Krav Maga
Advantages: Take Aim becomes a Free Action.

Sooooo...
Two Aimed Shots at one Target.
•Spend your first Simple Action to Aim
•Take your Aimed Shot
•Take your Free Action to Aim once more.
•Take your Second Shot.

Which is... three Simple Actions and one Free Action in a single pass?

You can fire a Semi-Automatic Weapon twice in One Simple Action and a Free Action can be taken at any time IIRC

Each shot takes a Simple Action, and you have two Take Aim actions there. I suppose it's Two Simple Actions and Two Free Actions, but you are still using too many actions.

EDIT: p 153, SR4A:
"SEMI-AUTOMATIC MODE
Guns that fire in semi-automatic mode can be fired twice in the same Action Phase. Each
shot requires a Simple Action and a separate attack test. The first shot is unmodified; the
second shot, if fired in that same Action Phase, takes a –1 recoil dice pool modifier. Recoil
compensation can cancel out this modifier."

This has been true in all Shadowrun editions, as far as I know.

I guess you are right, I still thinking about a Gunfighter Adept that that I created for someone wileding Two weapon with the SA and # of shots per action.
My Bad
Either to much or To little Coffee.

If you have more than 1 initiative pass what you can do is this:

IP 1
Take Aim (Free)
Fire (Simple)
Take Aim (Simple)

IP 2
Fire (Simple, with Aim from last IP)
Take Aim (Free)
Fire (Simple).

An adept with Nimble Fingers and a Smartlink can do something similar
IP 1
Fire (Simple)
Fire (Simple)
Drop Clip (Free due to Smartlink)

IP 2
Reload Pistol (Free due to Nimble Fingers)
Fire (Simple)
Fire (Simple)

Sometimes the beauty of turning some simple actions into free actions is most noticeable when you think in terms of multiple IP. In the above examples, you can get 3 aimed shots in 2 IP, or 4 non-aimed shots while changing a clip over 2 IP; handy and helpful, but not "required." Besides, many of the martial arts are nice. I suggest picking based on what best fits the character concept.

Here's another neat trick.

"An extra Free Action may be taken in place of a Simple Action (so the character would get two Free Actions and one Simple action, or three Free Actions, instead of one Free and two Simple Actions)." <SR4, p.136>

This means Krav Maga makes it possible to Take Aim three times per IP, which is another excellent efficiency boost. Of course, do remember that...

"The maximum number of sequential Take Aim actions a character may take is equal to one half the character’s skill with that weapon, rounded down." <SR4, p.137>

~Umidori

Yes, Jew-fu is pretty amazing.

I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would ever take gun ka....i mean fire fight in a world where Krav mage exists.

Krav Maga is the best style by a very large margin, simply because of that bonus. "Take Aim as a free action" is basically identical to "+1 die to all offensive actions", (which, incidentally, is the same as +1 damage) which is already better than most other styles.
Add that to the fact that Krav Maga works for ranged combat and you can now "Take Aim" a whole lot in a single IP for hefty dice pool bonuses and there's no reason to every take any other style over it, which sadly kills diversity.

Forget about the bonus dice of Take Aim. It allows you to use Image Magnification, which eliminates range penalties that are a lot bigger.

i thought you could only do one free action per IP.

It's only the same as +1 damage if that bonus die hits, so it's really only +1/3 damage.
There is also the added bonus of a reduced glitch probability (though that's mostly applicable to low DPs).

This is all based on the assumption that the character has nothing better to do with his free action. For most groups (especially in a raging firefight) this will be true, but free actions have many uses that players may take for granted like speaking, running and sending commands to your smartgun.

You get either...
1 Free Action + 2 Simple Actions
1 Free Action + 1 Complex Action

Simple Actions can be used as a Free Action. No matter what, you can only take 3 actions per IP at best. Meaning you could take 3 free actions.

