Psychic Martial Arts

One practice I am particularly critical of is kata (technique) focusing heavily on pain compliance such as pressure points or wrist locks. In the martial arts there is an extraordinary type of foolery where Chi is faked by demonstrating supposed no-touch knock-outs and other very silly no-touch martial arts techniques. In the martial arts there is also a less extreme type of foolery where people are doing martial arts randori (sparring) where one person is easily and effortlessly flinging multiple attackers around. I argue that these two types of foolery are strongly connected, the fake randori leading to the fake Chi, and it all starts with pain compliance kata.

If you spar with wrist locks or pressure points, you learn very quickly that pain compliance techniques have a low chance of success compared to more common techniques such as straight punches, leg kicks or double leg take downs. So some people practice pain compliance through kata instead of sparring:

1. If you are not sparring, and you are training kata, and someone hits you with a wrist lock or pressure point intended to throw you, the pain will eventually hurt you enough so that you will have to comply with the take down.
2. Wrist locks and pressure points, like any other martial art technique, take a toll on your body when executed on you.
3. When practicing pain compliance kata, the best thing for the person to do to protect themselves from damage is to flow with the take down, offering as little resistance as they can get away with.
4. Over time, the person who the pain compliance is happening to will have a finely developed reflex to immediately comply with the take down.
5. Over time, the person executing the pain compliance will have to do less and less to get the desired result. 
6. Eventually, the person executing the pain compliance may not even have to make contact in order to get the desired result, since his target will react even when the technique is not executed correctly.
7. It is easy to see from here how people think they have the ability to knock someone else over with an invisible force. If you are someone that has been conditioned to react this way over time, it's easy to see how you might believe another person has such an invisible force - you don't necessarily realize how you have been conditioned over time.

This following video by a highly regarded martial arts master actually follows this 1-7 progression above (notice that at the beginning of the technique at around 2:40 the techniques are at least trying to appear practical, but by 3:42 they have become distinctly less practical, at 6:35 we have a technique that is completely implausible in any way, and at 7:43-7:44 we have our no-touch throw):

I am not trashing Aikido specifically here, Aikido can still be saved. I am not trashing Chi here, I think there is more to Chi theory than most want to admit. What I am trashing here is the practice of drilling pain compliance techniques for long periods of time instead of sparring with them.

Systema has an interesting take on Chi, which is that Chi is psychic power or mind control of others. That's exactly what I think is going on with these fake Chi martial arts demos, by drilling pain compliance people have been conditioned into cult like, mind-control behavior, "psychic martial arts" if you will. The following video shows a similar progression as the above video, from seemingly well intentioned dodging type of techniques, into pain compliance, and eventually just sitting in a chair and making 4 people fall over with a hand gesture:

George Dillman, who ran the North East Karate Championship for 30 years, became obsessed with pain compliance kata in the form of pressure points, and is now famous for his bizarre no-touch knock out mind-control techniques:

Almost every martial art out there has pain compliance techniques. But the more they emphasize these techniques outside of sparring, the more prone they are to develop delusional ideas about how likely pain compliance techniques are to work. Using pain compliance drills to condition your students to react to your non-sparring movements is what I call "psychic martial arts."

Martial Arts Fantasy Origin

There is a new vocabulary developing on the internet for talking about how effective various martial arts are. The latest development, which I for one agree with, is how much "fantasy" has creeped into any given specific martial art. From my perspective as a consumer advocate, I have a very clear vision of exactly how martial arts get infected with high levels of fantasy.  Probably the most classic example of a fantasy-rife technique found in many martial arts styles is countering a punch using a wrist lock:

There is no problem to most of the individual steps this Sensei describes: keeping good posture at close range, grabbing someone's arm, dropping your weight, flanking your opponent as they attack you, etc. Almost every little component of this technique works, yet if you have ever tried to use this whole technique in free sparring, you know that it almost never works. Even though the technique happens in a brief period of time, it is made of numerous little steps that have to be done in exactly the right order. Free Sparring teaches us that the opponent has an agenda as well, so that techniques must be simple in order to actually work.

People have been talking about how "martial arts that do training with resistance or sparring are the best." As this vocabulary has been developing, "training with resistance" used to actually mean free sparring specifically. Now "training with resistance" seems to mean "everything that makes a martial art good, but which is not actually free sparring." Here's the different kinds of martial arts training people are talking about here:

• Practicing a technique in a drill while someone resists you. You could be throwing a boxing jab at someone who is practicing head movement. You could be doing a kata while someone times you for speed, pressing you to go faster and faster, kicking a heavy bag in Muay Thai for example. You could be doing stop and go "fighting" like in fencing or stationary push hands. None of this is any kind of "sparring," it's all drills. It's all Kata to teach martial art theory.
• Focused sparring is where no one is taking turns, but where only a few techniques are allowed while sparring. Positionals in BJJ is an example. Playing "king of the mountain" in wrestling (trying to get each other out of a circle) is another example. Sparring with only a jab in boxing is another example of this. This is one of the very best way to teach individual techniques and develop a practical understanding of the theory behind the techniques, BUT IT IS NOT FREE SPARRING.
• Free sparring is continuous, and has the least possible outside interference. No one is dictating which moves you can do within your over all ruleset you are sparring with. Though it can have varying levels of contact and intensity, free sparring is where you learn to react against unscripted attacks, and where you find out exactly what works for you want what doesn't. The elite quality of both BJJ and Muay Thai has everything to do with their culture around Free Sparring.

In other words there is a Yin/Yang balance to martial arts training: theory vs. practice. Everything that is not Free Sparring is Theory, and the ONLY way to build solid practical skill is by complementing that Theory with Practice aka Free Sparring. The Yin is the Theory/Kata/drills/focused sparring, while the Yang is the Free Sparring.

But here's where the FANTASY comes from: while Theory/Kata informs Free Sparring, the Free Sparring in turn informs the Kata/Theory! What happened in Aikido that made it mostly fantasy based, is that the founder of Aikido was a pacifist, and this pacifism  discourages Free Sparring. Aikido's practical side is largely neglected because the people practicing Aikido do not realize which techniques are the most important, because they do not do Free Sparring.  All Martial Arts Change over time: All techniques are always becoming better or worse in their effectiveness, so that if a martial art is not sufficiently investing time in free sparring, that arts Kata/Theory will become less valuable over time.