Risk of Injury

 In 2010 Penn & Teller claimed the entire martial arts industry was a sham. They offered many arguments that were convincing, but the most convincing one was essentially "you are far more likely to get seriously injured practicing martial arts than you are to be seriously injured by an attacker that you could protect yourself from using martial arts." As a martial arts consumer advocate, risk of injury is one of my primary concerns.

This is personal for me. Since 2019 I have had to recover from two shoulder impingements, one on each side of my body. One was from a car accident, the other was a martial arts injury. Beyond this I learned talking to my various physical therapists that it is common for weight lifters and martial artists in the USA to develop shoulder impingements from over training muscles on their front like chest and abs, while under training muscles between their shoulder blades. This combined with the fact most martial artists make their living by sitting in chairs in front of computers, is bad news for their posture in general.

Some of the Katas I look down on from some styles of Southern Kung Fu and Karate have a strong emphasis on holding tension on those very muscles between their shoulder blades. Thinking back on my own traditional training in Tai Chi and Choy Li Fut if I had listened to my instructors better I would have put more focus on maintaining good posture and spent less time doing high reps of push ups. Standing Meditation (Zhuan Zhuang) and Tai Chi forms have helped me greatly in rehabilitating my shoulders and correcting my posture. However there is one exercise I would like to point out that all chair dwelling martial artists should consider, and that is the straight arm push up:

But I got one shoulder impingement from doing a grappling drill. Specifically we were practicing double leg take downs on a mat, and I got turned sideways with one of my arms isolated, slamming my shoulder and face into the mat, compressing my shoulder and collarbone. And this a drill wasn't even necessary as it wasn't free sparring.

But when it comes to free sparring injuries, the worst martial art I have studied is BJJ. In one year I had 3 injuries that prevented me from free sparring for more than one week (about a month in two cases.) I have done full contact 1990's (today would be called Dutch-style) kickboxing, full contact stick fighting, full contact karate, a lot of dangerous stuff, and BJJ on paper shouldn't have been the worst, but it was. Icy Mike reports more serious long term problems here at 4:40 :

Joe of Fight Bible (the not-pro-fighter on the channel) reports numerous injuries, including even a broken neck, from doing BJJ. Now let me ask you a question: are you better off doing martial arts that give you a broken neck, or doing no martial arts at all?

Many people love to dismiss some forms of Tai Chi sparring as useless, because they don't include strikes and try to remain standing on their feet instead of going to the ground when they execute take downs:

But not only does this help people develop some stand up grappling skill without getting a shoulder impingement or more serious injury (it helps that they aren't landing on top of each other when executing a throw,) it helps to build balance to prevent injuries outside of fighting. But we need to know how to fight on the ground or we have a big missing piece from our self defense training, right?

Well what exactly do we need to know about ground fighting? We need to know how to get up to our feet. It then follows we need to know how to hold someone down on the ground. That's it, that's all most martial artists need out of ground grappling, is one person holding on the ground and the other getting back up. Which grappling arts commonly available to martial arts consumers commonly teach this? Not BJJ or any other Judo lineage martial arts, because they are obsessed with smashing the other guy on the ground and getting a submission, and dedicate less than 1% of their training getting back to their feet.

Fight camps for striking sports such as MMA, Boxing and various forms of kick boxing are notoriously injury prone. The biggest problem with Muay Thai from a consumer perspective is the culture of having matches: you don't have to be good at Muay Thai for very long before you will feel pressure to take a public fight. The punishment you will take in that fight, and the punishment you will take prepping for that fight that you wouldn't get in regular training, will likely be far more dangerous to you than any injury you would have avoided by beating up an attacker on the street with your Muay Thai. Consider the injuries from fight camps endured by both fighters from one of the most important boxing matches of all time:

Traditional martial arts seem to have a clear advantage over combat sports when it comes to risk of serous injury. However these arts are also not without their safety challenges, and almost useless if they do not include free sparring (free sparring is often done safely in both combat sports and traditional martial arts.) Risk of injury should be a top priority for anyone to consider when evaluating a martial arts school, trainer, or technique.