hand to hand self defense anyone?

It's not that a 5'11" cannot fight. It's that typically the 5'6" 110 lb guy isn't the one picking a fight with the 5'11" 185 lb guy. It's the 6'3" 220 lb guy and if he can handle himself he's going to wear down the smaller fighter. You can't teach size, which is why there are weight classes in pretty much all levels of organized fighting.
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I agree!

I'm 5ft 8in and to go toe-to-toe with a 6ft 2 inch 200 muscle man, well that is why I learned the art of Glockdo.

Yes if all have is hands and feet well, that's all I got but I will sure look around for anything as a weapon (lamp, table, chair, bottle, belt, rock, book, towel, etc.. and I'll attack first if need be.

But, as Ernest Hemingway said, "the comforting feel of well worn checkered grips" is not something to sneeze at.

Deaf
 
I have trained in multiple styles of Kung Fu, Some Karate, multiple Filipino styles based on knives and sticks, and a dash of Krav Maga. The only other style I've learned about is Libre System, and that's some great stand up fighting, but not used in relation to firearms. All I really learned of Krav Maga were disarms and some knife work.

In what I have seen and practiced, the full mount doesn't seem to happen as often as a lot of Jiujitsu stylists seem to portray. The video posted makes me think of two questions: Why draw while on the ground when you can wait for a better position? (It's showing you have a weapon while offering a dominant position to the opponent. Why fight over the gun when you could simply talk them down from here?) For civilians, why have your gun out against an unarmed opponent? If you're standing up, they are a threat, but not lethal, you should not be drawing. If you are young enough to use that technique, there's quite the chance you could use better open hand defense on your feet. If you aren't young enough, there's a chance that by the time you've drawn, been knocked down, and you are trying this technique, they may very well have beaten you.

On your feet, it's all in footwork, hands, and communication. But as we all know, excrement happens...

Carrying a gun that doesn't fire without a magazine is an optimum choice if you see yourself in this position. Drop the mag. Now you're fighting over a bludgeoning tool, not a firearm. If you carry a revolver, cover where the hammer strikes, or if possible, open the cylinder and keep it open. Secondary to these options, a knife is excellent in this position. Small and fixed bladed, icepick grip, edge in. Something like the SOCP Dagger is what I would suggest. This is of course my opinion according to my training and experience.

If you find yourself there, and you attempt this technique, and it works, that's great. I don't like that it involves aiming the gun in a direction you can't see, and that the opponent may very well rip the gun out of your hand before you can push them off of it, if you can. I would rather fight the structure of the wrists and hands by aiming the gun lower on them, making it harder to grip. Just a thought on it.

If you're looking for answers, it's sometimes best to learn things and try them out yourself. The best, most violent criminals do it, and it works for them.
 
ARCON ground fighting... but other than that I punch a bag. I am no tuff guy but I have always been the kind of person who focuses of what I am going to do.. not what someone is going to do to me.
 
Brazilian Ju Jitsu. It will humble you. I practice Muay Thai and Bjj. It works well. I am not an internet commando, I have actually been doing these things for around 9 years now...actively sparring. When I first started, I tried sparring someone with basic knowledge of BJJ, it didn't go well for me. So I started do it too. If anyone reading this doesn;t believe me, find a gym in your area and go spar someone in an MMA style bout who knows BJJ and see how you do.
 
Yeah the good old 120lb superman, then there is brock lesner, bigfoot, alastair ovareem, lennox lewis, and a plethora of" big guys" that would "clean his clock." Proving the old saying," if the big dog has as much fight, cliches have no place in reality,".... or something like that.
 
I've done it, they usually can't get me to the ground, much less before I'd have hit them in the throat, groin, or given a kick to the knee. One was a great fighter too, one of the best I've had the pleasure of sparring. BJJ has its place, but is too focused on staying on the ground for most situations. It teaches manipulating positions, holds/breaks, and great joint manipulation, but it focuses on one person. I won't deny its effective use, and it's not fun to not know it when you're on the ground with a practitioner. As long as one isn't too caught up in it as a self defense style, it can be useful. I see too many people with the mindset that it's a hammer and everything around them is a nail.

