Define useful.

Will any martial art make it a good idea to engage in a street fight, ever? Will any martial art prevent you from getting shot, stabbed, or ganged up on and beaten? No. Your best bet is situational awareness and a keen sense of GTFO.

However, martial arts are physical activities. They involve precise movements, and allow you a safe space to build conditioning. All of that means that, even if the techniques of the specific art you practice are fundamentally useless in the situation, you’re going to be just better able to use your body effectively. Hopefully to run.

I’d say the biggest thing a martial art has over a traditional sport is conditioning yourself to take a proper hit. Beyond any technique, the first hit is usually the deciding hit in a street fight. Knowing what it’s like to be hit, and being able to not immediately crumble, go further than any technique.

When faced with a firearm or a knife, any self respecting martial artist will tell you the one technique that will save your life.

Running the fuck away and or taking cover.

When it comes to hand to hand combat, understanding the dynamics of how to protect yourself and control the opposer like in Jiu Jitsu is very useful and can also potentially save your life.

But no, if they have a weapon of any kind, get the fuck out of there.

Useful for what?

As a kind of joke, look at these senior citizen doing tai chi in the park, while many 80 years old can’t walk without a cane. Looks like pretty useful.

Judo or Aïkido will teach you how to fall, which may save you a visit to the ER if you slip on the street, and pretty useful again.

It’s also a fun way to exercise and stay in shape, so again, it’s useful

I begun judo a few weeks ago. The teacher was clear: it may not be useful in actual fight, but we don’t fight often in the real life. But it’s great for your body, spirit and it will teach you how to fall without hurting yourself. And these things are way more useful than self defense.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been very useful to me. My cardio has improved dramatically, I am much stronger than I used to be, and I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of going from absolute trash to slightly less trash over 2 years.

But I don’t expect it to really help me in a fight. If I did get into a fight, I certainly would do better than if I hadn’t trained; but one thing I’ve learned from fighting people for like 8hrs a week is that it is REALLY easy to fuck up and get hurt in ways you wouldn’t expect. The outcome of a fight is unpredictable - especially when the other person could have a weapon. The best martial art for self defense would be running.

Useful for what?

You address a couple of things, so I’ll try to cover them in the order your post does.

Firearms and concealed carry don’t really have anything to do with hand to hand. You aren’t going to do much training in martial arts that specifically addresses firearms just because it’s not necessary. If you’re close enough to engage someone with a firearm, you’d use the same methodology to attempt to negate the firearm as you would any weapon of a similar size. If you aren’t inside ten feet and a gun is already pointed at you, you’re fucked. If you’re inside about 20 feet, and the firearm isn’t drawn, they’re fucked if you can apply any control to it at all because they won’t get drawn and fire in the time you can close distance as long as you’re in decent shape.

Doesn’t matter if it’s concealed or open carry tbh. If anything, a gun is easier to control than a knife, but that’s a tangent that’s not applicable here.

For me, and I’ve been shooting since I was maybe elevenish, I’m still not going to draw, remove safety and shoot fast enough to ensure a stop on someone inside of about twenty feet if they’re already primed to move. You might get the fast draw trick shooters that could, but they won’t be doing it from concealed carry.

Besides, you see a weapon of any kind, number one goal is escape, not fighting. The only reason you’d engage with a firearm user is if you can’t escape. Same with a knife, a stick, whatever. Fighting isn’t the goal, you don’t want to be fucking around trying to “win”. You do the bare minimum to gtfo.

Seriously, it’s not a factor in the practicality of martial arts.

Where martial arts is useful for the average person that’s maybe gong to use the training in self defense once or twice in their entire life is in being prepared for trouble. You train, and it’s good exercise. You develop a sense of how your body works in motion related to another person. You learn how to react to pressure (with a caveat I’ll cover in a bit). You learn how to take hits, how to judge distance and how to close distance. And that is true for any training that isn’t just katas, even systems like aikido or judo that aren’t meant to be self defense as a primary focus.

Now, the caveat to that is sparring. If you never, ever do any training with a partner that’s resisting your effort, it’s just fun exercise. That’s where aikido usually fails, the near total lack of actual resistance while training with a partner. But the basic techniques if you do resistant training and toss the stuff that doesn’t work are literally bone breaking even with aikido, and it’s as gentle as it gets.

The problem with kung fu, karate, or any traditional martial art is the training not including live, resistant sparring. Even systems like mma that’s had the ineffective stuff removed, if you don’t train against someone that’s working against you in a realistic way, it’s just fun exercise. But there are “styles” of pretty much all of the name checked systems that feature live sparring.

