Many styles of martial arts are practiced for self-defence or include self-defence techniques. Some styles train primarily for self-defence, while other martial/Combat sports can be effectively applied for self-defence. To provide more practical self-defence, many modern day martial arts schools now use a combination of martial arts styles and techniques, and will often customize self-defence training to suit the participants' lifestyles, occupations, age groups and gender.[citation needed] The practice of combining martial arts styles for competitive sport is most often referred to as Mixed Martial Arts or MMA

The best Unarmed Defence Techniques (UDT) are often a handful of simple gross motor skills that are used to 'bash and dash' rather than highly complex fine motor skills that deteriorate under stress. Learning UDT is about increasing confidence and awareness not about 'beating' an attacker. Good UDT lessons will teach simple, high impact techniques to momentarily distract or off-balance an attacker so a victim can get away.

BJJ Self Defense

As Royce Gracie explains, “A fight (in real life) does not start with a referee asking if you are ready…if you cannot escape from such an attack and bring the situation to your comfort zone, then you are in for a long day.” So what is it about Brazilian jiu-jitsu that makes it so effective as a self-defense system? We can break the answer into four main points:

it is designed to work even when you are surprised

it is designed by and for small people to defeat larger ones

it allows you to develop instantaneous reactions by practicing in extremely lifelike exercises, and
it provides you the option of dealing with your attacker using various levels of severity.