Assuming you are attempting to attack every round, this allows you to do....
FA- Take Aim
SA- Take Aim
SA- Shoot

However, unless you actually need +2 from take aim to hit the target reliably, the best benefit from Krav Maga is likely...
FA- Take Aim
SA- Shoot
SA- Shoot
For 1 IP or the last IP when you have odd numbers of IPs

-or-

FA- Take Aim
SA- Shoot
SA- Take Aim

SA- Shoot
FA- Take Aim
SA- Shoot
For even numbers of IPs.

The other, perhaps unmentioned thing, is that with a Free Action take aim, you could do the following unless the rules strictly prohibit it.

FA- Take Aim
CA- Long Burst/Full Auto

My drake gun adept had Krav Maga. I abused the hell out of it too, well sorta. I still only had 13 and 12 dice to each shot, of course, so the free action was much appreciated. I also had dual clips in my P93, so I could switch ammo types pretty much at will (and I never once changed a clip,* not with 60 rounds in each one and never fired anything but short bursts and tended to only get in a coupler per combat--I spent more time strategically using cover and letting my teammates get shot at).

*Actually, I did finally change near the end of that game, where I took out ~15 rounds from one clip and filled back up to 60 during downtime.

I prefer Wildcat's +1 die when calling shot to increase Damage.
Makes a Take Aim action turn into at least 1 more guaranteed hurtbox.

WARNING: LINKS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR MINORS!

Yes, you need to take krav maga.

EDIT: And personally, I prefer the Ready weapon as a free action bonus available. It will speed up archery or throwing attacks about 50%.

*looks at the video* So....you really think subdue and/or runaway is why one should take it? Those were not finished fights...the guys they
subdued will just be out on a technicality, and then come for the people that beat them up. Or are you saying people need to take Krav Maga because
most thugs are going to be stupid?

Jew-jitsu.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, this might become a real world martial arts thread. I've got my tranq rifle and my tracking collars ready, can finally complete that paper i wanted to do on the habits and migration patterns on internet tough guys.

I think Jew-Fu has more cachet, your millage may vary.

I have a semi-related question. Does adept centering require a free action like regular centering? The text doesn't mention it, but it seems to be a variant of regular centering. If it doesn't take an action you could, you could double your cheese factor. Center for range/visual/wound penalties, then aim for +1 die, that sort of thing.

Thoughts?

Seriously? I didn't think anyone took Krav seriously anymore. Whatever merit it may have had as a pretty straightforward and conventional military hand to hand combat cirriculum has since been utterly teabagged by soulless marketing and commercialism in the United States. The fact that you can now buy a Krav Maga sports bra pretty much says it all.

Commercialization does not invalidate the effectiveness of the Martial Art though...

Keep the Faith

Glancing through here... Biggest problem.

1. way too many actions, you can only do 3 things per combat pass. You're always limited in combat to 1 free & 2 simple, or 1 free & 1 complex.
2. You can substitute a free action for a simple action.
3. Multi-tasking gives you 2 free actions, but only out of combat.

I disagree a bit on the availability of free actions. I find myself always running out of actions. And take aim IMO is outdone by called shot (already a free action).

Though I disagree on the use of a free action, especially for an adept. A free action for an adept is adept-centering, ignoring dice penalties equal to your initiate grade. Especially for the dual wielding pistol adept above. Given the choice of firing twice and taking aim, called shot, adept centering... or numerous other free actions (such as communicating w/ your teammates!!!). Take aim is pretty far down that list... (barring the case of scoped combat! where first take aim uses the scope).

Any martial art video you find on Youtube is going to make that martial art look like the best thing ever, because top instructors (and the occasional token woman) are going to beat all kinds of Hell out of obligingly slow thugs in five-and-six move combos, often accompanied by exciting music.

There's nothing wrong with Krav as a basic martial art that will teach you how to react to stressful situations, take a hit, get your fitness level up, and will show you a small sampling of very simple, very effective, strikes. If you train hard in Krav, you'll get just as much from it as if you train hard in anything else.

That said, it's YOU that counts, not the martial art. You won't get anything from Krav -- unlike in-game -- that you can't get at any other reputable school, if you put in the time. It's not a magical school of automatic win, it's not a worthless school of automatic lose. It comes down to how much work you put in, how seriously you take it, and the quality of instructor more than anything else.

