no i don't have much time for training. what i mostly do, is that i train (and instruct) in taijiquan. the club also has a sanshou team, so i have done a tiny bit of that, but i feel that when it comes to actually being hit and hitting someone, my interest is more academic. hehe. i am too old, and i need all my fingers alive for my job (as a composer, at the piano).
i also did 2-3 years(?) of aikido, and then some medieval european fencing with sword and buckler... and fencing is actually what i miss the most so when i get the time again, i think i want to start training more fencing and taiji sword as well.

In reply to this comment by rembar:
From order of most to least experience, for unarmed martial arts:
Brazilian jiu-jitsu / Submission grappling
Judo
Boxing
Muay Thai
Kickboxing
Wrestling

By this, I mean I'm a lazy sub grappler, a shitty striker, and an even worse standup grappler. Hahah, but I still love doing it.

I have also trained krav maga, wing chun, hung gar kung fu, and aikido for varying amounts of time, but I don't consider them "arts I know" for various reasons. I remember you sifted that old-school GJJ vid, do you train BJJ or something?

In reply to this comment by lavoll:
upvote for rembars comments. but now i have to ask, what art(s) do you do know, rembar?

From order of most to least experience, for unarmed martial arts:
Brazilian jiu-jitsu / Submission grappling
Judo
Boxing
Muay Thai
Kickboxing
Wrestling

By this, I mean I'm a lazy sub grappler, a shitty striker, and an even worse standup grappler. Hahah, but I still love doing it.

I have also trained krav maga, wing chun, hung gar kung fu, and aikido for varying amounts of time, but I don't consider them "arts I know" for various reasons. I remember you sifted that old-school GJJ vid, do you train BJJ or something?

In reply to this comment by lavoll:
upvote for rembars comments. but now i have to ask, what art(s) do you do know, rembar?

That scissor-squeeze is called the guard, do-jime, or the body scissors in submission grappling sports. In theory, enough pressure could cause compressive asphyxiation, but in reality that isn't possible because legs are too weak. The actual purpose of the guard is to create a defensive position on the ground to prevent an opponent from moving freely.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is dealing with a psycho Russian woman with a penchant for BDSM and murder...

As an MMAer myself, I don't quite understand what's so mindblowing about MMA making it onto the cover of SI. It's a terrific sport, albeit somewhat misunderstood, and is quickly becoming one of the leading sport draws. I men, it's fighting for pete's sake, how can that NOT appeal to young adults?

As you may know, mixed martial arts, in the form of pankration, was one of the most popular sports in the original Greek Olympic games, back in the 600s B.C., and is currently under review for admittance as a demonstration sport in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

Contrary to popular belief, mixed martial art fighters are not mindless brawlers: in fact, to reach a high level in the sport requires excellence in not just one martial art, but many arts, in order to adequately cover the three ranges of combat (standing, clinch, and ground) as well as both striking and grappling. For example, Fedor, almost universally considered the best fighter in the world, draws his base as an international champion in judo and sambo, and usually trains in submission grappling, boxing, and Muay Thai. He has, among many other feats, thrown and submitted an Olympic gold-medal judoka, hip tossed an Olympic silver-medal Greco-Roman wrestler, submitted some of the world's best Brazilian jiu-jitieros, and knocked out high-level Muay Thai fighters and kickboxers.

MMA has become a proving ground for martial arts, in what I believe is the spirit of Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do: take what works, discard what doesn't. Arts that are effective are proven in the ring, and ones that aren't are dropped quickly - people can't make excuses when they get hit in the face. And the arts that work have coalesced into an overarching view of fighting, making for basically the most effective method of training and preparation for unarmed combat.

As for homoerotic overtones....well, I guess one can see what one wants to see.

Sifters interested in learning more about specific aspects of MMA can check out my Fighting Arts playlist, which includes sifts covering an expanding selection of martial arts practiced and used in mixed martial arts competitions.

*sigh*.

While it is true that the Gracie family made submission attacks famous by representing Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) in mixed martial arts (MMA), everything you just posted is - and I almost never say this - completely ignorant of the sport and martial arts as a whole.

Submissions were not brought into "the sport" - and by this, I assume you mean MMA - by the Gracies. The Gracies, as I wrote in my BJJ sift, took the judo/jujitsu taught to them by Mitsuyo Maeda and developed the newaza groundwork into a new system, focused on establishing positional improvement and dominance before the application of submissions. It was this conceptual change from the general judo mindset of throw-and-fall-or-scramble-to-position, rather than the submissions themselves. Judo, for the most part, has all the submission BJJ does, it just generally doesn't train them as much or as well. So really, the submissions were brought into the sport by judo, which was brought into creation by Kano through adaptation of the teachings of jiu-jitsu. If you want to argue about fighters using the submissions, sure Royce Gracie made use of them famously in UFC 1, but the first UFC tournament was set up to ensure no other submission grappling styles, including judo, was entered to make a clearer differentiation of style versus style, among other reasons. When such fighter picking was stopped, submission fighters from many styles sprung up in MMA competition.

