Ideal In A Nutshell

Along with politics and religion (and I suppose any human discussion), martial arts is fraught with controversy. In martial arts, arguments over what's workable or necessary or what is a likely street scenario splinter into various camps. We'll examine some of these points of view, but my instructor, Dan Inosanto, put the ideal general skill set in clear perspective. He said to be well-rounded combatively, you would want to have some understanding of offense and defense at the kicking ranges, punching ranges, some grappling skills, know a bit about edged weapons, something stick length, and in terms of physical qualities, appropriate strength, some endurance, some pain tolerance, and the final thing he said it was good to have was luck! That being said, the good news is that you don't need to be tremendously skilled or well rounded to improve your odds in many combative scenarios. The most important tools, i.e. anything you use, are not acrobatic or exotic, just efficient. A kick to the knee is not something that takes years to make effective or maintain. This is not to say that high kicks can't be effective, but clearly they are more labor intensive to develop and I would rather use that time to cultivate more important skills. Or read a book for that matter.
To be continued...