What are some martial arts techniques you have used in "real situations"?

The bes techniques I have used twice is the boxing jab(right) and the clinch and knee. The situation allowed for it and it just came to me. Usually street fights are close quarter so jabs,kneed,elbows are effective.Since they do a lot of damage if you hit the right place. I have had two street fights and have seen a couple of others but never saw someone kicking.

Thai clinch - close quarters. Guy started getting real aggressive outside of a show I was at - right up in my face. Clinched quickly when he tried to grab me, few knees down the middle, went down quick. Also transitioning to a guillotine choke from there is useful - most folks don't know how to defend it. Throw in some greco and you've got a nice little toolkit. You're in close, can control the action, don't have to worry too much about getting clipped from some lucky haymaker, can take it to the ground if you want. The rag-doll effect you get from the head / neck control throws a lot of people for a loop, opening up plenty of opportunity for dirty boxing, trips, sweeps, etc. Note - this is one-on-one.

The most useful things to do in "real situations" are not usually said because of  the - bs - morals related to martial arts. Rule 1: Real life fights have no ground rules. The guy is going to kill you, return the favor.  If it's one on one fight, I would aim for the groin. Kick/Knee in the groin is very effective, more than people actually think it is. Differently from mat/ring/cage fights, IRL people don't really know who you are, what you know or the ground rules you are going to follow. Take advantage on this, use deception in your favor. Put your hands up, fake you are going for peace and throw an elbow in the face. Improvise. If we are talking about several guys (5 on 1 for example) the strategy is much harder and needs some endurance. Aim for the weakest guy, hug him and start biting as violent as you can. Bites are very painful, he will start to scream up to a point the other guys are going to stop trying to beat you and split you from the other guy. As they pull you from biting the weak guy, find nearest and do the same thing, hug and bite violently. Repeat until they think you are way to crazy and go away. In fact you should only fight when there's no way out. If you decide to, go full power.  Running is actually the best option, less downside in order to spend energy. If you decide to run, in parkour we try to put obstacles between we and the guy behind us. Gaps, walls, cars and fances, go for it and try to pass it quickly. If you are successful on it, your distance will increase from few seconds up to a minute, until he gives up pursuing you. I've been training parkour for 11 years, 17 years of taekwondo and 8 years in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. This is what I would try to do. (sorry the bad english writing )

I used simple Aikido technique called Shomen-ate on a fellow who was preparing to strike me with a " round house haymaker punch.  It was outside a bar.  I stepped back away from my SUV as he approached.   I stepped inside his punch as he broke mai. put my palm on his chin with "unbendable" arm and using my body weight and a sliding step, pushed him back wards.  The forward momentum of his upper body was instantly halted and shoved back ward, his lower body continued to move forward and he did an abrupt 180 degree spin in place and came down inverted on his head.  Or more correctly he would have, if a conveniently parked car had not broken his fall.  He hit the fender with his shoulder, breaking what could have been a fatal or near fatal fall onto the concrete on his head from about 4 feet up. I took a quick look at him saw that he was out of the fight, and looked at the two guys that had been behind him.  They put their hands in the air and backed away.  I got in my car and left, leaving the guy lying on the ground. It was application of pure mass and speed creating force.  I weigh about 250 and was moving about 2 feet per second so generated around 500 foot pounds of energy on the guys chin, not as a punch, but just a shove.  He flipped on the spot as his legs continued forward.  He basically did a back flip and would have landed on his head.  I realized later how dangerous what I knew was.  If he had fallen without breaking his fall on the car, I could easily have been up on charges of manslaughter. About six months later I met the guy again and we had a beer and talked about that night.  I was having a drink with my wife and spoke with another woman seated at the bar one thing led to another and her husband came in, and she looked at me, and said..."Oh my god, you're the guy who kicked his ass!"   I felt sorry for him.  She ragged on him the rest of the evening.

