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Join self defence pioneer Richard Dimitri and trauma-informed self defence expert Pamela Armitage at CAIA for two workshops that will provide you with proven tools to keep yourself better protected!

One of the most common claims in martial arts is that ‘our style will allow a smaller person to beat a larger, stronger opponent’, which I like to call 'David and Goliath Technique'.

It’s mostly prevalent in Krav Maga (and any other ‘reality based’ system), BJJ, and traditional grappling styles like Aikido, Jujutsu, etc., but is a common advertisement in most martial arts.

However, when we look at most combat sports, there are strict limitations on weight – and by extension on size and strength. The idea is to take two competitors who are similar so that the competition becomes one of skill.

So… Is there truth to that claim? Does size, so to speak, actually matter?

Let’s start with an analysis of attributes and skills.

Attributes mean pretty much everything outside of one’s technical base – strength, power, speed, endurance, etc. It can also mean intangibles, like fighting spirit, timing, toughness. Skills refer to the actual techniques that one knows.

All things being equal, attributes trump skill. Here’s a hypothetical for you:
Take two people who are identical in everything except skills and attributes – same age, size, weight, etc. The first has no skill, but is strong, fast, powerful, can get hit for days and doesn’t care, and has the endurance of an ultramarathon runner. The second has poor attributes (i.e. unfit, weak, etc.), but has an incredible technical base and knows all the techniques and can execute them well. Which would you put money on in a fight?

For me, it’ll be the former 99 times out of 100.

However, the core assumption in the above was ‘all things being equal’, which is the exact opposite of ‘smaller person can beat a larger, stronger opponent’. Is there a middle ground? What other things can impact this?

The answer, as always, is context.

So what things do we need to consider? Well, loads. But to start with, let’s look at the ruleset, disparity in skill, and the training methodology and preparation.
Let’s start with the ruleset and definition of winning.

Can a smaller person, highly skilled in BJJ defeat a larger, stronger boxer? Potentially. Are they in a BJJ match or a boxing match?
Can a smaller person, armed and highly skilled in the use of firearms, defeat a larger, stronger person who is unskilled and unarmed? Potentially. At what distance do they start the engagement? You may recall that's how David beat Goliath...
Even when taking these into account, the outcomes are not definite. However, by asking these questions we can get a pretty clear idea of the likelihood of certain outcomes.

I can hear the screams of discontent from many a practitioner already saying ‘this is not what we meant, we were talking about self defence’ or ‘what about Royce Gracie in the UFC’.

Well, self defence situations also come with a set of assumptions that affect the rules, though it maybe in a different way. For example, psychological attacks such as intimidation and distraction, as well as lack of consent to engage in violence (unlike a combat sport or martial art), as well as potential relationship or history with the person can impact the rules, even if that is not necessarily explicitly articulated. Add to that environmental factors, not to mention the critical fact that you can potentially defeat an opponent in the physical engagement of a self defense situation, and still lose in court, suffer from trauma, and/or be the victim of retaliation, means the definition of ‘defeating an opponent’ becomes very different.

And as for Gracie and the UFC, while the rules were looser than many combat sports today, there were still rules that were agreed upon in advance and given how the world has changed, unlikely to have the same result today given the fact that all fighters today know how to grapple (which is credit to the Gracies and the UFC’s early days).

And this is a nice segue to the next topic, which is that of skill disparity, though that still happens within a given ruleset.
Can a smaller BJJ practitioner defeat a larger, stronger opponent within a BJJ ruleset? Yes, but that will greatly on the level of skill of both combatants. If they are both of equal skill and experience, the answer is likely to be ‘no’. If we reframe this to ‘can a small BJJ black belt defeat a larger, stronger BJJ white belt’ then we start evening the odds a little bit. But the amount of training time required is significant for this to happen and is rarely advertised in the ‘get your black belt in one year’ circles.

Which opens another issue to consider, which is that of training methodology and preparation.

