East vs. West - Is it Semantics Over Time?

[dvcochran]

I was recently watching some really good MMA takedown videos and realized the person in the video was doing a good job of explaining the technique. I also realized it was exactly what I have learned from my Eastern training. The verbiage is quite different. I think largely because my Korean GM is well, Eastern. So how much of the argument about Western styles/sports such as MMA being better for XXX is semantics and the amalgamation of multiple Eastern arts into a new naming convention?

 

[now disabled]

I was recently watching some really good MMA takedown videos and realized the person in the video was doing a good job of explaining the technique. I also realized it was exactly what I have learned from my Eastern training. The verbiage is quite different. I think largely because my Korean GM is well, Eastern. So how much of the argument about Western styles/sports such as MMA being better for XXX is semantics and the amalgamation of multiple Eastern arts into a new naming convention?

are you meaning techniques that you use are the same as others but just called different names ?

There will always be semantics

As far as arts fromthe east being amalgamated I would think that will stay in the west.....that said you could (and it is very true) say that Aikido is an amalgamated art as are a few others from the modern era but as for them being amalgamated now I think that may meet resistance

And from your Korean angle then Hapkido is an amalgamated art

are either the two MMA ...they could be called that but they chose to name them something else

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Most wstern styles have been sportinied thats one reason th eastern ones dominate in western countries, that and films and TV and our fiighting culture has died out at this point.

Mainly seaking they are just built for another culture, wapons terrain etc. You can find some similarties and some opposites.

(i just consider MMA a sport BTW, funnily enough i think Bartisu is the first estabished MMA down to it being a joining o boxing kicking and Japanese wrestling, it predates Fairbairs's style)

By the way a lot of reconstructive work for dead or dying western martial systems is based on interpritation of tratises mixed with exerience in other styles.

 

[now disabled]

Bartisu

The sherlock holmes fighting style ...but you are probably correct as it possibly was the first form of MMA in the west

 

[Deleted member 39746]

The sherlock holmes fighting style ...but you are probably correct as it possibly was the first form of MMA in the west

Unless something is proven and baked up by evidence of being taught before it. thats the earlist true mix of styles. (unlike some systms which were hybrids rather than mixes) Plus cane fighting, have to love it.

Included that bracketed segment as some people might view some pre existing styles which included striking, grapling etc as mixed but they were just hybrids rather than two or more styles mixed togther.

 

[now disabled]

Unless something is proven and baked up by evidence of being taught before it. thats the earlist true mix of styles. (unlike some systms which were hybrids rather than mixes) Plus cane fighting, have to love it.

Included that bracketed segment as some people might view some pre existing styles which included striking, grapling etc as mixed but they were just hybrids rather than two or more styles mixed togther.

be careful as there are the HEMA styles and they do involve more than just swords but again in the modern era you are possibly correct

 

[Deleted member 39746]

be careful as there are the HEMA styles and they do involve more than just swords but again in the modern era you are possibly correct

I was refering to those styles. the particular one i had in my mind was a germanic grappling style which can incude basially everything. (too bad all the schools that teach it are just out of my each )

I cant think of anything else around the 1900's to incude that until Defendu became popular for the west but thats gutter fighting.

 

[hoshin1600]

(i just consider MMA a sport BTW, funnily enough i think Bartisu is the first estabished MMA down to it being a joining o boxing kicking and Japanese wrestling, it predates Fairbairs's style)

to clarify for those readers not familiar, its Fairairn, William Fairbairn.

So how much of the argument about Western styles/sports such as MMA being better for XXX is semantics and the amalgamation of multiple Eastern arts into a new naming convention?

i dont think its semantics at all. one of the law enforcement trainers i know said "there is nothing in our tactics you wont find somewhere in traditional martial arts"
its not about the names. its about training methodologies, focus and the reason why people train. MMA has a very narrow bandwidth of reasons for training while traditional MA is much more diverse.

