[Amnell]

I more or less agree with you about Aikido. It is a pacifist's art and aimed at doing everything you can to NOT kill or seriously injure your opponent. Even still, as has been pointed out already by CrazyLee, Aikido does teach some very good techniques for surviving an attack.

I also agree with you that size can be a big help to anyone who knows how to use it when it comes to ground fighting. However, our cumulative system is designed for fighting the Average Joe who has not trained in BJJ, Muay Thai, and Shaolin Kung Fu. This means that our smaller students have an advantage, even over larger opponents. Your average street ass hole won't know how to break fall, won't know how to escape an arm bar, won't know that posting will get him rolled by someone half his body mass, etc.

Our system is NOT designed for fighting people that have commited a lot of time to training in a martial system.

A trained individual such as yourself would likely be a hard target for something as basic as an eye gouge, even without the reach advantage you would have over a 5'6" female. But trained individuals such as yourself are not what we're worried about. However, even a trained person can succumb to the basics.

To demonstrate:

Kenpo is known for redirecting the opponents attention to land a strike. They will telegraph horridly with the right hand to make the opponent watch the hand (even one who knows better than to actually look at the hand will have more attention on the hand than elsewhere). Then a left snap kick will hit the opponent just below the rib cage.

Left Snap Kick, aka Front Leg Front Kick, is the very first kick you learn in any system, anywhere (excepting maybe ground fighting systems). It doesn't get more basic than that.

My school teaches very similar methods in the lower black belt levels to ensure that the basic eye gouge and basic groin kick are still effective, even against someone who's been in fights before.

Hit and Run is actually a very good strategy when you're in a street fight. If you can disable your opponent, even if only for a few seconds, and get away, you will be far less likely to get arrested for use of unwarranted force. In war, things are probably a bit different; hence Krav Maga would be a little differently applied by the military than by the civilian sector. Regardless, we're talking about a system that is designed to teach you self-defense, not how to beat the shit out of someone in a battle or a ring--all this goes for Civilian KM and for my own school's Yon Wuen Fa and any other system that is specifically sd oriented.