Flashy Martial Arts suck and here's why

[Feuer Frei!]

There's a lot of people out in the big beautiful world defending flashy traditional martial arts that emphasize the high kick, rote fighting sequences or point sparring as training methods.
In real fights, after being brainwashed by Jean Claude vanDamme movies and likeminded garbage, they'll get their asses handed to them.
Fake crap like this:


Makes it all look great but, it's scripted.

If the ground is the least bit wet or slippery, doing these kicks will just slam you right into the ground. If you're too slow (and feet are always slower than hands), your opponent will grab your leg and slam you.
Deliberately going to the ground can leave you vulnerable to a head stomp or injury if the area is rocky or uneven.
Specific defenses look good when you know exactly what's coming at you, but can you memorize a different one for every possible attack known to man and recall them quick enough?
Fortunately there's an alternative:
Weight lifting, point shooting and basic combatives. Fighting methods that are simple to learn and can make you ready in about three months instead of the years it takes to master traditional martial arts.
Weight lifting:
Contrary to what martial artists say, strength and endurance matters no matter how skilled you are. Every MMA fighter worth his salt knows to lift weights, do his push ups and sprint intervals.
You can gain strength by using quickly learned, simple exercises.
For strength and power, use multi-joint movements, heavy weight and multiple sets of low repetitions after warming up thoroughly with lighter weights.
Squats, deadlifts, presses, weighted dips and pull ups will work every muscle group thoroughly.



Good endurance and speed can be gained by doing high intensity interval training with calisthenics, sprinting and hitting a bag on days when you're not strength training.

Point shooting:
Not a total replacement for sighted shooting. Point shooting makes it possible to engage and shoot close range targets accurately under high adrenal stress, from any position and on the move.



Old school military combatives:
The natural alternative is something simple that relies on flexible counter-attacks, being able to meet a thousand types of threat when you only know ten moves, if not just one.
You don't need a hundred highly athletic moves that you'll only half know after ten years of training. You only need a few simple, easily learned, well practiced attacks.
With old school combatives you will learn: Edge of hand strikes, heel of hand smashes, knees to the groin, low kicks to the legs, strangles, eye gouges, very few grappling techniques.







.... or, you could just give up your worthless social life and practice flying spinning kicks that just don't work and become a Super Hero at sucky anime conventions!