 

[jobo]

I was recently watching some really good MMA takedown videos and realized the person in the video was doing a good job of explaining the technique. I also realized it was exactly what I have learned from my Eastern training. The verbiage is quite different. I think largely because my Korean GM is well, Eastern. So how much of the argument about Western styles/sports such as MMA being better for XXX is semantics and the amalgamation of multiple Eastern arts into a new naming convention?

yes and no, mma, has evolved in the proper meaning if the word, through selection by attrition, if it doesn't serve a useful. Purpose, its gone, if it doesn't work its gone, if it's a flash low % move its nearly gone, if its in tma and not common or even apparent in mma, then it's for one is the,above reasons.

mma to the most part looks nothing like an art, and much more like two drunks fighting, presumably because. Drunks ht on the,secret of effective fighting, whilst the Eastern masters were working on fighting in a horse stance or other bizare non effective techneque s

 

[dvcochran]

to clarify for those readers not familiar, its Fairairn, William Fairbairn.


i dont think its semantics at all. one of the law enforcement trainers i know said "there is nothing in our tactics you wont find somewhere in traditional martial arts"
its not about the names. its about training methodologies, focus and the reason why people train. MMA has a very narrow bandwidth of reasons for training while traditional MA is much more diverse.

I regarded semantics as more than just verbiage and to include methodology, which has to have a name. I do see techniques "rebranded" where the same thing is interpreted and presented different ways. It is the way of the world. For example, manufacturing and process control uses many branches of Ford and Toyota's Kanban and ISO 9XXX systems. They all have originations in SPC where the verbiage and methodology conventions have been refined.
Do you ever see this amalgamation causing some of the more established styles to fall to the wayside?

 

[dvcochran]

yes and no, mma, has evolved in the proper meaning if the word, through selection by attrition, if it doesn't serve a useful. Purpose, its gone, if it doesn't work its gone, if it's a flash low % move its nearly gone, if its in tma and not common or even apparent in mma, then it's for one is the,above reasons.

mma to the most part looks nothing like an art, and much more like two drunks fighting, presumably because. Drunks ht on the,secret of effective fighting, whilst the Eastern masters were working on fighting in a horse stance or other bizare non effective techneque s

MMA has done a good job on multiple fronts. The marketing of the product is beyond compare. As with many products, some would argue it is being watered down at times. I think this is true on a location by location basis only. It seems quite organized so maintaining certain standards would seem easy.
I am old enough that when I opened my first dojang I was genuinely concerned that no one would know what Tae Kwon Do was so I intentionally used the word Karate in the school name(hence the avatar photo).

 

[hoshin1600]

I regarded semantics as more than just verbiage and to include methodology, which has to have a name. I do see techniques "rebranded" where the same thing is interpreted and presented different ways. It is the way of the world. For example, manufacturing and process control uses many branches of Ford and Toyota's Kanban and ISO 9XXX systems. They all have originations in SPC where the verbiage and methodology conventions have been refined.
Do you ever see this amalgamation causing some of the more established styles to fall to the wayside?

if you want to use business as an analogy. i would say MMA is like netflix VS block buster. i dont see how you can say the methodology is the same a semantics or even put them in the same grouping. martial arts and MMA use the same techniques. netflix and blockbuster show the same movies. that is really where the similarity ends. netflicks has a completely different business model / methodology. they produce their own content and its internet based streaming.
blockbuster went out of business, so will the traditional styles that we currently have now at some point but they will be replaced by something else and so will MMA.

 

[dvcochran]

if you want to use business as an analogy. i would say MMA is like netflix VS block buster. i dont see how you can say the methodology is the same a semantics or even put them in the same grouping. martial arts and MMA use the same techniques. netflix and blockbuster show the same movies. that is really where the similarity ends. netflicks has a completely different business model / methodology. they produce their own content and its internet based streaming.
blockbuster went out of business, so will the traditional styles that we currently have now at some point but they will be replaced by something else and so will MMA.