Which, of course, isn't easily quantifiable in an RPG, so instead martial arts all grant you cool special abilities you couldn't get other places, or augment the cool special abilities you've already got from magic or cyber, etc, etc, which tends to differentiate between the various arts to an unnecessary degree. Real life Krav Maga (or the genuine martial arts that work hard on integrating pistols into close-combat) don't magically teach you to draw and aim and fire any faster...YOU do that yourself.

The simple fact is most martial arts have a lot more things in common than things that set them apart from one another. The human body only works in so many ways, and every martial art in the world has designed itself to work along those lines -- your leg swings this way, your arm moves this way, your body can take damage here but not here so you block this way -- in order to make us more efficient at combat. Everyone wants their style to be the best, but it's the artist, not the art, that really makes the difference.

Commercialization has no impact on the historical, abstract body of techniques and concepts that existed at the inception of what we call krav maga. However, commercialization means that odds are if you go out and look for training in krav maga you're going to get sports bra krav maga instead of the original classical-jujitsu-ripoff/conventional Vietnam-era hand to hand combat krav maga.

It's like taekwondo. When taekwondo was created in the 50s the cultural, political, and military context in which it was created meant that it was basically hardcore; just as hardcore as the original full contact karate practiced by Japanese tough guys who never acknowledged feeling pain or never refused to carry out the most extreme commands from their instructors. But if you go out to learn taekwondo today in a typical American city you're probably going to end up with flippy tappy kick taekwondo and the ATA and their marketing scheme targeting kids and soccer moms. A korean military man from the 50s who trained in taekwondo would be tough and if you attacked him with punches and kicks he'd have a good shot at hurting you really badly. But if you randomly attacked a statistically average taekwondo practitioner today you'd probably overwhelm and beat the crap out of him/her because the overall quality of training today is so low and has gravitated far away from an emphasis on combat.

Likewise, if you randomly attacked an average krav maga consumer today he or she would probably be overwhelmed just like the TKD person because even though his or her head would be filled with standing elbow hyperextensions and trachea strikes the consumerist and non-combative spirit which charaterizes most krav maga today would mean that person would be less prepared to fight than, say, a typical boxer. The boxer would do better in defending himself because he actually fights and practices with a level of aggression and intent to actually use against another person on a regular basis.

I do agree with what you have posted here... yes, the Typical Dojo has downgraded the martial arts to be more accessible to the masses, because lets face it, there are a lot of the masses that believe that the Martial Arts are an "I WIN" system that will keep them alive when they are attacked... However, there are a few quality Dojos out in the real world that this would not apply to, though you do have to actually look for them, and in this regard, you would be taught the traditional techniques of the Art in a traditional manner... but here in America, I would say that they are very few and far between...

While still not an "I WIN" system, these systems taught in a traditional style have a lot more actual use than the fluffy dojos impart... and in the end, the individual dojos can only impart what the student is willing/able to learn... If someone wants to be good in the martial arts, they have to dedicate themselves to learning it... and that is something that is very hard to do in a world that is so on the move 24/7/365...

And you are right... I have seen a large number of "Black Belts" and/or advanced students get their asses handed to them by someone who actually knew how to fight... In most cases, it is because the standards to obtain a "Black Belt" or other certification have been greatly lowered so that the masses actually receive less training than practitioners of years past...

anyways...

keep the Faith

I've done some muai thai and krav maga.

Your average krav maga practitioner will probably do a lot better in your average mugging situation than most martial arts, including boxing. They're taught lots of tactical awareness and watching your back, so they're less likely to get caught by surprise. They're taught to strike hard and fast, and run. Now, the sort of blocks and strikes they teach you, they're no good against trained fighters, but they're good against your average untrained tugs. A krav maga student will probably spot the knife attack early, block it, get in a knee to the groin and palm strike to the face, spin around and run, avoiding the second mugger altogether.

A thai boxer isn't taught to try to block strikes directly, that opens your parade. You just do enough to make the blow glancing - which gets you knifed in the shoulder. The thai boxer then proceeds to kick the crap out of the attacker, and while he's doing this and feeling all good about how tough he is, the second mugger stabs him in the back.

