Is it still a martial art if...

Black Bear

I think we have some misunderstandings between us because I agree with pretty much everything you are saying. I will take ownership for part of this, though, because I haven't been entirely clear with my viewpoints.

All of this centers around the word "fight." In my opinion, this word has a very negative connotation. Where I work and live, the word "fight" has a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome meaning. "Two men enter, one man leaves." I define the word "fight" as being a contest between two or more people whose main objective is domination. Hurting your opponent isn't the main objective of "fighting."

Self defense, on the other hand, is surivival. What ever you need to do to survive, you do. This can also be known as fighting and it can use skills learned in "sport fighting" arts. I totally agree that these skills can be used for self defense and are important, but I am also saying that there is more that could help someone in survival then these skills. You have also said this, so we don't have any disagreement.

I want to tell you a little about my dojang and hopefully, this will clear up some misconceptions. I have pretty much abolished the word fight. My students come from an inner city, low income background and they view fighting as going out and beating someone up for what ever reason. If I say that I am teaching them how to fight, I think some of them might take that as permission to go out into the streets and use it for violence. To combat this, I changed the term to self defense. In my dojang, this has nothing to do with domination and has everything to do with survival. Above all, I want my students to be peaceful, yet I want them to be able to survive the encounters they face in the hood. I hope this helps. (Although is it not our focus, we do do some sport fighting. We call it sparring or tag and we do it about once a month. I have no problem with sport martial arts, but I think, at least in my situation, a strict deliniation needs to be made between the sport and self defense)

Now, our disagreements.

1. I believe that training in (sport) fighting is hard. When I was competing, I hit the weights five days a week. I ran 4 miles a day. I practiced my techniques 6 days a week. We fought all of the time, full contact, full speed, and with full intent. If you want to WIN, this is how you do it. Injuries happen when you train like this. Look at some of the statistics from the Lion's Den, for instance. You can use sport fighting techniques in a self defense situation, but I think that if you are going to rely on that alone (which isn't something you said, its something I said) then you are going to have to train HARD.
2. I have been stabbed with a wooden tanto many times. That was our practice knife. Two times it broke skin. I use rubber knives in my dojang.
3. Pressure points are usefull, especially in grappling situations. Points as small as a quarter can be worked to get effects. In striking situations, small points are harder to get at. Things happen too quickly. Perhaps it would be good to have a list of strike points for striking and for grappling.

Anyways, I don't want to be negative Black Bear. I hope there is no hard feelings.

John
 
Okay, the issues you have with the word "fighting" I understand. But if you're going to use it in a way that is not all that conventional, you should clarify ahead of time instead of getting argumentative. So you say that you agree with most of what I say. Well you brought a lot of the matters of purported substantive disagreement up (multiples, etc.) in the first place as though you presumed to know what i thought about it. I still don't know where you were getting all these ideas.

"1. I believe that training in (sport) fighting is hard. When I was competing, I hit the weights five days a week. I ran 4 miles a day. I practiced my techniques 6 days a week. We fought all of the time, full contact, full speed, and with full intent. If you want to WIN, this is how you do it. Injuries happen when you train like this. Look at some of the statistics from the Lion's Den, for instance. You can use sport fighting techniques in a self defense situation, but I think that if you are going to rely on that alone (which isn't something you said, its something I said) then you are going to have to train HARD. "
Agreed, sport training is hard. You are deliberately overloading your system's present capacity in order to increase it. But it's a matter of degree. It used to be said that when you trained for Japanese pankration, you always trained around your existing injury. But that way of living is not sustainable. It's like hockey. There are different levels of involvement from very high-stakes, big-money pros, to weekend warriors who shinny whenever they can book ice time. There are all sorts of leagues between these two extremes. Most competitors are not willing to be constantly injured.

"2. I have been stabbed with a wooden tanto many times. That was our practice knife. Two times it broke skin. I use rubber knives in my dojang." Okay well that kind of a stab isn't too awful. It won't usually badly wreck a lot of deeper tissues. That happens from time to time, but there are things like eyes--which is why rubber.

"3. Pressure points are usefull, especially in grappling situations. Points as small as a quarter can be worked to get effects. In striking situations, small points are harder to get at. Things happen too quickly. Perhaps it would be good to have a list of strike points for striking and for grappling."That is true. When you are attached, you can access things things better.
 
I was attempting to make the point that in most self defense situations, sport fighting techniques aren't going to be very usefull. Especially when facing multiples. For example, I trained at my buddies TKD dojang in AK. We did some two on one and three on one sparring and we were forced to use TKD "rules" and it pretty much ended up as a CF. I would have gotten killed in that scenario using those techniques.

Also, I don't think my definition of the word "fight" is too far away from reality. And, I believe I defined my terms for "fight" and "self defense" in earlier posts.
 
Originally posted by Black Bear
Agreed, sport training is hard. You are deliberately overloading your system's present capacity in order to increase it. But it's a matter of degree. It used to be said that when you trained for Japanese pankration, you always trained around your existing injury. But that way of living is not sustainable. It's like hockey. There are different levels of involvement from very high-stakes, big-money pros, to weekend warriors who shinny whenever they can book ice time. There are all sorts of leagues between these two extremes. Most competitors are not willing to be constantly injured.

This way of living is not sustainable, I agree, but in order to make sport fighting techniques successful, this way of living is essential. The human body can take a lot of punishment and if you are striking non-lethal areas, you had better be able to deal some power. Most people are not willing to train hard enough to generate the power, so, for most people, sport fighting techniques are not going to be effective in self defense situations.

I hope this clarifies my point.
 
I'm having a real hard time following all of this. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but it almost sounds as if your saying that in order for a martial art to be effective it needs to be well-rounded. Use a safe but realistic way to train. And instructors should be responsible enough to teach the difference between pratical techniques and techniques that are not practicle. For example, we learn how to perform a spinning back kick. We are taught that it is a very powerful kick. However, we are also taught that if we were to use it during a real altercation we'd more than likely be knocked on our butts, because it's not very practicle to use in a real fight.

Am I close?
 
Yeah, that is pretty much it. Also, I have been attempting to make a point about the validity of arts that do not teach the flashy sporty fighting moves. Arts that use forms or kata lists have something to teach about self defense and I would hate to see them thrust away because people don't understand how they could be effective.
 
upnorth, I don't see how there can be any argument on what you've just said in those last two posts. As for the previous one, you were the one who brought up sport fighting, not me.
 
Originally posted by Black Bear
I don't see how there can be any argument on what you've just said in those last two posts. As for the previous one, you were the one who brought up sport fighting, not me.

I was lumping sport fighting into the term "fighting" and using "self defense" to describe something else. Anyway, its not important.
 
... you can't fight with it?

Say there's an art in which the last true master is dead, and people only know how to "dance" with it anymore. Or more to the point, say a given school that teaches a particular art doesn't teach how to fight effectively.

Are they teaching martial art? If so, why is it a martial art? If not, what is it?

Someone posted very wisely about martial art often having exhibition, competition, and combat dimensions. If whatever a school was doing--regardless of what they called it--did not have a combat dimension, is it a martial art? If so, why? If not, what is it?

This thread is so old that I can't even recall how I found it! LOL

At any rate, I think there is a distinction between a street-effective art and a flashy piece of garbage. I went to a "kung fu" school that taught these super aerobic forms but, when we tried to take certain techniques out of the forms and apply them to a self-defense scenario, they never worked! And I'm talking that even senior students had issues with it. So if a technique can't work in a controlled situation where you KNOW what attack is coming, then it would be beyond useless in the chaos of a street fight.
 

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