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Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture
A lesson from history on untrained opponents

Hi All,

I stumbled across this video today and thought it was a good illustration of a much talked about topic here. The video discusses duels, with swords, during the time of Waterloo. It makes the point that in these duels the French combatants would chose a weapon that was unfamiliar to their English opponents. The result of this was that the English fought in a “unskilled” but aggressive way, and this often resulted in victory over the more skilled French swordsmen who were anticipating a skilled back and forth.

The video makes the point that we need differing methods for differing types of enemy, and how some of the groups (i.e. the 16th century “London Masters of Defence”) would insist that its members demonstrated competence against various types of opponents; both skilled and unskilled.

I’ve talked before how modern martial artists have a bad habit of assuming that the methods used to beat a skilled practitioner of their own system, in a mutually agreed upon exchange, will be an ideal fit for dealing with “untrained” criminals. It’s not! The arrogance being that, if they are “untrained”, they will be easy to beat. This, of course, ignores the fact that criminals don’t behave like martial artists and in self-protection you are on their turf. A shark is infinitely less dangerous when removed from its habitat and placed on land (think fighting a criminal in a ring), but an apex predator when in their natural environment (not looking for a skilled exchange, but to commit crimes upon you).  

I maintain that this failure to “know your enemy” (as Sun Tzu would have it) is the biggest failure that martial artists have when it comes to self-protection. I’ve talked about it lots in the podcasts:

Reinventing Violence:

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/reinventing-violence-podcast

Think Like a Criminal:

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/thinking-criminal-podcast

Two things criminals know about violence that you should know too:

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/two-things-criminals-know-about-violence-you-should-know-too-podcast

Context! Context! Context!

https://iainabernethy.co.uk/content/context-context-context-podcast

This video shows it is certainly not a new issue!

All the best,

Iain

Chikara Andrew
Chikara Andrew's picture

I would have to agree as a long time fencer (long since retired) fighting someone who was unskilled was infinately more daunting that fighting someone who had received a degree of training. Even though a skilled fencer might be difficult to beat, they maybe faster or more deceptive in their movements, their movements followed at pattern and it was a mutual exchange. Beginners could be wildly unpredictable and whilst in a consensual bout with a referee they would not prevail it was obvious that the skills of modern fencing are very much in the sporting arena. 

I also trained for a time with some guys from the Royal Armouries at Leeds who joined our fencing club, they certainly provided a bit of perspective on how we fought. In particular they had a great desire to turn around at the end of the piste and come back the other way, which doesn't really work when you're on wires!

We have to accept that sporting kumite is the same as modern fencing, it is a sport and is bound by the confines of the sporting arena. Interestingly we can see the same thing in kumite in that if you put a complete beginner in a match, generally one of two things happen, they either cower and are beaten by the skilled opponent or they fight like crazy causing the referee to interveen, take the referee away and the "skilled" fighter could be in alot of trouble.

As Iain says its all about context. I'm not a massive fan of sporting kumite and therefore don't spend alot of time training it however the clubs I teach in are family type clubs and sport karate is a part of what we do.

That being said as the article and video show there are comparrisons to be made between armed and unarmed combat both inside and outside of the sporting arena.

Andrew

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Thanks for sharing those insights Andrew! Very interesting from a fencer's perspective! As one of my teachers said, “Fighting someone who is untrained is like sitting down to play an advanced game of chess against an opponent who is going to play draughts / checkers”.

