Poll: Tradition or Evolution?

[gblnking]

Tradition vs. evolution? Simple. If your selling your school (and stlyle) as self defense then you have to evolve. If Great Grandmaster Fu Man Chew's school of Drunken Alligator has as it's tradition perfected the art of the leaping side kick but down the street Sluggo's school of *** kickery has learned (see evolved) how to step out of the way and counter with a whirling hair pull then Sluggo's students are better prepared for actual self defense. Keep some of the traditions, they make it interesting rather than just "kick, punch, repeat" all day but If you want to train good fighters/self defenders you must evolve to meet the changing world.

 

[exile]

Tradition vs. evolution? Simple. If your selling your school (and stlyle) as self defense then you have to evolve. If Great Grandmaster Fu Man Chew's school of Drunken Alligator has as it's tradition perfected the art of the leaping side kick but down the street Sluggo's school of *** kickery has learned (see evolved) how to step out of the way and counter with a whirling hair pull then Sluggo's students are better prepared for actual self defense. Keep some of the traditions, they make it interesting rather than just "kick, punch, repeat" all day but If you want to train good fighters/self defenders you must evolve to meet the changing world.

Here's the thing, though. Conditions do change, I believe, but I suspect more in the nature of fighting environments, weapons and other aspects of the setting. But do you actually think that Sluggo's students know anything about streetfighting that wasn't known to the street thugs in Yokahama eighty years ago (or to the robbers, bandits and other lowlife that Matsumura, in his capacity as the King of Okinawa's chief `sheriff', as well as chief bodyguard, had to face and beat into submission a hundred years ago and more)? This is something that you have to bear in mind—the habitual acts of violence that initiate physical attacks in modern setting, the ones studies e.g. the karateka and `pavement arena' experts of the British Combat Association and other experts like Patrick McCarthy, are exactly the ones that realistic bunkai for karate kata turn out to provide severely effective responses to.

This seems like pretty good evidence that in terms of street violence `technique', there's not much new under the sun. Rummage around in the archives to find that `Police Shotokan' video, watch it a few times, and ask yourself just how much you would want to be a street thug, regardless of what you thought you knew, who had that kind of violence directed at him. And then ask yourself how many dojos train that way...

There's bound to be some technical movement forward and updating. But I think that what really has to evolve is training methodology, in the direction of ever more realistic methods that still keep you out of hospital.

 

[CuongNhuka]

Take ground-fighting in self-defence. Many people correctly state that you do not want to go to ground in a self defence situation (I refuse to use the phrase street fight).
However the fact that you do not want it to happen does not remove the possibilty of it happening, so its important to also develop tactics for preventing it or dealing with it when it does.

I agree with you up to this point. Here, I'm about 75/25. There are situations were grappling would be not only warrented, but the best plan of attack. If your drunk uncle Bob is giving you grief, and swings, an arm bar is probably better then breaking his nose. Many arm locks can be modified into a knife disarm. If you're sitting/laying down you might not have much of a choice.
But that goes agian to evolution. I don't know of many styles that teach fighting from a sitting position, or when you are on the ground and your opponent is not. But you can easily take what you have and alter it so it works. My arm lock to disarm is anouther good example. I could take most Aikido locks and make them into a disarm with pretty much no thought. Not the intended prupose, but it works within the way it's done.

 

[exile]

BTW, in my post above, I was definitely not saying that MA technique doesn't have to evolve. It certainly will do so, as I've suggested earlier, as new discoveries are made about what works well and what works better; green meanie's earlier post is very much to the point here. All I wanted to emphasize is that I don't think the main stress pushing that evolution will come from novel ways of attacking, cooked up in the creative imaginations of street thugs. What drives MA evolution, I believe, is new knowledge based on critical thinking about how to combine safety, efficiency (in the sense of getting the greatest effect with the least expenditure of motion/energy) and realism. There are great ideas out there about this trio of desiderata that no one's thought of yet, you can bank on it. But what I don't think is the case is the possibility of Sluggo and his `students' figuring out new ways to begin an aggressive, untrained violent encounter with you (apart from novel weapons, and that's a whole different discussion...)

 

[funnytiger]

I couldn't really figure out how to choose.

