Best Martial Art for Self-Defense?

I used to say that the best thing to learn for self-defense is a 30m sprint. I have changed my mind on that.

Self-defense is a very interesting topic. It is appealing for primal reasons: no one wants to be hurt. When thinking of self-defense, we imagine scenarios where people want to hurt us —few topics are more sure to evoke strong emotions than this. It is perfect content for our current style of media, that craves instant attention. People who get good at communicating about this become massively influential. Joe Rogan is just the most shinning example of this.

I got caught up in this too. At the same time when I became involved in the whole “self-improvement” culture, I became interested in self-defense. After training calisthenics for some time, feeling I was sufficiently strong by then, I moved on to Muay Thai. I had already done a bunch of other martial arts as a kid: karate, judo, capoeira. I began to learn more about martial arts in general. And everything took a turn when I started to watch UFC.

What I enjoyed the most was the innovation of it: finnaly people were fighting with “no rules”, and we get to know what the best system for fighting is. In karate competitions, you can’t punch someone in the face. How does that prepare you to fight someone outside of karate, where the first thing they’ll do is swing for your head? It seems almost comical. In BJJ, you can’t strike anyone, ever. How is that realistic? In MMA, though, all the caps are off. It’s all fair game.

So, it would seem obvious that the best martial art for self-defense is MMA. Only this will give you a toolkit of skills wellrounded enough to deal with any opponent, no matter their skills or intentions. But is that really true?

Frequently, when discussing this topic of the best martial art for self-defense, a certain type of objection tends to come up, claiming that transposition of the skills learned from said martial art would never work in the “real world”. This is because martial arts have rules, while the “real world” does not. If martial arts did not have rules, it would be impossible to train them.

So people object to BJJ as an “end-all, be-all” solution, not only because not taking into account that people might punch you is ridiculous, but also because BJJ takes place on the floor, for example. And in an urban setting, it would be generally unadvised to jump to the floor hugging someone with your legs. The floor in the streets is not soft. You can’t pull guard there.

Similar objections might be raised against other martial arts. The more interesting ones, in my opinion, are not the ones that complain about the rules, but the ones that question the unsaid assumptions we have about them. How will you grapple if the floor is covered in broken glass? Someone brakes a bottle and there goes your BJJ with it.

What if you are inside an elevator? There go your nice Taekwondo kicks. So much for hours of practicing. What if you’re fighting a shirtless guy and you dont have a sleeve to grab? No more judo throws. What if you don’t have gloves? Good luck throwing a one-two without breaking your hand. And the winner-takes-all objection: what if you’re fighting a guy twice your size?

What if you’re fighting potentially more than one person at the same time? What if you’re fighting someone with a knife? Or a gun? Or a car? Or a tank? Or bombs? Have a nice time kicking the hell out of them. Hope the thousands of hours of practice to get the movement just right helps you.

Here we finally get to the good stuff. These questions get to the heart of the problem: what is self-defense, really? What are we actually looking for in a martial art to consider it “the best for self-defence”?

This question is illuminating because it exposes a very shallow conception at the core of the whole UFC hype behind this idea. The idea of self-defense that a martial art is well equipped to actually be of use for is a one-on-one fight against someone, generally speaking. It needs to be assumed that not many people will intervene, that the setting is somewhat stable and predictable and your opponent is somewhat your size. Basically, it is useful for a scenario similar to the rules of MMA competitions.

MMA, combat sport that it is, remains highly constricted by rules. Fighters battle almost naked inside a fenced octagon (the size of which actually matters a lot, as it turns out), in 3 or 5 minute intervals, assisted by a refferee. Some strikes and techniques are prohibited, fighters use small gloves and a mouthpiece.

They are allowed to be treated by cutmen in between rounds. They cannot run away from the octagon, they have no weapons, they have to weigh the same one day before the fight, they know who they will fight months before — they even sign a contract. They face-off before the fight. The fight begins with each fighter standing in front of the other, already aware of what will happen.

Each fighter has a corner of people there to shout instructions and give them moral support. Fighters are not allowed to, but constantly do eye poke each other, strike the groin, grab the cage or stall the fight. There are fixed rules to know who won the fight.

In real life, none of this is true. If any MMA practitioner actually think about what are the possible scenarios where they would actually put their skills to use, they would be very limited. Maybe fighting a bully in school, a drunk guy at a party at night, maybe (but most likely not) a robber in the street.

