I had to use a fair amount of front when I lived in a rough neighbourhood for years. I’m a bog-standard medium sized woman of no particular distinction - big dude, you don’t get points for trying to intimidate someone like me in broad daylight on a city street. The last time of several times it happened the whole idea seemed so ridiculous to me that I just started laughing and walked away. He didn’t do anything about it.
It DID help that I used to box so maybe there was a little Clark-ette Kent thing going on, but I don’t think I would have been able to beat him up or anything LOL. My whole point was to get away from those situations with as much dignity as possible.
If you ever have an opportunity to witness an Aikido demonstration you might find it interesting. Aikido includes techniques that are the physical incarnation of deescalation, as the attacker’s energy is harnessed into increasing the power applied to himself. It works because it scales automatically: a raging crazy will end up subdued due to a serious but survivable injury, a person caught up in the heat of action will be subdued with a sore shoulder/elbow/wrist.
Edited to add: I see you study martial arts, so you have hopefully already seen what I’m talking about. I found it to be a revelation when I saw it the first time. Aikido also worked correctly for me once in deescalating an encounter with a pickpocket in Italy.
I know of Aikido. Taken a few classes. Sorry, I don’t believe it works in real life however. It’s compliant partner drilling. Anything practiced in Aikido is done so in a more practical way with Judo or jiujutsu.
Police forces use deescalation techniques based on Aikido. Well, those that deescalate, instead of just shooting the “bad guys” in the back as they are running away. I suppose deescalation is out of fashion these days.
I’m sure some of it is, but then again I think it’s like any martial art, you get enough schools with diluted teaching out there and it gives the whole style a bad name.
(I have met some real Aikido masters, keep trying until you find one!)
I’ve heard that said so many times. I don’t buy it. There’s no sparring. No resistance. No aliveness to training. This isn’t an argument we’re going to convince one another over. You should go try to spar with a boxer, wrestler, mma player, street fighter and see how many of those techniques you can pull off when the attacker doesn’t play the same way uke does. I’m going to say very few if any. Go to YouTube and look up Martial Arts Journey. It’s an Aikido Sensei who found this all out for himself.
I wouldn’t want to. I train because I’d like to learn how to fight. Aikido is not an effective martial art. No sparring. No resistance. No aliveness to training. It’s comprised of compliant partner drills. Try doing those techniques on a boxer, wrestler or plain old street fighter.
Just goes to show that even though they’re demonstrably living and transporting oxygen around, I defy you to prove that there’s effective distribution of it to their brains.
Aikido is an incredibly time inefficient way to learn how to fight. I would guess that, given similar fitness levels, that 6 months of MMA training plus some dirty tricks would outstrip a decade of Aikido.
I’m also not convinced it would ever work against a decent boxer or Muay Thai practitioner.
I urge you to reach deeper on your understanding of the use of the word “gentleman” here on BB.
It speaks ironically to the image of white males whose images must be protected from bad press at all costs to logic and grammar, and intent. White males in the news almost always have the benefit of the doubt. People of color do not.
All I can say is you had crappy Aikido teachers. I thought Taekwondo was crap for many years until I met somebody who actually knew what they were doing. Good luck finding a quality Taekwondo teacher in America though, lol! Aikido seems to have suffered similarly.
FWIW, when it comes to martial arts in America, it seems like the ratio of bad to good schools (any style) is about 100-1, but most people have no clue so all the bad ones stay in business too.
I’ve practiced martial arts for most of my life, and I’ve also moved a lot, so I’ve done a lot of “interviewing” martial arts schools, and one thing I’ve learned along the way is that the teacher is far more important than the style.
Remember that you are not “learning a style”, you are “learning what that teacher knows about that style”.
I’m 100% pro-legalization (I have great policy ideas!) and have nothing against anyone who chooses to work in the sex industry or employ it’s services.
But I am never, never, going to get over the term “happy ending.”