The place I trained, they were very open about NOT teaching you stuff that worked against "people who fought in spandex 3 times a week". Boxers, MMA fighters, etc. will just tear apart krav mage practioneers. They did have a voluntary combat class each week, where it was full contact, and the style was very different from the normal classes, because this was fighter vs fighter. I hadn't done any martial arts for a decade when I started, and people who had done krav for over a year but only little full contact training, I just tore through them. They never moved their head, so you could hook them so easily. They let their guard down when punching, were slow in getting hands back.

On the other hand, I used to feel pretty well prepared for a street fight. Krav showed me I wasn't prepared for anything but 1 on 1. I needed to learn to fight without gloves, to watch my back, and to run, run, run.

Man just when i was loosing hope that this thread would deliver Smokeskin comes in and restores my faith like a textbook example we have.

-Nice vague statement of own proficiency
-Unsupported belief in own arts superiority(based on "situational awareness" no less, extra bravo)


The rest of you need to step it up a notch while i get more pop corn I will be very disapointed if someone doesn't say they don't spar because their style is too extreme (the usual statement of Krav and *shudder* ninjitsu fighters) and someone else needs to declare their willingness to fight anyone any place, any time, any where (irony intended)

I'll kick it root down and put my boot down.

2thaXtreme

What's the point in coming to this thread and just making fun of the people who try to contribute in a constructive manner -- and, in fact, by very specifically singling out those who have some first hand knowledge and experiences to share? I get it, you're being funny, and the internet is full of would-be thugs who like to chest thump, har har har, yes, very good.

But since you've got no way to know who's being an internet tough guy and who's got genuine experience with the topic at hand (which is, of course, ironically the very thing internet tough guy's count on, the anonimity)...why not just chuckle to yourself in amused silence, and not spam the place up with inane comments?

Lurker's hardly flexing and bragging about his biceps or something. For every vaguely praising comment he made about Krav, he made one just as disparaging. The big example of what a badass Krav Maga makes you -- maybe you didn't notice -- was a knee to the crotch, a single hand strike, and then turning and running. Toss in a "That's my purse!" and the secret "I don't know you!" technique, and you've just described the elite combat mastery that Bobby Hill picked up at a woman's self defense course at the YMCA. Lurker wasn't exactly claiming Krav was the best martial art in the world, was he, nevermind that he was it's greatest practitioner?

Cut the guy some slack.

There is a world of difference between a so-called "fighting art" and effective self-defense.

A fighting art will train you to battle other fighters. Traditional and Modern martial arts all do this.

A self-defense art will train you to run away effectively. You don't stand there and fight, you get out of Dodge as fast as you can.

Both have their places, but for the average civilian, self-defense is the better bet. Training in the skills of Awareness and Evasion will keep you out of more trouble than any spinning jump kicks.

I agree with a lot of what Critias has said. It's YOU that counts. What you get out of a martial art largely depends on what you put into it. And one point I've made over and over on the internet is that it isn't the school that matters, it's how well you mesh with that school. You may think you want to learn a "cool" art, like Krav Maga or Jeet Kune Do; but then you might discover that what you really need, you can get from the local karate club.

Also never underestimate the other guy who is willing to do a lot more damage to the other person and care a whole lot less about their own safety (short term vs. long term). Aggression goes a long way.

- J.

I made no statements about my own profiency, because I wasn't trying to make a point about myself, and I didn't make any claims about an arts superiority.

I was highlighting the differences between two very different systems, that were brought up above and I happen to have trained both (well, it was boxing and I did thai boxing). A muai thai boxer will be very good at 1 on 1 fighting, if a bit hampered by his gloves only training and no ground fighting. A krav maga practitioner will by comparison be significantly weaker in 1 on 1 combat, but he'll have for example much better situational awareness.