When I think tradition when it comes to MA I think of the peripherals that surround the techniques and applications. So in my case, I think of lion dancing, Bai Si, etc. That is what I think of when I think tradition. I think that the techniques and applications themselves should constantly be evolving, but should always hold the integrity of the original.

Not sure if that made sense...

- ft

 

[kidswarrior]

I couldn't really figure out how to choose.

I think that the techniques and applications themselves should constantly be evolving, but should always hold the integrity of the original.

Not sure if that made sense...

- ft

This makes a ton of sense to me. :ultracool

 

[funnytiger]

This makes a ton of sense to me. :ultracool

Yaaaaaay! {Imaging me throwing my arms in the air and waving them around like a Muppet.}

 

[Laurentkd]

I couldn't really figure out how to choose.

When I think tradition when it comes to MA I think of the peripherals that surround the techniques and applications. So in my case, I think of lion dancing, Bai Si, etc. That is what I think of when I think tradition. I think that the techniques and applications themselves should constantly be evolving, but should always hold the integrity of the original.

Not sure if that made sense...

- ft

I think you make perfect sense!!

 

[exile]

I've been thinking about KidsWarrior's original question... am not really satisfied with anything I've had to say about it so far. It seems to me that it's really a different question than what I was considering earlier in the thread, and it occurred to me that there's a very important difference between the very general notion `change' and the more specific concept of `evolution'... when I say `you' here, remember I mean `anyone' (saves a lot of typing )

The notion of `evolution' is, ultimately, always based on the biological model that it came from. And in biology, evolution is driven by necessity. Crudely put, you have what it takes and you live, you don't have what it takes and you die. Fashion, or styles in art and literature and music, aren't evolutionary in this sense. Just one of a huge number of examples: Fritz Kreisler, a violin supervirtuoso in the early 20th century, composed a number of pieces in various 18th century styles that were acclaimed as great music: styles had changed, but 20th century genius expressing itself in 18th century idiom is completely convincing, apparently. The essence of evolution is different in a very important way: it implies that the change involved isn't a matter of taste, or whim (as vs: skirt heights go up, go down; ties get thicker, thinner, thicker, ad nauseum—that sort of thing). Evolution is the response of some living system to necessity—pitiless unforgiving reality. So in a sense, as soon as you bring in evolution, the answer has to be, `of course, evolution, because whatever is necessary will, by definition, have to occur.'

So then the question is, what would cause necessary change in MA systems that themselves arose in response to the necessities of their own time?

One possibility is that the kind of violent personal conflict that modern MAists have to face is fundamentally different from those of, say, late 19th c. Okinawa. The evidence here is bleak for anyone who wants to claim that Sluggo the thug and his knuckle-dragging buddies know anything more than their Asian counterparts 150 years ago in Okinawa, Japan, Seoul or Shanghai did. I've ranted about this stuff in different threads, but the fact is: what Patrick McCarthy calls the `habitual acts of violence'—the moves that initiate a violent conflict—appear to be unchanged since Matusumura shaped the basis of modern karate and its offspring. Virtually every tech recoverable by intelligent bunkai from karate/TSD/TKD forms (think late 19th c., early 20th c.) matches up with the most commont attacking moves observed by contemporary violence experts (think late 20th, early 21st c.). I can document these statements if anyone is interested. If this story is on the right track, the 19th c. karateka saw pretty much everything that there was to see in the way of assault initiation. Anything you're going to be hit with in a 21st c. bar, Anko Itosu already knew about in the 1890s. Work out the bunkai to the kata and you've got the key to the kingdom in your hands, right there.

So where does the notion of evolution come from so far as the MAs are concerned? One part of the answer is I think that while there are no new attacking strategies that you have to worry about—anything you're going to be facing: would-be sucker punches, head-butts, upper-body grabs combined with punches to the head, groin strike, you name it—there are new ways to respond based on the difference between 19th c. Asian norms of courtesy and `face' that are very different in N. America and elsewhere in the West. In particular:

(i) you can feign deference, while keeping your arms in a position which blocks almost any strike thrown by the attacker while positioning yourself to move to all-out attack as soon as the opportunity presents itself(the Fence tactic; see Bill Burgar's work on moderning the form of kata to incorporate this tactic in a way completely harmonious with classical karate strategy);

