Learn to move, learn to fight
Learn to move, learn to fight
If you are able-bodied, and have the financial means, consider joining a BJJ or boxing/kickboxing/muay thai gym. The recent zionist mob violence - along with the neonazi/proud boy violence seen a couple years back - has driven home the point that we keep us safe. We cannot expect the fascist police to keep us safe, nor should we. As part of learning to fight you will learn how to move. Learning how to move is important to being able to evade the cops when they try to grab you, and to keep your balance and footing when the cops are shoving your line. Also, learning to fight is fun. A lot of people describe it as feeling like you're a kid again, roughhousing with your friends (if that is an experience you had).
Some details so you know what to expect:
Training for most fight sports can be split into two categories: technique, and sparring. In the technique portion the instructor will show you some move or strike then everybody practices with a partner at low resistance as the instructor roves the area observing and correcting. Sparring, in contrast, is simulated real fighting. You and your partner will attempt to apply the moves you know to each other with significant resistance. The amount of resistance varies; in striking sports, you rarely use more than 25-50% power because you don't want to hurt your partner. In grappling sports like BJJ it is more common to use 80% or higher levels of resistance due to the reduced risk of injury & concussion. The general consensus is you cannot learn to fight by learning technique alone. If you do not spar, you do not know how to fight because you have not been tested in anything resembling the crucible of the real world. Sparring is what separates actually effective martial arts from "fake" martial arts that claim their moves are "too deadly" to be practiced against a resisting opponent or some other such nonsense.
BJJ is the most accessible of all fight sports due to the low risk of concussion, compared with striking-based fight sports (for obvious reasons). In BJJ you spend a lot of time learning to fight a single person once you have both fallen to the ground. As we saw in the zionist violence, this is not entirely useful because once you've fallen to the ground the fascist's friends will surround you and beat you. However, BJJ does teach how to get back up once you've fallen down with somebody on top of you and also how to keep your balance so you don't fall down in the first place. Thus it is mostly valuable for learning how to move, since you're unlikely to be locked in a 1:1 struggle in the sort of scenarios we are worried about.
Striking based sports are most useful for learning how to block the fascists' attempts to punch or kick you. It's questionable whether it would be worth it to actually strike somebody, but knowing how to absorb or block a shot is a nice skill indeed. If nothing else a good leg kick will make them think twice about coming near you.
To set expectations, you will take at least two years to become basically competent at any of these sports, if attending class 2-3 times per week for 2 hours at a time. By competent I mean you will be able to easily ragdoll almost any newcomer to the gym unless they are physically large & muscular or have significant background in wrestling or other physical sports like football. 99% of people you encounter in the real world will not have any training whatsoever.
Two years is a long time. The best time to have started training was two years ago. The second best time is now.
I will never move
Become the Immovable Object
Become the wall against which the darkness breaks
PSA: If you can't fight, learn to fucking fight.
A fascist trained to fight today did you?
I'm referring (verbatim) to a struggle session from 2+ years ago.
Can we have a maoist urban guerrilla movement disguised as training gym? One-on-one fight will only get us so far, we need organized group fighting tactics!
But yeah, go to gym if you can.
these things exist but you gotta know people locally to be invited to them
Not to get weird with it but I am gonna get weird with it.
For a while I was going to a local larp group. In terms of the stuff going on right now learning to form a sheild wall is probbaly an important skill.
Also gets you out meeting people. Renesance fairs were started by communists. So this has other benefits to organizing and socializing as well. This is generally good for people with diverse body types as well.
hell yeah shield wall training is especially important in these modern forms of protest people are using, with reinforced banners and such
Yeah, some HEMA groups teach group combat and it's very much worth it. English school fencing manuals also focus on unarmed and improvised weaponry combat as well, and you can generally find a stick at least if a protest goes south (do keep in mind that the cops will attempt to stack extra charges on if you so mach as use a backback as a shield.)
ACTUALLY, the second best time to learn was 1 year, 365 days ago. Today is the 729th best time to learn
you FUCKER you boomed me
This isn't something that's easy to train, but: get comfortable being swung at. Learn to block and when you do, practice by having a friend take (slow, easy at first) swings at you live. You need to learn to stay calm and focused with a blow incoming, because during the attack is when your opponent is most vulnerable to a counter.
Become accustomed, even if just a little, to the feeling of being punched in the face. It's like an ice bath plunge, shocking but only briefly. Being used to that, and being able to shrug off the surprise and react immediately, will give you an advantage.
Realistically this is something you should learn in formal training at a gym, with gloves pads instructor etc.
If combat training isn't for you, there's still a lot things you can do to make yourself less useless.
Dance for instance, especially earlier styles like viennese, waltz, polka, traditional Latin and Spanish dance, and especially ballet teach balance and movement. And just keeping your balance when the horses charge in is worth a lot.
As you go earlier pre-romantic ballet and court dance begin to openly have fighting moves in them, to the extent that until the 19th century dance was considered the foundation of many western combat arts.
i did two years of competitive taekwondo in a really harsh, hyper-disciplined dojo. it wasn't fun and i was young and talking out of turn, breaking stance, etc could make you be forced to spar the whole class until you nearly passed out
but i am still surprised by how much stuck and how much muscle memory i retained. for a big person i still can move with crazy fluidity (even at work where i do phyiscal labor) and have broken every accidental fall i've had without injury (except one, but that's a complex story and was unavoidable)
im much older now and would sometimes love to refresh the skills under a vastly different style of fighting (and i have no patience for the fake militarism shit anymore) so this is pretty interesting to read
Been trying to get back into fighting shape since the year started
Been doing a decent job of it
Still got most of my boxing skills, can still punch hard enough to move a 100lb heavy bag
Can still probably become a Wildcat-esque superhero named El Bombastico
join local drone racing club, if you have money
I also approve of this lol
How much does that sort of thing cost?
