Most people, I think, would agree that martial arts training as it is known today, promotes the teaching of skills in self-defense (fighting) and sports, among other things. Many would also agree that martial arts training can be useful for such things as helping to instill self-discipline, positive self-image, and general good physical health, especially in children and young adults.
However, although not everyone teaches or chooses to partake in other aspects of martial arts training, such training does exist. Primarily, this comes in the form of what we generically know as 'TMA' or 'traditional martial arts'.
This is because many modern forms of martial arts have taken what they see as the most important aspects of traditional training and just taught that.
For example, styles that teach mostly for tournaments and sport. Styles that teach mainly for self-defense.
Many of the sport styles have focused on primarily the way the arts look when practiced. Kata or forms, both empty-handed and with weapons, and a form of sport-oriented sparring that is designed to be flashy, fast, and athletic, but also safe for the combatants. You won't find these schools working to understand the meaning or application of particular moves in a kata, for example. Such things are of no particular use to them as long as the movements are done with precision, power, speed, balance, and presentation. Sparring, particularly point-sparring, is done in the manner of counting coup; a combatant darts in and touches to score; this ignores most reality-based self-defense principles, but that is not the point of the competition.
Many of the styles that simply focus on self-defense also ignore most basics (kihon) and kata or forms, in order to focus on the reality of actual self-defense or combat. They use the movements of arts like karate, judo, and others, but modified for presumed maximum effectiveness in real self-defense situations. They would not focus on learning 12 ways to do a single thing, but one or two ways, and practice only those things. They pressure-test their training with a variety of methods, including sparring, sometimes full-contact, sometimes full-power, sometimes (infrequently) both, and some even go so far as to test on 'the street' using a variety of methods.
Those schools that teach so-called traditional martial arts teach different things as well, and to differing levels. They may teach a form of sport or self-defense or both, and then they may add to the training a set of standards to be met by students, such as learning and repeating kihon and kata, both empty-handed and with various weapons. Some schools go significantly beyond this, some do not.
Having said all of this - and I'm sure many will take exception with what I've said even so far - I now turn to the point of my post, which is to attempt to answer the question about what TMA is actually good for.
It's not strictly sport - some compete in tournaments, some win, but let's face it, the guys who concentrate on only tournament martial arts tend to do well in exactly that.
It's not strictly self-defense - although a competent TMA karateka, for example, should be able to defend his or her self against say a knife attack, it's definitely not the same as the self-defense expert who practices disarming an assailant with a knife tens of thousands of times.
So what is it good for, then? Why not study sport martial arts if one wishes to compete, or reality-based modern martial arts if one wishes to learn to fight or to defend oneself?
The answer, I believe, is because there is something more to be found in TMA than just fighting or sport. More than just physical fitness. More than just flexibility and good balance and mental well-being. More than just camaraderie and pleasurable social activity.
Now, not everyone *wants* those things. That's fine. TMA is probably not for them, and there is nothing wrong with that. I doubt hockey players think speed skaters are idiots; they both skate on ice, but do so for different reasons, and both are OK, right?
Not everyone *believes* that those 'additional things' exist. That's fine too. Again, TMA is probably not for them either. But whether one believes or whether one does not, nobody can deny that some people believe that there is more to TMA than good health, self-defense, and sport. And as you have the right to not believe it, they have the right to believe it.
Someone recently described basically everything martial-arts oriented that wasn't actual reality-based self-defense, as 'woo-woo'. In other words, magical or nonsensical stuff.
Such things do exist in martial arts, clearly. We have people who believe in what many consider outlandish impossibilities, and I will include the oft-derided 'no touch knockout' or 'chi power knockout' in that. But everything exists along a continuum, it is not black-and-white. Belief that there is something deeper in TMA than simply kihon, kata, sparring, and so on, is not necessarily belief that there is such a thing as knocking someone out without touching them. We do not live in such a cookie-cutter world, where if you do not believe in X, you must therefore believe in Y. That is a logical fallacy.