(ii) unlike our legally unarmed Okinawan MA ancestor, you can carry throwing weapons such as stars which will make a hell of an impression on a would-be attacker who doesn't know what you're capable of, as a preliminary to your take-no-prisoners empty-hand techs (knifehand to throat, claw-hand to eyes, elbow-strikes all over the head and face);

(iii) you can absorb the various techs of the classical era—this takes a lot of work, but masters like Iain Abernethy, Patrick McCarthy, Bill Burgar, Kris Kane, Lawrence Wilder or our own Robert Rivers, Jay Penfil (and many others on MT) have provided us with terrific analyses and video resources for this aspect of our MA education—and you can then try to visualize the utilization of these techs in specialized scenarios: an elevator, for example, or a subway (all those hanging straps to grab suddenly, pull yourself up with and deliver a fracturing kick to an assailant's jaw... etc.) In other words, adapt the techs to contemporary physical environments...

To do this well, you really have to understand the intentions and limits of the classical strategy/tactics mixes in the traditional form of the MA you study. A lot of stuff that's relevant and valuable is still in there, waiting to be discovered. But if you don't understand what that front stance really is (not a stance you assume, but rather, code for driving your bodyweight into a lock on the attacker's joint), and so on, you won't be able to adapt your practice in a logical way to whatever is genuinly new in CQ combat in the early 21st c....

I'm just trying to think this whole question through, y'understand, eh?

 

[Adept]

So then the question is, what would cause necessary change in MA systems that themselves arose in response to the necessities of their own time?

I think the issue is that many martial arts schools removed themselves from those evolutionary pressures. Their students were no longer fighters, but suburban housewives and stockbrokers whose reasons for training were not the same as the people who trained hundreds of years ago. But given the lack of 'survive or die' pressures present in modern society, these schools were allowed to continue, and even prosper as their advertising campaigns and softer work ethic took hold, while the more 'hardcore' martial arts schools faded into the background.

Now, we haven't yet encountered a situation where those schools that do not teach effective fighting techniques and strategies are forced to evolve or die, but we can certainly see why, if their students wanted to remain as effective as possible, they would need to change their systems. Need to evolve, if you will.

 

[exile]

I think the issue is that many martial arts schools removed themselves from those evolutionary pressures. Their students were no longer fighters, but suburban housewives and stockbrokers whose reasons for training were not the same as the people who trained hundreds of years ago.

I've been thinking along the same lines for a while now.

But given the lack of 'survive or die' pressures present in modern society, these schools were allowed to continue, and even prosper as their advertising campaigns and softer work ethic took hold, while the more 'hardcore' martial arts schools faded into the background.

Now, we haven't yet encountered a situation where those schools that do not teach effective fighting techniques and strategies are forced to evolve or die, but we can certainly see why, if their students wanted to remain as effective as possible, they would need to change their systems. Need to evolve, if you will.

Yes, they would need to start training differently. And that training itself could well result in important technical innovations. It would definitely `clean out' some of the largely decorative or cosmetic effects of tourament sparring-based practice.

That raises an interesting point: we have seen evidence of evolution in the MAs when these are televised for competition. The very specialized environment of televised spectator sports has independently driven both TKD and karate to develop elaborate, flashy high kicks which reward acrobatics more than damage potential, and what's interesting is that comments by karateka about the distorting effect of ring competition on karate's technique set sound word-for-word like what people say about TKD, even though karateka aren't (so far as I know, anyway) consciously borrowing TKD high-kick/low hand practice. It's just something which evolved under conditions of necessity—in this case, the necessity imposed by maximizing entertainment value. It may not represent progress, but it's certainly an instance of evolution...

 

[kidswarrior]

I've been thinking along the same lines for a while now.

Yes, they would need to start training differently. And that training itself could well result in important technical innovations. It would definitely `clean out' some of the largely decorative or cosmetic effects of tourament sparring-based practice.

Interesting, Exile, that you use the word 'innovation', which I almost chose over 'evolution' when framing the question. Finally chose not to, because the former seems to involve a pinch of choice in the matter, while the latter seems to be driven pretty exclusively by necessity. I believe you made this point rather clearly in a previous post.

