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‘Self-Defense All-Round’ Competition Format
(A Competition Ideology)
1. The need for competitions
The representatives of all styles and kinds of martial arts are faced with ‘self-defense’ problems. Every kind of martial art has been elaborating upon its own solutions for these problems. However, very often some schools and directions subject the other schools and their representatives to criticism that often turns to be unjust. It happens due to the absence of unary norms, rules and technique and tactic of self-defense arsenal assessment. Certain schools and styles even claim that it is impossible to compare them and consider the real street fight to be the only measure of efficiency. Such an approach is wrong, because it can result in stagnation in self-defense evolution. For a successful holding a fight one needs an idea of the competitor’s real fighting skills, as well as arsenal elaboration and preparation methods. It is no secret that during the last years the quality of training in many schools has considerably improved both in technical and in tactical respect. Their real combat arsenal has become several times as many. Besides that, during the last years new ‘synthesized’ styles and schools have appeared and have begun to evolve. These schools have added various techniques from different, often antagonistic schools to their armory, synthesized these techniques and got new and non-standard solutions. Hence in order to ensure a successful training and self-defense development one needs to enjoy constant experience exchange, which is possible only within competition format.
2. Combat arsenal problems.
Protective action.
The conditions of the real street combat do not conform to those of staged single fight. The staged single fight presupposes roughly equal body weights, roughly equal skill level, the absence of arms and a number of technical hold application restrictions. The sport fighting is started and ended after a command and it is subject to rigid regulations. It results in the shift of attention in sportsmen training to a narrower scope of the most probable actions in sport fighting. Such an approach can be justified within the sport, but very often it results in the inefficiency of sportsmen actions in a real street fight. The real fighting circumstances demand a wider (sometimes less technically complicated and elaborated) arsenal of fighting holds from a defendant. Because of their high trauma jeopardy the self-defense competitions with wide fighting arsenal demonstration can be held only in the defense mode against fore-known and conditional attacks (for example, in compliance with DUO-SYSTEM rules).
Attacking and counter-attacking actions.
In order to reduce the trauma jeopardy level, the rules of staged single fights impose a number of restrictions on hold application. As a result, the most effective self-defense technical actions (kicks in the groin, throat, eyes or other painful areas, painful holds applied to the neck or the spine, and so forth) are removed from the arsenal. Protection equipment usage is another cause of efficiency lowering of a number of holds.
Quite often, in order to win the highest rating the sportsmen apply technically difficult and showy holds, and at the same time they let their competitor to apply less spectacular holds that are rated lower according to the competition rules, but that are very dangerous in the self-defense respect. It is not infrequently that the victory in a competition is awarded to the fighter who has shown the best result in certain techniques, but did not gain the real advantage over the rival.
All the afore-mentioned aspects lead to the shift in the attitude to the fighter training, which results in the lowering of their actions’ efficiency in the real street fight conditions.
Holding competitions in self-defense techniques demonstration (for example, DUO-SYSTEM) is a partial way out of the existing situation. Naturally, the stress in the assessment must be made on the efficiency of these techniques in the safety and effectiveness respects.
3. Problems of regulations
The staged fight is begun and is ended after a command. The time of the fight is limited, but it provides the time for probing attacks and tactic selection for the fight. The fighter who was likely to lose in the first half of the match can take revenge in the second half.
Of course, this approach can not be justified in the situation of the real fight, as the first attack in such a fight can happen to be the last one. The probability of several enemies in the fight demands that the defendant is laconic and effective in both attacking and counter-attacking.
One can solve the given problem by means of the combat ‘obstacle course’ (i.e. the relay-race with the task for one participant to pass several areas actively defended by drawn assistants within the minimal time). The combat ‘obstacle course’ is one of the main training methods in applied military sambo, it helps to cultivate automation and spontaneity of defense actions.
4. Problems of arms
A self-defense system must consider the prospective of using cold arms of different kinds, using improvised means, the threat of fire arms usage by the aggressor and by the defendant should he take the arms away in the course of a real had-to-hand fighting. The disarmament and arms usage techniques must be efficient and safe for the defendant.
5. Tactical problems
In the course of a real fighting the defendant can encounter an enemy of an exceeding weight, enjoying a higher speed of movement or having mastered a kicking or wrestling technique. Naturally, the arsenal against every enemy is to be selected for every given situation (wrestlers should be kicked, ‘kickers’ should be thrown, and one should combat on a long distance with heavier or slower enemies and on a short distance with the lighter ones). However, one must bear in mind that in certain cases the probe attack or exact enemy classifying is impossible, and some peculiarities of the fighting spot (small room, slippery floor, natural obstacles) can hinder the defendant from applying the most tactically profitable holds.
It is worth specially considering the prospective of fighting with several enemies. The self-defense must elaborate not only the technical arsenal, but the tactic of fighting against the enemy outnumbering the defendant (leaving the assault zone, forming a line, benefiting from natural obstacles or room peculiarities and so forth).
In order to solve this set of self-defense problems the Applied Military Sambo and Jiu-Jitsu Godai-Ryu Federation suggests Self-Defense All-Round Sport Competitions holding. This is not the last option, and the Federation welcomes suggestions from the other styles and martial arts schools representatives.
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