You are making my point to a degree. Both entities provide entertainment so they are apples to apples in very broad brush strokes. What has Netflix done that Blockbuster did not do in the stream of entertainment evolution? What has MMA (and others) done to gain so much traction against traditional and many mainstream MA? It is a valid concern that some will disappear. Maybe just the evolutional process.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Something i forgot to bring up. Date/period takes a vital role in this as well. 900AD was different in the British isles to what it was in Russia. Narrowing down to a date makes it easier to compare regions/countries with each other


Probably not relivent but people dont mention japan was isolationist and force foreign influenced out originally and passed laws to keep its culture and weapons the way it was. So their way of warfare probably stayed similar until a country (i forgot/dont know) forced the japanese into trading with them. No doubt this applied to their unarmed fighting systems as well. (its a influence/event which needs to be noted if you want to do comparitives between X and Y)

 

[now disabled]

Something i forgot to bring up. Date/period takes a vital role in this as well. 900AD was different in the British isles to what it was in Russia. Narrowing down to a date makes it easier to compare regions/countries with each other


Probably not relivent but people dont mention japan was isolationist and force foreign influenced out originally and passed laws to keep its culture and weapons the way it was. So their way of warfare probably stayed similar until a country (i forgot/dont know) forced the japanese into trading with them. No doubt this applied to their unarmed fighting systems as well. (its a influence/event which needs to be noted if you want to do comparitives between X and Y)

it was and it wasn't then it was again and your meaning when perry visited lol

What do you mean by their weapons ?

and oh I think there warfare advanced at least till the start of the Edo period (kinda sorta as after the Tokugawa Shongunate fully gained control then wars really ceased)

I don't understand what period you are talking about as influence/event ?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Amalgamation has always been part of fighting art development. Somebody knew some stuff and taught someone else. That person figured something else out, and saw some other dude do something he could copy, and added both of those to the original stuff. Another group follows the same process. Then some wise guy comes along and trains with both groups, figures out the principles are close enough to flow between both easily, and takes his favorite subset of each to make a new "stuff".

There's a problem that happens, though, at times: people decide the stuff they learned was perfect. Because the guy who taught them (or the guy who organized it originally) was extra-special. At that point, those people stop improving that stuff, and start teaching it less and less for effectiveness and more for preservation - attempting to replicate exactly what they were taught. Sometimes that's because they believe their kind of stuff is different from all other kinds of stuff, so shouldn't be mixed, lest they ruin their stuff.

The reality: the human body only moves so many ways. Put a few thousand people studying ways to put people on the ground, and a bunch of them will come up with strikingly similar answers, and a bunch of different names for the same thing (and a bunch of the same name for different things).

 

[Gerry Seymour]

if you want to use business as an analogy. i would say MMA is like netflix VS block buster. i dont see how you can say the methodology is the same a semantics or even put them in the same grouping. martial arts and MMA use the same techniques. netflix and blockbuster show the same movies. that is really where the similarity ends. netflicks has a completely different business model / methodology. they produce their own content and its internet based streaming.
blockbuster went out of business, so will the traditional styles that we currently have now at some point but they will be replaced by something else and so will MMA.

But remember where Netflix started. They started out just renting out DVD's. They did it a little differently (send them to you, you pay a monthly rate, etc.), but it was the same basic concept. Some differences in the model, partly due to what became possible (had to have ready internet access to use Netflix), and partly because Blockbuster didn't see the opportunity (or the threat). Netflix evolved to streaming and branded content much later.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

I don't understand what period you are talking about as influence/event ?

Ironically, i dont know as i dont know the periods for Japan.

Just heard citations to events and out of context etc. I know they had laws to conserve the katana, banned foreigners and enforced isolationism etc. I know some eras names but not they encompass or what happened in them.

 

[hoshin1600]

But remember where Netflix started. They started out just renting out DVD's. They did it a little differently (send them to you, you pay a monthly rate, etc.), but it was the same basic concept. Some differences in the model, partly due to what became possible (had to have ready internet access to use Netflix), and partly because Blockbuster didn't see the opportunity (or the threat). Netflix evolved to streaming and branded content much later.

as i think about it more the blockbuster/ netflix is a really good analogy.
do you remember where todays MMA started? UFC traditional style vs traditional style.

 

[jobo]

as i think about it more the blockbuster/ netflix is a really good analogy.
do you remember where todays MMA started? UFC traditional style vs traditional style.

No it's not really, Netflix started do exactly the same thing as blockbusters, except without have to go out in the rain , find parking or stand in a queue whilst someone with learning difficulties tried to book vids on and out it played on the basic human instincta of laziness, the product it's self was exactly the same, just more convenient.

Mma, is a superior product and one that takes a lot more effort to be good at , it's the very opposite of more convenient,