And in all of these, it would be arguably better advised to try to solve the problem with words, not violence. Not only because of the inherent risk of getting yourself hurt present in any physical confrontation, but also, and mainly, because of the risk of actually hurting the other person.

If you punch someone and knock them out, they fall and hit their head on the concrete, have a concussion and die, you go to jail as a murderer. If you break someone’s arm, even if you plead self-defense, you will, at least, have to defend yourself in court and pay a lawyer. How is that better than avoiding the fight?

This is why I have always thought and said to other people that, being someone who knows how to fight, I have enough experience to say: the best thing you should do for self-defense is to have a really nice sprint. Whatever happens, run fast enough that the trouble will quickly give up on catching you. Maybe even learn some parkour — although that is also farfetched.

But the idea of running as a self-defense tool might force us to redefine self-defense. More than the vanity driven “show of force” that people dream of when they decide they will learn a martial art, of having someone come at you and beating the hell out of them, self-defense is about staying safe.

More than being able to fight someone, if the moment forces you to, self-defense is about being able to forsee the moments when you would need to do something like this — and avoiding them. The best self-defence is never having to actually fight. Fighting is too risky.

So let’s think about this more broadly. Instead of training to fight or run, we might want to acess our situation first. If you live in a dangerous place, you should try to get out of there. Probably, the actual best thing for self-defense is to move to Europe, in some town with very, very low criminality. Just by doing that, you reduce the danger you are in by 99% already. In a small town in France, people (most likely) simply will not try to hurt you, so you don’t even need to know how to fight off people that try to.

You should put yourself in a situation that give no reason for the people around you to harm you. Be in a peaceful place, make people like you and empathise with you, make people find you valuable somehow. If you are liked and can be of value, it will not be in anyone’s interest to hurt you — or at least, it will be in someone’s interest to protect you. In fact, being too useful might be a problem. But that’s not a thing for most people to worry about. Almost no one manages to be that useful.

Work on your social skills, learn to deescalate conflict. Have a lot of money and be rich enough to be the first to be saved. Be careful driving. Those boring and mundane things are the actual best self-defense tips.

But if things actually go south and conflict is unavoidable, there are, again, priorities that come before BJJ or Muay Thai. To actually defend yourself in a variety of scenarios, army training is better than martial arts training. A soldier will lose a fight against a fighter under the martial art’s rules, but in most other contexts, a soldier will manage to win. Learning to understand terrain and use it to one’s advantage, use improvized weapons, adapt to every context and work with what you have.

Learn to shoot a gun. Maybe all kinds of guns — the more, the better, I guess. Learn to use sticks and shields effectively. Learn evasion techniques. Master all technologies of mobility — know how to ride a bike, a motorcycle, a horse, drive a car, fly a plane, sail a boat. Whatever means you have to get places faster is much more important than knowing how to fight someone in a one-on-one battle — that’s for action movies.

In fact, learning all of these things could in fact hinder your self-defense, in the sense that it would make it more likely for you to get involved whenever conflict actually happened. Not knowing any of this makes you a civilian. Being a soldier is not great self-defense strategy.

All of this could be categorized and distinguished in different “layers” of protection, each being progressively more important to self-defence, according to the probability of things occuring. Some things you do will already cut the likelyhood of bad things happening to you by so much, that it would be ludicrous to pursue other things first.

I’m not going to actually do this, though.

Now someone could argue that what I am talking about is self-protection, not self-defense. That self-protection includes self-defense, which is a more specific thing. In trying to protect myself, getting away from trouble is important. But there is always a “last barrier” of defense, the one that comes when trouble cannot be avoided — and that is self-defense. Being able to stay safe in the midst of danger.

Not only that, but living your life with your number one priority being “stay away from danger” is cowardly. And that is fair enough. We might want to be able to confront danger when it comes. But also we must be reasonable as to what our response to said danger will be. In almost any case, martial arts will not cut it anymore. In almost any case you can imagine that using martial arts skills effectively to neutralize a threat would be a good idea, having a gun and shooting people in the thigh would be better. And if you say that you can’t have a gun as a civilian, then I will retort that you shouldn’t use martial arts as a civilian either. Don’t be delusional.