Encapsulation and Infrastructure

I have gotten into some arguments on the internet with some people who know a lot more about martial arts than me, some of them BJJ blackbelts. It has been educational. But there is a concept that I have discovered, a sort of yin-yang of how martial arts propagate:

1. Martial arts have infrastructure: what does it take to keep the community of that martial art going? What does it cost in terms of time, money, space, specialized training equipment, etc? How big of a population do you have to have in order to have enough practitioners to keep the art going?
2. All martial arts have a degree of encapsulation (in other words what their scope is, how many techniques they teach, and how big of a range of techniques.) An example of a very encapsulated martial art is Boxing: It's punches, and defense against punches. 

An example of a martial art with low encapsulation is Choy Lay Fut kung fu - it has a certain style of ergonomic "soft" movement, and any technique they can adapt to that form of movement gets grafted into that system. Choy Lay Fut has multiple bare knuckle versions of every boxing punch. Most Choy Lay Fut schools have absorbed Yang style Tai Chi, largely because of its compatible principles. With 30+ weapons (including spade and bench), you probably haven't heard of a kung fu weapon that isn't covered in that style:

So what is more practical for self defense, boxing which covers only punches, or Choy Lay Fut which covers every martial art technique I have ever heard of including numerous concealed weapons (like double daggers and chain whips,) with the exception of some BJJ escapes and passes, a few obscure Mantis sweeps, and head buts?  Boxing is FAR more practical, because in boxing you spend much more time sparring in your first year of training than a Choy Lay Fut person will (and the Choy Lay Fut student will spend most of their training time practicing forms some of which are hundreds of moves long.) Encapsulation, and encapsulation alone makes boxing more effective. There is a wider range of techniques commonly sparred with in Choy Lay Fut than in boxing, including most Muay Thai techniques. But boxing's focus allows the student to get to a self-defense ready level of competence much faster, and allows more time for the most important martial art exercise of all, sparring!

Encapsulation also reduces need for infrastructure. For example, to do wrestling, you only need 3 things: people, mats and space. Wrestling is extremely common in the USA. Boxing needs more infrastructure, with rings, multiple types of bags and protective gear. But add the 30+ weapons of Choy Lay Fut to all that, and that art needs drastically more infrastructure still.

Low infrastructure has helped propagate martial arts with low infrastructure: BJJ is one of the most common martial arts in the USA now, even though it is one of the newest martial arts in the USA. Low infrastructure martial arts allow the customer to pick exactly what they want to learn. For example I once had a Japanese Jujitsu black belt friend who wanted to learn 3-sectional Staff. I talked to my Choy Lay Fut instructor, and determined it would take this black belt at least a year of training in Kung Fu before he would know the prerequisite essentials before he could learn that weapon.

This is part of why FMA (Arnis, Kali, Esgrima) is so popular, is its forms are simple and 2 person, sparring is somewhat common, and it tries to teach the techniques that apply to a variety of weapons in a brief amount of time. It also focuses on the weapons the participant is most likely to have available.

Combat sports in general have an advantage here. Even though it seems like MMA is not well encapsulated, it is somewhat focused: it doesn't worry about obscure self-defense scenarios, weapons, uniforms, etc. It also shares infrastructure with other combat sports, so that an MMA gym can share space with boxing, kickboxing, wrestling and BJJ.

The most important infrastructure for any martial art is participation. Each individual participant has limited time they can spend training. The more time a martial art practices techniques participants are not interested in, the more those arts are wasting the resource of participation. Encapsulation keeps a martial art focused, preserving participation infrastructure.

Some arts will grow, some will shrink into obscurity. I believe encapsulation and infrastructure will be major influences on this evolutionary process.