At a nightclub a reasonably big guy had a fight with his girlfriend and decided to throw some chairs at her and her friend. I was sitting right behind him at the time. I grabbed one of his arms and put him into a simple shoulder lock, which also bent him over, and started walking him towards the exit. At which point the bouncers turned up and escorted him out. I had never trained or practiced shoulder locks as most of what I had learned, up to that point, was based on striking. I think it was just martial arts thinking rather than training. The only time I have ever used anything I actually trained, outside of a martial arts class, was when a work colleague attempted to grab the zip on my jumper which was up near my neck. I was totally unprepared and not expecting anything and subconscious reactions kicked in. I very forcibly blocked his arm with something like a bong sau and just about stopped myself from punching him. I have to stress that his action was playful but because I was totally off guard I didn't really have a choice about what happened until I realised I was very near to hitting him. It left two very nasty bruises on our arms and I apologised for about 2 weeks. Luckily he understood because his wife was a karate blackbelt.

Aikido wrist locking techniques to stop aggressive behavior without doing great physical damage in the process.  They are submission locks, i.e. either submit or get a broken or sprained wrist.   Otherwise blending with the energy, i.e. getting out of the way in an entering/turning motion or "tankan."  It's like baseball. When you step up to bat you don't think, "well, he's going to throw low and outside."  No, you instinctively respond (conditioned by lots and lots of training).    My Sensei hated "what if" questions. She's say, "I don't know. Something will appear. I can't say what it is until it happens."    Real Example: We had spent about an hour on the mats practicing then adjourned to her living room to celebrate her birthday. She was in her 60's. She was kneeling (in seiza) , opening presents, when a "candy gram" guy in a Tarzan costume and wielding a toy hatched charged into the room. Her husband thought it would be a great gag. As it was happening I thought "this is not going to end well."  Still kneeling, Sensei turned out of the way and sent him into a couch.  What was the technique? I don't know. Maybe it was just a blend, no technique at all.  It was much more than "just getting out of the way;" and it was also "just getting out of the way."  Very Zen  But you need to spend hours and hours experiencing "the blend" and doing accompanying techniques to get that good. nikkio kotegaeshi -    

Based on your criteria, I have never been in a "real situation" in my 44 years, and I blame that on knowing martial arts, having sometimes maddening awareness, and not consorting with criminals or messing with a spouse or girlfriend of someone else.

i was walking alone after visiting a friend at night. when i went through an alley around 2 meters wide, 2 people came to me, one with a knife and was trying to mug me. what i can remember was i pulled the knife hand to my left side and stroke the 1st guy's throat with a knifehand while my palm facing upward so hard i felt a subtle 'crack' with my other hand. After that 1st guy fell over, choking while holding his throat, the other guy tried to charge me to take me down and i just go ahead and put my knee up to his face. afterwards i grabbed his hair and smashed his head to the brick wall beside me. after that i ran away because i thought the 2 guys might have friends somewhere and i would rather not pushing my luck in that situation thanks to that i had to bring my trusty karambit almost everywhere until those guys got arrested around a week later.

Um...been a while but I have done these:  I get asked this a lot I can offer up a few of them.... Wrist compression lock on a guy high on cocaine You can see the lock in this video at the 45 second mark (it was hard to find the lock on youtube!) I have use a 1/2 nelson to turn a guy over that was beating up his girl friend.  When I turned him over he got up and sprinted down the street.   He was arrested by the police a short time later. When I studied Aikido in college I used tenkan Ikkyo from a push from behind --I felt bad at the time because he went sliding across the concrete. I used a chokehold once to break up a fight between two guys in a parking lot.   The guy I put the choke hold on (the aggressor) started to cry when I let him go---he was so afraid from choked..it really had a lasting impression on me--- I jumped a counter once at work and pinned a guys elbows to his short ribs who was attacking a woman at my work---he complied right away so I couldn't test the validity of my attack---I just walked him out of the store and she didn't want to press charges. I kick a dog once under the jaw that was attacking me.  He ran off after one kick.  I am a huge animal lover--so that really sucked. I used a technique called a wrist level to take away a knife woman once---I can't find a video on that....but even if I did knife disarms are crazy business----not sure I would want to promote that idea on a forum . I got a few more but that is a short list.