Updating of techniques

Whilst training I often wonder “why am I doing it this way”. I wonder why (Japanese) Ju-Jitsu has not been updated to make it more applicable to real life/street situations we are more likely to face. I can understand why some of the techniques where developed in the first place, we know that many of the joint locks are applied because on the battlefield of ancient Japan your Samurai opponent was wearing armour and so strikes or other techniques would have been ineffective. But it is unlikely that an assailant in a pub who has had 10 pints of idiot fuel is going to be wearing body armour (unless you frequent some very dodgy pubs) ;-).

Any yet we still practice techniques that were developed against an armour wearing opponent. I would have expected that some techniques would have been changed over the years to reflect more realistic/street techniques that are found in Krav Maga for instance.

I am interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

That's an excellent point.

I think, to some extent, it has been adapted to suit "real life" situations but this has been in terms of new martial arts being created (such as MMA, which takes aspects of more traditional martial arts and applies them to a particular style of combat, although I'm sure few would argue that MMA is "real life"!)

I think the Kata and traditions of jujitsu have been preserved more for the purpose of style, as opposed ot application - let's face it, most of us will train a few hours a week for years and years and rarely, if ever, have to apply our skills.

An excellent question - what does eveybody else think?