All the best,

Iain

Anf
Anf's picture

Unless I've misunderstood something, there is a fundamental flaw in the assertion that an unskilled fighter is often harder to beat than a skilled one. That would suggest that the 'skilled' fighter has not only been training badly, but has also somehow completely lost his or her own natural instinctive fighting ability. This is something that constantly bugs me when people online make assertions that, for example, a karateka would always get beaten by an MMA person, or a taekwondo person is stuffed if the fight goes to the ground. All of this assumes that a person trained in a particular style will only use the techniques they have trained in, if they find themselves in a genuine violent confrontation. When faced with a genuine threat, we won't 'do karate', we will do whatever our instincts drive us to do. That might be to run, or it might be to comply, or it might be to fight. If it's the latter, karate won't happen. But maybe the training of that karate might enable us to perform a bit better. Ie the training doesn't replace instinctive ability, it augments it.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Anf wrote:
Unless I've misunderstood something, there is a fundamental flaw in the assertion that an unskilled fighter is often harder to beat than a skilled one.

I think we need to mark the difference between “unskilled” and “untrained” as they are not the same thing.

“Skilled” is defined as, “having or showing the ability to perform a certain activity or task well.”

We also need to ask what people have been trained in?

A violent criminal may never have set foot in a gym or dojo, but they can still be a “skilled” criminal i.e. they are good at committing crimes of violence. So, they are untrained but skilled.

It a martial artist has exclusively focused on duelling one of their own kind within an agreed framework, then they will be highly skilled at that. However, it does not follow they will be as skilled when facing someone who does work to expected patterns and disregards the framework (the point of the story in the original post).

As an unsubtle example, a judoka is highly skilled when facing other judoka, but it does not follow they will be as skilled if their opponent decides to act as a boxer instead of a judoka (i.e. disregards the framework and does not act in accord with anticipated patterns).  

When it comes to facing criminal violence, it could well be that that untrained criminal will be way harder to deal with than the trained martial artist. The reason being that the martial artist may only be trained for duelling their own kind (that’s what they are skilled at) and the criminal is specifically skilled in criminal violence (even if they are untrained in martial arts).

To be good at keeping ourselves safe from criminals, we need to train specifically for that. Training to outfight fellow martial artists won’t automatically equate to skill in self-protection. The goal and nature are fundamentally different, so the skills, strategies, tactics and techniques will also be different. There is some cross over, but skill in one does not equate to skill in the other.

This related post gives another, more up-to-date example of the importance of context. In it Michael Bisping states that as an elite level fighter he does better against other high-level fighters than he does against “game beginners” who throw “####### stupid stuff”. It’s the same stuff the French sword fighters found out centuries earlier.

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/bisping-conor-verses-floyd-and-how-relates-self-defence

It all comes down to the type of violence, the nature of your enemy / opponent, and relevance of the skills and training of all involved. In a word, “context”.

All the best,

Iain

Anf
Anf's picture

But it still boulders down to a failing of both student and teacher. The student has failed in allowing training rules to supersede instinct, and the teacher has failed in that they've drummed out instinct in favour of rules.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Anf wrote:
But it still boulders down to a failing of both student and teacher. The student has failed in allowing training rules to supersede instinct, and the teacher has failed in that they've drummed out instinct in favour of rules.

I can’t say I agree with the reasoning there. It infers that “instinct” imparts perfect skills for the problem of civilian self-protection. While there are certain things that human beings do innately, I would maintain that they need to be trained to optimise effectiveness. There are other vital considerations that are not innate.  For example, no one has an innate understanding of the law of the land and innate instincts that will operate in accordance with it. Those things require education and training.

I think you may be missing the point of this thread? You’ve certainly misunderstood my last post if you feel it still comes down to instinct. I’ll try to clarify a little more.

It’s about the vital importance of context and training for the goal. It’s about how expectations of certain patterns can cause problems. It’s about how duelling skills don’t automatically transpose to self-protection skills (criminals don’t duel).

It seems you are asserting that a trained person should always beat an untrained one, and if they don’t then that’s because the training as has undermined the instincts the now trained person previously had, and hence they are less efficient that the untrained person they once were?

That misses the points raised and fails to acknowledge that being trained for one thing does not equate to skill in another thing. It also seems to ignore the need to acknowledge context.

