Most people have no martial training and never need it. It might be better to train in descalation or something much more useful, like JavaScript.

I started training martial arts years ago. Of the brawls I've been in since then, usually with the homeless or drug addled while out on the town, de-escalation has never worked. I've been in bars where you can't talk someone down. Do you know how long it took for the police to arrive when a homeless guy started a fight with me for no reason? After giving the guy what he deserved I escaped to safety to call the police/medical. They never arrived. Sobering. He ran off eventually. Which, frankly is a testament to the power of street drugs.

You can't de-escalate someone who is determined to harm you. This is a fallacy promoted by people who have never had to fight. You are universally safer by knowing how to fight and never using it than not knowing how to fight at all.

The correct answer is understanding the escalation of force spectrum. Always start by trying to talk some sense into them. Then, based on their next move you either escalate to physical violence to defend yourself, or lethal force if they use a weapon. FWIW BJJ and Muay Thai are the only martial arts you should ever do.

Life is not a video game. The police aren't there to help you. There are bad people everywhere. It's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

I think that deescalation might just not be your strong suit

That (common approach) takes what is rationally a question of risk and turns it into a reactive question of survival. The reality is that there are many risks in life and I can't mitigate them all. I need to identify the greatest risks and mitigate those, and also I want to live my life - not prepare fearfully for danger.

So far, I've never needed martial arts, off the top of my head I don't know people who could have used it more than a few times - probably not enough, even if they knew what would happen, to spend the time learning it. It's like people who want guns for personal safety - 'what happens if you need one?' turns the question into survival; the reality is that I don't know anyone who ever would have benefitted from having a gun in private life; I don't think the risk is there (also, even in truly dangerous situations guns are rarely useful - a wild west shootout isn't a good solution).

Other people have different lives and experiences. Maybe they have more risk of situations where they need martial arts. Personally, I'd try to change my life so that I wasn't exposed to those situations but I really don't know about their lives. I guess if I was going to be incarcerated a maximum security prison, I'd want to learn something.

I don't know you but there might be another way. I've interacted with many, many people who appeared unhoused (I usually don't ask people about their homes); I've never had a problem or a hint of violence. I've never been in a brawl or been close to being in one. Violence is easy to avoid IME.

> You can't de-escalate someone who is determined to harm you. ... There are bad people everywhere.

I've never encountered someone determined to harm me, afaik, and if that's how we define bad people, they are very rare. Humans are social creatures - just stand on a sidewalk downtown in a busy city - look at all the people getting along peacefully, being polite, helping each other. Logically, if you think of humans a bears - lone, anti-social creatures - then the danger makes sense, but very few people live on their own, away from other humans, like bears. We are social creatures, evolved since our proto-chimpanzee days to live harmoniously in groups, to only function even on a fundamental cognitive level when we are with other humans (solitary confinement drives people insane and is considered torture).

> You are universally safer by knowing how to fight and never using it than not knowing how to fight at all.

I'm universally safer knowing how to fly a plane, because what if a pilot is incapacitated? However, I don't need to plan for that.

> “It’s now known to be essentially the population with the highest known incidence of traumatic brain injury, even above when we consider athlete populations and other known populations like veterans,” said O’Connor, now a clinical neuropsychologist in the acquired brain injury program at Hamilton Health Sciences.

There are a huge number of TBIs in the homeless population.

Well, back in those days, boxing was part of the training, even for pilots who would never see hand-to-hand combat. My colleague found that pilots who had their EEG scans after a boxing class were far more likely to show epileptiform brain activity.

Saber fencing especially is pretty quick. Which is probably what they’d like—at least, I don’t think the Air Force would like to promote a mentality of taking a few hits and slugging through.

I think the Air Force would prefer epée (full court press: first mistake loses).

https://library.olympics.com/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/37431/trai...

(I have heard that WWI era air bases had signs "no spurs in the cockpit" but am not sure that these aren't just modern retconned "collectibles")

(also my understanding of the curve, based on our national level hospital statistics, is that a substantial fraction of the really bad wrecks happen to people with under 500 hours)

My wife's a horse trainer. I could go down a long list of injuries of various severity that she's suffered over the years. There's at least one concussion (that I know of!) in there and a solid whack to the face that drew lots of blood but no other noticeable injury.

And that reminds me of the software developer I used to work with who was also previously a horse trainer but switched to software after being run over and breaking five ribs.

Unfortunately, this stuff is considered expected and accepted [shrug].

Then again, I knew someone whose wife did intake at a nearby ER and pretty much all of their equine-related injuries came from the same trail riding outfit nearby!

But I’m very unlucky with concussions. I once got one in a swim meet for running head first into the wall. So ymmv.

Back when I trained, I remember going home with headaches because as senior student, my job was basically to stand in front of a line of junior students who took turns whacking me in the head :-)

As a developer I vastly prefer no-gi because gi grips totally wreck the fingers.

I am primarily a gi player but no-gi is much, much easier on every part of your body.

When you have the gi it can be used as a handle, or a lever, and there can be very little slip ... but skin on skin slips and gives a lot and is much more forgiving.