As a rule, I leave sport styles behind in terms of self defense. Boxing is a clear one, you don't carry padded gloves to absorb blows to the face. Muay Thai is great, but a lot of the strikes take some conditioning for most people to be able to do effectively. It's a very hard style in terms of impact on the body, and most people won't get as much technical knowledge from it.
 
Boxing shows up in krav maga. In krav maga you will learn the uppercut, hook, and jab... I think that boxing in the ring is a sport, but you can certainly apply boxing to self defense.


As for BJJ...

Brazilian jiu-jitsu has its origins in Judo, however the training is out right dangerous to ones health. It might give a few years where a practitioners conditioning is good, but shortly thereafter, neurological problems; very much like what happens in the NFL, may start to show up.

Even you are not fighting in a ring, even if you do not compete at all, you can absolutely destroy your joints, your hearing, your brain with that style training. Blown out knees, screwy ankles, spinal problems, cauliflower ear... I have seen these happen to people first hand.

BJJ might be todays, "new cool school of fighting," but old school Judo can be just as effective for self defense, is far more spiritual, and can improve body conditioning to old age.
 
I'll second the Shivworks recommendation. Nothing like going through the ECQC class to show you that what you think works really does not and put you on the path to learning what does.
 
I would recommend that you start with the basics.

I did Tae Kwon Do for years, wrestled for 4 years in high school, some Kung Fu, fought is some full contact tourneys 30 years ago. In LE been trained in PPCT, several styles of batons, ground fighting, weapon retention. Dominated in LE fights for over 30 years.

You need formal training, making it up as you go is not going to cut it if you are up against a trained fighter. I don't care how big you are. I would much rather fight 3 guys that do not know how to fight as a team than 1 really good fighter.
 
First why. Simple really. Got into a situation that went badly and could have went really, really bad. I discovered two things. There is the stuff we grow up with. Playground fights to bar or club altercations and so on and there is truly violent fights and crime. I knew zero about the latter and that isn't fun. Started a martial arts class and started looking at youtube for fight videos. Very boring until one long google session I found a website called warriors path redux. It was a site of fight and crime videos cataloged in an interesting way. Was pretty illuminating to someone with zero real life experience. So now I use Kelly McCann aka Jim Grover high risk combatives and Michael Janich's martial blade concepts/damnithurtsilat. I'm still sticking with the dojo I started with, but not for the system. Everyone needs training partners.
 
Highly suggest a book - " The SAS Self-Defense Handbook" written by John Lofty" Wiseman. ISBN 1-58574-060-4

The last 5 pages of the book alone are worth the prices of admission. Only 19 sentences & 5 pictures in those last five pages, and they will serve you well the rest of your life. Lots of good self-defense, awareness & preparedness tips. Great book.
 
There are at least 3 reasons I can think of to be proficient in unarmed combat if you carry a firearm: 1) While carrying you may be in self defense situations where you don't want to escalate to presenting your firearm, let alone deadly force. Knowing how to disable, even temporarily, an attacker gives you a chance to get away and gives you options. 2) You may not always have your firearm with you (places where it is prohibited to carry or you just don't happen to be carrying that day; 3) Weapons retention and ability to deal with an attacker who gets to close (and even the most alert person can't keep potential threats out of striking distance, particularly since a person can cover 20 ft of ground in about 2 seconds).

Any martial art or combat system (those are two distinct things) requires a lot of sweat, often some blood and an investment of significant time and money to become proficient to the point where it is likely to be ingrained in muscle memory and useful in a real fight.

I have a 2nd Dan black belt in moo do kwan Taek Kwan Do (rougly 9 years of regular study). TKD is fun, and even with 2-3 years of practice you will realize some benefit in self defense ability. Knowing how to throw a punch and kick, increased foot speed and flexibility, and sparring experience will be of some use. BUT, TKD is a sport before it is a practical self defense system in my opinon, even in ITF schools. Learning pumsaes (forms, same as katas in Karate), the concept of block followed by strike, the prohibition on any strikes to eyes, throat, groin, knee, etc. and rules of sparring make TKD an art that doesn't translate very well to a real workd street fight. I'd assume the same applies to karate and even BJJ as taught in the lower levels in most schools.

