Deluxe Martial Arts Forums - View Single Post - "Self-defense" vs. "Fighting"

Flash · 05-14-2002, 01:46 AM

You're right - you "defend" yourself by beating the crap out of the other guy or at least hurting him badly enough to buy you time to escape.

However, I classify "fighting" arts as those arts which train you to deal with a situation in which you know "the fight is on" and you are facing your assailant on a "neutral" footing, i.e. neither person having any sort of advantage outside of strength and skill and attitude.

By "self-defense" arts, I mean those arts which deal with more situation specific techniques, i.e. "What do you do if the guy has you jacked up against the wall and he's trying to crush your adam's apple with his thumbs?" In other words, techniques which deal with situations in which you did not know that "the fight is on" and before you knew it, the assailant attacked and put you in a position of disadvantage.

My contention was that it is easier for the person trained in the "fighting" arts to transition to the "self-defense" arts as he would have developed the attributes necessary to make those "self-defense" techniques work whereas a person who only learned "self-defense" techniques may or may not be able to pull them off depending on that particular person's attributes.

05-14-2002, 01:46 AM	#3 (permalink)
Flash Novice Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 74 Groans: 0 Groaned at 0 Times in 0 Posts	You're right... You're right - you "defend" yourself by beating the crap out of the other guy or at least hurting him badly enough to buy you time to escape. However, I classify "fighting" arts as those arts which train you to deal with a situation in which you know "the fight is on" and you are facing your assailant on a "neutral" footing, i.e. neither person having any sort of advantage outside of strength and skill and attitude. By "self-defense" arts, I mean those arts which deal with more situation specific techniques, i.e. "What do you do if the guy has you jacked up against the wall and he's trying to crush your adam's apple with his thumbs?" In other words, techniques which deal with situations in which you did not know that "the fight is on" and before you knew it, the assailant attacked and put you in a position of disadvantage. My contention was that it is easier for the person trained in the "fighting" arts to transition to the "self-defense" arts as he would have developed the attributes necessary to make those "self-defense" techniques work whereas a person who only learned "self-defense" techniques may or may not be able to pull them off depending on that particular person's attributes.