You also seem to think that situational awareness can't be trained. Just a few things they did at krav training, warm up always had some awareness element. For example, we'd be split by some difference in appearance like hair color, everyone with light hair tries to hit those with dark hair in the back, and vice versa. Everyone is then running around, checking their backs, moving to avoid the opposition, trying to find a way to get to enemies without exposing yourself. Other warmups, you'd run around chaotically in a space that just fit all of us and try to squeeze through tight spots between people, to teach you to escape quickly through crowds. During training, every drill, you end it with looking behind your back and running away. And most of the time when doing drills, there are instructors or other students walking around, ambushing people from behind - so everything you do, you learn to check your six and be ready for additional attackers from behind.

I might add I did the civilian krav maga - different versions are taught for different applications, like law enforcement or military.

Krav maga certainly does teach you situational awareness. When something goes wrong, a krav student will check his back, and he will escape very quickly - that's what he's done during training, 2-3 quick hits, then you turn and run. A thai boxer might know to do it too, but he won't have those reflexes drilled into him - at best, he's going to be slower and less proficient at it, at worst he's going to drop into his usual habit of a regular, stand up fight with focus just on the guy in front of you.

If you want to compare that to SR4 martial rules, I think it works out quite well (even if disagree on the exact bonuses). Sure, the PC might know what to do, but the guy who has been putting a lot of hours into perfecting certain aspects of fighting, he'll get a bonus for those situations.


If you really want to bring up my own profiency, I've trained martial arts for a combined 4 years, the majority of it nearly 15 years ago, plus some scattered sparring from time to time. I also did some karate and aikido when I was a kid, but that was so little and I was so young and the styles so ineffective, I don't believe it counts. I've had my ass kicked around the ring by many people, compared to trained fighters I'm not even average. Compared to people with no real training, including bullies who think a few bar brawls make them tough, I'm a combat machine. After a few fights when I was younger, it made me feel invincible because it was so easy, until I ended up in a 5 vs 1 which didn't go too well - I was doing well for a few seconds until someone pulled me to the ground, and with 4 of them still standing, I couldn't really recover from that. I consider myself lucky I learned that lesson by some decent people who didn't jump on my head, or by meeting a guy with a knife or a broken bottle.

If you want to argue superiority of the arts I practiced, the widespread use of krav maga by professionals speaks for itself, and it deserves its reputation as one of the best self defense system. I believe everyone also realizes the need to crosstrain to improve your 1 on 1 fighting skills, and that you need to do it against people who don't just do krav maga because they're just not skilled enough at sparring. Muai thai is considered very superior too, but obviously it lacks ground fighting - I'd need to add some BJJ or similar to become a rounded fighter. If you want to argue that kickboxing and MMA are also "superior systems", I'm not going to disagree just because I happened to not have trained those. But I did train some systems that are among the "best ones", unlike TKD and karate, which is more gymnastic than applicable to actual fighting. Martial arts just aren't equal

From what I've seen and done of traditional martial arts, almost all of them are crap for self defense and they're crap for fighting. Of course an expert is fast enough and skilled at using his body that he has a major advantage, but damn did he take the long way around to be able to handle himself in a fight - and non-experts will get their asses handed to them.

3 months of karate will teach you very little that's useful in a fight or for self defense, while 3 months training in for example muai thai of MMA will make you quite capable, and 3 months of krav maga will give you some good self defense options.

There are many other reasons than learning to fight for doing sports, and that's the reasons people should have for doing traditional martial arts (speaking broadly). If they're doing them to learn to fight or defend themselves, they've picked wrong.

Wow...

Someone who is incapacitated can be finished much easier than someone who is still trying to hurt you. Also, not every confrontation needs to end in blooodshed (or death for those times when you can do it without actual bloodshed). Someone else needs to brush up on their self control, discipline, and learn not to always use excessive force.

Actually, Tae Kwon Do was around much longer, it's just that the people practicing it called it Karate because us dirty Westerners couldn't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese (and many still can't). Learn your history please.

I just liked the Krav Maga vs Caporara fight

Au contrare



I mean maybe English isn't your first language but when you make a blanket unsupported statement that average performer of X is better in Y then MOST other letters especially C yea it pretty much looks like your making a unsupported claim about the superiority of X. The rest of your post is just more of the same.