If you're not talking about modern MMA, then consider the fact that pankration from Greece in 648 BC was the first Western MMA competition, and chokeholds and joint locks were widely displayed and documented.

Consider that catch wrestling can be traced in nearly every culture, from Lancashire catch-as-catch-can wrestling to the US hook wrestling to the Indian pehlwani.

Or you might even be referencing the infamous gong sau of China, where kung fu masters would challenge each other for the rights to open schools in villages or cities, matching style versus style, starting from millenia ago and continuing to the present day. Of course, dubious as the documentation surrounding those matches were, and as stupid as kwoon-storming is, there have been accounts of Chin na masters defeating other strikers through armbars and rear naked chokes.

As for "ruining the sport", I can only assume you're talking about the present version of MMA, as represented largely by the UFC and Pride FC (which have recently been merged as one organization. The UFC and Pride, as you may know, evolved out of the Vale tudo competitions in Brazil and Japan, which when brought to the US were imitated and televised. Of course, you should also be aware of the fact that vale tudo tournaments were largely organized by Helio Gracie, the original creator of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and his descendants. The UFC was created largely as the brainchild of Rorion Gracie, Helio's eldest son and BJJ black belt, as well as Art Davies, one of Rorion's student. In fact, according to many inside sources who were present for the UFC's founding, it was created in a large part to showcase BJJ for the US, just as Pride FC was created in a a large part to showcase Rickson Gracie, another one of Helio's sons, versus Nobuhiko Takada, a famous Japanese shoot-wrestler and mixed martial artist who also trained in a form of submission wrestling. So how exactly do you figure that modern MMA, which exists largely because the Gracies wanted to showcase the effectiveness of submission fighting versus pure striking styles, is somehow ruined because it did exactly that?

And finally, you have absolutely no idea about submission grappling. If you think getting a submission hold is a "basic skill" that can beat anybody, and the sport now revolves around using and avoiding those holds, then how do you figure that only one of the five current UFC title holders is a well-known submission specialist, and even HE won his title fight two days ago by knockout? If it's such a get-out-of-jail-free card, why doesn't everybody just use those magical subs? How come sprawl-and-brawl and ground-and-pound are becoming such dominant strategies of fighting in MMA fights? Oh, and what did you mean by "strength, skill, stamina or fighting spirit" having no effect on submission grappling? Superior skill, strength, stamina, and fighting spirit is what submission grappling is all about. The fighter with the greatest combination of all four will win, just as with any other art in MMA. Look at Yuki Nakai, the grappler who continued a fight despite being eye-gouged illegally to the point of complete blindness and yet continued on not only win his fight by submission but also fight AGAIN the SAME night against the most feared grappler in the world at the time, Rickson Gracie. Look at Ronaldo de Souza, aka Jacare, who had his arm broken in a fight but continued to fight and win. Heck, look at Rickson Gracie, who is well-known for having an insane cardio routines involving sandy beaches and mountain running. Or any of the MMA athletes at the top of the sport, who train and spar and weight lift and run and work out for hours on end each day and every day so they can become strong and build up endurance and improve their skills, all thanks to their fighting spirit and determination to be the best.

If you doubt me on any of those facts, just get yourself to a real, honest-to-goodness MMA gym, and tell the first MMA fighter you see that submission holds are ruining the sport. Seriously. I'd like to know what happens.

Do you know why I'm annoyed by your comment, Enzoblue? I'm annoyed because training submission grappling is not fucking easy. It is hard, painful work to train. It is expensive as hell, in terms of money as well as time and effort. I am shit-awful at it, and my only goal each day I step on the mat, which is every damn day, is to suck a little less than the day before, and sometimes, like today, I don't feel like that's happened, and I haven't been able to move my neck in certain directions for days because of a neck crank that got cranked on too hard. And yet tomorrow, I'm going to put on my smelly, sweaty gi, get in my friend's carpool, and go roll around on a mat with large, sweaty men who outweigh me by over 50 pounds on average for several hours, and come back tired and sore and cranky. (Hah, pun, get it? It's a joke because my spinal column isn't functioning properly.) And I'm happy with all of that, from the musty gym smell to the same old jokes my friends make about me being gay that they've made for years, because through my training I know I am acquiring a skillset that is not available or acquired in the general public, and yes, I do take pride in what I do because it is a part of my life and part of who I am, and also there's the fact that my training and dedication can and have helped me to choke fools out who are deserving of it, just as those things have saved the lives of friends and acquaintances who were attacked in ghettos and Iraqi villages. And yet here you come to say that I, along with every other MMA competitor who has devoted far larger amounts of their life to perfecting the art of submission grappling, am ruining the beautiful sport of mixed martial arts, a sport that I am, as well as those competitors far above me, dedicated to as well and one that I do my best to represent well in the public eye. No. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you say that, because you're wrong.

