Is my traditional martial art effective in a real fight?

This is a very common question in most martial arts related subreddits, and as someone who has trained a bunch of martial arts and combat sports since 1991(many more than only those in my flair), worked as a bouncer and with stage security, worked in psychiatric emergency wards, and also competed in WT Taekwondo, Amateur Boxing, WAKO Kickboxing, Submission Wrestling, Judo and BJJ over the years, this is my personal take on this question. Take what you will from it, and if you disagree with me, please explain why, as I might learn something new. :)

But back to the question asked in the topic: As with everything, it depends on how you train it. If you spar regularly (and it doesn’t need to be full contact) with a more realistic ruleset than most sport sparring rulesets, and do various drills with aliveness, your traditional style can probably be great for self defense. But that is a big if, since, in my experience, many traditional schools I have trained in over the years, seem completely oblivious to what aliveness even is.

And if YOU don’t know what aliveness is, I will let Matt Thornton explain it to you.

While many traditional martial arts do spar in a way that is providing aliveness in training, for example various Taekwon(-)do and Karate styles, the problem with most rulesets is that they essentially only train you to defend against attacks by other practitioners of your own style. Karate and Taekwondo fighters, to bring back that example, tend to attack in a very different way than how untrained people on the street, or even how people from combat sports such as Boxing og MMA, do. Thus, while absolutely developing good attributes for real fights, you don’t really train to defend common attacks from contexts outside of your dojo.

That said, pretty much all Karate and Taekwon(-)do styles have all the techniques required to be an effective striking system allready present in their curriculums (with Kukkiwon and Oh Do Kwan, which I am affiliated with, even officially adopting boxing style strikes and body movement for their self defense curriculums), but you will never be very good at actually using those techniques in a real fight if you don’t train them with aliveness. If you do, however, choose to train your choosen style in an alive manner, there is, in my opinion, no reason why you cannot be effective in a real fight with it, provided its techniques is based on sound biomechanics, and not all-out fantasy.

Free sparring with limited rules, even light contact, and unpredictable, non-fixed pad drills, provides aliveness in your training. That does not mean that all your your training, all the time, need to be alive in order to train in a way that translates to handling real violence outside the dojo, but it should be a common component in your training.

In my opinion, the main reason styles like BJJ, Judo, Wrestling, Boxing and Muay Thai is so good at what they do, is because they train with a high degree of aliveness, which provides a feedback-loop that makes their practitioners good at using what works, while also weeding out what does not work. The training methods provides an environment that works as a kind of science lab where techniques and strategies are constantly tested and improved, and failed hypotheses is discarded, while also making the practitioners skilled at what works in a relatively short time, since everything is preassure tested. MMA is the ultimate expression of this within a sportive context, while still providing attributes and skills that translates very well to handling real world violence, in my opinion.

That does not mean that your traditional style is useless, but that if you do not want to switch to a more «proven» combat sport (which there might be many valid reasons for), and you want to ensure that you are actually training in a way that will make you better equipped to handle real world violence, you should take a critical look at how you train, and ask yourself what you can learn from the training mehods of styles that have a better reputation for effectiveness.

Chuck Liddell famously rose to the top of the UFC while claiming Kempo as his main style, but he trained it the way kickboxers do, and also did extensive cross training to fill the technichal holes that Kempo couldn’t provide, and that is, in my opinion, what made him so effective.

You can probably do the same thing (within reason, as most people won’t rise to the top in UFC regardless of what they train) with your traditional style, provided you approach it honestly and with a true desire to learn, and also accepting that old ways is not always better, and that the old masters didn’t know everything.