In part one of Why the untrained fighter kicks your highly trained butt,  I covered some of my thinking about the whole training vs. experience thing so you might want to read that part first before going over what follows.

In the comments section, Viktor wrote this:

All of this makes sense, i’ve though along these lines before even though i don’t actually have any experience of real life violent situations.

I have trained martial arts for some time now, but i don’t think i would stand a very big chance if i actually ended up in a fight with someone that has been in many real fights no matter how unskilled they are in any form of martial art. (partly because i’m not that skilled in martial art yet nor am i very well trained physically or have any experience at all in real situations, all in al not much in favour of me)

And one thing i’ve been thinking about a lot is how to train for a real situation, San shou or sparring is of course a way to train techniques in a simulated fight, but that final touch that is needed for a technique to work in a real situation; a situation with adrenaline, full power and speed is hard to train for. I’ve often thought that i should aim for competitions because i think that is as near as i can come without actually being in a fight for real even though i otherwise think that fighting or violence as a competition doesn’t make sense. What is your take on competition as a way to train and test techniques under stress?

What would you say is a good way to train for real situations? Can it even be done?

It’s an interesting question but before I answer it I need to give some qualifiers and context:

• Viktor says he’s not very skilled, experienced, or in great physical shape. Two out of these three are things you can remedy quite easily by training harder and more frequently. Doing so will give you not only more skill but it’s also a quick way to get your physical attributes (like speed and power) to a higher level. Once you do that, your chances of coming out on top in a violent conflict are better already. There’s no guarantee that these things will let you win every fight you end up in but I believe not working on them definitely decreases the odds in your favor. So I’d say: go out and train some more. There’s no reason you shouldn’t.
• That said, I don’t think there are easy answers to the “I lack experience, where should I get it?” question. I know people who answered it by starting to work as a bouncer or join the military. I know of others who would go out and pick fights to see if their techniques worked. They all ended up getting experience though not necessarily the kind they wanted. E.g.: One guy on purpose tried a crescent kick as a knife disarm and found out it worked perfectly. The only downside was that even though his attacker was now just as empty-handed as he was, the knife was now stuck in his foot. Kind of ruined the rest of the fight for him… [Read more…]