Because it amuses me or at least passes the time, isn't that why we're all here? Plus the discussion at least to begin with was pretty much how rediculous Shadowrun Krav maga was, I knew that someone given enough time was going to come in and make claims on how awesome real life Krav Maga was as a justification, it seems whoever was writing the book felt the same way too and more's the pity, because you end up with one martial art that is simply way more useful then all the rest, especially for gun-play. This is especially jarring considering there is a martial art invented by a weapons manufacturer and described fluff wise to all about using pistols in melee, an ability that Krav Maga already helps with (to a lesser degree) and comes with some amazing benes on the side.

EDIT: I should mention I've taken over 17 martial arts over the last 15 years, not including weapons styles. I've also been active in sparring and instruction. What I end up using should be called Jeet Kun Do, as Bruce originally meant it, not what it has become. Bruce Lee taught people to learn as many martial arts as one could and adapt them into a unique style that is tailored for your use. Now we have Jeet Kun Do studios teaching a specific art that is designed for marketing. Krav Maga is one that I've been meaning to look more seriously in to, mainly because I can definately see some aspects of it that I can use for my own.

This might surprise you, but what the real world considers a "finished fight" and what RPGs and action movies consider a "finished fight" are two terribly different things.

In a random street violence/mugging situation -- assuming no ranged weapons -- it's perfectly valid to kick someone in the junk to get their attention, smack 'em in the head and neck once or twice to slow 'em down, and then turn and run. You know why? Because that's called winning the game. The mugger was after your wallet. You got away with your wallet. You won! You don't need to kill the guy once he's down in order to try and get kill factor XP, you're winning the scenario by completing the adventure's goals; getting to safety after momentarily defeating your opponent. Sticking around to "finish" the fight can get your ass thrown in prison for manslaughter charges in a surprisingly large chunk of the world. Defending yourself is one thing, stopping to "finish" someone after you've already incapacitated them and can get to safety is something else altogether.

There's no "out on a technicality" in real life, and this might floor you, but yes, most thugs are going to be stupid. If they had other marketable job skills besides "random intimidation" and "sporadic violence," they probably wouldn't be accosting people in parking lots with filed-down screwdrivers, would they?

epic. I love it.

Try reading it again, I said that your average krav maga practioneer would probably do better in a mugger situation, while a stand up 1 on 1 fight, a muai thai boxer would do better. That is superior in certain situations, not overall. Since I have personal experience with both, the claims are not unsupported.

There's a pretty simple concept at work here - it is called you get better through practice. If you want to get good at tennis, you play tennis and not badminton or soccer. In krav, you practice handling self defense situations. In thai boxing, you practice stand up fighting.

It seems you're trying to push some "it is the individual that matters, not the art". That's bullshit. Lots of training, lots of hard work, that's what makes you good. Sure, your genetics play a role, some people are just faster and stronger, but even for them, without practice, they're not going to get good at anything. And what you train and how you train will matter. A thai boxer sparring full contact 3 times a week will clean the floor with someone who has spent that time practicing gymnastic kicks, or choke hold releases and pistol disarms.

Could you tell me what your experience is? Have you ever done any martial arts training? Full contact sparring? Have you tried sparring with people with lots of full contact experience, and with people with plenty of traditional martial arts training but who have done little sparring? I've done those things, and seen the difference. And sure, some people are just better at it than others, but no one gets good without having put lots of hours into it.

The same goes for handling yourself in self defense scenarios. You do drills and exercises, again and again, in how to respond properly, so you do it right if you ever need to use it.

And English isn't my first language.

Did you even read the passage you yourself posted?

He wasn't making a blanket "Krav Maga is better than anything all the time" statement.

He specifically was referring to a mugging situation.



-karma

Oh i read what he said my point my point of contradiction was his lack of support for his generalist statement. If he'd said that for example that Krav maga is more successfull against mugging situations then muai thai based on his experience and even gave examples to back it up that would have been fine.