Consider this: the UFC and modern MMA changed what "one would actually consider fighting". People used to think those flicky, chambered TKD kicks would hurt, or that they could just avoid a takedown attempt with elbows to the spine, or even in later years, they could just fight out of guard. The sport has evolved, and anybody who has a half a brain can see that a good MMA fighter needs to train to fight out of the three ranges that have been established through the test of the fight, standup, clinch, and ground, as well as be able to strike, grapple, and submit from all three ranges if necessary, as well as defend against an opponent's attempts to do so to oneself. Submission grappling is part of the sport out of necessity, not because it's what people (and by that I mean Westerners) think of when they think about fighting, or because it looks pretty - it's in the sport because it works. The skills and abilities trained in sub grappling allow a more skilled fighter to beat a less skilled opponent, given reasonable size comparisons, just as with every other martial art that has been used with success in MMA. The concept of MMA is the extension of Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do - take what works, and lose what doesn't. So in reality, sub grappling being used to win fights in MMA is really part of the evolution and development of martial arts, in fact it embodies what MMA and the development of effective martial arts is all about. And if that simple fact offends, then perhaps you don't understand quite as much about MMA as you might like to think you do.

@obscenesimian: What's your ACTUAL experience? What MA do you study, or courses or training programs have you participated in? Do you teach? Do you compete? On top of that, how much LEO experience and/or beat time do you have? If you know enough about judo tournaments and MMA competitions and the like as well as physical confrontations between LEOs and perps, then you should know that the use of chokes and strangles are safe in application primarily because of the knowledge of the fighters competing, and that competitions are the closest thing to "real life" training as possible. Let's take a look at the factors you say are not present in competitions but are present in "real life":

1. The health of the persons being choked: Ok, last time I checked, MMA fighters had no problem choking out opponents who they just finished punching repeatedly from many different positions and angles. On top of that, there are basically no health factors that makes chokes "more dangerous" for any given person than other, although it may make the chokes more effective (in terms of time until unconsciousness). This is as opposed to tasers, which can, for instance, disrupt a pacemaker for somebody with a heart condition.

2. Excess adrenaline: Competitions are high-adrenaline environments. The whole concept of judo shiai and the like is that the competitions mimic the kind of environment of a "real life" situation, in terms of adrenaline rushes and other stress-related anatomical reactions. That's why all good grappling arts train for larger bodypart locks, like keylocks and armbars - people have realized that the adrenaline dump from all the stress causes a lot of loss in terms of fine motor coordination, so it's much better to rely on gross motor coordination.

3. Malice: Last time I checked, judo, sambo, wrestling, MMA, and all other serious full-contact fighting sports have competitions in which the main goal is to throw, lock, choke, and/or beat the crap out of one's opponent. Malice? Oh, yeah.

4. Poor training: Well, DUH. Obviously police need to be trained. You think it would be any different than if police were just handed guns and told, "Ok, safety off, point and pull the trigger"? All combat skills need to be trained to be effective and controlled.

Also, people well-trained in submission grappling arts know the effects of all their chokes, blood and air. Even if the ref doesn't stop the fight, I know the approximate times that my opponent will lose consciousness, will suffer permanent damage, and regain consciousness after the chokehold is released. Without a ref, properly LEOs just choke the perp until he loses consciousness, then release the hold, lay him down and deal with him. And there's no need for medical personnel: the guy gets choked out, you lay him on his side until he regains consciousness, he wakes up without any permanent damage. That's it.

And no, that is definitely not why the Taser was developed. The Taser was developed to reduce the number of FIREARM-related deaths. FIREARM-RELATED DEATHS. That's why it's so ridiculous that a taser was used in this situation. It was completely inappropriate and out of line.

If people were better educated, especially the paper pushers making all the decisions on what LEO training/equipment should be, none of this would be a problem. But this is sadly not the case, which is why we are now all being entertained by a non-threatening but annoying idiot being zapped multiple times by two pissed off cops who don't know the proper methods for dealing with the punk.