Half a day of working and an AliExpress account (or Alibaba if you want to buy bulk drones, for the club of course)
I've already accepted my death
Unless my area develops community defense to protect me and people like me I'm dead
I think that the best way to defend against a mob (zionist or otherwise) is to have a bunch of people with shields and/or sticks. Riot cops do this without having to be individually skilled martial arts practitioners. This is a collective thing; as you note, even being a great BJJ fighter won't save you from a couple fascists surrounding you.
And the obligatory: if you are concerned with defense outside of these strange scenarios of lightly-armed street fighting (when have leftists won political change from street fighting anyway?), you should buy a gun. 4-6 hours a week for two years of martial arts training is a LOT of time and money. It is way faster and cheaper to become a competent shooter.
nobody cares if you rough up a fascist during a street scuffle. if you shoot one it is international news.
I feel like I'm fucked no matter what because I wear glasses. My gut says contacts are a nightmare against the pepper balls, so is there anything I should do? I feel like hurling shit is my best use if shit starts popping off, but is my worry re: contacts wrong? Should I switch back and start training the punchies?
OP is a larper, but your concern is valid, Two options include sports glasses (which can still shatter, but a flexible frame makes them less likely to break otherwise) and wearing a visor or safety goggles or something in the case that you wear contacts, so they act as a protective barrier to irritants.
Yeah I am not getting in a street fight sorry. You can't expect anything close to a martial arts situation out there. Police use krav maga chiefly to choke people to death, it's LARP. People will stab you, people will swarm you, you will die horribly if you do this. Yes, working out is great and martial arts can be very fun but the whole framing of it as self defence work seems misguided to me in a modern context it's going to get people to seek out situations to misapply it like you're talking about.
Martial arts gyms love being run by ex cops and generally filled with informants looking for people who want to try to get other means of self defence and get them to break the law.
Nothing in my post said you should train so you can solo a mob of rabid zionists lmfao. This is so you can handle yourself if you're in a group that is attacked by another group, so you don't become a liability and can contribute to collective defense.
There are a lot of ex or current cops and military people in martial arts gyms, you are correct. However they tend to often be very politically neutral spaces (as far as that is possible). Since you have to trust everybody not to break your arm or vice versa there is a strong disincentive to spout off in any way that could give someone a grudge against you.
filled with informants looking for people who want to try to get other means of self defence and get them to break the law.
I have never run into this and don't even know what it could be referring to.
Agree about krav maga being larp and one of the martial arts to avoid. They focus on stupid things like eyepokes and can't spar for that reason.
Okay I guess hypothetically yes it is better to be able to keep your balance and be more formidable, but this is still preparation for Japanese Trot style street battles instead of accepting that when things come to violence we need to be armed or it turns into a fucking clown fiesta that martial arts training has precious little relevance to
The best thing to practice is de-escalation and running away. If you need to fight, it should be after those fail. The exception is if you do something as an organized group, in which case you should use the program and technique adopted by that group. There is safety in numbers. Anything that is dangerous should be done with a group and in an organized way.
Fights are very dangerous. It's not like on TV. If you get knocked down and kicked in the head even once, you can die. If you get hit in the head and just fall wrong, you can die.
It is certainly safer to carry a weapon before learning how to spar. Pepper spray, tazer, a knife, a gun. Those are ordered by safety to the user Ave I recommend getting them in that order and only doing so when it feels necessary and like this is more likely to protect you than become something that would backfire on you.
Carrying and using weapons is the exact opposite of de-escalation, even if they're beating you people tend to give what they got. Which is why eyepokes as taught by krav maga for example are a bad idea - you just raised the stakes on a fight you were already losing.
Fights are very dangerous. It's not like on TV. If you get knocked down and kicked in the head even once, you can die. If you get hit in the head and just fall wrong, you can die.
Yes, which is why it is important to know how to block/deflect things as much as possible, know how to avoid falling to the ground, know how to - if falling to the ground is unavoidable - fall while protecting your head, and know how to get up again quickly & safely. All of which you will only learn how to do effectively in the gym.
Somewhat tangential but important, consider the liabilities of the particular clothing you wear to a protest -- your own clothing can be turned against you. For example, I wouldn't wear a hoody to a protest because the hood can be used to help control you, obscure vision, choke you, etc.
Also consider the way that street clothing can hamper mobility compared to what you would likely wear during training.
I'm probably going to do my national service soon, so I'll learn how to take a beating there, I don't currently live in America though
Engaging in martial arts LARP battles is legitimately proud boy agitator shit, there is a leveling aspect to gunfighting (although the statement "God made man, Samuel Colt made them equal" is completely false in every respect) this is a level of escalation that has none of those benefits and many of the negatives. I'm not advocating for people to be defenseless because I think they can't handle having training. Just saying as a strategy this seems bunk to me.
Based on what I've seen in this uprising and in the George Floyd uprising, I would say that shield wall and formation Fighting tactics are the most important thing to learn. That isn't to say that you shouldn't practice martial arts if you want to, it definitely doesn't hurt to have those skills and muscle memories. Also, train with firearms and learn about asymmetrical warfare tactics, because it's better to have those skills before they are needed.
Actually serious question: have you ever been in a fight
yes