All Martial Arts Change

INTRODUCTION

Traditional Martial-Arts (TMA) schools should not apologize for rejecting the latest martial arts fad. I began my Martial-Arts training in the 1980′s, when many TMA schools in the USA were involved in the stop-and-go, no-contact “point-fighting” fad. I remember picking up some good skills in class from lots of continuous full-contact sparring, and then having those skills be replaced in favor of tournament point-fighting skills. Even in the Karate class of my childhood, I could see that “martial-art fads” could be very harmful to a martial-arts system.

However, I do not believe it is possible for a Martial-Art System to remain exactly the same from generation to generation of students. The differences in the physical builds, personalities, and level of dedication of each generation students is enough to create significant differences in techniques. I am convinced that every Martial Arts System is constantly changing, either for the better or for the worse. Let’s take Tai Chi for example [1], as it is the most “traditional” Martial-Art I am familiar with.

TRADITIONAL EXAMPLES

Today’s Tai Chi got it’s start sometime around the year 1300, by a Taoist priest named Zhang [2]. He was old, and trying to continue to be a formidable fighter. He came up with principles that are still very dominant in Tai Chi. (Using one technique to stop a combo, focusing on precision instead of speed, staying calm, and using relaxed power instead of stiff power.) However, even Zhang had already been working with an older form of Tai Chi, as well as other health techniques, in addition to the other Taoist martial arts of his day. I take these facts to mean that today’s Tai Chi, when it originally took the form it is found in now, was a combination of different martial arts. Tai Chi was a Mixed Martial-Art (MMA) of it’s day! Hundreds of years later when Yang style Tai Chi started, it was common for Tai Chi students to exchange moves with Pa Kua and Hsing-I students [3], and this expanded the number of techniques found in Yang Style today. Even Yang Style Tai Chi was a MMA.

Another example of the non-static nature of TMAs is the very name of the Chinese Martial-Art (CMA) “Choy Lay Fut” (CLF.) “Choy, Lay, and Fut” are basically the names of three Kung Fu masters who taught the founder of CLF three different sets of techniques. CLF was originally a MMA. But have these CMAs really continued to mix since they were conceived?

MODERN EXAMPLES

Consider Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong’s most famous instructor, Hu Yuen Chou, who added Yang style Tai Chi as a core part of his CLF training. That wasn’t Hu Yen Chou’s only MMA effort:www.plumblossom.net/TaiChi/huyuenchou.htm

The new contributions continue to this day, in this same school of CMA. Grandmaster Wong himself ended up studying from other CLF systems besides Hu Yen Chou’s school. One of Wong’s advanced students (Vern Miller) has made a contribution by showing that Grandmaster’s Wong’s Martial-Arts System can be used to train modern sport fighters, even training a woman to beat a man in a boxing match:
www.womenboxing.com/margaret.htm
(This new application of this traditional CMA could be noted as a significant contribution to the system.)

But that is just one example of how one very traditional CMA is not static, and continues to develop. I’m pretty sure it’s a similar situation with most CMAs. Mantis is modified beyond it’s shoulin roots (www.mantiskungfu.com/Academy.htm ) HunGar is said to be a mix of Tiger and Crane. Most CMAs were originally MMAs. I doubt that any Martial-Art sytem that was founded as an MMA, would be able to suddenly slam-on-the-breaks and quit changing, considering that their whole justification for existing in the first place was that the older CMAs needed to be modified to suit the needs of the new CMA’s practitioners.

But the same is true of OTHER Traditional Martial-Arts. MasOyama (the bull-killing Karate Master) studied a wide variety of martial arts as he formed his version of Karate. Usheiba (the founder of Aikido,) incorporated elements of Japanese fencing, Jujitsu, and Sumo (and PROBABLY elements of already existing Internal Martial Arts.) Even Judo (and to a lesser degree Muay Thai,) has altered it’s rules over the years, to become less injury prone, so that competitors can fight all the harder.  As 80′s point-fighting proved, no martial-art system is static: a martial art system is ALWAYS changing, either for the better, or for the worse.

CONCLUSION

Did people in the past use your martial art to kill other people with? Probably yes. Do they today? Probably not very often. Therefore your art HAS changed, and anything extra you do to try to preserve it’s authenticity – or to try to keep it from getting watered down – is also a change. This generation of student’s duty is to make sure your art changes for the better, instead of changing for the worse, just as the founder of your TMA was doing when he formed your TMA.*

REFERENCES

[0] All unsupported facts, without a number [in brackets like this], or a website associated with them, have been just that, unsupported facts, with only my sorry-excuse-for-experience to back them up. Any of the people I mention in this article could disagree with this article, and none of them have endorsed my writing of this article.