These are some of things that I believe TMA is good for. My beliefs are my own opinion; many other people whom I respect have different opinions, either by a little or a lot. And I wasn't taught to have these opinions, by the way. My instructor did not say "We don't do self-defense here, we learn the Way of the Woo (tm) instead."
Instead, over the years as I trained, I changed how I felt about what I was doing, about why I was doing it, about what I hoped to gain from it.
It includes very simple things; for example, no matter how lousy a day I had at work, I lose all trace of it from my mind when I step onto the mat at my dojo. The cares of the day simply fall away; and believe me, I'm under a lot of stress where I work, stress that follows me home and keeps me up nights.
It includes investigating things that one might think make no sense, like evaluating the power of a punch while exhaling versus inhaling. Subtle differences in how a foot is placed or how the body is angled. Tiny things that have a big effect, such as stealing a tiny bit of an opponent's balance prior to striking them, and so on. Are these things necessary for self-defense? Maybe. Probably not. In a chaotic street fight, at my level of experience, I doubt I'd be thinking about any of that; if I had to hit, I'd hit; if I had to block, I'd block. On the other hand, as time goes by, I might have trained myself enough to avoid falling down on a slippery surface, or to steal an attacker's balance prior to striking. I hope that perhaps one day, my voyage of discovery will give me the neural connections necessary to do such things without thinking about them.
It includes such things as evaluation of how the core principles and techniques I train in apply to other aspects of life. I can sit in a meeting at work and consider that the time to speak (strike) is when the opportunity presents itself, or that a person's unbalance is the same as a weight - in conversation as well as in self-defense.
It includes such things as calming myself for a struggle ahead, looking to the opponent's core to gain insight into future actions, shifting to not be where the attack goes, directing the nature of the flow of a series of movements so that the end is where, when, and what I want to have happen. Taking a hit to give one. Attacking weaknesses after identifying what they are.
It includes accepting that my training puts me on a path, rather than directing me to a goal. I don't know where I am going; I do know that I won't get there. I am content with that. The goal is no goal. Nothing matters but the path.
So I spend time standing in one place, investigating the motion of a few toes or the angle of a foot or the bend in my knees, and checking mentally to see how that affects the stability of my stance, my balance, how it informs my breathing. I practice moving from stance to stance in different ways to see how I can move without giving up as much balance along the way, to shorten the period of time I'm open to attack without being based, to disguise my movements as well as my intentions, to build speed and power.
Is that last bit the Way of the Woo (tm)? I'm sure some see it that way. How can one choose a path and not have a goal? What's the point? I don't know. Ever been on a Sunday drive on a bike or motorcycle or in a car, with no particular place to go, just enjoying the weather and the scenery and the people you are with or meet along the way? Breathing the air and feeling the sun and the breeze, just being rather than doing? It's kind of like that. If you are the sort of person who sees no value in doing something that has no obvious return value, then you probably don't get that. And that's fine; you don't have to, it's not for you. Don't deny it to me, and don't deny that it has value to me. Leave me to my woo, if that is what you think it is.
Am I deluded? Am I wasting my time? Well, what if I am? Is it not my time to waste, am I not free to delude myself?
TMA to me holds much that I will need to spend the rest of my life investigating. It may or may not have a practical real-world relationship with self-defense; probably nothing at all to do with sport-related martial arts. It does have to do with my development as a person. As I leave middle-age behind and start the long trek to the finish line; slower paced, but still hopefully making progress, I find that there is no place where one can say "Well, I learned all I need to know, now I can just vegetate until I die." No, I continue to find ways in which I can improve, and many of those involve my study of karate. I won't get any faster, probably won't get any stronger. I doubt I'll ever be as good a fighter as some younger people who have studied MT or BJJ or whatever for a year or so. If that was the point, I've failed, but I was doomed to fail anyway, so what would be the point? The rewards I get for continuing my study are mostly internal. And some feel that's just not OK. What a shame.