I've been studying krav maga for 2 years and IF you have a legit teacher and apply yourself, I think it is much, much more relevant to a street situation. A good school will teach you the basics of punching, kicking (including front kicks, side kicks, round house and back kicks, similar to TKD/Karate but modified to make them more practical) and blocking ("360 defense") AND teach you real world techniques applicable in myriad self defense situations. The big differences with krav are: 1) from they outset it teaches simultaneous defense and offense -- eg a block is always accompanied by a bursting, explosive punch, not followed by a punch, 2) the concept of "retzev" or flow -- in a real fight there are no breaks or pauses if you want to prevail, you must hit hard first and keep hitting until the threat is eliminated and 3) everything goes -- eyes, throat, knees, are all not just legitimate, but in fact preferred targets. It is pure self defense, not an art or a sport.

One big caveat -- there are a lot of BS krav schools out there. Krav is "hot" and a money maker and unscrupulous practitioners of other martial arts take advantage of that. I've seen TKD and karate schools suddenly start a krav program after getting a certificate following a weekend of training with some bullshido artist (eg, see the Krav Maga Association headed by "Professor" Marty Cale.) Do your research to find legit schools. Those schools don't advance people easily. KM is deceptively simple. The fundamental principles requrie a lot of practic and technique to employ reliably and effectively.

If you can't find a good KM school I'd say look for a good, old fashioned boxing gym.
 
I've studied Kali/escrima for a good number of years and my total extent of using it was taking a fork out of my 6 year old nephew's hand.
 
If you can't find a good KM school I'd say look for a good, old fashioned boxing gym.

Reminds me of my karate instructor telling us once that a professional boxer would defeat a karate practitioner. This was MANY years ago, so I'm not sure of the basis for his statement, but it may have been based on the boxer's superior hand speed. If it wasn't hand speed, it was something to do with footwork and balance. The memory fails me. Anybody here enlighten me?
 
Good boxing training will teach you proper foot work, get you used to taking punches (which is a key part of self defense), and obviously teach you how to punch properly and greatly increase your speed. Many people are not flexible or fast enough to properly throw kicks, particularly in a real world scenario, so all of the time spent learning fancy kicks in TKD and to a lesser degree Karate are basically useless for self defense. Boxing is basic and effective. Most fights start with and can be ended with a punch or elbow. The vast majority of people who aren't trained don't know how to throw a proper tight punch with proper body rotation and use of your legs and core that can generate tremendous force.

I saw on "Human Weapon" or another similar show that they tested punch strength of TKD, kung fu and boxer, and the boxer far and away had the most force behind his punch.
 
A boxer would beat most MMA practitioners (whether it's karate, judo, jujitsu, taekwondo,etc)......in a boxing match. However I can kick a lot harder (and farther) than I can throw a punch and you don't need to be super flexible to kick someon's knee out. It is easier if you only have to defend against a hand strike, if you throw in feet and knees it's another dimension that can be hard to account for.
 
I've trained hapkido for a few years now. Great form if you're looking for a balance between soft and hard style technique. Practice multiple times a week.
 
40 years or so of boxing and wrestling have taken it's toll on me. I've managed to stay is some sort of shape for most, but at 57, that's getting tougher as well. I like to think I can still hold my own, but then at 6'4" and 250 lbs, suffice to say, I don't usually have to worry about strangers. I do carry concealed, all the time, usually on elevated alert, due to my previous location, but have had very few occasions warranting more than an extra worry or two.
 
My guess - on what was meant by the boxing vs. martial arts thing - is that typically boxers are trying to knock each other out, and marital arts practitioners are trying to score points.
Obviously there are lots of exceptions but, a lot of "black belts" never progress beyond points-sparing and preforming katas.

I think it's a good idea to get some hand-to-hands training of some sort, but for practical purposes, the discipline you choose probably doesn't matter much.
If you're comfortable enough with physical interactions that you won't freeze up, have a basic understanding of kinesthetics, and can avoid having your gun taken from you, you'll probably do pretty well at defending yourself.
 
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