[1]All supported facts are taken from either the linked website associated with the statement, or from Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong’s “Tai Chi Chuan’s Internal Secrets”, co-written with Jane Hallendar. The book was published in 1991 by Unique Publications, Inc., who were located in Burbank, California. 

[2]This is from the book previously mentioned, from pages 3 and 4.

[3]Same book, first two paragraphs on page 9.

(This essay was originally posted on Bullshido, the most important Martial Arts website out there.)

APPENDIX: THE IMPORTANCE OF SPARRING

The main problem facing martial art schools today is poor-quality sparring, or no sparring at all.  Traditionally martial arts masters have always sparred with their good students.  However, schools of martial arts rapidly deteriorate when less dedicated students who aren’t disciplined enough to endure the physical pain of sparring, instead focus on the non-sparring martial arts exercises.  Later on in life, these inferior students sometimes pass along the martial arts exercises without also passing along the sparring practices.

Let’s say a champion kick boxer opens a martial arts gym to teach kick boxing.  His good students spend a lot of time in the ring with him and each other sparring.  However the students with less character spend more time shadow boxing and working on the punching bags.  Eventually these inferior students pass along “aerobic kick boxing” preventing their future students from fulfilling their kick boxing potential, since they do not have access to sparring.  Many people do not realize Tai Chi is even a martial art, since this very phenomenon happens so often with the martial art of Tai Chi.

Here is a story to illustrate the different kinds of martial arts exercises, and how they are different from sparring:

• Let’s say you have two identical twins, Jared and Shawn.  They live an identical lifestyle, but like to brawl with each other occasionally to see who if there is any physical difference between the two of them.
• Now lets say that a small change happens in Shawn’s lifestyle, where he reads about dirty-fighting self-defense tricks every day for an hour instead of watching TV.  Shawn will now have an edge over Jared.
• Now let’s say Jared decides to take it up a notch, and takes up weight lifting.  Now Jared will have an advantage over Shawn, books or no books, because of the physical enhancements from his training.
• Now let’s say Shawn starts working out on a punching bag, developing his body in a focused direction applicable to fighting.  Shawn now has an advantage over Jared and his weights, because Shawn’s workout is conditioning his body to be more efficient at specific brawling techniques.
• Now let’s say Jared starts going to a boxing gym and actually sparring with real opponents.  A magical thing happens: Jared has not only an advantage over Shawn and his punching bag, but Jared completely dominates Shawn, quickly and easily desposing of him.
• Now let’s say Shawn studies at a mixed martial arts gym with sparring partners, learning to land kicks and submission holds on real people who are trying to do the same to him instead.  Shawn now has an advantage over Jared.  However, this advantage isn’t one of total domination like Jared had when he took up boxing-gym sparring and Shawn was only working out on a punching a bag.  Jared can still hold his  own with Shawn just using his boxing, it is just that Shawn has a clear advantage because he has mastered a wider variety of techniques.

All activities mentioned in this story could be considered “studying martial arts”:

1. reading or watching video instruction about the martial arts,
2. physical conditioning not obviously connected to fighting like aerobics or weightlifting,
3. doing physical conditioning that appears to be related to martial arts, or
4. actually sparring, trying to use moves against someone trying to use similar moves against you at the same time.

All four activities can enhance self defense ability.  However, sparring is so much more effective than the others, that any martial art school with sparring is better than any martial art school without sparring.

Sparring should be intense enough to require some safety equipment, such as mouth pieces or mats.  “No contact sparring” is not sparring, because the practitioners are not really executing the techniques on each other.  In addition to contact, good quality sparring is continuous: instructors rarely intervene in the middle of a sparring round – the action is non-stop like in a real self-defense situation.  

Some say sparring is limited because it is not safe to practice certain effective moves on sparring partners, such as eye-poking for example.  However, people who spar are better physically prepared for a real fight, and will therefore be better able to actually do eye-poking than someone who just practiced a three-stooges fighting style without sparring.  Furthermore, it is fine to do calisthenics, watch instructional videos, or do specific martial arts exercises in addition to sparring, as long as those activities do not take away from the practitioner’s time set aside for sparring.

Some say sparring is not effective because nothing can substitute for being in a real self-defense situation.  This is simply untrue, any athletic conditioning can give you an edge in a self-defense situation, and real athletic ability focused on actual self defense techniques practiced with real sparring consistently creates superior street fighters.

Some say sparring is not effective because of injury risk.  If reasonable rules are put into place and safety equipment is used at an organized school with supervision from a qualified instructor, sparring is no more dangerous than a game of basket ball, and significantly safer than playing American foot ball.  

Sparring is the most important martial arts activity.