Streets can be dangerous anywhere. Proper vigilance can help you avoid most of these threats, but sometimes you need to learn a few skills to ensure your safety. Grab your mouthguard because things can get rough. Here are three disciplines that can help you survive the urban jungle.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (BJJ) is a great martial art to learn for one-on-one combat. It can help you fight above your weight or against larger opponents. It also has several techniques that can incapacitate an opponent without dealing with significant damage.
As Royce Gracie demonstrated in the first UFC, a properly trained BJJ practitioner can win against heavier and stronger opponents. BJJ focuses on technique and leverage. It can hold an opponent immobile or knock an opponent unconscious.
BJJ practitioners also spend much of their training fighting on the ground. This reduces a significant amount of an opponent’s fighting ability as well as his potential to deal damage.
BJJ has a lot of locking techniques that can dislocate joints and break bones as well as several holds that can put an opponent unconscious within seconds. It might seem particularly brutal, but against a less trained individual — BJJ can stop fights with the least amount of damage dealt. Why harm when you can merely hold?
Boxing
Some important aspects of boxing that’s often unrecognized is evasion, dynamic vision, and hand-eye coordination. These 3 are important factors in stopping fights and avoiding damage. Dynamic vision trains your eye to see fast movement, giving you an additional split second to react or evade an attack.
The side-to-side head movements of a boxer are actually enough to avoid most untrained attacks. Coupled with accurate punches, you can deal damage while avoiding getting hit. Boxing requires a bit of dedication.
You need to train yourself to a point when muscle memory takes over, and you need to spar so you won’t hesitate when hitting an attacker. It’s normal for an untrained individual to hold back, often using less than 20 percent of their strength to land a blow against an opponent.
You need to overcome these restraints in order to be able to defend yourself more effectively, and this can be done through regular sparring.
Parkour
Avoiding confrontation is the best way to keep yourself safe. While parkour is not a martial art, it gives you the tools to evade and overcome obstacles that can hinder your escape. If you can vault a wall and your attackers can’t — then the confrontation is over.
Parkour also trains your body and your dynamic vision. Running at high speeds and vaulting obstacles trains your reaction speeds.
This allows you to react faster to an oncoming attack and react appropriately. The physical training of parkour will also give you massive explosive strength that would complement any other martial art.
Street safety is all about awareness. Be vigilant in your travels and learn sufficient skills that can help you ward-off danger or give you the opportunity to escape from difficult situations.
