These are all great modalities but, I would like to make clear that the most important thing to do, is to be ready to fight; from a physical stand point.
All this training in Marshal Arts is great, especially Aikido or a jujitsu art of some kind. It will give you some advantage over the average Joe, and I love it. But, at the end of the day, if you are in fight shape; it just might be the thing that keeps you alive or from getting hurt. And you know what they say, "there's no shape like fight shape", I'm not saying that you have to be in shape like you're a professional mma fighter, but you need to be in better shape than most Aikidokas by far.
In the last year a Judo club opened up in town and my kids and I started training a little. It all started because I had a little Judo as a kid, it always worked well for me and I thought that it would be good for the kids to learn some simple throws and that the quality full resistance training would make there Aikido or Jujitsu more effective for the real world. I started training too only because, if it is good enough for them, then it's good enough for me.
Kids are doing great, I at first thought that I was going to die.
And I hurt myself all the time. I did alright with the techniques, in fact I usually do better with the more advanced ones and it makes the advanced students mad when the new guy does it better then them. I think this is do to my Aikido training. But my conditioning was no good. I simply was not in the right condition to fight people with full resistance let alone change partners and fight again. Now I feel fit, stronger and more confident.