Martial Eras

From a Martial Arts consumer point of view, there have been 3 significant waves of martial arts in the USA. Each era has:

1. one dominant sport striking martial art,
2. one dominant sport grappling martial art, and
3. one dominant self-defense martial art.

These three arts have different needs for uniforms, safety gear, gym equipment, and training methodologies, which creates natural barriers between them. However in each era there are ALWAYS practitioners who commonly do any combination of the three arts of their era.

Globalization is the main evolutionary force that has caused one era to give way to the next.

THE OLD WEST ERA

Inherited from European culture, the Civil War and Old West, the first wave of martial arts for consumers was:

1. Boxing (the dominant sport striking martial art,)
2. Wrestling (the dominant sport grappling martial art,) and
3. Fencing (aka "Western Single Stick," the dominant self defense martial art.)

These arts are so deeply rooted in our history that it is hard to talk about martial arts at all without referencing these arts. These arts are quite literally part of the English language.

THE COLD WAR ERA

As the USA became exposed to its first non-European nation state enemy in World War 2, Japan, our military had to compete with a new way of looking at martial arts which they had not seen before. Beginning a decade or two after of the end of World War 2 and extending all the way up into the early 90's, the martial arts consumers were consuming the most were:

1.Karate (the dominant sport striking martial art. This includes numerous other Asian martial arts of various origins, but which conformed to Karate's competition rules.)

2. Judo (the dominant sport grappling martial art, now competing with submission holds,) and

3. Aikido (the dominant self defense martial art. This includes numerous other Samurai martial arts which involved too-dangerous-to-spar-with techniques, weapon kata or attempts to train to fight multiple attackers.)

These arts however between the early 60's and early 90's were watered down by the relentless materialism of the 80's, as instructors made compromises in order to sell more classes, or were influenced pacifistic agendas. At first Karate was what would now consider to be kickboxing:

But as sparring standards fell apart, so did Karate's reputation, to where it was something nerds would use to try (and fail) to fend off bullies with:

Judo, preserved as an Olympic Sport, fared much better than Karate, maintaining most of its value as a martial art. Aikido, thoroughly infected with pacifist ideology, fared far worse than Karate, to the point where it is now the laughing stock of the martial arts world.

Boxing, Wrestling and Fencing still managed to maintain a loyal following. Boxing seemed immune to the erosive forces destroying Karate and Aikido. In theory Professional Wrestling may have been an example of these forces having their way with Wrestling, but serious fighters still trained to complete in amateur wrestling. But ultimately style vs. style analysis were completely theoretical, with no actual proof as to what techniques were the most effective.

THE INTERNET ERA

Then in the mid 90's two important events transpired which reshuffled the deck for martial arts consumers in the USA again: the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which was the USA's first widely publicized and popularized Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) event, and more importantly the World Wide Web became a part of most people's lives in the USA, giving them global access to knowledge and communication. The 90's brought unlimited access to information, combined with a format to really test the value of different martial arts against each other.

By the mid 2000's, the dominant martial arts for consumers in the USA were:

1. Muay Thai Kickboxing (the dominant sport striking martial art, not in terms of professional pay scales but in terms of actual practitioners.) With Muay Thai's open ended rule set for striking and clinch fighting, it became the format for proving techniques from Karate, Boxing and traditional martial arts.

2. Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ, the dominant sport grappling martial art.) With BJJ's open ended rule set for take downs and submissions, it became to format for proving techniques from Wrestling, Judo and other grappling martial arts.

3. Kali (aka Arnis or Escrima, the dominant self defense martial art.) Though containing many too-deadly-to-spar-with techniques, training for fighting multiple attackers and weapon kata, the culture around these Filipino Martial Arts was very friendly towards fighting and sparring. FMA "Gatherings" (Tipons) are now the dominant format for testing techniques from Fencing, Aikido and other self defense or weapon oriented martial arts.

As mentioned above, besides being full of highly effective techniques that influence other martial arts, these three martial arts have open ended rule sets that naturally assimilate the techniques of other martial arts. Beyond that, these three arts are very friendly to beginners, the average martial arts consumer can get very good at these three martial arts without becoming an instructor or professional fighter because they have strong practices when it comes to free sparring at different levels of intensity:

MMA, fulfilling its role as the supreme fighting sport, doesn't make compromises for average martial arts consumers: as of 2019 there is still no universally accepted rule set for MMA-lite tournament, as there are for BJJ and Muay Thai. MMA was never some love child of Muay Thai and BJJ, instead MMA proved to consumers that Muay Thai and BJJ were the best styles of martial arts when it came to style vs. style competition. 

You Spar Or You Don't!

