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Hmm.
Let me suggest for conversation's sake that there's no reason PK failed that isn't explained by the same reasons that every other male-centric organization was either infiltrated or undermined in this period.
My contention is that martials arts might be the sole remaining bastion of pure, healthy masculinity left in Western Society. I become more certain of this every passing year.
All else has been skinsuited or crushed. The UFC is the only sports league left that doesn't even try to cater to women or push LGBT causes, and it revels in its appeal to the dudebro.
So perhaps the failure of PK was they simply had no 'martial' aspect or even any competitive spirits to it to keep men engaged and deter entryism.
I'm in a running club. It's kind of interesting how it stratifies.
Tier 1. Exclusively extremely younger fit dudes that win sprint races. Coach has completely different conversations with them.
Tier 2. Younger fit dudes and extremely fit middle aged dudes that win distance races, and some extremely fit younger women that win their category in distance races.
Tier 3. Middle aged fit dudes and younger fit women. Maybe we win our age+sex age group in some races. I'm in this group.
Tier 4. Obese dudes, not very fit dudes, thinner women.
Tier 5. Obese women.
Even though we're in a very blue town the vibe of the club is... not overly political! The most political thing we did was try to organize a food drive for people losing SNAP benefits.
Running is for everyone and you don't have to be competitive to enjoy it but it's pretty clear the young fit dudes are on a different plane of existence and we all know why.
No amount of hugboxing will get you a top 5 10k time if you don't put in the work and don't have genetics working against you.
The coach is not based enough to flat out announce the single best way to improve your running performance is to lose weight. But he will admit it in private!
Interesting but not surprising.
What's really funny is now GLP-1 drugs have made it a simple matter of adhering to an injection schedule, so these difficult conversations need not happen. Someone just loses a bunch of weight out of 'nowhere' and their life quality and performance improves, everyone cheers, and then nobody has to acknowledge that being fat just sucks in about every way no matter what you do.
Martials arts well, as they say "weight classes exist for a reason." There's a bit more dimensionality to it, but simply put you will never EVER find a woman who can beat a man in her weight class without the guy being severely handicapped.
I assume you mean at the highest levels of the sport. Female black belts can absolutely wreck even fairly experienced dudes with 50 pounds on them when it comes to grappling (not as effortlessly as a male black belt their size would, but still).
Well, are we starting with grappling or does the woman have to take him down?
I guess I can clarify, if 'dirty' tactics like eye gouges and groin strikes are on the table, then size isn't an insurmountable factor.
Problem is a dude can win literally by just dropping all his weight on her and holding her down.
If you think you can win by just dropping all your weight one someone, it’s obvious you’ve never done submission grappling in a serious way. If someone with 50 pounds on me just drops their weight on me without any sort of skill behind it, I’ll be choking them in 30 seconds.
Takedowns are harder given a weight difference because wrestling is harder to do across weight classes than submission grappling is. I’m less confident that a very experienced woman could beat a dude who outweighs her and has a moderate amount of experience from the feet.
There's a point at which technique ceases to trump size and strength.
I should know, I've been training techniques for damn near 10 years, and I've got one buddy with ~40 pounds on me who can still ragdoll me at will if he decides to/I don't execute the technique perfectly. I can beat him at striking, though.
Look at Connor McGregor attempt to fight The Mountain from Game of Thrones.
I have yet to see any 'convincing' demonstration of a female submission artist defeating a male of similar size who did not want to be submitted. I will grant it can happen, but it is probably a fluke.
For demo purposes, it is hard to override the male instinct to 'play nice' with women so as not to inadvertently hurt them.
Thus, I think it is far, far better to not feed female ego on this point and just tell them straight up "your attacker will probably be a male, and probably be larger than you. Give up any hope of beating him on skill or strength and just CHEAT LIKE HELL and beat him on brutality." And carry a weapon and train with said weapon.
I realize it's my youtube algo, but it's funny because like three videos suggested next to it are "LMAO DUMBASS BODYBUILDER GETS MOGGED BY TINY BJJ BLACKBELT"
I was explaining to one of the girls I train with that we (all the male white belts) are all terrified of rolling with her, because there's no winning. If I win and tap her too quickly, I'm a dick who's trying to stunt on a girl. If I lose and she taps me, I just got beat by a girl. The winning move is to use very little strength and perfect technique string together a really technically compelling flow roll. I'm being called on to do this more by my coaches ("We need someone experienced to roll with Sydney because she's new, roll with FiveHour!") and while I'm getting better at it I kinda hate it. What I've started doing is closing my eyes and rolling by pure feel to try to develop better instincts.
I think part of it is that we just need to acknowledge that for self defense purposes, we are mostly talking about different things.
I don't mind doing some light sparring with a female. But my favorite demo at that point is to shoot for the legs, then bodily lift them off the ground and remind them that now, I can simply slam them to the ground and the fight is probably over.
Then show them a few ways they can 'cheat' to make it a little less lopsided.
Today I was showing a quite young, very athletic, but petite female student how to wrist lock when the opportunity presents itself. Then I showed her how hard it is to land a wrist lock on a guy (me) that is giving more than token resistance. So final lesson: "IF you can do it, then you go in with the full intention to break the dude's wrist as quickly as possible. Don't depend on pain compliance. In fact, don't even assume snapping his wrist is enough. The longer the fight lasts the worse it is for you."
Best general advice I can offer them is "use the bigger muscles of your body against the (relatively) small muscles on theirs when possible." And God bless her she has internalized the "groin kick first, ask questions later" mentality.
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