Way of Karate Do
Old fashioned martial arts schools are behind the times.
Recently in the past few weeks, people have asked why I think martial arts schools are behind the times. Why I referred to the school I used to attend as crap in mybio.
Bruce Lee said it best: ”Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it.”
In earning my kinesiology degree, I learned something about human movement that not only undermined years of martial arts practice, but destroyed the basis of most martial art foundations.
Most schools teach by practicing patterns of movement. There’s nothing wrong with this, but eventually people need to move past this mode of learning.
I remember learning how to write, doing lessons in workbooks. One of them required me to follow dotted lines for each of the letters of the alphabet. Once we graduated from that simple lesson, our class moved to copying simple sentences my teacher wrote on the blackboard. Then she wrote simple paragraphs that we copied into our notebooks. The paragraphs we copied got longer. As we moved up the elementary school echelon, we were taught the structures of the three paragraph essay, then the five paragraph essay. We were given subjects to write about and we wrote. And so on and so forth.
Now, imagine teenagers in high school, or students in college being given homework, copying dotted letters of the alphabet. That is what you have in the traditional martial arts school.
Have you seen old English calligraphy? All those swirls, extra lines, and decorations? How inefficient would that be in everyday writing? A lot of that is in traditional martial arts, as well.
In our particular school, we always made fun of Tae Kwan Do students. They limited themselves to kicking, and when sparring they didn’t allow striking to the head. But one thing they did a lot was sparring. Sparring is the key to truly learning anything.
Kinesiology taught me that people need to be in dynamic environments if they are to perform in dynamic environments. If I taught you a martial arts technique to deal with a right punch, and I drilled that technique over and over again, all you would’ve learned was the technique. What you wouldn’t know how to do is react to the right punch. To do that, you can’t be told that a right punch is coming. And sparring gives you that opportunity.
Yes, learn the technique. Yes, practice the technique. Then forget it.
The above quote by Bruce states exactly how I live my life.
When I first attempted my first three novels, I had no idea what I was doing. Then my best friend suggested many sources that spoke on the structure and techniques of fiction writing. I read them, attended seminars and learned so much. But those lessons didn’t sink in until I sat down and wrote. By the end of my many revisions and writing myepisodes,I had to go back and do one last revision/rewrite. I’d changed so much as a writer that I had to do a line by line examination of my manuscript.
I didn’t want to at first. I knew it would take a long time. But once I dug in, I became more intimately engrossed with my story. And something happened that was unexpected. I fell in love with my story again.
I also realized that I’d broken some rules of writing. I didn’t do it on purpose. That’s just the way the story needed to be told.
Bruce Lee said: ”Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.” That has definitely worked out for him.
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There’s always a limitation of some kind. A TKD fighter (assuming he’s experienced and skillful) will be effective within that arena. Certain aspects will translate well to a street altercation, but the habits formed as a result of following the “rules” of sparring (which is a sport, not combat), will be detrimental, and could, in fact, put the TKD at more risk than if he never studied.
Kenpo bills itself as “realistic self-defense”, and I would argue that, compared to TKD, that’s true. Remember, kenpo includes full-contact sparring, using a much broader arsenal than TKD. Lei tai fighting goes even further, including leg kicks and throws. So if you limit the discussion to the sport fighting aspect of any given martial art, kenpo compares quite favorably. If that’s the scale, though, I’d put my money on MMA.
The problem is, all of them are still within the arena of sport, which is NOT true self-defense. Any time you have rules of engagement, it’s not true self-defense, where no rules apply, except survival (a gross oversimplification, true, but valid in a general sense).
Even training for “street fighting” has its limitations, because you’re talking about severely damaging another human being. Your training wouldn’t last long without some form of restraint. BUT…restraint on the street could get you killed.
See the problem?
Chris, this is my site. So no arguing. Just kidding. Kenpo has individual pieces that can be used in a real life and death situations: claw to the eyes, kick to the groin, strikes to the throat, etc.
But to practice it in never-ending patterns, and you know what I mean when I say this, is meaningless. It’s meaningless because the patterns itself don’t teach you what’s really missing from kenpo. Reactionary exercises are missing. The patterns don’t teach people how to react to a punch.
Worse. It doesn’t teach you how to react to the intense stress environment of an attack.
Yes, Kenpo does have full contact sparring. But in our school it’s severely limited to the instructors. And it’s the general population who needs it as well.
Sports fighting is the closest thing to a real life situation because of the stress factor. Not only do you have to be ready to react, but to do so effectively you must be cool.
Yes, I agree, that if we were to train at a truly real level, the number of students would die down pretty quick. But not many schools train anywhere near this level. The school where I came from definitely did not.
Jimmy, you’re full of…..insight.
Something I’ve been pondering lately is the fact that a real street attack is likely to happen with very little warning, certainly before you get a chance to hit your Fighting Stance ™. So in addition to practicing with a minimum of preset patterns (a whole other subject), it would be sensible to practice from various positions of “readiness”, or lack thereof.
For example, if you feel threatened, at what point to you put up your “guards”? Is that an invitation to attack? Or just prudent? And at what point has the potential assailant breached the Go Zone ™, inside of which you severely limit your ability to adequately react to an attack, and at which point the only sensible reaction is to act, that is, preemptively attack?
These, to me, are the crucial questions, and they’re virtually never addressed at a Traditional Martial Arts School (pat pend).
What thinkest thou?
Great questions. Something the Mark came up with was really ingenious. If you think you’re in danger, say someone approaches for an unknown reason, then you could put your hands up palms out and say, “Can I help you?” or “Stop!”. Palms out is important just in case you have to strike or use something called spearing invented by Sammy Franco. At first it’s non threatening. But it puts your hands in a position ready to attack.
The breaching of personal boundaries has to be addressed individually. Some people like yourself have long range weapons. Someone like me has short range weapons. Do you carry pepper sprays? Should you? Once a personal boundary has been established, then a teacher must place some kind of external pressure, like a simulated attack. Having taught this, I’d have several different types of attacks that the student must react to. And much like playing an RPG on Playstation or an XBox 360, it can raise the student’s heart rate and anxiety level. I’ll even have non-threatening stimuluses so the student must choose whether I’m a real threat or not. I’ll internalize an emotion to attack to help the student’s awareness to it.
Can this truly substitute for the real thing? No. But it’ll come close. This with medium to heavy contact sparring is close.
If someone comes in the inside, where it seems to severely limit your options, then a student must train that. As you know, no matter how good yur defence is, once a person attacks, an opening is created. That is true in close quarters.