Note: I train gi and no gi and have been for almost 10 years. My biggest injury happened in the gi (broken hand), but I've had significantly more ankle and knee sprains and shoulder dislocations in no gi. Also, the morning after no gi feels like I got hit by a truck compared to the morning after gi.

Once I know the other person is good at the gripfight in a certain position, I immediately let go and try to counterattack from another angle.

It's the only reliable way I've found to save my fingers lol

Nowadays, I stick to technique based learning and lightly spar. Never competed, never will. So yeah, don't be stupid like me and BJJ will be kind to you. :)

But your Jiu-Jitsu won't help you much when bombs gonna fall on your head, so better keep a nice garden if you can. ;)

Apropos of nothing much, where does that first I come from in "jiu-jitsu"? It's not present in the Japanese, but for some reason it appears in Portuguese even though the original vowel is a monophthong.

For instance the first article about ju-jutsu and judo that was written by Jigoro Kano and translated into English by T. Lindsay in 1888, has used the spelling "Jiujutsu", i.e. neither "jujutsu" (as written in this article) nor "jiujitsu".

In Japanese kana, in the 19th century, before the spelling reform that happened after WWII, the spelling was "jiyuu-jiyutu". The Japanese spelling might have suggested the writing of an "i" after "j" in the Latin transcription.

In the corresponding Latin alphabet spelling "jiu-jitsu", the reason why a "u" has been preserved from "jiyuu" but no "u" has been preserved from "jiyutu", is likely to have been because the first "u" is long, so it is pronounced clearly, while the second u is short, which in modern Japanese is pronounced without rounding the lips, so it does not sound like a "u". It also does not sound like a "i", because it is a back vowel, but English or French do not have this vowel, so they can render it only as either "u" or "i", and it appears that the choice has been random, because all variants are encountered in the old publications.

So there exist both "ju" and "jiyu" and they are distinct. In "juu-jutsu" there are only "ju", there is no "jiyu" (the latter can appear only in compound words).

Before WWII, in kana there was no distinction between "ju" and "jiyu" (there was no small "yu"), so you had to know that the word written as "jiyuujiyutu" must be pronounced "juujutsu", in the same way like you had to memorize many other differences between the old Japanese spelling and pronunciation (e.g. yahara => yawara, osahe => osae, kuwatu => katsu and so on).

Isn't that why English words ending in -t or -d get transcribed into Japanese with a final vowel of -o rather than the -u that is used for other final consonants?

The kana syllables are grouped by their consonant, so a direct transliteration would use the same Latin consonant for all kana in a group, e.g. "ta-ti-tu-te-to", but when it is desired to suggest the English pronunciation, like in the Hepburn transliteration, that corresponds to "ta-chi-tsu-te-to".

Before WWII, the kana spelling corresponded to a much older Japanese pronunciation, from about one thousand years ago, so there were much greater differences between spelling and pronunciation. So in my examples, what was written "yahara" was pronounced "yawara" and today it is written like it is pronounced, what was written "osahe" was pronounced "osae" and today it is written like it is pronounced, what was written "kuwatu" in kana had been earlier pronounced as "kwatsu", then the pronunciation has become "katsu" (= life) and today it is written "katu" in kana and "katsu" in Hepburn transliteration.

Even when you know some Japanese, reading any book published before WWII can be difficult, because many kanji used before have been replaced with others and the kana spellings of the old kanji can also be confusing because they are different from the modern spellings too.

You are right about the transliteration of English words into kana.

This seems unlikely. The pronunciation was tsu before WWII. But the organization of the syllabary strongly suggests that the pronunciation was once tu.

I don't know to what degree the syllable 'tu' is viewed as impossible in Japanese as opposed to merely nonexistent. (Compare Mandarin, where (as in Japanese) there is no syllable /si/, but it's not especially difficult for Mandarin speakers to pronounce /si/.) I'd be interested if you knew.

Or in other words, complete nonsense. You can't answer a pronunciation question by appealing to spelling conventions, particularly spelling conventions that are completely divorced from the reality of pronunciation.

When we spar, it's always in full padding, and either points fighting or light contact continuous sparring. It's about tagging or outmanoeuvring the opponent, rather than hurting or defeating them. Except for a bruised rib I never had any injuries, training twice a week for over two years.

I recommend finding a gym where you train with people in your age group. It's difficult training with a bunch of teenagers who recover quickly and don't care about bruises, when you're the only one aching the next day and having to drop off kids and see clients.

Muay Thai has also been okay. It's brutal when you first start (RIP your toes and shins), but the sparring at my current gym is very relaxed, nobody is trying to kill you. This is how most muay thai gyms should be (not saying they are).

Most of those gyms also do BJJ, and I do very frequently see joint and ear injuries from those. Nothing major, but people will rotate in and out of injuries for a few weeks at a time.

With any gym, it's important not to rush into sparring before you get your bearings (and protection, like at least a mouth guard and shin guards). Some places require head protection too, but I'm not sure if that actually protects you vs just giving your opponent a false sense of "it's okay to hit you harder". You might be trading light grazing blows (and visibility) for heavier blunt impacts...? Not totally sure of the science there.