Guilty! Or rather training and life experience matters, martial arts, no matter what one studies can be either a very large or a very small portion of that. Being effective at what you do logically makes the most sense. The simple fact is you have no hard proof that Krav Maga is somehow better, you believe it's teaching emphasis better equips for those situations and there is likely some truth to that, however it is predicated on a set of ideal scenarios toachieve that theoretical higher success rate.

As for what i've studied and how long I'm going to decline other then to say I agree with you that full contact is the way to go.

I'm half Japanese and was born in Japan. It always amuses me when people with a righteous chip on their shoulder assume I'm white/Western/insert PC villian and jump up on their soapbox about how benighted I am.

And, actually, *you're* mistaken. Taekwondo per se was created was created in 1955 by General Choi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Hong_Hi

Many people say that TKD is 2000 years old or something similar, but that's actually historically inaccurate. Worse, it's probably nothing more than a misleading marketing tagline. There was a traditional martial art from Korea with kicks called Taek Kyon, but that is not the same thing as Taekwondo.

Who needs to learn their history now?

I will admit it is entirely possible I read/interperated something wrong about that the first time around.

Then you miss a lot of what a TMA has to offer you. MMA's get too caught up in sparring, as if fighting in a cage is an any way analogous to a real street situation. There's skills that cross over, but there's a lot that doesn't. Self-defense is something totally separate, and useful under a different set of circumstances.


And that's just plain wrong. Someone who trains at Jeet Kune Do for a few weeks will have his butt handed to him by a black belt in traditional karate, simply because the karate guy will have more dedication and discipline, not to mention a higher fitness level. It is individual discipline, abilities, and attitude that matters when it comes to the physical side of things. Techniques matter, but only to a degree-- you can get quite far on natural ability and physical attributes alone. Look at Brock Lesner for an example: his technique is crappy, but he wins on size and brute force, with minimal technique. To bring this back to Shadowrun, a character with a high enough Quickness can get away with very low combat skills, since he has the natural ability to compensate.


Dear gods, no, not this "JKD Concepts" BS. I do happen to know quite a bit about the JKD Classic/Concepts battle, and let's just say there are bad claims on both sides. You'll never understand Bruce's philosophy unless you understand where he was coming from. And on the flip side of your claim, you have instructors who don't have an art, they have a hodgepodge of techniques that were never designed to work together. While I don't think Bruce would have minded the adaptability that JKD Concepts shows, I think abandoning the core techniques was a bad idea.


QFT. Right on, Critias.

I agree that MMA doesn't teach you much self defense, as I've indicated in my post. It does make you very good at 1 on 1 fighting under those circumstances, and they do cross over to a certain degree, but they're just not trained for handling multiple attackers, attacks from behind, escaping, etc. I think we're very much in agreement here.

I just don't traditional martial arts does any of those things better. Once these people start sparring, they pretty much drop all their TMA techniques and start fighting like any other MMA fighter or thai boxer. All those awkward karate and kungfu stances, their stilted kicks and stiff shoulder strikes and chain punches, they're pretty much just for show in the dojo.



You can't compare someone who has done a few weeks of training in one discipline with a black belt from another. You can look at how well people do after a year of training and compare that, or do a "fair" comparison in another way.

I don't really know who Brock Lesner did except just having skimmed his wiki article, but don't you think he's worked hard to maintain that level of skill? Of course I agree that being big and strong is a big plus, but even lacking fine technique, doesn't he still have skills in reading the opponent, getting good holds and connecting properly with his punches etc. And determination and other mental factors are also important.

Especially once you get into the elite practioneers, mental and physical differences start to matter a lot. Fighting isn't that technically demanding, and in a few years of dedicated training many will come very close to their peak ability, meaning that the differences are often genetic at the top level. But still you should note that these guys aren't doing aikido or capoeira, they're all sparring and fighting in a very similar manner.

You just aren't seeing people do well with traditional martial arts - they may come from a TMA, but once they start fighting in a ring, they drop all the traditional stuff and start fighting much like any other MMA fighter.

The question is, does Brock Lesnar not train? Does he do what he does effortlessly? Or does he constantly have to train to win his matches? Because that would make the difference whether or not we can say he has skill or not.