is on the ground, twisting the fingers in order to break them, and so on.

Brief, enforcing someone who learned all these techniques to avoid using them is really like telling a master of iai-do to drop his katana and to compete with a fencing sword. He will be ridiculous. As traditional masters are ridiculous in MMA, K1 or other competitions like that.

In a traditional martial art, there are a lot of ways to practice against resisting opponents. The only difference is that those exercises are not competitive fights. Jyukumite for dexterity and speed, with real strike at the torso when you are black belt (with or even without sport armors), kakie undo or kakie eido for strength and stamina, sanchin or tensho with striking tests for toughness, and so on.

Of course, those exercises don’t allow to learn as fast as competitive fights, at least apparently. Because the problem of competitive fights is that, most of the time, the strongest win and the weakest loses ... And don’t learn anything. In traditional karate, nobody loses. Everyone learns something because there is no applause, no medal to win, so the strongest is here to help the weakest to improve, not to bump on him until he is knocked out.

When you say that you "have taken traditional martial arts for the majority of your life", which one, how much time, and to what level, please? Traditional martial arts are like musical instruments. 5 years of full time practice is nothing more than a good start.

[Michael Thayne]

Part of the core problem here is that the way GURPS handles untrained unarmed fighters is sort of weird. For most skills, the default level is 4 levels lower than the 1-point level, e.g. Attribute-4 for most Easy skills and Attribute-5 for most Average skills. This reflects the fact that realistically, even a small amount of training will be a huge improvement on trying to do something based on having seen it on TV. But when it comes to unarmed combat GURPS says that 1st point in a skill is mostly to let you attempt techniques that you normally can't attempt at all, which is not at all my experience. On the one hand I've done a bit of jiu-jitsu, not a ton, and I can tell you that little bit goes a long way. On the other hand... you don't really need training to give someone an elbow or knee to the stomach, even though GURPS says Knee Strike and Elbow Strike have no default to DX.

[sir_pudding]

More that untrained elbow and knee strikes aren't sufficiently distinct from untrained punches and kicks to warrant special rules.

[Gollum]

In my humble opinion, these features come from the fact that Peter Dell’Orto (GUPRS Martial Arts author) knows very well martials arts.

Striking with elbow is possible for everyone, yes, but really harming someone with such a strike is much harder. Horizontal swinging elbow strikes require a rotation of the twist to release the elbow. Vertical elbow strikes require a muscle contraction of the hips and of the rear leg. And rear thrusting elbow strikes also require a rotation of the wrist.

Try this at home (on a punching bag!). If you are not trained enough (if you can’t do these wrist rotations or these muscle contractions fast enough), you will immediately notice that your elbow strike is slow, that your muscles interfere with your own movement and that you make a much better impact when you punch.

Ditto for knee strikes. If you try that on a punching bag, you will notice that it is hard to make a good impact ...

So, untrained people can strike with elbows or knees, and it can hurt. But they cannot really take benefit from it if they are not trained.

Furthermore, elbow and knee strikes are shorter that punches or kicks. So they require to come closer from the opponent, which is somewhat frightening for untrained people.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

More that untrained elbow and knee strikes aren't sufficiently distinct from untrained punches and kicks to warrant special rules.

Originally Posted by Gollum

Furthermore, elbow and knee strikes are shorter that punches or kicks. So they require to come closer from the opponent, which is somewhat frightening for untrained people.

The thing about range is a normal person is unlikely to move closer just so they can land a knee or elbow strike, but if someone is attacking you and puts themselves in range for such a strike, those moves suddenly become very intuitive. Like, seriously, if someone tries to grab you from the front, kneeing them in the groin is the most obvious thing in the world as long as you have no scruples about fighting dirty. I would argue it's actually easier than landing an effective kick on someone a yard away—which GURPS reflects in the fact that Knee Strike defaults to Skill-1 rather than Skill-2, and has additional benefits in grappling situations... but only if you have a point in Brawling, which is where I go "huh?"

I dunno, maybe this actually isn't obvious. Maybe I earned a point in Brawling as a kid by play fighting with friends and getting in one, maybe two serious playground fights? The idea that I might have earned a point in a combat skill in grade school / early middle school feels ridiculous, but maybe it says something that I have a memory from middle school about a teacher giving the whole class a talking to about how we needed to stop getting into fights because as an adult getting into fights can land you in jail.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I dunno, maybe this actually isn't obvious. Maybe I earned a point in Brawling as a kid by play fighting with friends and getting in one, maybe two serious playground fights?

This is where you run into Gurps not being as simulationist as some people think it is. A number of things about combat are made harder in Gurps play than they appear to me to be in actual reality and I believe this is for purposes of game play.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

SNIP

I dunno, maybe this actually isn't obvious. Maybe I earned a point in Brawling as a kid by play fighting with friends and getting in one, maybe two serious playground fights? The idea that I might have earned a point in a combat skill in grade school / early middle school feels ridiculous, but maybe it says something that I have a memory from middle school about a teacher giving the whole class a talking to about how we needed to stop getting into fights because as an adult getting into fights can land you in jail.

I would say, from sadly practical experience, you could get more than 1 point in Brawling from school experience. That depends clearly on which school you visit, and how rough the neighbourhood is. Being beaten up often enough you learn two things, to run and be good enough to fight back, maybe you find out you have a real talent for it. Some of my fellow pupils were quite competent Street Fighters, or learned Martial Arts in their free time.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This is where you run into Gurps not being as simulationist as some people think it is. A number of things about combat are made harder in Gurps play than they appear to me to be in actual reality and I believe this is for purposes of game play.

Seconded, that´s a question I often asked myself. Some of the techniques and skills from the combat section of GURPS, make pointwise not much sense for me - if you take a realism approach, gamewise it makes a lot of sense. A lot of skills or techniques are easier to learn, other much harder than GURPS treats them.

By the way, if I mostly add to PCs always a bit Brawling, I find it at low levels more helpful than judo or karate.