AboutSifu Tony Mendoza Jr. Expertise I can answer questions related to fitness and how it relates to martial arts. I specialize in helping martial artists improve their skills, balance, and striking power.
Experience I am a Certified Fitness Trainer with 30 years experience as well as a 4th degree Kung Fu San Soo Black Belt with 16 years experience. I enjoy helping people improve their martial art skills. I am also a freelance writer on the subject and offer instructional material based on my writings. I have several websites where people can go to get information on how to improve their fitness and martial art skills.
Organizations I have either created or am associated with the following:
www.kungfutrainingsecrets.com (Kung Fu Training Secrets, Inc.)
www.goldenwolfe.blogspot.com (Blog - Diary of a San Soo Black Belt)
www.westcoastselfdefense.com (West Coast Self Defense, Inc.)
www.myspace.com/kungfutrainingsecrets (MySpace Site for my Students)
www.fitnessmindsets.com (Fitness Mindsets, Inc.)
www.fitnessmindsets.blogspot.com (Blog - Ask the Trainer)
www.phillipskungfu.com (Phillips School of Kung Fu San Soo)
Publications Fighting Secrets of Martial Arts Masters (Edited by Charles Prosper)
Education/Credentials Certified Fitness Trainer since 1980
NLP Trainer Since 1994
4th Degree Black Belt - Kung Fu San Soo
Awards and Honors Certified Fitness Trainer (30 years)
4th Degree Black Belt - Phillips School of Kung Fu San Soo (16 years)
Recently I was Thinking about martial arts and there aspects in a variety of situations, one of these scenario came to mind, strikes, kicks and armored opponents. Armor was a big part of warfare from ancient times until now. I thought about the effectiveness of striking in situations where someone had to defend themselves against someone wearing some sort of body armor. It seems that striking loses it ability in this type of situation due to the protection, and that throw locks and grappling would be more useful. I was wondering do strikes and kicks have a role in these types of situations or are they of little use? Do you think that there are situation’s where one aspect of the art should be emphasized over the other such as in a fight against multiple opponents or against an armed opponent? I don’t have much experience in martial arts yet and wanted to ask someone with experience and I wonder which you think should be emphasized more.
With Respect
Erik
Answer Hello Erik,
Thank you for the questions. You bring up some interesting points in fighting armored opponents. In the past armor was made of much heavier materials than today so it would have been very cumbersome and take a heavy toll on your cardio capacity to fight in. Today's armor is much lighter and you have far fewer limitations.
The first thing I would do is to evaluate the situation depending on how much protection the armor gave my opponent. You are right in saying that you would have to know what aspects or techniques would be valuable in armored situations.
Strikes with the upper body (fists, chops, elbows) may not be as effective as you would need to eliminate the threat. I would look for soft targets or unprotected areas of the body, i.e., eyes, throat, ears, armpits, etc. first. Even if your armored opponent has a face shield of some type you could distort his vision by defacing it with dirt or some type of coating so that he couldn't see!
I think certain kicks would be effective (front kicks, snap kicks, side kicks) if your targets were the inside, outside, or back side of the knee joint areas because a powerful kick there would distort or challenge the joint because of the need for the armors design to have mobility there to begin with.
One of the most effective things to do would be to set up your opponent so that you could get behind him and grab him under the chin. Once you are in this position it would be fairly easy to twist or break his neck because once you control the chin the control the whole body. I would never go to the ground with an armored opponent unless I could position him face down so that his attack is limited.
Fighting multiple opponents is a whole other strategy and not like you would be led to believe from what you see on television. You would never stand in the middle of a group of assailants and expect your chances to be good of wining the encounter. Rather you would need to choose your closest or most vulnerable opponent and be able to eliminate him with the minimum amount of work while using his body as a shield against the rest of the attackers (creating a funnel effect) and so on until all are eliminated.
In Kung Fu San Soo we are taught aspects of fighting multiple opponents in our training and we have had seminars working against armored (blue max suit training) opponents so we get to see some of the things that you are asking about.