All proficient practitioners of the martial arts spar, because learning to go through the motions of a technique is only about 10% of learning the technique, the other 90% is learning to do the technique while sparring:

There are often newbies who are delusional about their abilities who pass on forms (kata) without having mastered any techniques through sparring. They and their students are not proficient practitioners, being generally ignorant of the real martial art from which those forms came.

Let's start with the ultimate example, Tai Chi. People love to talk about Tai Chi like it is a set of line dancing routines that after decades of practice cause people to be deadly. Though some Tai Chi forms are ridiculously time consuming, the forms are only meant to augment other important training methods, namely standing meditation, stationary push hands drills, moving step push hands sparring, kickboxing and in many cases sword sparring:

Another common example brought up is a form of Japanese Tai Chi called Aikido. But the style of Aikido that is closest to the real martial arts roots of Aikido is Tomiki Aikido, which is still based on sparring. In fact, they are the only sport in today's world that actually spars with one person having a knife and another person being unarmed - the real self defense situation so many martial arts are obsessed with:

People like to talk about other forms of pseudo fighting besides forms/kata as an alternative to sparring, such as Karate Kumite-Point Fighting. But the man responsible for making Karate world famous, Mas Oyama, didn't fool around with that nonsense, his sparring strongly resembled what we now think of as K-1 Kickboxing:

Some like to use cultural or fitness excuses as to why so-called martial artists would not spar. Capoeira is the best example of this, yet serious practitioners of that art do indeed spar:

No matter how "traditional" your martial art is, sparring is a moral choice. Either you choose to do martial arts related exercise without sparring under the false pretense that you are learning martial arts - OR - you pay the price that it takes to really learn martial arts, enduring the minor injuries and physical pain associated with sparring: 

You spar or you don't!

Utopians

(This is an ideological post, here are my posts about: Martial Arts.)

Globally, there are three main ideological orientations:

• Conservatives emphasize change often causes more problems than it solves.
• Libertarians emphasize individual freedom is paramount.
• Progressives emphasize that government is what drives modern civilization.

The left/right dichotomy in the USA divides the Libertarian perspective in half, with conservatives embracing individual economic liberty, and Progressives embracing individual lifestyle choice liberty.

What I have noticed is a new political movement afoot, which I call "Utopians." The Utopians look past the current political fray, and ask "what challenges are humans facing as we inevitably face the future?" The best example of an Utopian is Elon Musk. He puts his money were his mouth is, aggressively working on space exploration, solar power and electric cars, literally doing everything he can to prepare the human race for its inevitable future. If it wasn't for the fact he was a billionaire who rubs shoulders with the infamous President Trump, you would think Musk, captain of industry, was a socialist based on his comments in public:

But he is no socialist, and is a capitalist to the core on a level few conservatives can really appreciate, seeking private investments into his futuristic projects.

He is not the only popular personality sharing these kind of views. Consider for example Joe Rogan:

The future, Automation, is going to continue to reduce the need for labor. Eventually, we need some form of Basic Income in order to be able to decide who needs the goods that are going to be produced by that automation. 

Utopians are generally in favor of access to information, be it Elon Musk's open-sourcing of his battery patent, or Joe Rogan's push for free education. In general, they are also in favor of universal health care:

Many seen as libertarians and socialists now have much in common. AOC infamously claims to have socialist ideology, but consider how she actually talks about it:

She may or may not fashion herself to be some fabulous lefty commie, but her background as a scientist is telling. If the Trump supporting Elon Musk could be considered a right wing Utopian, AOC is a left wing Utopian, and standing their views side-by-side there is no daylight between them.

Sure they believe the science and are concerned about the effects of global warming, but they have no problem with private property, free markets, investment, etc. In fact they have little opinion on weather something should or shouldn't be in the future, they are just facing the future head on like adults. Anyone expecting the Utopians to be friendly humanitarians using government to appease their ideology will be in for a rude awakening:

The Walking Dead Got Aikido Right

Aikido and FMA have remarkably similar Kata:

Some say Aikido is mostly technique unrelated to weapons. That is incredibly naive, and rooted to the same pacifism in Aikido culture that eschews sparring. In reality, the self defense prescribed by Aikido's founder involved incredibly violent weapon technique (and probably some form of now lost sparring):

What keeps FMA from turning into a martial arts failure (like what Aikido has degenerated into in 2019) is continuous contact weapon sparring. The issue is you can't really learn a martial art technique until you spar with it until you can land it:

Continuous contact weapon sparring could save Aikido (not that I expect it to):

Update #1 - this post has a sequel: http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-walking-dead-got-aikido-right-2.html

Update #2 - Icy Mike did a video on what I call the "supposedly not Pakua strike in Aikido":

Update #3 Hein actually saved Aikido already under generally these same premises.