However, although not everyone teaches or chooses to partake in other aspects of martial arts training, such training does exist. Primarily, this comes in the form of what we generically know as 'TMA' or 'traditional martial arts'.
This is because many modern forms of martial arts have taken what they see as the most important aspects of traditional training and just taught that.
For example, styles that teach mostly for tournaments and sport. Styles that teach mainly for self-defense.
Many of the sport styles have focused on primarily the way the arts look when practiced. Kata or forms, both empty-handed and with weapons, and a form of sport-oriented sparring that is designed to be flashy, fast, and athletic, but also safe for the combatants. You won't find these schools working to understand the meaning or application of particular moves in a kata, for example. Such things are of no particular use to them as long as the movements are done with precision, power, speed, balance, and presentation. Sparring, particularly point-sparring, is done in the manner of counting coup; a combatant darts in and touches to score; this ignores most reality-based self-defense principles, but that is not the point of the competition.
Many of the styles that simply focus on self-defense also ignore most basics (kihon) and kata or forms, in order to focus on the reality of actual self-defense or combat. They use the movements of arts like karate, judo, and others, but modified for presumed maximum effectiveness in real self-defense situations. They would not focus on learning 12 ways to do a single thing, but one or two ways, and practice only those things. They pressure-test their training with a variety of methods, including sparring, sometimes full-contact, sometimes full-power, sometimes (infrequently) both, and some even go so far as to test on 'the street' using a variety of methods.
Those schools that teach so-called traditional martial arts teach different things as well, and to differing levels. They may teach a form of sport or self-defense or both, and then they may add to the training a set of standards to be met by students, such as learning and repeating kihon and kata, both empty-handed and with various weapons. Some schools go significantly beyond this, some do not.
Having said all of this - and I'm sure many will take exception with what I've said even so far - I now turn to the point of my post, which is to attempt to answer the question about what TMA is actually good for.
It's not strictly sport - some compete in tournaments, some win, but let's face it, the guys who concentrate on only tournament martial arts tend to do well in exactly that.
It's not strictly self-defense - although a competent TMA karateka, for example, should be able to defend his or her self against say a knife attack, it's definitely not the same as the self-defense expert who practices disarming an assailant with a knife tens of thousands of times.
So what is it good for, then? Why not study sport martial arts if one wishes to compete, or reality-based modern martial arts if one wishes to learn to fight or to defend oneself?
The answer, I believe, is because there is something more to be found in TMA than just fighting or sport. More than just physical fitness. More than just flexibility and good balance and mental well-being. More than just camaraderie and pleasurable social activity.
Now, not everyone *wants* those things. That's fine. TMA is probably not for them, and there is nothing wrong with that. I doubt hockey players think speed skaters are idiots; they both skate on ice, but do so for different reasons, and both are OK, right?
Not everyone *believes* that those 'additional things' exist. That's fine too. Again, TMA is probably not for them either. But whether one believes or whether one does not, nobody can deny that some people believe that there is more to TMA than good health, self-defense, and sport. And as you have the right to not believe it, they have the right to believe it.
Someone recently described basically everything martial-arts oriented that wasn't actual reality-based self-defense, as 'woo-woo'. In other words, magical or nonsensical stuff.
Such things do exist in martial arts, clearly. We have people who believe in what many consider outlandish impossibilities, and I will include the oft-derided 'no touch knockout' or 'chi power knockout' in that. But everything exists along a continuum, it is not black-and-white. Belief that there is something deeper in TMA than simply kihon, kata, sparring, and so on, is not necessarily belief that there is such a thing as knocking someone out without touching them. We do not live in such a cookie-cutter world, where if you do not believe in X, you must therefore believe in Y. That is a logical fallacy.