It's also super important to choose good sparring partners, meaning they are both adequately skilled at self control and not prone to bouts of anger that make them lose control. Watch other people spar for a while and talk to the coach about your own ability and theirs before jumping in. The absolute worst is beginners jumping into sparring each other without good self control, causing an unintentional slugfest where people don't know what they're doing and end up getting hurt. Don't do that, take it slow and play it safe. If you're not planning on competing there's no reason to rush through training or disregard safety.

I know I sound like an old geezer lol, but seriously, it's entirely possible to do martial arts safely if you just lower the aggro level and don't go all out.

She said last time that happened with someone during sparing it broke her kneecap instead, so I guess I was 50/50 on that one.

People are shocked when I tell them that a sport where you try to hit other people in the head has a shockingly low rate of injury.

> Some places require head protection too, but I'm not sure if that actually protects you vs just giving your opponent a false sense of "it's okay to hit you harder".

Plenty of studies have come out showing that head gear increases the rate of injury, to the extent that head gear and padded gloves should just be banned in every gym.

The safest way to spare is bare knuckle with a mouth guard. No one in their right mind punches full force when bare knuckle, at least not more than once.

(Also, bare knuckle, still wrap up, and hit with the first two knuckles. Boxers in thick gloves learn to hit with the bottom two knuckles, which will shatter the shit out of any hand that tries to do that without gloves on...)

The injuries in BJJ come from newbies rolling with newbies, and completion, stay away from those things, don't be afraid to tap early, and you'll be fine.

Purely maximizing strength and fitness and minimizing injury would look like some form of resistance training combined with low-impact cardio like swimming or cycling.

Martial arts with minimal injury would look like a boxing fitness class (as opposed to a boxing class) or something with slow motion sparring or no sparring. Not sexy at all, or particularly helpful in a fight, but safe.

So #1 is you like the gym and the vibe. That means you'll keep going back and stay with it.

Either BJJ or Kickboxing (or any striking art) will get you into a general sense of "in shape".

In my experience (and I have #s from chest heart rate monitors to back this up), kickboxing does a much better job getting you conditioned than BJJ does, and if you just want to look good, hitting the boxing bag will get you a nice v-shape upper body, especially if you throw some push ups in the mix while hitting the bag.

Neither alone will get you ripped or build strength the way a dedicated weight lifting program will, if you just want to be able to pick up heavy things, practice picking up heavy things. :-D

Also you won't lose fat unless you also cut calories, I've rolled with plenty of chunky peeps in BJJ. Your body will want to eat more right after an intense class, you'll need some discipline to tell it "no". If you can manage that then you'll also shed the pounds, but even if you are in the gym 2 hours a day 5 days a week, you won't automatically lose weight w/o self discipline in the kitchen (but you will be able to eat a lot more before you start gaining weight, so there is that).

For BJJ gyms, take some sample classes at different gyms, see what they are like. Some gyms are guys in their 30s and 40s who have left their egos behind, some gyms are very "go go go" and will run you ragged. No judgement either way, I've worked out at both styles of gym and both styles can be fun so long as safety is paramount.

Safety should be discussed. You should hear the instructors talk about it all the time.

At a good BJJ gym, more senior students will be asked to help out the junior students, and roll with them and show them how to do things safely. At more ego driven gyms people with black belts may not even talk to people who are just starting out. IMHO avoid those types of gyms at all cost.

Same goes for kickboxing. Sparing is an important part of learning, the only way to learn how to dodge punches is to have someone try to punch you in the head. But good gyms don't want people getting hurt, and they should be very aware of TBI and how to avoid it.

I actually trained for a couple years at a professional MMA gym, and despite being really high energy with lots of shouting and hard core warm ups, they were incredibly serious about avoiding injuries during training. The reason was simple: Injured fighters can't go in the ring, and thus don't get paid.

I've been injured 3 times during training over 10 years, which IMHO is pretty good given at one point I was training ~15 hours a week.

Tip: In a good gym, the highest risk of injury comes from training with new students who don't know how to control themselves yet. Someone in boxing class who doesn't know how to pull their punches, or who doesn't understand their reach and bops you in the face by accident.

The 2nd highest injury risk comes from yourself and not knowing your own limits.

When I was just starting out I had a senior student tell me I needed to stop because I was about to break my own arm if I didn't tap out.

That is what a good training partner at a good gym does.

All the black belts at my gym will roll with anyone. And yes, it's not common which is silly. Everyone in the gym has progressed so quickly because the different black belts are so willing to help.

> Safety should be discussed. You should hear the instructors talk about it all the time.

My instructors all the time, "the most important person in the gym is your training partner - do not hurt them. If they don't tap from a joint lock, let it go"

> When I was just starting out I had a senior student tell me I needed to stop because I was about to break my own arm if I didn't tap out.

Yep. I just let people go and tell them about it later. :)

While BJJ is a great workout, I would also suggest adding some weight/strength training.