Many of the one-year-black-belts don’t test their techniques in any way that can be considered combatively effective. In other words, how you train a technique is often more important than the technique itself. The concept of aliveness as a methodology for effective realistic training is critical to things working or not, even more so when there is a distinct size disparity.

Can a smaller opponent defeat a larger, stronger opponent who offers zero resistance or intent to their attack? Mostly, yes. While the second part of the sentence (you can guess which one) is left unsaid and is unlikely to be what either the trainer or student meant, it is implied in the training methodology.

With all of that in mind… there are certain things that work better and can give someone an advantage. But the statement in itself, well, is highly unlikely.
A more realistic statement is ‘I have a technique that can help a smaller, highly skilled person who has been training for a long time and using specific training methods defeat a larger, stronger but unskilled opponent under very specific rules that were agreed upon in advance, with an unambiguous definition of winning, and with agreed upon levels of resistance’.

But that’s a bit of a mouthful and doesn’t sell as well…

So what’s the lesson here? Size matters. Training methodology matters. Rulesets matter. And there are no absolutes in training.

Stay safe, stay tuned!

Osu!

Please join us to celebrate CAIA's 10 Year Anniversary with our Open Day
SATURDAY 29th October from 9AM - 1PM

There will be demos, free training, yummy food, our 100 Rounds in 100 Minutes event - and some great prizes!

Grand Prize - win a weekend getaway in Dunsborough!

OK - we turned 10 in the middle of COVID on June 1st but we wanted to save the party til things calmed down a bit ?
Please share this link, and mark your calendar - we hope to see you on the 29th!

REGISTER / BOOK HERE

Demos & FREE training:
9:30: Krav Maga
9:45: Striking
10:00: BJJ
10:15: Japanese Jujutsu and Weapons
 
10:30: announcements
10:50: prize draw for weekend in Dunsborough
11:00: 100 rounds in 100 minutes event

REGISTER / BOOK HERE

Many thanks to our sponsor:
Dunsborough Beach Cottages

It's happening again!

29 October 2022 @ 11AM

This time as a part of our 10 Year Anniversary Event - 100 Rounds of Boxing / Kickboxing or BJJ for a worthy cause.

The concept: a friendly 100 Rounds of sparring to raise funds for a CAIA family member who needs assistance to pay for an important surgery. 100% of funds raised will be donated.

We raised around $3000 for a worthy cause!

Cobra Kai, the now-infamous Karate school from the Karate Kid movie franchise and the recent Netflix reboot (which is excellent, by the way) were seen as the bad guys.
Johnny, the villain in the first Karate Kid movie, was egged on by his sensei to fight dirty and do whatever it takes to win. Daniel, the hero of the movie who taught by Mr Miyagi
agy, was taught that honour and discipline is what matters.

Funnily enough, in all of the recent takes on the movies we now realise that – much like in life – there’s a little bit of black and a little bit of white, with a ton of grey in the middle.
Daniel is now often portrayed as the bully, the instigator of the now famous rivalry.

Despite the fact that Johnny was often the one to throw the first punch, he understood the lessons of Cobra Kai and how they apply to real self-defence.

Cobra Kai’s infamous motto is ‘strike first, strike hard, no mercy’. While it sounds violent, it actually has a lot of wisdom in it.

So, what is it that Cobra Kai understood so well about self-defence, and why is it that a large portion of today’s martial arts and self defence community don’t get it?

In my last article I talked about how different people learn, and also about how both instructors and students should be aware of this to further improve their performance.

Often, the style we prefer to learn is determined by the preferred learning style we have. Nice tongue twister. But what does it mean?

The infamous phrase ‘reality-based training’ once again returns to feature in an article…

Martial Arts can be an incredible force in the life of a young person. It can provide focus, structure, culture, problem solving capabilities and solid strategies to deal with bullying and other various challenges that life will throw at them. But it's not for everyone, and for some kids it's important to consider the type of training they may need before throwing them into a martial arts programme.

Will Martial Arts help my child's behaviour problem?