Untrained criminals (expert criminals, but not trained martial artists) can easily defeat trained martial artists (trained to duel with other martial artists) when in the criminal’s environment. The martial artist has built up an expectation of certain things and the criminal does not act in that way because it’s far more effective for them not to. We need to understand how criminals operate and train accordingly. Some martial artists have an unacknowledged arrogance that if they can beat their own kind in a duel, then those “lowly untrained criminals” will be easy. That’s both wrong and dangerous. It’s is built on the false assumption that the optimum solution to one kind of conflict is the optimum solution for all kinds of conflict.

The French swordsmen expected a duel, they got a savage attack and they lost as a result.

So it’s not to do with instincts, but an understanding of context and the need for specificity in training. Untrained people can beat trained ones if the context changes.

All the best,

Iain

JWT
JWT's picture

Very few people train to 'get good' at barging head forwards or windmilling and yet these are common behaviours seen from both trained and untrained, skilled and unskilled people, under pressure. If they are unpredictable on the part of the person defending against them, in that they have no experience of them, they can often prove more devastating than 'more skilled' tactics. I think a more apt distinction is between the familiar and unfamiliar.

John

Anf
Anf's picture

Sorry I think there's been misunderstanding on several fronts. I'm not saying that a trained person can always beat an untrained person. Just that a trained person is an untrained person plus. Let me give an example. In real life, if someone chooses to start a fight with me, I have a number of options. I can try to diffuse the situation, I can run away, or I could fight. I've had no training at all in the first two options. I just have those built in instinctive abilities. The last option, to fight, has always been an option. I've always had some ability to fight. Whether I have enough such ability depends on many factors. The training I've had does not, or should not replace any of those abilities. My training should only add to that inate ability. When viewed like this, I don't see trained vs untrained. I see untrained vs untrained, but with one having some add ons. The latter should be no worse in a real situation. This is unless they've allowed their training to create bad mental habits and assumptions. If someone starts on me in the street, if I assume they'll fight by the rules I train in, then let's face it, I'm going to get a good hiding. If I disregard my training and just do what comes naturally, then maybe I'll do alright, maybe not, but at least I won't be assuming that nobody will kick me in the nuts. Maybe my training will help. Maybe it won't. I certainly won't be thinking about it.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Hi Anf,

I understand what you are saying, but in the context of this conversation (as set in the original post) I think you are missing the central point and hence we are talking past one another.

This is a thread about how the skillset for dealing with trained people will not automatically work well against untrained people.

In an earlier post, you said:

Anf wrote:
there is a fundamental flaw in the assertion that an unskilled fighter is often harder to beat than a skilled one

In a previous post, I maintained there is no flaw there … and that by replacing “untrained” with “unskilled” there was the potential to add confusion into the discussion (as seems to have happened). The bottom line though it that there no flaw in the assertion made.

Anf wrote:
Just that a trained person is an untrained person plus.

I disagree because this is just another way of saying the same thing. A trained person is not an untrained person plus.They are not connected like that. There’s not that sliding scale. They are different.

Anf wrote:
This is unless they've allowed their training to create bad mental habits and assumptions.

It’s not good vs bad, but a matter of how appropriate that training is for a given context. The training for dealing with other trained martial artists is good when you are facing other trained martial artist in a fight. The same training could be an outright liability in self-protection. The training for keeping ourselves safe from the violence of criminals is good for self-protection. But the same training won’t cut it when it comes to fighting another martial artist in a consensual exchange.

Different situations, different goals and different enemies / opponents require different methods. That’s what we are discussing in this thread.

The original video makes the point that we need differing methods for differing types of enemy. It notes how the 16th century “London Masters of Defence” would insist that its members demonstrated competence against various types of opponent; both skilled and unskilled. I’m asserting that the same is needed today. Skill at one does not mean automatic skill at the other.

It’s what Jamie Clubb calls “The by-product myth” i.e. if we train for one thing then that will help us deal with a different thing by default.

