First let’s look at the subject of “Street fighting.” When I was a young teenager studying martial arts my real goal wasn’t to build character or to be able to defend myself, it was to build my ability at “Street fighting.” All the movies I watched, all the magazines I read, and all the people I talked to in the martial arts all talked about the street fight.
Years later the internet came about and soon I was on there watching videos of street fights; only the fights I saw really weren’t fights.
These were assaults not street fights and there was nothing about them that I wanted to train for.
Fast forward several more years and a lot more training and I realized what a street fight actually is.
This can be said to be the typical bar fight or the street fight.
The thing I want to draw your attention to is that both of the above are forms of mutual combat; all parties are voluntarily agreeing to fight so if they get hurt it is their own fault for fighting and if they didn’t want to fight they could have just walked away in the beginning.
Once I realized that the honest reality I faced wasn’t some guy picking a fight with me it was criminal violence I gave up on the notion of street fighting.
Today if someone challenged me to a fight and called me, my wife, and my mother every name in the book to egg me on I’d simply smile and walk away.
If you want to go around picking fights then that is fine, but let me know where you’ll be so I can be on the other side of town with all the other people that left their junior high mentality back in junior high.
Since “Street fighting” is actually avoidable the average person just has to concern themselves with acts of criminal violence so let’s look at that and how physical conditioning relates to it.
The last thing the average criminal will want to do is get into a fight and risk getting hurt so they’ll try to close distance without spooking you and then take you by surprise so it is important to remember that a real criminal will not put their hands up, they don’t square off, they don’t let you get into a fighting position, and they don’t get into a kickboxing match with you.
If you want to put your hands up and get into a fight with someone in a ring then being physically strong and in good aerobic and anaerobic shape would be a necessity because you would be competing in an athletic endeavor.
Criminals are predators and don’t want a fight.
Criminals are the same way; they don’t want to fight with someone and most will only expand a little bit of energy before giving up and going after someone else.
Most of the guys I knew when I was younger that got in fights and won weren’t well conditioned at all, they were just big and aggressive.
The problem with most people who train to “Fight” is that they focus on aerobic conditioning.
Fighting contains random and chaotic movements; you may throw 4 punches followed by 2 kicks, followed by hopping around for a few minutes, and then a minute or two of grappling.
Nothing in a typical fight is about sustained repetitive motions, rather it takes place in small but very aggressive bursts.
To prepare your cardiovascular system for the random movements of a fight you should do aerobic workouts but you should focus most of your training on anaerobic conditioning.
Years back an instructor of mine taught me a program that is not easy but definitely gets you ready to fight.
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