Martial Depth

As a martial arts instruction consumer, I have surveyed the martial arts world fairly well, and have earned a beginner level rank or had at least equivalent training in several different martial arts systems. The most important thing I have learned is that if you aren't sparring, you aren't learning martial arts. I recently posted commenting that I don't think people who are training without weapons really understand the context in which their martial arts techniques were developed. However it is important to understand that if you take all the martial arts there is to learn out there, and reduce it all to technique that can actually be used in a fight, the numbers are different than what most people would expect:

In general, 60% of all actionable martial arts knowledge is grappling (2/3 of that on the ground and 1/3 of that standing up,) 20% is unarmed striking technique and the other 20% is all of the weapon martial arts knowledge out there. Of the 20% that is weapon technique, half of that is technique that would work with a baton, 1/4 of it would require a longer reach weapon to work, and the last 1/4 would require other weapon features to work such as a sharp edge or hook on the end of it.

This is not a classification of martial arts, but only techniques that can be used in a fight. I don't know of ANY martial art school that teaches only 1 of the above categories. For example fencing technique would be a small subset of Baton and Other (a single handed weapon, but with certain features such as a hand guard and a sharp tip.) Get into a weapon martial art like Kali (FMA) that superficially appears to be a Baton fighting style, and you could see most of the above areas addressed in some way (knife, other, unarmed striking, and clinch grappling, if not also some staff and submission grappling.) Some Kung Fu styles which would appear to be mostly Unarmed Striking and Clinch Grappling spend most of their time at the higher levels working on every type of weapon technique imaginable, and even some Tae Kwon Do schools require their black belts to have some rudimentary knowledge of weapons.

So when I make absurd claims about martial arts like "The Walking Dead Got Aikido Right", I am not just trolling, I am looking at martial arts with through this sparring-oriented lense. I am not the only one noticing that some very large fraction of fighting technique from Aikido is weapon technique:

Of course a bunch of you couldn't care less about weapon technique, considering the fact that what you normally have to defend yourself with is your bare hands. Self Defense instructor Icy Mike mentioned what I think is a very similar phenomenon when it comes to comparing the learning curb between unarmed striking technique and grappling technique in the following video at around 1:13, where he points out that the depth of skill/training advantage you can get to in grappling seems to far exceed the depth of skill/training advantage you can get to in striking (at least in the first year anyhow):

This post makes no claims about what the best martial art is, or what martial art you should do next. This is just an observation about the world of martial arts generally: even though historically martial arts have mostly been developed for an armed context, most of the martial arts technique out there is grappling technique, and the most common striking weapon is your body.