That raises an interesting point: we have seen evidence of evolution in the MAs when these are televised for competition. The very specialized environment of televised spectator sports has independently driven both TKD and karate to develop elaborate, flashy high kicks which reward acrobatics more than damage potential

It's just something which evolved under conditions of necessity—in this case, the necessity imposed by maximizing entertainment value. It may not represent progress, but it's certainly an instance of evolution...

And here you point out one of my presuppostions in the orignal question. I intended the evolution under consideration to be the need for having the best fighting arts possible. But as you illustrate, the Big Bucks could also assert pressure, which could lead to 'evolution', if also perhaps degradation of an art's fighting effectiveness. We also see this, BTW, in China's declaration of Wushu as the official version of Chinese MA to be presented to the world. Talk about flashy....

 

[exile]

I intended the evolution under consideration to be the need for having the best fighting arts possible. But as you illustrate, the Big Bucks could also assert pressure, which could lead to 'evolution', if also perhaps degradation of an art's fighting effectiveness. We also see this, BTW, in China's declaration of Wushu as the official version of Chinese MA to be presented to the world. Talk about flashy....

Yes, this is a very flagrant example... and one which Flying Crane raised some months ago; I don't remember the thread name, but he pointed out that there is a lot of pressure in China to mold traditional CMAs in the direction of, well, the entertainment industry. What the Chinese seem to have concluded is that if you take a `working' MA with rolled-up sleeves and adapt it to ring conditions, you get a glitzified version of the MA as a martial sport which is, however, still constrained by some simulation of a combat situation, however artificial. The next step to ramping up the flash-quotient is apparently to remove that constraint entirely and replace the martial combat sport with a martial acrobatic sport. And they've basically done this in one go, bypassing the televised CMA point-sparring stage and going directly to the acrobatic stage.

And again we have an independent parallel case, showing convergent evolution: the emergence of XMA as the hottest new marketing trick in the sportotainment world. If you look at what, e.g., Mullins' Sideswipe demo team does, it's basically a bunch of complex cheerleading routines built on MA movements, with out and out acrobatics. The style is much more karate-like than wushu-like, not surprising given Mullins' background, but it's really a kind of linear-art Wushu. Once again, the evolutionary pressure supplied by the lure of the long green is hard to defy...

 

[Xue Sheng]

Big Bucks could also assert pressure, which could lead to 'evolution', if also perhaps degradation of an art's fighting effectiveness. We also see this, BTW, in China's declaration of Wushu as the official version of Chinese MA to be presented to the world. Talk about flashy....

Although exile gave you good examples, you do not have to go all the way to China for Wushu or look to XMA to find de-evolution of an art.

Just look at the majority of the Taiji schools in the US, particularly the Yang style schools. Many who train taiji today in the US do not even know it IS a martial art. I wrote post months ago on the death of Taiji and it is mostly due to the mighty dollar. More people will take Taiji if it is a slow moving exercise for heath than if you say it is a martial art.

Many traditional styles have caved to the pressure of money. How many Traditional CMA schools in the US require stance training these days? How many actually train as hard as they use to?

And now then you get the MMA vs. TMA arguments that is both valid and baseless. Valid from the stand point of the LACK of training in many TMA schools today and baseless because if TMA is trained the way it should be, or use to be, it is incredibly effective.

Things, in my opinion, today are devolving more than evolving and this is due to the pressure of the mighty dollar.

 

[exile]

Although exile gave you good examples, you do not have to go all the way to China for Wushu or look to XMA to find de-evolution of an art.

Just look at the majority of the Taiji schools in the US, particularly the Yang style schools. Many who train taiji today in the US do not even know it IS a martial art. I wrote post months ago on the death of Taiji and it is mostly due to the mighty dollar. More people will take Taiji if it is a slow moving exercise for heath than if you say it is a martial art.

Many traditional styles have caved to the pressure of money. How many Traditional CMA schools in the US require stance training these days? How many actually train as hard as they use to?

And now then you get the MMA vs. TMA arguments that is both valid and baseless. Valid from the stand point of the LACK of training in many TMA schools today and baseless because if TMA is trained the way it should be, or use to be, it is incredibly effective.

Things, in my opinion, today are devolving more than evolving and this is due to the pressure of the mighty dollar.