In the last post you said:

Anf wrote:
If someone starts on me in the street, if I assume they'll fight by the rules I train in, then let's face it, I'm going to get a good hiding. If I disregard my training and just do what comes naturally, then maybe I'll do alright, maybe not, but at least I won't be assuming that nobody will kick me in the nuts. Maybe my training will help. Maybe it won't. I certainly won't be thinking about it.

The point is that we should train for untrained people (generally criminals) and trained people (other martial artists) differently, and the methods for one won’t be ideal for the other.

Again, for the purposes of this discussion “untrained” means not trained in martial arts, it does not mean inexperienced or unskilled. We also have to remember that criminals don’t want a fight (where the best fighter “wins”) and hence any fighting methodology is flawed from the off when it comes to self-protection.

Self-protection is not a “no rules street fight”. Most martial artists assume it is. They think that if they drop the rules and “fight dirty” then that’s self-defence. It’s not. There are fundamental changes in objectives, strategies, tactics, and choice and delivery of technique. HUGE changes that radically shift things.

The differences are massive. We therefore need to train for these differences in different ways. We can’t train one way and think that a few tweaks will give us the edge when the situation we are in requires a fundamentally different skill set.

This article covers it all in a little more depth:

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/article/problems-street-fighting

As does this podcast:

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/reinventing-violence-podcast

To return to this point:

Anf wrote:
This is unless they've allowed their training to create bad mental habits and assumptions.

The right training can’t do that. This maybe the key issue.

If you are training to deal with untrained (same definition as before) criminals then the training will be appropriate for that. There is zero need to hope instinct supersedes it. There is no way it can impart “rules” over that instinct. In suggesting those are issues, you seem to be seeking to solve problems that you’re needlessly creating through a lack of specificity.

Anf wrote:
But it still boulders down to a failing of both student and teacher. The student has failed in allowing training rules to supersede instinct, and the teacher has failed in that they've drummed out instinct in favour of rules.

That’s only an issue if we mush our training together into confused goals. We should not do that.

If we think it’s a matter of “rules over instinct” then we are not appreciating that it’s a non-issue if we get to the heart of the problem. There will not be “rules” in that training in the first place. There won’t be a thousand other things either. No feints, no closing the gap, no submissions, no skilled counters, no skilled combinations, no provoking trained responses, and so on. In short, there won’t be many of the things you need to prevail against a trained fighter in a consentual exchange. It’s all irrelevant to the nature and goals of self-protection.

If you have training for trained fighters alone (what most martial artists do because the don't get the differance), then untrained criminals (still violent, skilled and experienced) will cause problems. If you have trained for dealing with untrained criminals alone, then you won’t have the skill set for trained fighters. You can train both, but they still need to be distinct and seperate.

So, it’s entirely possible that untrained people can cause huge issues for trained people. And that’s not an instinct over rules issue; it’s a failure to appreciate that the violent crime of non-martial criminals and consensual exchanges with fellow martial artists require fundamentally different skillsets.

Train specifically, that’s the point.

I hope that helps clarify what I’m driving at.

All the best,

Iain

Mulberry4000
Mulberry4000's picture

hi acutaly bernard cornwell deals with this very subject  in his Sharpe  series. Where repeatedly  sharpe comes up against skilled opponents in the art of the sword  and he just ploughs threw them with a scottish broadword and fights dirty. Of course he gets hurt but comes out of it alive while the person is dead. Though in Sharpe's sword is where  he nearly dies from a good swords man, to such extent he was on death's door though the skilled french man was dead and sharpe got his lovely sword I hope i am right on this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharpes-Sword-Bernard-Cornwell/dp/0006168345 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114418/

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

This is another fictional version of the concept. Bronn refuses to fight as his enemy expected and wins as a result.

3:13 onward:

QUEEN: "You don’t fight with honour!”

BRONN: “No” (looks at the hole his dead enemy just fell through) “He did”.

All the best,

Iain