But, in real world scenarios, if you do that training, if you spend the time repeating a technique against a resistive partner, you won’t have to try and use it. You’ll just react. And that’s how martial arts are useful in self defense scenarios. Instead of having to see an attack, decide what to do against it, then make the attempt, you detect the incoming attack, and you’re responding without any conscious decision. You basically taught yourself a trick the same way Pavlov taught the dogs to drool to a bell. That’s a gross oversimplification, but it’s good enough for this.

Now, it takes time to reach that automatical response. That time also takes money most of the time (unless you know someone willing to train you for free, and good luck with that). So whether or not you want to invest that time solely for the chance you might need it, that’s another tangent.

But, if you do choose to train, that’s why it helps to get something other than just the fighting out of it. The fitness, the fun, the camaraderie, the self discipline, the self awareness, the pain tolerance, there’s so much you can get out of it, if you’re willing to put in the resources.

Now, the post references specific “arts”. But it doesn’t have to be traditional arts at all, or even eastern traditional arts. You can get all the same benefits from boxing, wrestling, HEMA, or any of the arts that developed outside of asia. And we’ve got mma now that focuses on full contact fighting, and has whittled away at the stuff that’s not effective for full contact sport fighting, which makes it pretty damn good for self defense overall.

Again, guns just aren’t a relevant factor in choosing to learn martial arts or not. Even melee weapons aren’t. The primary advice you get, even when training to counter weapons, is to not let yourself get into that fight in the first place. You run first, you try to deescalate, you keep situational awareness to hopefully never even need to run, any of the things that could avoid being close enough to the weapon to have to control it at all.

But, all of that is helped by training. Situational awareness itself takes time to develop.

And, yes, I’m kinda enthusiastic about the subject lol. But, as much as I love/loved martial arts, it isn’t for everyone. It isn’t necessary for daily life for the average person. It’s like an insurance policy where you pay in now, in the hope that if something happens later, you’ll have it covered.

As an example, me and my best friend are the same age. He has never been in a fight as an adult, never been mugged, attacked, or even threatened with something like that. Me? I can’t actually remember how many fights I’ve been in, but I was a bouncer for a little over a decade, and worked some really bad areas as a nurse’s assistant. If I hadn’t been doing those jobs, and I discount any violence because of them, I would only have maybe a dozen fights have happened.

Is that range of self defense occurrence worth the resources? It was for me, but it might not be for someone else.

Yes, absolutely! Mostly for exercise and mental health though.

For more practical styles, look at jiu jitsu, Muay Thai, MMA, and/or krav maga. Look for a teacher who has fought professionally or otherwise has practical experience. There are a lot of bullshitters out there who will happily take your money.

Also, keep in mind you get out of it what you put into it effort wise.

all of the “real” Martial arts from back before guns were about using weapons. those aren’t really practiced as much anymore because they’re all useless in the face of firearms anyway. why spend years training with a knife when the same time could be spent training with a gun. if combat effectiveness is your goal then you need to learn modern combat techniques.

that said, there’s plenty to be learned from it, and it’s not like it can’t help you in a fight. but as another commenter said, the real way to win every fight is by avoiding them. so really the best thing to learn is de-escalation and recognizing danger.

I feel like I read somewhere that if you can’t run away the best thing to do if in arms’ reach is run into them as fast as possible. Fuck trying to hit anyone in the jaw with a punch, just run into them, knock them over and keep running. Third best thing (eg they have a knife) is to continually evade without even trying to retaliate as it’s a lot easier to keep dodging out the way than it is to attack and they’ll tire quicker.

I’m no expert, but I think basically unless it’s a one on one with someone who’s unarmed, and maybe inexperienced, it won’t help much. Every good instructor would tell you to give them what they want, or maybe run away if they only have a knife.

useful for what? when I was doing martial arts I was in the best shape of my life. as far as fighting? Fuck no.

Yes, it is useful because it make your body better.

Let’s give an example: Assume you are in the shootout. You have the gun, so they are. You are quick reflect because you are trained, which make you moving and shoting better than those weeb on high.

Another example: You hear a gun shot. You run for 2km without breaking the sweat. Because you are training to enduring and stamia daily, you can run for a while without tired.

But I think, reflexing, enduring and stamia are most useful when you are in danger. Just act fast, and run the hell out of danger.

Getting to black sash in northern Shaolin is a personal challenge. It’s great excercise, good community, gets me out of the house.

6 years in and 2 forms away from black. I’m almost there

MMA has an interesting trajectory where people actually didn’t know which style would win at first. Dudes in gis would actually fight some dude in kickboxing gear. Look up some old MMA fights and you’ll see the fights were usually awkward and bad.

Someone else called out in this thread that the rules of MMA influence what wins. I think that makes sense. They can’t just immediately kick each other in the balls.

I say join a gym and try out a few fights just so you know what it feels like to get punched in the face, and then do like everyone else says and get good at cardio. If you have asthma carry concealed I guess.

Not like against a bear, mountain lion, or gorilla no