The Orthodox Technique

When it comes to the subject of martial arts, this blog has become a broken record. In 2002 I started writing a book on Martial Arts called "The Orthodox Technique", a direct response to "The Art of Jeet Kun Do" by Bruce Lee. And in 2002 I was not wrong about where MMA, international kickboxing striking technique, and most Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) striking technique was at. The point of The Orthodox Technique, was to document that type of striking which I had learned while training in K-1 Rules kickboxing and Chinese TMA in the 90's. Now this kind of fighting is well documented, it's pretty much what we just call "Muay Thai" these days, where most of the time you:

1. Lead with your left side to protect your liver, keep your left hand in the game so you are functionally a two handed fighter, and to keep your fight foot primed for aggressive movement and power striking. 
2. Keep your hands up (and jaw down) to protect your jaw and keep your hands closer to hitting the face of your target.
3. Keep your hips facing your opponent, in a fairly square stance with your feet shoulder width apart, to block leg kicks, keep your body ready to twist into an attack, and to be ready to sprawl against a throw attempt.
4. Don't stop moving. Maybe you are closing distance or running away, orbiting your opponent or turning to face them, throwing a combo or checking with a jab, but you are most definitely never just standing there in your fighting stance waiting for something to happen.
5. Strikes should include a twist of the hips and shoulders following into the attack, in one simultaneous motion with the attack. In a fight, anything from a jab to a leg kick should have knock out potential.

Unfortunately MMA has not destroyed the cancer to martial arts that is Kumite Point Fighting. There are so many people doing MMA that many of them are also contaminated with this cancer, so that once is a great while they will pull off a technique in an MMA match which can be claimed to be related to Kumite Point Fighting. Fortunately this type of technique goes absolutely no where in Thailand, so that striking critics can always say "that stand up game might work in MMA where you can resolve your conflict grappling on the ground, but please show me this working in Thailand."

But there isn't any point in me writing about any of this anymore. Kumite Point Fighting is becoming an official Olympic Sport, apparently the UFC gyms are actually good with that, and few martial artists are speaking up against it. And why should I care? In the old days martial artists tried to keep their best secrets to themselves so their enemies couldn't train against those secret techniques. If the great secret today is "Muay Thai as practiced in MMA gyms is better in a street fight than MMA if that MMA is based on Olympic Tae Kwon Do and blue belt level sport-only BJJ," what do I have to gain by sharing that secret that isn't hardly any secret at all anyways?

We are moving into 2020, which may be the most important year for internet trolling of all time, and I have said most of what I have to say about martial arts. This blog is about a lot more than Martial Arts, and in 2020 it won't have much to do with martial arts. I have actually found my martial arts trolling time cutting into my martial arts training time, and that is a heavy price to pay for something that does me no good what so ever. In conclusion I want to respond to a few points of criticism I have gotten over the last few years in this "Martial Arts Messiah" martial arts troll campaign:

1. A BJJ instructor on the internet suggested something like "it's too bad you wasted your life studying a bunch of crap martial arts, now you should devote what years you have left to the BJJ industrial complex." If I had just done BJJ this whole time, I would have been stabbed and beaten severely, maybe even killed, or done time in prison for defending myself, several times over. I have never had the luxury of a life style where the worst threat to my person was some drunk guy at a bar - I don't experience self defense situations where A) both sides of the conflict are equally matched, or B) there won't be legal consequences for me taking one of my attackers to the ground and literally choking them. I value the BJJ training I have had, but I certainly don't value it as much as the stuff that has actually saved me numerous times, which if I had to describe in one word would be "Muay Thai," but which in reality includes some stuff I have only found in TMA.
2. I am "stuck in the 90's" or "just a Muay Thai fan": over time I have come to realize this is basically true about me, but in my defense I must say that my primary "doctrine of salvation" applies to all martial arts, a concept I call "Sparring First." I might talk trash on Full Contact Karate/American Kickboxing for not being Muay Thai, but I have to admit that they can do almost everything they think they can do, because they spar. No matter how unorthodox your martial art is, you can develop legitimate fighting skill as long as you dare to spar regularly. (Stop and go fighting by definition is not sparing - it is a carefully judged drill to see who can land the first hit, versus sparring which is often unsupervised and always continuous.)