These are some of things that I believe TMA is good for. My beliefs are my own opinion; many other people whom I respect have different opinions, either by a little or a lot. And I wasn't taught to have these opinions, by the way. My instructor did not say "We don't do self-defense here, we learn the Way of the Woo (tm) instead."
Instead, over the years as I trained, I changed how I felt about what I was doing, about why I was doing it, about what I hoped to gain from it.
It includes very simple things; for example, no matter how lousy a day I had at work, I lose all trace of it from my mind when I step onto the mat at my dojo. The cares of the day simply fall away; and believe me, I'm under a lot of stress where I work, stress that follows me home and keeps me up nights.
It includes investigating things that one might think make no sense, like evaluating the power of a punch while exhaling versus inhaling. Subtle differences in how a foot is placed or how the body is angled. Tiny things that have a big effect, such as stealing a tiny bit of an opponent's balance prior to striking them, and so on. Are these things necessary for self-defense? Maybe. Probably not. In a chaotic street fight, at my level of experience, I doubt I'd be thinking about any of that; if I had to hit, I'd hit; if I had to block, I'd block. On the other hand, as time goes by, I might have trained myself enough to avoid falling down on a slippery surface, or to steal an attacker's balance prior to striking. I hope that perhaps one day, my voyage of discovery will give me the neural connections necessary to do such things without thinking about them.
It includes such things as evaluation of how the core principles and techniques I train in apply to other aspects of life. I can sit in a meeting at work and consider that the time to speak (strike) is when the opportunity presents itself, or that a person's unbalance is the same as a weight - in conversation as well as in self-defense.
It includes such things as calming myself for a struggle ahead, looking to the opponent's core to gain insight into future actions, shifting to not be where the attack goes, directing the nature of the flow of a series of movements so that the end is where, when, and what I want to have happen. Taking a hit to give one. Attacking weaknesses after identifying what they are.
It includes accepting that my training puts me on a path, rather than directing me to a goal. I don't know where I am going; I do know that I won't get there. I am content with that. The goal is no goal. Nothing matters but the path.
So I spend time standing in one place, investigating the motion of a few toes or the angle of a foot or the bend in my knees, and checking mentally to see how that affects the stability of my stance, my balance, how it informs my breathing. I practice moving from stance to stance in different ways to see how I can move without giving up as much balance along the way, to shorten the period of time I'm open to attack without being based, to disguise my movements as well as my intentions, to build speed and power.
Is that last bit the Way of the Woo (tm)? I'm sure some see it that way. How can one choose a path and not have a goal? What's the point? I don't know. Ever been on a Sunday drive on a bike or motorcycle or in a car, with no particular place to go, just enjoying the weather and the scenery and the people you are with or meet along the way? Breathing the air and feeling the sun and the breeze, just being rather than doing? It's kind of like that. If you are the sort of person who sees no value in doing something that has no obvious return value, then you probably don't get that. And that's fine; you don't have to, it's not for you. Don't deny it to me, and don't deny that it has value to me. Leave me to my woo, if that is what you think it is.
Am I deluded? Am I wasting my time? Well, what if I am? Is it not my time to waste, am I not free to delude myself?
TMA to me holds much that I will need to spend the rest of my life investigating. It may or may not have a practical real-world relationship with self-defense; probably nothing at all to do with sport-related martial arts. It does have to do with my development as a person. As I leave middle-age behind and start the long trek to the finish line; slower paced, but still hopefully making progress, I find that there is no place where one can say "Well, I learned all I need to know, now I can just vegetate until I die." No, I continue to find ways in which I can improve, and many of those involve my study of karate. I won't get any faster, probably won't get any stronger. I doubt I'll ever be as good a fighter as some younger people who have studied MT or BJJ or whatever for a year or so. If that was the point, I've failed, but I was doomed to fail anyway, so what would be the point? The rewards I get for continuing my study are mostly internal. And some feel that's just not OK. What a shame.