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."