Right, right and right again, XS (very sharp observation about the MMA/TMA kind of arguments)—though fortunately, there are movements in at least certain TMAs in the other direction: the karate-based MAs are moving forward, IMO, with the bunkai-jutsu/realistic training movement in the UK and a few other places leading the charge for Japanese styles and TKD (the Okinawan styles have, I'm pretty sure, maintained their combat orientation and realistic bunkai/oyo components much better than the Japanese and Korean variants over the past thirty years). But this is still a minority movement; right now, sport karate and XMA are way in the lead.

What I'm wondering about—this is something you, Flying Crane and other CMA practitioners would know—is if there's a comparable movement within the Chinese arts of the same sort, the recovery of effective combat techniques and the realistic training of those techniques. I have no idea at all of how things are in the traditional Chinese combat arts... do you have any information about anything along these lines, guys?

 

[HKphooey]

Tradition is what keeps us from walking into a bar and picking a fight and using the evolution.

 

[TraditionalTKD]

I think you need to have the core (basic techniques, etiquette) that don't change. Those should be based on solid principles-biomechanics, history, physics, philosophy. Any thing else is open to debate, interpretation, and evolution.
For example, in Kukkiwon TKD, the basics and etiquette don't change. You can go around the world and basics and etiquette are the same. Now how a form is executed, free fighting, self defense. even logic behind techniques will change according to preferences and mindset of the instructor. If the changes are beneficial, TKD will grow and evolve. If the changes are detrimental, that Instructor's organization and students will perish.

 

[Shaderon]

I think you need to have the core (basic techniques, etiquette) that don't change. Those should be based on solid principles-biomechanics, history, physics, philosophy. Any thing else is open to debate, interpretation, and evolution.
For example, in Kukkiwon TKD, the basics and etiquette don't change. You can go around the world and basics and etiquette are the same. Now how a form is executed, free fighting, self defense. even logic behind techniques will change according to preferences and mindset of the instructor. If the changes are beneficial, TKD will grow and evolve. If the changes are detrimental, that Instructor's organization and students will perish.

I don't think they will neccessarily perish if the changes are detrimental, unless they get real combat testing, you can pass unsound knowledge on for centuries before anyone realises it's unsound. I think that's one reason for keeping traditional training as well as evolving, to preserve the things that do work as well as trying out new things.

 

[TraditionalTKD]

I tend to agree. However, I also don't believe you can or should pass knowledge simply because "That's how we've always done it." One nice thing about, say, Kukkiwon TKD-it's willingness to grow, evolve, and change things as concepts become outdated. Not just do things because that's the way it's always been done. There should be a reason for doing anything, and a good Instructor should know what that reason is. If there is not a good reason for doing something, don't do it. That's one of the reasons why the TKD we practice is different than it was 50 years ago. Our knowlege of the body changes and we incorporate that into practice.
Again, keep the core foundation of any art, but anything else is open to discussion.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Right, right and right

Hey... isn't that a left?

What I'm wondering about—this is something you, Flying Crane and other CMA practitioners would know—is if there's a comparable movement within the Chinese arts of the same sort, the recovery of effective combat techniques and the realistic training of those techniques. I have no idea at all of how things are in the traditional Chinese combat arts... do you have any information about anything along these lines, guys?

I don’t know how others in CMA feel but I would say more no than yes to be completely honest.

Yes there are some that are looking to traditional CMA and training traditionally and it is hard training and to become effective in some (many) of the CMA styles it takes a long time and a lot of training and there are a lot of people that simply do not want to take the time.

However there are also some that think they are returning to tradition when in reality they are combining arts for example like Taiji and Karate and calling it taiji or combat taiji or martial taiji and although it is effective, it is not taiji.

And then you still have this massive influx of people coming in that really don’t want the martial arts they just want pretty movements and bragging rights. This is also why there are very few Xingyi practitioners by comparison, the form is not pretty and the training hurts.

And what is even making it worse are that there are some rather big names in CMA that are feeding into this problem and just making it worse. And of course then there is the Chinese government that is not helping things either. Pushing Wushu and Wushu rankings every chance they get

It appears that the only way you can pretty much guarantee that you will be getting a fighting CMA these days is Sanshou and the majority of that is sport and none of it is considered traditional.

However if you find a CMA practitioner that has trained hard at his or her given style, whether they have done traditional style training (meaning things like stance training) or not you are still getting effective CMA people.