Excessive force

tallaght01

Do people reckon many martial arts teach excessive use of force?

I know KM has a bit of a rep like that, but I think our techniques are usually appropriate for the threat involved.

But I remember being at a kempo class a few years back, when we had a different instructor for the day...Anyway, he started teaching us a technique that started off with the "attacker" placing his hand on your shoulder from behind. The "solution" was to spin around and chop him in the throat!

And the class continued in that vein. We were some pretty impressionable teenagers at the time. Now, A) I've always found kempo to be good fun. I think it was just this instructor who was mental and obviously, most combatives can kill/seriously injure someone in the right circumstances.

But, I still found this to be pretty irresponsible teaching. I just wonder is he still teaching.

So, do people reckon there's a lot of nutcases teaching out there? Does anyone know anyone who' ever been stopped from teaching? I mean, it's gotta happen, as your ability to fight correlates with your likelihood of progressing through the grades, but it doesn't neccesarily correlate with your ability/aptitude for sensible teaching, I guess.

Boston

Sounds pretty irresponsible alright. Did he explain to the class the that should the gardi decide you used excessive force you yourself could be brought up on charges of assault? A lot of people have the mistaken impression that once someone attacks them, they are free to use whatever force they want.

Scramble

In my experience it is people without any training whatsoever who are more likely to fall afoul of the problem of using excessive force (I am thinking here more of people I have come across working as doormen, in the prison service, Gardai etc. but the principle applies across the board). If someone is less comfortable in a confrontation because they have not trained for it, they are more likely to accidentally ramp up the level of force they are using to compensate for being afraid / having no gameplan / effective tools.

For example, I have seen a big man with no training attempting to restrain a smaller man able to squirm away from him. Eventually they began hitting one another and the bigger guy windmilled the smaller guy until he needed medical attention. Had he had the right tools then he would have been able to achieve the same end result (bringing the person under control) without risking injuring himself or the other person to the same extent. Conversely, I've seen people with practical training use exactly the right level of force to take someone out of a confrontation without either hurting them or leaving themselves open to the suggestion that they used an excessive level of force.

In summary, proper training = competence = less complaints/accidents/risk to you in the physical and legal sense hopefully.

The other question in there seems to be 'are there cowboy teachers out there teaching material which might involve using excessive amounts of force in most situations?'. I think the answer obviously has to be yes in some cases.

Say someone is training to soccer-kick in the head someone who is on the ground. I can think of two situations where this might be a good idea:
(1) If you were training to fight according to PRIDE rules or something, and you and everyone else knows that what you're doing is preparing for a sporting event
(2) It's part of some traditional martial art that you're practicing for hobby's sake, not for actual usage on the street.

If, however, someone had someone tellin them that this is a great way to 'finish' a downed opponent who has just tried to attack them on their way home from the shops, then I'd say yes, there's reason for concern here in that it should be highlighted that this is the kind of technique which leads to people being up on manslaughter charges more or less every year. Short of being a soldier fighting on a battlefield there are few situations where this wouldn't constitute an excessive use of force.

Nothingcompares

I think it's fairly common for those that teach "reality self-defense, self-preservation" type courses to explain their interpretation of the legality and consequences of fighting, especially what constitutes excessive force etc.

Luckily I suppose, the majority of the Kempo schools and their kin teaching all this ninja self defence stuff use training methods that arent conductive to learning. My point is, all those kenpo kids would be able to do any of their moves in a real fight. So it's not really all that important if they learn all this dangerous stuff in a bad context cause they'll never actually do it in real life, even if they try.

To answer your question. I've never heard of a martial arts club being shut down because they "sensei" was teaching nonsense, even dangerous nonsense. Who would have the jurisdiction to shut it down? Who would check?